Our President is a homophobic bigot who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state.
Of course, we all knew that already, but it is still a little upsetting to see it illustrated so clearly.
Bush, at a news conference Wednesday, said, "I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or the other."
Today, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House was studying possible responses if pending lawsuits in Massachusetts and New Jersey result in legalization of gay marriage. McClellan declined to say whether Bush favors a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.
I really have never heard why marriage is too sacred and pure for two men or two women to participate in together, but it's not too sacred for Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee to marry each other, or for Carmen Electra to wed a drunken Dennis Rodman, or for Anna Nicole Smith to marry that old guy.
Can the proverbial "Adam and Steve" enjoying the legal benefits of marriage really be worse for society than Plus-Sized former Playmates golddigging geezers on their deathbeds?
Thursday, July 31, 2003
I really should be packing now...
...but procrastination has always been my strong suit.
Anyway, I hereby order everyone to request the second season of Twin Peaks on DVD. Apparently if Amazon gets enough emails from people wanting it, they'll tell "the studios" to put out for us.
And I seriously want these on DVD. So everyone, click here.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to brush my teeth.
...but procrastination has always been my strong suit.
Anyway, I hereby order everyone to request the second season of Twin Peaks on DVD. Apparently if Amazon gets enough emails from people wanting it, they'll tell "the studios" to put out for us.
And I seriously want these on DVD. So everyone, click here.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to brush my teeth.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
A Quick One (Happy Jack)
Read this article I found via Rittenhouse, "What Would Ann Coulter Eat?"
Apparently, the answer is "nothing".
I kind of thought it would be babies, or whole live mice, or something.
Read this article I found via Rittenhouse, "What Would Ann Coulter Eat?"
Apparently, the answer is "nothing".
I kind of thought it would be babies, or whole live mice, or something.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
What President Bush "Brought On"
I've caught a few of my anti-war friends (well, just my husband, really) not sympathizing with wounded troops in Iraq. That is, after all, the job they signed up for, right? Well, it's not quite the job they signed up for, in my opinion.
Just because these men and women have sworn to defend our nation, even thought they might die, doesn't mean that those in the White House (especially those that never took the same oath) have the right to use them as cannon fodder. To be very cold about it, soldiers are a resource, and our leaders are supposed to use that resource responsibly.
So when Dubya says "bring them on" to the attacks on our troops, let's just rememer it's this that's being so callously talked about.
Link via Atrios.
I've caught a few of my anti-war friends (well, just my husband, really) not sympathizing with wounded troops in Iraq. That is, after all, the job they signed up for, right? Well, it's not quite the job they signed up for, in my opinion.
Just because these men and women have sworn to defend our nation, even thought they might die, doesn't mean that those in the White House (especially those that never took the same oath) have the right to use them as cannon fodder. To be very cold about it, soldiers are a resource, and our leaders are supposed to use that resource responsibly.
So when Dubya says "bring them on" to the attacks on our troops, let's just rememer it's this that's being so callously talked about.
Link via Atrios.
Monday, July 28, 2003
Rich white guy lead a full life
Bob Hope died.
Hope died in his Toluca Lake, Calif., home Sunday evening, with his family at his bedside, his longtime publicist Ward Grant told the Associated Press.
It's been a big death year, hasn't it?
Bob Hope died.
Hope died in his Toluca Lake, Calif., home Sunday evening, with his family at his bedside, his longtime publicist Ward Grant told the Associated Press.
It's been a big death year, hasn't it?
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Please, stop the insanity. You can buy cool shoes that I can't.
This is some serious bad parenting. If there's anything I hate, it's parents willing to flood their children's bloodstreams with needless medications, and the huge pharmecutical corporations willing to take advantage of them.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Friday approved use of a growth hormone for boosting the height of children who are short but in good health.
Eli Lilly's hormone, Humatrope, has been sold in the United States since 1987 and used for treating children with growth-hormone deficiencies. With the new approval, Indianapolis-based Lilly will be able to market Humatrope for short children with normal levels of the hormone and no evidence of a disease that stunts growth.
This is the stupidest thing I've heard of in a while. And given current events recently in the United States, that's really saying something.
As a woman who's been 5' 10" since she was 11 years old, I may not have much to say on this subject. But then again, maybe I do. It may not be easy being "abnormally" short. But being tall is just as difficult. Dresses and skirts my size usually fall 3-5 inches too short. The only women's shoes that come in my size are either Dr Scholls' or (ack) nurse's shoes. (I think that's one of the reasons I was a punk rocker...Doc Martens in UK men's size 9 fit just right!)
I hit my head on everything. I once saw stars knocking my head on a high shelf the bedroom of my petite, elfin friend Anna (who, incidentally, once bought the coolest punkest boots ever --they had a fat chunky steel toe with a hammer and sickle in red leather emblazoned on it, perfect for shocking all the rich Bostonians back home-- in in a tiny shop in the Village for 80 percent off because they were size 5, and only her tiny, Cinderella-like feet would fit them). There was a chandelier over the dinner table at the house where I grew up that I bumped my head on two or three times a day. My husband now thinks it's cute when I hit my head every time I get out of the car.
I get backaches stooping down to reach my keyboard at work. Or, I have to lower my seat to the point where my knees ache from being bent at a 45 degree angle all day. I'm taller than everyone else in my family, even my father.
So, in order to save my head from all the lumps and to save me from the social akwardness of highwater pants and nurse's shoes, should my parents have given me shots as a child to mediate my growth to an "acceptable" or "normal" level? Or, should they have encouraged me to see myself as statuesque and elegantly elongated? Should they have given me a sense of Amazonian pride at the fact that I would never need someone to reach something on the top shelf for me?
So, parents of potentially short children, please do not make Eli Lilly any richer by giving your children growth hormones they don't need. Please let your children know that although they may never play basketball, they could be great equestrians or gymnasts. They may need help getting that last jar of spaghetti sauce off the top shelf at the supermarket, but their heads will remain pristinely unlumped.
And please, please let them know that really cool shoes are easier to find in size 5.
This is some serious bad parenting. If there's anything I hate, it's parents willing to flood their children's bloodstreams with needless medications, and the huge pharmecutical corporations willing to take advantage of them.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Friday approved use of a growth hormone for boosting the height of children who are short but in good health.
Eli Lilly's hormone, Humatrope, has been sold in the United States since 1987 and used for treating children with growth-hormone deficiencies. With the new approval, Indianapolis-based Lilly will be able to market Humatrope for short children with normal levels of the hormone and no evidence of a disease that stunts growth.
This is the stupidest thing I've heard of in a while. And given current events recently in the United States, that's really saying something.
As a woman who's been 5' 10" since she was 11 years old, I may not have much to say on this subject. But then again, maybe I do. It may not be easy being "abnormally" short. But being tall is just as difficult. Dresses and skirts my size usually fall 3-5 inches too short. The only women's shoes that come in my size are either Dr Scholls' or (ack) nurse's shoes. (I think that's one of the reasons I was a punk rocker...Doc Martens in UK men's size 9 fit just right!)
I hit my head on everything. I once saw stars knocking my head on a high shelf the bedroom of my petite, elfin friend Anna (who, incidentally, once bought the coolest punkest boots ever --they had a fat chunky steel toe with a hammer and sickle in red leather emblazoned on it, perfect for shocking all the rich Bostonians back home-- in in a tiny shop in the Village for 80 percent off because they were size 5, and only her tiny, Cinderella-like feet would fit them). There was a chandelier over the dinner table at the house where I grew up that I bumped my head on two or three times a day. My husband now thinks it's cute when I hit my head every time I get out of the car.
I get backaches stooping down to reach my keyboard at work. Or, I have to lower my seat to the point where my knees ache from being bent at a 45 degree angle all day. I'm taller than everyone else in my family, even my father.
So, in order to save my head from all the lumps and to save me from the social akwardness of highwater pants and nurse's shoes, should my parents have given me shots as a child to mediate my growth to an "acceptable" or "normal" level? Or, should they have encouraged me to see myself as statuesque and elegantly elongated? Should they have given me a sense of Amazonian pride at the fact that I would never need someone to reach something on the top shelf for me?
So, parents of potentially short children, please do not make Eli Lilly any richer by giving your children growth hormones they don't need. Please let your children know that although they may never play basketball, they could be great equestrians or gymnasts. They may need help getting that last jar of spaghetti sauce off the top shelf at the supermarket, but their heads will remain pristinely unlumped.
And please, please let them know that really cool shoes are easier to find in size 5.
Friday, July 25, 2003
Still winning the hearts and minds. Yeah right.
Our understanding of what will please the Iraqi people seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. For instance, the fact that we are still parading around the corpses of the Hussein brothers, although now with gobs of mortician's wax on their faces instead of gashes and bruises, grosses me out. And I have no religious feelings whatsoever. I can only imagine what devout Iraqis must feel about it.
"Showing dead and deformed bodies on TV is not acceptable," protested Amer Ahmed al-Azawi, a 55-year-old Baghdad merchant. "But the Americans are criminals and unbelievers. We got rid of one tyrant, and we ended up with a bigger one."
Hamza Mansour, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front in neighboring Jordan, said the display violated Islamic custom.
"The bodies of Odai and Qusai should have been washed, shrouded and buried immediately, but the Americans have no respect for our traditions and doctrine and they acted in a very unethical manner," he said.
I think if we wanted to display our cultural ignorance any more obviously, we would have to actually try. Or is that not what we're doing? Sometimes I'm not sure anymore.
And then there's still this factor.
Their faces were reconstructed by morticians and medical personnel, a common practice in the West and not a bid to fool Iraqis, according to a doctor involved in the autopsy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The people who we have "liberated" don't trust us further than they could throw one of our tanks. With our President lying about the reasons we invaded their country in the first place, how can we blame them?
*UPDATE** It seems like not giving the Hussein brothers a proper Muslim burial may really be pissing some people off.
"What happened is a mutilation of the body of the dead," said Souad Saleh, an Islamic theologian who sits on a committee entrusted with issuing fatwas, or edicts, at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, the world's highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning.
"But the Americans are infidels, and whatever Islam says doesn't apply to them," he said.
...Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Qassim, a Saudi lawyer and a former judge, said the handling of the bodies by U.S. authorities in Iraq contravened Islamic law as well as the rules of war, arguing that Odai and Qusai died as soldiers who died in battle.
"It goes against Islamic sharia laws to display bodies of fallen soldiers to influence enemy morale," said al-Qassim, who spoke from the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Another scholar from the Gulf Arab region saw the display of the bodies as inhumane, although he described the two sons as criminals.
"This is a political game to instill fear in the hearts of others that follow their path or support them," said Sheik Adil Isa, a Sunni Islamic scholar from Bahrain.
Emphasis in that last bit is mine. I really am loathe to try and please anyone who would call me an "infidel", but the fact is that conservative Muslims are exactly the people we should be trying to impress with our respect and finesse in the Middle East right now. Besides, what we have done to these bodies is apparently so repulsive to them that even those who denounced the Husseins as criminals are creeped out by it.
Heck, I'm creeped out by it.
In any case, this is definitely a social faux pas at best and a barbaric and savage act of gloating at worst, and at a time when we need to proceed as delicately as possible in preserving the teensy shreds of respect the world still has for our nation.
Our understanding of what will please the Iraqi people seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. For instance, the fact that we are still parading around the corpses of the Hussein brothers, although now with gobs of mortician's wax on their faces instead of gashes and bruises, grosses me out. And I have no religious feelings whatsoever. I can only imagine what devout Iraqis must feel about it.
"Showing dead and deformed bodies on TV is not acceptable," protested Amer Ahmed al-Azawi, a 55-year-old Baghdad merchant. "But the Americans are criminals and unbelievers. We got rid of one tyrant, and we ended up with a bigger one."
Hamza Mansour, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front in neighboring Jordan, said the display violated Islamic custom.
"The bodies of Odai and Qusai should have been washed, shrouded and buried immediately, but the Americans have no respect for our traditions and doctrine and they acted in a very unethical manner," he said.
I think if we wanted to display our cultural ignorance any more obviously, we would have to actually try. Or is that not what we're doing? Sometimes I'm not sure anymore.
And then there's still this factor.
Their faces were reconstructed by morticians and medical personnel, a common practice in the West and not a bid to fool Iraqis, according to a doctor involved in the autopsy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The people who we have "liberated" don't trust us further than they could throw one of our tanks. With our President lying about the reasons we invaded their country in the first place, how can we blame them?
*UPDATE** It seems like not giving the Hussein brothers a proper Muslim burial may really be pissing some people off.
"What happened is a mutilation of the body of the dead," said Souad Saleh, an Islamic theologian who sits on a committee entrusted with issuing fatwas, or edicts, at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, the world's highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning.
"But the Americans are infidels, and whatever Islam says doesn't apply to them," he said.
...Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Qassim, a Saudi lawyer and a former judge, said the handling of the bodies by U.S. authorities in Iraq contravened Islamic law as well as the rules of war, arguing that Odai and Qusai died as soldiers who died in battle.
"It goes against Islamic sharia laws to display bodies of fallen soldiers to influence enemy morale," said al-Qassim, who spoke from the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Another scholar from the Gulf Arab region saw the display of the bodies as inhumane, although he described the two sons as criminals.
"This is a political game to instill fear in the hearts of others that follow their path or support them," said Sheik Adil Isa, a Sunni Islamic scholar from Bahrain.
Emphasis in that last bit is mine. I really am loathe to try and please anyone who would call me an "infidel", but the fact is that conservative Muslims are exactly the people we should be trying to impress with our respect and finesse in the Middle East right now. Besides, what we have done to these bodies is apparently so repulsive to them that even those who denounced the Husseins as criminals are creeped out by it.
Heck, I'm creeped out by it.
In any case, this is definitely a social faux pas at best and a barbaric and savage act of gloating at worst, and at a time when we need to proceed as delicately as possible in preserving the teensy shreds of respect the world still has for our nation.
Surprisingly Revealing Quizilla Result of the Week
SPIRIT is your chinese symbol!
What Chinese Symbol Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Hey, that's pretty accurate.
Via Wallybrane.
SPIRIT is your chinese symbol!
What Chinese Symbol Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Hey, that's pretty accurate.
Via Wallybrane.
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Tsk tsk tsk...
To all of you who've found this page by searching for "pictures of Kobe Bryants's accuser" or some variant thereof, shame on you!
*added, after noticing about a hundred hits from these searches* On second thought...Welcome! Why don't you all buy me a present.
Of course, I'm still disgusted.
To all of you who've found this page by searching for "pictures of Kobe Bryants's accuser" or some variant thereof, shame on you!
*added, after noticing about a hundred hits from these searches* On second thought...Welcome! Why don't you all buy me a present.
Of course, I'm still disgusted.
Why don't we just put his head on a pike?
This is really disgusting. No only did we beat them, apparently we also joined them. Releasing graphic photos of the corpses of the two sons of Saddam as some sort of "looky what we did, aren't you scared of us now?" kind of thing is behaivor I'd expect of a tinpot dictator. Oh wait...
While the U.S. military has historically been reluctant to release photographs of people killed in combat, the images were released by the provisional authority in Iraq to overcome widespread Iraqi skepticism that the Hussein brothers were dead.
The gruesome photographs were immediately broadcast by the Arab satellite channels al Jazeera and Al Arabiya across the Arab world.
But reporters in Iraq said the reactions to the photographs were mixed, with several Iraqis maintaining they were still unconvinced by the photographs. Several Iraqis expressed disappointment that Saddam's sons, who have been accused of human rights and war crimes, were not captured alive.
Qusai and Odai Hussein both escaped easy, and the Iraqi people they terrorized will never get to see them get punished for thier crimes
*ADDENDUM** I like this quote from former CIA Director James Woolsey in this CNN.com article.
"Normally, we would not do this," he said. "But I think it's necessary for the world to see and particularly for the Iraqis to see that these two are, in fact, dead, that this is not some ginned-up story from the United States."
Why oh why would the world suspect the United States of attempting to sell the world a ginned-up story I wonder? This whole war has damaged the credibility of the US to such an extent that nobody knows whether or not we're actually crying wolf anymore.
This is really disgusting. No only did we beat them, apparently we also joined them. Releasing graphic photos of the corpses of the two sons of Saddam as some sort of "looky what we did, aren't you scared of us now?" kind of thing is behaivor I'd expect of a tinpot dictator. Oh wait...
While the U.S. military has historically been reluctant to release photographs of people killed in combat, the images were released by the provisional authority in Iraq to overcome widespread Iraqi skepticism that the Hussein brothers were dead.
The gruesome photographs were immediately broadcast by the Arab satellite channels al Jazeera and Al Arabiya across the Arab world.
But reporters in Iraq said the reactions to the photographs were mixed, with several Iraqis maintaining they were still unconvinced by the photographs. Several Iraqis expressed disappointment that Saddam's sons, who have been accused of human rights and war crimes, were not captured alive.
Qusai and Odai Hussein both escaped easy, and the Iraqi people they terrorized will never get to see them get punished for thier crimes
*ADDENDUM** I like this quote from former CIA Director James Woolsey in this CNN.com article.
"Normally, we would not do this," he said. "But I think it's necessary for the world to see and particularly for the Iraqis to see that these two are, in fact, dead, that this is not some ginned-up story from the United States."
Why oh why would the world suspect the United States of attempting to sell the world a ginned-up story I wonder? This whole war has damaged the credibility of the US to such an extent that nobody knows whether or not we're actually crying wolf anymore.
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Drink up, me hearties...
Continuing with the strong pirate theme as of late, try this quiz.
What's your Pirate Name?
My pirate name is:
Black Bess Rackham
Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!
Continuing with the strong pirate theme as of late, try this quiz.
What's your Pirate Name?
My pirate name is:
Black Bess Rackham
Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!
The meaning of American Justice
I was going to blog about how the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons didn't quite sit well with me, but then Lambert over at Eschaton went and hit it exactly on the head already.
Suppose we had captured Saddam's sons, and then turned them over to the Hague tribunal for trial. What happens? The national interest gets served in all kinds of ways. We get all the propaganda advantages that the Peruvians and Imperial Rome got (which is all the killing was about anyhow). We get the Europeans and the UN back on board, and maybe we get some help with reconstruction and even a graceful way out. Best of all, it's good for the Iraqi people. The Clinton administration followed just this policy in the Balkans when they got Milosevic tried at the Hague for war crimes, and the Balkans are doing reasonably well.
At best, killing Saddam's sons was a missed opportunity. At worst, it's the tip of the iceberg of a policy of targeted assassination that perverts the notion of American justice, and will lead to blowback just as certainly as funding Afghan jihaadists did.
And I agree wholeheartedly. This sounds like something Israel would have done. Instead of arresting these men, dragging them out in chains in front of the cameras, making them answer for their crimes in front of a court of the world, we just killed them.
We get no intelligence from them, and they get to die honorably in battle (I hope that doesn't sound too much like I'm a Klingon, but that's exactly what I mean) instead of rotting away in a jail cell.
This should not be the meaning of American justice. I don't think we should be the vigilates of the planet.
I was going to blog about how the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons didn't quite sit well with me, but then Lambert over at Eschaton went and hit it exactly on the head already.
Suppose we had captured Saddam's sons, and then turned them over to the Hague tribunal for trial. What happens? The national interest gets served in all kinds of ways. We get all the propaganda advantages that the Peruvians and Imperial Rome got (which is all the killing was about anyhow). We get the Europeans and the UN back on board, and maybe we get some help with reconstruction and even a graceful way out. Best of all, it's good for the Iraqi people. The Clinton administration followed just this policy in the Balkans when they got Milosevic tried at the Hague for war crimes, and the Balkans are doing reasonably well.
At best, killing Saddam's sons was a missed opportunity. At worst, it's the tip of the iceberg of a policy of targeted assassination that perverts the notion of American justice, and will lead to blowback just as certainly as funding Afghan jihaadists did.
And I agree wholeheartedly. This sounds like something Israel would have done. Instead of arresting these men, dragging them out in chains in front of the cameras, making them answer for their crimes in front of a court of the world, we just killed them.
We get no intelligence from them, and they get to die honorably in battle (I hope that doesn't sound too much like I'm a Klingon, but that's exactly what I mean) instead of rotting away in a jail cell.
This should not be the meaning of American justice. I don't think we should be the vigilates of the planet.
Housekeeping
I've done some blogroll shifing...
A Rational Animal is now at http://www.arationalanimal.org/blog/, and Body and Soul is not at http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/.
Say hello to Ms. Musings! Thanks for the link!
The same goes to the Lefty Directory, Whom Gods Destroy, Conceptual Guerilla, and Iddybud!
Also I've deleted a few links that seem either dead or just absolutely inactive. Nothing personal to anyone!
I've done some blogroll shifing...
A Rational Animal is now at http://www.arationalanimal.org/blog/, and Body and Soul is not at http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/.
Say hello to Ms. Musings! Thanks for the link!
The same goes to the Lefty Directory, Whom Gods Destroy, Conceptual Guerilla, and Iddybud!
Also I've deleted a few links that seem either dead or just absolutely inactive. Nothing personal to anyone!
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