Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all...

Dear Fellow Alters and Ex Alters:

Could you do me a favor? If you are linked to me and use any permutation of my handle there in the link...could you please change the name to something else?

I checked my site meter for the first time in a long time today...and discovered that in this month alone I've had a dozen different visitors lead to my blog here via a google search on my alt handle. It's probably sandard members wanting to take a look at my profile and finding this blog because the same handle is listed on some blogs here as a link name.

Thanks.

(p.s. I'll do the same if you like since some of my links use your alt handles. I also had two google searches that lead to my blog here that were searching for some of your alt handles)

Future Serial Killers of America, Unite!

Mike Huckabee's kid...what a winner:

"...one of his sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998. The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee, then 17, from his job as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark. It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney— bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group—to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed."

Hoo boy.

Oh Mike, Mike Mike....as personable as ye may be...you are looking more and more like a sociopath and/or poorly informed, willfully ignorant, back-country rube. You do not believe in evolution...want Christianity to be brought into all public life...once said that AIDS patients should be quarantined like plague victims (a good ten years after the contagion mechanism was identified).

And now it's revealed you gave birth to a future serial/spree killer. Good job, Mike. Pray for him. See how much that does for you.

Mike Huckabee: My least favorite Republican of the day.

The Top Seven Rejected Toys of 2007

The Ted Kennedy's Liver Beanbag Chair.
Made from genuine donkey hides and utilizing a unique stuffing system comprised of hot air and pork. May be used as a flotation device.

The Ann Coulter Home Genetics Testing Kit.
Now you can finally determine beyond a doubt if your seXXy lover is truly seXY. Comes complete with mouth swabs, depilatory and mock turtleneck. Appropriate for all ages and indeterminate genders.

The Bill O'Reilly Brand Falafel Flavored Loofah.
Whether you are sexually harassing subordinates or just kicking back being a douchebag, now comes the perfect tool for clumsy self pleasure. Perfect for the dirty, old man in your life. Costs: an undisclosed amount, your dignity.

The Pastor Ted Haggard Game of Non-Gay Life.
Now you too can live the life of a powerful and influential man teetering on the precipice! It's the classic battle of good v. evil! "Yay, Tommy! You have rolled a 144 and have won acceptance into Pray the Gay Away Camp! Sit out three turns and be welcomed into the cleansing light of Jesus!" "Oh no, Jimmy! You rolled triple sixes! You're condemned to a life of cock sucking and meth abuse!"Warning: May cause hypocrisy. Appropriate for: no one.

The Mike Huckabee AIDS Patient Concentration Camp Play Set.
Warning: May leave an oily taste in the mouth and cause uncomfortable shifting and back-peddling. Made in China, sired in ignorance.

The Lil' Hillary Future Shrew Costume Extravaganza Dress Up Playset.
Comes with seven pantsuits, a nutcracker, a mask with faces on both sides and a velvet pouch for your playmate's "jewels." Warning: may cause insane cackling and voice changes to sound more "southern negro."

The Willard Mitt Romney Pander Bear.
Cozy up your cuddly constituent! Comes with magical underpants and two mates. Costs: next to nothing because it's made by illegal immigrants.

Rudy Can Fail

I just love Rudy Ghouliani's new TV ad...the one wherein he lisps on about how the only way to deal with terrorists is to stand up to them. Really? As opposed to...what? Laying down in defeat? The inference is deafening.

And the ad goes on with Rudy managing to again to link his name to Ronald Reagan's (this time around every republican candidate not only has to puff up and display their Christ credentials...but also compete to see who is most Reagan-like. Call it Bushie blowback). Rudy recalls misty-eyed how those savage Iranians, quaking with stark terror, released the embassy hostages within an hour of Reagan taking the oath of office. As if somehow...by the simple act of being elected...a republican dealt ISLAMOFASCISTS a serious defeat!

I'm positive the Iranians were living in fear of a craggy, Grecian-formulaic old man and ex B movie actor and capitulated immediately rather than face his elderly wrath. That makes much more sense than the notion that they held the hostages to the final minutes of Carter's time in office as a way to humiliate the peanut farmer. Or that the invasion of the country by Iraq might have made them more receptive to dealing with the USA. I'm impressed with Rudy's ability to not only rewrite history...but to sell the people what they think they want to buy.

Yesterday Senator Mitch McConnell was my least favorite Republican of the Day...today it's the ever ethical Rudy Ghoulani.

“Unfortunately, most of our friends on the other aisle are having a hard time admitting things are getting better; some days I almost think the critics of this war don't want us to win. Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."

---Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

I guess The Senator thinks it is OK to have sent these kids to their deaths because they signed up for the service.

Senator, you are wrong, dead wrong. When your nation's young men and women take a sacred oath to defend their country and volunteer to live a sometimes harsh and unpleasant life and do and live through unpleasant things...you, as a national leader, made damned sure you only send them into harm's way to make that ultimate sacrifice as a last resort. You don't support their use in a bankrupt foreign excursion over and over while voting against veteran's benefits expansions. And you sure as shit don't toss out casual statements trying to shine that turd and downplay the deaths of these kids. It's callous and cruel. And wrong.

Maybe if the good senator had not gone the draft deferment for law school route during the height of Vietnam and gone another way...he'd have an inkling of what purposeful sacrifice means. Instead he has the typical mindset of the conservative chickenhawk.

Up yours, senator.

Far be it from me (well, not really) to look down on other people's fetishes....because heaven knows...I've got some that would make people blanche, scratch their heads and perhaps even shudder.

But that doesn't mean I can't be befuddled by some...or find them a bit...icky. Or comical.

Check this out:

http://www.blimpboyadventures.com/index.html

Rock Chicks Kick Ass

It's a Wonderful Life Without Rupert Murdoch

...a funny little piece with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry making social commentary by riffing on a classic film...

DAMN IT, JIM! I'M A DOCTOR, NOT A VETERINARIAN!!

I would hate to be around when the kitties experience pon farr.....

Court: Blogspot Blogger May Remain Anonymous

lawsuit intended to unmask the blogger known as “Orthomom” has failed, preserving a closely guarded secret of the online world.

Former Lawrence School Board trustee Pamela Greenbaum, once a frequent target of commenters on the site, filed suit against Google, which hosts the Orthomom blog, seeking the blogger’s name. Her intent, she said, was to file a lawsuit directly against the writer of the blog, who she claimed had called Greenbaum a bigot and anti-semite.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman disagreed, writing in an eight page decision dated October 23, 2007, that, “The relief sought by Greenbaum, on the eve of a school board election, would have a chilling effect on protected political speech.” The judge also found that a commenter on the blog, not the blogger, had used the term bigot which, in any event, the judge found, was protected speech.

Some bloggers say that Google stood up for the privacy of their users this time, as opposed to another recent case in India that made news. The blogger called Orthomom herself sees things a bit differently, writing a piece on the court ruling in the Jewish Star (my emphasis):
If it hadn’t been for a tip from a concerned reader, the case quietly filed against Google by Pamela Greenbaum to have me unmasked might have been over before it started. One day I’m happily blogging along between carpool runs, the next I’m looking for a good First Amendment lawyer. And it was a good thing I managed to procure once, as I soon found out that Google, Inc. was not prepared to do much in the way of defending me against the false and frivolous claims presented by Ms. Greenbaum and her attorney.

Orthomom adds that the US Supreme Court had ruled before that anonymous free speech must be protected. “It is crucial to the free exchange of ideas, whithout any fear of reprisals or retribution for holding opinions that are potentially unpopular,” she says.

I know why the caged Sushi sings....

A while back Soo Chee made a comment (I think it was on alt) about how she's amazed (and not in a good way) that she has a blog in a place where the topics of interest are so sparse....and used an amusing example.

I feel ya. I'm finding it more and more difficult to post anything there. The only thing keeping me there is the fact that I like a lot of people who post ...although that number is shrinking quickly.

When I signed on earlier...the first post title I saw was about someone detailing the 24th black dick they sucked. Sigh. Maybe some people would find an OCD afflicted black cock fetishist interesting....not me.

The lack of quailty bloggers is uninspiring...and a lot of posts just suck the life from me.

So Mr Black Cock Fetishst...rock on with your bad self. Thank you for degrading the quality of the place with your unflushed toilet of a blog.

Maybe I'll go find some video footage of Sleestaks for the sushinator.

I've opened up another blog here....one for just my pictures. I figured i'd create a space to collect my photos in one spot.

http://wickedcoolpictures.blogspot.com/

Janeane OWNS this bitch!

Gotta love Fox News...even their morning coffee chat shows are vitriolic conservative circle jerks. The only network where the fluffy morning crew beats the war drums. I'll bet they regret this interview. I'll also wager the irascible whatever-his-name-is has never retracted his statements.

An Obscene and Vulgar Clown.

The president visits with wounded soldiers and Marines...and still can't wipe away his smirk.

You Can't Stop the Music (or break the spirit)

I wish I had written this.

it's from Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on his show last night. Every once in a while he delivers long editorial speeches that are really something.


SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
updated 9:42 p.m. ET, Mon., Nov. 5, 2007


It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.
All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...

All of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the refocusing of our entire nation, toward keeping this mock president and this unstable vice president and this departed wildly self-overrating attorney general, and the others, from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country.

"Waterboarding is torture," Daniel Levin was to write. Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protester. He was no troublemaking politician. He was no table-pounding commentator. Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man.

Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off.

Charged, as you heard in the story from ABC News last Friday, with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora's box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation," Mr. Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them ... was to have them enacted upon himself.

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded.
Mr. Bush, ever done anything that personally courageous?
Perhaps when you've gone to Walter Reed and teared up over the maimed servicemen? And then gone back to the White House and determined that there would be more maimed servicemen?

Has it been that kind of personal courage, Mr. Bush, when you've spoken of American victims and the triumph of freedom and the sacrifice of your own popularity for the sake of our safety? And then permitted others to fire or discredit or destroy anybody who disagreed with you, whether they were your own generals, or Max Cleland, or Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, or Daniel Levin?

Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now.
Instead, he was forced out as acting assistant attorney general nearly three years ago because he had the guts to do what George Bush couldn't do in a million years: actually put himself at risk for the sake of his country, for the sake of what is right.

And they waterboarded him. And he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die — still, with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terror screaming from inside of him, could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us, the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves, like purpose and name and family and love, he could not convince his being that he wasn't drowning.

Waterboarding, he said, is torture. Legally, it is torture! Practically, it is torture! Ethically, it is torture! And he wrote it down.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd president: "The United States of America ... does not torture."
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.
Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.


Waterboarding had already been used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about except for the one detail you'd forgotten — that there are rules. And even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we're Americans and we're better than that.

We're better than you.

And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not waterboarding was torture had decided, and not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty poseur attire of flight suit and helmet.
He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was.

So, your sleazy sycophantic henchman Mr. Gonzales had him append an asterisk suggesting his black-and-white answer wasn't black-and-white, that there might have been a quasi-legal way of torturing people, maybe with an absolute time limit and a physician entitled to stop it, maybe, if your administration had ever bothered to set any rules or any guidelines.
And then when your people realized that even that was too dangerous, Daniel Levin was branded "too independent" and "someone who could (not) be counted on."

In other words, Mr. Bush, somebody you couldn't count on to lie for you.

So, Levin was fired.
Because if it ever got out what he'd concluded, and the lengths to which he went to validate that conclusion, anybody who had sanctioned waterboarding and who-knows-what-else on anybody, you yourself, you would have been screwed.
And screwed you are.
It can't be coincidence that the story of Daniel Levin should emerge from the black hole of this secret society of a presidency just at the conclusion of the unhappy saga of the newest attorney general nominee.
Another patriot somewhere listened as Judge Mukasey mumbled like he'd never heard of waterboarding and refused to answer in words … that which Daniel Levin answered on a waterboard somewhere in Maryland or Virginia three years ago.
And this someone also heard George Bush say, "The United States of America does not torture," and realized either he was lying or this wasn't the United States of America anymore, and either way, he needed to do something about it.
Not in the way Levin needed to do something about it, but in a brave way nonetheless.

We have U.S. senators who need to do something about it, too.
Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee has seen this for what it is and said "enough."

Sen. Schumer has seen it, reportedly, as some kind of puzzle piece in the New York political patronage system, and he has failed.
What Sen. Feinstein has seen, to justify joining Schumer in rubber-stamping Mukasey, I cannot guess.

It is obvious that both those senators should look to the meaning of the story of Daniel Levin and recant their support for Mukasey's confirmation.

And they should look into their own committee's history and recall that in 1973, their predecessors were able to wring even from Richard Nixon a guarantee of a special prosecutor (ultimately a special prosecutor of Richard Nixon!), in exchange for their approval of his new attorney general, Elliott Richardson.
If they could get that out of Nixon, before you confirm the president's latest human echo on Tuesday, you had better be able to get a "yes" or a "no" out of Michael Mukasey.

Ideally you should lock this government down financially until a special prosecutor is appointed, or 50 of them, but I'm not holding my breath. The "yes" or the "no" on waterboarding will have to suffice.

Because, remember, if you can't get it, or you won't with the time between tonight and the next presidential election likely to be the longest year of our lives, you are leaving this country, and all of us, to the waterboards, symbolic and otherwise, of George W. Bush.

Ultimately, Mr. Bush, the real question isn't who approved the waterboarding of this fiend Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two others.
It is: Why were they waterboarded?

Study after study for generation after generation has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.
Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn't a problem if you don't care if the terrorist plots they tell you about are the truth or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.

If, say, a president simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared.

If, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the threat he didn't interrupt.
If, say, he realized that even terrorized people still need good ghost stories before they will let a president pillage the Constitution,
Well, Mr. Bush, who better to dream them up for you than an actual terrorist?
He'll tell you everything he ever fantasized doing in his most horrific of daydreams, his equivalent of the day you "flew" onto the deck of the Lincoln to explain you'd won in Iraq.
Now if that's what this is all about, you tortured not because you're so stupid you think torture produces confession but you tortured because you're smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction — well, then, you're going to need all the lawyers you can find … because that crime wouldn't just mean impeachment, would it?
That crime would mean George W. Bush is going to prison.

Thus the master tumblers turn, and the lock yields, and the hidden explanations can all be perceived, in their exact proportions, in their exact progressions.

Daniel Levin's eminently practical, eminently logical, eminently patriotic way of testing the legality of waterboarding has to vanish, and him with it.
Thus Alberto Gonzales has to use that brain that sounds like an old car trying to start on a freezing morning to undo eight centuries of the forward march of law and government.

Thus Dick Cheney has to ridiculously assert that confirming we do or do not use any particular interrogation technique would somehow help the terrorists.
Thus Michael Mukasey, on the eve of the vote that will make him the high priest of the law of this land, cannot and must not answer a question, nor even hint that he has thought about a question, which merely concerns the theoretical definition of waterboarding as torture.

Because, Mr. Bush, in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed.

From its beginning as the most neglectful protection ever of the lives and safety of the American people ... into the most efficient and cynical exploitation of tragedy for political gain in this country's history ... and, then, to the giddying prospect that you could do what the military fanatics did in Japan in the 1930s and remake a nation into a fascist state so efficient and so self-sustaining that the fascism would be nearly invisible.

But at last this frightful plan is ending with an unexpected crash, the shocking reality that no matter how thoroughly you might try to extinguish them, Mr. Bush, how thoroughly you tried to brand disagreement as disloyalty, Mr. Bush, there are still people like Daniel Levin who believe in the United States of America as true freedom, where we are better, not because of schemes and wars, but because of dreams and morals.

And ultimately these men, these patriots, will defeat you and they will return this country to its righteous standards, and to its rightful owners, the people.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Remember When Dennis Miller Was Still Funny?

Before he became a hateful, rabid right-wing tool and could only find work on Fox News shows and talk radio....

Always Trust Your Government

The Old Sneezeguard

Don'tcha just hate when someone tries to lay out orthodoxy?

Do you hate it when people ascribe motives when they couldn't possibly know your motivation?


"I AGREE. PEOPLE WHO COME HERE TO CREATE CONFLICT OR TO LOOK FOR A CHANCE TO "ONE UP" SOMEONE MUST BE SUCH TOTAL FAILURES IN LIFE THAT HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO.

IF IT IS NOT ABOUT THE LIFESTYLE I AM UNLIKELY TO READ IT. THAT INCLUDES THE MAJORITY OF BLOG POSTS, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS ABOUT POLITICS. SOME OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BLOGS HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH THE LIFESTYLE. IT SEEMS MANY COME HERE PRIMARILY TO GET A FREE BLOG THAT ALLOWS X RATED TOPICS OR TO GET LAID. VANILLA PEOPLE PREDOMINATE, NOT THOSE WHO ACTUALLY LIVE AN ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE.

AFTER CHECKING FOR MAIL, MY GROUPS AND MY WATCHED BLOGS, I SKIM DOWN THE LIST OF RECENT POST AND SOMETIMES I FIND ONE OR TWO THAT LOOK INTERESTING, BUT MORE OFTEN I FIND NOTHING."

How amazingly boring.

Gone Baby Gone

Went to see it last night. It was very, very well done. I had a few issues with it...but they were due to my being a fan of the series of novels from which the characters were drawn, not the film itself.

The author of the book, Dennis Lehane, grew up in my neighborhood and sets most of his books here...in a neighborhood pretty much ignored by other movies filmed here. (The Departed had two scenes filmed here though) I love the books...there's the neighborhood connection...I watched them film of of this movie. A few scenes were filmed, quite literally, around the corner from my house.

So I had high expectations. Ben Affleck being a first time director taking on this material...had me a little wary. But he really pulled it all together. Very impressive work by the actors and by Affleck the Director.

A few of the performances are outstanding...most notably Ed Harris as a BPD detective on the missing child case. He's fucking intense.

BRRRRRIIIINNNNGGGGGGGG!

Yip yip yip yip
IS it any wonder Generation X grew up to be ill in the head?

Video No Go

Anyone else having a problem getting videos to load? I've never done it before...but I think I'm doing it correctly...but the fuckers just will not load onto this site for me.

Ennui

I'm finding that blogging at the other place is becoming less and less...interesting...or something.

I was looking at my Watched Blogs list just now. About a year ago it numbered 76 members. It's down to 21 now.

I took a tally of the front page bloggers. Excluding my own...there are 15 members there. I read just 5 of them....and not all of them regularly.

(related tangent: further looks determined that only 3 of those 15 people come to my blog...so apparently they find me as boring as I find most of them. I wonder if there's an unspoken, unacknowledged kind of competition amongst a lot of the Front Pagers? A quiet enmity that keeps them away from those who would surpass them in rankings? I know a few have open hostility in this regard. The apply Sun Tzu's teaching to blogging. Me? I just don't see the interest in a lot of them. How many times can the same blogger ask the same questions? And I already receive plenty of e-mail forwards from friends...I don't need to read them in blogs as well.)

======================

I'm not sure what it is that's causing this...fatigue?...lack of interest? Maybe familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe it's the fact that so many of the people I read and enjoyed have left after becoming fed up with alt's service, the proliferation of scumbags and whackos...or both. I do know that the really great writers who've moved on from there...are rarely replaced by writers of the same caliber.

Maybe it's the repetition. Just the other day the topic of submission being a gift was being tossed back and forth. And my only thought on the subject was "Sweet Jebus, not THIS again!" No one has anything new to say on it...it's the same tired, old retread viewpoints. You can only watch so many reruns of Gilligan's Island.

Oh well.....it's a "whatever" kind of issue. I do miss a lot of people there though.

Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

ROME, Oct. 11 — A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.

The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet.

“We now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”

But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.”

The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.

In Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe. “In the past we didn’t have this kind of data to draw on,” Ms. Camp said. “Contraception is often the missing element” where abortion rates are high, she said.

Anti-abortion groups criticized the research, saying that the scientists had jumped to conclusions from imperfect tallies, often estimates of abortion rates in countries where the procedure was illegal. “These numbers are not definitive and very susceptible to interpretation according to the agenda of the people who are organizing the data,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research at the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in Washington.

He said that the major reason women die in the developing world is that hospitals and health systems lack good doctors and medicines. “They have equated the word ‘safe’ with ‘legal’ and ‘unsafe’ with ‘illegal,’ which gives you the illusion that to deal with serious medical system problems you just make abortion legal,” he said.

The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal.

The researchers used national data for 2003 from countries where abortion was legal and therefore tallied. W.H.O. scientists estimated abortion rates from countries where it was outlawed, using data on hospital admissions for abortion complications, interviews with local family planning experts and surveys of women in those countries.

The wealth of information that comes out of the study provides some striking lessons, the researchers said. In Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States, 21 per 1,000 in that year. The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.

The Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar campaign against H.I.V./AIDS in Africa has directed money to programs that promote abstinence before marriage, and to condoms only as a last resort. It has prohibited the use of American money to support overseas family planning groups that provide abortions or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Worldwide, the annual number of abortions appeared to have declined between 1995, the last year such a broad study was conducted, and 2003, from an estimated 46 million to 42 million, the study concluded. The 1995 study, by the Guttmacher Institute, had far less data on countries where abortion was illegal.

Some countries, like South Africa, have undergone substantial transitions in abortion laws in that time. The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.
Abortion is illegal in most of Africa, though. It is the second-leading cause of death among women admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia, its Health Ministry has said. It is the cause of 13 percent of maternal deaths at hospitals in Nigeria, recent studies have found.

===================================

NEWS FLASH

5:01 am today I'm drinking coffee and watching the Nobel Peace Prize announcement.

Al Gore wins it.

Congrats, Mr. Gore.

5:03 am: nutty right-wingers everywhere start gnashing their teeth and foaming at the mouth.

It's True

http//www.blackpeopleloveus.com/index.html

ONE STOP SHOPPING

Swallow Your Head

I really hate when people boast that they don't watch television or, worse, do not own one.

If you do this...please...stop. Nobody cares.

LEMUR MADNESS
needs no explanation

The Savage Beasts of Maine

From York Wild Kingdom....a lounging (and large scrotumed) kangaroo...a baby alligator....a platoon of pot-bellied pigs...and a very friendly llama. I think his name was Ralph (the Wonder Llama).

This is Not a Love Song


I recently caught the tail end of a brief news story on a local cable news station. One of the 14 soldiers killed in the helicopter that crashed a few days ago in Iraq was a local kid and was receiving the obligatory brief mention.


The story went on in an even briefer mention of some of the other kids on board. Something mentioned caught my eye...so I went web searching some news sites and the official site of the 25th Inf Div to get more information.


Here's the gist of it:
21 year old Specialist Nathan Hubbard was killed in the crash...and he's the second son to be killed in action in Iraq. His brother Jared died there in 2004. Nathan and his other sibling, Jason, enlisted together after Jared's death and served in the same division and deployed together in Iraq. Jason was on the same mission the night of the crash and watched his brother Nathan's chopper go down and crash and burn. Nathan and Jason had joined to continue what their brother started and to look out for each other.



This is the type of story about family, sacrifice, loyalty, duty, sadness, tragedy that perfectly brings home to the American public the realities of the war in Iraq. It puts the effects of the war right in the reader's face. But....



...this story was almost completely passed over by the media. Yet again the fourth estate has fallen down on the job.

Instead...much of the coverage that eclipsed this story was all about another American family.

"Jenna Bush Engaged" is what they breathlessly reported for the entire week. The TV networks rolled out footage of presidential daughters going back to LBJ's Basset Hound-esque offspring. Now Jenna Bush is betrothed to the son of some Republican Party bigwig (if she truly were a rebellious daughter and not just a drunken party girl she'd have chosen some hairy neo-hippie). Looking at the two squeaky clean, slack-eyed kids together...one can't help but get the creepy feeling of an arranged marriage. I half expected to see Angela Lansbury flitting about making the arrangements The Manchurian Candidate style.

Cue much breathy commentary from media types about how Party Girl Number One has cleaned up her image, is growing up. You know the types of stories....

In looking at the coverage of the two stories...I can't help but shake my head at the prioritizing of the media in what they consider news. On the one hand...a story containing all the human drama and tragedy imaginable goes mostly unreported. On the other...a fluff piece about Generalissimo Busho's fermented piece of crotch fruit putting her tequila bottle down long enough to find a man gets coverage on every network...for days.

This isn't really the surprise to me it sounds like. I'm much too cynical. But sometimes the media still manages to shock me.

Which Would You Rather Do?

Have a staring contest with Nancy Pelosi or take a Wide Stance with Larry Craig?

Which Would You Rather Do?

Go hunting with Dick Cheney or driving with Ted Kennedy?

On my last day as a resident of New Orleans...

I walked through my soon-to-be empty house. Everything was almost done...but things still felt incomplete.I was leaving the city against my wishes.

Mom was sick, dad's cancer was back...both were almost down for the count...so back to Boston I went.I was leaving the only place I've ever been where I honestly felt like I fit. Perfectly.My heart was heavy.

In my bedroom there was a very shallow yet very wide closet. It was only about 18 inches deep but extended to cover nearly an entire bedroom wall. A sort of vertical crawl space. I can only surmise that whoever designed it was a madman.

I opened the double doors...just to peek inside and make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind (I'd already looked...but don't you just always check and check again?). And I had an idea. I grabbed a red magic marker from my desk.Then I eased into the closet backwards...and shuffled and shimmied my way sideways down inside the wall.And what I had a few inches before my face was a very large canvas.

I began to write. And I wrote...and wrote and wrote. I reached as high as I could and scribbled line after line. Then I worked my way to the other side of the doors and continued on that fresh slate.I covered the walls with my pen.I wrote a long love letter to New Orleans.It contained a brief history of my time there. Little sketches of the people I knew, things I had done, why I loved the city, some of the aspects I hated (very few) and so much more that I can't remember now.

It was a secret letter.

Because no one could have casually seen what I wrote. One would have had to stick their head into the closet and twisted it around to see it. It would take a little work to see it and a lot of work to read it.It cracked me up to think that the next resident of my house would look at that closet and think "what kind of maniac designs a closet like this?" Then poke their head in to marvel at the impossible dimensions and stumble across my letter...and think "And what type of maniac worms inside and scribbles a secret manifesto inside such an impossible closet?!" Anyone with the tenacity to read it would be my kind of person.

That long letter was my little chronicle of important personal history. It was like a cave painting waiting to be discovered.

Then the levees broke.

The neighborhood where I lived took between eight and twelve feet of water. I watched the TV reports...and punched my coffee table every time a news chopper flew over my neighborhood. I read the online charts showing water depth. My house was submerged.After the waters receded...a friend still living there took photos and mailed them to me. The water line was way up there.High enough to submerge most of my letter. The toxic gumbo washed it all away. Well...maybe the uppermost lines survived. But it really doesn't matter. At last report...the house was an empty hulk.

I may challenge myself to recreate it.