"I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression."
-- Focus on the Family's James Dobson on former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), according to U.S. News and World Report.
TMZ has learned Mel Gibson exploded in anger last night on a college campus after an expert on Mayan culture accussed him of racially stereotyping the Mayans in the movie "Apocalypto."
It happened last night at Cal State University at Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Gibson was speaking to a film class about his movies, and several members of the Mayan community came to hear the famous director.
After Gibson's presentation, the crowd was allowed to ask questions. Alicia Estrada, an Assistant Professor of Central American Studies at CSUN, challenged Gibson, asking him if he had read about the Mayan culture before shooting the controversial film. Gibson said he had.
Estrada persisted, stating that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist. Estrada and others tell TMZ that Gibson exploded in anger, responding, "Lady, F**k off."
Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
1. What do Ginger Baker and canteen coffee have in common?
They both suck without Cream.
2. How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?Just one, so long as the roadie gets the ladder, sets it up and puts the bulb in the socket for him.
3. What is the difference between a chiropidist and Ginger Baker?
A chiropidist bucks up your feet4. How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Five: One to screw the bulb in, and four to talk about how much better Neil Peart would have done it.5. How can you tell a drummer's at the door?
The knocking speeds up.6. How can you tell a drummer's at the door?
He doesn't know when to come in.7. How can you tell when the drum riser is level?
Drool comes out of both sides of the drummer's mouth.8. What do you call a drummer that breaks up with his girlfriend?
Homeless.9. How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?
None: they have a machine to do that now.10. What's the last thing a drummer says in a band?
"Hey guys, why don't we try one of my songs?
What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians?
- A Drummer
Republican Party loyalty in decline since 2002
By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer12:31 PM PDT, March 22, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged since the second year of George W. Bush's presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political dominance for more than a decade, a major new survey has found.The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, while only 35% aligned with Republicans.
What's more, the survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down.
Those findings suggest that Republicans' political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush."Iraq has played a large part; the pushback on the Republican Party has to do with Bush, but there are other things going on here that Republicans will have to contend with," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.
"There is a difference in the landscape."A key question is whether those trends signal a broad and lasting change in the balance of power between the parties or just a mood swing that will soon pass or moderate. It remains to be seen whether Democrats can capitalize on Republicans' weakness and gain a durable position of political dominance.
"This is the beginning of a Democratic opportunity," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "The question is whether we blow it or not."
"We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do,"
- Rudy Giuliani, March 1994.
Excitement surrounds Obama's visit to Oakland
Candidate calls for ending war, solving problems at home
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Sunday, March 18, 2007Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, appearing before an adoring crowd in Oakland, one of the state's largest African American communities, delivered a rousing call Saturday evening for an end to the Iraq war, saying "we can't continue this occupation" because America has got "business right here at home.''
...
"I am proud of the fact that I opposed this war from the start, that I stood up in 2002 and said this is a bad idea, that this is going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives,'' Obama told the audience, which wildly cheered his statements. Noting that he has sponsored a bill calling for drawing down troops beginning on May 1 of this year, the senator said that "we've got to send a signal to (the Iraqi government) that America's not going to be there forever."
...
Obama also talked about the recent scandal over poor treatment of Iraq war veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center ...With his voice rising in anger, he said the nation must ensure "that we treat them right ... that we're getting them the treatment they need,'' and that "they don't end up homeless because nobody's looking after them.''
"Don't stand next to a flag and say you believe in supporting the troops when you forget them when you come home,'' he yelled, as the crowd cheered.Obama's campaign speech -- delivered on a gloriously sunny day with the elegant backdrop of Oakland's historic City Hall -- drew an enormous crowd that snaked for blocks throughout the downtown and filled the plazas and streets nearby. And the mood had the feel of a community picnic, with merchants selling Obama T-shirts, rap musicians hawking their wares, and a wide range of supporters, from curious Democrats and loyal grassroots activists to families with children.
NYT: 'Bong hits' case divides Bush and religious right
RAW STORYA free speech case has divided President Bush from key supporters of his base, as many religious rights groups have joined the ACLU and others in defending the rights of high school students, an article in Sunday's New York Times reports.
The case which will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on Monday "has opened an unexpected fissure between the Bush administration and its usual allies among conservative Christian supporters," Linda Greenhouse reports for the Times."On the surface, Joseph Frederick's dispute with his principal, Deborah Morse, at the Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska five years ago appeared to have little if anything to do with religion," Greenhouse writes. "As the Olympic torch was carried through the streets of Juneau on its way to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City and as television cameras focused on the scene, Frederick and some friends unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with the inscription: 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus.'"
The principal tore down the sign, after Frederick initially refused her demand to remove the banner, and suspended him for ten days.
"The Bush administration entered the case on the side of the principal and the Juneau School Board," Greenhouse notes.
But, Greenhouse continues, "While it is hardly surprising to find the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship on Frederick's side, it is the array of briefs from organizations that litigate and speak on behalf of generally conservative Christian groups that has lifted Morse v. Frederick out of the realm of the ordinary."
NYC council leader marches on St. Patrick's Day - in Dublin
March 17, 2007, 12:22 PM EDT
DUBLIN, Ireland -- New York Council Speaker Christine Quinn finally marched Saturday in a St. Patrick's Day parade _ and it took her just 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) to do it.
Quinn, the first openly homosexual leader of New York City Council, has boycotted the New York parade for years because of the organizers' refusal to let gays and lesbian groups march.
This year, she accepted an Irish government invitation to join the Dublin City Council contingent here _ and highlight the big differences between the parades in Ireland and New York.
"The fact I'm here in Dublin and able to march and participate in inclusive events should send a message of how backwards the New York parade is," said Quinn, who is the city's second-most powerful politician behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a likely 2009 mayoral candidate.
The New York parade has been bedeviled for years by chronic bickering between its conservative organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians fraternal group, and New York's legion of special interest groups, particularly gay and lesbian groups.
Milotte, a senior reporter for the Irish television network RTE, says life was particularly hard for the mothers in these convents, which were largely self-sustaining thanks to the women's labor but also received public funding. In some cases, he says, the priests and nuns received money from the adoptive parents, who paid "confinement and medical costs" associated with their child's birth.
"Where did the money go?" he wonders. "It sustained the people who ran the institutions in a manner they wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed."
But money likely wasn't the primary motivator, he says. Rather, there was a demand for children, and many of the nuns believed they were doing God's work by sending some of Ireland's social outcasts to a better life in the land of opportunity.
"They thought they were doing good," says Milotte in a phone interview from Dublin. "The fact that people might have rights didn't enter into their thinking. They thought they knew best. If, in doing the best thing, there was an opportunity to make money, that was all the better."
In those postwar days, it was not uncommon for Irish children to be adopted by U.S. military and government employees living abroad, Milotte says.
Many of these women were seen as the next thing to prostitutes, and were very often told that when their identities became known. Even when girls got pregnant, very often they didn't get married even if -- because there was the stigma attached to having had sex before marriage. So even where a relationship endured, the child would be given up for adoption. And it was all done in secret.
ZWERDLING: Here's one of the most curious aspects of this story.It's hard enough for most women to give up a baby for adoption during the first few hours or weeks of its life. But church officials forced the young mothers to stay in their convents and raise their own infants for at least one year or more before adoptive families could come and get them.Reporter Mike Milotte says he's turned up cases where young women changed their minds after their babies were born and tried to leave the convents. But the nuns sent guards to capture the women and bring them back.For her part, Mary O'Connor says, she knew she'd have to give her baby away. She felt she literally had no choice. But by the time the nuns came to take her son, she'd been raising him for 17 months. Then one evening, O'Connor says, a nun told her, "Get him ready. We're giving him away in the morning."
O'CONNOR: So she just carried it over to the convent. There was two parts, like there was a hospital part where the children were kept and then there was the convent part. And the child was brought over to the convent part. And there was three steps up. You went in the side door and there were three steps up. And they went to the top of the steps and they said, "Just say goodbye now. That's it."
SOUNDBITE OF O'CONNOR SNIFFING ZWERDLING: Did you say goodbye?
SOUNDBITE OF O'CONNOR SNIFFING
O'CONNOR: Yes. I waved and they went off. I have not seen him since.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) "has told new Democratic members of Congress to steer clear of Stephen Colbert, or at least his satirical Comedy Central program, The Colbert Report,"
The Hill reports. Reports Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN): "He said don't do it... it's a risk and it's probably safer not to do it."
Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) "might have crossed what some are calling 'one of the last frontiers' in politics when he delighted atheists this week by acknowledging that he does not believe in a supreme being," reports the San Francisco Chronicle."Just a generation ago," says Democratic political strategist Dan Newman, "you couldn't go anywhere near" such a statement, which "would have been political suicide."
Stark’s "frank declaration that he is 'a Unitarian who does not believe in a Supreme Being' indicates, says Newman, that a significant page has been turned -- and maybe it's not such a political liability anymore."
Office of The Chairman
"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude. I'm very proud of the gays
and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want
to serve their country and I want to make sure they can."
In Minnesota, Coleman Ahead by 10Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) holds a 10-point advantage over challenger Al Franken (D), according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey. Coleman currently leads 46% to 36%.
Shrum Says He Pushed Edwards on Iraq
John Edwards "was skeptical about voting for the Iraq war resolution and was pushed into it by advisers looking out for his political future," according to an upcoming book by political consultant Robert Shrum, the AP reports. Shrum writes "that he regrets advising Edwards to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. He said if Edwards had followed his instincts instead of the advice of political professionals, he would have been a stronger presidential candidate in 2004."An Edwards spokesman disputes the account, saying the former senator "cast his vote based on the advice of national security advisers and the intelligence he was given, not political advisers."
"For this isn't really about Coulter at all. This is about a pact the American right made with the devil, a pact the devil is now coming to collect on. American conservatism sold its soul to the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to gain power, and now that its ideology has been exposed as empty and its leadership incompetent and corrupt, free-floating hatred is the only thing it has to offer. The problem, for the GOP, is that this isn't a winning political strategy anymore -- but they're stuck with it. They're trapped. They need the bigoted and reactionary base they helped create, but the very fanaticism that made the True Believers such potent shock troops will prevent the Republicans from achieving Karl Rove's dream of long-term GOP domination."
....the September 13, 2006 email from Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to Justice Department liaison to White House counsel Harriet Miers.
Fifteen minutes earlier, Sampson had sent the same email to the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, asking "Any corrections?" before sending it over.In the email, Sampson outlines the "USAs We Now Should Consider Pushing Out." They were: Arizona's Paul Charlton, San Diego's Carol Lam, Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara, Nevada's Daniel Bogden, and Seattle's John McKay. All five were eventually fired. Arkansas' Bud Cummins had his own heading, "USA in the Process of Being Pushed Out."
In the summary portion of the email, Griffin lays out his recommendation to use a legal loophole to install replacements without Senate confirmation.
"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed -- It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately. In addition, I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments.... we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."
Sampson added, intrigiuingly, that he had "one follow up item I would want to do over the phone."
WELLESLEY, Mass. - The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended. But rarely has it been read, because for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency it was locked away.
As forbidden fruit, the writings of a 21-year-old college senior, examining the tactics of radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, have gained mythic status among her critics — a “Rosetta Stone,” in the words of one, that would allow readers to decode the thinking of the former first lady and 2008 presidential candidate.
Despite the fervent interest in the thesis, few realize that it is no longer kept under lock and key. As MSNBC.com found, it is available to anyone who visits the archive room of the prestigious women’s college outside Boston. With Clinton’s opponents in the 2008 presidential race looking for the next “Swift Boat” attack ad, and the senator herself trying to cast off her liberal image, Clinton's 92-page thesis is certain to be read and reread by opposition researchers and reporters visiting the campus.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chief White House lawyer floated the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys at the start of President Bush's second term, but the Justice Department objected and eventually recommended the eight dismissals that have generated a political firestorm two years later.
The long-simmering feud erupted with the new revelations, causing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to cancel a planned trip Tuesday to Syracuse, New York, amid calls from Congress for his ouster.
Additionally, Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson, announced his resignation Tuesday. In a statement, the attorney general said he is "very appreciative" of Sampson's service, which began when Gonzales was White House counsel. Sampson resigned Monday night, the statement said.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday that then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers raised with an aide to Gonzales the prospect of asking all chief federal district prosecutors to resign in 2004 as a logical way to start a new term with a new slate of U.S. attorneys.
White House Said to Prompt Firing of Prosecutors
WASHINGTON, March 12 — The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.
The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.
But Ms. Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.
Within a few weeks of the president’s comments to the attorney general, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.Previously, the White House had said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.
The role of the president and his advisers in the prosecutor shakeup is likely to intensify calls by Congress for an investigation. It is the worst crisis of Mr. Gonzales’s tenure and provoked charges that the dismissals were a political purge threatening the historical independence of the Justice Department.
Accepting her award, Ms. Smith recalled a kitchen table argument with her husband, Fred Smith, shortly before he died in 1994. “He said to me, ‘Tricia, one day you’re going to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,’ ” Ms. Smith said. “He asked me to accept it like a lady and not say any curse words and to make certain to salute new generations. Because it is the new generations that will redefine the landscape of rock ’n’ roll.”
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."-- “An Ideal Husband”
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned at two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of "gross indecency", which also included homosexual acts not amounting to buggery in British legislation.[1]
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art.
Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. He later commented ironically on this view when he wrote, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is quite useless". Wilde was associated with the phrase Art for art's sake, though it appears nowhere in his writings: it was coined by the philosopher Victor Cousin, promoted by Theophile Gautier and brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler.
The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.
In 1879 Wilde started to teach Aesthetic values in London. In 1882 he went on a lecture tour in the United States and Canada. He was torn apart by no small number of critics — The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and Aestheticism — but also was surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. [1] On his return to the United Kingdom, he worked as a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in the years 1887-1889. Afterwards he became the editor of Woman's World.
Politically, Wilde endorsed an anarchistic brand of socialism, expounding his beliefs in the text "The Soul of Man under Socialism".
On May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd. Constance was four years younger than Oscar and the daughter of a prominent barrister who died when she was 16. She was well-read, spoke several European languages and had an outspoken, independent mind. Oscar and Constance had two sons in quick succession, Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886. With a family to support, Oscar accepted a job revitalizing the Woman's World magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889. The next six years were to become the most creative period of his life. He published two collections of children's stories, “The Happy Prince and Other Tales” (1888), and “The House of Pomegranates” (1892). His first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in an American magazine in 1890 to a storm of critical protest. He expanded the story and had it published in book form the following year. Its implied homoerotic theme was considered very immoral by the Victorians and played a considerable part in his later legal trials. Oscar's first play, “Lady Windermere's Fan,” opened in February 1892. Its financial and critical success prompted him to continue to write for the theater. His subsequent plays included “A Woman of No Importance” (1893), “An Ideal Husband” (1895), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895). These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright.
In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, the third son of the Marquis of Queensberry. Bosie was well acquainted with Oscar's novel “Dorian Gray” and was an undergraduate at Oxford. They soon became lovers and were inseparable until Wilde's arrest four years later. In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie's father for libel as the Marquis had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar withdrew his case but was himself arrested and convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor. Constance took the children to Switzerland and reverted to an old family name, “Holland.”
Upon his release, Oscar wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a response to the agony he experienced in prison. It was published shortly before Constance's death in 1898. He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. When a recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in, and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900.
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."-- “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”
