Lip Balm

Think this is coincidental? I think not.

First, this happens. Then this .

And then this closes the circle.

US Water Pipelines Are Breaking

Imagine how many jobs could be created in this country if we just took care of the things we’ve so badly neglected.

A nation of busy bodies (a rant)

That is what we’ve become. And it ain’t a good thing, people. It’s not a good thing when the New York Times, the supposed “newspaper of record” finds space to publish an article on the prostitute that Elliot Spitzer allegedly hired, including her pictures from her MySpace page. And I’m gonna tell you why this is not a good thing. I’ll bet I could easily get detailed opinions from people on whether or not Silda Spitzer should have stood next to her husband, an unbelieveably idiotic subject, yet if queried, the same people wouldn’t know jack about anything of actual importance that went on this week. Y’know, stuff like the house of reps passing a FISA bill without retroactive immunity for the telecoms, the outrageous executive order Bush issued, weaking the Intelligence Oversight Board, the misuse of Security Letters on ordinary U.S. citizens by the FBI, the fact that the “surge” is an utter fucking failure in it’s actual intent. Stuff that actually affects our lives in many ways. I realize that many people just don’t want to know about this shit. It’s too depressing, etc. and blah blah blah. Well, what depresses me most, is my fellow citizens giving more attention to the lastest cocksniffing frenzy then they do to the things that really matter. I realize this is a rant. So be it. I could have added at leat 10 more things to the list of devious things this administration is up to just this week. I’m begging y’all to pay at least a little attention to the corruption of the Bush administration, the eroding of our Constitutional rights. Rant over.

Women are dumb and they lie a lot

First there was this Oh, it’s bad. So very bad. Then the WaPo decided to up the ante by having a “chat” with Ms. Allen.  Ugh. Honestly, why give this wretched person anymore space to spew her crap. Then yesterday, Meredith Viera foisted this piece of crap on the world. If you scroll down and launch the video player piece titled, “Why women lie”, you’ll see what I mean. I don’t even want to waste too many words on what shite this is. But wtf is going on here? Misogyny is fine when it’s done by a woman? 

Bye Bye Love

  Roy Schieder died this week, aged 75. He had such a magnetic screen personality, I just loved the guy. Loved him in All That Jazz, a flawed but great movie. He’s fantastic in Marathon Man, as Dustin Hoffman’s worldly and sophisticated older brother. But the movie I just added to top of my Netflix list is 52 Pick Up. A satisfying thriller from the mid-80’s, based on the Elmore Leonard novel, it’s a blackmail story with a couple of really nasty blackmailers, played by John Glover and Clarence Williams III (Linc! from the Mod Squad). It also has a very strong role for the ever fabulous Ann-Margaret. In fact, up to seeing 52 Pick Up, I’d only seen Ann-Margaret as another sexy actress whose distinguishing feature was her red hair. This movie made me see what a marvelous actor she is when her material is worthy of her. I don’t want to go on and on about, just rent it. Oh, and if you need a little more incentive, it’s directed by John Frankenheimer. 

And speaking of teen pregnancy…

34 years ago, I got knocked up at the young age of 15. Roe v. Wade had only been decided several months earlier. I was clueless about what was going on in the world. I thank my lucky stars that I was able to safely terminate that pregnancy and I’ve never regretted it for a second. It would have been nice if my parents or my public education had given me the relevant reproductive information that could have saved me from getting pregnant in the first place but…they didn’t. Thank you Sarah Weddington.

Teen pregnancy rates are up and it’s all Jamie-Lynn Spears fault. Or Juno’s.

Because it couldn’t be the fault of several years of  abstinence-only nonsense. What a ridiculously slanted piece this is. Why is teen pregnancy still being framed as the girl’s “fault”? No mention of the young men’s responsiblity in creating a pregnancy or how their lives will be affected legally or emotionally. Deborah Robert’s asinine shock and her shaming attitude towards these girls is absurdly comical in this day and age. No, having a kid and keeping it at such a young age is not the smartest thing in the world. Yes, the odds are stacked against them. But do they really need Ms. Roberts to make them feel worse about their situation? And the way that the mention of abortion in any context is avoided at all cost is ridiculous. At the end of the piece when Diane Sawyer asks Ms. Roberts how many girls choose adoption, Roberts replies only a small percentage of girls opt for adoption and that half of pregnant girls keep their babies and the other half “lose their babies, other things happen”.  Other things happen? You mean like abortion, Deborah? Jesus Christ, I know abortion rights are getting chiseled away but is it now a crime to mention the word? 

Jesus Christ, this scared the shit out of me

From an article on the front page of the Washington Post

“Thousands of people around the world say they have a disease that causes mysterious fibers to sprout painfully through the skin, and they’ve given it a name. The spread of ‘Morgellons disease’ could be Internet hysteria, or it could be an emerging illness demanding our attention.”

I haven’t heard about this before. Has anyone else? I’m so creeped out now.

The most intelligent and interesting thing I’m reading these days

Scott Horton    Scott Horton’s No Comment blog on Harpers.org consistently blows me away. An attorney and human right’s advocate, Scott writes about an amazing array of subjects. Right now, if you navigate to the site, there are posts up about Bertold Brecht, how a federal court has declared inmates at Guantanamo not to be “persons”, on ending the culture of immunity for contractors and an insightful overview of what has happened and what will happen in the unfolding scandal over the destruction of the CIA torture tapes. Just read him is all I’m saying.

U.S. Airstrikes Up In Iraq

This report on NPR’s Day to Day made me see red today. The reporter, Josh White, unquestioningly spouted the Air Force talking points he’s been given. According to him, the military “clears away the cilvilians” before they bomb the targeted area to shit. No mention of where the civilians go, what they do. I guess they just go away to happyland while we surgically strike the evil ones. In this article by the same reporter in the Washington Post, there’s a little more about how they get the civilians to vacate. “After doing a show of force to get civilians out of the area, they engaged the house and the fighters with a 500-pound bomb,” he said of the attack by two British Tornado GR4 jets. “They took the fighters out.”