So, who am I pissing off this week?

You know, I like to think that I'm a nice guy. A cheerful, cultured, man about town (you should hear me sing the chorus of "Puttin' on the Ritz." I mean, Fred Astaire has nothing to worry about - even Taco wouldn't be frightened. But I give Peter Boyle a run for his money). But I seem to be gradually annoying more and more people around the country. (I'll do everybody a favor and not reprint the various exchanges; anything you want to see, you can click on the link. It's fun - try it!)

About two weeks ago, the big news stories involved Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, and those Fox News-sponsored "tea parties." Well, I left a few comments in various places, and the responses were mixed: In a lot of cases, people wouldn't even try to respond. And then I've got one lady who apparently fashions herself the world's Mommy or something, who sent me the following note:

while i publish comments that are in disagreement, I do not publish those that are sarcastic or treat me as if I were intellectually inferior

As a former radical leftist I am all too familiar with the way your comment reads. I now understand that intelligent people can disagree and treat each other with respect.

Conservatives are not stupid. I have an IQ of 150+ and a BA in Philosophy.

Grow up. realize that intelligent people can disagree and learn to treat others with respect.

barbara

And she refused to publish my response. Kind of what I expect, although I don't usually get a personal note telling me why she isn't supporting that whole First Amendment thing.

On the other hand, she also runs a blog called Mommy, Teach Me (although, from what I've seen, I wouldn't want her teaching capitalization or punctuation). But it has the somewhat disturbing title on the front page of "Why send your child to preschool to fall in love with a teacher?"

Consider that for a moment. What is that saying about her relationship with her kids? Is it just me, or is something just a little... wrong in that?

Oh, and then there's a group of guys who consider themselves Curmudgeonly + Skeptical, who did try to engage me a little bit, but now they close off comments in every thread where I say "hi" - it seems I'm not welcome there, either. (I wonder why? Could Rodger be angry because I called him a conspiracy theorist? Or a racist? Or is it just that they can't handle the fact that a former military guy disagrees with them on just about every level? I just don't get it - could it be my deodorant?)

I rarely just give up on an argument, but once in a while it just isn't worth the headache. They make specious arguments, and pull up textbook examples of logical fallacies. I'm not clear that they really think about what they're writing - they just keep arguing for the sake of arguing. (Kind of like me, only I like to think that I have a point.)

(OK, sometimes I do...)

(...really, I've been known to...)

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the point was that marriage can only be considered to be for procreation. Period. That's it, end of story. There is no other reason to get married, and therefore no gays can get married. (I wasn't clear on this going in, but we got around to it eventually.) Of course, they refused to admit that the logic starts to break down at that point. Straight couples who can't or won't have children (medical reasons, age, their own choice - whatever the reason) must then have their marriages invalidated, yes? Well, apparently not - the only reason to get married is to have children, but you're allowed to get married even if you can't have children. Unless you're gay.

(One guy honestly tried to argue that gay marriage had to be banned because it discriminated against straights, while at another point the argument seemed to be that a gay marriage exposed the couple as gay, advertising their status to the world. And, lest we forget, "we've never had gay marriage, thus we cannot in the future." Or some crap like that. It just became ridiculous and I gave up on them.)

And this week, I found new subjects to irritate people. The Right Wing decided that expanded hate crimes protection meant that priests were going to be locked up in droves if they spoke out against homosexuality. Now, a blogger who thinks that The Night Cometh felt that just reprinting an article from that bastion of journalistic integrity, WorldNetDaily, was enough. And when I say "enough," I mean that he refused, not just to answer, but even to print my response.

Definition of irony: Complaining that your free speech is being stifled, as you're preventing other people from talking. (At least this P.O.'ed Patriot was willing to talk about it.)

I'm having a nice chat with an apparent Russian, too, who seems to think that the swine flu is going to topple the US government. (You see, all pigs are created equal, but some are more equal than others...)

I've also got a fairly wide-ranging discussion going on here involving religion, Miss America, feminism, and apparently whatever pops into people's minds.

The big news, though, was Arlen Specter changing political affiliation from Republican to Democrat. Now, while Dena Leichnitz, who fancies herself Black'n'Right got a little pissy with me on the subject, she seems to have tapered off into sullen silence. (To be honest, she doesn't use the apostrophes, but I think that Blacknright just looks silly without them, so I overruled her.)

A blogger who types On Freedom's Wings actually thought that I should be nicer because she's a lady! (Now, I'm not clear about that whole patriarchal, gender-discrimination thing, but do you lose your standing as a protected species when you refer to the 79-year-old senator as "Arlen Sphincter"?)

David Drake apparently got tired of trying to defend his idiocy, and now refuses to post my responses. (Looking at the web address for his blog, I'm a little curious why he originally called himself "Mrs. Satan" - just not curious enough to ride the Wayback Machine and find out.)

So I feel reasonably confident when I point out that the Far Right is just as unhinged and self-deluded as ever.

If Texas Secedes, Can They Take Bush With Them?

I was born in Texas, and many of my relatives are still there, so I like to think that I can speak for the culture, even though I'd much rather be castrated with a hammer than ever move back. There's a very ugly, small-minded fringe element that's taken entirely too much power in that god-forsaken state.

The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry (christened by the great philosopher M. Ivins as "Governor Goodhair") whipped a crowd of teabaggers into a frenzy last week by saying that Texas should secede. (And Chuck Norris, who's apparently starting to believe all the jokes, said that he may run for President of Texas.)

We should probably ignore the fact that talk like this feeds into the insane mindset of certain fringe elements of the population (apparently "fringe elements" everywhere but in Texas, anyway). And when I say "fringe elements," I'm referring to groups like the Republic of Texas, a bunch of armed extremists known for kidnapping random strangers and hosting armed standoffs with the police (you know, cheese and crackers, boxed wine, and the occasional exchange of hostages).

However, what Perry was talking about with his secession speech is a long-standing myth down there: that Texas has always had the right to secede, ever since we joined the country (not "we were annexed" or "we asked to join," but "we did it under our own volition, and they couldn't have stopped us if they'd tried").

The whole thing feeds into the myth of self-determination, that Walker-Texas-Ranger/Lone-Wolf-McQuade thing that Texas tries to propagate about themselves. Self-important idiots, really, swaggering around in their carefully-shined cowboy boots and crisp, clean white hats. Screw 'em.

(And incidentally, if Texas is such a cornerstone of self-righteous individualism, then why did Governor Perry, upon being told that Mexico might have a swine flu problem, demand that the CDC send Texas 37,430 doses of Tamiflu? I mean, if Texas doesn't need the rest of the United States, shouldn't they be willing to deal with this problem on their own?)

The alternative myth to Tex-cession is "Texas has the right to split into five states," a myth which at least has the advantage of being closer to reality. (It's still bullshit, but at least it'll make flowers grow, right?)

So let's look at these myths. First of all, the "secession" argument usually goes like this:

Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. If there was a right of secession before that war, it should be just as valid now. It wasn't negated because Northern munitions factories were more efficient than Southern ones.

Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" - by force, if necessary - a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming independence.

The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government.

Which sounds great. Of course, that whole argument ignores the fact that the writer is referencing the Articles of Confederation, which were replaced by the Constitution, because the founders realized that they needed a Federation, not a Confederation.

As for the "five states" question, that feeds into the myth of self-determination, too. But the truth is Texas can be carved into five states.

The way it works is, in the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, which was approved by Congress on March 1, 1845, it stated :

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution...

Now, to add to that, you have Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, where it says:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Texans love that crap. They think it proves something. Of course, it ignores the fact that the whole thing is a joint process, not something Texas can force on everybody else: "no new states shall be formed or erected... without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."

Also, did you notice those ellipses at the end of the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas? That's because it goes into something that they don't want to talk about. Not only could Texas get split up if it proved to big and unwieldy to govern itself, but there was a second reason for the subdivision of the Lone Star State.

and such states as may be formed out of the territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each State, asking admission shall desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory, north of said Missouri Compromise Line, slavery, or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.

Yes, the right of Texans to keep slaves was part of the reason that they wanted to be able to split themselves into a cluster of smaller small-minded states. Oh, and by the way, if you look at a map, very little (possibly nothing) of what currently makes up Texas was due to be a free state.

(It's not clear whether "Fuck Texas" is the unofficial battle cry of the Oklahoma Sooners, but it's the only thing I've seen to recommend the Dustbowl State, for that matter.)

If Texans were to get truly up in arms, and the fringe elements were to try to secede, I think it would be a fascinating experiment, for the year or two it would last before they completely collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity. Admittedly, it would suck to be gay or non-white in the "Republic of Texas," and I'm not sure that the mis-educated kids would ever recover, but at least the rest of America could get to see the nightmare that unfettered far-right fringe elements would lead us to.

In fact, overall, it would suck to be a Texan (even more than it does now). But it would be a fascinating experiment.

Balls to the wall

Now, here I was, working on a tremendously hilarious post about the teabaggers across the country: it was going to be epic, using knee-slappers like "low-hanging fruit" and multiple variations of "ball" and "dangle." (You'll be relieved to know that I'd abandoned the phrase "getting to the crotch of the matter" early in development. Even I felt like I was reaching for that one...)

(Must... resist... temptation... to use the phrase "reach-around"...)

Unfortunately, life got in the way. My wife's last weekend in Sullivan and Gilbert butted up against her departure for a week on the road with Opera Unlimited (literally straight from the closing curtain to the highway, without time to take off her stage makeup); we're continuing with the big installation of Electronic Medical Records at work; and, of course, there's always Fallout 3.

(Yo, Bethesda Softworks! Can we get a release date on that next downloadable update? We're all waiting for the new level cap out here...)

Anyway, that whole sack of fun came and went, and most of the world moved on to other things. Except, of course, for the false outrage from the right, who wanted you to feel absolutely incensed that the Mainstream Media couldn't resist the easy jokes on the subject (unlike, say, us responsible bloggers...)

Which led a guy named "Mustang Bobby" to opine at Shakespeare's Sister (and apparently at Bark Bark Woof Woof):

Who Ordered the Petard?

Scott at Powerline is incensed that the folks at CNN and MSNBC were all giggle-snorting over the Tea Party rallies unfortunate choice of the verb "teabagging."

The star hosts of CNN and MSNBC news shows have notoriously derided the tea party demonstrations around the country with reference to the practice of teabagging (which I had never heard of before they brought it up). As John noted, both networks' "journalists" used the rallies as an occasion for childish sexual innuendoes -- in the case of MSNBC, the same obscene teabag "joke" was repeated 51 times in a 13-minute segment.

The Media Research Center detailed the teabagging references in an informative press release. The Huffington Post noted the references as well as more "jokes" in the same vein (including a video of Cooper's jape, over which David Gergen cluelessly chortles).

While sitting in for Keith Olbermann on April 15, MSNBC's David Shuster packed the teabagging puns into his report on the protests. Shuster is like a juvenile student who has commandeered the loudspeaker system at his high school to commit the prank of a lifetime. Maybe it was just a case of Olbermann's writers feeding Shuster the same good stuff they usually give to Olbermann.

Andrew Sullivan is giddy; he seems to think the phenomenon is a big ball of fun.

Well, of course you know why, Scott asserts. It's because Anderson Cooper is "widely reputed" to be gay, and -- gasp! -- Andrew Sullivan and Rachel Maddow are "of course public homosexuals." (Public homosexuals? I'm pretty sure they're homosexuals in private, too.) Scott doesn't say anything about David Shuster's sexual orientation, but he was just sitting in for Keith Olbermann, and you know how he is with that perfect hair, the trendy glasses, and those suits....

So it's all a big gay conspiracy. We queers somehow coerced these ignorant patsies into using the term "teabagging" -- including Scott, who claims he never heard of it -- just so they would come up with all these rallies so all of our gay correspondents could then make fun of them on national TV. It was all a part of the Radical Homosexual Agenda, Item 13, paragraph 2: "Trick the straights into making complete fools of themselves by using gay code words in public (see Lexicon in the Appendix)."

I'm sorry, but when you set yourself up as the Party of Fiscal and Moral Responsibility and then don't even bother to check with the nearest teenager -- straight or gay -- as to whether or not it might pass the laugh test, you deserve all the derision and mockery you get. Getting all huffy and pearl-clutching about being hoisted on your own petard makes you look even more like a clueless dork. And if what I've heard from one of my commenters at Bark Bark Woof Woof is true, the organizers of the rallies actually knew what "teabagging" meant and went ahead with it anyway.

But the term was chosen intentionally - generally it became an in-joke among the protestors which caught on quite easily (because let's face it, it's not really a very in-joke as everyone knows what it means) but it did have the effect of finally getting coverage in the mainstream media, because the protests had been oddly ignored in favor of much smaller protests against things like AIG.

Scott ends his tantrum by demanding that all those snotty queers apologize to the good citizens who are Google and Wikipedia-deprived, and he wants CNN and MSNBC to do something.

There is not only something funny going on here, there is a story here. These supposed journalists and their networks (or publisher, in Sullivan's case) have rather seriously insulted the citizens who colorfully took to the streets to air respectable views in a most civil fashion. If they had any decency, Cooper et al. would apologize for their vile reference to sexual practices in the context of ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Oh, so Scott thinks the people took to the streets to "air respectable views in a most civil fashion," does he? Like the posters with the signs calling President Obama "Chairman Maobama" and labeling him as Hitler, or making pointed references to his race? If that's "respectable," then why are they getting all upset about sly references to teabagging? Oh.... because it's gay.

Well, the folks at Powerline will get their chance to set the record straight, so to speak. I hear they're planning a huge series of anti-tax rallies over the Fourth of July weekend. And in keeping with the summertime theme, they're going to be festivals celebrating water sports.

Oh, and incidentally (just to prove that I'm educational and stuff), let me make two very important points.

1. The actual act of "teabagging" only involves the scrotal sack being placed in the mouth of the drunken, snoring frat boy. The shaft is not involved. (It's important to get these things right, folks.)

2. A "petard" (from the title) was an early shaped charge: a metal box of gunpowder with a fuse, set on a stick. The guy using it would run up, brace the stick on the ground or in a shallow trench, and run away; then the petard would blow up, hopefully breaching the gate. Of course, they'd do this with the fuse (or "match") already burning, and if the fuse went too fast, it would blow up before it was set, and the engineer placing it would be "hoisted on his own petard." (And etymologically, the word petard comes from the Middle French word for "fart.")

See? Educational.

Obama's Bow; Republican Arrows

OK, so the latest evidence of the impotent right-wing idiots trying to generate false outrage over Obama is in.

There's very little controversy over this one, as far as I'm concerned. I look at the video, and it's fairly obvious that Obama takes the Saudi king's hand and bows as he shakes it. He's trying to be a diplomat (and, judging by the results, succeeding), and he greets the Saudi king with respect. My question, of course, is "what's wrong with that?"

Well, first off, the Moonie Times had a slavering, bit-chewing editorial that read:

Barack takes a bow

In a shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate, President Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London last week.

Mr. Obama later said in Strasbourg, France, "We have to change our behavior in showing the Muslim world greater respect." Symbolism is important in world affairs. By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the U.S. president belittled the power and independence of the United States.

The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook hands with Saudi King Abdulaziz in February 1945. Granted, Mr. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but former President Dwight D. Eisenhower shook hands when he first met King Saud in January 1957. Mr. Obama's bow to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi King and not to any other royals remains unexplained.

Now, if you think about it, it makes sense that Obama would be polite to King Abdullah. I mean, the part of our economy that Bush didn’t sell to the Chinese, he sold to the Saudis. Obama probably didn’t want to be rude to our new landlord.

But really, I don't see a bow as showing fealty. It's a bow, f'Christ's sake! He bent at the waist. He didn't go to one knee, or kiss the man's ring or anything. I mean, after eight years of the Cowboy President talking with his mouth full and groping the German Chancellor, I realize that diplomacy and politeness have fallen by the wayside, but what does it hurt to make the man feel good about himself. It doesn't mean you have to fellate him, or even give him a damned thing that he wants. Hell, we're already throwing millions into alternate energy research, which, if it works, will cut the Saudi income enormously. Why shouldn't we talk nice to the man?

This whole situation was made worse when the White House spokesperson, , Robert Gibbs, back in America, apparently not up on the situation and not having a planned answer, tried to say that it wasn't a bow. The unhinged wingnuts jumped all over that as evidence that "and now Obama is lying about what he did!"

(Here's a clue, guys. Yeah, I'd say that Gibbs lied, in that he really didn't know what happened and just denied it in a knee-jerk "assume the best" reaction. But here's how you tell them apart: Obama is the slim black man; Gibbs is the puffy white guy. They aren't linked at the hip.)

But the right wing doesn't want to see it that way. Their end of the blogosphere was awash with people screaming things like "I don’t know bout you, but when did we bow to ANYONE. I’m a free man that will stand on my two feet until someone cuts them off or breaks them. What an embarrassment to us!" (You can practically see the spittle flying off the screen. I'm surprised he didn't type that in all-caps, or in red or something.)

One popular subset of these rants tried to link Obama's bow to King Abdullah with the long-debunked rumor that Obama's college tuition was paid for by a Saudi prince.

So I felt I should engage some of these hydrocephalic lunatics, and see if I could interject a little reality in their screeds. (As you can probably guess, for the most part, I failed.)

Rather than one extended sermon, which they wouldn't read anyway, I broke my concepts into bite-sized chunks for easy reading. I had three basic templates, which I'd cut-and-paste, then tailor to fit the individual blog. The first one was relatively simple:

Give me a break.

Bush kisses King Abdullah, and then walks hand-in-hand with him through the flowers. Bush showed more obeisance to the King than any previous President ever did. This is just unhinged wingnuts trying to manufacture outrage again.

If you want to check out Abdullah's obedient vassal, go here.

If (ok, when) they'd argue, it was usually with something to the effect that "I replied with this:

Bowing always means exactly the same in every culture. Unless it doesn't.

"Bowing to other human beings is frowned upon in Muslim cultures as all human beings are considered equal and bowing is only supposed to be done to God in Islam."

Oh, my God!!! Obama was insulting the King!

Wasn't it Freud that said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"? Maybe Obama was just bowing in an attempt to be polite.

Because it's not like he looked like he was being somebody's bitch or anything.

And finally, in a particularly useful response if I'm accused of being something horrific like a "leftist," I had the following:

Let's see what Fox News has to say about this.

But protocol experts told FOX News that no rule exists on presidents bowing.

"To my knowledge, there is no rule at all," said Lloyd Hand who was chief of protocol for President Lyndon Johnson. "Protocol is 95 percent common sense judgment and 5 percent specific rules and that has nothing to do with bowing."

Hand said he doesn't believe Obama's stoop qualifies as a bow.

"American protocol favors the extension of warm gracious hospitality and I put what he did in that context," he said.

But, hey, you keep right on trying to make something important out of a small gesture of diplomatic civility.

That last one was especially useful in answering the one guy who informed me that he wasn't impressed by the "lefty media" I provided. (Youtube is "leftist"? Who knew?)

(In case you're curious, the other conversations not mentioned elsewhere in this post can be found here, here, here and here.)

The reaction was mixed of course. Some of them tried to argue; some just sat in sullen silence. My favorite, though, was actually a blog that refused to print my response. This one had the fascinating blog title of "Loose Lips." Not real loose, though: only four posts in the last year; this guy makes my posting rate look prolific. He was so off the rails that I would have thought it was a joke if I'd come across it without having read the rest of these screeds.

This one is for all you people who are convinced that our president is Black...(and he's not).

President Obama is caught bowing to the Saudi King during a visit to Saudia Arabia. Fist off, the visit was kept secret, then when it was discovered, it was covered up by saying it's purpose was soley to visit the troops. Then why is he visiting with the king?
Secondly, a bow in Saudia Arabia is done only from persons of lesser status, or not worthy of the king...so why is Obama bowing? He is president of the United States..that is comparable to King of Saudia Arabia...He shouldn't be bowing...but in Muslim beliefs, it is disrespectful to not bow to a king or noble.
And you thought you voted a black president...Americans got caught up in color and not facts...we voted in a Muslim...
He swore in on the Quran for gosh sakes..and he is supposted to be this devout chrisian...explain that!
And now he's bowing to Saudi Kings, promising middle eastern countries that we will never be at war with them and bashing America and our government during the visit to Great Britian...America, What have we done?

Let's ignore little facts like, well, Barack Obama is rather noticeably black, and, as I pointed out, it's actually considered rude to bow to a Muslim. We'll also ignore the blatant misrepresentations of what he said, the misspellings and the fascinating punctuation style. I think that the best part of this post was the title, something I pointed out to him in my ignored response. His brilliant title, unchanged as of this writing:

Obama Finally admits to his Muslin Heritage

Which also explains why this guy thinks our president isn't black. Apparently, Obama's father wasn't Kenyan; he was a piece of cloth.

Taking the hat off the little man

There are two extremes in the circumcision debate - the ardent religious person who believes that a circumcision is a symbol of submission to G-d, and it's also a metaphor for Man's purpose to make the world a better place; and the equally ardent human rights proponent, who sees circumcision as an unnecessary, barbaric sexual mutilation of innocent children.

I had initially thought to begin by saying that there are two schools of thought on the matter, but there are a thousand shades of gray between the black and white ends of the penile spectrum: there's the devout Jew who understands the danger of elective surgery, even a surgery as minor as this; there's the man who is himself circumcised, who doesn't understand (and is often incurious to know) what would be entailed in raising a child with an intact foreskin; there is the person who doesn't find the penis looming large in his thoughts, and who just doesn't care one way or another.

Well, there are some additional factors to consider on the subject. First, you should remember that any surgery has risks (and some risks are worse than others).

(On that subject, our pediatricians were recently told by the Patient Advocate that they needed to be more "understanding" of people's beliefs: she'd received a complaint from one set of parents, who felt that the pediatrician was trying to talk them out of circumcising their son. As none of the doctors had done so, the general consensus was that the parents were reacting badly to the doctor explaining the possible risks involved with the procedure - something that the doctors are required by law to explain.)

But as it turns out, studies are now saying that circumcision protects against the human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes, genital warts, and, according to the latest studies out of Africa, it may even make you around 50% less likely to become infected with AIDS.

(On the opposing side to that argument, of course, is the fact that you can also effectively protect your newborn from trench foot by chopping off his toes. A cost-benefit analysis gets a little tricky on this subject.)

Personally, I like this take on the subject, courtesy of one M. LeBlanc, writing on a blog calling itself Bitch PhD:

I immediately expect an outcry from every righteous, god-fearing person in the country, and all their Republican leaders, that we halt circumcision of male infants immediately. We simply can not encourage young boys, teenagers and men, to be promiscuous sluts by reducing the likelihood that they will get infected as a result of having that sex.

I expect a ban on circumcision from Congress, and a special restriction on anesthesia by the FDA that it can not be used in a circumcision. I expect mandatory counseling for all parents-to-be on the dangers of circumcising young boys lest they grow up to think that they can have sex without consequences. I expect a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before any circumcision. I expect South Dakota and Texas to immediately introduce legislation against late-term circumcision. Even if you wisely didn't have your infant son circumcised, you can not have him get the surgery at a later date lest he become a slutty whore.

The chastity and purity of our young boys is already threatened enough, what with the FDA considering approving the HPV vaccine for boys, too. Who will think of the rowdy Davids and Johns and Jeremies and their precious sanctity as vessels of God's special plan for sexuality?

But anyway, aside from any possible health benefits, what reason remains for circumcision? To be honest, all I can come up with are Tradition and Religion.

Now, tradition is easy to do away with. There's an old (and possibly overused) definition of tradition as "the art of making the same mistake over and over." But if someone really finds the argument "well, it was good enough for my father, and his father before him..." to be compelling, you probably can't argue with them. The inbreeding has spread too deep.

The "religion" argument is a little harder to get around, though. Many (but not all) of our Hebrew friends find circumcision to be an important part of their culture: it was a mark that set Jews apart from the other cultures around them, and, after all, it was commanded by God.

No, really. It's right there in the Bible. Genesis 17:10-14 (NIV - in fact, all the rest of the Bible quotes will be from the New International Version [NIV]).

Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

That seems pretty straightforward. Why, then, are the Christians not required to chop the head off the one-eyed serpent?

To be honest, that's where you get into some strange theological ground. First, obviously, the term "the people of Abraham" refers to the Jewish people. And apparently, the Christians don't want to be descended from the people blessed by God. They want to come from the bastards, reprobates and sinners from those other kingdoms.

But in fact, Jesus specifically told people that He wasn't there to change the Hebrew laws. In Matthew 5:17-18, He came right out and said "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled."

Of course, later in Matthew (15:11), he contradicted himself, by saying that you don't have to follow the kosher dietary laws. So apparently, there are neither jots nor tittles in food. Who knew?

But that's just the food rules. Jesus liked a good pork chop, but he never said that you should ignore the rest of the rules that God laid down for mankind. It wasn't until later, after he'd been nailed to a tree, that his followers decided to play fast and loose with the penis.

In Acts 15, Paul argues against Gentiles being required to get snipped. And Paul, if you remember, never met Jesus — he claimed to have talked to the ghost of Jesus, but never met him while Jesus was alive (Acts 9). So he came into it late, and like most born-agains, he became all Christainier-than-thou.

Technically, what actually happened was this:

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. (Acts 15:1-2)

Then they start talking, and Peter argued "why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?" (15:10), and James read them some Scripture (Scripture that, oddly enough, never made it into the Old Testament) and said that "we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God." (15:19)

But ironically, Peter didn't talk about the penis. What he then listed off, as the rules that non-Jewish Christians should follow, doesn't mention the hatless willy at all.

"Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." (15:20-21)

And the elders dutifully wrote this all down and mailed it off, again not talking about chopping the chicken: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." (15:28-29)

The rest of them didn't seem to care about the cock. The only person who spent a a lot of time ruminating on the man-root was Paul:

"Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you." (Galatians 2:3-5)

Later in that same book, Paul wrote:

if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law... For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:2-3, 6)

And, you know, the more you read the New Testament, the more that you get the feeling that Paul was a self-important dick (so to speak). He was all about telling people what to do — the Elders hadn't even mentioned the cock, but here Paul is, going on and on about it. He was fixated on the penis: 1 Corinthians, several times in Romans, Phillipians, over and over. He just couldn't get other men's hard, throbbing rods out of his mind.

It was Paul, not Jesus, who decided on the phallic rules; apparently, the penis was very important to him. His basic rule was, if you had already been circumcised, stay that way; if not, don't take a knife and start carving the wood.

Of course, if you're following Jesus, and Jesus was a Jew and a descendant of Abraham, shouldn't you then try to follow the same rules as He did? After all, Jesus was circumcised (in Luke 2:21-39, if you're interested). And you want to be like Jesus, right?

In fact, Jesus never really mentions circumcision at all - except one time, in John 7:21-24. But that was more in context with telling people that they should be more flexible. (Basically, He explained how you have to circumcise a baby even if it's on the Sabbath, when you aren't supposed to do work. So some things are OK on the Sabbath - like healing the sick. In fact, He was arguing that the people shouldn't kill Him. It's rough, being the Christ...)

Overall, you have to decide whether you're a Christian or a Paulian, I guess. And if you're a Christian, then maybe God really does want to protect you from STD's, and that's why circumcision helps with that.

So, what have we learned today? Well, really, one of two things. Either God wants you to have sex, but He also wants you to whittle away at your willy.

Or, possibly, we've learned that eventually, every religion just turns into people making up rules to do what they want to do - like Paul, who wanted to have a choice in flavors of cock.

Basically (I know, this is a revolutionary idea), you should make up your own mind. But remember, ripping off the foreskin may provide a little protection from some STD's. But a condom provides a lot of protection against most of them.

Your choice.

We're Communicating

My son just turned 19 about six weeks ago. Recently, I was dropping him off at the Kimo Theater (where, if you're interested, Christopher - my son, in case you aren't smart enough to deal with things like "context" - is a supernumerary in Lucia di Lammermoor, a fact which I throw in because, like much of life, this sentence isn't complex enough; plus, I'm reasonably proud of the boy, even if he is just a halberd carrier, a task which he performs masterfully, along with his duties as a sword carrier and occasionally a faggot carrier - which isn't as dirty as you make it sound - he is not, incidentally, a spear carrier, because there are no spears to be found in this production, which is probably for the best, since he and his two companions successfully make up the single worst set of guards in the world, and god only knows what they'd do with a set of spears)...

Where was I? Crap, I hate it when that happens...

Right, Walgreen's. OK, technically, I hadn't made it to Walgreen's before my train of thought was derailed by a Donizetti opera laying on the tracks, but that's where we'd been headed. We were in a rush, but I needed a couple of things, and because there was a small liquor section attached, I could get the bottle of brandy for my lovely wife at the same time. It was convenient.

Or so I thought.

We picked up a random collection of stuff; my son got a Coke, I got some makeup for the wife and a small bag of potato chips, if I recall correctly. And a bottle of brandy. We walked up to the counter, talking about various subjects (mostly the video game Fallout 3, but more on that later), and I put all the stuff on the counter, and obligingly had my driver's license ready for the tattooed mook behind the counter to see.

Said mook's reaction was to look at me, then look pointedly at Chris, and then say "I'm gonna have to see his ID, too."

I smiled my most engaging smile, considered batting my eyes in the off chance he was gay, and explained calmly "Well, you could, but it wouldn't do any good. He's my son."

"I'm still gonna have to see his ID."

I didn't see where this was likely to end well, but Christopher obligingly handed over his ID, whereupon the mook started typing his birthdate into the cash register.

Ever the optimist, I tried explaining again: "That won't do any good. He's 19. You can probably figure that out by the way that the birthdate says '1990'."

"Yeah, but he's in my department."

"Oh, is that the problem? Chris, go stand by the door."

It was his turn to try and explain things. "No, I already saw you together."

I wasn't particularly calm any more, because stupidity pisses me off. But I don't think it showed in my voice. "That would be because I'm driving him."

"Yeah, but that's the policy. Next time you should let him walk around the store over there." He waved in the general direction of cosmetics and gel insoles, where I had a fleeting vision of a milling crowd of teenagers waiting for Dad to buy a six-pack.

"So you're saying that because I didn't hide the fact that I have offspring, I can't buy this brandy."

"Yeah, that's the policy."

"That's a goddamned stupid policy."

It's a shame that I didn't have time to waste, because I would have quite cheerfully called over the manager and had him explain to me which law was being broken by the fact that my son was within ten feet when I bought a bottle of E&J (not, incidentally, the first drink of choice for the average teenager).

I hadn't seen any signs saying "no children past this point." (Not that a 6'3", 220 pound hairy behemoth like my baby boy really qualifies as a "child," but that would at least have stopped us). On top of which, the mook in question hadn't troubled himself to check Christopher's ID as we wandered past him; he just stared at us, cow-like, over the heads of his complete and utter lack of customers.

But this aforementioned goddamned stupid policy raises a few questions. For example, once a woman isn't breastfeeding any more, she can drink alcohol without endangering her precious little snowflake. But that particular snowflake probably shouldn't be wandering the store alone while Mama grabs a fifth of Jack (although God knows some do). So how does this goddamned stupid policy address this conundrum? Can Mama buy her perfectly legal adult beverage with a toddler in tow? Is there some magical cut-off where the child isn't going to burst into flame when their parent's hand brushes a wine bottle?

I realize the purpose of the goddamned stupid policy - they have to make sure that underaged kids aren't drinking alcohol. But there's no law that says that I can't buy alcohol just because I had the bad fortune to reproduce.

No laws would have been broken if I'd walked out of there with a legally-purchased bottle of brandy. And I would be happy to be hauled away in handcuffs if the cops had found me and my son swigging big gulps of a distilled amber beverage produced from wine; essentially, I was penalized because this store (or perhaps just this particular mook) felt that he was capable of reading the future.

Why does Walgreen's feel that, in a recession, that they don't want my business?
__________

So that was (with a few additional comments) the customer comment I just submitted at walgreens.com. The rest of this post is a comment I just sent to a software company. (OK, game company. Sue me.) This part probably won't be real interesting unless you're playing the game (and maybe not even then). I'll update this post (or make a second one) if I get a decent response to either email.
__________

Dear Bethesda Softworks,

I’d like to thank you for revitalizing one of my favorite videogames of all time, the Fallout franchise. It has a simple, relatively intuitive interface; hours of playable scenarios (plus available sandboxing); and a weirdly beautiful playing environment. Plus, the downloadable content has so far been excellent.

I would like to suggest a fourth download pack, though. The most important part of this would be a larger music library; there are thousands of hours of usable, free (no longer under copyright) music available in record stores around the country, and you could only find twenty songs? Even limiting yourself to pre-50s jazz/pop shouldn’t restrict you too much. The Library of Congress even has an on-line database of music (although I’m not sure how extensive it is, to be honest).

And really, how much would it cost you? Some time spent searching for music, a lawyer verifying that your minimum-wage intern properly checked copyright on the songs, and you’re done. You could even link it to a quest, where the player has to locate a cache of pre-war music for Three Dog.

A second addition that would improve the game would be a larger collection of randomized stuff to find – nothing major, but with the amount of stuff you can pick up, you get a lot of repetition in that area, too. The biggest expense here would be the design of the images. A few suggestions off the top of my head (offered, like everything in this email, free of charge):

- Metal flashlight (you could even make it a minor melee weapon, with a slightly redesigned Pip-boy light function)
- 1 gallon can of fuel alcohol (which could blow up like a fire extinguisher if shot)
- Chris Avellone Brand Dancewear (tights and a fringed leather vest - value of 1 as armor, but comes in multiple neon colors)

More food:
- Cap’n Scurvy Orange slices (a quick redesign of Dandy Boy apples, maybe)
- Dried fruit
- Cheezy Poofs (hey, they already used the name in Fallout 2)
- Base a few brand names off previous Fallout characters (Patrick the Celt could have marketed “Patrick’s Best Haggis,” for example)
- All the various food/drink items from previous Fallouts (the lumpy-apple looking “fruit”, Cherry and Classic Nuka-Cola, Afterburner Gum, etc – do you hold the rights to all the previous Fallouts?)

What happened, for that matter, to all the Jimmy Hats?

Homemade hooch: if you wanted, give each one a slight chance that it causes a few points of damage from a bad batch. Probably worth half or less the value of “regular” booze – although I’d say that moonshine would be worth more than vodka, just for giggles
- Homemade wine
- Bathtub gin
- Moonshine

Cosmetics seem to be left out entirely
- Miss Phyllis Brand Bobby Pins (adds 10 to your bobby pin collection)
- Comb
- Hairbrush
- Curling iron
- Various makeup items (can be generically labeled “makeup kit” – might get you a better reaction from females if you give it to them – possibly even female ghouls)

There’s got to be more mechanical/electrical bits that you can sell than conductors and sensor modules (OK, you have more than that already available, but still…)
- Power cords
- Electrical wire
- Fuses
- Burned-out fuses (worth almost nothing, if not less)
- Surge suppressor (probably important, with the irregular energy supplies available)

Tools:
- Soldering iron
- Pipe wrench (also usable a club; much like a tire iron, only heavier)
- Needle-nosed pliers
- Socket set

The possibilities are endless.

Oh, and I've got to say this. I realize that ammo is weightless for gameplay purposes, but Mini-Nukes? Really? Between the fissionable material and the shielding, these things should really NOT be weightless.

Maybe that's just me.

Saving Money in an Economic Downturn

I'm sure you've noticed by now, our economy has been healthier. We aren't totally screwed yet, but things have been better; I am noticing a lack of lubricant on the store shelves.

What can we do in this time of crisis? Well, we can all stick together, for one thing: the closer you are to your neighbor, the easier it will be to slash their throats when the time comes to eat them.

Well, learning to cook and to sew are both ways to save money. Sadly, they're also skills that have fallen by the wayside. (Learning to sew also takes in initial start-up cost, and takes up both time from your schedule and room in your living space. So if either of those is at a premium, sewing may not be for you.

(Incidentally, if you do buy new clothes, check the label. If it has special washing instructions, that should, by itself, be a reason to reconsider buying it: it's going to cost more in the long run.)

Cooking isn't actually that difficult, but it scares some people. (Best recommendation: watch Good Eats on the Food Network for a while. It's interesting, relatively funny, and you'll learn something at the same time.)

Eating healthy will also help you in the long run: those pesky medical bills can really eat into your wallet.

Some things just don't save you any money at all. I take the bus to work. For the last part of last week, I passed a sign advertising a yard sale (strange by itself, since it pointed into a group of apartments, but never mind). The sign was attached to the outside of a cardboard box (fairly common). But to weigh down the box, you know what they'd used? Not rocks or bricks - that would have been too ordinary.

There were three quart-sized jars of applesauce.

Sometimes, you need to give the kids very specific instructions before you turn them loose to do something for you.

(By the way, if you're shopping at Walmart, remember that, while you may be saving money in the short run, but most of your cash is leaving the country. So in the long run, you're hurting the economy. Things aren't going to get better over here anytime soon. But the people of China thank you. (OK, the people in charge in China thank you. Nobody else is really making more than slave wages. But, hey, it's your money. Do what you want.)

But really, anybody can cook. And if you do it for a while, you eventually get to the point where other people will eat it, too.

Now, let's look at how you can eat decent food, and still save money. First, let's go steal a recipe. We're going to a site called "bakespace.com," where we find:

Beef Stroganoff With Brandy

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 pounds beef tenderloin, trimmed, cut in 3 inch x 1 inch x 1/4 inch strips
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
16 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 cup low sodium beef broth
1 1/2 cup low fat sour cream
1/2 cup brandy
6 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced

In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil over high heat.
Brown the beef for 2 minutes, transfer to a warm platter, and season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.
Melt the butter in the skillet over moderate heat.
Add the onions and garlic and saute for 2 minutes or until onions are tender, then stir in the mushrooms, cover and cook for 3 minutes.
Uncover and stir in the remaining salt and pepper, and add the beef broth.
Bring to a boil, stirring to scrape up any browned bits, and boil, uncovered for 2 minutes.
Remove the skillet from the heat and whisk in the sour cream until smooth.
Stir in the beef and any juices that have collected on the platter.
Add brandy and place over low heat and stir constantly just until heated through (don't let the sauce boil).
Turn heat off and place Stroganoff in a serving dish and sprinkle with parsley.
Serve over whole grain pasta cooked al dente.

Now, let's break that down.

olive oil - OK, let's be real. You're frying meat in oil. And then it's going into a cream sauce. You aren't going to notice if the olive oil is changed with canola oil.

beef tenderloin - Oh, shut the hell up. Go look at the price per pound, and tell me how quickly you're going to change to a lesser cut. Now, the more fat you see on a cut of meat, the less of it you really want to buy for anything except stew. In fact, any part of the meat that isn't openly red and meaty, you only want it for stew. Or braising. Basically, any long, slow cooking method, where the non-meat stuff has a chance to melt and be absorbed into the food.

brandy - now, again, it's going into a cream sauce. The brandy is there because the meat (and some of the herbs) have some flavor compounds that dissolve best in alcohol, and not water. (Actually, tomatoes have more of those compounds, but this recipe doesn't have any of those, so go figure.) You don't have to use your best brandy. Trust me on that.

And as for mushrooms, you don't have to buy the best ones, either. White button mushrooms do just as well as portobello mushrooms (unless you're my wife, but she has taste buds and stuff).

Serve over whole grain pasta cooked al dente - OK, the standard is actually egg noodles, but serve on whatever pasta you like.

Now, have we cut the price enough?

OK then, here's a cheaper version. Replace the beef with ground beef, and everything else with a can of cream of mushroom soup (made with half the liquid). Dump it over some cooked noodles, drained. (If you really want to save money, serve it over ramen noodles, cooked without the flavor packet. (You might be able to use the flavor packet if it's beef ramen. And then you wouldn't need to add salt, either.)

While it isn't nearly as good (and it definitely doesn't have a whole lot of health benefits), it costs about a 27 cents a serving.

Oh, look. Another jackass

Well, I seem to have made another friend.

I went wandering on the Dark Side again this week, and found a guy who felt he knew what he was talking about. So I kicked him.

Here's what he wrote:

Obama Reverses Himself On Embryonic Stem cells..After Two Days!

President Obama, in a highly publicized bit of political theater signed an executive order last Monday, March 9th reversing a 2001 executive order that President Bush had signed that allowed federal funds for research involving embryonic stem cell lines that was already in progress using embryos that had already been destroyed, but denying federal funding for new research that required the killing of any additional embryos.

Since the current occupant of the White House is an avid fan of abortion, even to the point of mandating that babies who survive an abortion be allowed to die of neglect, this was hardly a shocker.

But then, a mere two days later came the old switcheroo, buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday.

Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it's been part of the annual funding for the Department of Health and Human Services for over a decade, and explicitly prohibits funding for "(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

It not only prohibits the government from providing tax dollars to support research that kills or risks injury to human embryos, it specifically mandates an all-inclusive definition of “human embryo” that encompasses any human life even if created in a laboratory through cloning, in vitro fertilization or any other technology.

Sooo..what is President Barry Zero up to?

I see three possibilities: one, he simply didn't realize that the Dickey-Wicker Amendment was part of what he was signing; two, this was a window to allow well-connected `friends of Obama' to dump some stock they held (or short it) in companies specializing in embryonic stem cell research at a profit after it was artificially pumped up by the highly publicized White House announcement and make a tidy profit; or three he's planning an attack on Dickey-Wicker in Congress.

As a matter of fact, there's nothing to stop the any two of these from being true.

For the record, embryonic stem cell research has been almost entirely a waste of time, although a great deal of significant and valuable discoveries have been made using ADULT stem cells. The embryonic stem cells tend to mutate quickly and be unstable, which is why this research has mainly been a means to funnel government grants and taxpayer funds at certain scientists and companies specializing in the area. In states like California, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York, the treasure trove runs into the billions.It's almost as lucrative as global warming.

So, in the spirit of Truth, Justice and the American Way, I felt that I should set him straight.

Well, I guess it's good to see that you have managed to be completely ignorant on the subject that you are expounding on. I suppose that's a good thing.

The Dickey-Wicker amendment has been in every budget since 1996, and has no effect on stem-cell research.

To start with, Dickey-Wicker banned funding only on reseach conducted on embryos themselves. While this includes the process of creating stem cell lines for further research (since the stem cells are taken out of an unused, non-implanted IVF embryo), but it does not prohibit the use of stem cells themselves, only the embryos they were taken from.

See, what you remain blithely ignorant of is the fact that a stem-cell "line" is a continuously-maintained collection of cells in laboratory flasks, which are transfered to new flasks as they divide and grow. One of the unique properties of stem cells is that they can be grown permanently in this way, unlike most other body tissues.

The line is created by taking stem cells out of an embryo, but that only has to be done once for each new line; after that, it's just the individual cells themselves that are grown - they do not form embryos, and could not be implanted to create a pregnancy, while they are growing in the culture medium. "Stem-cell research" uses these separated cells, not developing embryos.

Dickey-Wicker has always been interpreted as permitting funding for stem-cell research, but not for the creation of new lines of cells. Scientists accommodated this by using private funding to generate cell lines, and federal funding for research on the cells. Bush not only banned that, but imposed restrictions on the usage of existing cell lines that choked off vast amounts of ongoing research.

We'll ignore your potentially libelous statements regarding allowing "well-connected 'friends of Obama' to dump some stock they held (or short it) in companies specializing in embryonic stem cell research at a profit" - see, research companies aren't set up, and their stock made public, overnight. But we can tell that you aren't a fan of Barack Obama, so we'll assume that God will judge you for your lies, and we won't.

Instead, let's look at the following fascinating paragraph:

For the record, embryonic stem cell research has been almost entirely a waste of time, although a great deal of significant and valuable discoveries have been made using ADULT stem cells. The embryonic stem cells tend to mutate quickly and be unstable, which is why this research has mainly been a means to funnel government grants and taxpayer funds at certain scientists and companies specializing in the area."

Wow. I didn't know that you could be that wrong, that many times, in only 50 words.

Let's see - "embryonic stem cell research has been almost entirely a waste of time" - gee, I dunno, since Bush banned research except in 22 lines (many of which are played out, and sometimes contaminated), do you think that might have had an effect on the amount of research that's been done successfully?

(On the other hand, three days after Obama was sworn in, On January 23, 2009, phase I clinical trials for transplantation of an embryonic-derived cell population into spinal cord-injured individuals received FDA approval, making it the world's first human-embryonic-stem-cell human trial. The results of initial experiments suggest an improvement in locomotor recovery in spinal cord injuries after a 7-day delayed transplantation of human embryonic stem cells that were pushed towards an oligodendrocytic lineage. So, despite the anti-science attitudes of the former Bush White House, science marches on.)

"The embryonic stem cells tend to mutate quickly and be unstable" - well, no, not so much. Look at my description above, regarding stem cell lines. The fact that they don't mutate and become unstable is the very reason that the research is viable, you moron.

So, let's see. You have no idea about the federal budget process, and you don't know anything about stem-cell research that you don't read in biased pamphlets cranked out by medical Luddites. But here you are, expounding on both subjects, as if you had a clue (which, clearly, you don't).

Keep up the good work, OK?

Despite the fact that he moderates his board, that comment made it through. Followed by a response.

Fascinating.

First of all, the failures involved with embryonic stem cells have been pretty well documented.

Try here, here, here, here... as a matter of fact, when you google 'failure of embryonic stem cell research' you get about 350,000 hits.

The link you provided is an article of yet another experiment, which might succeed..or fail like the others have. On the other hand, the use of ADULT stem cells has a fairly good track record of success.

And obviously the scientist quoted in the article hated Bush and loves Obama..because the money tap has been turned back on!

We have a saying here in Joshua's Army...don't BS the blog.It never works.

Likewise, your expounding on Dickey-Wicker, which clearly disallows the use of federal funds for the destruction of embryos. Click on the link in the article, read it carefully and take notes.

As for the possibilities of why the Chosen One reversed himself undercover, I think my three possibilites are perfectly valid based on common sense and the way this administration has conducted itself so far. Hey, it's the Chicago way..on a national level.

Oh, and look up the definition of libel sometime. Unfortunately, your legal knowledge is apparently on a par with your scientific knowledge.

Based on a quick look at your profile, your blog and your comment, we know a couple of things..you hate Christians and the Bible, are an Obamabot, suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome (admittedly, not my favorite president, but I never got foaming-at-the-mouth about it), are retired and so bored that your self-confessed hobby is trolling blogs you deem to be 'Christian' and 'Right wing.'

Seems pathetic to me, especially if this is the best you can do.

I suggest you find another blog to troll for your enjoyment. Joshuapundit might actually challenge your deeply held beliefs and I have a feeling that might be uncomfortable for you.

And if you wish to be taken seriously , I'd suggest you avoid the name calling and bitchery in the future. It just makes you look like an idiot without any class whatsoever. And who wants that, eh?

Oh, and one last thing BTW..in spite of the fact we disagree and your attempt to troll the board is pretty rank, thanks for your service to our beloved Republic.
( I assume your telling the truth about that)

We're all able to mouth off because guys like you were willing to pick up the rifle, and I respect that, if nothing else.It's why I spent the time and electrons responding to you that I did.

Regards,
Rob

But see, the problem is that Rob is intellectually dishonest. Because if he doesn't have an answer, he suppresses the question. I put in a followup, and he refused to let it see daylight.

Obviously, I should have kept a copy. But I think I can recreate it. (To be honest, the response I gave him was, while terse, relatively polite. If he thinks he can shut me up, the gloves are off. Not that the condition of my hands really matters at this point, but still. It's the principle of the thing.)

Rob,

Gee, where do I start?

Well, first of all, most of the links you gave for "stem cell failures" lead to "lifenews.com," which lists their mission statement as "LifeNews.com is an independent news agency specifically devoted to reporting news that affects the pro-life community... The topics covered by LifeNews.com include abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, bioethics issues such as human cloning and stem cell research, campaigns and elections, and legal and legislative issues."

Got enough agenda there, Butch?

You know, it's strange. Among the issues mentioned there, I don't see "death penalty." Isn't death... like, the antithesis of life? You'd think they'd be there on the front lines opposing it, wouldn't you? Odd.

as a matter of fact, when you google 'failure of embryonic stem cell research' you get about 350,000 hits.

Yeah, and you google any three unrelated words, you end up with hundreds of thousands of hits. Try "cheese gun swan" - 524,000 hits. With something as controversial as stem cell research, I'm surprised you only got 350,000 results.

On top of which, since George Bush banned federal funding of anything involving embryonic stem cells in 2001, and the research only got started in 1998, I think we can all see why there have been limited successes with it, if we're honest with it. Can't we?

We have a saying here in Joshua's Army...don't BS the blog.It never works.

Why would that be, Rob? Because like attracts like? Because it would be like calling the ocean "damp"?

Likewise, your expounding on Dickey-Wicker, which clearly disallows the use of federal funds for the destruction of embryos. Click on the link in the article, read it carefully and take notes.

Well, I could suggest that you do the same yourself. Or perhaps, do a little research yourself. Or would that be asking too much?

In January of 1999, Harriet Rabb, the top lawyer at the Department of Health and Human Services, released a legal opinion that would set the course for Clinton Administration policy. Federal funds, obviously, could not be used to derive stem cell lines (because derivation involves embryo destruction). However, she concluded that because human embryonic stem cells "are not a human embryo within the statutory definition," the Dickey-Wicker Amendment does not apply to them.

But reality isn't your strong point, is it, Rob?

Oh, and look up the definition of libel sometime. Unfortunately, your legal knowledge is apparently on a par with your scientific knowledge.

Golly, gee. How about Stanford University? Would their definition be good enough for you?

Libel involves the publishing of a falsehood that harms someone.

Slander is the same doctrine applied to the spoken word. Collectively, they are referred to as defamation. Both fall under the jurisdiction of individual states, which usually require the falsehood to be intentional.

So there we go. You're also ignorant on the law and/or the English language. Any other subjects you want to expound on?

Based on a quick look at your profile, your blog and your comment, we know a couple of things

Oh, this ought to be good...

you hate Christians and the Bible

Uh, no. Obviously, I've read the Bible several times. It's hypocrites that get under my skin. As you, personally, should be able to tell...

(you) are an Obamabot

No, sorry. He's doing a good job, and God knows he's infinitely better than his predecessor, but I don't agree with everything he does. For example, why (in the words of Nancy Pelosi) is "impeachment... off the table"?

(you) suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome (admittedly, not my favorite president, but I never got foaming-at-the-mouth about it)

OK, one time I tried to talk about him while I was brushing my teeth, but that hardly qualifies, does it?

I wouldn't call it "foaming at the mouth," but when an intellectually untalented man consistently lies to the American people, destroys the economy, takes us to war for no reason, and supports the torture of prisoners (among dozens of other charges), what's to like about the man?

Speaking of “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” though, let’s look at a few of your statements (just in this webpage – no need to mine the rest of your blog. That would be too easy):

“since the current occupant of the White House is an avid fan of abortion…”

“Sooo..what is President Barry Zero up to?”

“…this was a window to allow well-connected `friends of Obama' to dump some stock they held (or short it) in companies specializing in embryonic stem cell research at a profit after it was artificially pumped up by the highly publicized White House announcement and make a tidy profit…”

“…the Chosen One…”

“…Obamabot…”

I wonder. Has the phrase “Obama Derangement Syndrome” been taken yet?

(Actually, yes it has. It even appears in a National Review article, so I’ll presume you’ve seen the term. Apparently, though, you’re blind to the warning signs…)

are retired and so bored that your self-confessed hobby is trolling blogs you deem to be 'Christian' and 'Right wing.'

Ah, no. If you'd actually been reading, you'd have noticed that my current hobby is Fallout 3. (Incidentally, the Experimental MIRV? Not worth the weight to carry it. And why do Mini Nukes not weigh anything? I mean, I understand that ammo is weight-free. But nuclear weapons?)

Joshuapundit might actually challenge your deeply held beliefs and I have a feeling that might be uncomfortable for you.

You certainly haven't managed that so far.

And if you wish to be taken seriously , I'd suggest you avoid the name calling and bitchery in the future. It just makes you look like an idiot without any class whatsoever. And who wants that, eh?

Well, in the words of that great philosopher Popeye T. Sailor, "I yam what I yam."

On the other hand, if you want to be taken seriously, perhaps you could make an effort to get at least one fact right. You know, just for the heck of it.

So, greetings from the fact-based community. As ever, I remain, the

Nameless Cynic

See? It's important to make new friends.

Update: (3/21/09) I seem to be banned from his blog. He got all cranky with me, called me a "libtard," and now he doesn't return my calls, he never writes, and we haven't been palling around in the lunchroom like we used to.

I'm so hurt that he would leave me like this. I don't know how I'll get through the day.

Now, about that "evolution" argument...

OK, so I got lazy and took last week off. It's true. I've been involved in a couple of on-line arguments, and I've become addicted to an evil, destructive drug known as "Fallout 3." (Trust me, it's better than crack, and you don't have that whole pesky "you're under arrest" thing to worry about...)

Well, I was casting about for a new point to annoy people with, and realized that a guy named Brian Byrne made the point much better than I ever could.

(OK, maybe not "better," but at least "more succinctly." I mean, really, I have this unfortunate habit of rambling on for paragraphs at a time, simply because I'm in love with the sound of my own voice. I should be ashamed. I'm not, of course. But I should be.)

So I'm going to be lazy this week, too, and reprint his entire entry, fully attributed, of course.

The Holocaust AND Darwin in the Same Week?!?

The Vatican chipped a wee bit from the religious ignorance boulder yesterday when they acknowledged that Darwin was right about that whole evolution thing. In doing so, they officially gave the kiss-off to Intelligent Design, more or less dismissing it out of hand, as any thinking person has already done.

I'm not Catholic, and I don't want to fall into the trap of gushing on and on about how something I'm not now, nor have ever been a part of, is sooooo much better than what's closer at hand. That said, it strikes me as particularly powerful, the degree to which the Vatican seems to have actual scholars actually thinking about these issues, as opposed to the American fundamentalist Protestant approach of creating a think tank to generate misinformation that flies directly in the face of painfully obvious science.

Granted, the Vatican’s scholarship only goes so far in the face of their continued anti-straight-male rights positions, and I also seem to remember something about a coverup and some kids? Something. Still, let’s give them credit for cracking a book.

Another important point that’s brought up in the article:

Professor [Marc Leclerc, who teaches natural philosophy at the Gregorian University] said that too many opponents of Darwin – above all Creationists – had mistakenly claimed that his theories were "totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality," as did proponents of Intelligent Design.

I would say I’m baffled by the fact that nobody in the American Taliban has stood up and acknowledged this idea (really, could all-powerful God have NOT created things He knew would evolve?), but doing so would remove a hugely popular bludgeon from their arsenal in the ongoing, completely fabricated culture war. The idea that Christian ideals and ideas are being persecuted by a callous Liberal Elite Establishment is key to keeping the wedge between fundamentalists and everyone else firmly in place. They keep their people feeling alienated, their alienation unifies them, and they flock to the polls when another W shows up on election day.

Does God really hate abortion?

If you ask the standard pro-lifer "does the Bible oppose abortion?" their first answer will be "Of course it does! All life is sacred!" It's when you try to pin them down regarding where, exactly, the Bible says this that they start to get squirrelly. For all of the people who are willing to tell me that I'm "twisting Scripture" and taking things out of context for saying that homosexuality isn't opposed by the Bible, the only way to say that the Bible opposes abortion is to read things into the verses that aren't actually there.

You find arguments like "Psalm 78:5-6 reveals God's concern over "the children yet to be born." Yeah, that's a steaming pile. What it actually says is:

He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers
to teach their children,
so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.

Yeah, so the fathers are going to teach the baby while it's still in the womb? Or is that just saying that each generation will teach the next? Poetic license is not equal to proof.

Or the anti-abortion people will feed you unsupported arguments like "Well, the Bible says 'thou shalt not kill.' And so abortion is murder, right?" But that doesn't answer when a fetus is considered a human being. For example, all throughout the Bible, "life" is equated with "breath." In Genesis 2:7, it says "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." So you could take that to read that life begins when the baby takes its first breath.

Alternatively, in Leviticus 27:6, the Lord tells Moses how much people are worth, to establish the tithe, and children aren't worth anything until they're a month old (anything younger apparently has no value). In the same way, the Lord told Moses to count the "Levites" (Jews) in Numbers 3:15, but not to count anybody less than a month old. So perhaps the baby isn't even human until then.

Another common argument is to use more poetic license from the Bible to show that God sees us as individuals even before we are born. For example, Jeremiah 1:5 (Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart), or Psalm 139:13-16:

or you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

So, we'll ignore the fact that in Jeremiah, we have a guy claiming to be a prophet pumping up his own importance. Let's just consider the statement in there: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." Doesn't that imply that God sees every person as important before conception? Which not only leads us back to the Catholic opposition to birth control, but, taken to its logical conclusion, any woman who miscarries should be charged at least with manslaughter, if not murder.

Same argument, folks. Let's not fool ourselves. So let's consider what the Bible actually says, as opposed to what people want to read into it.

Let's go to Numbers 5:19.

And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse.

First, that's another use of shakab-as-rape: "...If no man have shakab with thee," which is then contrasted with her willingly having sex with a man other than her husband. If it is suspected that a woman has been raped or had an adulterous affair, she will be forced to drink the "bitter water" (made from holy water and some dust swept from the church floor), which would cause her to have an abortion "to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot."

Or in Ecclesiastes 6:3-5, where Solomon is making the point that it is better to end a pregnancy early than to allow him to be born and live a miserable life:

If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.

So apparently, the "holiness of the womb" isn't quite as important as some conservative Christians would like you to believe. In fact, it wasn't even a serious crime to cause an abortion.

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.(Exodus 21:22-25)

It states right there that abortion is a civil matter - you only pay a fine. It's the other damage, to the mother (not, you'll notice, the fetus), that can get the abuser punished.

In Genesis 38:24, there's a pregnant woman convicted of prostitution. Though the leaders of Israel knew the woman was carrying a fetus, they still decided to burn her. Why does the fetus have to die for the mother's crimes?

And all through the Bible, it repeats that it's better to be aborted, to die before you're born, than to live a crappy life. That sounds kind of... well, pro-choice to me. Or at least a "quality of life" argument.

Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, "A man child is born unto thee," making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide; because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame? (Jeremiah 20:14-18)

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master. (Job 3:16-19)

If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but he does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he. For it comes into vanity and goes into darkness, and in darkness its name is covered; moreover it has not seen the sun or known anything; yet it finds rest rather than he. (Ecclesiastes 6:3-5)

OK, they were sad, so they're allowed to wish to have been aborted? Not just "never have been born," the wording is pretty clear there. "because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave"

And apparently, abortion is quite all right if it's performed on somebody you don't like, during wartime, or on someone who disagrees with your religion.

At that time Menahem, starting out from Tirzah, attacked Tiphsah and everyone in the city and its vicinity, because they refused to open their gates. He sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women. 2 Kings 15:16

Give them, O LORD—
what will you give them?
Give them wombs that miscarry
and breasts that are dry.
(Hosea 9:14)

The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open.
(Hosea 13:16)

So basically, if you actually read the Bible, you'll find that it really isn't opposed to abortion after all. In fact, it's easier to make the case that the Bible supports pornography than it is to say that it opposes abortion.

No, really. It is. As evidence, I submit the following:

How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince's daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands.
Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
(Song of Solomon 7:1-3)

Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
and your mouth like the best wine.
(Song of Solomon 7:1-3)

And even more than that, my favorite Bible verse:

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (Ezekial 23:20)

Perhaps, rather than twisting passages from the Bible, the rabid anti-abortion activist should remember one or two. Like, perhaps, Matthew 7:1-2: Judge not, lest ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And, once again, another verse from the Gospel of Matthew. "But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Matthew 15:9).

Huh. Imagine that.

You know, I never figured that I'd be writing a religious blog. But I seem to have struck a nerve somewhere with my recent activities.

One of my "anonymous" responses was signed by (and therefore, I'm willing to accept that it was from) this hypocrite, who not only refused to allow a comment that he disagreed with, he decided to inform me:

It is obvious that you are not a Christian in any way shape and form. As for your military service doesn't mean squat when compared to your immature knwolwdge of the Bible and the Word of God. Truth is unchangeable and Jesus Christ is Truth. Homosexuals are by their very act condmened less they repent of their Evil Life style.
I'm glad you responed on my blog. I Knew their were people of no moral convictions out there and you obviosly are one of them. I'll pray for you and your family that you come back to the Truth.

David Drysdale Sr.

So, aside from being homophobic and illiterate (and his illiteracy matches what's on his blog - hence my acceptance that it's him), he's making some major assumptions about me simply because I disagree with him.

And, incidentally, his problems are more extensive than that. Based on the lack of balance in his thinking, I suspect that "Master Drysdale" is not as effective a teacher of the martial arts as he claims. If nothing else, the fact that he insists on referring to himself as "Master Drysdale" shows a fascinatingly large ego. He may think that he's found his center, but he's tilting pretty heavily in the wrong direction.

Oh, and by the way, Davy. There are a number of very useful spellcheck programs out there. Of course, they wouldn't solve all of your problems, like on your blog, where you air your ignorance for all the world to see.

Yeah, scroll down that left column there. Past five or six anti-gay screeds (many followed by "Master Drysdale" - not that you have an ego problem... are you short, by some chance? Because I see a little short-guy complex going on here...), couple of anti-abortion things, couple of politicians (Sarah Palin? "Governor of Alaska and trouble for Liberals"? Really? No, Davy, we want her to run in 2012. Please. She makes you look intelligent...), couple of conservative commentators (Christ, do you have enough crap on here?), way down at the bottom, where you prove how much you love your wife by having pictures of pretty girls on there... well, Spellcheck probably wouldn't tell you about this one, but you know Kiera Knightley? Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's never written a book...


However, let me expand on that shakab argument, in case anybody's interested.

If you accept that the Old Testament considered homosexual rape a particularly heinous sin, it also explains one of the worst stories in the Old Testament: Genesis 19. In a nutshell, two angels visit Lot in Sodom and he treats them to dinner and convinces them to stay the night. Outside, a group of men gather, asking to "know" the men staying with Lot — to "know them in the Biblical sense." Lot discourages the crowd by offering them his daughters, telling the men they can do whatever they want to the girls. But the daughters are refused.

Now, while this chapter is commonly used to denigrate loving, same-sex relationships by comparing them to homosexual rape, which is really a nonsensical comparison - it's exactly the same as saying that the existence of an abusive husband proves that any marriage will always be a crime, or the fact that a heterosexual rapist exists is evidence that all men are evil animals.

(OK, there's actually some truth in that...)

However, consider the fact that Lot was supposed to be a righteous man, and yet he offers his daughters to a violent mob to be gang-raped. And this story is mirrored in Judges 19 (only in Judges, the woman is accepted, and, having survived being gang-raped all night, is then killed by her lover when she limps back home).

First of all, those stories prove how little value women had in that society. But if you think about it hard enough (and lock away that little voice in your brain that tells you how evil this whole scenario is), the stories are somewhat mitigated if the society also had a strong, religious prohibition against homosexual rape.

(The way I see it, it might explain it, but it doesn't make it right. I have a hard time not seeing any society that could think that way as evil - however, I'm also viewing that society from the outside.)

In the end, if these people thought that homosexual rape was so bad that heterosexual rape was considered positive in comparison, that explains a great deal about both chapters of the Old Testament.