interesting article and slideshow

mexico isn't all drug war deaths after all

A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexico
By MARC LACEY
Mexico City — Mexico can be intolerant of homosexuality; it can also be quite liberal. Gay-bashing incidents are not uncommon in the countryside, where many Mexicans consider homosexuality a sin. In Mexico City, meanwhile, same-sex domestic partnerships are legally recognized — and often celebrated lavishly in government offices as if they were marriages.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” (pronounced MOO-shays) — men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community..............

photo: Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times AT THE DEBUT Carmelo López Bernal, 13, at the recent annual town-wide muxe celebration, the occasion for his first appearance in the identity of a girl.

it seems the vets are happy with this decision

and it seems i am too. oh and retired general eric k. shinseki is himself a wounded vet

Obama Picks Shinseki to Lead Veterans Affairs

By Philip Rucker

Washington Post Staff Writer
President-elect Barack Obama today will introduce retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as his nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, bringing to his Cabinet a career military officer best known for running afoul of the Bush administration by questioning the Pentagon's Iraq war strategy. .................
..........

Notably, Shinseki led the Army at the same time that Gen. James L. Jones, Obama's pick for national security adviser, commanded the Marines. Both questioned Wolfowitz's presumptions, before the war in Iraq commenced, about how the fighting would go, and they argued that the Pentagon was being too optimistic in its planning and should prepare thoroughly for worst-case scenarios.

In a 12-page private letter he wrote to Rumsfeld in June 2003 just before stepping down as chief of staff, Shinseki said: "People are central to everything we do in the Army. Institutions don't transform, people do. Platforms and organizations don't defend the nation, people do. . . . Without people in the equation, readiness and transformation are little more than academic exercises." The letter was never publicly released; The Washington Post obtained a copy this August........

this is GREAT

found via wooster collective

More from the Public Poster Project here.

(via Urban Prankster)

i had not heard

but over at cathie filian's blog she tells us bettie page was hospitalized and is NOT doing well

the lds church a victim?

HARDLY

(no matter what they say about polygamy - and you know the ONLY reason they 'stopped' it on this here earth is so utah could be a state - they STILL BELIEVE a man is going to have MULTIPLE WIVES on his own planet when he dies. where by the way he is A GOD. and no, i'm NOT making this shite up). how DARE they tell the rest of us who can marry and who can't

Demand the Truth

HRC’s Religion and Faith program launches response to untruthful NY Times ad.

12/5/2008

Today, members of the Human Rights Campaign's Religion Council responded forcefully to a full-page ad in the New York Times that implies there is an organized attempt to foment mob intimidation and violence toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints due to its actions dehumanizing lesbian and gay people in the recent election campaign, particularly in California around passage of Proposition 8, which stripped gay families of the right to a civil marriage. The ad was sponsored by NoMobVeto.org, a project of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.When did the LDS Church become the victim? It’s hard to believe, but that is exactly what it is trying to convince the public of. It is continuing to spend an excess of dollars in an attempt to mislead the public and transform its image. But the truth is that this is the same church that conducted a national broadcast to every temple, calling on members to organize and write checks to the Prop 8 campaign. The same church that donated more than half of the $40 million behind Prop 8, even though California Mormons represent just 2 percent of the state's population. Yes, it’s the same church. ...........

you GO california nurses!!!

Citing “Midnight Rules” to Erode Health and Safety, Nurses Unveil New Website to Send Bush Packing

As President Bush seeks to push through a flurry of new regulations, many of which will especially adversely impact healthcare services and workplace safety, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee today unveiled a new website inviting web browsers to help "send Bush packing," www.SendBushPacking.com.

The site offers an interactive game highlighting some of the "midnight rules" – last minute regulatory changes – the Bush administration is seeking to cement in place in its waning days.

CNA/NNOC is inviting those who visit the SendBushPacking.com website and play the game to sign an online petition to Bush to "tell him to do no more harm and rescind the rules that undermine our healthcare, public protections, and workplace safety."

Healthcare, workplace safety, and environmental protections are major targets of the proposed rule changes, "many of which could seriously undermine access to care, workplace safety and workers' rights, and the environmental safeguards Americans depend on," said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro............

did you know the homos are kicking the shite out of

the christians? i didn't either, but mike the huckster says it true so it MUST BE

Mike Huckabee Exposes Real Hate in America: Christophobes
Posted by Katie Halper, KatieHalper.com

At a book signing this week, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee once again spoke truth to power and rejected two lies spread by the gay liberal media: 1) that the gay movement is a civil rights movement and 2) that violence against "homosexuals" is a big deal. Huckabee then shed light on the issue that nobody else will touch with a 10-foot pole: the gay violence perpetrated against Christians. It turns out that far from being the victims of hate crimes, the gays are the real haters and the true criminals.

Hucakabee explained, "there is a difference between the civil rights movement of African-Americans who were essentially hosed down in the streets by Bull Connor in Birmingham and beaten with their skulls crashed in on the bridges of Selma for being black, not for their behavior, not for anything other than their race.".................

oh f**k

because i can't think of any place BETTER SUITED to concealed weapons than a national park. full of families and tourists and foreign visitors

Interior Dept. overturns regulation, clearing the way for concealed, loaded firearms into national parks.»

Today, the Department of Interior overturned a Reagan-era regulation, permitting loaded firearms at 388 of 391 national park sites. The decision allows guns in parks in “any states with concealed carry laws, not just those that allow guns in their state parks as originally proposed.” While the Department cited safety concerns as a factor, the National Park Conservation Association notes:
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, there were 1.65 violent crimes per 100,000 national park visitors in 2006—making national parks some of the safest places in the United States. The new regulation could increase the risk for impulse shootings of wildlife, and risk the safety of visitors and rangers. Despite the potential affect on national park wildlife and resources, the Administration did not conduct an environmental review as required by law..................

if you have a daughter or are an aunt or uncle

to a girl, or have friends who have girls, think about this:

Girls flee circumcision in Kenya
At least 300 girls in south-western Kenya have fled from home and sought refuge in churches in a bid to escape forced female genital mutilation (FGM).

The girls, some as young as nine, are at two rescue centres in rural Nyanza province, police told the BBC.

Female circumcision is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas where it is considered to be part of a girl's initiation into womanhood.

The traditional ceremonies take place between November and December.

Security

The girls in Kuria District are now in the care of the two churches and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, a women's organisation. ...........

education is the KEY to stopping this (and almost everything else. EDUCATION)

of course they COULD

be praying to end world hunger but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Tiny crowd prays Supreme Court will invalidate Obama presidency
Nick Juliano
A small but determined band of conservative protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court Friday morning to pray the justices would invalidate Barack Obama's election.

The court was deciding whether it would hear oral arguments in Donofrio v. Wells, which argues that Obama's placement on the New Jersey presidential election ballot was invalid because he is not a natural born citizen. The justices are expected to dismiss the case.
................

kinda cool game

bow street runner (found via wonderland)


the only problem i had was i couldn't find how to quit and save. if i want to play again, i'd have to start from the beginning (i didn't finish the game when i stopped. hey, i'm TIRED)

i NEVER thought this would happen

blackwater indictments. wow. they're NOT tried nor judged yet but man, i really NEVER thought it would get this far. good news in that perhaps justice WILL be served (my fingers are crossed)

now if only they would charge king george and his band of merry good ol' white boys........

Sources: 5 Blackwater guards charged in shooting
By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON -- Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been indicted and a sixth was negotiating a plea with prosecutors for a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead and became an anti-American rallying cry for insurgents, people close to the case said Friday.

Prosecutors obtained the indictment late Thursday and had it put under seal until it is made public, perhaps as early as Monday. All who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because the matters remain sealed.

Six guards have been under investigation since a convoy of heavily armed Blackwater contractors opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection on Sept. 16, 2007. Witnesses say the shooting was unprovoked but Blackwater, hired by the State Department to guard U.S. diplomats, says its guards were ambushed by insurgents while responding to a car bombing......

you go otto!!!

Otto the octopus wreaks havoc

Staff believe that the octopus called Otto had been annoyed by the bright light shining into his aquarium and had discovered he could extinguish it by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.

The short-circuit had baffled electricians as well as staff at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, who decided to take shifts sleeping on the floor to find out what caused the mysterious blackouts.

A spokesman said: "It was a serious matter because it shorted the electricity supply to the whole aquarium that threatened the lives of the other animals when water pumps ceased to work.

"It was on the third night that we found out that the octopus Otto was responsible for the chaos.

"We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000 Watt spot light above him with a carefully directed jet of water."........

they ARE pretty amazing animals
great video at the nyt article: Revealed: Secrets of the Camouflage Masters
By CARL ZIMMER
WOODS HOLE, Mass. — The cuttlefish in Roger Hanlon’s laboratory were in fine form. Their skin was taking on new colors and patterns faster than the digital signs in Times Square..........

and this video is wicked cool too:

The culprit of the smashed glass and broken lamp is two foot seven inch Otto. Photo: EUROPICS

tell me

why in a zillion years are they even ENTERTAINING the THOUGHT of allowing this suit to proceed? can't we use the money being wasted on this shite to let's say, feed some needy families?

when these giant losers LOSE, is the court going to turn around and charge them for wasting precious time and resources and money?


Suit contesting Barack Obama's citizenship heads to U.S. Supreme Court Friday

Justices will decide whether to consider the case

By James Janega |Tribune reporter
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by some opponents of Obama's election.

The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer's supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation's highest court.

The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court's schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama's election over accusations that he either wasn't born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.........

i am almost certain

government to continue to deny the terrorists were FROM the madmen who wreaked terror and rained blood upon the city of mumbai were from pakistan. i am not certain if the government had anything to do with it or not. however, for the pakistanipakistan is not only an insult it is ALSO insane.

you might as well believe turkey when it denies the armenian genocide

Terror Attacks Traced to Two From Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and ROBERT F. WORTH
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai. .......

we really aren't shocked

or surprised. i don't think we as a country actually DO realize how devastating this disaster was. worse though, is our government's lack of reaction to it. putting everything else aside, even sending 4,209 of our men and women to their deaths in iraq, the government should be made to be accountable for what they did (and didn't do) during and after katrina. of course if you add on iraq, healthcare, homelessness, abstinence only education, the mixing of church and state, the repealing of many laws that protect our earth and the passing of new ones that destroy it even more.........

well if we do NOT demand justice (starting with contacting our senators and congress reps) it's ALL ON US

Many Children Lack Stability Long After Storm
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATON ROUGE, La. — Last January, at the age of 15, Jermaine Howard stopped going to school. Attendance seemed pointless: Jermaine, living with his father and brother in the evacuee trailer park known as Renaissance Village since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had not managed to earn a single credit in more than two years. Not that anyone took much notice. After Jermaine flunked out of seventh grade, the East Baton Rouge School District allowed him to skip eighth grade altogether and begin high school. After three semesters of erratic attendance, he left Baton Rouge in early spring of this year and moved in with another family in a suburb of New Orleans, where he found a job at a Dairy Queen.

A shy, artistic boy with a new mustache, Jermaine is one of tens of thousands of youngsters who lost not just all of their belongings to Hurricane Katrina, but a chunk of childhood itself.

After more than three years of nomadic uncertainty, many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems. Their parents, many still anxious or depressed themselves, are struggling to keep the lights on and the refrigerator stocked..........

who knew?

suzanne vega thought she was puerto rican for the first few years of her life? who knew she writes for the nyt now and again? who knew she was so f**king articulate (well, i guess we did know THAT one)?

Which Side Are You On?
By Suzanne Vega

In the last few months I have had a chance to review a song I wrote in October of 2007. It’s called “Daddy Is White,” and I haven’t sung it out loud yet in front of an audience except to record a demo of it. My daughter worries that people might make fun of me. However, I feel that it is a truthful song.

In my last blog post I mentioned that I was raised in a half-Puerto Rican family and spent five years in East Harlem as a young child. At some point, when I was about 9 years old, I learned that my birth father was actually English-Scottish-Irish. Or white, as we used to say in my old neighborhood. Actually, anybody looking at me could probably tell that this was the case, but I felt I was the last to know, partly because I was treated by my Puerto Rican abuelita and my aunt and uncle as one of their own. I was proud, and still am proud, to be a Vega.

One person wrote in after my last blog entry to ask whether I had any plans to record Puerto Rican songs or songs in Spanish as a way of honoring those roots. I thought about this, but have to say no, even though I have had experience singing songs in Spanish. One of my first performing jobs was with a group called The Alliance of Latin Arts. I was 15 years old, and it was a government sponsored job, where we traveled from borough to borough singing songs in Spanish, like “La Bamba.” I attracted attention wherever I went, and it wasn’t because of my singing. (Somewhere in storage in a folder marked “scrapbook” I have a flyer from that job — when I find it I will post it here.) If you could look at the photo, you would see one girl in the line of dark-skinned Latinas to the far right looking down, and that is me, sticking out as usual. .........

ok, here he is

the best guitarist that ever lived. i've posted a video or two of his before but here's my favorite song of roy buchanan's

the messiah will come again



(at about the 2 minute mark, he goes and starts playing notes that simply do NOT exist in this time space continuum)

and here's hey joe like you've never heard it before

prop 8 - the musical!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

found via americablog

numbers 7 and 8 trouble me

but all the rest are a go on MY list

(#7 because i believe MOST women in the sex industry are there because they are FORCED to be there and #8 i do think we need better diagnostics as to sexual predators and abusers but in my hearts of hearts i KNOW it is NOT someone we can cure or fix)

9 Ways to Halt the Right Wing Culture Wars and Bring Sanity to Sexual Policy

By David Rosen, CounterPunch.

The recent electoral victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party presents a unique opportunity to overturn the most perverse policy of the Bush administration and the religious right, the conservative repressive sexual agenda. The following nine proposals can help frame a new sexual agenda to be introduced in the first 100 days.

For the last three decades the religious right fought a take-no-prisoners war over popular morality. Taking power with Bush’s victory in 2000, Christian conservatives were finally in the position to impose their beliefs as public policy. And they did so with a vengeance. At the local, state and federal levels, religious zealots, working through the Republican party, took control of the apparatus of the State and aggressively implemented a diverse set of programs to further their goal of creating a morally upstanding, Christian society. Family life, sexual relations, education, scientific knowledge and popular entertainment became battlegrounds of

the culture wars.............