More Republican Gay Closeted Behavior

Rep. Richard Curtis, a lawmaker in Washington state who voted against domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples and opposed an anti-discrimination law to cover sexual orientation ran into a little trouble last night. Police Report PDF

Curtis stated both he and the male walked into the lobby together. He told the male gain that he would give the male $100 to help him out but he was not paying him to have sex. Curtis and the male went up to Curtis’ room, which was 968. Once in the room Curtis gave the male $100…. Curtis and the male ultimately had anal intercourse on the bed in Curtis’ hotel room. The male performed intercourse on Curtis and the male’s semen and/or DNA would be on the inside of the condom while Curtis’ DNA would be on the exterior. Curtis said he was the person who received the anal sex.

Why did Curtis spill the beans? Because the prostitute threatened to blackmail him.

OK, are we done believing the "values" legislators, judges and others in a position to judge you and me are anything but self-loathing hypocrites with their own problems based on their inability to admit who they really are - i.e., GAY! "Not that there's anything wrong with that", provided you don't believe that you have to live your life according to the rules of a several thousand year old tome full of hatred and inconsistencies.

Oh, and I love the part about the $100 being just to help the prostitute out, and not for sex. Which leads me to believe that Curtis knows how to play the game. Had the sleazy prostitute not threatened to blackmail him, Curtis would have been on his way back to Olympia to vote against more gay-friendly legislation and no one at his church would have been the wiser.

Pssst, women have money too, don't let on...

Guardian

The floor is littered with toys and children tussle with each other in a play fight. At the other end of the 28 sq metre room, a woman periodically looks over as she enjoys a cup of coffee in the calming earth tones of her surroundings.

But this is not a creche but a bank - Raiffeisenbank Gastein in Austria. The town of Bad Gastein might be a sleepy looking ski resort with only 5,600 inhabitants but it is home to one of the most innovative banking concepts around: female-oriented banking.

My, yes, how innovative! How terribly terribly clever of the "money men" to notice that women have money and are interested in more than mascara and accessorizing. And that we might even have brains and the wherewithal to compare portfolios. Just do us a favor, don't make the portfolios pink in an attempt to "reach out to women."

Emotion Banking's chief executive, Christian Rauscher, says that until now banks have failed to tap into the lucrative female market. "Fifty-one per cent of [banking] clients worldwide are female ... more women are standing on their own feet and deciding their own finances ... [banks] tend to address men in their communication, which is not necessarily the best way to be successful."

The only quibble I have with this philosophy is that the thinking that only moms should be in a bank with a child in tow. Perhaps the kid-friendly rooms are best for ALL parents who happen to have to run errands while also being a parent. My, what a concept. And it's only taken them a few thousand years to get around to it.

Tilting Taxes

HuffPo

Warren Buffett sat down with Tom Brokaw on "NBC Nightly News" last night to discuss his problems with the US tax structure. He described an informal poll of his office, where the average tax rate was 32.9 percent, compared to his 17.7 percent, citing that as evidence that "the tax system has titled toward the rich in the last 10 years."

Ya think? I hope Warren is putting HIS money where his mouth is (I think he generally does). We need MORE tax brackets. It is NOT OK to tax $200,000 of income the same as $2,000,000 the same as $200,000,000!

Good old mom

Times of India

It's a research that is guaranteed to bring some relief particularly to working women who are worried over being a late mom -- older mothers are better mothers.

Yes, according to a study by researchers, women who have children later in life make better mothers as they are likely than younger counterparts to be financially secure and in stable relationships, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.

Moreover, the older mothers are also happier to put their jobs on hold because they have already achieved many career objectives and also tend to enjoy better health and live longer than their younger counterparts.

I think I'm better than I would have been as a younger mom just because I know myself better and have better tools to work on all the crap that's wrong with me to the advantage of Catharine and myself. I'm sure there are plenty of advantages to being a young mom, but I'm glad there are at least a few of being "older".

Slimy all the way around

Newsday

The former head of the Long Island company that provided most of the body armor for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan was arrested at dawn Thursday in his Manhattan apartment by FBI and IRS agents on charges of fraudulently looting the company and investors to pay for a lavish lifestyle.

That lifestyle included supporting a stable of trotting horses; a face-lift for his wife; a diamond, ruby and sapphire-encrusted belt buckle in the shape of an U.S. flag; and an $8 million bat mitzvah for his daughter, which featured music stars including 50 Cent and Kenny G, according to Benton Campbell, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district.

They continue to loot the treasury and spend the ill-gotten gains on pure extravagance. If you don't care, they won't stop. Make noise, write letters to the editors, CHANGE THE COUNTRY - step by step.

Brooks allegedly made $186 million in 2004 by selling shares in the company shortly after he said he had no intention of selling the stock and shortly before the stock plunged because of reports about the quality of its body armor, the indictment said.

That's body armor boys and girls - you know for the troops?!?!? How low can you be to kill our soldiers w/inferior body armor and then use that money to for your daughter's obscene bat-mitzvah?

Mother Nature to the rescue

The Independent

Scientists have discovered a new and highly effective weapon against deadly superbugs like the MRSA sweeping through Britain's dirty hospital wards – green French muck.

The dramatic antibiotic success of agricur, a clay made from ancient volcanic ash found near the Massif Central, marks it out as a potential rival to penicillin, the wonder drug of the 20th century. In experiments, the clay killed up to 99 per cent of superbug colonies within 24 hours. Control samples of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) grew 45-fold in the same period.

The clay has a similar effect on other deadly bacteria tested, including salmonella, E. coli, and a flesh-eating disease called buruli, a relative of leprosy which disfigures children across central and western Africa. It has been classed as "an emerging public health threat" by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Perhaps it's time we discover "folk" remedies. Big Pharma has us convinced that only they have the answer to what ails us, when in fact, there are probably hundreds or thousands of cures waiting to be rediscovered. Let's just hope they're not rediscovered by Big Pharma, who will promptly trademark the cure, lock up the documents and start running the ads.

Observe...Hypothesize...Test....Observe...

U of AZ Student

Ben Stein, best known as the economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the host of his own game show and the mascot for Clear Eyes, has somehow managed to procure an even more humorous role - as the poster boy for intelligent design, the laughingstock of the scientific community.

Stein appeared Monday on "The O'Reilly Factor" to trump the values of his upcoming movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," which argues that secular science has unfairly ousted discourse regarding intelligent design. Stein believes the theory deserves fair treatment in schools and in science.

What the movie, due in February, won't tell you is the truth regarding intelligent design. The "theory" is so embarrassingly poorly argued and devoid of scientific merit that even the Rev. George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory - not exactly a bastion of anti-theistic vitriol the last time I checked - has denounced it as an unscientific idea that simply "pretends to be" science.

Stein elucidates in a blog on the film's Web site that science operates under a form of "anti-religious dogmatism" under which scientists "are not even allowed to think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator." In a ham-fisted reference to the First Amendment, he asserts that freedom of speech in this country ought to include freedom of inquiry.

But freedom of speech doesn't protect the rights of professors to make claims with no scientific backing without repercussions. Universities don't stand for professors who waste funds and time researching astrology, parapsychology or other pseudoscientific ideas, and they never should.

Notice how nowhere in the rules of science does it say to "throw out God." But it does demand TESTING. So ID'ers when you can TEST for the existence of the "intelligence" in your theory, come back and let me know. I will be waiting with tremendous anticipation.

Stop Fake "News"

Despite an ongoing investigation, corporate propaganda continues to
infiltrate local TV newscasts with disguised product advertisements
posing as genuine news reports. This represents a breach of the trust
between broadcasters and their viewers.

Take action to stop fake news today. Demand that the Federal Communications Commission investigate, strengthen disclosure requirements and punish station owners that air fake news.

Take action here

Personal Responsibility (tm)? That's for poor people.

Hear about Merrill Lynch's CEO, E. Stanley O'Neal, who's about to step down with his big wet thankyou from the board in the shape of $159 million dollars?

So Merrill Lynch has to write down a staggering $8.4 billion due to the disastrous mistakes of O'Neal, many jobs will be terminated because of his failed decisions and the guy is going to walk about with this kind of money. I realize he has a contract but really, if America can afford screw ups like this guy at the top, why the hell is it so difficult to see decent benefits and salary increases for the rest of the working population? $159 million is a lot of health care and a lot of salary for others.

All that crap about personal responsibility that the right likes to throw around, usually means, "you (poor people) are responsible for your own mistakes, but we (rich folks) are operating on a different plain here. Don't ever forget that there are two sets of rules. One for people with little/no money and one for people who pay to make the rules..."

This extra cookie? It's me sacrificing for my kid's brains...

Psychology Today

A woman's eye-popping hourglass figure offers drooling men more than just an irresistible image. Shapely hips and thighs hold essential nutrients that nurse brains and could produce smart kids too, say Steven Gaulin of the University of California at Santa Barbara and William Lassek of the University of Pittsburgh.

Thank goodness all those late night raids on the cookie jar are going to be put to SOME good use. Catharine, you can thank me when you're older; after your MENSA meeting. I'll be the one on the treadmill trying to work off your brains.

Outright lies

Politifact

During the Republican debate, Mike Huckabee said he believes one of the defining issues facing the country is the sanctity of human life. Arguing that the issue is of historical importance, he invoked the Declaration of Independence's rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and said that most of the signers of the declaration were clergymen.

Not even close.

Only one of the 56 was an active clergyman, and that was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

A few more of the signers were former clergymen, though it's a little unclear just how many. The conservative Heritage Foundation said two other signers were former clergymen. The religion web site Adherents.com said four signers of the declaration were current or former full-time preachers. But everyone agrees only Witherspoon was an active minister when he signed the Declaration of Independence....

We'd like to give Huckabee every benefit of the doubt, but even if you consider former clergymen among the signers the best you could come up with is four. Out of 56. That's not "most," that's Pants-on-Fire wrong.

Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor Mike - remember? Another holier than thou. Keep your religion in your way and I will keep mine in my way. And keep your religion out of the public square. The public square is for laws, not religion.

Before thou complainest about the mote in thy neighbor's penis, remove the log from thine own

WaPo

But only Pittsburgh is the scene of the fabulously tawdry and surpassingly vicious spectacle that is the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife.

Remember him? The cantankerous, reclusive 75-year-old billionaire who's spent a sizable chunk of his inherited fortune bankrolling conservative causes and trying to kneecap Democrats? He's best known for funding efforts to smear then-President Bill Clinton, but more quietly he's given in excess of $300 million to right-leaning activists, watchdogs and think tanks. Atop his list of favorite donees: the family-values-focused Heritage Foundation, which has published papers with titles such as "Restoring a Culture of Marriage."

The culture of his own marriage is apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery....

At some point in late 2005, Ritchie [Scaife's current wife] started having suspicions about her husband and hired a private investigator named Keith Scannell, a specialist in high-end surveillance for insurance companies. In December of that year, Scannell followed Richard Scaife to nearby North Huntingdon, home of Doug's Motel, a place where the TVs are bolted to the furniture and rooms can be rented in three-hour increments, for $28. (It's now under new management and renamed the Huntingdon Inn. Head east on Route 8, then east on Route 30.) There, according to Scannell, Scaife spent a few hours with Tammy Sue Vasco.

Why a billionaire would shack up at Doug's Motel, of all places, is a mystery. Ditto his choice of companions. Vasco is a tall, blond 43-year-old mother who in 1993 was busted in a sting operation after showing up at a Sheraton hotel and offering to have sex with an undercover cop for $225, the Post-Gazette reported.

Social Register material she is not, but Vasco and Scaife seemed to have a relationship that went beyond the purely professional. The two usually met each other twice a week, for months, at the motel, says an employee of the motel. Scaife would show up in a chauffeured car, dressed in a suit, wearing cuff links, always bearing flowers. Vasco would be waiting in same room every time, Room 5 on the ground floor, facing the parking lot, said the employee. Mr. Dick, as he was known at the motel, would stay for two hours or so, then get back in the car, which had been waiting, and leave.

Yes brothers and sisters, I'm sure that Mr. Scaife and Ms. Vasco were holding hands and praying for those two-hour windows. Praying that all the sin would be removed from America and that bad adulterers like WJ Clinton would never have any power in America again. As you can see from the list of Scaife's supported organizations:

Through contacts made at Hoover and elsewhere, Scaife became a major, early supporter of the Heritage Foundation, which has since become one of Washington's most influential public policy research institutes. Later, he supported such varied conservative and libertarian organizations as:
American Enterprise Institute
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Federalist Society
Foundation for Economic Education
Free Congress Foundation (headed by Paul Weyrich)
Freedom House
GOPAC (headed by Newt Gingrich)
Independent Women's Forum
Intercollegiate Studies Institute (which operates the Collegiate Network)
Judicial Watch
Landmark Legal Foundation
Media Research Center (headed by Brent Bozell)
Pacific Legal Foundation
Pittsburgh World Affairs Council
Reason Foundation

He's just a godly man who wants to ensure that none of us have an opportunity to sin or to have any of his money in the form of taxes. He's just another saint in the right-wing pantheon.

Oil, baby

London Review of Books

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion....

How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.) In February last year, the Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks described one such facility, the Balad Air Base, forty miles north of Baghdad. A piece of (well-fortified) American suburbia in the middle of the Iraqi desert, Balad has fast-food joints, a miniature golf course, a football field, a cinema and distinct neighbourhoods – among them, ‘KBR-land’, named after the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the construction work at the base. Although few of the 20,000 American troops stationed there have ever had any contact with an Iraqi, the runway at the base is one of the world’s busiest. ‘We are behind only Heathrow right now,’ an air force commander told Ricks.

So a trillion dollars for the war, $30 trillion back in control of oil - cheap at half the price? And what of the soldiers of empire? Where in this calculus do they fall?

Congrats to Mr. Gore on the Nobel Prize

If only...

Youngsters turning away from "that old-time religion"

Amen brothers and sisters. Amen. The Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, ran a survey of the young'uns. Here's what they got:

Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%) - representing large proportions of young outsiders who attach these negative labels to Christians. The most common favorable perceptions were that Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as other religions (82%), has good values and principles (76%), is friendly (71%), and is a faith they respect (55%).

Even among young Christians, many of the negative images generated significant traction. Half of young churchgoers said they perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political. One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality....

When young people were asked to identify their impressions of Christianity, one of the common themes was "Christianity is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus." These comments were the most frequent unprompted images that young people called to mind, mentioned by one-quarter of both young non-Christians (23%) and born again Christians (22%).

Kinnaman explained, "That’s where the term 'unChristian' came from. Young people are very candid. In our interviews, we kept encountering young people - both those inside the church and outside of it - who said that something was broken in the present-day expression of Christianity. Their perceptions about Christianity were not always accurate, but what surprised me was not only the severity of their frustration with Christians, but also how frequently young born again Christians expressed some of the very same comments as young non-Christians."

Them young kids are paying attention. They're reading and thinking and perhaps realizing that not all of the answers in life are to be found in the words of long-dead desert dwellers who thought that plagues were caused by spells and weather by bad behavior.

Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein discusses her new book w/John Cusack. Here are some thoughts:

Klein: It's time to face the fact that climate change has created a major new market. And I'm not talking about a new market for sustainable energy, which would be positive, but a market to profit from the disasters caused in large part by our fossil fuel addiction. Responding to the increasing numbers of emergencies is seen as simply too hot an emerging market to be left to the non-profits -- why should UNICEF rebuild schools when Bechtel can do it? Why put displaced people from Mississippi in subsidized empty apartments when they can be housed on Carnival cruise ships? Why deploy a major international peacekeeping force to Darfur when Blackwater has been lobbying for months to go in and get the job done? Why let the CIA read our email when there are hundreds of security "start ups" that want the gig?

This is a transformation of profound consequence. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, but it was economically insignificant compared to today's disaster capitalism complex. Before 2001, wars and disasters only provided opportunities for a narrow sector of the economy -- the makers of fighter jets, for instance, or the construction companies that rebuilt bombed-out bridges. The primary economic role of wars was as a means to open new markets that had been sealed off and to generate postwar peacetime booms. Now wars and disaster responses are so fully privatized that they are themselves the new market; there is no need to wait until after the war for the boom -- the medium is the message....

When I was in Baghdad, it was clear that this was one of the things that most enraged Iraqis -- watching the non-stop conveyor belt of corporate welfare going to western companies while having to listen to patronizing lectures about the free market. My favorite was from Michael Fleischer -- former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's brother. In the kind of nepotism rampant in the Green Zone, Michael was put in charge of Iraq's "private sector development" during the first year of the occupation. At one point he told a group of Iraqi business leaders that they would have to lose all their subsidies and trade protections because "protected businesses never, never become competitive."...

that a parallel, privatized state has been built for the elites with public money -- it makes Bush's so-called bungling look a lot more sinister. Maybe the construction of this parallel state, and the starving of the public one, is the real "mission accomplished."

How much privitazation of our country are we willing to take? Why are people not more disturbed about this? How much private "security" ought a company be able to have and provide? Remember the Pinkertons? It's like we're right back in the gilded age where we started. The New Deal and middle-class America are vanishing.

Science under George Bush, Jr.

Ed Lazowska holds the Bill and Melinda Gates chair in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. His words via Crosscut

The years of the [George W.] Bush administration have been a black time for science in this nation. I speak with the experience of having co-chaired the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee for Bush, and having chaired the Defense Department's DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] Information Science and Technology Study Group during his presidency. Funds for research, the seed corn of our future competitiveness, have decreased. And the balance of those funds has shifted from longer-range topics — the natural role of the federal government — to shorter-range topics. In the Defense Department, excessive classification of research programs, restrictions on the participation of foreign nationals, and other policy shifts have caused university researchers to abandon working with DoD, meaning that many of the nation's best minds are not focused on defense-related problems.

Note that DoD funded the research that led to the Internet during the Vietnam war — it is not that we are in a war that is the issue! Presidential scientific advisory committees have been politicized. I have seen this firsthand. The general denigration of science emanating from the White House, and the near completee failure of the President's Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, to speak out, is poisonous. Right here in Seattle, consider the Discovery Institute and its "intelligent design." ("Faith-based science" is not what made this nation the world's leader.) Think about our immigration policy. This nation became the world's leader by welcoming the best and the brightest from all nations, but today we have a devil of a time getting foreign students into UW, or hiring faculty who are foreign nationals; foreign students who are educated here are "sent back where they came from" upon graduation rather than being retained to grow the technological base of our nation.

Actually, I beg to differ w/Lazowska. It IS that we are at war that is the issue. Where we once spent money on research and social services, we now spend money on private contractors and bullets up the wazoo. If we would stop bleeding money and lives, we might have more money available to fund research into disease prevention, mental health and all manner of good things. You're the expert Mr. Lazowska, but you seem to be missing this.

Not a Christian Nation

NYTimes

Thomas Jefferson said that his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination.”

When George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, Gershom Seixas, the hazan of Shearith Israel, was listed among the city’s clergymen (there were 14 in New York at the time) — a sign of acceptance and respect. The next year, Washington wrote the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., saying, “happily the government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.

Every few months it seems that someone on the right is going on and on about American having been formed as a Christian Nation. Most recently, it has been the once-Maverick McCain. The lie has been told so often, it has legs of its own now. But again, the words of the framers and the greats in American history speak for themselves.

"and there shall be none to make him afraid" - from your mouth to...well you know...

All I need to know (about sad hypocrisy) I learned from the "religious right"

The Smoking Gun

An Alabama minister who died in June of "accidental mechanical asphyxia" was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report. Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge's two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister's rubber briefs.

So sad. These twisted wretched individuals with nowhere to turn and no one to talk to. Instead of being able to see a therapist or just talk to a friend, they seem to bottle it all up and spew hatred of sex in their ministry. But while the rest of us just go about our business and have consensual sex when we choose to, they wait 'til the wife's out of town and call up the hooker or go deep into their rubber fetishes. And this poor guy ends up dead. It's sad. When will they let themselves out of their self-made cages?

Our President, George Bush Jr.

Whitehouse Interview

Well, first of all, I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That's what I believe. I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren't religious people, whether they be a Christian who does that — we had a person blow up our — blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City who professed to be a Christian, but that's not a Christian act to kill innocent people.

Boy, that's likely to have the fundies' undies in a bundle for a long long time. George, George you forget that each sky wonder God is different and has different books and different rules about how best to satisfy him. Christians aren't going to like it when you suggest that the Judeo-Christian God (who wants his followers to kill the non-believers a la 2 Chronicles 15:13) is the same as the God of Islam (who wants his followers to kill the non-Muslims).

And what's that business about Islam being a religion of peace. You'd best have a talk w/Daddy Dobson. His radio show on Sept. 13th was called "Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam Part 1" wherein he and Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum are clear that Islam is not a religion of peace.

I guess Bush didn't get the memos.

Another toe-tapper

Times Picayune

St. Bernard Parish Councilman Joey DiFatta, who on Thursday withdrew from the 1st Senate District campaign, has been stopped twice since 1996 for suspicion of engaging in lewd behavior in public restrooms in Jefferson Parish, records obtained by The Times-Picayune show.

DiFatta, 53, acknowledged that reports he had been stopped are true, but he denied any wrongdoing in both cases. He said he was not prosecuted in either case and has no arrest record.

So another republican official has the old wide-stance problem. This one gets off (pardon the pun) and isn't arrested - but the official reports still exist (he was let off w/a warning).

Methinks the "values voters" doth protest too much.

Better fostered out than loved?

Daily Herald

Loving couple. Loving home. Steady jobs. No criminal history. Kids like them and the birth mother wants it.
Despite all that, Michael Gregg Valdez and Michael Oberg are wading upriver through the state child protection system to be able to take care of four kids belonging to Valdez's niece. The two Salem men say it's because they're gay.

"They'd rather pull them out of a loving, caring home and put them into a foster home," Valdez said. "You walk into our house without anybody here and it's going to be like any other house."...

The two were surprised three weeks ago when the children's birth mother asked them to take care of her children while she dealt with drug-related criminal matters. It was no small task, but they wanted to help, said Oberg. The kids are ages 11, 6 and 2 years, and 10 months. The children's fathers aren't able to take them, at least not now.

"It was very difficult to get it going. But we've got the kids situated now. They're comfortable. They're happy," Oberg said.
The children aren't strangers to DCFS, as the mother has a history of drug problems. But DCFS has worked to keep the kids with their mother when possible, Valdez said, and was even supportive of the men's efforts, until one of the division lawyers said the men had to sign over the children.

"They've been through enough without having been split up," Valdez said. "That's the major thing, the reason I've agreed to do this for her."

Finding a foster family to take in four kids isn't easy, though the state's goal is to always keep siblings together, said Martie Shannon, DCFS adoption program manager, adding that DCFS doesn't speak about specific cases because of privacy issues.
"It just depends on the timing of who is available," she said.

For now Valdez and Oberg are available and willing.

No, I'm sure it would be MUCH better to split up the children than leave them in the care of their great uncle who obviously loves them and has made room in his life for them. MUUUCH better. Anything to keep them away from "teh gayz."

Little Photoshop of horrors

Folio Mag

For its October issue—the “First Annual Figure Flattery” issue—Glamour put America Ferrera, star of ABC’s Ugly Betty, on its cover. For Jezebel, Gawker Media’s “girlie blog,” it was bit too much “figure flattery.” The site ran a post under the headline “Photoshop of Horrors” juxtaposing Glamour’s cover with a photo of Ferrera at the Emmy Awards the same week the magazine hit newsstands. (The apparent slimming recalled a similar incident in which CBS’s in-house magazine trimmed Katie Couric by about three sizes.)...

This is especially true with news magazines, says Karabatsis. Both Newsweek—which plopped Martha Stewart’s head on a different body for its “Martha’s Last Laugh” cover—and Time—which caused a literal outcry after placing a tear on Ronald Reagan in March—faced criticism for publishing manipulated covers.

The National Press Photographers Association called Newsweek’s treatment of Martha a “major ethical breach.”

“You’re a news organization,” says Karabotsos, noting that Newsweek has since changed their approach by disclosing photo illustrations like Martha’s on the cover.

But even transparency doesn’t translate to trust, Karabotsos says. “We go to magazines to bring us the world. They’re bringing us a modified world that doesn’t exist? Can we trust them?”

“You have to think,” adds Kobayashi, “Where does reality start?”

And where does it end? And who will teach the children to question all of it?

Another chink in the Unitary Executive Armor

AP:

Presidents don't have indefinite veto power over which records are made public after they've left office, a federal judge ruled Monday.

In a narrowly crafted ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush's 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

By law, the National Archives has the final say over the release of presidential records and Kollar-Kotelly ruled that Bush's executive order "effectively eliminates" that discretion. It allows former presidents to delay the release of records "presumably indefinitely," she said.

The judge ordered the National Archives not to withhold any more documents based on that section of the executive order.

Well, as Gomer Pyle would have said, "surprize, surprize, surprize." It appears you can't just make up the rules as you goes along there Mr. Bush.

GOP losing some business support

WSJ

The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title.

New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond...

Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: "The Republican Party left me" -- a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its '60s and '70s-era liberalism...

But polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago....

Overall, Democratic presidential candidates have raised more than $200 million this year, about 70% more than their Republican rivals.

Some of the most compelling evidence suggesting a redefinition of the Republican Party comes from prominent Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. Earlier this year, he surveyed 2,000 Republican voters, updating his similarly exhaustive poll of 10 years ago. In 1997, about half of Republicans said they were motivated mainly by economic issues, and about half by social and moral issues. This year, the culturally conservative wing was roughly the same size, but economic conservatives accounted for just one in six Republicans. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ranks of Republicans whose main concern is defense have grown after subsiding with the end of the Cold War...

Some intraparty tension is rooted in cultural differences. Social conservatives tend to be relatively lower-income, less educated, concentrated in the South and West, and newer to the party than many old-line Republicans of an economic or business bent. Each blames the other for the party's current state -- often employing pejoratives such as "Bible-thumpers" or "country-club Republicans."

There have been quite a few stories in the past few days talking about the demise of the Republican party at the hands of the social conservatives. Many date the beginning of the end to Bush rushing back to Washington to vote to "protect" Terri Schiavo from having her feeding tube removed. That enormously interventionist move finally woke up a lot of the fiscal conservatives to the lunacy of the "social" conservatives. The party of less-government apparently only applied to less-government unless you don't tow the social conservative line.

I'm glad that there's intra-party tension. It's about time that the social conservatives realize they've been played. They have always been used for their vote and fund-raising, while the Bushies and 12-years of Republican Congress have done very little on their "signature" issues - abortion and gay marriage.

It's also about time that the fiscal conservatives realize that the social conservatives are way out of the mainstream on most "social" issues [translation - putting our nose in your business and genitals issues].

Now if only the Democrats could field someone more populist and less business-buddy than Hillary.

Raising a daughter today

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Granted, it's from Dove, who is trying to sell you beauty products while giving you the message that you don't need beauty products. Tricky.

Still, it's a good message. Girls need self-esteems plated in platinum to get through teen-dom and early adulthood. When will we start to see through the bullshit message that "you're just not good enough as you are. You really don't measure up to perfect woman-hood in the following areas....."

Marriage on the mend?

NY Times

THE great myth about divorce is that marital breakup is an increasing threat to American families, with each generation finding their marriages less stable than those of their parents.

Last week’s release of new divorce statistics led to a smorgasbord of reporting feeding the myth. This newspaper warned readers, “Don’t stock up on silver anniversary cards” because “women and men who married in the late 1970s had a less than even chance of still being married 25 years later.” And apparently things are getting worse, as “the latest numbers suggest an uptick in the divorce rate among people married in the most recent 20 years covered in the report, 1975-1994.” Other major newspapers ran similar articles.

The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s.

I've always believed that marriage stats would turn around as we stop forcing people to marry over pregnancy; over the general pressure that society puts on young people to hitch up for life. When only those who want to marry, marry, the stats are bound to show a greater percentage of marriages that last. But we're still dealing with the remnants of generations of people who married due to societal pressure rather than due to their own internal belief that marriage was right for them. Give it time. Another decade or two and more willingness by society to let others live their lives as they see fit, and the stats should continue to improve.