The presidential date ended with a performance of August Wilson's play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
Sure, it's a piece of political celebrity trash to feed the masses. Sure, Republicans are getting on his case for taking a quick trip to New York for a date with the first lady when he should be escaping to his Texas ranch to clear brush like a real President.
With my background in theater and knowledge of Broadway plays, the President made a damn good choice. Racist assholes could make the case that of course the first black President would go see a black Broadway show. My own humble opinion is that August Wilson is one of the best damn playwrights this country has ever known. It sure beats the hell out of suffering through Gypsy.
Good choice, Obama. I'd still like to see him cutting down some Bushes in Texas.
Not only does torture have the potential of causing irreparable harm or even killing those being tortured, it also costs other lives. As a result of torture being used by the United States there have been more recruits to al Qaeda and more suicide bombers. Not only will those people die (willingly in a crusade against the Western hypocritical devils) but more troops die as a result of their actions (which are a result of our actions, torture).I have always believed that the United States secretly tortured people. I just figured they were really sneaky about it and kept it so secret most people could live in plausible denial their whole lives. I would have never imagined that we would reach a stage where the former Vice President not only condones torture but is proud of torturing people. For some reason I thought everybody saw what had happened in Nazi Germany and was so sickened by it that we could at least agree that civilized nations would never resort to that sort of thing ever again. At least to never publicly admit to such things. Torture should have been off the list of 'maybes' a long time ago.
Yes it s the long-anticipated dildo that features a likeness of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama!
When we say 'long' we mean 7 1/2" (and nearly 2" in diameter!). It's 14 ounces of TPR, Phthalate-Free Rubber & is made in San Francisco, CA. No batteries required. Previously it's only been available in sex shops & on-line sex sites.
That's right, former Dead Kennedys front man Jello Biafra's record label, Alternative Tentacles, is selling this somewhat disturbing sex toy.
In other disturbing sexual trends, this weekend is the 9th Annual Portland Masturbate-A-Thon. In the past I have given my endorsement of this event. After all, what could be finer than a charity event with a pro-masturbation message? This year it frightens me.
Darklady's Solo Sex Circus is pitching its big top tent over this year’s 9th Annual Portland Masturbate-a-thon for a fundraiser like no other. At last, your chance to run away and join a circus worth living in a trailer for!
Whether you’re a crazy clown, a gentle lion tamer, a nervous trapeze artist or a member of the super freak side show, Ringmistress Darklady will be happy to show you the ropes, the vibrators, the ThrillHammer, the MonkeyRocker, the silent auction, the potluck, the information table, the hoochie coochie girls, the guy stroking off while hanging from hooks and the bearded nuns… just for starters.
It makes me feel a bit prudish, but circuses and sex should not mix.
There are other things that should not be mixed with sex. Just something about creepy clowns and elephants...
Conservative Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding and concluded it constitutes torture. Independent former Governor Jesse Ventura underwent waterboarding on says it is torture. Third time's the charm. So a conservative radio host underwent waterboarding and guess what?
'I want to find out if it's torture,' Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.
This time we get video of the event! Hooray! Televised torture in the United States.
In the first video we see Mancow undergoing the 'enhanced interrogation technique'. I have to admit that watching it be done, it doesn't look so horrible. Lots of people have water dumped on them or get dunked in water. It looks fairly benign.They talk to him after the fact. He tells of how as a child his brother pushed him into a pool and he drowned, having to be revived be EMTs. So the guy knows what drowning is. He says waterboarding IS drowning, and it is torture.That should be that. Anyone who has been waterboarded will tell you that it is torture. The three examples given above were all waterboarded in the nicest possible way. Each of them had safety mechanisms in place that could end the procedure if they couldn't handle it, a luxury you can bet the inmates at Gitmo would have liked. Mancow could stop the torture anytime he wanted by simply letting go of a plastic toy he held in his hand. He knew there was a way to stop it and still called it torture. Some would argue that the detainees also had a way to stop the torture.
"Just tell us what you know and it will end."
"I don't know anything."
"Do it again."
"I meant to say that Bill Clinton and a vast left wing conspiracy have been funding al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden has been staying in their guest house."
Since waterboarding is the flagship of the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the United States government, and waterboarding is torture, we now can say conclusively that the United States tortured detainees. Enhanced interrogation is just a nicer way of saying it. Just like 'enhanced rectal cavity expansion technique' is a nicer way of saying 'ass raped with a baseball bat'.
Our nation tortured people. Folks can dance around that word all they want but we now know well beyond a reasonable doubt that the United States tortured people. People want to believe that all of those inmates were somehow guilty of some unnamed crime and deserved it. Without any sort of trial, without the benefit of presumed innocence that this nation's founding fathers thought was so important that they included it in one of our most important founding documents, with no way of knowing if they were actually terrorists or just citizen soldiers defending the country of their birth, the United States took it upon themselves to torture these people to find out the 'truth'. Knowing that this occurred, the only question left is if people are okay with that.
And some people are. Those people are about as un-American as they come. They hate America and are jealous of its freedoms. Those people are the children of immigrants and they hate immigrants. They are the children of people who escaped religious persecution and they can't tolerate other people's religions. They are the children of people who wanted the right to voice their opinions and they want dissenting voices to shut the hell up. They are hypocritical steaming piles of shit wrapped up in American flag t-shirts and hiding behind 'United We Stand' bumper stickers. They have wiped their assholes with the Constitution and called it an act of patriotism. And their representatives, the politicians, especially the ones who knew we were doing this long before the public did, are even worse.
In the 1984 film Red Dawn, there is a scene where Soviet forces invading the United States round up all the Boy Scouts as members of a para-military youth organization. It seemed absurd to most viewers. Not the Scouts!
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters...
The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out "active shooters," like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses.
Sixty years of para-military activities. I think when I was Scouts age (though I never was one) I would have really enjoyed such activities.
So the Boy Scouts are a para-military organization training kids to act like dick cops who will some day tase you for a minor traffic infraction. Not a big surprise.
Then there's this...
Given recent concerns over the DHS definition of "right wing extremists" and the agency’s penchant to affiliate veterans, gun owners, Ron Paul supporters and even those who question the mainstream media with terrorists, one wonders exactly who the boy scouts are being trained to target.
For the past eight years folks have been complaining that protesters and left leaning political activists have been targeted as terrorists for questioning the mainstream media. There has been plenty of evidence to support this claim as well as the above "right wing extremists" terrorist claim.
Put it all together and you discover that Americans across the board are terrorists. Scouts are being trained to keep us all in line. America as we knew it is going right down the... same path it has been heading down for generations. Only now it can do it on the internet!
Addendum: This slide show of the program is creepy.
Catholics who have prayed the rosary are quite familiar with a particular passage.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
World without end. I like that phrase. Has a real positive tone to it.
It's not just a Catholic thing. Every Bible has it. Ephesians 3:21,
Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
'Throughout all ages' and 'world without end' seem to refer to the phenomenon we now know as space/time. The space/time phenomenon is an inherent quality of the universe as we know it. So without a universe, or without existing in the universe, space/time ceases to exist and you no longer have a 'world without end'. That would be a secular translation. But 'world without end' still refers to a world, as opposed to the heavens. There was a distinct difference between the two.
I invite any and all Christians to rectify the Apocalypse and/or Armageddon with the earlier Biblical phrase 'world without end' without invoking the theoretical 'heaven' which would necessarily exist outside of space/time, or at least not in the 'world' as understood in the Bible.
For those Christians who say the Apocalypse/Armageddon is a fiction, I respect that. Just a few more books to go.
He is said to have believed they had been spying on Earth for decades.
Mr Reagan, who was President from 1981 to 1989, told a pal he had seen flying saucers three times, said author Darwin Porter.
He allegedly added: “I just know it. They’ve selected some desert in the West to make their landing.”
But the ex-President’s daughter Patti Davis dismissed the claims, saying her father, who died in 2004, may have been joking.
Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev has claimed the US and USSR made a pact to help each other against an alien invasion.
He added: “President Reagan said to me, ‘If the US were attacked by someone from outer space, would you help?’”
Some will point to this and use it as evidence he was crazy. Seeing UFOs doesn't make Reagan crazy. Believing they planned to invade made him a little paranoid. Thanks to Reagan propaganda I feared a Soviet invasion throughout most of the 1980's. That was fairly paranoid and we knew the Russians existed.
His reactionary 1950's nostalgia, now that made him a stark raving lunatic. Not to mention selling arms to Iran while simultaneously getting all cozy with Saddam Hussein. And his plan to bankrupt the Soviet Union by spending America into a pit of debt.
Not to mention giving Arnold Schwarzenegger a government job that resulted in him refusing to kill anyone in Terminator 2. That was perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to this country.
For as long as I can remember people tried to convince me that the church was the supporting structure of a moral society. The idea has issued forth from friends, family, clergy, politicians, teachers, veterinarians, homeless panhandlers and addiction counselors. I have maintained for quite some time that people can be just as good without all that. Turns out I was wrong.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
A bunch of Christian crackers think Jesus is okay with torture. Have they really thought this through? Take those terror suspects, nail 'em to a tree, and let them bake in the sun until they spill their guts!
Like I said, I was wrong. Religion is more like a bunch of termites gnawing away at a moral society. People are better without it.
Unless you think torture is the moral high road. Then God help you.
Why should Americans be excited about Cinco de Mayo? From Wikipedia
In 1861, Mexico ceased making interest payments to its main creditors. In response, in late 1861, France (and other European countries) attacked Mexico to try to force payment of this debt. France decided that it would try to take over and occupy Mexico. France was successful at first in its invasion; however, on May 5, 1862, at the city of Puebla, Mexican forces were able to defeat an attack by the larger French army. In the Battle of Puebla, the Mexicans were led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Although the Mexican army was victorious over the French at Puebla, the victory only delayed the French invasion of Mexico City; a year later, the French occupied Mexico. The French occupying forces placed Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico on the throne of Mexico. The French, under U.S. pressure, eventually withdrew in 1866-1867. Maximilian was executed by President Benito Juarez, five years after the Battle of Puebla.
By following the example of Mexico we can wrack up debt, not pay our bills, and when our creditors come to take our stuff, we shoot 'em.
With my background in theater and knowledge of Broadway plays, the President made a damn good choice. Racist assholes could make the case that of course the first black President would go see a black Broadway show. My own humble opinion is that August Wilson is one of the best damn playwrights this country has ever known. It sure beats the hell out of suffering through Gypsy.
