i'm laughing my ass off

these are wicked good

Time's first 100 days - Obama
(ht: americablog)



one of my favorites: Together
The President and First Lady are briefed by Valerie Jarrett before an event with the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Callie Shell / Aurora for TIME

this absolutely sickens me

i can see wanting to protect one child. i cannot see nor can i accept trying to cover up for a kid who (allegedly) calls in bomb threats, makes racist calls, takes money for making those calls.

that is unacceptable. no excuses. no trying to blame someone else. it's one thing to pull a little prank. it's another thing entirely to get police, fire fighters, bomb squads, fbi and goodness only knows who else, out on a false alarm. we're talking people's lives at stake here. this is NOT an innocent game or prank. it's sick and illegal and if someone does this, they should be locked up. anyone who knew about it should be tossed in the slammer too. they should get DOUBLE time if they're a parent

in church my big fat ass

at the very LEAST the bio-tch (mommy dearest) knew he made RACIST 'prank' calls. and the bio-tch is SUPPORTING THAT???????????? lock the bio-tch up just on princpal


Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online
Teenage Bomb Threat Suspect Was Internet Prank-Call Star
By Kevin Poulsen

A 16-year-old North Carolina boy arrested for allegedly making a bomb threat against Purdue University had a secret identity as a superstar in an unusual online subculture — one dedicated to making prank phone calls for a live internet audience, his mother admitted Thursday.

“I heard the prank phone calls he made,” says Annette Lundeby of Oxford. “They were really funny prank phone calls…. He made phone calls to, like, Walmart.” Lundeby confirmed that her son was known online as “Tyrone,” a celebrity in a prank-calling community that grew late last year out of the trouble-making “/b/” board on 4chan. Using the VOIP conferencing software Ventrilo, as many as 300 listeners would gather on a server run by Tyrone to listen to him and other amateur voice actors make often-crude and racist phone calls, some of which are archived on YouTube. The broadcasts were organized through websites like PartyVanPranks.com............

...............Lundeby admits that her son received donations for his prank phone calls, but denies that he made bomb threats. She says her son was with her, coming home from church, at the time of the February 15 phone call that summoned a bomb squad and evacuated the mechanical engineering building at Purdue University in Indiana..........

from the effed up and unbelievable file

you can bet if it was some rich white dude whose home was broken into.....

he wouldn't be charged for any forensic investigation that was done.

how ugly is this? not just being physically raped but raped again by the system? having to fight with hospitals and police departments and bill collectors. why should a victim of a crime have to go to all lengths to make sure bills (for evidence) are paid?

Rape Victim Billed For Evidence Costs

By Stephen Dean

HOUSTON -- Victims of sexual assault are getting bills, rejection letters and pushy calls from bill collectors while a state crime victims' fund sits full of cash, Local 2 Investigates reported Thursday."I'm the victim, and yet here I am. I'm asked to pay this bill and my credit's going to get hurt," said a single mom from Houston.She received bills marked, "delinquent," after she visited a hospital where police told her to have evidence gathered. Officers assured her she would not pay a dime for that rape kit to be handled."That was unreal," she said. "I never thought I'd be out anything for what I went through."She was 44 years old when she was attacked in her own bed. She said she awoke to find a burly 15-year-old friend of her son assaulting her. He was found delinquent, meaning he was convicted, in juvenile court, thanks in part to the evidence gathered with the rape kit."It is set up legislatively so that the criminal justice system pays for whatever evidence collection occurs," said Kelly Young, with the Houston Area Women's Center, a rape crisis facility.........

the 'ex' gay community?

there is without a doubt NO such thing being as an 'EX' gay. if you're gay, you're gay. even if you sleep with a member of the opposite sex. even if you pretend to settle down and marry a member of the opposite sex. if you are gay YOU ARE GAY FOREVER.

and, to me, i think, WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MATTER (if you're gay or straight)? it matters to me if you're an asshole or not. now THAT matters

well, a special shout out to pepsi for NOT cowering down to these evil closed minded bible thumping moronic goons

Pepsi Urged To Drop Gay Ties

By 365gay Newscenter Staff
(Dallas, Texas) A PepsiCo shareholder who describes himself as “a former gay” urged the company to “stop using shareholder profits to fund anti-heterosexual groups” at the firm’s annual shareholders meeting in Dallas.
Greg Quinlan, a member of the conservative American Family Associated affiliated group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, presented a motion asking stockholders to stop donating money to groups that he said ” aim to discredit the ex-gay community.”

In his speech to shareholders, Quinlan described the Human Rights Campaign and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) as “gay organizations that hate people like me.”

Over the past two years, Pepsi has given $500,000 to the Human Rights Campaign and $500,000 to PFLAG.

“By funding PFLAG, PepsiCo promotes fear and hostility against the ex-gay community and our supporters, and spreads lies about ex-gay organizations. Diversity does not mean funding one organization so that it can attack another,” said Quinlan.....

like it

(ht: blog portion)

the effed up hannity liberty tree

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sean Hannity's Liberty Tree
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage

i just saw star trek

it's EVERYTHING it's supposed to be. it far outshines any and everything i've seen so far. of course i realize the special effects had a LOT to do with everything and with each passing year they just get better and better. i'm not one to go to the mega-cinema-one-too-effing-many, BUT i decided to go to the 1:10 pm showing. i get out of work early on friday, so i figured what the hell. i knew it wouldn't be crowded and it wasn't. only about 10 or 12 of us. i sat in the back row with my medium lemonade and twizlers. the ticket and beverage and candy came to $12.00. i don't know how much the movie was on it's own.

i also am generally NOT a fan of the mega-block buster movie. i'm more a snob leaning toward the foreign or indie. well of course star trek is always going to be an exception. please don't get me started, because i could and would go on and on and on. i didn't want to go because i knew i'd cry. and yes, i did cry. but i didn't care. the movie had everything. romance (light), humor, villans, heroes, elders, warp speed, transporters, phasers, the enterprise (the FIRST one), humans, aliens. it kept me wrapped up from absolute beginning to absolute end. wait a minute. i take that back. the movie was missing ONE thing. the voice of the computer; majel of course i believed them all. the characters were fairly well rounded and developed. make no mistake. this is a kirk and spock movie. the others were just the icing. even so, they were main parts of the story and you DID see how their (older) characters developed from the young 'uns. i had to wait soooooooooooo long to see scotty but it was damn worth it. yeah, when there was that shot of the crew on the bridge, i welled up AGAIN. i can't and won't tell you about the plot except to say a couple of things. those rogue romulans are mean muthas AND IF THERE IS ONLY ONE THING YOU LEARN in this life or the next one.............. NEVER and i mean NEVER MESS WITH JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK, SPOCK, SULU, CHEKOV, UHURA, BONES AND SCOTTY. just effing DON'T. star trek official site star trek imdb

i needed to link to this

absolutely NEEDED to.

there are NOT two sides to female genital mutilation. a rose steamin' pile o' shite by any other name..........

it's not culture and it's not ethnicity and it's not tradition. it's the FORCIBLE HOLDING DOWN OF VERY YOUNG GIRLS AND CUTTING THEIR GENITALS OFF SO THEY WILL NOT EXPERIENCE SEXUAL PLEASURE LATER IN LIFE. in most cases, it's not even done by a doctor. (if you're asking what i think of male circumcision, i think the same thing. it's brutal and savage)

why it's even being presented in any other form than that is fucking beyond me. a bull fight is spanish or mexican 'tradition, culture, or whatever'. to me it's STILL KILLING AN ANIMAL FOR THE GRATIFICATION OF SALIVATING CROWDS. as i said, a rose steamin' pile o' shite by any other name........

cutting off a young girls vaginal lips does NOT make them a woman. it does NOT welcome them into womanhood. it's barbaric and savage and fucked up. if as an adult a woman wishes to have that done to her, than so be it. it's then THEIR decision. when it's forced on a young girl, then it's OUR business and MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS.


Female Genital Mutilation Versus Female Circumcision
The amazing Michelle Goldberg has a great piece in the latest print issue of The American Prospect, but you can also read it online. Essentially, she's exploring the question, as the title suggests, of "Rights Versus Rites," when it comes to the much abhorred practice of "female genital mutilation" (by many Westerner feminists) and the much honored practice of "female circumcision" (by many African women). Same practice, vastly different contexts and values--as evidenced by the language itself. Goldberg writes:

At first glance, the two speakers seemed to symbolize the dichotomy between modernity and tradition, cosmopolitanism and cultural authenticity. Fuambai Ahmadu (pictured), the American-born daughter of a Sierra Leonean family, wore knee-high leather boots under a stylish rust-colored skirt. A postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, she looked younger than her 40 years. Beside her was Grace Mose, regal in a red African tunic, matching skirt, and head wrap. Her perfect English was deeply accented by her native Kenya, where she had grown up in an Abagusii village in the country's southwest region. It was easy to imagine her as a champion of the line of midwives who have made their living cutting girls since the beginning of recorded history, women who are now being jailed in some countries for practicing a trade that once brought them money and pride.

But it wasn't that simple. Ahmadu, not Mose, is the high-profile defender of female circumcision and the role it can play in inducting African girls into their societies. "My sitting here is a perfect example that female initiation can have a place in a global society," she insisted. "I don't see that initiation is somehow an impediment to girls' development."...Toward the end of the debate, a Senegalese woman, incensed by Ahmadu, stood up and said, "I really feel very frustrated seeing an African sister defending female genital mutilation.".........

i agree,

this makes me smile
THIS my dears is an ad for a mattress. if you do not wish to see a birth, don't watch it (hell, people get all bent out of shape when someone breastfeeds. i can only imagine what they'll think or say on seeing an ugly, unnatural, shameful, the most wonderful, beautiful birth!!!!)
(from feministing)

Mattress ad depicting home birth makes me joyful

You know, it's not often that a commercial makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The tagline: "Tu cama. El lugar mas importante del mundo." ("Your bed. The most important place in the world.")

Read a translation and transcript here.............

i wanted to link to this article

a couple of friends were discussing ayn rand the other day. while i did say i read her, i was conspicuously quiet thereafter. there's a reason and coincidentally, i just happened across this article RIGHT NOW:
(from left blog)

Ayn Rand, sociopathic politics

At one point Ayn Rand referred to her own work as propaganda. It is militantly capitalistic; she vigorously campaigned for the demolition of the common good. She energetically promoted selfishness, and wrote to root out altruism.

Not only is her whole program diametrically opposed to liberal values; Ayn Rand’s ideals are profoundly undemocratic. She doesn’t just describe a world that was unfortunately Darwinian, but urges that it should be that way.

She always put strength above morality; and she despised the average man. In a letter unearthed by Jeff Walker, she wrote, ”I am becoming more antisocial.”

Walker, her biographer, researched her personal journals and found an entry written when she was 30: “One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself. Fine!” (All this in the pursuit of happiness.)

This is belligerent contempt for your fellow man. Aggressively pushing your impulses at the expense your group is not normal behavior. It destroys human bonds. It corrupts community.

It destroys trust. It is sociopathic..............

well they're not going to prosecute

the torturers are they? (we all know they're not).

so i'm VERY happy about THIS:

(and you know lt. watada is right. the invasion of iraq WAS illegal and immoral)

Justice Dept. drops case against war resister Watada

By Stephen C. Webster
The Department of Justice has dropped its case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a war resister who refused Iraq deployment in June 2006 and denounced President George W. Bush’s decision to invade as illegal and immoral.

In Feb. 2007, military judge Lieutenant Colonel John Head halted Watada’s case following possible inconsistencies concerning a “stipulation of fact” agreed before the hearing. The decision led to a mistrial, ending Watada’s court martial. The Army appealed, but a judge said Watada could not be tried again on the same charges, as it would violate his right to be free of double jeopardy.

The Justice Department is dropping its appeal of that judge’s decision.

“Because there are no longer any criminal charges pending against Lt. Watada, and because (his) military service has been extended far beyond his normal release date, he anticipates that he will soon be released from active duty,” Watada’s attorney, James Lobsenz, said in a media advisory published Wednesday. “He plans to return to civilian life and to attend law school.”......

way to go maine!

nothing i really have to add here, EXCEPT remember what horton said, 'a person is a person no matter how small'. MEANING of course (not that gay people are small you silly) meaning EQUAL RIGHTS to everyone.

a gay couple marrying is NOT going to un-do your marriage. it's NOT going to turn your kids gay and it's NOT going to have people demanding to marry animals. relax. if you don't want to marry a gay person, DON'T!

Gov. John Baldacci's statement on same-sex marriage bill

Maine Gov. John Baldacci issued this statement today:

“I have followed closely the debate on this issue. I have listened to both sides, as they have presented their arguments during the public hearing and on the floor of the Maine Senate and the House of Representatives. I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully. I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste.

I appreciate the tone brought to this debate by both sides of the issue. This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest and honest people on both sides of the question.

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage............

boing boing points us to some

liberal vs. conservative 'humor'

first, here is some liberal 'humor'. you see, the artist made all the republicans INTO CLOWNS. funny, huh?

secondly, here is some conservative 'humor'. you see the artist talks about KILLING non-conservatives. funny, huh?

those conservatives sure are funnier, huh? a gun sure is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more funny than a red nose, huh? yup. i can certainly see why THEY are so much better (than the rest of us poor soon to be DEAD SLOBS)

(boing boing posts by Mark Frauenfelder,)


clown collage: Hebiclens / WMxdesign

listen, they can convert who they want to

and who wants to be. i've posted about them converting the dead before. it's a hideous practice from yet another ridiculous religion (most if not all of them are. i'm NOT just picking on mormons). it really doesn't matter. the person is dead. they're NOT going to actually convert no matter what those mormons think they're NOT saving a damn soul (so to speak)

Lying for the Lord
by John Aravosis
It's a Mormon thing. It's called Lying for the Lord. And it's a tenet of the Mormon faith that, Mormons think, gives them to the right to tell you a bald-faced lie, so long as it's a lie that somehow furthers the Mormon cause.

What else to call the Mormon's laughable statement today that their posthumous baptism last year of President Obama's mother was a "rare" mistake that might have been done by "pranksters."

Yes, we're to believe that the Mormons, just by coincidence, forcibly converted a presidential candidate's deceased mother, 13 years after her death, and only months before the presidential election. And we're also to believe no warning bells went off at Mormon Central when they saw that the woman's husband, whose name is clearly listed on her "baptismal record," is "Barack Hussein Obama." (Obama's father has the same name.) Yes, all one big unfortunate "rare" mistake. Kind of like a clerical error. Except instead of giving you the wrong change, they just stole your mother's soul.......

wednesday with the la's

i heard congressman mcgovern on npr the other day

and had not realized the united states knew about these torture tapes LONG ago (under king george of course) and BURIED THEM

i'm not surprised. i'm really not. king george authorized torture, so what's the big deal with a uae prince torturing?

glenn greenwald in salon sets us straight: like how can we complain when we fucking did it too and destroyed the torture tapes, destroyed the people we tortured, denied torturing them, didn't bring them to trial, didn't compensate them, dumped some of them and are still keeping some of them locked up.

fuck the uae, fuck us for allowing what happened to happen THERE AND EVEN MORE SO HERE

UAE "torture" scandal and cover-up sparks outrage in the U.S.

As more videotapes emerge documenting the torture inflicted on numerous victims by Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a prince of the United Arab Emirates, the controversy is beginning to jeopardize the UAE's relationship with the United States, a country that absolutely loathes torture and demands real accountability for those who do it:

"I have more than two hours of video footage showing Sheikh Issa's involvement in the torture of more than 25 people," wrote Texas-based lawyer Anthony Buzbee in a letter obtained by the Observer.

The news of more torture videos involving Issa is another huge blow to the international image of the UAE . ......

oh shite!

what the HELL are they thinking? oh, i know. THE SAME THING THEY WERE ALWAYS THINKING

why is it when 'THEY' do something wrong

'they' do everything in their power to sleaze out of it. when someone else does something wrong or inappropriate or even something 'they' simply don't like, 'they' yell out for blood. i can hear 'them' saying 'OFF WITH THEIR HEADS' as we speak...............

Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report
Focus Is Approval of Harsh Interrogations

By Carrie Johnson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

Representatives for John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, subjects of the ethics probe, have encouraged former Justice Department and White House officials to contact new officials at the department to point out the troubling precedent of imposing sanctions on legal advisers, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

The effort began in recent weeks, the sources said, and it could not be determined how many former officials had reached out to their new counterparts.....

and an oh shite!!!! moment:

Torture Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Prosecutions
By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The officials said that it is possible that the final report might be subject to further revision but that they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations........

(because the united states DOES NOT torture. and if we DO torture, those that ordered it and committed it and knew about it and loved it should get medals instead of the time in the slammer they deserve)

one of THE most unbelievable stories i've ever heard

911 police officer refuses to help girl who calls about her dying father because she said the F word before the call was answered

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder,
In Lincoln Park, Calif. Michigan, a 17-year-old called 911 when her father (recovering at home from brain surgery) had a seizure. Her first call didn't go through, so the panicked girl hung up and tried again. While the phone was still ringing, the girl said "what the fuck." Apparently 911 calls are recorded even while the phone is ringing, so the police officer heard her say it. When the officer answered the call, he was only interested in the fact that the girl said "fuck" and wouldn't help the girl. Instead, he swears at her and hangs up. ........

by the way, HIS NAME IS SGT. ROBERT MCFARLAND

let's see what our good buds in dubai uae

are up to now (they're ALWAYS so wild and wacky!)

shite, as the article CLEARLY states, it's obvious ALL WOMEN MUST AVOID DRIVING OR I'D GO FARTHER AND SAY BEING IN A CAR - IN THEIR LAST TRIMESTER

UAE fines mother over baby death

A court in Dubai has found a woman who lost her unborn child in a traffic accident guilty of manslaughter in what is said to be an unprecedented ruling.

The Lebanese woman, who was nine months pregnant at the time, was also ordered to pay blood money. She said she had not caused the accident.

The judge based the ruling on Islamic law. The court said the rights of unborn babies needed to be protected.

Prosecutors had argued that the verdict should act as a deterrent......

........................Salah Bu Farousha, head of traffic prosecution, said women in the third trimester of pregnancy should avoid driving altogether to protect their own and their foetuses' lives..........

the daily kos SWEARS this is real

and NOT from the onion
Fox adds “accurate” to “fair & balanced” slogan

Posted by Jed Lewison

it's peabody and sherman tuesday

if i was a teenager

and forced to watch this lyin' MISINFORMED asshole, i would risk suspension and walk out of the assembly
his voice is grating, annoying AND he sure the hell isn't very articulate

Virginity Rocks!
.......H/T to RH Reality Check, which has more on the insanity you'll witness when you press play on the video below ...

They call him Keith Deltano, an abstinence "educator" and comedian who apparently gets paid to spread lies about prophylactics and threaten to smash kids genitals with cinder blocks. (Which is basically what happens to all those people who catch a VD, right?)

This is the cutting edge of abstinence education programs ... Many of which are funded by tax dollars. (Not sure if this guy is or not, but it isn't uncommon for school districts to pay people like Deltano for presentations your kids will mock for years to come.)...........

i admired her

but i did not fully agree with her. my belief is; women as a whole cannot have their power taken from them unless they allow it. they allowed it waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back and we're still fighting to get it back (well SOME of us are, some don't give a flyin' yoo hoo and another portion never wanted their equality and never will). thanks for stepping up to the plate back in the day though. your voice counted

MARILYN FRENCH, 79 Controversial Feminist Author Known for 'The Women's Room'

By Patricia Sullivan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Marilyn French, 79, a feminist whose 1977 debut novel "The Women's Room" sold more than 20 million copies and who became a prominent thinker on women's history, died of a heart ailment May 2 at a New York City hospital.

Ms. French, an erudite and angry writer, blamed men for the condition of women throughout the centuries, a stance that brought her sharply divided critical attention. Although many feminists lauded her for writing one of the most influential novels of the emerging feminist movement, others outside the movement charged that her books were belligerent and artless.

"In a way, 'The Women's Room' was, to a particular part of the women's movement, what Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' was to the civil rights community," feminist Gloria Steinem said yesterday. "She was always so far ahead because she wasn't writing about reforms around the edges. Her theories were big and exciting, and they definitely appeal to younger women who hear about them."........

(hint to naomi wolf-see my posting yesterday: instead of even talking about helen gurley brown, you should concentrate more on the frenchs' of the world)

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

from rawstory

..................This was screencapped today from Fox Nation, Fox News' month old conservative opinion site,........


hope the secret service is investigating this NOT SO DAMN SUBTLE threat to the president of the united states of america!

oh my stars

we're losing our jobs. we're losing our companies. we're seeing a great deal of gun violence. our citizens can't afford medical treatment. people are losing their 401k money and pension money and their homes. the wars in iraq and afghanistan are continuing (no, i didn't forget that)

and our courts are going to concentrate on a split second of nippleage. fuck that

we're not in the mess we are in now because we saw janet jackson's nipple

Court Sends Janet Jackson Case Back for Review
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal appeals court to re-examine its ruling in favor of CBS Corp. in a legal fight over entertainer Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

The high court on Monday directed the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to consider reinstating the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on CBS over Jackson's breast-baring performance at the 2004 Super Bowl.

The order follows the high court ruling last week that narrowly upheld the FCC's policy threatening fines against even one-time uses of curse words on live television........

I didn't realize

This was the Foodshare walk. I was stuck at the corner (girard & fern by hartford seminary) for what HAD to be almost a half hour. I wouldn't have minded but I did have to 'freshen up' (euphemism for I had to pee like a racehorse)

it's leo kottke monday

keep an eye on this website

from time to time.

you'll get some interesting insights into insanity

bachmann watch michele bachman vs. the truth!

i'm not a big fan of

naomi wolf and i'm even less of a fan of helen gurley brown. have you ever actually READ a cosmo? i haven't seen one in years and years (are they still published, i don't know?). they were absolutely insulting to women back in the day.

oh shite, there still IS a cosmo. i looked it up. what is one of the cover articles (at least on line) you ask?
'quiz: do guys think you're sexy?'.

my answers to the quiz are;
#1) who gives a flying shite
#2) do you WANT to be sexy
#3) if yes to #2, do YOU think YOU are sexy?
#4) if yes to #3, that's good enough

neither of you speak for me and i hope the majority of women

(it's just a book review, but geeze, like i said, who gives a flying f**k about helen gurley brown. she calls us 'girls' for goddess' sake. she wants us to take money for sex for goddess' sake)

and how DARE you compare or say michelle obama is who she is because of helen gurley brown. that's is an INSULT

Who Won Feminism?
Hint: She's the diva who ran Cosmo.
By Naomi Wolf

Bad Girls Go Everywhere

The Life of Helen Gurley Brown

By Jennifer Scanlon

Oxford Univ. 270 pp. $27.95

Look at Michelle Obama: She has segued seamlessly from an active professional life as a highly paid hospital executive to her current incarnation as fashion plate, doting mom and demure sex object, posing for Vogue in a hot fuchsia frock that shows plenty of skin. What's most surprising about this metamorphosis? How few people are objecting to it.

Every other first lady in living memory has been flattened into some stereotype of either/or femininity -- from Nancy Reagan as adoring Stepford wife to Hillary Clinton as shrill career woman. But now we finally seem to have reached the point where women don't face a false choice between sacrificing their softer qualities to be taken seriously as professionals or embracing love, sensuality, fashion and pleasure only to be dismissed as frivolous. And this revolutionary development isn't unfolding just in the White House: It's now affecting your house and mine. It's everywhere......

excellent question misha!

not so great an answer connddii

torture is NOT legal in the united states OR by united states citizens. no matter WHO orders or approves it

4th-Grader Questions Rice on Waterboarding
Ex-Secretary of State Stresses Legality

By Alec MacGillis

Washington Post Staff Writer

Days after telling students at Stanford University that waterboarding was legal "by definition if it was authorized by the president," former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was pressed again on the subject yesterday by a fourth-grader at a Washington school.

Rice, in her first appearance in Washington since leaving government, was at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital before giving an evening lecture at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. She held forth amiably before a few dozen students about her love of Israel, travel abroad and the importance of learning languages, then opened the floor to their questions.

The questions had been developed beforehand by students with their teachers and had not been screened by Rice. At first, they were innocuous: What was it like growing up in segregated Birmingham, Ala.? What skill did she want to be best known for?

Then Misha Lerner, a student from Bethesda, asked: What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?...........

i posted about the first tape

i didn't know about the others. that doesn't surprise me though. nor does it surprise me the video(s) and stories are being blocked by firewalls from being seen and read in the uae. what i DIDN'T think about was; WHO is supplying these firewalls...............


Video of UAE torture prince assaulting 25 others -- who's censoring this news in the UAE?
Posted by Cory Doctorow,
Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the prince from the UAE who made a video of himself brutally torturing a businessman with whom he had a dispute, has been implicated in 25 further video-recordings of other assaults.

In the leaked video, the prince sets fire to his victim's testicles, sticks a cattle-prod up his anus, beats him with a board with a nail through it, scourges him with a whip, rubs salt into his wounds, and then runs over him repeatedly with a Mecedes SUV (you can hear the bones break).

The UAE's national firewall is blocking stories about this (see the screengrab above). I know that a number of US firms have supplied the UAE with firewall services -- I'd be interested in any detail any Boing Boing reader has about the blocking shown above: did it come from a company that also supplies moral guardianship to western kids in their schools?.............

dependable renegade

points us to a lil' story about one of my favorite (if not my ABSOLUTE favorite) justice
N O T
Ah-HAHAHA! Vaffanculo, Nino!

What's good for the goose is good for the shithead:

Last year, when law professor Joel Reidenberg wanted to show his Fordham University class how readily private information is available on the Internet, he assigned a group project. It was collecting personal information from the Web about himself.

This year, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made public comments that seemingly may have questioned the need for more protection of private information, Reidenberg assigned the same project. Except this time Scalia was the subject, the prof explains to the ABA Journal in a telephone interview.

His class turned in a 15-page dossier that included not only Scalia's home address, home phone number and home value, but his food and movie preferences, his wife's personal e-mail address and photos of his grandchildren, reports Above the Law...........

dependable renegade

i can't think of anyone

i would rather spend a sunday with, other than the boys town gang

picture of album cover: bizarre records

honor killing

a vibrant beautiful woman was killed by her brothers. why? she did something VERY wrong. what? she sang on television. we MUST stop honor killing. we MUST stop these men who are so seriously effed up they don't know up from down. honor killing anywhere in the world is unacceptable. period
Singer Ayman Udas ‘shot by her brothers for TV sin’
Daud Khattak

A RISING musical star was allegedly shot dead by her own brothers in the conservative city of Peshawar in Pakistan last week after she had appeared on television.

The murder of Ayman Udas, who was in her early thirties and newly married, has shocked the city’s artistic community because it symbolises a backlash against women and cultural freedom in an area that is increasingly dominated by Islamic funda-mentalists.

As a singer and song writer in her native Pashto, the language of the tribal areas and the NorthWest Frontier province, Udas frequently performed on PTV, the state-run channel.

She won considerable acclaim for her songs but had become a musician in the face of bitter opposition from her family, who believed it was sinful for a woman to perform on television.

Ashamed of her growing popularity her two brothers are reported to have entered her flat last week while her husband was out and fired three bullets into her chest. Neither has been caught.

The final song performed by Udas on screen seems to have portended her death. It was entitled, “I died but still live among the living, because I live on in the dreams of my lover.” Udas, a divorced mother of two, had remarried 10 days before she was murdered. ..........