Under the headline "Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan" the Washington Times reports that "a homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close ties to Washington's political elite." The story alleges that homosexual call boys had been given tours of the White House, under the aegis of Republican Craig Spence. Spence's body is later found at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, an apparent suicide.
Feeling nostalgiac? Me neither...
Ore : 7:03 PM
Under the headline "Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan" the Washington Times reports that "a homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close ties to Washington's political elite." The story alleges that homosexual call boys had been given tours of the White House, under the aegis of Republican Craig Spence. Spence's body is later found at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, an apparent suicide.
Bullshit Survey
Ore : 6:45 PM
Paging Dr. Carothers, Dr. J.C. Carothers to Interrogation...
Ore : 9:12 AM
Doctors enabling torture: Wow, I really don't know what to say to this. There were reports of this happening at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but which were quickly swept under the Laci/Jacko/Prof. Churchill rug by our Holy Corporate Media. But now, it looks like the scandal has renewed currency (via the Toronto Star):
Medical records compiled by doctors caring for prisoners at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay are being tapped to design more effective interrogation techniques, says an explosive new report.
I'm going to avoid invoking Godwin's Law, and just let y'all chew on the examples of, say, Chile or Mau Mau Prison.
If the American Medical Association had even an iota of sac, they'd convene especially for the purpose of condemning doctors who enable torture or who follow any orders that require them to ignore their Hippocratic Oath. Any health care professional complicit in this kind of behavior needs to have his or her medical license revoked.
Hey, check that out! There's an AMA link up there. Well I'll be. Why don't you write them, like I did?
Profiling vs. Pragmatism
Ore : 10:27 AM
From among the nuttier sections of the right wing (ie Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter) often come calls to round up all Arabs or to use ethnic and religious profiling to guide airport security (eg, cavity searching every Mohammed, Fayrouz, and, yes, even that many-armed-god-worshipping Apu, while giving a pass on good white Christians and their lessers such as Samoans and poor people).
Criticisms of said mindset are often met with dismissal that they are born of mushy liberal notions of fairness and political correctness and civil liberties that, frankly, toots, have no place in our new post-nine-one-one, tair-fueled Homeland. That, like it or not, the person most likely to smuggle a gun on a plane bows down to Mecca five times a day.
Except, of course, when that isn't the case.
See, the thinking liberal's take is (or at least should be -- I know mine is) that not only is our approach (in favor of random searches, against sweeping internments) fair, it is pragmatic.
The problem with profiling is that it sets up false senses of security -- demographic comfort zones that, if one is to be serious about keeping our skies safe, one cannot afford to fall in to. Profiling automatically tells you that, while this group is suspect, this other group is safe.
But running an effective security operation means worrying less about likelihoods and worrying more about everything -- including, and sometimes especially, exceptions to those probabilities. If your job is to search boarding airline passengers, sure, you can tie up all your manpower and resources shaking down the stoner Lebanese-American college student, the Persian-American housewife, or the Pakistani-American cab driver, while letting the old Chinese-American lady or oh-so-precious little white boy (you know, the one with the teddy bear?) go. But what if those wily hajjis are actually harmless passengers?
Oops.
And say the eliminationists and exclusionists get what they always wanted: blanket internments of every Koran-loving dusky in America. Fine. They're all locked up, safe and snug in their own little Manzanars, and America can go back to being not-skeered.
Oops.
A few months later, some extremist Christian Identity white guy flies a Cessna loaded with explosive fertilizer into a chemical plant in Hoboken, NJ or the refinery in Martinez, California. Boom. Hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of people are dead, and we're back at square one. Nothing accomplished except the double bonus of making us less safe and weakening our Republic.
Fellow centrist Democrats, liberals, greens, whoever: good sense and the truth are on our side. When we rightfully decry the xenophobic right-wing jackasses who call for Arab concentration camps or airport profiling, we are not only being consistent in yet again standing up for justice, we are also speaking truth to power about what it takes to do everything we can to keep our country safe.
P.S. Feel really icky about the second link. Please forgive.
Knock It Off XIV: Iraq v. Japan
Ore : 7:42 AM
Listen up, wing-nuts: Whatever structure and guidance the MacArthur Plan may have provided, it did not work because of American military might. It worked because the Japanese people wanted it to work. Democracy flowered there not because the Americans wanted it to, but because the Japanese people worked their (at the time) starved and poor asses off, and fought (figuratively) and sacrificed (not-so-figuratively) greatly to make it happen.
And not that the Japanese needed that purple finger ink when they went to the polls, but if they had used it, there was virtually no chance that the arm that purple finger would have been attached to was going to get blown off the next week or the next day. Several years after those surrender papers were signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri (I can't remember -- was their a pretty "Mission Accomplished Banner" hanging from the bridge there?), you did not hear about people dying daily from car-bombs set off in Wakayama or Kagoshima, and there were no priests at Koyasan exhorting all Shingon Buddhists to resist the imperialist invaders. Those facts alone should put these "Color Me Khaki" fantasies of equivalency to rest.
When neocons indulge in this kind of feel-good self-back-slapping, they not only insult our good friends in Japan, they do a horrible disservice to our troops in harm's way and the Iraqi people currently suffering through chaos. Because if people like Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer are prone to these kinds of syrupy fantasies, then doubtless so are many in this misguided administration. And the more this White House and its allies let themselves be guided by fantasy than reality, the more innocent people are going to die.
The only verisimilitudinous comparison that might have been made is that for the longest time, the more thoughtful among Iraqi civilians may have been repeating their own version of "仕方が無い," whatever that might be in Arabic. Unfortunately, through growing impatience and violence-fueled attrition, their numbers have been dwindling.
So knock it off, already.
Recruiters Kidnap Teen
Ore : 7:24 AM
Axel repeated the family mantra, but he was feeling frazzled and worn down by then. The sergeant was friendly but, at the same time, aggressively insistent. This time, when Axel said, "Not interested," the sarge turned surly, snapping, "You're making a big (bleeping) mistake!"
Next thing Axel knew, the same sergeant and another recruiter showed up at the LaConner Brewing Co., the restaurant where Axel works. And before Axel, an older cousin and other co-workers knew or understood what was happening, Axel was whisked away in a car.
You know, if slavering war-cheerleader and infamous chickenhawk Jonah "Doughy Pantload" Goldberg had just enlisted, this might not have happened...
In other stuff: Yes I'm being lazy and neglectful, but I'm in a sweet spot right now...More later. WhyAmISoPoor: I'm rewriting my proposal now...Look for it soon!
Rubberneckers: Hola From Paradise!
Ore : 3:24 PM
I call it my "faux LiveJournal" entry:
Killer Facts:
*5th Grade: my tube socks had THREE stripes, bitch. Ain't no cheap-ass J.C. Penney shit up in here. Word.
*Booze and weed really do encourage intellectual laziness. Sorry, dirty hippies, but you're going to need more discipline if you're going to combat the Jonah Goldbergs and Ann Coulters of the world.
*Never interpose yourself in a girl fight. As a gay man, I enjoy "catfights" in the abstract -- specifically, on Wonder Woman, Cleopatra Jones, Buffy, etc. But when real women really fight in real life? I neither enjoy it and watch it for sport (I'm looking at you, you goatee sporting, backwards cap-wearing, Teva-flopping 'dudes'), nor do I get involved, as a concerned citizen. Either call the cops or let the bitches kill each other.
And no, it's not cute.
*Anyone (cough, cough) want to review a proposal for a sci-fi book I wrote? No, didn't think so.
Okay, kids, enjoy the hot-ass weather. I'm fixin' to get as dark as bread crust up in this bitch.
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