Speak, faulty memory... Shaking hands with the devil: a photographic palindrome
It is very possible that Victor Davis Make Mine A Double Hanson was suffering drunken blackouts during the eighties. How else to reconcile this:
One of the most depressing sights of the entire Saddam postmortem were the clips shown ad nauseam of all the dignitaries, diplomats, and obsequious reporters who in years past trekked to Baghdad to flatter or to pay homage to this creepy mass murderer. Watching a younger Kofi Annan, Lindberg like, pump Saddam's hand, smiling and offering blandishments was sickening. Surely the world can learn from this sordid spectacle, and not repeat the same mistake with Ahmadinejad and Assad. Their demise will come soon enough, and only the clips and outtakes of the appeasers will remain.
It is getting so that the cheap anti-American rhetoric from Europe and the Middle East about our purported complicity in killing a mass murderer should be worn as a badge of honor. We caught him, turned him over for a transparent trial, and ensured he would never murder again. So the question remains: where is the true morality-building this killer's bunkers, selling him weapons, taking his oil-or putting him in a noose?
Perhaps the most memorable of these roles came during the Reagan administration, when Rumsfeld was named special presidential envoy to the Middle East. According to the Washington Post and others, Rumsfeld was a major proponent of the Reagan administration's support of Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.
As a conciliatory gesture, the U.S. removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, paving the way for Rumsfeld to visit Baghdad in 1983, about the midpoint of the decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
At the time, intelligence reports indicated the Iraqis were using illegal chemical weapons against Iran "almost daily." During several trips to Iraq, Rumsfeld told government officials that the U.S. would consider an Iraqi loss to Iran a major strategic defeat. In a personal meeting with Saddam Hussein in December 1983, Rumsfeld told the Butcher of Baghdad that the U.S. wanted to restore full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
In 2002, Rumsfeld tried to put a gloss on this meeting by claiming that he warned Hussein against using banned weapons, but that claim was unsupported by the State Department's notes on the meeting.
As a result of the openings created by Rumsfeld's diplomatic triumphs, U.S. companies were recruited and encouraged, both covertly and overtly, to ship poisonous chemicals and biological agents to Iraq, by the administrations of both Reagan and George Bush Sr.. Care packages to Saddam included sample strains of anthrax and bubonic plague, and components which would be used to develop nerve poisons like sarin gas and ricin.
It's not like Victor Davis to skim over anything that might possibly make his point look ridiculous as well as the work of a hack at the top of his game. I guess he started hitting the Zimas early this New Year's Eve...
I'm going to take a blogging hiatus for a few days as the last dregs of the year circle down the drain. No year-end recap. No guest bloggers. No nothin'...
I just need to get away from the computer for a few days and take care of some personal stuff and get caught up on some reading....Oh, who am I kidding? I'll probably lay around the house like the Doughy Pantload, watching Law & Order reruns while peeling and eating a tube of Tollhouse cookie-dough like it was a banana. That's not to say that there won't be New Years eve dinner with the elegant and show-stopping mrs tbogg at our favorite restaurant followed by.... watching Law & Order reruns together while peeling and eating a tube of Tollhouse cookie-dough like it was a banana.
In the meantime I'l leave you to do the moral math this weekend deciding if the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein was worth the death of over 3000 and counting American soldiers.
Take care of yourselves... don't drink and drive.... use a condom.... quit smoking.... go easy on the bacon... read a good book.....rent a Bergman film and laugh at inappropriate times.... exercise daily.... pretend like you're interested... ask for a raise.... if you see James Blunt on the street - run him down...... get your oil changed... start a journal and confess to having three-way sex with Barbara Walters and Rachel Ray, then leave it for your friends to find... brush after every meal... find the cost of freedom... leave an excessive tip at a restaurant... snort derisively in church... talk someone down from a ledge - unless it's James Blunt... get that irregular shaped mole looked at.... put the seat down.... watch children playing at the park and then emulate them - minus the whining... take a nap.... and go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence, as opposed to listening to James Blunt who totally sucks.
Pre-Friday Random Ten and other stuff Are you alone now Did you lose the monkey He gave you backaches And now you slouch He didn't mean it He's just a dumb ape Reading Playboy On your couch
Catching up on some thank you's and end of the year shit. First, the random stuff:
Manhattan Avenue - Nellie McKay Did Someone Make A Fool Outta You...? - Beth Orton Say It Ain't So - Weezer Radiation Vibe - Hem (Fountains of Wayne cover) Santeria - Sublime Pretty Mary K - Elliott Smith Four Fingered Fisherman - Sun Kil Moon Breaking Into Heaven - The Stone Roses Head On - The Jesus and Mary Chain Live With Me - Massive Attack
Bonus #11: Paper Thin Walls - Modest Mouse
Now some thank yous:
To the luscious Watertiger for the Sun Kil Moon CD. To Steve in Tustin for the Cutter's Way DVD (Go rent it. A paranoid classic) To Thomas in Key Biscayne for the Red House Painters CD You are all in my will now. Let's keep it out of probate, 'kay?
Next up, these are my favorite CD's from the past year in no particular order for your I'm-cooler-than-thou amusement:
I also want to include Sun Kil Moon's Tiny Cities on the list because, even though it came out in 2005, I recently bought it and it has easily become my favorite this year. A collection of Modest Mouse covers that show off the lyrical genius of Isaac Brock, in Mark Kozelek's hands Ocean Breathes Salty, slowed down and stripped of it's jangly pop hooks, becomes the most beautiful and haunting song about mortality I've heard since Fire and Rain.
Thursday Basset Blogging...End O' The Year Edition
Last year when the radiant and vivacious mrs tbogg moved to Santa Barbara, where she lives during the week, we knew that what she would miss the most would be:
1. The lovely and talented Casey 2. My naughty bits 3. The dogs
One might say that she and the boys are attached at the heart and each weekend when she comes home there is much vocal celebrating and racing about and butt-wiggling joy by all three of them. With that in mind, this Christmas I took a couple of her favorite pictures of the dogs and messed with them a little in Photoshop to make them look like paintings and then had them blown up and framed for her office wall in the SB.
And those are what you get for the last Basset Thursday of the year...
Everything old is new again John Kerry and some other guy who served their country
Scott Hennen and some other guy who let other people serve their country in their place
Not content to re-fight the Vietnam war while also reclaiming the culture back from the 60's hippies who got all the hot chicks, the right has now taken to re-circulating year-old emails telling us were winning in Iraq right this minute while also publishing year-old photos of soldiers ignoring John Kerry for something that they think he's going to say about them... ten months before he says it.
If this doesn't win the war for us, nothing, not even painting every damn school in Iraq is going to do the trick.
So what Hugh is saying is that the "new media" is more than willing to publish something that is "misleading" and that's okay because it's really just an "alternative understanding".
I don't know about you but I kind of miss the days when we used to call something like that bullshit.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet We'll pick up here later...
Legend has it that Gerald Ford was once President of these United States, although I'm hard pressed to remember his inauguration. In fact he became President not too long after I graduated from high school and about the only things I remember about him was his pardon of Richard Nixon and his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons. But to this day I have just never been able to think of him as a former President.
Gerald Ford always seemed like a nice guy who was dressed in somebody else's suit; one that didn't fit him quite right. Up until Ford, all of the presidents of my lifetime had been larger-than-life tragic figures from the doomed American Royalty of John F. Kennedy to that Texas-sized cowboy caricature Lyndon Johnson followed by the Double-Nutty Evil Ripple of Richard M. Nixon. After living through all of that, America needed a break and there was Gerald Ford, the bookmark president acting as a placeholder while we caught our breath and began to think about what type of country we wanted to be again. I've always believed that, from the moment he pardoned Richard Nixon, his own chance of actually being elected to the job was pretty much doomed, and so for several years he sort of became our beloved bumbling uncle who, for some reason, crazy ladies wanted to kill.
Sometime, late last year, Ann Althouse became the go-to person for profoundly stupid statements by an adult who should know better. I'm guessing Ann's ascension happened on Oblivious Day.
Well, Ken Griffey is hurt again which must mean that baseball season is right around the corner.
...and not a moment too soon. Jesus, I hate the NBA. Isiah Thomas has managed to become an embarassment to coaches, general managers, team executives, and owners throughout the league. How he keeps a job is beyond me.
Getting back to the NBA in general, I'll watch Korean gameshows on TV before I'll watch an NBA game.
With the 2006 pre-Christmas season falling short of sales expectations for many merchants, the retail industry hoped that shoppers, armed with gift cards, would spend freely in the weeks ahead on discounted items as well as full-priced merchandise. That would boost business in December and in the fourth-quarter.
Federated Department Stores Inc.’s Macy’s opened its doors at 7 a.m. and offered discounts ranging from 50 percent to 75 percent. Toys “R” Us Inc. offered 50 percent discounts on selected toys. The toy seller was also showcasing hot toys from 2007 in its stores.
[...]
Based on data released late Sunday by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., sales for both Friday and Saturday generated a combined $16.2 billion, with Saturday’s business totaling $8.72 billion. But Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, said he had expected the finale to be stronger; because it wasn’t, stores need a good post-Christmas season to meet ShopperTrak’s 5 percent holiday forecast.
The post-Christmas season has become more important with the increasing popularity of gift cards. Gift card sales are only recorded on retailers’ balance sheet when cards are redeemed.
As I have pointed out before, anyone can increase their same stores sales or inflate their monthly sales by slashing prices and sacrificing margin (which also increases cash flow). But at the end of the day, sales margin dictates whether you're actually making money. A $100 gift card spent on merchandise that is discounted 50% (cost of goods in most cases such as apparel) means that the retailer is absorbing all of the costs of running their business since there is no profit in the sale. That is a recipe for disaster.
Based upon the amount of excess merchandise that I saw in some stores on 12/24, this was a horrible retail season and profitability* in most sectors is going to be ugly.
*There are exceptions, based upon the merchandise categories, when it comes to mark-up. Apparel...50% margin ($20 cost = $40 retail). Footwear...45% margin. Make-up on the other hand has an outrageous mark-up. I used to have a house brand make-up made where some units cost me $2.10 and I sold them for $39.
Oh sure, everyone else is posting clips from It's A Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story. But what about a Christmas movie that gets to the heart of the American family?
Lloyd: You know what I'm going to get you next Christmas, Mom? A big wooden cross, so that every time you feel unappreciated for your sacrifices, you can climb on up and nail yourself to it
It has a lovely collection of quotes you may want to try out at your next family get-together...
Twas the night before Christmas, and through Jasperwood We shut it down early, like good Lutherans should. The presents were finished with none left to wrap. In each festive package some more Target™ crap.
Gnat tucked in her bed and dreaming sweet thoughts, After one boring story and three Nyquil™ shots And mama was upstairs beginning to snore While I finished watching Stargate Season Four.
When out on the lawn there arose a kerfuffle Startled, my foreheads, they started to ruffle I snuck to the windows and peeked through the drapes But I could see nothing, my knees they did quake
The moon it shown down on the undisturbed snow That I had not moved since my blower won’t blow. There was someone out there! Someone bad I just knew it. If only I was brave like my good friend Hugh Hewitt
There’s bad people out there they envy our stuff, Because they've no Targets, their life is quite rough.. They want to invade us and make us their slaves. Live in our ranchstyles, not in their dark caves.
Islamists! Jihadis! and Birkenstocked hipsters! They'll destroy our pop culture and marry our sisters No more "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" They'l make fun of my matchbook collection, I fear.
These people are evil, they must be interned Or they'll fly into buildings, this much we have learned. I can't live in a world without DVD sets But my wife is relieved there will be no more sex
And then in a twinkling I heard a small crash Like a door that was opened too quickly, too fast. This is it! I just know it! They've invaded our block! Up the walkway, the stairs to the door they did knock.
Because of the wife I don't have a gun She said if I did I'd blow off my left thumb So I went to the door and peeked through the crack Omigawd, it's a man! Omigawd, he is black!
He stood there and waited and rapped hard once more I knew it was hopeless, I opened the door. And there stood a UPS man dressed in brown He held a small package, his face held a frown.
"I've got a package for Lileks", he held out a pad I grabbed it and signed it, I scribbled like mad He gave me the box and he went on his way No "Merry Christmas" No "Happy holidays".
I slammed close the door, my heart slowed a little. But the front of my pants showed I'd done a small piddle. So I went to the kitchen and I put on the kettle And soon my fast breathing, it started to settle.
I made some green tea and I climbed up the stairs My wife sat there giving me one of those stares. "Well, that was a close one", as I set down my cup. She said, "Jim come to bed... and shut the fuck up."
Correction from an article on Warren Bell's (According to Jim) appointment to Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
Note: In earlier versions of this post, Warren Bell's quote below, "I think I got the idea from an episode of 'The West Wing'," was incorrectly written. For reasons that can only be blamed on pre-holiday haste, we cited the show as "Sesame Street," which actually makes no sense. W&W apologizes for the error.
That would have been the episode where President Elmo confronted Congress over his judicial appointments...
Having failed to kill off irony, the right has turned it's beady slightly-out-of-focus eyes on camp:
Target Corp said on Friday it had pulled a CD carrying case bearing Ernesto "Che" Guevara's image after an outcry by critics who label the Marxist revolutionary a murderer and totalitarian symbol.
Target had touted a music disc carrying case for Che admirers emblazoned with the Argentine-born guerrilla's iconic 1960 portrait by Alberto Diaz, or "Korda." A set of small earphones was superimposed on the image, suggesting he was tuned in to an iPod or other music player.
(my emphasis)
They may not know art but they also sure don't know what they don't understand.
I blame it on a failure to evolve Chevolution calls
Now for something completely different. Woody Allen, George Gershwin, and Gordon Willis.
Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be... .
I'm a little late to the party on this, but there is no reason why you shouldn't still contribute over at Hullabaloo to make sure that Digby stays on the air. Think of the above Izzard clip like it was a James Taylor clip on a PBS fund drive. Sure you may not get a tote bag out of the deal, but if Digby stops writing the Bush administration wins.
Today, word gets out that another Miss Nevada, Katie Rees (this one of the USA, so I guess there are packs of Miss Nevadas wafting about out there) got caught with one of her boobies out and it wasn't because her talent is Tara Reid impressions:
Miss Nevada USA was stripped of her title Thursday after racy photos of her appeared on the Internet, pageant officials said. Some of the photos show Katie Rees, 22, kissing other young women, exposing one of her breasts and pulling down her pants to show her thong underwear at a party in Tampa, Florida.
"Katie Rees has been relieved of her duties as Miss Nevada USA 2007," said Paula M. Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, which owns the Miss USA pageant and others.
Pre-Friday Random Ten Yeah I can take a little pain I could hold it pretty well I can watch your little eyes light up When you're walkin' me through hell Yes I've been your fool before, babe And I probably will again
Holiday weekend edition.
Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes - Thievery Corporation The False Contender - Camera Obscura Hey Fuck You - The Beastie Boys Ways To Be Wicked - Lone Justice Nausea - Beck Sheila Take A Bow - The Smiths Tennesse - Arrested Development Brooklyn Bound - The Black Keys The Bitch of Living - Spring Awakening (2006 Broadway cast) Vienna - Ultravox
Bonus #11 for Santa: A Little Bit of Sympathy - Robin Trower. Santa is old school.
Thursday Night Basset Blogging Not a creature was stirring...as usual
It's Thursday night and I'm probably at my my company Christmas party right now (okay ...now....wait for it.... now!) watching my employees drink themselves borracho y estúpido. This is one of the joys of being a non-drinker; you can practice your judgmental skills on the unknowing and oblivious. Not that I need the practice, mind you...
Anyway, while I'm learning ugly truths about the people who work for me, Satchmo and Beckham will most likely be positioned as seen above until I get home and go to bed at which time they will assume the position on either side of me assuring that I will only be able to toss and turn as much as they choose to allow me. Forty degree evenings (freezing by San Diego standards) means a three two dog and one tbogg night. Later that night...
Bonus story: Out walking the beasties this morning when a young man from across the street came my way heading towards his car. Just as he got to his car, I was urging Satchmo forward (he's a big time sniffer and dawdler) with a "C'mon Satchmo, let's go" and the young man stopped, pointed at me, and said, "You're tbogg". This is the second time that this has happened to me on my own block in the past sixth months.
According to those familiar with the families in the private prison, children of those apprehended are dressed in prison jumpsuits and receive only one hour of schooling and one hour of recreation a day. The trade-off is that they get to remain with their families.
Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.
News of the 400 people — 200 of them children — being held in the T. Don Hutto unit in Taylor has sparked protests from several groups interested in immigrant issues. They are concerned about everything from care and feeding of those being held to the psychological effect of incarceration on children and families.
It has become increasingly difficult to remember a more shameful period in American history than what has happened over the past six years, best exemplified by a private contractor profiting from locking up children at Christmas-time with a nod and a wink and a check from the government.
After watching The View and following the inane statements made on the program, I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is true what Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton said: Women, without male guidance, are illogical, frivolous, and incapable of making any decisions beyond what to make for dinner.
At which point I quit reading for obvious reasons.
Shootout at the O.K. Galleria Food Court Okay punk...reach fer yer credit card
It's only been a short time, but Republicans are already tired of losing elections (they're learning to live with losing a war) and so they'll take their victories where they find them. And for that they turn to that long tall Texan (by way of the family's Kennebunkport summer home) to stand up to a sidewindin bushwackin, hornswaglin, cracker croaker from Taxachusetts:
bush vs. damon? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A reader thinks Sly Stallone wasn't the only 60-something with a Hollywood comeback today:
KLo—during the prepared-statement portion of his news conference this morning, W said the following:
"A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country — and I encourage you all to go shopping more."
He really emphasized the word "shopping", too. Delivered it with the Texas stare. Hmm. Then I saw this from the transcript of "Hardball" earlier this week, with guest(and noted military expert) Matt Damon:
"Damon: 'What bothers me the most about the state we're in right now is I don't feel that there's a shared consciousness and a shared sense of sacrifice, and we have these young men and women who are fighting a war in name and our president tells us to go shopping.'"
Do you think W heard about it and threw it back into Damon's face? I hope so. Even if it was accidental, it was a hell of a comeback.
Well, if so, that would officially be the high point of that press conference (which is not saying much).And while I can't imagine the president caring too much about Matt Damon, I could see Damon's remark bringing out a little dead-or-alive-like Texan in the prez — especially if Bush, like so many Americans, wasted an hour and a half watching Ocean's 12.
Yes, it takes a "dead-or-alive-like Texan" to challenge some punk kid with an itchy trigger finger to settle such matters mano y mano with a little...shopping.
Shall we say high noon in front of Wetzel's Pretzels?
...and from Texas we hear a mighty roar : Remember the Alamo Spring White Sale at JC Penney!
Why are you looking at me? Stop laughing. What? What did I say?
Without a whiff of self-awareness, Scott Johnson of Power Line (he's the goofy-looking one...no, the other goofy-looking one) invites his readers to read Pat Conroy's essay in which Conroy admits to feeling like a coward for having opposed the Vietnam war while others went and fought in it.
I'm not sure if Mr. Johnson harbors some deep unspoken regret concerning his own history of supporting wars while others go and fight or even the fact that he never found the time to serve during a time of peace, but if he and Hinderaker and the other goofy-looking guy from Power Line want to get the gibbering Coward Monkey off of their backs, I would recommend an evening camped out on top of the Empire State building.
Dispatches from the dayroom Warbloggers covering the war (LGF's Charles Johnson in the center wearing a headband)
Not since the OU Bomber case (which panned out as expected) have the Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys of the Basement Set been so feverish about solving one of the Great Mysteries of Universe...and all of it from the comfort of their spare bedroom/office/Red Bull & Fritos Freak-Out room.
We speak, of course, of Jamilgate (as Gun Counter Gomer calls it) and if you haven't heard about Jamilgate, well that must mean that you have a life. According to Curt the Mall Cop at Flopping Aces, it's the AP's month to be the Islamojihadifarian's bestest buddy displacing Reuters, the New York Times, and CNN; all news organizations with reputations for whoring around with terrorists who want to destroy Pamela Oshry's way of life...such as it is.
In the case of Jamilgate they have found a handy boogeyman under the bed that precludes them from having to get up out of bed and smell the coffee which smells a lot like Iraq burning. For example:
Baghdad . -- at 8 o'clock this morning an IED exploded in al zafaraniah area southern Baghdad, 6 civilians were injured.
Where's Jamil?
- at 9 o'clock this morning 4 employees of the ministry of industry were taking the salaries from al zuiah bank in karada area back to the ministry when unknown gunmen driving 4 vehicles stopped their car near abdul majeed private hospital and force them out from their car and took the car with one billion and two hundred million dinar.
Who is Jamil?
- the actor MITASHAR AL SUDAMI was found dead today on haifa street, he as kidnapped yesterday.
Um, Jamil? Anyone?
-- today 53 bodies were found in Baghdad, some were handcuffed and tortured. 3 bodies were found in sadr city, 2 kamaliyah, 1 hussainiyah, 1 talbiyah, 1 aour, 5 dora, 4 kadhumiah, 4 hurriyah, 2 adil, 6 amil, 3 bayaa, 2 saidiyah, 2 risalah, 3 abu atsheer, 3 jihad, 1 mansour, 4 shoala, 5 ghazaliyah,and 1 yarmouk .
Any of them named Jamil? We'll also settle for Jamail, Juwanna, Ishmael, Bueller or D'Brickashaw....
Rather than being content with a possible sharp-eyed press catch and holding the AP accountable for questionable sourcing in an isolated incident, warbloggers, in need of a much larger scapegoat, franticly inflated the Burned Alive story, insisting questions about a single dispatch could negate years' worth of reporting from Iraq. That if Jamil Hussein were confirmed to be a fraud that would somehow mean Baghdad is not being ripped apart by a civil war, and reporters would be revealed for the "traitors" that they are.
The warbloggers' strawman is built around the claim that if the AP hadn't reported the Burned Alive story, which was no more than a few sentences within a larger here's-the-carnage-from-Baghdad-today article, then Americans would still gladly support the war in Iraq. That it was somehow the contested Burned Alive story that swung public opinion on Iraq, not the three years' worth of bad news.
Chasing the Burned Alive story down a rabbit's hole, giddy warbloggers deliberately ignore the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who are killed each week, the thousands who are injured, and the tens of thousands who try to flee the disintegrating country. None of that matters. Only Burned Alive matters, as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely.
The story reached such a Holy Grail status that Malkin announced her plans to parachute into Baghdad and gumshoe the story herself. Note to Malkin: You might want to re-read this recent quote from ABC's man-in-Baghdad, Dan Harris: "I said to my driver casually the other day, 'If I get out of this car, take off my flak jacket or get rid of all my security and walk down the street, how long would I last?' He said, 'Four or five seconds.' "
Unfortunately, given her widely read blog and her platform as a Fox News analyst, Malkin has influenced a new generation of right-wing press critics, who sloppily draw all sorts of dark and dishonest conclusions about the press. The phenomenon has been rampant during the Hussein controversy.
So why do they come up with these hair-up-their-ass theories?
"Conspiracy theory as a theory of power, then, is an ideological misrecognition of power relations, articulated to but neither defining nor defined by populism, interpellating believers as "the people" opposed to a relatively secret, elite "power bloc." Yet such a definition does not exhaust conspiracy theory's significance in contemporary politics and culture; as with populism, the interpellation of "the people" opposed to the "power bloc" plays a crucial role in any movement for social change. Moreover, as I have argued, just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean they are not on to something. Specifically, they ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm."
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.
The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people -- about 33,000 of them women -- in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.
Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.
The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.
In case you didn't get that - he's talking about your mom, yo.
The one number that stands out like a turgid throbbing member straining for release is the 88% of the women born in the forties who, quite frankly, acted like a bunch of simple Kentucky girls who hit the big city and had trouble keeping their knees in front of their ears (if you know what I mean, and if you're Dr. Laura, there shouldn't be any question). They would be a part of the "If It Feels Good - Do It" Generation who were fortunate to have come of age during a time of great innovations and discoveries. I speak, of course, of the general availability of the birth control pills (1960, 1965, 1972) and the invention of the clitoris (1969).
The rest, as they say, was a lot of moaning, cries to heaven and post-coital pudding...
Another film ruined... Okay, it wasn't that great of a film to start with, but still....
Maybe it's just me, but the first time I saw this picture it reminded me of the scene from Basic Instinct when Michael Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn come in from the rain and....
Sometime early in the new year, President Bush will go on national television to tell a disgruntled American public what he has decided should be done to salvage "victory" from the jaws of certain defeat in the war he started.
The word on the street, or in the Pentagon rings, is that he'll choose to beef up American forces on the ground in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 troops by various sleight-of-hand maneuvers -- extending the combat tours of soldiers and Marines who are nearing an end to their second or third year in hell and accelerating the shipment of others into that hell -- and send them into the bloody streets of Baghdad.
These additional troops are expected to restore order and calm the bombers and murderers when 9,000 Americans already in the sprawling capital couldn't. They're expected to do this even when Bush's favorite (for now) Iraqi politician, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, refuses to allow them to act against his primary benefactor, the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army militiamen who kill both Americans and Sunni Arabs.
This hardly amounts to a "new way forward," unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war in which whatever Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial.
[...]
Did you notice that at every stop on the president's information-gathering tour last week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder? There was Vice President Dick Cheney, looking as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Should the president suddenly have an original thought or seem to be going wobbly, Cheney will be right there to squelch it or to set him straight.
It can be argued that Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.
Onward and onward until we are neck-deep in the Big Sandy...
The Bush administration has sent signals since last month's elections that the president is prepared to accept some tax increases on upper-income families, worrying congressional Republicans and fiscal conservative watchdogs who say he will compromise with Democrats to win a legacy accomplishment.
Sending other people's kids off to war is a grim but acceptable choice. But taxing the rich to pay for the war is so very very déclassé.
Marine Maj. Megan McClung, a public affairs officer who became the highest-ranking woman killed in Iraq when she died two weeks ago, had been escorting Oliver North and a FOX News crew through Ramadi just moments before a roadside bomb took her life, a military spokesman told E&P on Monday.
When the explosion occurred on Dec. 6, McClung was in the midst of escorting a Newsweek staffer, according to Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a public affairs officer stationed at Camp Fallujah. He said he did not know the identity of the Newsweek employee or the reason for the escort.
"My understanding is that Newsweek was with her at the time of the explosion, in a different vehicle," Salas said. "She had just dropped off the Fox News crew."
McClung, 34, had just left North, a Fox contributor, and his crew at the Ramadi Government Center following a 10-minute escorted drive from Camp Ramadi, a U.S. Army base there, Salas said. "It was her first and only escort with him," Salas told E&P. "He was covering the Marines in Ramadi." Many journalists go out without any military escort, even in dangerous areas.
A Fox News spokesperson said she could not confirm North's involvement, while Newsweek did not immediately return a call seeking information.
Oliver North, reporting from Ramadi, says we are winning there. As I noted last month, a Marine Corps intelligence report suggests otherwise. I don't know who is right about this, but I do believe that, even if we're not presently winning in Ramadi and elsewhere in Anbar province, we are capable of achieving victory there.
I look at it this way: if you are incapable of deciding who is more accurate when given the choice between Marine Corps Intelligence or a bribe-taking war-mongering perjuring multiple-felon... well, I'm not sure that I, or anyone else, trusts your judgement on exactly how things are going down in Iraq.
A load of generic mush perhaps best served as a piece of bitchin' '70s van art.
For those who love the fantasy genre known as sword and sorcery -- and I count myself in their number -- sitting through the movie version of Eragon will suck the will to live right out of you.
"Eragon" is based on a book by a 19-year-old with a script that seems to have been written by a 12-year-old.
Eragon has the courage of its earnest, borderline-humorless convictions.
It's a large-scale fantasy that plays like a rerun... Paolini began his novel when he was 15, and the simplicity of 'Eragon'... might bring back memories of high school writing workshops.
It's mostly just a bunch of actors trying to look involved while attempting to act through their bad wigs and Studio 54 reject outfits.
Eragon's fantastical milieu may be third-class Lord of the Rings, but its story--in what may constitute the most shameless act of plagiarism known to American cinema--is pure Star Wars.
So it looks like Jamil Hussein may have been found and even Michelle Malkin is temporarily reholstering her Popguns of Outrage (possibly because this gets her off the hook from having to go to Iraq where she would spend her sleepless days and nights dampening her panty shields every time someone's Rice Krispies made a too loud snap, crackle, or pop). One way or the other, I guess we will see soon enough.
Then there are some who aren't about to let a little reality ruin a perfectly good paranoid fantasy where everyone else is to blame for the Iraquagmire except for the people who planned it and executed it and, goddamit, freedom would be on the march if the facts didn't keep getting in the way and the bodies didn't keep piling up in inconvenient ways.
Whether Jamil/Jamail Hussein exists or not, is a cop or not, speaks the truth or not, has no bearing on the AP's longstanding failure to serve its clientele and their readers in the manner they should expect. This includes, in the recent past, its unbalanced reporting on the Bush administration, its bizarre presentation of Saddam Hussein as a victim of the United States and the U.N. weapons inspectors, and its burying of key facts in the case against Bilal Hussein, terrorist-approved AP photographer and associate of al Qaeda bombmakers currently in U.S. custody. The arrogant and dismissive response to questions raised about Hussein, however, speaks volumes.
Regardless of the resolution of this Hussein business, the fundamental problem remains. It's a problem of trust. The just-the-facts, inverted-pyramid news agency, founded over 150 years ago on the novel principle of providing raw, reliable, non-partisan information to newspapers of all stripes, no longer exists.
And of course, nothing quite validates an opinion like quoting a post from Dean Esmay's blog:
Dean's world, "So we could be moving from egregiously bad reporting to merely very bad reporting. And as I’ve said before, the AP’s vituperous reaction to the legitimate questions raised really shows their lack of commitment to intellectual honesty in their reporting.
These guys wouldn't know "intellectual honesty" if it invaded their country, killed their leaders, and coverted them to reality.
For some unexplainable reason I had always avoided giving the Minutemen a listen, but I've been reading Micheal Azerrad's excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life, and the chapter on the Minutemen was fairly intriguing. I recommend the book, but with the caveat that the chapter on the Replacements seemed truncated as if Azzerad lost interest in writing about them, which was pretty disappointing.
A little less Black Flag and a little more Hüsker Dü would have been nice too.
It's as if nobody at Time wanted to make a stand or look like they have an opinion on anything in the world. They could have chosen Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez or, hell, even Taylor Hicks (and yes that would have sucked but less so than picking "you", and by "you" I don't mean you in particular because I love and respect you in that special blogger/reader above-the-sweater no-tongues kind of way).
“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you,” the magazine’s Lev Grossman wrote.
Jesus. Grossman sounds like the kind of guy who could work synergy, paradigm, and tipping point seamlessly into one contentless wankeriffic sentence.
Congratulations Time: asked to pick you favorite color you chose 'clear'.
Back from THE MALL where the only stores that were busy were the M•A•C store and the Apple store, but then they're always busy. And who was the marketing genius who decided to release Snakes On A Plane on January 2, '07 when it could have been the hey-this-would-be-funny no-brainer Secret Santa gift of the year? No wonder capitalism is failing.
Anyway, here is your video and we're sending this one out to Daniel Henniger who thinks the world needs its dirty mouth washed out with a bar of soap, and to Kirsten Powers who is clutching her pearls and imploring, "Won't someone please think of the children!".
To pause game hit ctl-alt-jews4jesus "Buck" Williams levels his SuperStigmata rail gun at a golem after wasting his uncooperative buddy Hillel
Buried deep within an article about the video game Left Behind: Team Jesus Nukem are these comments from the president of the company that crapped it out:
Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.
The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.
The series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist.
Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.
"You are fighting a defensive battle in the game," Frichner, whose previous company produced Bible software, said of combatting the Antichrist. "You are a sort of a freedom fighter."
[...]
Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia's side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story.
When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" -- and thus can't be on Christ's side in the game.
"That is so obvious," he said.
Well, since you can't tell the bad guys without a scorecard, here are the names you'll find on Team NotJesus.
Pre-Friday Random Ten-updated Let's go out walking I know where to meet... The corner of Pacific Street Cause I feel restless And I just can't sleep I need to show you something...
Let's get pretentious!
Boys Wanna Fight - Garbage I Loves You, Porgy - Keith Jarrett Charlie Don't Surf - The Clash Trouble Man - Marvin Gaye Full Cup of Coffee - Tweaker 16 Days - Whiskeytown A Little Warm Death - Cassandra Wilson Expecting To Fly - Neil Young Some Velvet Morning - Slowdive Pacific Street - Hem
Thursday Night Basset Blogging. The Horror, the Horror Edition...
We had a bit of trauma around the house earlier this week.
It seems that when the housekeeper left Tuesday afternoon she neglected to put the ottoman (the piece of furniture, not the empire) back by the bed meaning that Satchmo and Beckham had to spend the entire day on the floor and in their own beds!!! instead of on my bed. By the time I got home they had already typed up a termination letter that went for naught when they discovered they couldn't forge my name because they lacked a single opposable thumb between the two of them.
After calming them down we had a long talk about "making lemonade when life gives you lemons", but I don't think it had much impact; they still seemed pretty bitter at dinnertime...
Hours later Satchmo had made up for lost time by destroying the bed and climbing completely under everything in order to get warm...only to come out panting in the end. Sanc-tu-ary!
While Beckham retired upstairs to the chaise where he took out his frustrations on Mr. Baseball Trying to tear off his little arms
If anyone wants to know why the LA Times is up for sale, they might want to consider that fact that the Times is paying cash money for crap like this.
Iraq needs a Pinochet
Sample:
Now consider Chile. Gen. Pinochet seized a country coming apart at the seams. He too clamped down on civil liberties and the press. He too dispatched souls. Chile's official commission investigating his dictatorship found that Pinochet had 3,197 bodies in his column; 87% of them died in the two-week mini-civil war that attended his coup. Many more were tortured or forced to flee the country.
But on the plus side, Pinochet's abuses helped create a civil society.
If only Saddam had made the trains run on time, what a wonderful world it would have been
Sorry Very very very busy today so blogging was out of the question. However the blogging handbook specifically mandates that, if you have nothing to say, you must run a YouTube video to stall for time.
One of my absolute favorite CD's is Beyond The Missouri Sky (Short Stories) a collaboration between Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden. The below video is Metheny, without Haden, performing the CD's Message To A Friend.
Missouri Sky is highly recommended, particularly for Jim Webb's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, He's Gone Away, and Josh Haden's Spiritual. We used to listen to this CD every night when going to sleep and I always tried to stay awake just to make sure I heard Spiritual. It always seemed the perfect song to end the day.
Oh. I almost forgot....Bush sucks. Worst. President. Ever.
I've been threatening to move the blog off of blogspot for some time now, and by golly, the time has come...soon.
Actually I'm planning on working on it after the first of the year when things settle down for me a bit and I'm going to be hiring someone to design the site, but I'm looking for an artsy-fartsy type to create a logo for the new blog which will have a new name (not to be divulged yet since I haven't registered the domain and, no, it's not hotnakedlynnecheney.com no matter how tempting it may sound).
If you're an artsy-fartsy type with a cartoony sensibility, drop me an email at tblogg at hotmail.com with samples or links to samples. There is money and fame in your future! Not with me, but I'm sure things will turn around some day and people will stop laughing at you behind your back because you went to art school instead of taking that manager trainee job at Cracker Barrel, so buck up Sparky.
Okay, there is some money, but just keep your day job no matter how degrading it is.
Adventures in Truthiness "Verdict first...truth later"
This is a tough one.
How do we approach a blogger who makes up his own "facts" as he goes along and yet expects to be considered "deeply serious"? If the post was written by just another rec-room variety blogger we would either ignore him, or there would be a call for one of those "bloggers ethics panels" that they have every few months because it keeps Jeff Jarvis off of the street and out of gangs. But what if the blogger is a journalist, and I use the term loosely since I don't know if being a columnist for a third-tier newspaper qualifies; particularly when the paper has a history of exposing plagiarists at other papers...and then hiring the plagiarist for themselves I speak, of course of the Boston Herald and neophyte blogger Jules Crittenden.
Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, father of two small children, died because he was doing something the insurgents didn't want him to do. He could have stayed in the garage, where he was getting his car fixed. He died running toward action, which is what good newsmen do. He died for a paycheck, and maybe, if he was lucky, for something he believed in.
This should not be confused with the AP's other problems in Iraq. Photographer Bilal Hussein, who operated with insurgents freely because he did what they wanted him to. Numerous other AP stringers and staffers who are complicit in reporting war crimes the U.S. military and Iraqi police say never happened, citing a source they say does not exist.
Of course, Crittenden provides no facts or evidence that Bilal Hussein "operated with insurgents freely because he did what they wanted him to." because, well, there isn't any such evidence. And nobody knows for sure, because the Pentagon has decided that they don't want to talk about him:
The Pentagon has brushed off a request from a journalist organization seeking more information and a decision on Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein continues to be held without charges at a U.S.-run prison camp. He instead repeated the military's longstanding assertion that it detained Hussein under authority of U.N. resolutions and in accord with the Geneva Conventions.
[...]
Whitman, in his response, said Hussein has been notified and given an opportunity to provide information for consideration in at least two of three military reviews of his detention.
But an AP executive said that was true only for one of the three hearings — and the notice came after the hearing took place.
"Bilal Hussein was not aware that any of these took place," said Dave Tomlin, AP's associate general counsel. "So he obviously wasn't present for any of them, nor was he represented at any of them."
"We regard all these so-called due process events as legally meaningless, and in fact consider it laughable that the term 'due process' would even be applied to them," Tomlin said.
[...]
Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained as suspected security threats by the U.S. military worldwide; some 13,000 of them are in Iraq. Few are charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.
But that doesn't keep Crittenden from getting all gussied up as the Red Queen of Hearts and deciding that Hussein did what the insurgents wanted him to do, so off with his head! After all Crittenden was there, man, he walked the walk, he embedded with the, um, embedded-ed. Well, he wasn't actually there when all of the Hussein stuff was going on and doesn't have any first-hand knowledge but what does that matter when you have a nifty khaki safari jacket with lots of pockets and epaulets and shit. Check it out! Hem-ing-way!
Sadly that was then and this is now, and these days Crittenden does his reporting from a lovely cubicle with tips coming in from Star Wars nerds, self-loathing racists with anger management issues, and losers. If that's not empirical truth or something that rhymes with truth, I don't know what is. Because, you see, these people just know deep down in their guts that Bilal Hussein is guilty guilty guilty because...well he's brown... and his name is Hussein...and, um, the government says so, and "no" you can't talk to him, now go away...
So what cab we say about Jules Crittenden, or all journalistic Crittendens for that matter? Well, one could say, after reading both Jules and Danielle Crittenden that to be a Crittenden is to be a self-promoting hack of marginal talents getting by on familial connections.
I can't prove it of course, but it has the ring of truthiness...
Eh, these awards are already fucked, and Althouse is being so mean-spirited and vindictive about the contest, I feel no guilt. Go vote for the Moderate Voice -- an actual centrist blog in the centrism category, and a good blog to boot. Vote early, vote often, and vote proudly. And if you need further incentive, this should do nicely. Althouse is one of the more loathsome participants in the blogosphere, while Joe Gandelman's Moderate Voice has long strived to help smaller blogs and inject some calm evenhandedness into the debate. Now, I'm not actually a fan of calm evenhandedness, but that's what this award is supposed to denote, so go vote.
Ooh, the great and somber Weblog Awards! Corrupted! Disserved! Or should I say disssssssssserved? What a snake I am! Ooh, organizers put time and energy into creating such a lofty institution and here I am, fooling around. Oh, noooo!
And I love the way you perceived all that after it became painfully obvious that you were losing abysmally to the the "lady" blogger your blog attacked in demeaning and dishonest terms. And now you're all about indignant righteousness? What a laugh!
What the voice in Ann's head is saying:
Dear Lord Jesus, I do not often speak with you and ask for things, but now, I really must insist that you help me win the election tomorrow because I deserve it and Paul Metzler doesn't, as you well know. I realize that it was your divine hand that disqualified Tammy Metzler and now I'm asking that you go that one last mile and make sure to put me in office where I belong so that I may carry out your will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
What we're all thinking:
Dear God, I know I don't believe in you, but since I'll be starting catholic school soon, I though I should at least practice. Let's see. What do I want? I want Lisa to realize what a bitch she is and feel really bad and apologize for how she hurt me and know how much I still love her. In spite of everything, I still want Paul to win the election tomorrow, not that cunt Tracy. Oh, and I also want a really expensive pair of leather pants and someday, I wanna be really good friends with Madonna. Love, Tammy.
Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.
Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus on Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less than four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.
Tinsley, 48, Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which a driver in Indiana is considered intoxicated, the Sheriff's Department said. He posted $755 bond.
On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested on a charge of public intoxication, according to the Sheriff's Department.
We thought an actual conservative looked like this:
Why mock the Asian when you can lock them up instead? Michelle Malkin, anchor baby and postergirl for the Irrational Irritability Foundation , dons her newsboy/Mao cap (when did Lerners start carrying those?) and makes much ado about The View because comedienne Rosie O'Donnell belittled her Asian bruthas and sistahs.
This is just a reminder from the ever-sensitive Michelle that, while it is okay to lock up funny-looking foreigners, mocking them through the barbed-wire is considered bad form.
