Good thing I don't go to Georgia Tech...

...where those same policies you're protesting against would prevent me from publicly labeling you a "backward God-freak cunt whose upbringing must have been so full of hate and bigotry that when she looks inside herself for this so-called "Christ's love" for her fellow humans, she instead finds only bitter, desiccated, ignorance-lovin' emptiness."

That, and a desire for the sweet milk of punitive damages.

LATimes:

ATLANTA — Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The relative value of life

For those of you who missed the Sunday NYT Magazine article about what's it's like to live in a country (El Salvador) where the "pro-life" position has been taken to its logical fucking extreme, here's the story on-line.

And an excerpt on ectopic pregnancies and how they are treated:

A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube — which is no bigger around than a pencil — and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year.

Above is a picture of the facility where Carla Climaco, 26, is spending her 30-year sentence. She had an abortion at 18 weeks, and was convicted of aggravated homicide.

Will Get Fooled Again

LIEUT. GENERAL GREG NEWBOLD (RET.) speaks out in Time Magazine:

In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture--who became career members of the military during those rough times--the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.

From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.

Damn liberal media, part 2,852

I count 11 questions asked of McClellan by the White House press corps at yesterday's briefing.

Not a one was about the recent revelation that Bush lied about his role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Not one.

Forensic Vagina Specialist...

...and other horrors of the anti-choice state.

Hear what it's like in El Salvador today for women, where the fetus is constitutionally protected from conception, and get a glimpse of the future the Christian right is trying to secure for us in the USA.

And check out the article by Jack Hitt in Sunday's NYT Magazine.

I love you, Harry Taylor

And I am sorry for any future wiretapping committed against you by the NSA.
And any surveillance of you and your family by the Secret Service.
And any future IRS audits of your tax returns.
Oh, and the hatemail from wingnuts. I am sorry for that too.

CNN:

A man who identified himself as Harry Taylor rose at a forum here to tell Bush that he's never felt more ashamed of the leadership of his country.

He said Bush has asserted his right to tap phone calls without a warrant, to arrest people and hold them without charges and to revoke a woman's right to an abortion, among other things.

He was booed by the audience, but Bush interrupted and urged the audience to let Taylor finish.

"I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration," Taylor said, standing in a balcony seat and looking down at Bush on stage. "And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself."

Bush defended the National Security Administration's surveillance program, saying he authorized the program to protect the country.

"You said would I apologize for that?" Bush told him. "The answer is absolutely not."

(thanks to JoshyP for the link)

Yeah...I'm pretty sure that doesn't jive with Bush's story

Scooter said Cheney said Bush authorized leak, er, I mean, "declassification" of CIA agent Plame's identity.

Gospel of Judas discovered

NYT:

The discovery in the desert of Egypt of the leather-bound papyrus manuscript, and now its translation, was announced by the National Geographic Society at a news conference in Washington. The 26-page Judas text is said to be a copy in Coptic, made around A. D. 300, of the original Gospel of Judas, written in Greek the century before.

The big scoop? Jesus was totally in on the whole betrayal kiss thing, and basically got Judas to act as his PR advance man.

The most revealing passages in the Judas manuscript begins, "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."

The account goes on to relate that Jesus refers to the other disciples, telling Judas "you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." By that, scholars familiar with Gnostic thinking said, Jesus meant that by helping him get rid of his physical flesh, Judas will act to liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within Jesus.

Well, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion in theological circles about the so-called revelations in this document, but come on, what is the big deal? Anyone who's ever seen Jesus Christ Superstar knows that Judas didn't want to be the one betrayin' Jesus, but Jesus told him that it was his place to do so, and Judas answered back that everytime he looked at him he didn't understand
Why he let the things he did get so out of hand
He'd a-managed better if he'd had it planned
Why'd he choose such a backward time in such a strange land?
Anyway?

Sexiest. Jew. Ever.

Aspic flashback

I love reading Waiter Rant, even though I get flashbacks to the 8 hellish years I spent in the food service industry.

After reading this post he wrote about a female colleague, I found myself relieved that the author actually recognized what I found to be true when I waited tables: that it wasn't enough to be efficient, pleasant, and knowledgable, you had to be "friendly" in a way that male waiters never had to deal with. I can't tell you how many times, when I asked a table of men what I could get for them, they would say "How about a smile?"

God, it was infuriating.

I once took a poll of my male coworkers and asked them if they'd ever been requested to smile for a table. They looked at me like I was cah-razy.

I eventually found that the best way of dealing with it was just to put on a totally false persona and "act" for them. I found a southern accent worked really well. Guys found it very non-threatening, and I could even get away with asserting myself just a little bit more.

Because it sounds "cute" when you assert yourself with a southern accent, y'all!

Let me demonstrate for you the difference:

NORMAL ME
Me: (approaching a table of 2 guys) Here are your drinks, gentlemen. Have you seen our specials?
Guy #1: (chortles) Yes.
Me: Do you know what you'd like?
Guy #2: (laughing) What I'd like is not on the menu!

Guys, do not EVER make any version of the remark above to a waitress or bartender. Not ever. Never ever. Never. Believe me, she has heard it 10,000,000,000,000,000 times. And although it may amuse your doughy, dart throwin' former frat bros, it will cause the server to have contempt for you, and she will correctly ascertain that you are a lousy tipper as well as joke teller, and you will receive crummy service from that point on.

But I digress.

CUTE, SOUTHERN ME
Me: (approaching same table) Here are your drinks, gentlemen. Have you seen our specials?
Guy #1: (chortles) Yes.
Me: Do y'all know what you'd like?
Guy #2: (laughing) What I'd like is not on the menu!
Me: Aw, that is funny!
Guy #2: Well...you probably hear that joke a lot.
Me: I swear, I have never heard that before! That is just s'funny! Say it again.
Guy #2: No...
Me: Come on, say it again. I want to remember it so I can tell the guys in the kitchen.
Guy #1: Say it, dude.
Guy #2: What I'd like isn't on the menu!
Me: Oh my god, y'all. That is so funny.
Guy #2: I like you. I'm definitely tipping you at least 10%.

We're both dorks. Wild, hot dorks.

Last night, I called my sister to tell her to turn on TV Land, because the show Living in TV Land was featuring William Shatner, and was focusing on his awesome album Has Been.

When she answered the phone, she said, "Are calling me about the show, because I'm already watching it." I said yes and we both laughed. Then, in the background, I heard one of her friends yell "Loser!"

I said "I'm not a loser. I'm a dork."

Ann Coulter hearts Mexicans!

Al Franken on HuffPost talks about his University of Judaism-sponsored debate with Ann Coulter:

But Ann went first, and set her tone for the entire evening. "It was fascinating being here for the demonstrations this weekend," she said with a snotty Darien sneer. "I guess that's why I didn't get clean towels in my hotel room this morning."

There was an audible gasp from the Jews. Ann continued: "I haven't seen so many agitated Mexicans since the World Cup Soccer Games were in L.A." As offended as the diners were, the waiters were pissed. Ann was actually dumb enough to drink her coffee afterwards.

Hang onto your lunch

Check out Chris Matthews falling over himself to smooch on Tom Delay's big ole "if I quit now, they can't take away my pension and all my campaign funds can be used for my legal defense" behind.

Not for the faint of stomach.

Takes one to know one

Via General de Jesus.

Jobs McCain won't do

More on the "jobs Americans won't do" horseshit.

Sen. McCain (R-Flip-Flopper) is pushing the JAWD line pretty hard recently, but maybe it wasn't such a good idea to push it in front of a room full of union leaders.

That's the venue where he chose to offer his opinion that Americans would not, say, stoop so low as to pick lettuce, not even for 50 bucks an hour.

Several people in the crowd begged to differ at that point.

Look, this whole idea that American workers are lazy and think that extreme manual labor is beneath them just really doesn't hold water.

I mean, what do you think those guys are doing down in those midwestern coal mines right before they collapse?

Keg stands?

And what about these workers? And these? And these?

For Melissa

I was a graduate student living in Pittsburgh when my first husband left me. He was an abusive son of a bitch, but I was still too far immersed in the thing to know that yet.

All I knew was that I wanted him back.

My dad came to visit me a couple of days later. I hadn't told him yet. After a few minutes in my apartment, he asked where my husband was, and I just suddenly and completely broke down. I couldn't stop sobbing, but I managed somehow to communicate what had happened.

This breakdown was really embarrassing for me, because 1) my family is not really very demonstrative emotionally, and I think I'd cried in front of my dad like, one other time in my adult life, and 2) I knew my dad didn't like my husband, and I was afraid he was going to judge my decision to marry him in the first place.

At some point, I managed to stop crying long enough to look at my Dad and say, "I know it's bad, but I want him back. I want him back."

This admission prompted another bout of loud sobbing from me.

Dad was quiet for some time. I eventually calmed down and sat with my head hung, looking at his shoes, waiting for him to speak.

Finally, he said "If you want to get him back, I think you should behave as if you are happy. Because that is when a person is the most attractive to others, when they are happy. And if it doesn't work...then maybe you will have learned how to be happy anyway."

Even in my heartbreak-addled state, I was amazed by the sheer brilliance of this advice.

And you know what? It absolutely worked. I pretended to be happy. I laughed with my friends. I smiled at strangers for no reason. Eventually, I forgot that I was pretending. And so when my husband finally came to me, wanting to be taken back, I told him no.

Because I was happy without him.

Cruise Control

Okay, everyone with a Yahoo home page saw this interview with Mr. Cruise. But I couldn't resist adding what I feel is the all too obvious subtext to his words:

"I had no really close friend," he reveals in the April 9th edition of Parade magazine. "I was always the new kid with the wrong shoes, the wrong accent. I didn't have the friend to share things with and confide in."

I was desperate to belong to something. Anything.

Let's face it, I was ripe picking for whatever strange, cultish psuedo-religion might happen along and offer me a free personality test.

Tom reveals that his father was also someone he was unable to turn to. "He was a bully and a coward," he says frankly. "He was the person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you."

He was also the person where, if help was needed with grammar or sentence structure, they kick you again.

The headline-making celebrity says the poor treatment actually taught him a lot. "It was a great lesson in my life -- how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!" he says. "For me it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.' There's that anxiety."

Anxiety so intense that it compels me to way, way overeact to the most insignificant of betrayals, like someone spraying water in my face from a trick microphone as a joke.

Despite their tumultuous relationship, Tom says he did see his father one last time -- after a 10-year estrangement -- while he was terminally ill. "He was in the hospital dying of cancer, and he would only meet me on the basis that I didn't ask him anything about the past," he says. "When I saw him in pain, I thought, 'What a lonely life.' He was in his late 40s. It was sad."

This story explains why the only decent acting I ever did in my life was in that movie Magnolia, where I play a son estranged from his father, who is dying of cancer, and that I agree to meet with one last time.

Also, L. Ron Hubbard is my spiritual father anyway, so I didn't need that loser who never loved me or gave me the kind of emotional support that you need to develop into an adult without pathological control issues.

The A-lister also opens up about his battle with dyslexia and recalls how perplexing it was for him to receive the diagnosis."The school took me to a psychiatrist to get tested," he says. "They said, 'Oh, he's dyslexic.' I'm labeled. It instantly put me into confusion. It was an absolute affront to my dignity."

And to someone like me, whose neglect as a child forced me into a worldview so simplistic that it borders on infantile, my only recourse was to condemn all psychiatrists everywhere as body thetan-riddled pawns of the evil overlord Xenu.

It made him determined to get to the bottom of the condition. "I remember thinking, 'I've got to figure this out. What's normal? Am I normal? Who's to say what's normal?' I didn't understand what 'normal' is. It still doesn't make sense.

And thanks to Scientology, it never will.

Worth reading for the Cheney joke alone

A New Rule from Bill Maher:

People who run everything can't complain that they're underdogs.

To whit, this week, there was a highly-attended conference in Washington called "The War on Christians." Because nothing quite says "I'm oppressed," like the opulent Regency Ballroom of the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Ah, yes, whatever happened to that plucky little cult, Christianity? Oh, that's right, they're 80% of the American people, and have taken over all three branches of government, country music, public schools, the bestseller list, and until recently, Katie Holmes.

You know, Christians, I don't mind that you're part of a dress-up cult that hates sex and worships magic but the paranoia, that does scare me. Did you know that the Missouri legislature recently felt the need to propose a resolution declaring Christianity Missouri's majority religion. No kidding. Really, you mean people aren't saying, "Gosh, I'd like to go to Missouri, but...too Jewish."

In Savannah, recently, a children's book about a baby penguin who is raised by two male penguins was removed from the library for its homosexual overtones. Because you know penguins, in those tuxedos, with the dreamy eyes. Huge fags!

The Christian right are now officially the party of paranoia. Secularists are attacking Christmas! Gays are attacking marriage! Liberals are attacking values! White girls are being abducted at an alarming rate! You know, if you're going to be that paranoid all the time, just get high.

And the worst part is, the people bitching loudest about being persecuted for their Christianity aren't Christians at all. They're demagogues and conmen and scolds. And the only thing they worship is power. If you believe Jesus ever had a good word for war or torture or tax cuts for the rich, or raping the earth, or refusing water to dying migrants, then you might as well believe bunnies lay painted eggs. And Jesus - and Jesus never said a word about gay marriage. He was much too busy hanging out with 12 guys.

Now - now I know George Bush says Jesus Christ changed his heart. But believe me, Dick Cheney changed it back. The only thing Bush has in common with Jesus is they both went into their father's business and got crucified for it.

Thomas Jefferson called the type of Christian who trumpets his own belief in the divinity of Jesus rather than the morality of Jesus "pseudo-Christians." And that's who's running our country today. And since they thrive so much on turning water into "whining"—and get off on their endless pretend persecution, this Easter season, let's give them what they want. Let's go to the zoo, get some lions, and feed them Tom DeLay.

One thing we're doing right in Iraq

We have an amazing team for treating the wounded. The LATimes has a slideshow with audio.

Go turtles!

Yeah!

A ridiculously modest proposal

Here's a few ideas I'm offering up for the dialogue on immigration reform.

1. Guest worker policies don't work. Next.

2.Congress: We have a problem with too many illegal immigrants.
Me: Why do they come here?
Congress: Because our jobs pay better than jobs in Mexico.
Me: Is it illegal for American employers to hire illegal immigrants?
Congress: Why yes, it is.
Me: Do we ever bust them for doing it?
Congress: No, not really.
Me: Well, jeez, that might be a good place to start, huh?

3. I do not believe in "jobs Americans won't do." BULL-SHIT. First of all, I've worked in many restaurants and bars in my day, and every single one of them had illegal workers on the payroll. Every. Single. One. And not once did any place of employment I've ever worked in have one visit ever from immigration or labor officials. Never. Not once.

Employers hire illegal immigrants because they can, because law enforcement looks the other way. If the couldn't do this anymore, then they would be forced to hire Americans. And you know what? They'd find that, surprise, surprise, there are plenty of Americans who would be quite willing to do those jobs.

In unionized and large chain restaurants and hotels, for example, it is difficult to get away with hiring illegal workers. And so somehow they manage to find an American who is willing to make beds or chop vegetables for the wage they are offering.

How do they do it? How do they keep those workers from finding out they are doing jobs "Americans won't do"?

What we can't do, what would be clearly morally reprehensible, is to allow American employers to prosper by using illegal workers, and then deny those same workers health care, and schooling for their children, and driver's licenses, and all the other things that working people in America have the opportunity to get.