I think it's funny they made me wear a hairnet over the hair I haven't got.
Most residents of Fort Worth have never even seen the inside of a gay bar.
I doubt that's true. I certainly have. It's not like there aren't whole sections of Dallas and Austin where that's the only kind of bar there is. Fort Worth is, I confess, a bit less cosmopolitan - though, unlike Dallas (not sure about Austin) we have a city ordinance banning employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Fort Worth's police chief Jeff Halstead is counting on that fact—counting on the average person's ignorance about gay bars and certain stereotypes about gay men—to get a half a dozen Forth Worth police officers off the hook for conducting a violent raid on a Forth Worth gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge, late last Saturday night.
There's no hook, so far as I'm aware. There are a bunch of officers claiming they were assaulted. If they're lying, I wouldn't be surprised. If they're telling the truth, I wouldn't be surprised either. But without some proof one way or another, nothing will happen to them - and nothing would be happening to them if the accusers were hetero either.
Allow me to translate the chief's comments: "Them faggots in that thar bar touched mah officers and now they're complainin' about some rough stuff and one little ol' faggot with a brain injury? Those perverts should be grateful they're alive."
Do you reckon this fucking clown can do piss-poor imitations of Black dialect too? Do you think he might have a problem that stretches beyond the behavior of the cops?
And the chief of police in Forth Worth, a major U.S. city, is attempting to use the Gay Panic Defense to convince the citizens of Fort Worth to ignore the evidence—to ignore photographic evidence and credible eyewitness accounts—and let his officers off.
If there is photographic evidence I have yet to see it, and assclown doesn't link it. I do find the eyewitness accounts credible, but the word of a handful of bar patrons is never going to outweigh the word of a couple of dozen cops, regardless of location or sexual orientation.
So... Chad Gibson sexually assaulted a Fort Worth police officer and, according to the Fort Worth's chief of police, Gibson's assault not only prompted but justified the actions of his officers at the Rainbow Room, but... Gibson wasn't charged with assault.
Can someone please ask the chief of police to explain how that works?
It works like this: you don't charge the guy you beat the fuck out of, even if his beating was deserved (which I am not saying it was), and you certainly don't do so while his life is still in question.
Moving on - I have no idea what happened in that bar. If it happened as the cops state then no crime occurred. If it happened as the gay guys state then the cops need some prison time. Either way the police chief does not need to induce "gay panic" to get his guys out of trouble. There is either enough evidence to go to a grand jury, or there is not. Public opinion by itself wouldn't be enough to get the police chief fired if the people beat up had been little old ladies, if the cops claimed they were resisting arrest in a bar well after midnight. And that would be as true in New York City as in aw-shucks Cowtown, you supercilious bigoted Yankee unclefucker.
Meantime I hear that half of China's giant stimulus ended up in their stock market. See, white people really aren't any dumber than yellow people, given a particular set of incentives.
Barack Obama seems to get this. His Republican opponents do not. See Iran, where a lot of dissidents are alive who John McCain would have gotten murdered. See now Honduras, where Hugo Chavez is trying desperately to tie the United States to a coup we've already denounced. I cannot think of any meaner thing Obama could do to the plotters of the coup (bloodless, justified, and appaprently as close to constitutional as a coup can be) than to suggest he considers their actions to be justified or constitutional.
A little subtlety is all I'm saying. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Give 'em a lollipop and then kick 'em in the nuts when they're not looking. America, fuck yeah.
I won't bother to quote most of this because both Obama's behavior and Greenwald's reactions are utterly predictable. Here's some for flavor:
There has now emerged a very clear -- and very disturbing -- pattern whereby Obama is willing to use legal mechanisms and recognize the authority of other branches only if he's assured that he'll get the outcome he wants. If he can't get what he wants from those processes, he'll just assert Bush-like unilateral powers to bypass those processes and do what he wants anyway. In other words, what distinguishes Obama from the first-term Bush is that Obama is willing to indulge the charade that Congress, the courts and the rule of law have some role to play in political outcomes as long as they give him the power he wants. But where those processes impede Obama's will, he'll just bypass them and assert the unilateral power to do what he wants anyway (by contrast, the first-term Bush was unwilling to go to Congress to get expanded powers even where Congress was eager to give them to him; the second-term Bush, like Obama, was willing to allow Congress to endorse his radical proposals: hence, the Military Commissions Act, the Protect America Act, the FISA Amendments Act, etc.).
Blah, blah, blah. This is the bit I found interesting:
If there's one principle that can be described as fundamental to the American founding, it's that the state -- and certainly the President -- do not have the power to order people imprisoned without charges. Thomas Jefferson said that trials by jury is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Why is this painfully obvious proposition still necessary to defend after the November election?
Thomas Jefferson held Aaron Burr, a former Vice President of the United States, incommunicado and without trial illegally for months. John Adams forced through the Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus without the consent of Congress although the Constitution in no way made it clear which branch of government had the power to do so, and imprisoned thousands including Congressman Vallandigham, convicted by military tribunal. Grover Cleveland sent Eugene Debs to prison for years for violating an injunction not to "interfere with the U.S. mail" by leading the Pullman strike (at least Debs had a trial). Woodrow Wilson's behavior, including in regard to Debs, was dubious in the extreme. FDR sent the Japanese-Americans to internment camps. And so on.
The point of all this is that imprisonment without trial, or with a cursory and ludicrous trial, is not only not Unamerican, it's a proud and bipartisan tradition of the Republic. How you feel about this I suppose depends on your politics, which we now know are mostly a function of brain chemistry. You may think that power corrupts and there's never any excuse for this. You may think that responsibility in trying times has a sobering effect that forces great men to abandon their ideologies and go with pragmatism which, fortunately, our society is flexible enough to tolerate and recover from during better times. Or, like me, you may see some room for nuance. But either way let's not lie about what this country is.
With recovery elusive, a population doddering into old age and perhaps a decade of deflation in prospect, Japan may start mulling the most radical monetary policy of all — the abolition of cash.
Unorthodox, untried and, said one Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi strategist, “in the realms of economic science fiction”, the recommendation has nevertheless begun floating around Tokyo’s corridors of power and economists have described Japan as particularly suitable as a testing ground.
The search for more outré economic policies continues, despite the recent surge in the Nikkei 225 index.The market may be reflecting soaring Chinese investment, rising consumer confidence and other cheerful data but economists see few long-term beacons of hope for Japan...
Several MPs in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party believe the abolition of cash, though politically radioactive, might be technically feasible. Richard Jerram, a senior economist with Macquarie bank, told investors that “the proposal has become practical with the broad penetration of electronic money and credit cards in Japan”.
He said that all the proposals were radical but worth consideration for Japan. Without physical cash, a central bank can set rates exactly where it likes, runs the argument. Mr Jerram said: “At the heart of the problem of achieving negative nominal interest rates is the idea that physical currency is an anonymous bearer bond with a nominal interest rate of zero.” While a central bank can impose positive or negative rates on non-physical assets, transmitting those rates to physical currency is a huge challenge. By permanently removing cash from a system, he added, policymakers are robbed of the excuse that zero is the lowest that nominal rates can go as a deflation-fighting tool.
The sound you hear is
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ikilled007's head exploding. Hahahahaha.At least I didn't flip out like this kid (thanks
xaoswolf)kgbman's writings on his church as an institution, and ikilled007's responses.The Catholic Church is political in a way no other institution is. There's politics in every religion, of course; see Iran or the meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention. But in Catholicism politics, while not part of the faith as such, is an essential part of the religion.
This is because Catholics supplement scripture with tradition, in the same way liberals supplement the Constitution with penumbras and such. That's all very well, but it means everything is a political question. Because of course not all parts of Catholic tradition are to be considered sacred. Some things are sacred, and some are the work of fallible human beings. In many cases the differences are clear. The Borgias, the trial of Pope Formosus's corpse, the fact that Peter was married, the issues with little boys, and the torture of the Inquisitors are the misbehavior of fallen man or nonbinding precedents, but Paul's parenthetical notes about sodomy and Jesus's pun about founding his church on a rock have been expanded and made holy writ.
Obviously my prejudices show a bit there, but the fact remains: of course there are Catholic dissenters and heretics. They know all they have to do to cease being dissenters and heretics, and make their opponents dissenters and heretics instead, is win the political battle. It's unlikely that
kgbman will be dug up and have his blessing fingers hacked off and his skeleton tossed back in the river like Formosus, but if the liberals ever elect a Pope, he might have to choreograph the mandatory liturgical dances.Protestants have this too (it takes real cojones to turn the New Testament into the Prosperity Gospel) but I think they have to work at it harder.
NEW YORK – The granddaughter of Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara is at the forefront of another revolution — for vegetarianism.
Lydia Guevara poses semi-nude in a PETA campaign that tells viewers to "join the vegetarian revolution," said PETA spokesman Michael McGraw.
Does Stalin have any hot grandkids? They could "send meat to the Gulag."
EDIT: Occurs to me it's also too bad Hitler doesn't have hot granddaughters really. "Silly Americans! Ovens aren't for meat! They're for..."
Interesting article on Mousavi and Khamenei. Among other things, they're cousins. And Mousavi used to be the conservative of the two.
TEHRAN, Iran — Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, massed in competing rallies Tuesday as the country's most senior Islamic cleric threw his weight behind opposition charges that Ahmadinejad's re-election was rigged.
"No one in their right mind can believe" the official results from Friday's contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi's charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers "in the worst way possible."
"A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God."
I guess now we find out whether a Grand Ayatollah is bigger than a Supreme Leader.
Wright told the Daily Press that he has not spoken to his former church member since [Barack] Obama became president, and he implied that the White House won't allow Obama to talk to him.
"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me," Wright said. "I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. . . .
"They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. . . . I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."
I would have thought that between drinking the blood of Christian infants and running Hollywood, the banks, and the diamond industry, the Jews would have been too busy to keep Reverend Wright down. But I guess I underestimated their industriousness. No offense, Jews. Way to work hard.
There it is in a nutshell.
Killing in the name of
The first (italicized) bit is a quote from Frank Schaeffer, former pro-life evangelist turned moderate pro-choicer. The rest is a comment in reply.
What I realized then, in 1994, as I watched these groups line up to condemn violence against "mass-murderers" and to renounce armed opposition to "the Holocaust," was that these folks didn't really mean any of it. They were horrified by the spectacle of someone taking their own rhetoric and arguments seriously. "We don't really mean anything we say," these groups rushed to announce. "We don't really believe any of that."
Have you considered -- as I am horrified to consider -- that maybe you've got it the wrong way 'round. Maybe it's not "we don't really believe abortion is the American Holocaust Of Mass Murdering Babies, we just find it politically expedient to pretend we do."
Maybe what's really happening is "We REALLY DO believe that abortion is the American Holocaust Of Mass Murdering Babies, and we REALLY DO believe that hunting down and murdering abortion doctors in a house of worship is a heroic act. But it's politically inexpedient for us to be associated with a guy who got caught."
I'm horrified to consider the possibility that the reason they are so quick to denounce the murder isn't that he crossed the line -- but that he acted *too soon*, before their movement was strong enough to rise up and murder their political enemies with impunity.
I have bad news for you. Most people who are not directly related to you and don't think exactly the way you do would just as soon you were dead. I know I would (no offense). You're breathing air I could be using.
In a real state of nature with no consequences, most Christians, I think, would indeed cheerfully slaughter abortionists. Most Muslims would cheerfully slaughter Christians. Most Islamophobes would cheerfully slaughter Muslims (I got
ernunnos to admit once that he would). Most... etc.The reason they don't, and the reason I am generally in favor of tolerance and open movement of humans, is that game theory works. There are powerful incentives not to behave that way. When religion is working correctly, some of those are religious. Others are the good opinion of society, the threat of prison, and the threat of being murdered in retaliation. These work so well that the fact that someone thinks differently from you is almost (not quite) totally useless in predicting whether he would actually try to kill you. If it weren't, I'd cheerfully advocate for the decapitation of whole classes of people myself, starting with Commies and working down through fascists, NASCAR fans and left-handed redheads.
That turns out not to be necessary. Keep your shotgun handy though.
Ha-Ha!
Not all sweetness and light though I am afraid:
At the same time, the vote for mainstream conservative parties in several countries only held steady or even slightly fell, against a backdrop of the lowest ever turnout for a Euro-election, with just 43% bothering to vote. In many countries, large protest votes went to populist, fringe and hard-right politicians vowing to close borders, repatriate immigrants or even dismantle the European Union in its current form.
Britain elected two members of the avowedly racist British National Party and in the Netherlands, a populist party which vows to ban the Koran and close the European Parliament, picked up four seats with 17% of the vote, coming second only to the ruling conservative Christian Democrats. Far-right and anti-immigrant parties picked up seats in Austria, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary...
Gloom for Britain’s Labour government became outright humiliation when the party was pushed into third place by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which advocates withdrawal from the European Union. UKIP was a big beneficiary of British voter rage at an expenses scandal that has left the British Parliament reeling. This is ironic, given that of the 12 UKIP members of the European Parliament elected in 2004, one was later jailed for fraud and a second is now facing trial for money laundering and false accounting. UKIP now has 13 seats, one ahead of Labour, and well behind the opposition Conservatives, who picked up 24 seats with nearly 29% of the vote.
The European Union is basically none of my business and I know that all sorts of hippie bullshit comes down from Brussels that makes it difficult to tolerate, but in general, I'm inclined to think that anything that promotes free movement of goods and labor is a good thing (though reducing competition among fiat currencies may not be).
More worrying is the progress of groups like the BNP. The British do seem to have gone overboard recently in terms of coddling actively dangerous immigrant groups, but the backlash shouldn't be to kick immigrants as a whole (we're talking Poles as well as Pakistanis here, after all, not that most Pakistanis deserve it either).
