Now, this is the issue: Does a political party say to its most militant, committed, ideologically driven believers in purity that they have a veto over what the party does? And I say that procedurally because substantively I agree with them. I have spoken on this floor and in committee for including people of transgender. I have argued that with my colleagues in private. I have argued that with the Democratic Caucus. But I also believe that I have a broader set of responsibilities than to any one group and my job is to advance the moral values that I came here to advance as far and as fast as I can and not voluntarily to withhold an advance because it doesn’t meet somebody’s view of perfection. And the question is, how do we relate to those people? And it has become an increasing problem for both parties.
Frankly, until recently I have felt that one of the advantages we Democrats have had over our Republican colleagues is that we were more willing to be responsible, less susceptible to the most committed minority of our party having a veto. I think from the days of Terri Schiavo and before and since, the Republican Party has suffered from that. I don’t want the Democratic Party to suffer from it. Not because I want to protect the Democratic Party as an end in itself, but because the Democratic Party is the means by which these values I care about are most likely to be advanced.
And let me talk about this ideological faction that we have. There are some characteristics that they have that I think led them to this profoundly mistaken view that the greatest single advance we can make in civil rights in many, many years would somehow be a bad thing because it would only include millions of people and leave some hundreds of thousands out. And I want to include those hundreds of thousands. I have done more to try to include them than many of the people who say we should kill the whole thing, but I don’t understand how killing the whole thing advances that.
But here are some of the characteristics: first of all, they tend to talk excessively to each other. One of the things when you are in this body is you talk to people all over the country. You talk to Members of Congress from every State. And I have this with people who can’t understand why I am not introducing legislation to impeach the President and the Vice President, and I find that this is a characteristic that these are people who do not know what the majority thinks, who do not understand the depths of disagreement with their positions on some issues. And that doesn’t mean a majority that says George Bush is wonderful. That isn’t there anymore, but a majority who would be skeptical of impeachment.
But let me get back to this. There are people who talk excessively to each other. They don’t know people of other views.
There is another characteristic of these people who are so dedicated. They do not have allies. You can take an elected official who has been with one of these groups day after day for years, but let that individual once disagree, and it’s a betrayal. It’s a failure of moral will. And lest anyone think I am here being defensive about myself, let me be very clear: I will be running for reelection again. The likelihood that I will be defeated by someone who claims that I am insufficiently dedicated to protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation seems to me quite slender. I am not worried about my own situation, and let me also say that I have said that my colleagues suffer sometimes from the unwillingness to tell people bad news. It has been suggested that I may suffer from the opposite direction. It’s not that I like telling people bad news, but I do think that you should when you have to.
I am not worried about myself, but here is what I’m worried about: I am worried about people from more vulnerable districts because not only do people talk only to themselves and not understand the differences that exist and not accept anybody’s bona fides ever, that they will turn on anybody the first time there is an honest disagreement, but there is also the single-issue nature. That is, there are people who say, okay, you know what, I don’t care about your survival to fight for any other issue.
I’ll say this…you have to admire the chutzpah of a man who argues that he has "a broader set of responsibilities than to any one group" while defending a bill that protects only the group he belongs to, and not the broader set of sexual minority groups that it used to. You have to admire the chutzpah of a man who cites his minority rights credentials, while arguing that the people he’s culling out of a civil rights bill don’t matter as much, because they’re a smaller minority. But you Really have to admire the chutzpah of a man who is willing to state flatly that the job security of his fellow democratic congressmen is more important to him then then the job security of the people he’s culling out of his anti-discrimination bill.
This business about people with "no allies" who "talk excessively to each other" and bitch about being betrayed over an "honest disagreement" stinks like a cesspool. This is the language the gentleman bigots use to paint gay people as a militant pressure group for wanting equal rights, equal opportunity and access to marriage. They call us a threat to children and families, they call us disrupters of military cohesiveness, they call us disease spreading sexual deviants, they say we’re offensive to god almighty, and when we call them on their cheapshit bigotry they reply that they’re being viciously attacked for disagreeing with us. That’s called begging the question. What is the nature of the disagreement Barney?
You are betraying them Barney. And in doing that, you are betraying all of us. You’re selling them out, and in the process, cheapening our many many years of hard, bitter struggle. This wasn’t for fairness. It wasn’t for equality. It wasn’t for justice. It was just for Getting Ours. That’s what you’ve turned our struggle into. Jackass.
Yes you drooling moron, you have a broader responsibility. You have a responsibility to All Americans. Not just Some Americans. Not just Your Kind Of Americans. You have a responsibility to America. To what America stands for. Or…used to anyway. The American Dream? Liberty and Justice For All? That stuff? Remember it?
Members of the House of Representatives recently threatened to hold a vote on a bill that would cut from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act the people who most need its protections. There is no better example of the reason we need a transgender-inclusive ENDA than Diane Schroer, a highly-decorated veteran who transitioned from male to female after 25 years of distinguished service in the Army. Diane interviewed for a job as a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress, and accepted the position, but the job offer was rescinded when she told her future supervisor that she was in the process of gender transition.
The ACLU does not support an employment discrimination law that covers sexual orientation but not gender identity, for two reasons. First, the sexual orientation only bill may well not even do what its sponsors want. Because it currently defines sexual orientation as “homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality,” there is still a serious risk that employers may get away with claiming they fired women because they are too masculine and men because they are too feminine. There is a serious risk courts will say the definition only covers who you have a relationship with, and not stereotypes that only apply to some gay people. If that sounds far fetched, we’ve been watching courts do just this in disability and marital status discrimination cases. And courts have already said that harassing someone over perceived masculinity or femininity is not sex discrimination if the prejudice stems from sexual orientation. We have been warning members of Congress about this problem for over four years.
But the more important reason to oppose excluding gender identity and expression is this: We truly do believe that discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression are not mutually exclusive. They are all based on beliefs about what is or is not appropriate for men and women; what jobs are appropriate, what relationships are appropriate, what kind of personal and public identity is appropriate. It makes no sense to split them apart.
No one is more aware than the ACLU that compromise is a critical part of the legislative process, and that change in a large republic is almost always incremental. But a compromise that cuts out some of the community, as a group, as opposed to one that cuts out some employers or some situations, is wrong. It would create the belief that this is a less worthy group of LGBT people, something that doesn’t happen when you leave people who work for small employers uncovered (something most civil rights laws do). There has been plenty of compromise in ENDA. It allows employers to keep same-sex partners out of health plans. It doesn’t apply to the military. But some bargains are just not worth it. Cutting out people who have been on the front lines of the LGBT movement is not a concession we should make.
Matt Coles
Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project
Why I’m a card-carrying member. You think the ACLU is an extremist pressure group Barney? Well walk across the isle and shake John Boehner’s hand Barney, because without a doubt he believes that too.
Barney Frank wants to pass an EDNA and he doesn’t care if it leaves some members of our community (Yes John Aravosis, Our community…) in the dust. He doesn’t even really care if it really protects the people he claims it will. How does this make any sense? Because it’s got his name on it, that’s how. Frank wants his name in on the first ever federal law banning discrimination against gay people, and never mind whether or not it actually does that. It’s not for the community…it’s for posterity.
Your argument boils down to the assertion that America really does accept transgendered people far more than I’m willing to realize and therefore we’d have no problem passing a trans-inclusive ENDA. Great. I’m game. Show me the votes. Show me that you have the votes to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA, that the bill won’t go down in flames, that Democrats won’t be forced en masse to vote in favor of some hideously anti-trans amendment lest they lose their jobs next election, and I’m there for you. You think this is some easy game, that we actually have the votes, but some of us simply don’t like you and find you icky and that’s why we’re concerned. Fine, then I’ll call your bluff. I adore you. Now prove to me that you have the votes to pass ENDA and that your strategy won’t kill this legislation for the next two decades, and you have my support. You have two weeks, which should be ample time considering all of us are lying about there not being enough votes to pass ENDA with trans inclusion.
This is sickening. No John, you don’t "adore" the transgendered. And reading this unmitigated bullshit you call a response I don’t think you even see human beings when you look at them, let alone people who are your neighbors. They’re speed bumps on the road to your place at the table is all they are. Your place at the table. Not ours, everyone’s. Your EDNA is a classified ad reading "No fems, freaks or fatties". Your EDNA is an gay nightclub with a doorman that keeps out all the uncool people. Your EDNA is a circuit party for a-listers only. And that’s your America too, isn’t it John? Why the fuck are you even bothering to call yourself a democrat?
Nothing worse in this poor world then a moron without a conscience, and you’re case in point aren’t you? Prove to You that the votes are there to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA…did you say? How about you prove the votes are there get one actually enacted into law. Bush is going to veto it, the republicans are going to uphold it, and you and every other braying inside the beltway jackass fucking knows that. If anyone is committing political theater here John, it’s you. And oh that it was meaningless. You’re proving not just to the transgendered community, but to all our heterosexual friends, people who have stood at our side, often at great personal cost, that we are as cheap, petty and insular as the homophobic bigots who are the reason we need EDNA. You’re proving to our straight allies that our struggle isn’t about anything more noble and righteous then getting ours, even if we have to put an elbow in the side of a few friends along the way. You’re proving to them that we really are the self absorbed, narcissistic, vainglorious pricks the religious right keeps saying we are.
I’m 54 years old, and I have been fired many times for being gay, back when doing that to gay people was utterly unremarkable. I think I know a thing or two about what it’s like to have to live and work and try to fucking earn a living under those conditions. My lifetime income when all is said and done and my body is laid to rest, will probably work out to around half what it would have been had I simply been more attracted to girls then guys. I’ve had employers tell me to my face that I was being let go because there wasn’t any place for homosexuals in their company. I’ve had them make pathetic excuses for letting me go when we all knew perfectly well the reason why. I’ve had them just show me the door, only to be told later by a co-worker what the problem was. There were times when I had to mow lawns to make ends meet.
I have always laughed at those "studies" that prove that homosexuals make more money then the average American. Where the hell did mine go then? Don’t tell Me I don’t know what’s at stake here if EDNA doesn’t pass. I fucking lived it for decades! Maybe someday you’ll grow a conscience and realize that’s exactly why I cannot look my transgendered neighbors in the face and tell them they’re holding me back and they have to get in line behind me. Who would you do that for John? Who would you get in the back of the bus for?
How You Sell This Stuff With A Straight Face I Have No Idea…
The Amazing Randi’s challenge to the golden ear cult made Slashdot today, and in the comments there is a link to a list of the worst audiophile products ever. If you remember what high end audio used to look like before The Absolute Sound and it’s spawn completely destroyed it, take a look now and weep. Here’s what it’s come to: A pen you color the edges of your CDs with to, I kid you not, "reduce the scattered reflections of the laser beam and increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected laser", for a "significant decrease in the harsh "edginess" in the sound of many CD’s and an increase in clarity, resolution and ambience". A $485 dollar wooden volume control knob to reduce "vibrations" and make your system sound "much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution." A thin mat you place "atop a CD, DVD-V, DVD-A, SACD, or mp3 disc" with cut-outs that will "…create a very specific energy spectra that mechanically dithers the laser to recognize and retrieve additional low level information that is otherwise lost, truncated or unseen."
But the ultimate really does have to be this demagnetizer for, I kid you not, CDs, CDRs, and DVDs. Yes, a demagnetizer for an object made of polycarbonate plastic with an aluminum coating. This is what you get, when you take objective measurements out of the picture, and replace them with a gaggle of golden ears.
"New! Featuring four beams, nearly twice the rotation speed and improved timing processing, the Quadri-Beam is an ultra cool disc treatment. This patented process reduces the noise floor allowing far more information to be retrieved from the disc. It also works great on DVDs, giving you a picture that is brighter, sharper, crisper and cleaner. For those of you who have never experienced the sonic benefits of the Bedini Clarifier, it significantly reduces high frequency glare and increases retrieval of information, enhancing dynamic range. Detail and resolution are improved dramatically."
I won’t comment. This is Slashdot, so I guess you have some entry level knowledge to know why this is the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in months.
There are physical reasons why vaccuum tube amplifiers sound DIFFERENT than solid state amplifiers. I don’t, however, subscribe to the philosophy that they’re better inherently, as I’ve heard some terrible-sounding tube amps.
Whoa. Let’s not equate the tube vs. solid-state debate with cable voodoo. You can look at the waveform of a tube amp’s output and compare it to a solid-state amp’s output and see the difference yourself, if you know what to look for. Tubes color the sound (essentially, distort it, but in a way that many people prefer) by emphasisizing the odd-ordered harmonics of a given tone.
EVEN ORDER, not odd order harmonics… TRANSISTOR gear has a higher ratio of odd harmonics to even, comparatively. Especially a triode vacuum tube in a single ended circuit design will have almost no 3rd harmonic signal compared to the second one.
"The thing is, even the cheap drilled wire of your phone-line is good enough to transmit multi-mhz signals for DSL over a few km."
That’s because the telephone system uses low-impedance balanced lines; without this technology, POTS would be largely impractical, and long-distance nearly impossible (at least in the days before satellite).
Low-Z balanced lines are also used in many hi-end audio systems, for the same reasons; they offer a material advantage. In fact, an inexpensive low-z balanced line cable can easily better very high-priced single-ended cables. It’s the primary reason that all of the equipment I build and work with uses balanced line technology.. better performance without fancy cables = value for the customer.
Man oh man how I wish the adults were back in charge in the world of high end home audio…
Our rant about those $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables found its way to the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and Randi offered $1 million to anyone who can prove those cables are any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables "danceable," Randi called it "hilarious and preposterous." He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, "they would be paranormal."
Long ago Harry Pearson and others like him not only injected cultish mysticism into the audiophile world, Pearson in particular dragged the conversation into the gutter with his grotesquely venomous personal attacks on anyone who showed the slightest respect for objective testing and actual measurement of how audio equipment actually behaves. So what replaces objectivity in a high end audio review nowadays? Mostly a system of cult leaders and cult followers. Randi’s offered them a million dollars if they can prove in double blind scientific studies that their favorite equipment actually does what they claim it does for sound reproduction. Unsurprisingly, none of the cult leaders are biting. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
The original intent of the forum, according to Coalition of Conscience director Dr. Michael Brown, was to have an open and honest dialogue between the Coalition of Conscience and members of the Charlotte-area gay & gay-friendly clergy.
Brown said he had invited members of the clergy from thirteen area churches – including the New Life Metropolitan Community Church, MCC of Charlotte, Myers Park Baptist Church, St. Martin’ & St. Peter’s Episcopal Churches, Holy Covenant UCC and Jay Bakker’s Revolution Church. Brown also said up to 500 personal invitations to the event were handed out at the Pride Charlotte festival at the end of August. He also noted that this was his third or fourth attempt at organizing a public discussion on issues of sexuality & Christianity with members of the Charlotte-area LGBT community.
…
“We want to open a door of grace to the gay & lesbian community. We are convinced from the Scriptures that Jesus is against homosexual practice. We are equally convinced that Jesus died for homosexual and heterosexual alike,” Brown said, “We know there is a lot of misunderstanding. We know that a lot of gays and lesbians have been driven out of churches as if homosexuality was the worst of all sins…. Just by saying, ‘Let’s talk about it,’ hopefully we can break a wall down there.”
Oh how…neighborly…
Uhm…well…sort of….
At the beginning of the forum, however, Brown made his point very clear: One cannot be gay & Christian, or rather, one cannot be a self-affirming gay person and Christian:
“If you mean, can I be a devoted follower of Jesus while struggling with unwanted sexual desires, while saying I know these are wrong, I resist them, I don’t give into them, I do not practice homosexuality, I’m celibate and I’m abstaining from these things and my goal is to be pure in front of the Lord, but I’m still struggling with these things… Can you be gay and follow Jesus? In that sense, yes. And that’s the same as a heterosexual struggling with lust, desire, temptation outside of wedlock. However, if you mean can I practice homosexuality? Can I engage in romantic and same-sex relationships and does God endorse those things and can I be a follower of Jesus at the same time? The answer is absolutely, categorically no. The Scripture leaves no room to question that.”
(Emphasis mine…) Oh. Well there’s nothing to talk about after all then is there?
The “values voters” seem (so far) to be obsessed about homosexuality. And the candidates that showed up to pander are playing right along. They all weighed in on how to oppose “the homosexual agenda” with only Ron Paul hedging his anti-gay attitudes in terms of libertarianism.
Libertarianism…did you say…?
Every single candidate present would veto ENDA, would support a federal marriage amendment, and would support healthcare policies that would reward a “moral” lifestyle.
Emphasis mine. Ron is the kind of libertarian who would have (and probably did as far as I know) joined in the celebrations over the supreme court decision in Hardwick v. Bowers back in 1986, which upheld the sodomy laws. It was a "state’s rights" thing see. Now of course, it’s Let’s Let The Federal Government Define What Is And What Is Not A Family.
State’s Rights. Libertarianism.
[Update…] In the comments to that post, Ron Paul’s supporters note that Paul is apparently "on the record" as being against FMA. However, that seems not to have been a record Paul was willing to share with the Values Voters. Apparently he weaseled his way around the question.
See…this is the thing I noticed even back in the 1970s about many libertarians. You can appeal to a lot of people by saying the government should get the hell out of (insert what government does that you despise most here), so long as you mute the part about wanting to dismantle (insert what government does that you really like here). And almost without exception those libertarians who did that, turned out to be mostly right wing conservatives, wrapping themselves in libertarian language, trying to convince liberals that government is more a source of all our troubles, then a means to any good end. They’ve been singing that tune since…oh…back around when the feds started desegregating the public schools…
I won’t deny that there are libertarians who would be perfectly willing to get up on that Values Voter stage, look that audience right in the eye, and tell them if they want the government to leave them alone, it has to leave their neighbors alone too. They’d be tossing those votes away of course, but they’d say it. Paul apparently, couldn’t bring himself that day to stand on…you know…principle. There’s probably a reason for that.
How To End A Telephone Conversation Before It Even Begins…
…with Me at any rate. Once again I am expecting a phone call on the land line, and once again I don’t have my glasses handy when the phone rings, to check the caller ID…
Me: Hello?
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: Hello…am I speaking to Mr. Garnet?
Me (warily): Are you with the landscaping company…?
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: No…I’m calling on behalf of…
Me: CLICK!
Garrett. Garrett.gar-it . Two ‘r’s, two ‘t’s goddamnit.
Ninth Commandement? What Ninth Commandment…? (continued)
Oregon Magazine, they of such informative and thoughtful jourmalmalism like Hippies History Channel History is a Bad Trip ("They (the hippies) were all Leftists. Teenagers, young adults, old folks driving a spray-painted VW van — they were all the same."), the hard hitting online magazine bearing a picture of John Wayne standing in front of an American flag with the quote, "Now, just why in the HELL do I have to press ‘1’ for English?", brings us this alarming news about the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy…
Florida Mayor Jim Naugle has been under rapid fire assault from homosexual activists and liberal media for asking people simply to obey the law and to be responsible and respectful to families and children.
No shit…this crap showed up in Google News. And not just buried somewhere in the "all 3791 news articles" link, but right on the fucking news home page. I’ve noticed lately that whatever algorithm Google uses to determine what stories actually make the front page, it’s tracking a tad to the right…particularly when it comes to news regarding the gay community. Next thing I know I’ll be seeing press releases from PFOX. Oh…wait…I have. But more on that later…
Naugle, you may recall, is the prize jackass who in his last term as Mayor of Fort Lauderdale Florida, decided to go on an anti-gay jihad, accusing gay folks of making Broward County the nation’s AIDS capital and having public orgies in the beach toilets, despite being inconveniently contradicted on both counts by the Largest HIV/AIDS Healthcare Provider in the United States and his own police department. The Broward County Commissioners voted unanimously last week to remove the mayor from his seat on the tourism board for the damage he’s been doing to the attractiveness of the oceanside city to tourists, that they’ve worked so hard to cultivate since Naugle decided that Fort Lauderdale didn’t need to be a Spring Break destination anymore.
But the man has his defenders, at least in the "Now, just why in the HELL do I have to press ‘1’ for English" crowd, and Oregon Magazine would like us all to know that, in fact, having sex in public is just what the militant homosexual agenda is all about…
Members of the activist community in Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere are actually coming out in defense of public "gay"
sex. The homosexual legal group, LAMBDA Legal calls such public sex a civil right in their "little black book," and encourages such behavior.
The lousy formatting on that paragraph is theirs because I wouldn’t want to be accused of altering any of their breathless prose. And don’t bother clicking on the link they’ve provided because like the paragraph formatting and a lot of everything else that’s on the pages of Oregon Magazine, it’s a tad fucked up. But if you go to the Lamba Legal web site, and search for it, you can find the pamphlet they’re talking about, Here.
While Lambda Legal and other groups are fighting against the ways police target men who have sex with men, having sex where others might see you and take offense can subject you to arrest, publicity and other serious consequences. If you feel unsafe, you should leave.
Nowhere in that document is having sex in public called a civil right. The document is full of warnings about the risks involved, both legal and to your health, and the low probability of successfully fighting the charges.
Be aware that undercover cops may be “cruising” to arrest you. A cop doesn’t have to tell you he’s a cop, even if you ask. If you’re cruising for sex and an undercover cop hits on you, what you do can still be a crime. Don’t count on proving the cop “entrapped” you (which is difficult). Talk to your lawyer if you think you were set up.
How you can read the words "what you do can still be a crime" and think they say "public sex is a civil right", I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect it has something to do with wondering why you have to press ‘1’ for English. And it doesn’t sound very encouraging to me either. On the other hand if you’re the kind that thinks that just telling the accused that they still have…you know…constitutional rights…amounts to encouraging crime then maybe your mileage varies. Or maybe you’re just a dickwad. Say…what was that you folks were saying about hippies ….? Oh…yeah…
Hey, hippie. You want to see an authoritarian style, regimented, intolerant government? They’re all over the place. One type is dedicated to the ideas of Marx. The other is dedicated to the ideas of Islamic extremism.
Oh heaven forfend America should become anything like a Marxist dictatorship where people don’t have…you know…the right to talk to an attorney or anything…
And speaking of lying conniving dickwads…over at Ex-Gay Watch, it looks like they’ve caught PFOX telling another whopper giving people the facts about militant homosexuality…
This past Tuesday, PFOX posted some disturbing news. While innocently offering “materials on same-sex attraction and tolerance for the ex-gay community to a hungry public” at the Arlington County Fair, Arlington Va (Aug 15-19), they claim their representatives were viciously attacked, both verbally and physically, by “gay activists” who had also set up a booth at the fair.
Wow…that’s just so…so Wrong! Damn those militant homosexuals!
Since PFOX stated that the police were “summoned” and that they “ejected the gay man off the fairgrounds” we decided to check with the Arlington County Police Department. Focus on the Family reports through CitizenLink that “Officers kicked the gay activists out of the fair and encouraged the PFOX volunteer to press charges, but he chose not to.” So depending on the account, we have one or more officers responding to a complaint of assault, recommending that the victim file charges, and then ejecting one or more “gay activists” from the fairgrounds. Surely the Arlington PD would know if one or more of their officers participated in such an action. What good would it do to eject them if others in charge were not also made aware so they could make sure they didn’t come back?
We contacted the Arlington PD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.
Whoops!
Ex-Gay Watch was also rude enough to check with Denise Marshall Roller, the Event Manager for the fair, who said that their call was the first she had heard that there were any problems of that sort at the fair…and she was there. Most of the time she said, near the officer in charge. So it would appear that not only do militant homosexual activists go around attacking decent people who only want to expose the sordid truth about homosexuality, they can also warp the space time continuum to conveniently hide their evil deeds after the fact. Or maybe they have the power to cloud men’s minds…
You will remember nothing of this incident…there was no vicious attack…
the PFOX booth was not disturbed…no homosexuals were at
the PFOX booth…there is no such thing as a homosexual…
Next thing you know they’ll be bitching about Why The Hell Do I Have To Press ‘1’ For Heterosexual…?
The best time for a telephone solicitor to catch me is when I’m expecting a phone call and I’m busy in the kitchen and the phone rings and I don’t have my glasses handy to look at what the caller ID is telling me…
Me: Hello…?
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: Hello…I’m I speaking to Mrs. Garrett?
Me: There’s no Mrs. Garrett here.
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: Oh…am I speaking to Mr. Garrett?
Me (icily): Who’s calling?
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: I’m calling from the American Diabetes Association…
Me(interrupting) : Oh….right…I still get those mailings… My mom passed away several years ago.
Oh-So-Friendly Telephone Voice: Oh. I’m so sorry. I’m just calling to thank you for your past support and to ask…
Me: CLICK!
The problem with cordless phones is you can’t slam them down when you hang up.
…I would have been unable to resist saying that Republicans have shown no sign of believing in "the right to keep your own money" or in limited government or in a "strong defense". Allowing rich people and corporations to make use of (and often ruin) public services without paying for them is not giving you "the right to keep your own money"; in fact, it’s making you pay for the things they get more use from. Limiting the power of government to protect your Constitutional rights is not "limited government"; neither is allowing a president the power to summarily deprive individuals of those rights "limited government". Bankrupting the Treasury in order to give the DoD money it doesn’t need (and doesn’t spend wisely) while you go blow up other countries that posed no threat to the US is not "a strong defense".
Conservatives have always supported intrusive government, they have always endangered Americans by aggravating other countries, and they have always been very happy to collect taxes from ordinary working people and use that tax money to fatten the Malefactors of Great Wealth while depriving the rest of us of our freedoms. Those same people conned a number of libertarian-minded young people in the ’70s and ’80s into believing that conservatism was liberalism and vice-versa because a few intolerant lefties went overboard in their objections to morally reprehensible expressions of racism and sexism. I would have thought these kids would have grown up by now and realized that they’re still paying taxes but under the Republicans they’re getting less for them – and that’s before the bill for all that "strong defense" comes due. How dumb they have to be to think it makes sense to be both Republican and gay after all this just doesn’t bear thinking about.
I was one of those who were conned…right up until Reagan gave me a clear understanding of what kind of government we were likely to end up with when market forces become the moral standard and the rule of law bows to the rule of money. But I think the final nail in my libertarian phase’s coffin was the reaction of many of my ersatz fellow libertarians to the supreme court decision in Hardwick v. Bowers, that upheld the sodomy laws. I heard a lot of applause for the court standing up for state’s rights, while at the same time paying lip service to the proposition that individuals should be free to have whatever sex they wanted to, as long as it was mutually consensual. How, I asked them, don’t sodomy laws violate the fundamental libertarian principles of individual freedom and freedom of association? To which I got the standard "state’s rights" reply.
Me: But…sodomy laws are wrong…they’re evil…
They: The federal government has no business telling the states what laws they can pass.
Me: But…you Do agree that state don’t have the right to trample on the individual’s liberty…?
They: The federal government has no business telling the states what laws they can pass.
Me: But…states don’t have any more right to abridge the freedoms of the people then the federal government does…
They: The federal government has no business telling the states what laws they can pass.
…and so on. That was when I realized that a lot of libertarians were merely right wing conservatives cloaking themselves in libertarian rhetoric about individual freedom when it suited them. I’ve watched them play that game ever since. And amazingly, as President Nice Job Brownie has proven, they can rip the rights guarantees right out of our constitution, eliminate the right to a trial by a jury of our peers, eliminate access even to the courts, spy on Americans and laugh at the need to get a warrant, lie the country into war, assert that the government has the right to determine what is, and what is not a family, declare same sex couples to be legally strangers before the law with no recourse to marriage or even civil unions, and wave our tax dollars in our faces before stuffing them into their cronies pockets…and those gen-X knuckleheads who bought into it during the Reagan years will still insist that republicans and conservatives are for individual rights and democrats and liberals hate freedom and are for big government.
Tragically, not all of my fellow boomers made it out of the 60s and 70s sane. Many of them are stumbling through life now, middle aged pathetic burned out shells of their former selves. One case in point being the drooling jackass who wrote this last week in the Wall Street Journal…
The Summer of Drugs
Forty years ago, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in and drop out."
BY TED NUGENT
Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.
Irresponsible lifestyle of random sex…did you say Ted…?
The first time that I got it
I was just ten years old
I got it from some kitty next door
I went and see the Dr. and
He gave me the cure
I think I got it some more
They give me cat scratch fever
Cat scratch fever
It’s nothin dangerous
I feel no pain
I’ve got to ch-ch-change
You know you got it when you’re going insane
It makes a grown man cryin’ cryin’
Won’t you make my bed
I make the pussy purr with
The stroke of my hand
They know they gettin’ it from me
They know just where to go
When they need their lovin man
They know I do it for free
Do it for free do you Ted? Got it from a lady next door when you were just ten did you Ted?
That Nadine, what a teenage queen
She lookin’ so clean, especi’lly down in between; what I like
She come to town; she be foolin’ around
a puttin’ me down as a rock-and-roll clown
It’s all right
Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
Wang dang, what a sweet poontang
a shakin’ my thang as a rang-a-dang-dang in the bell
She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat
Down on the street you know she can’t be beat
What the hell
Wang dang Ted…
I don’t wanna hand nothin’ to ya
I just wanna sit back and do ya
Dontcha make me stand up and chase it
I just wanna lay back and taste it
Come and get it right here for you
I would never want to bore you
No
Come and get it
Come and get it
Come on girl and sit down beside me
Let me tell ya whats burnin’ inside me
I want you to take it
I know that you’ll like it
Sit right down and grab it and bite it
Come on girl its right here for you
Yes…I think we can see what’s burnin’ inside of you Ted…
Looking for trouble, looking for sex
Walking on the wild side, she’s so complex
She’s on fire, the heat is coming on
The girl’s on fire, she burns all night long
High hell sneakers
Head to toe in lace
Such a dangerous body
With a little girl’s face
Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, was it? Well I’m sure there wasn’t a father anywhere in this country back then Ted, who wouldn’t have felt completely at ease letting you be alone with their little girl. No random irresponsible sex for you. With…little girls…
I with you Ted, when you morn the deaths of all those amazing talents back then. They died way too young and it was a tragedy. Just think where they’d be now if they had lived on. For one thing, I don’t think Hendrix or Joplin or Morrison would be writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal. I mean…just try to picture it. Would John Lennon be writing for the Wall Street Journal? Would the Wall Street Journal let John Lennon fucking anywhere near it’s pages? But then it wasn’t drugs that killed Lennon…it was some burned out lunatic with a gun.
I was in Chicago last week I said, "Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?" Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, "Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch." Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.
I can understand why you’re so pissed off Ted. I can understand why you hate all the dirty hippies. Hendrix…Joplin…Cass Elliot…Jim Morrison…John Lennon… They’re still taking the spotlight away from you, aren’t they? Their music lives on generation after generation…long after their pointless deaths. Kids who were born long after they’d died are still groovin’ to their music…and you still can’t raise your act much higher then the gutter trash crowd.
You understand why that is…don’t you Ted. In a world where Hendrix can still sing Foxy Lady to us, why would anyone want to listen to a burned out lunatic belching Kiss My Ass…
I believe in animal rights
I let my dog hump on my shin
Right. Whatever. You’re howling out abuse at the hippies so you won’t have to face the fact that if it wasn’t for the greats who took rock and roll from the back streets to Woodstock you wouldn’t have a stage to prance around with your…machine gun. You’d be just another long haired weirdo with a guitar and an open guitar case on the sidewalk in front of him with a little card in it asking for spare change. I mean…it certainly isn’t your music your audience comes to you for now is it…?
Oh look…a naked woman tied up and served on a platter like a pig, with a hand grenade in her mouth. So nice of the Wall Street Journal to give you a forum to bitch about hippies, drugs, cowardly irresponsible lifestyles of random sex, and…soulless music.
There is a saying that if you can remember the 1960s, you were not there. I was there and remember the decade in vivid, ugly detail. I remember its toxic underbelly excess because I was caught in the vortex of the music revolution that was sweeping the country, and because my radar was fine-tuned thanks to a clean and sober lifestyle.
So tell us Ted, what this clean and sober lifestyle has to do with naked ladies bound on silver platters and gaged with hand grenades. And…does being clean and sober help much for getting on stage and announcing to the world that you want a black man and three white women to suck on your…machine gun? Wow…it must have been awful…simply awful…getting all caught up in that toxic underbelly of excess back then. Good thing you made it out of there clean and sober. Every father would want his son to grow up clean and sober…
It’s really cute how the Wall Street Journal ends your editorial with "Mr. Nugent is a rock star releasing his 35th album, "Love Grenade," this summer." Perhaps they should have put a photo of the cover art there too. Or one of these souvenir stickers they’re selling now on eBay…
I’m picturing you looking at the cover art for your new album, and thanking your lucky stars that you weren’t caught up in any toxic underbellies of excess…
…and I’ll take what all those Haight-Ashbury hippies gave the world over this ugly shock jock crap any day. See…the hippies shocked the establishment, but they weren’t About shocking the establishment. They rejected the empty values and broken promises of the 50s…they were reaching for something they really thought was a better place. You just want to shock. And the problem with shock is that it gets old. People get used to it. So to stay in the spotlight, you have to keep ratcheting it up…increasing the dose.
…which makes you the drug Ted. You and all the other shock jocks who’ve been busy ever since the Reagan years, dragging America into the gutter for money. Rush Limbaugh…Michael Savage…Don Imus… You. You’re no Hendrix. You’re no Morrison. You’re no Joplin. You’re sure as shit no John Lennon. Drugs may have killed some of the best musical talent of my generation Ted, but they left behind a little beauty and wonder for the rest of us and for generations to come, and that’s something you’ll never be able to say on your deathbed. You’re the symptom of cultural decay Ted. You’re one drop of the heroin coursing through America’s veins now. You give your customers a quick little high, a cheap little thrill, and when you’re done with them they’re a little less then they were before.
Wang dang, what a sweet poontang…
I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns…
…and your wallet is a little bigger. How fitting that you’re in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, so soon after Rupert Murdoch bought it.
[Update…] Via Harp I learn that Nugent’s new album has a cover of the old Amboy Duke’s psychedelic hit Journey To The Center Of The Mind. A quick visit to the CD listing on Amazon.Com confirms it. This is rich…
The Amboy Dukes, some of us still recall, was the 60s band Nugent made a name for himself in. Sweet. Here we have Nugent bellyaching in the Wall Street Journal about the 60s drug culture, and hippies and LSD and how "the bodies of chemical-infested, brain-dead liberal deniers continue to stack up like cordwood"…and the album he’s releasing this month has a cover of one of the quintessential songs of that period, and that culture. Christ…I’ve heard of playing both sides of the street, but this is really brazen.
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…
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Oh. My. God. One of the items in there is some sort of box for processing your disks [musicdirect.com]:
"New! Featuring four beams, nearly twice the rotation speed and improved timing processing, the Quadri-Beam is an ultra cool disc treatment. This patented process reduces the noise floor allowing far more information to be retrieved from the disc. It also works great on DVDs, giving you a picture that is brighter, sharper, crisper and cleaner. For those of you who have never experienced the sonic benefits of the Bedini Clarifier, it significantly reduces high frequency glare and increases retrieval of information, enhancing dynamic range. Detail and resolution are improved dramatically."
I won’t comment. This is Slashdot, so I guess you have some entry level knowledge to know why this is the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in months.
There are physical reasons why vaccuum tube amplifiers sound DIFFERENT than solid state amplifiers. I don’t, however, subscribe to the philosophy that they’re better inherently, as I’ve heard some terrible-sounding tube amps.
Whoa. Let’s not equate the tube vs. solid-state debate with cable voodoo. You can look at the waveform of a tube amp’s output and compare it to a solid-state amp’s output and see the difference yourself, if you know what to look for. Tubes color the sound (essentially, distort it, but in a way that many people prefer) by emphasisizing the odd-ordered harmonics of a given tone.
EVEN ORDER, not odd order harmonics… TRANSISTOR gear has a higher ratio of odd harmonics to even, comparatively. Especially a triode vacuum tube in a single ended circuit design will have almost no 3rd harmonic signal compared to the second one.
"The thing is, even the cheap drilled wire of your phone-line is good enough to transmit multi-mhz signals for DSL over a few km."
That’s because the telephone system uses low-impedance balanced lines; without this technology, POTS would be largely impractical, and long-distance nearly impossible (at least in the days before satellite).
Low-Z balanced lines are also used in many hi-end audio systems, for the same reasons; they offer a material advantage. In fact, an inexpensive low-z balanced line cable can easily better very high-priced single-ended cables. It’s the primary reason that all of the equipment I build and work with uses balanced line technology.. better performance without fancy cables = value for the customer.