I'm Sure Oprah Is Crushed

I don't like 50 Cent. Why do people interview him like he is is a voice that needs to be heard - particularly about politics (can nukka even vote?) or potentates (like Oprah)? Why would a woman who has been raped and molested have performers, who call women bitches and hos, on her show?

He usually saves his beefs for other rappers; this time, 50 Cent is going after Oprah Winfrey.

In an interview with The Associated Press, 50 complained that Winfrey rarely invites rappers on her talk show: "I think she caters to older white women."

"Oprah's audience is my audience's parents," the 29-year-old rapper said. "So, I could care less about Oprah or her show."

He's not alone in his resentment toward the talk show host cum media mogul.

Rapper-actor Ludacris, aka Chris Bridges, said in the May issue of GQ magazine that Winfrey was "unfair" during a show he appeared on last October with co-stars from best-picture Oscar winner "Crash."

"She edited out a lot of my comments while keeping her own in," he said. "Of course, it's her show, but we were doing a show on racial discrimination, and she gave me a hard time as a rapper, when I came on there as an actor."

Winfrey's representative at her production company, Harpo, told the AP that Winfrey was unavailable for comment.

But, as 50 Cent said, Winfrey's purported disapproval might enhance a rap star's street cred.

"I'm actually better off having friction with her," he said.

Ludacris needs to be glad she let him on her show at all. The fact that he now acts does not change the fact that he is a rapper, first and foremost, and made his initial millions singing about having "hos in different area codes." That is hardly the kind of music that a woman, who is all about empowering women, would feature on her show. But, proving true to their lack of insight or empathy for how violated some women feel by the words in their songs, they choose to whine like "bitches" because one of the most respected women in the WORLD isn't giving them props. I'm so sure she cares about their pissant complaining and, definitely, is better off ignoring anything they have to say.

(Note: please don't ever get me started on the nimrods who think that the word ludicrous is spelled "Ludacris.")

Technorati Tags: 50 Cent, Oprah, Ludacris

Speaking Of Pedophiles: Update

You know how they say that if you put something out into the universe, it will happen? Well, while I have no proof that I can literally call this guy a pedophile, my suspicion that he is a possible abuser became much more real this week.

I am in a technical position and report to the same manager as this guy. He is a team lead for his team and my team has been working with his on getting ready for an enhancement release of our software. My personal opinion (and that of several co-workers) is that he is BS'ing as far as what he knows. He has managed to con himself into a job where he does no technical work but merely doles out work to everyone else and "plays with" spreadsheets all day making it seem as though he is some king of test metrics. Anyhow, I disagreed with him on an issue and took the side of another co-worker who was in the middle of a conflict with him over a task he was trying to complete. All I said was that I understood where the other guy was coming from and that it seemed that the scope of the original task was creeping into something beyond what we'd originally planned at a time when we needed to stay on schedule.

Well, you would have thought I pulled his dick off. I wasn't even talking directly to the guy. I was chiming in through my cubicle. The guy took offense, got defensive and tried to make an argument of it. I stated that I was just expressing my opinion (this is still America, right?). He then informs me that he had an errand to run and he would take care of this issue when he got back! He said it in a tone like he was my daddy and would be back to punish me. But, I laughed, muttered something to the effect that he was a moron, and blew it off.

Sure enough, a couple hours later, while I am at my desk lunching on a nice, hot bowl of my homemade chili, he stomps his way over to my cube to tell me he wants to talk about my issue with his plans. When I looked up, saw his chest all puffed out and that red Uncle Fester looking face and bulging eyes, I knew it was not the right time for either of us to have a discussion. So, I told him that it wasn't a good time for me. Did this fool stand there and tell me that it WAS a good time and that we WERE going to talk about it? Did he refuse to leave my work area? Did he stand there talking while I turned the other way, continued to type or take a bite of food? Did he tell me that he was going to keep talking even though I was ignoring him (who the fuck does this motherfucker think he is)? Did I feel trapped an unsure what he would do if I tried to leave my cube? Did I tell him he was a micro-manager and that he irritated me? Did I tell him that I didn't think he knew what he was doing? Did it ultimately escalate, because he wouldn't leave, into me chanting "control freak/wife beater?" (Did you note that I can be an unabashed ABB in situations like this)?

Since he was lording over me as I remained in my chair(and because I'd gotten my digs in), I found it best to tell him that I was long over the need to be right in any given situation. The difference of opinion was hardly worth all of his rage so I told him that whatever he said was gospel because he knew everything there was to know about everything. I told him that whatever he wanted the team to do was fine with me and I would do whatever he said was the right thing to do . He finally left but I'd seen all I needed to see. This man aggressively invaded my space over a small difference of opinion. It wasn't critical. I'm not the team lead. He is. I'm just a satellite helper so God knows it wasn't worth all of that.

As far as I am concerned, if he would flip out on me like that over something so small, I don't want to imagine how he behaves at home with his concubine wife. My original abuse suspicions were raised because I heard him snap at her (in front of several of us ... in the kitchen) over something that he thought he heard her say. My eyebrow has been raised ever since.

Meanwhile, said wife was sitting in the kitchen the whole time (this was just after lunch). She had a laptop but was she hooked up to the office WiFi? No! On the few trips I made to the break room that afternoon, I noticed her either staring at her screensaver or playing solitaire. It was after 6pm when I went to wash my coffee cup and leave for the day. I still want to know what grown assed woman (and I cannot verify that she is or that he didn't adopt her instead of marrying her) has nothing better to do than sit in the cold kitchen of her husband's job for hours on end ... doing NOTHING? She started bringing the computer, it seems, after I offered her some magazines - which she declined. She also declined my offer to find her a desk (we have several empty cubicles). I do think she is dominated and abused and now the "pedophile" knows I know. Men just don't talk to women the way he talked to me unless they have the delusional view that they have the right to and are used to doing it.

After thinking about it overnight, and not knowing how crazy this guy is, I documented my recollection of the incident (giving myself full credit for my ability to stand up to him and not be bullied) for my manager. We discussed it with a third party and I made it an official complaint. Of course, like a classic wife beater, he was totally nice the next day and agreeable with everything I said. But that horse is out of the barn. I cannot confirm that I'll be seeing him on any Dateline stings, but I can confirm that he has a temper that flares up over minor issues and that he felt he had power enough to talk to me like I was his property (didn't say slave but he was acting like Mr. Tom, the plantation overseer, who was going to teach this gal a lesson ... I think he learned the lesson and got snapped out of his time warp too).

I have no plans on interacting with him anymore than I absolutely have to. I just hope he didn't beat his wife when they got home that night.

Does He Know The National Anthem Himself?

I'd like to believe that our President knows the words to our National Anthem but given his track record, I'd say it is a 50/50 shot either way. I do know that there are probably an embarrassing number of American citizens who don't know the anthem and the recent botching of it by Musiq Soulchild at a basketball game just highlighted it - yet again. With the immigration debate in high gear and Bush desperately needing to find a way to play both sides of the fence, I guess this comment was music to some ears and an insult to others.

President Bush, who has worked hard to court the Latino vote during two election campaigns, made it clear today that he does not welcome a new National Anthem sung in Spanish. Bush was asked in a Rose Garden press conference if he thinks the anthem will carry the same meaning in Spanish.

"No I don't,'' Bush said. "Because I think the National Anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the National Anthem in English.''

I know I could care less if folks sing the anthem in Spanish. Unlike many Americans, at least they'll know the frickin' song!

Must Be The Money

I suspect it is pretty hard to see anything when you are buried in a pile of profits!

Bush sees no evidence of gasoline "rip-off".

Haven For Terrorists

If we keep it up, they'll be breeding terrorists on farms.

Sunni and Shiite extremist groups are working inside Iraq to create a terrorist haven, where foreign fighters can operate, a U.S. State Department report said Friday.

Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq group and others 'view Iraq as a potential safe haven and are attempting to make it a reality,' said the annual report on worldwide terrorism.

The study said Syria and Iran, whom the United States consider to be state sponsors of terror, are supporting terrorists in Iraq.

Syria 'was used as a facilitation hub for terrorist groups operating in Iraq' and Iran 'has provided political and ideological support for several terrorist and militant groups active in Iraq,' the report found.

It also noted the 'proliferation of smaller looser networks that are less capable but also less predictable.'

These terrorist groups loosely associated with al Qaeda 'represent the most prominent current terrorist threat to the United States' and allies because they are 'smaller, harder to detect and more difficult to counter,' the report found.

'These micro-actors are launching more attacks, and they are more local and more lethal,' said a senior State Department official involved in the preparation of the report.

The View Will Be Buck Wild Now

The dynamic will soon change on ABC's "The View." It seems that Rosie O'Donnell will be replacing ditzy-acting, middle-aged mom, Meridith Viera. Rosie, another middle aged mom, is a politically astute, very outspoken but hardly a ditz who forever is whining something (and, I'll bet, won't be giving Wesley Snipes a lap dance on air). It's about to get wild!

Rosie O'Donnell is expected to make a surprise return to daytime television by taking over exiting Meredith Vieira's slot on the talk show 'The View.'

O'Donnell's appointment was reported Thursday by the newsmagazine 'Extra.' It was confirmed by a person close to the show who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because 'The View' wanted to make the announcement on Friday's show.

ABC officials declined comment on the report on Thursday.

Dubbed 'The Queen of Nice' when her syndicated talk show went on the air in 1996 and became an instant hit, O'Donnell won six Daytime Emmy Awards in six years as best talk-show host. She left the show to help raise four children with her partner, Kelli Carpenter O'Donnell.

The most interesting thing will be to see how this change will impact the chemistry. Joy, my favorite, has a straight from the hip style that I can relate to. Star Jones wants to be larger than life and the Diva of the show but I don't think that Rosie sitting in Meridith's old seat next to Star will work. I'm not sure if placement on the other end next to Elizabeth would work either (would probably scare little miss Republican to death). At the same time, I think that placing her on either side of Joy (thus plopping her to the opposite side of either Star or Elizabeth) would be one raukus mess - which might be fun for me but not sure about the average morning viewer.

In anycase, I think it is a good choice and am looking forward to the new show. Meanwhile, I have to say that I will not be following Meridith to The Today Show. I am a diehard Good Morning America fan and shall not be moved (unless they get stupid and get rid of Charlie and Diane again).

It's Like De Ja Vu All Over Again

This post at Shakespeare's Sister is about the sexual assault of a Hispanic boy over the weekend but it raises the larger issue of the panic that seems to be emerging in the larger, dominant culture. The current generation seems to have no knowledge, karmic or otherwise, of the treachery of their forefathers. The rape and beating of this young man because he supposedly made advances towards a white girl is horribly reminscent of the Emmett Till story. But, I think she is right on with this conclusion:

And we need look no further than the GOP, as each is representative of their key wedge issues: gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.

When there are politicians—including our president—spouting off about gays undermining the sanctity of marriage, abortionists commiting murder, and mostly Hispanic undocumented workers threatening both our national security and economy, and those politicians’ words are repeated ad infinitum by their supporters, and the conservative echo chamber comprised of media shills and the rightwing blogosphere led by disgusting characters like Michael Savage and Michelle Malkin, who have millions of listeners and readers, put their own overtly vicious spin, rooted in bigotry and hatred of The Other, on these policies, we should expect nothing less for a disingenuous wedge issue designed by the likes of Karl Rove to exploit the prejudices of the GOP base to translate into action that leaves victims of policy also victims of violence.

This shit doesn’t happen in a void. When real people are used as fodder to garner votes born of bias, those real people are inevitably endangered. Politicians cannot continually demonize a group of people and then claim naivety that the fuckwit homophobes, radical anti-choicers, and racists on whose votes they are dependent for their continued supremacy actually treat those groups as demons, monsters under the bed who threaten our very way of life.

The GOP is no longer a legitimate political party. They are a collection of hatemongers who overtly seek to convince poor white trash that they are privileged, and that their privilege can be used to oppress the weak, scaring them through policy and their loyal shills that life would be better if only gays and feminists and racial minorities weren’t around. They use these people’s hatred of others to mask the real reasons life sucks for poor whites—tax breaks for the rich, rewarding companies who offshore, largesse toward corporations designed by lobbyists at the expense of Americans’ pocketbooks. As long as the gays, feminists, and racial minorities stand between the GOP and their poor base with targets on their backs, the GOP will continue to hide behind them, shouting, "Ready, aim, fire!"

Have Western Men Become Asexual?

There are many times when I agree with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and many times when he works my nerves. But, this article is rather thought provoking.

The greatest cultural story since the 1960’s is the decline and fall of the Western male, and how women have accommodated that fall by allowing themselves to be treated like garbage by men. It’s now 40 years since the second wave of feminism, and yet to be a guy today is to have your pick of hundreds of women who will sleep with you and expect not only no commitment, but not even courteous treatment. You can burp in their presence, break wind, and they will still go to bed with you. To be a guy is to have women move into your apartment and cook and clean for you, even as you endlessly push off the question of marriage, which you have no intention of addressing anyway.

Once, when I lectured at Yale, a female student perfectly identified for me how it is a man’s world and how it all begins at university: "When it comes to love and relationships the men here sit and pick us out, like a man sifting through a jar of jellybeans for the colors and tastes that he likes, leaving behind all the ones that don’t appeal to his taste buds at the moment."

To be a man today means having access to a seemingly endless array of women who take off their clothes on TV to sell you everything from beer to cars to hamburgers. But in becoming boastful beasts of female prey and losing their sense of awe for women, men have guaranteed their own boredom.


If you’re a man, and a woman can no longer excite you, what will? A bunch of guys hitting a ball with a bat? Watching race cars go in a circle for 500 miles? Do men realize just how pathetic they have become as they endlessly pursue cheap substitutes for a lost sense of erotic excitement? Most of the men I meet aren’t even that attracted to their wives and live in predictable and monotonous drudgery in their marriages as a result. Yes, there is a price to pay for disrespecting women.

Male overexposure to women has even led to the death of the heterosexual man as we know him. If the definition of a heterosexual man is a male who is attracted to women, then most men today are barely heterosexual.

I recently told my mom that marriage might be a nice hobby for me when I retire (she, being retired and having a long-term boyfriend, laughed and politely nixed that logic) but it is definitely not in my range of view or on my list of desires in this lifetime. Fairly recently, on one of my yahoo groups, someone posed the question "what makes a woman marriage material?" The list is co-ed and this is what the replies were reduced to: "she gotta be a fine azz ... doctor who swallows" and "I need a woman with Ambition and earning potential, I aint saying im a gold digga but I aint messing with no broke women! Not to mention the head game must be on point!"

How exactly do you word that in marriage vows?

Is She High?

I watch America's Next Top Model (ANTM) regularly and every, single "cycle" they have one aspiring model who is off the chain. This year it is Jade. I've cringed at a couple of her malapropisms and mispelled words (nearly passed out when she said gendre) but this clip of her shows that she makes a habit out of it:



To many, she's the one to hate. But to me, she is sheer comedy - whether she is butchering English or messing with one of the other model's mind. After this clip, however, I am starting to wonder if the chick is high or something? What the hell [do she be] talking about?

Newsflash: Anti-Rape Bill Is An Impediment To Marriage

Talk about some f'd up isht!

Kenyan women's rights activists have condemned an MP who told parliament that women usually say "No" to sex, even if they mean "Yes".

During a debate on a new sex crimes law, Paddy Ahenda said Kenya women were too shy to openly say "Yes" and warned the law could prevent marriage.

Twelve of Kenya's 18 female MPs walked out in protest, saying Mr Ahenda and other MPs were "trivialising" rape.

Many Kenyans are alarmed by a huge rise in the incidence of sexual abuse.

"This is a nation that should be in shame because its leaders are laughing at offences committed against women and children," said Kenya National Commission on Human Rights official Catherine Mumma.

'Impediment to marriage'

Several male MPs feared that the bill went too far and could lead to a spate of false accusations by women.

"If the bill is adopted the way it is, it will prevent men from courting women and this will be a serious impediment to the young who would want to marry," said Mr Ahenda.

"In our culture, when women say 'No', they mean 'Yes' unless it's a prostitute."

The AFP news agency reports that many of his male colleagues laughed and applauded his comments.

He also called women "God's creatures", prompting women in the public gallery to leave, followed by female MPs, led by Health Minister Charity Ngilu.

A group of women's rights activists wearing red T-shirts marched to parliament as the MPs prepared to debate the Sexual Offences Bill, urging them to pass it.

They were turned back by police.

Trauma

Earlier in the debate, MP Njoki Ndungu had said the bill would act as a deterrent to the rising number of rapes and other sexual crimes.

She said rape was the "most traumatic experience that happens at the most private part of you" and had nothing to do with sex.

She said the bill would introduce 21 new sexual offences and provide for the treatment of victims, including publicly funded counselling.

The bill's first version recommended that rapists be castrated but this has now been dropped.

Last year, Ms Ndungu told parliament that two Kenyan women were raped every hour and accused the police of being lax in prosecuting rapists.

Did I read this right? If you are a prostitute, men believe you if you say no. If you are a desireable woman or girl, no really means yes?
---
Rewind/Regurgitate: Wait a minute! I am still trying to process the logic these men use. They really think that only a whore would say no to them? Not only a whore would say yes?

Okay. Got it!

Well, Thank God For Some Small Favors

Not only do I not ride public transportation anymore but I also never had more than a couple problems with disgusting pigs when I did ride the bus and train. Other cultures need to catch up (even though America, in many ways, is going backwards).

Rio De Janeiro just started to run women-only subway cars this week...they’re pink striped.

How Brazilian women actually feel about the sex-segregated cars is something that remains to be seen. A Reuters headline screams Women applaud no-men, pink-striped metro cars, but another article says that women aren’t fans:

“Separation (of the sexes) is a throwback to my grandmother's era. It's a big step backward in the fight for women's equality," said Rogeria Peixoto, head of a Brazilian women's group.

I know I’ve said this before, but whatever: while I understand the need for immediate safety concerns, putting the responsibility on women not to get harassed rather than on the men to stop harassing is really problematic.

And I do agree that this might be the wrong approach. Next women will be walking around like those in the Middle East instead of demanding that men keep their hands and their comments to themselves.

And He Wasn't "Just A Stripper"

Via ABB, here we go again. What is up with these folks' obsession with beating and sodomizing people?

Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a 16-year-old Hispanic boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old white girl at a party, authorities said.

The attackers forced the boy out of the house party, beat him and sodomized him with a metal pipe, shouting epithets "associated with being Hispanic," said Lt. John Martin with the Harris County Sheriff's Department.

They then poured bleach over the boy, apparently to destroy DNA evidence and left him for dead, authorities said. He wasn't discovered until Sunday, a day after the attack.(Watch how a neighbor described the victim's injuries -- 1:34)

The victim, who was not identified, suffered severe internal injuries and remained in critical condition Thursday.

Keith Robert Turner, 17, and David Henry Tuck, 18, are charged with aggravated sexual assault, investigators said.

Prosecutors are considering whether to attach hate-crime charges, but unless the victim dies, the possible penalty would be the same. If the boy dies and it is ruled a hate crime, the attackers could face the death penalty, authorities said.

The case has been turned over to the homicide division, Martin said, normal procedure in severe assault cases.

Authorities set bond at $100,000 for Turner and at $20,000 for Tuck.

Spring is a middle-class, largely white suburb of 36,000 residents, located about 10 miles north of the Houston city line.

Oh Ye Of Two Faiths

I get into more religious debates than I'd like but every once in a while I have to explain how being Christian doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with certain. Buddhist practices.

“My typical Sunday consists of church in the morning and the Buddhist center in the afternoon,” said Betty Levy, a practicing Catholic and a resident of Whitehouse Station near the Pennsylvania border.

Unlike an earlier generation of aspiring Buddhists, Levy didn’t discover the center while on a spiritual trek. Instead, she met Diana Cutler while both women were waiting for their cars to be repaired at a local auto dealership.

And after three years of classes, Levy said Buddhism is making her a better Christian.

“In the Gospels, Christ is teaching how to live,” Levy said. “And Buddhism helps give me the tools to live like we should — to put others first, to control anger and to be compassionate.”

The Cutlers, now in their late 50s, still embrace a quiet, austere lifestyle that they learned from their mentor, a Tibetan monk named Geshe Ngawang Wangyal.

But they also said the new wave of students is an encouraging sign that Buddhism is gaining mainstream acceptance.

“It’s gotten to the point where people stop me in the supermarket and ask me about the Dalai Lama,” Diana Cutler said. “They want to know how he’s doing and when he’s coming back.”

Snowball Rolling Down The Hill

Among other things, as gas prices rise and soar, President Bush's approval ratings get lower and lower and lower.

President Bush's approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said.

In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's performance, 60 percent said they disapprove and 8 percent said they do not know.

That's a significant drop from the way Americans perceived the president a year ago. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll carried out April 29-May 1, 2005, Americans were split on their assessments of Bush's performance, with 48 percent saying they approved and 49 percent saying they disapproved.

Works For Me!

Do I need to sign anything?

State legislators in Illinois and California have introduced proposals to impeach President Bush. In California, the amendment provides for impeaching Vice President Cheney as well.

So, Is This Assualt Or What?

Can you get away with punching people like this?

Pink Is Getting Deep

Looks like Pink is finally calling her own shots and using her music to say exactly what she wants to say. I just hope the Bush Administration doesn't retaliate for this one:

Speaking Of Pedophiles ...

Okay! I know I am wrong for this even though it creeps me totally out to no end. I have a co-worker who is probably (I am assuming he is over 40 but I think I am still older than him) middle-aged. I consider him to be a typical, nerd-like, reject (as in had a hard time getting/keeping women) white dude. He's not very attractive and seems to have an anal retentive/control freak personality to boot.

Well, when he first started working here and I saw his wedding ring, my radar went off and I immediately assumed that he had an Asian wife (of one nationality or another). Sure enough, I was right. BUT, this chick is really tiny (as in has a childlike body), talks in a baby voice and, apparently doesn't have much to do with herself at any given time during the week because she drops him off in the morning, picks him up after work and is often found in our cold kitchen area in the afternoons, presumably, waiting for him to get off of work - which often means hours.

Being only one of two females left on my team and, in general, surviving this industry for so many years being the only black, only woman or both, I have heightened sensitivity to sexism/racism in the workplace. Working around a bunch of chauvinistic pigs isn't always an easy task and when I see the kind of women these guys have at home, I realize why I get into conflict with some of them sometimes. I am probably their worst nightmare: independent, making as much money as them, speak with knowledge and authority in my voice and look at them like they are pedophiles when they bring women, who look and act like children, to work with them. It's NASTY!

Anyhow, it is this guy's birthday today so, of course, he gets flowers/balloons. Now I hear her over the cubes, talking in that baby voice and it is grating my nerves. It just grosses me out a) because he is so creepy b) because he obviously had to go trolling the Philippines for a bride.

I don't begrudge anyone the right to be happy but there is some stuff that just gets under my skin. How do you buy a woman in modern society? My manager too, it seems, is in the market for a mail-order. He just returned from the Philippines a few weeks ago and is always having these whisper conversations with the other co-worker in question (I guess his trips to Russia didn't pay off). He's an obnoxious prick too and I'm not sure he's taller than me (I'm 5 ft). Oh well, as long as it is legal I don't suppose there is anything wrong with it. But, like I said, it just skeeves me out! It's hard for me to take these guys seriously in a professional environment.

Pe-do-phile!

I've been seeing this all over the blogsphere so I finally decided to post it. Is this man so inbred that he does not understand that offering to purchase a 12 year old virginal girl is considered a crime? Heck, why would a 24 year old woman (virgin or not) want a creep like this? I need a shower and some calamine lotion! This makes me itch!

A man has caused an uproar in this southwestern Oklahoma town by advertising in an unusual manner that he'd like to pay for a virgin to be his bride.

A sign that 45-year-old Michael Thelemann posted in his yard Sunday said that he'll pay $1,000 for a virgin bride between the ages of 12 and 24.

"I feel like I'm living down the street from a pedophile," said neighbor Christy Sternadel. "We want him out of this neighborhood. Who asks for a 12-year-old virgin bride?"

As of Wednesday, no one had taken up Thelemann on his offer, but he had heard several negative comments from neighbors, which he said he didn't understand. He said his grandmother married "a much older man" at age 14.

"I'm just somebody who is getting up there in years, and I'm looking for a born-again, God-fearing virgin between the ages of 12 and 24 who can bear me children," said Thelemann, who was divorced in 1989. "What's the problem? I just think I have some wicked neighbors."

Neighbors asked the Stephens County sheriff's department to stop Thelemann from displaying the sign, but Undersherriff Bob Hill said the sign was gone by the time deputies visited Thelemann's home.

That's because it was stolen, Thelemann said. He put up another sign Wednesday that didn't include the minor ages. The new sign also noted he's not interested in a "pig-worshipping, heathen, white-supremacist wife."

Free Samples You Won't Get At Costco

Aside from the fact that it is just, plain bold and brazen for drug dealers to feel free enough to pass out samples of heroin, it's just plain insane that so many people took them up on their offer ... and died!

As word circulated this week of people passing out from potent heroin on Chicago's South Side, drug users didn't recoil with fear, police said.

They turned out in droves for a taste.

By the end of Wednesday, 25 people between the ages of 17 and 73 had overdosed, including a 51-year-old woman who died at her home.

"It's a sad commentary when people are racing to a place they know may overdose them," Police Supt. Philip Cline said Thursday.

With 66 heroin overdoses since August, including 11 deaths, police announced they are teaming with federal officials to try disrupting the drug's flow into the city and to staunch the street deals plaguing the South and West Sides.

Though there are close to 250 fatal drug overdoses in Chicago every year, officials said, incidents involving heroin are becoming more concentrated. Fifteen of Wednesday's overdoses happened near the Ida B. Wells public housing complex. In February, 10 people died near the Dearborn Homes after taking heroin that, authorities said, was cut with Fentanyl, a prescription drug often used in anesthesia.

Though Fentanyl is believed to be contributing to most of the heroin overdoses, Cline said, it is unclear if the drugs passed out Wednesday were cut with the substance or if they were simply extremely potent doses.

What is known about Wednesday's outbreak is that samples were being given out in pink baggies in the 500 block of East Browning Avenue and at 64th Street and Ashland Avenue, Cline said.

I think this is taking product marketing and sampling much too far!

Fetus Freaks Set Up Fake Clinics

I just wonder if these pro-birth zealots invest this much time and creativity into making sure that the babies/children who are already here have viable lives?

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group — one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic, and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there — the "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Our clinic director reports that she was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

Behind the Story: The anti-choice movement is setting up so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers! What’s more, these centers have received $60 million of government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars."

What about the sick children already here? What about the starving children already here? What about the abused children already here? What about the neglected children already here? Does their mission stop once the forced pregnancy comes to term?

Wusses!

How transparent is this? This is akin to taking your ball and stomping home when you lose the game.

Yesterday, Broadsheet noted that a teenage girl won a boys tennis championship in Pennsylvania. Just one day after Annie Houghton's win, league officials congratulated her on her achievement, while taking steps to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. (Thanks to Broadsheet reader Bethany L. Ruhe for the tip.)

Officials from Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League asked school administrators to come up with new rules to prevent such "gender crossing" in the future, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I think that the concern isn't so much with girls playing boys'
sports. It's the other way, with boys playing girls' sports," the league president, Rich Constantine, told the newspaper. Recently, some boys in the region have taken up girls volleyball and girls field hockey.

Still, it's puzzling why the high-profile victory of a girl in a boys tennis championship so urgently reminds officials that the fairer sex really needs to be protected from competing with boys. Is Houghton giggling into her trophy about the irony right now?

Technorati Tags: Annie Houghton

Fetus Freaks in LA Pass Bill

Yet another poor, dumb state is following South Dakota's lead in attempting to ban all abortions. Now, Louisana has jumped on the band wagon.

Senate Bill 33 by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, cleared the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare after the provision was added. The bill would allow abortions only to save the life of the mother. But Sen. Diana Bajoie, D-New Orleans, said she wanted to "make it more pro-life" by not allowing any exceptions.

She did not offer the amendment but served notice she will on the Senate floor, where Nevers is expected to take up the bill next week. "I do have some concerns about this bill," Bajoie said. "It should be all or nothing. . . . Life is life."

Nevers said he will work with Bajoie to "get as much of a pro-life bill as I can."

Sen. Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan, a member of the panel, told Nevers he thought the committee was going to have a chance to vote on an amendment to allow abortions in cases of rape and incest. "My concern for your bill is if we don't have such amendments, that lessens your chances of getting rid of abortions on demand (in the state)," he said. "Think about that between now and the (Senate) floor" debate.

Amendments to add those exceptions are expected to be offered on the Senate floor, although Nevers said he would oppose them.

These people really are stupid. They want no provision to save the woman's life because it would make the bill more pro-life? Let the mother die to save the fetus (that cannot survive without the mother). Two dead people instead of one terminated fetus? That's pro-life? How about doing some math!

(link via feministing.com)

Technorati Tags: pro-life, pro-choice, Bajoie

The Way It Should Be

As fringe elements on the far right aim to ram through legislation to deny women adequate access to reproductive health and services, the democrats came up with their "prevention first" plan. Here is a great joint statement by Harry Reid (who is pro-life) and Hilary Clinton (pro-choice) coming together on this issue.

As two senators on opposite sides of the abortion debate, we recognize that one side will not suddenly convince the other to drop its deeply held beliefs. And we believe that, while disagreeing, we can work together to find common ground. We believe that it is necessary for all Americans to join together and embrace policies that will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, decrease abortions and improve access to women's health care.

There is no question that the rate of unintended pregnancy is too high in the United States.

Half of the 6 million pregnancies each year in this country are unintended, and nearly half of these unplanned pregnancies end in abortion. It doesn't have to be this way.

Most of these unintended pregnancies -- and the resulting abortions -- can be prevented if we eliminate the barriers that prevent women from having access to affordable and effective contraception.

In the Senate, we have long championed the Prevention First Act. This legislation would help to reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy in our nation, decrease abortions and improve access to women's health care.

Our proposal includes common- ground, common-sense policies.

It makes family-planning services more accessible to low-income women. It improves awareness and understanding of emergency contraception, a poorly understood yet highly effective form of contraception.

It ensures that government-funded sex education programs provide medically accurate information about contraception.

It also ends insurance discrimination against women. Right now, many policies cover Viagra, but not prescription contraceptives. That is wrong, and our legislation will change it.

Wanted: White Muslims

It was only am matter of time.

Terrorists have been working to recruit non-Arab sympathizers — so-called "white Muslims" with Western features who theoretically could more easily blend into European cities and execute attacks — according to classified intelligence documents obtained by The Associated Press.

A 252-page confidential report jointly compiled by Croatian and U.S. intelligence on potentially dangerous Islamic groups in Bosnia suggests the recruitment drive may have begun as long as four years ago, when Arab militants ran up against tough post-9/11 security obstacles.

"They judge that it is high time that their job on this territory should be taken over by new local forces ... people who are born here and live here have an advantage which would make their job easier. By their appearance, they are less obvious," the report reads.

Arabs, it adds, "have become too obvious, which has made their job difficult."

Bosnia's minister of security, Barisa Colak, acknowledged the existence of the intelligence report but said authorities had no concrete evidence that recruitment efforts are widespread. There are no known cases of a Balkan "white Muslim" recruit being involved in an actual attack.

"Even so, we have to be extremely careful and serious and not miss anything," he told the AP.

Monica Wasn't Cute But ...

Bill Clinton almost lost his job over her. Apparently it doesn't take much to short circuit men's brains.

Catching sight of a pretty woman really is enough to throw a man's decision-making skills into disarray, a study suggests.

The more testosterone he has, the stronger the effect, according to work by Belgian researchers.

Men about to play a financial game were shown images of sexy women or lingerie.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B study found they were more likely to accept unfair offers than men not been exposed to the alluring images.

The suggestion is that the sexual cues distract the men's thoughts, preventing them from focusing on their task - particularly among those with high natural testosterone levels.

The University of Leuven researchers gave 176 heterosexual male student volunteers aged 18 to 28 financial games to test their fair play.

I wonder if this was the kind of logic Moammar Gaddafi used when deciding to assemble an all female security team. Initially I assumed it was because he figured that an armed man would be less likely to shoot a woman to get to him. But, perhaps these women, who are dressed in military attire but aren't shrouded and still have visible curves, are there as more of a sexual distraction. A split second of distraction by an attacker could save Gadaffi's life. This chick looks fierce!

Don't Be A Fool. Stay In School.

Everybody wins when babies are planned and wanted.

There's a pill that women take that makes men smarter.

In fact, it's the Pill.

The widespread use of oral contraceptives by women has increased educational levels of men as well as women, says economist Heinrich Hock of Florida State University.

Hock examined education data collected by states during the 1960s and 1970s when the Pill became widely used. By comparing how much formal schooling women had in states that denied or severely limited access to the Pill with women in states with more relaxed rules, he could estimate the impact of the Pill on schooling.

Hock found that 'unconstrained access to the pill increased the enrollment rate of college-age women by almost 5 percentage points.'

The surprise came when he looked at college completion rates among young men during the same time period. Guys, too, indirectly benefited from the Pill because it allowed them to complete their educations rather than have to drop out and get a job to support a baby. Overall, their college completion rates rose by about three percentage points during the same time period, controlling for other factors known to be associated with completing college.

Dayum!

Not that low approval ratings will get you kicked out of office but, Jeebus, 33% is LOW!

More Americans disapprove than approve of how George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Congress are doing their jobs, while a majority approves of Condoleezza Rice. President Bush’s approval hits a record low of 33 percent this week, clearly damaged by sinking support among Republicans.

You know things are bad when Fox is even releasing numbers this low for public consumption.

Why Isn't The FCC After Guys Like This?

I fully believe in freedom of speech but where do you draw the line with what is decent. How is this guy any different than Howard Stern? How is half the filth that comes out of his mouth any different that a millisecond of Janet Jackson's boob being exposed. This type of speech inspires hate, ignorance and violence. The sad thing is that he has tons of lowlife listeners who think exactly like this.

On April 17, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage called for "kill[ing] 100 million" Muslims and referred to the woman who alleged she was raped by members of Duke University's lacrosse team as a "drunken slut stripping whore."

On his radio show, Savage told listeners that "intelligent people, wealthy people ... are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, 'Oh, there's a billion of them.' " Savage continued: "I said, 'So, kill 100 million of them, then there'd be 900 million of them.' I mean ... would you rather us die than them?" Savage added: "Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you're going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later."

Savage also referred to the alleged Duke rape victim as "a drunken slut stripping whore accusing men of raping her when there is absolutely no evidence of such a rape other than what comes out of that filthy mouth of hers." He later asked: "What kind of system do we have that anyone can scream rape and not have to show her face?" adding, "This is all the product of the out-of-control lesbian feminist movement." Echoing previous comments he has made about the alleged rape victim, Savage said, "The Durham dirt-bag case disgusts me to my core."

This guy's hate-speech disgusts me to my core.

I Got To Say Amen on Easter Sunday

Naturally, I wasn't about to fake the funk and show up at somebody's church simply because it was Easter (I cannot even remeber the last time I went to church for Easter). But, Meet The Press had a special panel on Sunday that really left me with a bit of inspiration. Of course, spiritual leaders like Rabbi Michael Lerner, Joel Osteen are always kind and uplifting but I loved the crisp logic of Sister Joan Chittister. She got
right to the point:

MR. RUSSERT: Sister Joan, you wrote an open letter when our new pope was selected: “Dear Pope,” and in it, “Do not make enemies of us.” Are you concerned that some Catholics do not feel welcome in their church because they have disagreements on issues like stem cell research or on gay rights or AIDS and condoms, or abortion or death penalty?

SISTER CHITTISTER: I, I’m simply asking that all of us realize that the answers we have right now in those arenas may well not be final answers. That we’re all struggling to find the best answers. We all say that, that life is, is our greatest value, but life has never been an absolute value. It’s not an absolute value in war, it’s not an absolute value in prisons, it’s not an absolute value in self-defense, for instance. So now all of a sudden you have a completely new set of life questions that some of us want to absolutize. I, I consider that a holy act. But another—others of us, out of a completely and equally sincere concern for life, answer those questions differently.

MR. RUSSERT: Abortion?

SISTER CHITTISTER: Anything. Stem cell research, abortion, any of those. At one time, for instance, the church was against dissection for the sake of, of medical research. We grew. I’m saying that this is a time of a lot of new questions. I’m agreeing that we’re in this together, that, that we have to see life as, as our basic value that we have. We’re politicizing religion. Having religion in the public arena is one thing, politicizing it is another. If we, if we do that, we’ll lose pluralism for Puritanism. We don’t want to do that. We’re risking the country at the same time.

The function of the church is to form and shape consciences. We have two different kinds of laws. We have laws that require and laws that permit. Nobody—when Catholics did not believe in divorce—do not believe in divorce ...

We never asked the United States government to outlaw the divorce procedure. We never said that’s the only way this can be an honorable nation. Now we’re back into those kinds of questions. If we’re looking for, for, for a moral standard, we have to do something about looking at the national budget. Your national budget is theology walking. If we’re really a pro-life country and not a pro-birth country, we, we won’t be taking from all the life bodies in order to feed a war body. Somehow or other, we have got to be willing to live in our denominations the best we can in those denominations, growing—open to growing into answers that are coming to us from other people, other places, other sciences. That’s, that’s my great concern. I believe it’s you all come. I don’t want anybody in a, in a time of great newness and emerging ideas to say, “Everybody, but you.”

Yes and Amen! Yet she, as a woman, is not worthy of being ordained as a minster in the Catholic church and there doesn't seem to be even a hint in the air that there will be any effort to change that.

Stop It Guys! You're Killing Me!

What is it with white people and watermelon? I went on a Girl Scout trip the summer before my sophomore year in high school. It was a three week trip to Texas and Mexico which included brief stays with host families at the beginning and end of the trek. When I arrived at the first host family's house, the mom greeted me, almost at the door, with: "We have dinner ready! We're having watermelon too!" I was still living in a segregated environment so aside from nuns and teachers, some of my exposure to whites came from TV (as did images of us to them) and between the two, I'd conculded that Edith Bunker was the best prototype for a white woman I'd seen. This woman's joy over serving watermelon just added to my childhood view that they really weren't all that bright and that nervous laughing was a part of their speech pattern. It wasn't until I got home and started sharing some of my "wierd" experiences, that I realized that something racial had gone on.

It's not like I didn't eat watermelon but it certainly was no big event nor something I got excited about. In the summer in Chicago, on any given corner, you could find a man with a truck load he'd just driven up from Mississippi where you could get one for a good price. I didn't jump up and down, run around the backyard and squeal.

All that said, that was 30+ years ago. This mess is recent! Again, I ask, what is with white folks and watermelon?

Oooh boy. First came this incident; and now, from Bellevue, Washington, we get this:

A controversial question given to students during a practice test for a math final at Bellevue Community College has students — and others — shaking their heads because of its lack of racial sensitivity….

The question read: “Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second.”

The Condoleezza question went on to ask when the watermelon will hit the ground, based on a formula provided.

We’d like to know: If it takes the president of Bellevue Community College 5 seconds to walk 10 feet, and the teacher’s classroom is located 300 feet from the president’s office, how long did it take for this math teacher to get fired?

(As it turns out, the professor didn’t get fired. Instead, he “apologized and requested cultural sensitivity training.” Which is pretty much the first time in human history that someone requested sensitivity training.)

I guess I have another watermelon story. Many years ago, I worked as an office manager at a computer company. I was sitting at the reception desk when a man from the electric company came in to read the meters. He was an older white gentleman and after he'd finished, he decided to stop by my desk to tell me a "fun" joke. I don't really remember it but it had to do with how to get a "colored boy" to make a touch down and ended with "give him a watermelon." He laughed. I gave a blank stare and had the "hee, hee ... riiiiiiight" look on my face. I'm quite sure he hadn't shared that "fun stuff" with any of the cute little blond receptionists in the other offices. I'm still baffled about the association. Heck, though I like fried chicken, white folks seem to be the ones packed into KFC on the regular so I am mystified by that correlation as well. Oh well! Maybe I'm not black enough to understand.

Technorati Tags: condoleezza, watermelon, stereotypes

The V Word

Via Pandagon, this is hysterical. This article is criticizing Notre Dame for allowing a production of "The Vagina Monologues" on campus again. Since the play has been out for years now, I assume that most people have heard of it or seen it. However, if I'd had my head buried in the sand, I might be hard pressed to figure out what the "V" stood for. Virgin Monologues? Venus Monologues? Victory Monologues? Vacuum Monologues?

These people are ridiculous!

A conservative Catholic group is criticizing the University of Notre Dame for once again allowing a homosexual film festival and a vulgar feminist play on the Indiana school’s campus.

Notre Dame’s President John Jenkins recently stated that he saw "no reason to prohibit performances of the V Monologues on campus." His position comes as a surprise to some who object to the play’s content, which includes profanity and graphic descriptions of lesbian sexual relationships.

The prestigious Catholic school near South Bend, Indiana, has hosted the V Monologues for the last five years and a "gay and lesbian" film festival for the last two years. Patrick Reilly, president of the Catholic watchdog group the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), says he is not surprised the university is continuing to allow homosexual activism on its campus.

... In fact, the president of the Catholic watchdog group believes most Notre Dame faculty are strongly resistant to any idea of restoring the school’s faith-based identity. And he feels it is disingenuous for administrators like Jenkins to claim Notre Dame is not endorsing the V Monologues and other pro-homosexual events when it is obviously funding them.

... But as far as how individual Catholics should respond to a production like the V Monologues goes, "The question is just whether it’s sinful, whether this is scandalous, whether we’re leading people away from the church," Reilly contends. "And I think there’s no doubt that these events clearly scandalize the faithful.

Lord, they'd have a field day with the things I was taught at the Jesuit University I attended. I had some priest/professor who had us pondering whether Jesus had erections (and, honestly, at 19 and never really having given it thought, I was with the rest of the red-faced class when he brought it up). But, the inability for an adult to write or say the word vagina is positively juvenile. I've known parents who only teach their children the "proper" names. Yet, I'll bet if they went to a day care sponsored by one of these faith based organizations, they'd probably be sent home as some demon seed for using the real word instead of some made up code name. I've always been taught that if you can't say it, you aren't ready to do it - which makes me wonder how these wingnuts can push for people to breed without caution.

Prevention First

Well, it is about time! The democratic party has got to take a stand on abortion rights and female reproductive rights. Being pro-life/anti-abortion is a personal matter - not one that should be forced upon anyone else. If Harry Reid can support this, every democrat/liberal/progressive can.

Democratic strategists say the time is right for action because women who support abortion rights but are not politically engaged are alarmed by the confirmation of Samuel Alito as Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement on the Supreme Court and by the passage of legislation strictly curbing the availability of abortion.

Democratic leaders had planned to attach their wedge legislation to the budget resolution last month, but let that opportunity pass.

The Prevention First Act is sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), one of few congressional Democrats considered anti-abortion. The bill, which Reid introduced at the start of the Congress, has the support of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), presumptive front-runner in the 2008 presidential primary and 21 other Democrats.

The bill would prohibit group health plans from excluding contraceptive drugs, devices and outpatient services if they cover the cost of other prescription drugs and outpatient services. It would also require the secretary of health and human services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to healthcare providers and require hospitals receiving federal money to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.

The bill would also mandate that federally funded programs provide information about contraceptives that is medically accurate and includes data on health benefits and failure rates.

Bill O'Bunker Bull

It always amazes me how conservative blowhards like Bill O'Reilly feel they can speak with authority on black people. Here he goes again.

O'REILLY: Let me -- let me throw this to you. I read your column, and you didn't mention this, and I think this might be a factor, but you tell me if I'm wrong. I -- I have always believed -- always believed -- that the mainstream African-American person, the person who goes to work, gets up, doesn't live in the ghetto, lives in a, you know, in a working class neighborhood or an affluent neighborhood is conservative at heart. Their value system is church. A big church-going population among African-Americans, particularly female, if you look at the polls, they're against gay marriage; they're against far left political thought. You don't see a lot of African-Americans, you know, running around with Jane Fonda. You see a lot of African-Americans going into the military.

HUTCHINSON: Um-hmm.

O'REILLY: And I think that there is a conservative bent among African-Americans mainstream now. And we're not talking gangster rappers, or Jesse Jacksons. We're talking mainstream. And I think that they feel that look, we have to obey the law, and why don't these people have to obey the law? I -- I -- I bet you if you strip it down, Doctor, there's a lot of that going on.

What bugs me is that he is basically stating that conservatives have a market on being hard-working, law abiding citizens. Yes, he is correct that in narrow, bigoted religious terms, many blacks fall to the far right along with the other religious zealots. Homophobia and inadequate family planning (meaning, abortion or not, having children you cannot afford is not a good thing) may be conservative values but are by no means virtuous. Additionally, I don't know what stats he's been looking at but blacks' rate of entry into the armed services, since this disastrous war began, have plummeted. Before that, people joined only because it was a means for paying for college or the only way to get a halfway decent job. That's called lack of options - not patriotism.

And, Bill always gets back to his favorite obsessions: Jesse Jackson and gangsta rappers. I am hardly conservative and have had my fill of Jesse Jackson but I don't speak for other blacks. I find mention of him irrelevant. He also needs to look a little harder at gangsta rappers (or rappers in general because I'm sure he doesn't understand the genre well enough to distinguish between them) like Fifty Cent and Master P who have both spoken highly of President Bush (Fifty likes him because he says he is "gangsta") so I think he needs to check his facts a bit before he starts lecturing a black man about black people.

I really wish he stick to something he knows - like being a closet pervert and womanizer.

911 Is A Joke?

This was a sad and unfortunate event. I cannot imagine a child having to go through this.

A wrongful-death lawsuit was filed Monday in the case of a 6-year-old boy who called 911 after his mother collapsed and was told by an operator he should not be playing on the phone.

Attorney Geoffrey Fieger has said Sherrill Turner, who had an enlarged heart, would have survived Feb. 20 if help had been sent immediately.

The lawsuit was filed by Turner's family against two unnamed dispatchers. Fieger said the city was not named in the lawsuit because state law prohibits it, but that Detroit would be liable for its employees. An amount was not specified in the lawsuit.

"We teach our children in the face of an emergency to call for help and call 911," Fieger said at his offices in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. "But when children call and ask for help, they're ignored, they're dismissed and they're threatened."

Robert Turner, who was 5 at the time, was alone with his mother when she collapsed in the bedroom. In the first call, he told the operator that his mother had passed out, but the operator asked to speak with an adult.

When he called back about three hours later, he repeated that his mother had passed out. Another operator said: "You shouldn't be playing on the phone." Later she said: "Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble."

Police eventually arrived at the house after the second call, but Turner already was dead. An ambulance never came.
...

Detroit's 911 service receives about 2 million calls a year, said police spokesman James Tate. A large portion of them are pranks or non-emergency situations for which 911 should not be used.

I heard the 911 tapes and both dispatchers who dismissed the boy were stern and very serious and not about to let him get away with playing on the phone. I'm not in their shoes so don't know the stress levels or the number of prank or non-serious calls they get. Even if they don't get fired for this gross mistake, I can't imagine that they'd want to stay in that job. All that being said, I must also bring up another issue. While listening to the 911 call, I also noticed that the young boy had a hard time articulating the emergency. He wasn't speaking clearly and at times was inaudible. Parents must do more than teach a child to dial 911. If mommy or daddy are sick, in distress or unconscious, they must be taught to speak clearly and with volume. The child made the first call and when he was disconnected, he played around the house for three hours before checking on his mom again and calling 911 again. While none of this was his fault, he obviously had no idea of the magnitude of the situation. Moreover, I also wonder if there were ever instructions on how to find another adult (perhaps a neighbor) in an emergency. It is instinctive to say that every 911 call should be responded to but the reality is that if 25% are pranks, someone in real trouble may end up without service because EMS is tied up on an unecessary call.

The already troubled city of Detroit is being sued by the family and has a high profile attorney. This is really a no brainer so I cannot see a real trial coming out of this. My sorority is holding it's bi-annual convention there this summer and we will bring lots of money and profit to the city. I joked to friends that it would all be spent on this case.

Technorati Tags: Detroit, 911, Sherrill Turner

I Think We've Been Punk'd At The Pump

As gas prices in my area inch near (and have reached at some stations) $3/gallon for regular gas, this fat cat is screaming ka-ching!

Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn't complaining.

Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits.

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand.

I guess all is fair in oil.

Give Him His Own Show!

I'm sorry! I'm probably naively not taking this guy seriously. I think he is just talking shyt. It cracks me up. While ideologically and religiously he may believe some of this stuff, I DO NOT think he is going to risk the annihilation of his own country to annihilate Israel. Most of his chat is to irritate the United States.

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was 'heading toward annihilation,' just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a 'permanent threat' to the Middle East that will 'soon' be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

'Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,' Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. 'The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.'

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be 'wiped off the map.'

On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: 'If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?'

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, 'will be freed soon.'

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: 'Believe that Palestine will be freed soon.'

'The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat' to the Middle East, he added. 'Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations.'

Still, we do have a problem and Israel (along with its US support) has been a festering sore in the Middle East since they established the state. Why couldn't they have just established an Israeli state in Wyoming?

He Didn't Mean To Kill Her, Only To Stomp Her To Death

All that energy to beat someone to death but his lazy ass couldn't heat up his own sandwich.

A man threw a microwave at his girlfriend, then fatally beat her after she refused to heat up sandwiches, police said.
Walter S. Fordyce, 58, of Uniontown, remained jailed without bond Thursday on a charge of criminal homicide. It wasn’t clear if he had an attorney.
Fordyce told police he began arguing with his live-in girlfriend, Mary McCann, 58, early Thursday.
After throwing her to the floor, Fordyce threw a microwave oven onto McCann’s chest after she refused to heat up sandwiches for him, he told police. Fordyce also said he stomped on McCann’s chest repeatedly then banged her head on the floor until she lost consciousness - but that he also said he didn’t mean to kill her, police said.
"It was an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose," police quoted Fordyce as saying.
Fordyce ran to a neighbor’s house for help, but couldn’t find anyone there to call 911, police said. After returning home and checking McCann for a pulse - and finding none - he went downstairs and drank a beer before going to another neighbor’s home and asking them to call 911, police said.
Autopsy results were not immediately available.

At What Point Do People Learn?

Abercrombie and Fitch, on more than one occassion, has had to pull items from their shelves which many people found offensive. Who approves things like this before they go to market and why, even if a half Asian guy did design them, does this kind of thing not set off a red flag to someone. It's 2006, for crying out loud! Why are we still perpetuating stereotypes?

A new, limited-edition shoe from Adidas-Salomon AG, part of the 'Yellow Series' and decorated with the face of a character who has buck teeth, a bowl haircut and slanted eyes, has provoked a heated debate about the lines dividing racism, art and commerce.

The character on the shoe is the creation of a San Francisco graffiti artist, Barry McGee, who is half Chinese. McGee, who calls the character Ray Fong after an uncle who died, said the image is based on how the artist looked as an 8-year-old.

'You have to look at it as a piece of artwork,' said McGee, 40, who used Ray Fong as a graffiti tag in the late 1990s and later in art installations and catalogue covers. 'The way we put it all together, it becomes a collectible as art.'

The shoe was released April 1, with 1,000 pairs on sale at a dozen boutiques in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Tokyo, Hamburg and Denmark. It retails for $250 and comes with a graffiti art fanzine.

Since then, several blogs and message boards have been consumed with fervid debate over the shoe, and Asian American organizations have said it evokes damaging and long-standing stereotypes.

'You're kidding me, right?' read an entry on the Web site Angry Asian Man. ' That's racist! '

Others point out that McGee's mother is Chinese and that he often uses art to explode stereotypes of Asians. On the blog AdJab, Adam Finley wrote, "My theory . . . is that Adidas is trying to target a younger, hipper demographic that is already familiar with the underground art world and the images can seem controversial when not seen in the proper context."

The Organization of Chinese Americans, which is based in the District, has received about 40 complaints from its members, according to communication director Anh Phan. The organization has sent a formal letter of complaint to Adidas, asking for removal of the shoe from the market.

And People Wonder Why "I Don't Do Camping!"

It would be just my luck ...

A bear attacked a family at a camp site in the Cherokee National Forest on Thursday, killing a 6-year-old girl and injuring her 2-year-old brother and mother, authorities said.

The attack took place near a pool of water on Chilhowee Mountain, said Dan Hicks, spokesman for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

Witnesses described the bear picking up the boy in its mouth while the mother and other visitors tried to fend it off with sticks and rocks, Hicks said. The mother was injured before the bear was chased away.

The girl ran away during that attack, but was found dead a short time later with the bear nearby. A park ranger fired at least one shot at the bear before it bolted off.

The woman and her son were flown by helicopter to Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, where both were being treated for wounds consistent with a bear attack, Hicks said.

Hospital officials did not immediately return calls for comment, but Hicks said the boy was listed in critical condition. The victims' names were not released.

Forest Service employees, TWRA game agents and several hunters were searching for the bear in an area spanning several thousand acres.

The 640,000-acre park runs along the southeastern Tennessee border with North Carolina, southwest of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Oh MY God!

I really, really wish this were a joke. How did this happen?

A story reported by the Los Angeles Times' Paul Watson on Monday was so mind-boggling it took a few days for other media outlets and Web sites to react. Just about the time that story started circulating widely, NBC News on Thursday night confirmed it, and took it a step beyond.

This is how the NBC investigative team reported it:

'Just outside the main gate of the huge U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, shopkeepers at a bazaar peddle a range of goods, including computer drives with sensitive — even secret information — stolen from the base.

'This week, an NBC News producer, using a hidden camera, visited the bazaar and bought a half dozen of the memory drives the size of a thumb known as flash drives. On them, NBC News found highly sensitive military information, some which NBC will not reveal.' Earlier, the Los Angeles Times had published what indeed appeared to be sensitive material.

"This isn't just a loss of sensitive information," Lt. Col. Rick Francona (ret.), an NBC News military analyst, said. "This is putting U.S. troops at risk. This is a violation of operational security."

This information is more than sensitive, it is dangerously sensitive and folks are buying it at a flea market!

On Monday, the Times had revealed, among much else, "A reporter recently obtained several drives at the bazaar that contained documents marked 'Secret.' The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a U.S. ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for 'kill or capture' and discussions of U.S. efforts to 'remove' or 'marginalize' Afghan government officials whom the military considered problem makers.'

"The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 U.S. service members and their Social Security numbers, information that identity thieves could use to open credit card accounts in soldiers' names."

Has anything gone right in this war effort? Anything at all?

Spaz! Spaz! Spaz!

This is stupid! I thought only select, backwards Americans got bent out of shape over the ridiculous! We hear over and over again that British English and American English are quite different. Though spaz may have originated in England as a reference to a disability, what American knew they had a charity formerly known as The Spastics Society (and I'm not laughing as I type - really I am not)? I call myself a spaz all the time. It doesn't have the same meaning here and unless you are a little kid being teased for being goofy and doofus, you don't get offended by it. Anyhow, Tiger apologized for calling himself a spaz.

Tiger Woods has expressed his regret for saying he putted like 'a spaz' during the final round of the US Masters. Paralympian Dame Tanni Grey Thompson had joined representatives from the Disability Rights Commission and cerebral palsy charity Scope in condemning the American.

Woods, who lost his title at Augusta to Phil Mickelson, had said: 'I putted atrociously today. Once I got on the greens I was a spaz.' However tonight, his spokesman Mark Steinberg said: 'Tiger meant nothing derogatory to any person or persons and apologises for any offence caused.'

Thompson feared his off-the-cuff use of the term was more likely to be copied because the golfer was seen as a respectable character. 'My worry is people and youngsters seeing that someone like Tiger Woods is using this kind of terminology,' she said. 'If they think it's OK for him to use it, then do they think it's OK for them to use it as well?'

The 11-time Paralympic gold medal winner acknowledged the word may be considered less offensive in the United States than it is in England, a point also recognised by Scope. Previously known as The Spastics Society, Scope only changed its name in 1994 after being lobbied by disability groups who felt the word had become offensive.

But a spokesman for the charity said: 'Tiger Woods has demonstrated, as George Bernard Shaw said, that 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language'. Although in the US the term 'Spaz' may not be as offensive as it is in the UK, many disabled people here will have taken exception to likening his poor golf stroke to that of 'a spaz'.'

The Disability Rights Comission was more stringent in its criticism, pointing out that the golfer's own experiences with prejudice should have left him more aware. 'We shouldn't limit people's horizons by continuing to use the nasty labels of the past,' said Agnes Fletcher, assistant director of communications. 'The low expectations that the term 'spaz' conveys are something that undermine young disabled people's hopes from a very early age.

'Tiger Woods is a role model for young people around the world and has smashed through prejudice to achieve on the international stage. He will no doubt regret that his words may compound the prejudice that so many of his disabled fans face.'

I suppose gay Americans should call for an apology if some Brit comes over here and uses the word fag instead of cigarrette, huh?

Just Plain Wierdness

Why does this creep me out so?

Katie Holmes was raised a Catholic, but, says fiance Tom Cruise, their soon-to-arrive baby will not have a Catholic baptism.

'No,' Cruise tells Diane Sawyer in an interview on ABC's 'Primetime,' airing Friday, 9 p.m. EDT. 'No, I mean you can be Catholic and be a Scientologist. You can be Jewish and be a Scientologist. But we're just Scientologists.'

The 27-year-old Holmes' switch to Scientology has sparked reports of a rift between her devout parents, Ohio natives Martin and Kathleen, and the 43-year-old actor, who introduced her to Scientology.

However, Cruise shrugs off the stories of family friction, telling Sawyer he's close with 'the whole family' and - 'absolutely, yes' - they approve of Scientology.

The superstar dad-to-be also confirms to Sawyer that Holmes, in the final stages of her pregnancy with the couple's first child, will adhere to Scientology's practice of quiet birth. Cruise explains that 'quiet birth,' which aims to minimize talk and other noise inside the delivery room,' is 'basically just respecting the mother.'

'She does what she's gotta do,' he explains, addressing speculation that such a practice would somehow muffle Holmes completely and deny her pain medication. 'If she needs medicine, she needs medicine.'

The star of the upcoming 'Mission: Impossible III' has two children, Connor, 11, and Isabella, 13, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman.

As the baby's birth approaches, Cruise says 'it feels a little unreal.'

Cruise said last week that he and Holmes plan to wed in the coming months. They have been engaged since June.

Why do I not believe that Katie is really into all of this? She's going against her upbringing, her family and her faith ... all for a man she barely knew when they announced they were together? Something still isn't right!

Now That's Something To Be Proud Of!

Wow! What a feat!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday called his 2004 decision not to recuse himself from a case involving Vice President Cheney, who is a friend of his, the 'proudest thing' he has done on the court.

The conservative justice's remarks came as he took questions from law students during a lecture at the University of Connecticut.

The case involved Cheney's request to keep private the details of closed-door White House strategy sessions that produced the administration's energy policy. The administration fought a lawsuit that contended that industry executives helped shape that policy. The Supreme Court upheld the administration position on a 7 to 2 vote.

Critics alleged that Scalia's impartiality had been compromised as a result of his taking a hunting vacation with Cheney while the court was considering the vice president's appeal. The justice rejected that reasoning.

'For Pete's sake, if you can't trust your Supreme Court justice more than that, get a life,' he said.

Get a life? How about getting over your fat, greasy self?

Morality and Medicine

Now it's just not birth control that some Pharmacists wont even fill prescriptions for anti-biotics because the health clinic provides abortions. So assuming a woman has already had an abortion, these people are going to play God and deny her the medication to protect her against infection?

Cedar River Clinics, a women's health and abortion provider with facilities in Renton, Tacoma, and Yakima, filed a complaint with the Washington State Department of Health this week alleging three instances where pharmacists raising moral objections refused to fill prescriptions for Cedar River clients. The complaint includes one incident at the Swedish Medical Center outpatient pharmacy in Seattle. According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was 'morally unable' to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River's complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager's May 17, 2005, e-mail account: 'Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription... to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in... and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription.' (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)

Cedar River's complaint, dated April 10, summarizes: 'In each of the situations, we believe the pharmacist displayed behavior that was biased, unprofessional, and unethical. We are concerned that this type of poor treatment may be becoming a trend.'

Now this part, I definitely don't get.

The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she "didn't need them if she wasn't pregnant.

We have got to put a stop to this. A Pharmacist's job is to distribute medication. It is not their job to judge what the medicine is for nor why it was prescribed. Allowing people to use nebulous moral and religious beliefs to deny medication, in itself, is immoral.

Who Knew? Colin Powell Has A Bitch!

First of all, Christopher Hitchens always look like he wreaks of hard liquor and cigarette smoke (not to mention that he looks and sounds like he just rolled out of bed - or out of he gutter) but this clip is just out of control! He must have been wasted!

Thomas: He (Powell) wasn't against the war. He was against doing the war right then. If you talk to Richard Armitage-his aid, they were ready to go to war-they just didn't want to do it that year...

Hitchens: his aid (garbled)...his bitch you mean.

Matthews: His what?

Hitchens: His bitch, why aren't you, why are you calling Colin Powell a good soldier...

They cut this segment out of the repeat broadcast. Why? People need to see how crazy these war crazy, Bush supporters are.

No Shame In Lying

Guess what folks! Bush lied!

The Bush administration publicly asserted that two trailers captured by U.S. troops in Iraq in May 2003 were mobile 'biological laboratories' even after U.S. intelligence officials had evidence that it was not true, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

On May 29, 2003, President George W. Bush hailed the capture of the trailers, declaring 'We have found the weapons of mass destruction.'

But a Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, the Post reported, citing government officials and weapons experts who participated in the secret mission or had direct knowledge of it.

The Post said the group's unanimous findings had been sent to the Pentagon in a field report, two days before the president's statement.

Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons ever were found.

Update: Now Scotty is bitching about the article.

McClellan’s complaint is that the Washington Post and others suggest that President Bush may have known about the report before he made definitive statements that the trailers were for the purpose of building biological weapons.

When McClellan was asked when the White House became aware of the Pentagon field report, however, McClellan couldn’t say. He told the press corps "I’m looking into that matter" but the answer was “not the point.

Abortion Is The Cause Of American Obesity

Not quite. But this is the same level of argument that this clown used. He claims that abortion is the reason for illegal immigration.

But what's the root of the problem? Why do we have a shortage of workers? Aha, that's the unspeakable "A" word that the elite dread the most: abortion. The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment. And Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman.

Using that logic, I guess the lack of births means an excess food supply - causing people to eat more and become obese! It's a sin I tell ya! Americans are not birthing enough babies to pick fruit, cut grass and clean homes in exchange for slave wages and maltreatment.

I Am Aghast!

While I should be way past being surprised, I still am.

A Palestinian Rueters news service cameraman named Mazen Dana was assassinated in Iraq by US military forces in 2003. Though the official U.S. line is that it was an "accident," Dana's friends say otherwise.

Dana was targeted, they say, because he had discovered the U.S. military dumping bodies covered in plastic into mass graves in the desert. At first Dana thought these were Iraqi bodies. Soon, he discovered the sickening truth. They were undocumented immigrants who had joined the U.S. military as mercenaries after being promised Green Cards.

Dana filmed the U.S. disposing of their bodies in mass graves, and so the military killed him and confiscated his videotapes.

Seems "illegals" are not only serving in large numbers, they are dying in huge numbers. And our government doesn't acknowledge their deaths in the official U.S. death counts (after all, they aren't citizens...) or even bring their bodies home for proper burial. Rather, the U.S. dumps them into mass graves.

Our nation has been taken over by liars, thugs and sociopaths.

I Don't Want To Be A Stupid Girl

This was a great episode on Oprah yesterday. I know some stupid girls but they really are stupid. They aren't pretending to be stupid or dumbing themselves down. I love how Dr. Robin stressed that something is wrong (particularly as young women deal with men) when they do anything that makes them have to be "small" in order for someone else to be big.

Dr. Robin says many young women who act "stupid" are actually smart girls whose obsession with imitating celebrities keeps them from being their true selves. "The word for me isn't stupid girls—it's lost girls, it's girls who are being defined by somebody else," says Dr. Robin. "[Pink's] video is calling forth for us to look at anything that makes me have to be small so that someone else is big—making me lose the essence of who I am."

The show's theme was actually based on Pink's new hit song "Stupid Girls" and her words to young girls and women should be a source of inspiration:

Oprah says she defines "stupid" as "anything less than what is your true self—any time you have to pretend to be something that you're not, around guys or around anybody."

Pink says that if she had compromised herself as a young girl by acting "stupid," she wouldn't be where she is today—a message she hopes to convey to other girls. "If you are going to be the future rock stars [or] whatever you want to be—then you're wasting your time trying to be somebody else because you'll never get to you."

Pooh Gets A Star On The Walk Of Fame

Yay Pooh Bear!

Winnie the Pooh sure does love his honey, but the beloved bear now has something just as sweet: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The children's character, created in the 1920s by British author A.A. Milne, was joined Tuesday at the star's unveiling by his Hundred Acre Wood pals Tigger, Eeyore and Rabbit.

Pooh debuted as a cartoon character in the 1966 Disney featurette 'Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree,' and went on to star in dozens of films, specials and several cartoon series.

'I know that Winnie would react to all this fanfare by simply saying, `Oh bother,' said Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co. 'But, Winnie, you really are worth a bother.'

Milne named Pooh after a stuffed bear owned by his son Christopher Robin Milne.

TR-IFL-ING!!!!

I honestly do not know where people get the balls to do things like this. What kind of minds come up with scams like this?

The library books on multiple births crowded the couple’s coffee table. The bedroom-turned-nursery awaited the arrival of six newborns.
But in the end, authorities say Sarah and Kris Everson never had the sextuplets as claimed. All they had was what appears to be a big lie.
The couple’s dramatic story had holes in it from the start - from their mysterious withholding of information for more than a month to the unanimous response of area hospitals that they hadn’t helped deliver the newborns.
On Tuesday, authorities said the mystery had been solved - the entire tale was deemed a hoax aimed at tapping the generosity of others to pay the couple’s mounting bills.
“I have never dealt with anything like this,” said Police Chief Aaron Ambrose. “The level of fraud like this involving people, I have not.”
Gary Bradley, the city administrator, said charges against the Eversons were forthcoming. Prosecutors had not yet determined how much the couple profited from the scam or whether they would qualify for charges beyond the municipal level.
The Eversons - Sarah, 45, and Kris, 33 - claimed to have given birth to four boys and two girls on March 8. The babies were apparently in intensive care.
The tale exploded in the local spotlight Monday when The Examiner in Independence ran on its front page a photograph of the couple holding six one-piece baby outfits and announcing the births.
Those who heard the Eversons’ sad story of tight finances set up a Web site to solicit contributions - including a van, washer and dryer, cash and gift certificates. A real estate agent was even working to find the family new housing.
Sarah Everson showed an Associated Press reporter pictures of her in maternity clothes, her baring a huge pregnant-looking midsection, even sonogram images she claimed were of her infants. She showed off a tiny nursery, a closet full of baby clothes and the tiny diapers premature newborns must wear.
She said the entire story of her children’s births was being kept secret by a court order enacted because a member of her husband’s family was trying to kill the Eversons and their new sextuplets.
"I’m so afraid they’re not going to make it," she sobbed. "Nobody understands how hard this is. I know that they’re here. I know what I had to go through to get them here."
Sarah Everson said a detective begin questioning her Tuesday evening; Bradley and Ambrose said the Eversons were interviewed at the police station for about an hour, during which they revealed the story was a scam. They were released pending charges.
Reached by phone late Tuesday, Sarah Everson offered no explanation for the hoax. "I’m not talking to anybody right now," she said, "because nobody gets it."
The Web site soliciting gifts was taken down Tuesday night. "

This takes depending "on the kindness of strangers" to new and predatory heights!

I'm Gone!!

First off, I'm up much too early again. But, I'm still flipping through the three channels that I normally watch at this time of morning: CNN, C-Span, and because I am crazy, MSNBC which is now airing "Imus In The Morning". At the mike was one of his regular visitors: Bo Dietl - whose NY "gangsta" style and mannerisms grate my nerves beyond belief. Did this fool just say "documentating?" DOC-U-MEN-TATE-ING! (as in "we need to start documentating" illegals).

I turned!

Been There, Done That

Arrrggghhh!

Bea Perdue was excited. She and her boss at a Fortune 500 company were driving back to the office after a very successful meeting with a major client. Perdue's boss showered her with compliments about how well she handled the client and the presentation.

Then it came. Perdue's boss, a white man, said the one comment that strikes like a punch in the stomach for black women.

'He commented on how articulate I had been in the presentation,' recalls Perdue, now executive director of the Johnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. Perdue, who is black, was the only woman at the company who managed major accounts. 'I asked if he had ever commented to my three peers [all white men] that they were articulate and well-spoken … He gasped.'


Comments that reveal surprise at a black woman's intellect, question a Latina's ability to control her emotions or an Asian-American woman's aggressiveness remain all too frequent in corporate America. Moving up the ladder requires the ability to respond to these offensive stereotypes in a manner that educates the speaker and prevents further comments without appearing hostile or unapproachable.

The Power of Stupid

I found this link over at The News Blog. I'm kind of glad that my blog isn't all that popular because I'd have high blood pressure if I received a slew of ignorant emails like this. She broke it down for this "lump lump," though. Here are some of the points he brought up that she whittled down.

MICHAEL SAYS: 3. They do not register for selective service and do not serve in the military - forcing legal Americans to defend them.

ALISA SAYS: Sigh. According the U.S. government, all male immigrants – legal and otherwise – are required by U.S. law to register for selective service.

According to the National Center for Immigration Law, one in ten U.S. soliders who have DIED in Iraq have been immigrants. Five percent of those serving in our military are illegal immigrants.

The first soldier to die for the United States in the current war in Iraq was Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.

He died for you.

You are not in Iraq fighting for anyone. You are home, sending lie-riddled missives to strangers at 3 a.m. on your computer.

Enough said.


MICHAEL SAYS: 4. The only tax they're likely to pay is sales taxes which they cannot avoid and can remain anonymous.

ALISA SAYS: The vast majority of illegal immigrants work in jobs that pay such low wages they would receive all of their federal and state income tax back on April 15 if they did pay taxes.

Many illegal immigrants do, in fact, pay taxes. According to the U.S. government, the majority of illegal immigrants pay taxes through Individual Taxpayer Identification numbers of false social security numbers. On average, immigrants – regardless of legal status – will pay $80,000 per capita MORE in taxes than they will USE in government services.

The Social Security Administration at this very moment holds $420 BILLION in taxes paid from earnings of illegal immigrants who, because of their legal status, are ineligible to claim the funds.

Meanwhile, since taking office, George W. Bush has SLASHED taxes for the top 1 percent of the population – ie the VERY RICH. The average amount of money SAVED in taxes for the 1.3 million wealthiest Americans PER YEAR thanks to these new laws is: $53,120 PER PERSON. That is a total of $69056000000.00 - PER YEAR - in taxes that we were getting from the nation’s mullti-billionaires BEFORE Bush that we are NOT getting now, taxes that the billionaires would not have even noticed were gone. That's $69 billion. A year. For this amount of money, we as a nation could have provided health coverage for 40 million AMERICANS for a year; almost the exact number of Americans now living without health insurance. For that matter, we could have provided health coverage for FOUR TIMES the number of illegal immigrants as currently reside here; not that you'd ever want us to do something like that. My point is, this money you're worried about? It's being taken from the poor to give to the rich by our sick Reverse-Robin-Hood administration.

Sixty-nine billion dollars PAID BY OUR GOVERNMENT AS A GIFT TO THE RICH OF THIS NATION is many, many times more than anything 11 million illegal immigrants working for $4 an hour could contribute.

You want to talk about people sucking the country dry and not doing their part to contribute to the nation? Let’s talk about Bush’s billionaire friends and their outrageous and criminal tax cuts, and the people who suffer as a result.

Not only are you misinformed, you have fallen for propaganda aimed at distracting your from the real thievery going on in our land."

What's sad is that this is the kind of stuff that ignorant hack pundits spew on their radio and cable programs. I know (always briefly) folks who think and say things like this as well. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if these folks weren't such a dominant force in our society and if they had a clue that they were totally off base and just plain wrong. While all of the guy's remarks were stupid, I think that this one, and ones like this, get me the most:

MICHAEL WHINES: 5. They refuse to assimilate, learn English, and send much of what they earn back to Mexico.

ALISA SAYS: The Pew Center for Hispanic research shows that by the third generation all immigrant grandchildren – NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE FROM OR THE LEGAL STATUS OF THEIR ANCESTORS – are COMPLETELY ASSIMILATED ENGLISH SPEAKERS.

There is not a single third-generation Hispanic in the United States whose primary or dominant language is Spanish. NOT ONE.

This is precisely the same assimilation pattern followed by the Germans, Italians, French and every other linguistic minority immigrant group to this nation.

As for remittances? Only one in five illegal immigrants send money to another nation.

I will offer as further argument a note I got from my father this morning. He is a sociology professor who has taught at Duke University and is currently at the University of New Mexico. He was born in Cuba and came to the U.S. at 15, and within two years could read, write and speak English better than you do. (Your spelling is miserable. Read often?)

On the issue or remittances, Dr. Nelson Valdes said: “Certain uninformed critics of illegal immigration have written on your blog that remittances to Mexico and other nations take money out of the US economy. The same argument should be held against US foreign investments abroad. After all, the amount of corporate transfers of capital is greater than the amount of remittances sent by low-paid workers. Moreover, if the US is to oppose the money remittances of "migrant workers" - should the reverse argument be held? That is, should US corporations abroad NOT be allowed to remit profits to the United States?

Heck, let's put an end to globalization altogether!

I worked with a guy (and this was years ago) who was always spouting off about people not speaking English so finally I asked him what language his grandparents spoke when they came here and his mouth dropped and he could say nothing. I think that one of the initial reasons why I used to despise Pat Buchanan (and probably still do but I've been agreeing with his assessment of Bushco lately) is because he was always harping on things like that too. I always think of that book, How The Irish Became White, when I hear the likes of Buchanan and Bill O'Reilly because it seems that they secretly envy immigrants/minorities who still maintain part of their cultural identity. While, what being American meant to them, I believe, was being accepted by WASPS - which, honestly, they still aren't and never will be.

Why You All In My Grill?

How exactly was this supposed to work? They'd remove the "grills" then sell them at an FBI auction? Who'd buy used teeth?

Government lawyers tried to confiscate the gold tooth caps known as 'grills' from the mouths of two men facing drug charges, saying the dental work qualified as seizable assets. They had them in a vehicle headed to a dental clinic by the time defense attorneys persuaded a judge to halt the procedure.

'I've been doing this for over 30 years and I have never heard of anything like this,' said Richard J. Troberman, a past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. 'It sounds like Nazi Germany when they were removing the gold teeth from the bodies, but at least then they waited until they were dead.'

Prosecutors had a warrant to seize the gold dental work, according to documents and lawyers involved in the case. But they eventually abandoned the effort, saying they mistakenly thought the grills were removable.

The customized tooth caps, popularized by rappers such as Nelly, are made of precious metals and jewels and can cost thousands of dollars for a full set. Some can be snapped onto the teeth, while others are permanently bonded to the teeth.

Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis both have permanently bonded grills, their lawyers said.

Neal and Lewis, both charged with several drug and weapon violations, were taken Tuesday from the Federal Detention Center to the U.S. marshal's office, where they were told the government had a warrant to seize the grills. They called their lawyers as they were about to be taken to a dentist, said Miriam Schwartz, Neal's public defender.

I'm not sure where those clowns got their information but why would they assume that all grills were removable? If they were, they wouldn't have required a dentist.

NAST-TY

Among many other things that I don't understand, I don't get flashers.

Possibly as an excuse to use the catchy headline "Onan the Vegetarian," the April 10th issue of New York magazine has a profile of raw-food enthusiast and subway flasher Dan Hoyt. (Be warned that the opening paragraphs of the piece describe a flashing incident, and have a high yuck factor.) Hoyt was convicted of public lewdness on February 27, after one of his flashing victims, Thao Nguyen, snapped his photo using her camera phone, took it to the police, and then posted it on Laundromatic. The image wound up on the cover of the New York Post, and got Hoyt arrested. (He hasn't been sentenced yet, but he expects to get two years' probation.)

Hoyt seems to have learned approximately nothing from the experience; he's quoted in the profile saying that some women find being flashed arousing, and is angry that Nguyen took his picture and posted it. If Nguyen ever met him in person, he figures, "She’d probably want to go out with me."

Silver lining: Nguyen's ordeal inspired Broadsheet fave Holla Back NYC, which invites people who have been flashed or catcalled to turn the tables on their harassers by posting their photos online. "She’s our princess," Holla Back cofounder Lauren Speers says. And Nguyen's feisty attitude makes our day. As she told New York mag, "He picked the wrong person to do this to."

More than that, I really don't get flashers who think that some random young woman would enjoy it. There are some sickos out there and I am glad this one was exposed for the exposer he is!

Le Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I cannot say anything. He's just a liar!

In October, a source told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that President Bush was directly involved in the CIA leak scandal. It looks like Stephanopoulos’ source was right.

According to court documents released in the Scooter Libby case, the former chief of staff to the Vice President received “the specific permission of President Bush” to leak a highly classified intelligence document:

Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.

Although the White House press corps has never pressed Bush on his personal involvement, Bush has repeatedly implied that knew nothing about leaks from the White House:

“There’s just too many leaks, and if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.” [Bush, 9/30/03]

“I want to know the truth. … I have no idea whether we’ll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers.” [Fox News, 10/8/03]

“I’d like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information.” [Bush, 10/28/03]

Beyond The Vaccum

The Nations of Liberia, Chile and Jamaica (all countries with considerable legacies of and active practicing of chavenism or machismo) all have newly installed female heads of states. Their biographies and stories of their ascent to power are facinating and admirable.

Yet, here in the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world - the country that is supposed to be a glowing example of freedom and equality for all men and women - are still hung up on the basics when it comes to what is expected of a woman.

The fact that this is any issue at all is downright embarrassing. I fully support every woman's right to choose her own life. Laura chose to give up her job as a librarian to marry George W. Bush and raise two, albeit unruly, children. She is a perfect, plastic, perpetually smiling First Lady. Yet, five years after her husbands term began, she is taking swipes at a dynamic woman, accomplished scholar and lawyer (now a United States Senator) over her "house keeping skills." Talk about a petty bitch!

Summary: MSNBC host Joe Scarborough devoted an entire segment of Scarborough Country to purported housekeeping differences between First Lady Laura Bush and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), asking whether Clinton neglected housekeeping because she was "too busy trying to play assistant president."

On April 3, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough devoted an entire segment of Scarborough Country to purported housekeeping differences between First Lady Laura Bush and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), asking whether Clinton neglected housekeeping because she was "too busy trying to play assistant president." The segment was prompted by revelations in a book by Ronald Kessler titled Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of a First Lady (Doubleday Books, April 2006). Joining Scarborough on the program, NBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O'Donnell reported that the "juiciest bit" of Kessler's book was that Laura Bush was " 'quietly dismayed' by the decor that the Clintons left behind in the White House." The remainder of the segment was devoted to a discussion among Scarborough; Antonia Felix, author of Laura: America's First Lady, First Mother (Adams Media Corp., 2002); and Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus about the importance of domestic concerns in the role of a first lady. Jacobus stated that "taking care of the White House and the decor and keeping it in order is basically what the first lady does," adding that when Clinton was first lady, she "didn't care" about the job and "didn't want the job" because she "wanted her husband's [former President Bill Clinton] job." Jacobus later said that Sen. Clinton "accomplished about as much as first lady as she has as senator, which is basically nothing."

People knew who Hillary was during the 1992 election season. She said she wasn't no Loretta Lynn, standing by her man or in the kitchen baking cookies. Why should she have been? Laura is admired for a co-dependent relationship with a drunk who credits her with keeping him off the drink (how healthy) and now, apparently, has the audacity to be bashing an accomplished woman who chose a career, knowledge and power over a carpet sweep. As many men hunch over and hold their balls at the mere mention of Hillary's name, I believe it will be women who will be Hillary's downfall if she does not make it to the White House in 2008. I am not sure if they are envious of her choice to follow her heart and her brain into something more than being a housewife or if they really and truly believe that a woman's place is behind a man and a vaccum. But, it is clear that the "crabs in a barrel" syndrome is in full effect where Hillary and many American women are concerned. How sad!

Bedknobs and Broomsticks?

When does the perversion end? That is all I am seeing lately! They don't call sodomy by broomstick and flashlight a sexual crime? I hope that is just in Utah.

Clifton Bennett, 18-year-old son of Arizona state Senate president Ken Bennett, and his friend, 19-year-old Kyle Wheeler, were charged in January of 18 counts of aggravated assault and 18 counts of kidnapping. The charges refer to incidents which occurred at a boys' student government leadership skills camp in June of 2005, at which Bennett confesed that he and Wheeler sodomized several 11- to 14-year-old boys with broomsticks and flashlights in 40 separate incidents.

Wheeler has an additional assault charge based on his choking three boys until they passed out.

Yesterday, the pair was offered a plea agreement that will include no record of sexual assault; they will likely receive 90-day jail sentences, though the judge could reduce the charges and give them no jail time at all.

According to the victims' parents, the boys are having some type of colonic difficulty, they are sleeping with their clothes on, are afraid at night, and have received sexual assault-related counseling. However, the prosecutor told the judge that the 'broomsticking' was a 'hazing ritual' and a punishment for breaking rules, not sexual assault. The assaults, he said, were not viewed as sexual in nature because the prosecution could not prove that the perpetrators had 'sexual intent.' One has to wonder how this prosecutor does with other rape cases.

Bennett is an honor student and an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. If convicted of a felony, he would not be allowed to go on a planned church mission in September.

Aw! He won't be able to go on the chuch mission if convicted! Here we go again. Church and perversion. Perversion and church. I wonder how many wives he'll be granted?

Cell Memories Working On My Mind

Ooooooh ... my hands are shaking. I am not a fan of Condi's politics but I stand up for her amid accusations that she is Aunt Jemima or an oreo. I know the spin will be that she was kind enough to offer her guest her bed. But this is still America and the imagery of a black woman sleeping on the floor while an old white man sleeps in the bed ... Whew! Somebody hold my hand!!!!

You can call them cell memories, karmic flashbacks or whatever but this sent a chill through my body!

When it came time to grab a few hours rest before landing on a secret mission in Baghdad last weekend, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice insisted that British foreign secretary Jack Straw take the bed in the private cabin in her aircraft.

Straw, 59, showing none of the chivalry for which British gentlemen were once famed, made himself at home in her comfy cabin.

Meanwhile, the US secretary of state — the world's most powerful woman — slept in the aisle as flight attendants carefully stepped over her.

The British foreign secretary was horrified when he woke up to find that Rice had slept on the floor so that her guest was more comfortable.

The episode came during a seven-hour flight to Kuwait at the weekend en route to Iraq. And American authorities were keen to let the matter lie.

Another GOP Pervert

Wow! Today I posted a comment over at Shakespeare's Sister that mirrored my earlier post about gross men who travel to Atlanta to have sex with young girls. She replied that all men weren't like that but that a large percentage of them were "conservatives." Tell me she was lying! Yet another GOP pervert made the perp walk today.

A Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary was arrested this evening on charges that he was using a computer to seduce a child.

Brian Doyle, 55, was arrested at 7:45 p.m. in his Silver Springs, Maryland home on 23 charges related to the use of a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful materials to a minor after a joint investigation by the Polk County Sheriff’s office, Florida State Attorney Jerry Hill’s office and the Department of Homeland Security.

And, as if being a disgusting pedophile wasn't enough, this fool was just plain stupid:

Doyle allegedly met someone on the internet he thought was a 14-year-old girl and “initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her,” according to a press release issued by the Polk County sheriff’s office. “The girl was actually an undercover Polk County Sheriff’s computer crimes detective. Doyle knew that the girl was 14 years old, and he told her who he was that that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During future online chats, Doyle gave the undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl his office phone number and his government-issued cell phone number.”

Doyle “used the internet to send hard-core pornographic movie clips to the girl and used the AOL Instant Messenger chat service to have explicit sexual conversations with her.” He also “instructed the victim…to perform a sexual act while thinking of him and descried explicit and perverse sexual acts he wished to have with her, in addition to sending her numerous obscene digital movies. He also had sexually explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as a child…and encouraged her to purchase a web cam so that she could send graphic images of herself to him and promised her that he would likewise send nude photos of himself.

I honestly don't understand this fixation with young girls and why any old azzed white man would think some teen would want to see pictures of his grey haired, old wrinkled dick! I know I that's vulgar but what, exactly is wrong with these folks ... and why do they seem to be so prevalent in the GOP?

I'll Show You An Ass

It looks like I'm just feminizing all day today but I keep finding these ridiculous stories. Ladies, we have so much work to do!

It sounds like the kind of lame remark someone's crusty old uncle would make at a family gathering -- something about a donkey making a better companion than a wife. But in the Indian state of Rajasthan, some genius put it in a textbook. And now Reuters reports that the women's wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government is demanding in a very un-donkey-like way that it be removed.

Here’s the entry from the Hindi-language primer for 14-year-olds: "A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master."

State education official A.R. Khan in Rajasthan defended the comparison as "made in good humor" but added that it is being removed.

This Must Be A Global Effort

I think America is teetering on going backwards with women's rights. But, throughout the world, the disregard for women as human beings is commonplace.

One United Nations estimate says that between 113 million and 200 million women around the world are 'missing.' Every year, between 1.5 million and 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect. As the Economist, which reported on the policy paper, put it last November, 'Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust.' How could this possibly be true?

Here are some of the factors:

• In countries where the birth of a boy is preferred, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.
  
  
• Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to males.
  
  
• In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners.
  
  
• The brutal international sex trade kills uncounted numbers of girls.
  
  
• Domestic violence is a major reason for the deaths of women in every country.
  
  
• Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die, and others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.
  

All these figures are estimates; registering precise numbers for violence against women is not a priority in most countries. It is comfortable for us to ignore these issues, especially when the problems are so widespread and for many, so far away. And by 'us,' I include women.

Going forward there are three challenges: Women are not organized or united. Those of us in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, need to mobilize to assist our fellows. Only our political pressure can lead to change.

Why No Hurricanes Here?

Or has God just not been filled in on the ATL?

I would really like to know the percentages of men who participate in crimes like this.

In a sleazy hotel room, 'Brittany,' then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.

A 'john' could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.

None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.

It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.

'Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family,' said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.

A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.

But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.

'Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child,' said LaKendra Baker, project manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).

I know I've said something similar before but between teenaged prostitution, adult prostitution, pornography, gang rape and closet homosexuality, I am beginning to seriously wonder what normal male behavior is. Do we have stats on this?
(link via P6)

Why Are We With You Women?

I know many folks consider me to be a Christian basher and a heretic because I am constantly questioning people's logic where religion is concerned. But this kind of downright foolishness is the kind of thing that absolutely sets me off. Aside from the fact that the "downlow" phenom is hardly new or strictly a black thing, it is hardly a woman's fault if her husband is a closeted homosexual.

Married black women who do not have regular sex with their husbands are to blame for the 'down low' and the rise of HIV infection among African Americans.

That was just one message delivered during a two-day summit on 'Protecting the Biblical Institution of Marriage and Family Values,' held March 25-26 at Kingdom Builders Christian Center, a large predominately black church in Norcross.

'Apostle' Jamie Pleasant presides over the congregations, which cites more than a thousand members, according to its web site. He has a doctorate degree from Georgia Tech in Business Management and started the church in 1995.

Addressing the 'down-low,' a term that describes married black men having sex with other men in secret, Pleasant told hundreds of worshipers March 25 that God intended man and woman to procreate.

'The marital duty is not being fulfilled,' Pleasant said. 'Why are we with you women? Just think about it…we have a strong sex drive. You need to do your part and keep the marriage bed pure. Whenever your husband wants sex it is your duty to say yes.'

What I find especially offensive and insulting is the notion that women are no more than holes to be screwed on command. This kind of statement from a so-called man of the cloth is truly disturbing and wholly disgusting.