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…
Leroy Greer is a bit of a romantic. He sent a dozen roses and a teddy bear to his girlfriend, with a card reading "Just wanted to say I love you".
Unfortunately the florist sent the receipt to his wife.
How…romantic…
Now the luxury car salesman from Missouri City is suing the firm for $1 million for "mental anguish" caused by the mix-up and his resultant divorce.
The affair was laid bare after his wife received a receipt from 1-800-flowers.com.
Bereft of bouquet, she called the company and requested more information, which not only included the damning card message but the girlfriend’s name and address.
She faxed the receipt to her husband at work with her own note: "Be a man! If you got caught red handed then don’t lie."
Divorce proceedings followed swiftly.
Ya think?
Mr Greer blamed the florist for his divorce and insisted it had told him no receipt would be sent to his home.
No Leroy…it wasn’t the flowers. It’s the thought that counts.
An Australian farmer who thought he’d found his perfect soulmate online got a nasty surprise when he travelled to Mali to meet his fiancée – a reception committee of "machete-armed bandits" who held him for almost two weeks demanding an AU$100,000 ransom.
Des Gregor, 56, flew last month to the impoverished African nation’s capital Bamako in search of "Natacha" and a dowry of AU$100,000 in gold bars, Reuters reports. However, he was picked up at the airport by a carload of ne’er-do-wells who whisked him to an apartment full of armed men.
The kidnappers gave Gregor "a good belting" and threatened to chop off his arms and legs unless his family coughed the aforementioned ransom. He recounted: "I was tied, bound by the legs, and that was only probably for a couple of days because they knew that I was going to cooperate. There was always one bloke sleeping at the door, there was no way out."
The gang’s plan unravelled after 12 days when Oz and Mali police duped them into letting their hostage enter the Canadian embassy to collect the cash.
Tales From The Best Health Care System In The World…(continued)
Funny how the same people pushing "free market" solutions to the health care crisis in the U.S. are also the same ones pushing these Religious Exemption laws that allow individuals to refuse to give health care regardless of what their employer’s policies are…
A federal judge’s ruling this week upholds the right of Illinois pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception.
…
Several pharmacists employed by Wal-Mart and Walgreen Co. have been disciplined for either refusing to dispense Plan B or for refusing to promise that they would dispense emergency contraception if asked.
U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B.
Vandersand, who lives in Bluffs, formerly worked at the pharmacy in Beardstown’s Wal-Mart. He was put on unpaid leave after he refused to fill a Plan B prescription requested by a nurse practitioner at Springfield’s Planned Parenthood on behalf of a female patient in February 2006.
Wal-Mart had contended the state’s right-of-conscience law doesn’t cover pharmacists. Walgreen Co. has made the same argument in other Illinois lawsuits filed by fired pharmacists.
But Scott wrote in her ruling, "The statute prohibits discrimination against any person for refusing to provide health care because of his conscience."
Emphasis mine. Note that the law doesn’t limit a person’s right to refuse to give health care to contraception. It can be health care for Anything, according to this judge. Picture someone who has AIDS and needs their medication to keep their viral count low. Picture some religious right bigot behind the counter turning them away because those medications enable homosexuals to escape the consequences of their sin.
Picture that happening to…hell…just about anyone who isn’t living their lives according to the god of the fundamentalists: who isn’t one of their tribe.
You need to keep something in focus here. Take a look back on the history of the rise of the religious right. Abortion was one of their hooks to get votes and money, when school desegregation wasn’t cutting it anymore. Then Anita Bryant showed them how much more effective the homosexual boogyman was, and they’ve been running with it ever since. But this fight has been going on for decades now, and the religious right got involved in politics along with the secular right over school desegregation…and more specifically, loosing their tax exemptions for their segregated private schools. That’s the mindset here. You have to keep that in focus. Abortion…The Homosexual Menace…these are just tools to keep the voters angry. The real agenda, is dividing America into haves, and have-nots. Guess which side of that fence you’re on.
These conscientious objector laws are ultimately about building that fence of have, verses have-not. It isn’t just contraception, and it isn’t just health care. It’s about building that fence. Everything is about building that fence.
Because we don’t deserve the American Dream. This is not our country. It’s theirs. We just work here.
(Frederick, Colorado) A Catholic priest faces an indecent exposure charge after jogging in the nude about an hour before sunrise.
The Rev. Robert Whipkey told officers he had been running naked at a high school track and didn’t think anyone would be around at that time of day, a police report said.
He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging. "I know what I did was wrong," he said in the report.
So he’s a Catholic priest…and he’s jogging…naked…in the predawn twilight…Around A High School Track… Yeah…I’ll just bet he has a sweaty little problem alright…
Via Pam’s House Blend… You could just about predict the reaction from the kook pews when several democratic candidates for president announced they’d participate in a debate on Logo about gay issues…
After all who could argue with the intellectual, philosophical, economic, national security, and social conscience expertise of a network that prides itself on the number of different ways a human being can have engage in sexual behavior while at the same time avoiding good old fashioned marital sexual intercourse?
…
What will happen is that each of these candidates will have to also later face the same "faith-based" audiences that they have been attempting to woo in recent weeks. Heaven forbid, but Obama might even have to make a follow up appearance in Rick Warren’s pulpit to announce the results of his most recent AIDS test. And what will they have to say then?
See here is the unrelenting truth, put as plainly as humanly possible:
Homosexual behavior and Christianity do not mix. From the standpoint of theory, theology, doctrine, and practice the two are totally and completely incompatible; as are adultery, pornography, bestiality, pedophilia, pre-marital sex, incest, cross dressing, multiple partner orgies and the list goes on. So the candidates can not have it both ways.
The truth is Democrats are not now nor have they ever been interested in seriously committed faith based voters.
So says Kevin McCullough over at TownHall.Com. Meanwhile…back on the side of all that is Godly and Righteous, the republicans are showing the rest of the nation just what it means to be morally upright…
NEW ORLEANS — New allegations tie Sen. David Vitter to a high-priced brothel in his hometown, days after he publicly apologized for his connection to an alleged prostitution ring in Washington, D.C.
Vitter (R-La.) acknowledged being involved with a D.C. escort service that federal prosecutors say was a prostitution ring.
On Tuesday, former madam Jeanette Maier said Vitter was once a client of her Canal Street brothel. She pleaded guilty to running the operation in 2002. Vitter won his seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Maier described Vitter as a "decent guy" who appeared to be in need of company when he visited the brothel.
"As far as the girls coming out after seeing David, all they had was nice things to say. It wasn’t all about sex. In fact, he just wanted to have somebody listen to him, you know," Maier said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Tonight I got confirmation from a solid inside source who has no ideological ax to grind. The source said [Sen.] Vitter was a client at Canal Street, and provided some additional details that shed light on Maier’s comment that there was “more to the business than sex”. [Update: Based on her comments about Vitter not having “unusual predilections”, I would interpret this comment to mean something like companionship and social interaction rather than fetishes… etc.] These details are not for the faint of heart, either.
We’re talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That’s right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre “fetishes”. I don’t have much more info than that from my source, except that some of the other patrons at the brothel included a well known business-minded New Orleans Republican and a well known Democratic ex-governor. There are many other well known patrons who never held public office, too. You’ve probably heard various names floated about.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love that New Orleans has more than its share of sex fetishists and preeverts who can’t come missionary. This ain’t a vanilla town, kids.
But the thought of Vitter prancing around in a dipey is a bit jarring, especially since I’m changing those nasty things every day.
During the Clinton impeachment scandal, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt placed an article in his magazine offering up to $1,000,000 for information on sexual indiscretions by Republican officials. Flynt received evidence that Livingston had strayed outside of his marriage and he was preparing to publish this information. Livingston got word that the article was pending. During debate over the impeachment resolution on December 19, 1998, Livingston surprised everyone by stepping down as Speaker-elect and announced he would resign from the House in May1999. He was succeeded by David Vitter…
The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong — moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers (No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
In considering impeachment, Vitter asserted, Congress had to judge Clinton on moral terms. Decrying the law professors’ failure to see this, Vitter observed, "Is that the level of moral relatively [sic] and vacuousness we have come to?" If no "meaningful action" were to be taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."
You don’t say, David. Gosh…three cheers for moral leadership. And…prostitutes who are worth every penny they charge. Especially the ones who know how to dress a man in diapers.
Today, looking back, Jeanette is not the least bit ashamed of the business she built. "There is a need for prostitutes," she says. "We balance everything out. We let a guy live out his fantasies."
Some of the fantasies at the Canal Street Brothel got a little rough. For those who liked that kind of stuff, there were whips, chains and a lot of leather. Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, "They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings–and these are the people who run our country."
"We’ve got 20-some investigations that all look good," Flynt said during a news conference at his Beverly Hills office.
"We have got some high-ranking Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and the House," he told reporters. "If I get just a couple of those phonies out of there, maybe it will be a step forward."
I’m laughing in your face Kevin McCullough, and all the rest of you pusillanimous sexual perverts over at Town Hall. Sex is a beautiful, thrilling, wonderful part of being alive and being human, and it isn’t Godlessness that’s writing all these sordid headlines now, and it isn’t moral relativism and wasn’t the dirty hippies and all their free love. This is what you get when you drag this vital part of the human identity into the gutter like it was dirty laundry, not one of this life’s pure and perfect joys. When you teach people that sex is a sordid, squalid, dirty thing, don’t be surprised when they act it out in sordid, squalid, dirty ways.
The author Mary Renault once said that politics, like sex, is an expression of the person within. If you’re mean and selfish and cruel it will come out in your sex life and it will come out in your politics when what really matters is that you’re not the sort of person who will behave like that. So what have we here? The party of Greed Is Good, and Sex is 90 Percent Evil, Except When It’s Between A Married Man And Women For Making Babies. And the brothel owners are saying they like to be dominated and spanked and tortured. And…wear silk stockings. And…diapers. And I’ll not endure lectures on how unnatural my sex life is from the likes of your kind Kevin.
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in homosexuality,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Whoops! Sorry. What this guy actually wrote was…
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in the ex-gay movement,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Sorry about that. Really. Meanwhile (again via Ex-Gay Watch…), PFOX is still battling the Montgomery County Maryland Board Of Education to insure that the only things taught in sex education classes about homosexuals and homosexuality are what the ex-gay movement wants taught. Not that they want to be telling anyone how they think they should live mind you…
Fred Clark’s Slacktivist bloggot an R rating from the same nutty blog rating thing that gave me my NC-17. Fred is a liberal Baptist and one of the most decent people I’ve ever met. He regularly tackles spiritual and theological issues on his blog, and he’s been doing a really killer ongoing review of the first book in the Left Behind series. His blog got the R for excessive use of the words Missionary, Hell, and Death. Oh…and Dick…but that Fred says, was in a post about the Vice President.
So the San Diego Padres, in a gesture of good will to the gay community, hosted a pride night at yesterday’s game. Given that many gay couples go to the games are families with kids, the Padres cheerfully offered to give their kids 14 and younger free Padres floppy hats. Of course you just know this made the kook pews go nuclear…
What began as a few angry parents in San Diego, has now turned into a major blunder on the part of the political powerbrokers within the Padres administrative offices. However, the Padres are not backing down. They are choosing the side of homosexuality over the protection of kids, as well as the rights of parents to choose when they teach their kids about sexuality. Parents at the July 8th game will be forced to explain homosexuality, lesbianism and transsexuality to their little boys and little girls because of the celebration of gay pride during the Braves-Padres game.
Rally organizer James Hartline hopes that educational flyers being distributed to families coming to the ballpark will discourage parents from bringing their children inside of the stadium where they will be exposed to radical elements of the homosexual movement. Rally sponsor Scott Lively, President of Defend the Family International, hopes that the Christian response to the gay pride celebration at Petco Park will serve as a catalyst for awakening parental responsibility in a very sexualized culture.
…"We will not abandon these kids to the destruction of homosexuality," says Dennis Martinez, a former national skateboard champion. A committed Christian and well-respected minister among America’s troubled youth, Martinez decided that he could not allow his ministry or its employees to compromise their commitment to Christ.
As boycotts go, yesterday’s protest at Petco Park flopped – like the hats.
Objecting to the confluence of two promotions at last night’s Padres game – “Pride Night,” a group event for local gays and lesbians, and a team giveaway of floppy hats to children 14 and younger – several Christian and conservative groups called for a public protest and boycott of the game.
Roughly 75 protesters showed up outside Petco Park’s front gate dressed in red T-shirts emblazoned with the message “Save Our Kids.” They handed out fliers. A few attempted to talk with Padre fans as they arrived for the 5:05 p.m. game that was nationally televised on ESPN.
“We’re here to inform parents, to warn them about what’s happening inside (the ballpark),” said James Hartline, a self-described Christian activist who directed the protest. “Bringing together homosexuals with baseball and kids is beyond bounds. We’re trying to get people to turn around, not go to the game, and we’re succeeding.”
If so, it wasn’t readily apparent. Official attendance for the game was 41,026, just short of a capacity crowd for the 42,685-seat ballpark.
And…oh look James…it wasn’t just the gay fans who were ignoring you…
“Values start and are taught in the home. Just because you see a bum on the street doesn’t turn you into a bum,” said Robert Davila of El Cajon before walking through the gates with his wife and two young children.
Not that gay people are bums…but you get the idea. Gay isn’t something you catch like a cold. But the subtext here, as always, isn’t that simply seeing gay people would turn the kids gay, but that gay people are predators that children should be taught to be afraid of. The better to make them fear and loath their gay classmates as they get older. The better to make them fear and loath themselves if they are gay. That’s what the Save Our Children slogan has always been about, ever since Antia Bryant used it back in 1977.
You can see why the bigots were bursting a vein over this. If gay and straight can sit down together with their families and enjoy a baseball game together, what next?
Six months after raising the curtain on their gourmet coffee shop in the beachside Indian Harbour Place shopping center, Laurie and Jim Hall decided to offer live music on Friday and Saturday nights.
The performers, normally duos, mainly covered songs written and made famous by other musicians. There was no cover charge, no pay for the musicians, no limit to how long patrons could sit on a couch with their coffee, playing chess and enjoying the music.
No problem.
Then a few months later, music industry giant ASCAP started calling and sending letters saying East Coast Coffee & Tea was in violation of copyright laws. The fee to continue the music was $400 a year.
"At the time, the shop was losing money, so we had to break it up into payments," said Laurie Hall. But the Halls paid, and the music continued.
Six months later, other music copyright companies began calling the Halls and demanding money. Most days there would be three or four phone calls from each company, Hall said. Finally, unable to afford the fees, she had to call most of her musicians — those who did not play original music — and tell them they would not be allowed to continue performing.
This aggressive — but legal — posture being taken by music licensing companies has the potential to unplug live music in many restaurants, bars and coffee shops in Brevard County.
Doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar? First they agree to payoff the one guy…and then another guy shows up demanding money…and then another…and then another…
Andrus, the owner of Lou’s Blues, said he has had many run-ins with the copyright companies over the years.
"It started 15 years ago when I had a guy come out to our other place, Cantina dos Amigos, and play Mexican music on his guitar on the patio," Andrus said. "They came after me for money. Are they really sending royalty checks to the songwriter in Mexico?"
Andrus said he pays BMI and ASCAP about $3,000 a year but is ignoring the smaller companies that seek royalties from him.
"There are so many damned companies you don’t know who to pay," he said. "One guy called and said I had to pay him if I played any gospel music at all. It’s really a mess."
…
And in no way do the songs have to be performed live, or even on the radio, to elicit calls for royalties.
Andrus said a friend of his who owned a restaurant that did not feature music was contacted by a company looking to charge him because it owned the rights to a Hank Williams Jr. song, "Are You Ready for Some Football?" The song preceded every "Monday Night Football" telecast, which the restaurant carried on its televisions.
What next? A shakedown of street performers who play for tips? If the music companies had their way you wouldn’t be able to whistle a tune in public without paying them royalties.
…and want to help them to be everything that God intended for them to be when He created them.
Quatre…
This being the case, we have no desire with the following information to try and attack or hurt someone…
Cinq…
…involved in homosexual sex.
Six…
Quite the contrary
Sept…
…our intention is first to try and help to set them free from the sin of homosexuality and the subsequent tragic consequences associated with homosexual sex – this is an act of love.
Huit…
Our society has been attacked by homosexual activists at every quarter, lying to us about the reality of homosexual sex while they are FULLY AWARE of this sin’s implications and dangers – FULLY!
At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.
Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I’m facing? How will history judge what we’ve done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?
These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.
Well when you nail your compass needle down, staying on course is pretty much a matter of dumb luck George. And while dumb you are, dumb and lucky you never were. Otherwise your rich father and his cronies wouldn’t have had to save you from from jackass self over and over again.
These sessions, usually held in the Oval Office or the elegant living areas of the executive mansion, are never listed on the president’s public schedule and remain largely unknown even to many on his staff. To some of those invited to talk, Bush seems alone, isolated by events beyond his control, with trusted advisers taking their leave and erstwhile friends turning on him.
"You think about prime ministers and presidents being surrounded by cabinet officials and aides and so forth," said Alistair Horne, a British historian who met with Bush recently. "But at the end of the day, they’re alone. They’re lonely. And that’s what occurred to me as I was at the White House. It must be quite difficult for him to get out and about.
That’ll happen to people who would rather have sycophants then real friends. You’re the golden boy, right up ’till the moment you’re not. Then you’re nobody.
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