BUJU BUSTED!

Jamaican tourism commercials feature beach walks and tropical cocktails set to a hypnotic, sun-drenched reggae beat. You may experience a different kind of beat if you're gay. Like getting your ass beat a gang of gay-bashers who are thoughtful enough to make house calls. (I guess "Try Jah Love" doesn't extend to the gay community, but try Jah fist does.) Buju Banton, the popular Jamaican reggae artist whose lyrics advocate killiing gays, will be sentenced today for joining just such a gang of thugs. Well-organized protests in forward-thinking countries have lead to the cancellation of many of his concerts, so perhaps he was taking revenge. Yeah, right. So please explain the rest of the bashers' motives. I wish him only the worst in his trial today.

I have mixed feelings about censorship in music. On one hand, I don't think anyone's expression should be muted by what society thinks. We would have lost out on a lot of great songs that way. (I remember radio stations banning Donna Summer's LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY because it had orgasmic groans in it.) If I write a song which some people find objectionable--and trust me I have--I want the freedom to perform/promote it even though it doesn't jive with public opinion. Particularly in this country, where the born again crackpots seem to be shifting public opinion back to the days of the Puritans. But the issue gets gets a lot stickier when you are attacking/recommending murder, particularly of an already beleaguered group like gays, jews, blacks, women, felchers, etc. And it gets even stickier when the group is well-organized. Dammit, I've just GOT to mobilize us felchers a little bit better!

I guess it's just a fine line. I was on the opposite side of that line regarding the Elton John/Eminem duet on the Grammys a few years back. I was surprised that Elton would team up with a homophobic rapper, but it was Em who suggested the pairing, so maybe he's not as hateful as he tries to seem. But I'm glad they did team up. Elton sang the haunting, Dido-penned chorus in STAN, a grim tale about a crazed fan who slits his pregnant girlfriend's throat and stuffs the corpse into his trunk. And Eminem's rap is amazing story-telling. Sick, yes. But intelligent, creative and very moving. You could even argue that STAN has a message: if you're completely living for the attention of your favorite recording artist, this may point to a possibly dangerous imbalance. Eminem knows about mental instability and has probably received some very disturbing fan mail in his time, so he was writing from experience and I prefer a real expression like this to some sugar-coated "lets-make-a-formulaic-hit" approach to song-writing. And he wasn't advocating killing your girlfriend. I guess that's where I draw the line. Cuz I would never want anyone to kill MY girlfriend. What's the point in torturing her if she's not even alive to feel it?

But my mind isn't made up and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

DELAY CLIFF NOTES

Tom Delay is not hot. He does not spin the latest circuit beats. He does not do drag. He does not appear to work out in a gym. Is he top or bottom? Definitely bottom--of the barrel. Is he well hung? Not sure, but he has a huge asshole and it's in the White House. So why would a fag possibly care about Tom?

Last night I asked my hairdresser if he's heard the scandalous news about Mr. Delay. He hadn't, and asked me if Delay was Madonna's manager. Well, if my hairdresser has to focus on one thing, I'd prefer it to be up-to-the-minute high fashion coiffures. ( I know, I know. I'll pause for a sec while you all scream in unison "I've seen your mangy wigs and you're dreaming, beeyotch!") If Delay is off of my hairdresser's gay party boy radar, so be it. Politics were completely off my radar until 9/11 so I pass no judgement and I'm not talking down to anyone. (Going down on ANYONE is more my style.) Many of you are as involved and informed as I am, if not much more so. But for those of you who don't know who Tom is, here's what's going on and why a wacky drag queen thinks you should put down the gerbil and acquaint yourself with his situation.

WHO IS HE? This from his own website: "Tom DeLay serves as majority leader, the second ranking leader in the United States House of Representatives. He is responsible for developing the issues and policies that form the Republican agenda, in conjunction with committee chairmen and the rest of the leadership."

WHAT HAPPENED? Oddly, there's no mention on his site that he's been indicted, along with two associates, on criminal charges of conspiring to violate Texas election laws. Tom's being forced to step down from his position and if convicted, he faces up to years in jail. Of course, he responds that the accusations are politically motivated and that his accuser is a partisan fanatic.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It exposes the republican party as the crooks that they are. Hopefully, it will knock down their house of cards and usher in an era of republican-bashing which may, if we are lucky, help elect a democrat to the White House in 2008. Tom can call it "partisan" all he wants, but there's nothing partisan about the law and he broke it! BUSTED! Or at least there's enough evidence that he broke it to force him out of his post as the country's #2 republican--please insert "#2" shit joke here. Bill Frist, another "rank" republican, is also under investigation for a Martha Stewart-style insider stock trading job. Even Delay's replacement in the House, Roy Blunt, is linked to unethical fund-raising--so they can't even find an honest, scandal-free republican as a replacement for one who is forced out by improprieties! But then again, what honest person could press the republicans' rotten agenda with a clear conscience?

But the republicans attached that rotten agenda to good old-fasioned family values and down-home religion. During the last election, right-wing preachers were urging their congregations to vote against Kerry and thereby nix "radical" policies like gay marriage and abortion from reaching fruition. (If anything, a skunk like Tom is a terrific argument FOR abortion!) If you don't know too much about politics, then you are very likely to believe someone like your preacher or your president. You want to trust someone and leave it in their hands so you don't have to figure the situation out for yourself, armed only with the lies which FOX news spouts. But if top members of your party are being forced to leave their posts and possibly going to jail, it's going to begin to register with even these conservative church ladies that "Hey, my party's leader is a crook and maybe the president is too!" Well, there's hope anyway.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR GAYS? Tom's indictment is a rare cause for rejoicing. Our enemy has been pummeled by this scandal and we haven't had many victories of late. ANY weakening of republicans is an advancement of gay rights. We've just inched a little closer to the existence of gay marriage. Anti-discrimation laws are in less danger of being overturned. The ridiculous, unsafe notion of teaching abstinence to kids may fall from favor. Simply put, Democrats traditionally care about people, republicans care about people's money. The corporate interests whose ass republicans are constantly kissing may weaken a little, which could eventually translate to AIDS medications getting a little cheaper, more affordable insurance, less outsourcing of jobs to feed corporate greed, less cutting of funding to organizations like GMHC and NYC's gay community center which all but did away with their vd screening in recent years--don't ask me how I know this one!--honey, you name it! It's a VERY good thing.

Darlin', even if you are a depraved slut who isn't concerned with what stuffy, unattractive old men are doing in Congress because you seldom rise before noon and nurse your daily hangover along with your aching behind, tonight you have something to celebrate--as if YOU need an excuse! After Katrina and Iraq have depleted government funds, these prudes still found the wherewithal to announce the renewal of the republican war against porn! You let these republicans gain an inch and they'll be shutting down the gay bars your gay ass is drinking cosmopolitans in. Or that adult bookstore where you have sex or get your dildoes and poppers. And girl, if you quit worrying about the high gas prices these repubs have ushered in then just maybe you can afford that new Prada blouse or that top-shelf cosmo you've been nervously eyeing!

Take heart Tom! Now that you've been canned and may be headed for the can, there's still time to cash in like Anna Nichole and Kirstie Alley did with their weight loss. You could become a spokesmodel for a cosmetic surgeon and have those grim, razor-thin snapping turtle lips injected with collagen before you head off to jail, where those alluring, plumper lips will definitely help get you laid! We'll see if you feel any differently about gay rights after "The Hammer" does a couple years in the slammer!

ARNOLD: GAY FOR PAY?

from radaronline.com

Arnold Quits The ‘Fag Business’

Veteran Arnold watchers say the California governor’s announced veto of his state’s historic same-sex marriage bill is an affront to the memory of his most enthusiastic early supporters: the gay sugar daddies of the international bodybuilding circuit.

“Arnold has had a long association with rich gay men,” according to Wendy Leigh, author of Schwarzenegger: An Unauthorized Biography. “When he moved to England [around the time of his first Mr. Universe title in 1967], John Dixey, a British businessman and well-known aficionado of muscle boys, was very, very kind to Arnold. You have to understand, before Arnold came on the scene, it was common currency that bodybuilders were less than macho—it was absolutely given and accepted that they supported themselves by catering to the tastes of wealthy gay men.”

Another of Schwarzenegger’s early benefactors, Leigh says, was Paco Arce Gomez, a Spanish millionaire and renowned gay playboy. In a 1992 Spy magazine profile of the Conan the Barbarian star, Arce was credited as the lensman behind a series of photos from the Austrian’s early days, showing him “eating breakfast off of very fancy china wearing a tank top and tight underwear.” (Schwarzenegger also posed nude for homoerotic photog Robert Mapplethorpe at least three times in the seventies and famously appeared naked in a 22-photo spread in now-defunct gay rag After Dark.)


Paul Barresi, an L.A.-based private investigator who claims P.I. Anthony Pellicano hired him before the 2002 election to “look into” any compromising relationships the then-prospective candidate still had in the demimonde, said he was “shocked that Arnold would turn his back on the very people who were obviously so helpful to him. In fact, Arnold even met his wife, Maria [Shriver], though his friendship with a gay member of Maria’s family.”

The governator has been careful to frame his veto as promoting the will of the people as evidenced by an outdated 2000 vote against same-sex nuptials (today public opinion is split down the middle), and has been mostly mum about his personal feelings on the issue. At least since his notorious 1977 interview with Oui magazine, in which he claimed to “have absolutely no hang-ups about the fag business.”

Apparently, it doesn’t pay like it used to.

HOW SWEET IT IS

By Lou, Elvira's chiropractor:

HOW SWEET IT IS!

Tom "Pus Face" DeLay has been kicked to the curb as House Majority Leader Wednesday after he was indicted by a Texas grand jury on charges of conspiracy to violate state election laws. He and two of his lackeys are charged with conspiring to funnel corporate campaign moola to Republican candidates for the Texas state legislature. Boo-fucking-hoo.

If you recall, anticipating that DeLay might be indicted, last November the Repugnitan-run House tried to change the rule that any member indicted on criminal charges would become ineligible to hold a leadership position (I think they even fired the chair of the Ethics Committee to try to push it thru) but widespread negative media and a great push by Moveon.org threw that shit under the bus.

This was all about that nasty business that went on with the redistricting of parts of Tex-Assthat made it possible for the Repugnitans to takeover of the state House and Senate, by fucking with the boundaries of the state's congressional districts. They basically broke up minority neighborhoods and shoved them into mostly Democratic districts, sweeping clean those 'darkie parts' to create more, more better, and more improved whiter districts far more favorable to the Repugnitan candidates who would sashay their way to glory. Way to go, bros! So American of ya!

I guess Delay and his Boys got some big cake from folks like Sears and AT&T, but..oops!...these guys kept their own set of books besides the ones cooked up by Delay. Boo-hoo.

But here's the part I fucking love! Pus-Face now cries his crock-of-shit-o-dile tears with such original lines as I have done nothing wrong, and denounces his prosecutor as a partisan fanatic and a rogue district attorney. More Boo-hoo!

Tell you what, Tommy. You think about this: If I remember correctly, you were on of the staunchest supporters of Ken-un-ethical Starr. Fanatical, even. You may have even helped Kenny pull his pud while you both wacked off thinking about Miss Lewd-insky's mouth all puckered on the Bill's Presidential Johnson.But, hey..the world understands ...some guys got pull with the ladies and others...don't.

But..quite unlike the sordid little blue-dress affair, this investigation involves actual crimes, motherfucker.

I think you and Frist are gonnah need Johnny Cochran ..oops...he's dead.

Just the Rant of one Citizen of the Universe...

I'LL ALWAYS GUM YOU

from popbitch.com

WHITNEY CAN STILL 'CRACK' A SMILE

Whitney Houston was brought to the South of
France a fortnight ago to perform at a big
party for a Russian billionaire, along with
Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias.

Two hours before the concert was due to
start, Whitney's people called the party
organisers. There was a problem. Whitney
wouldn't be able to sing... because all
her teeth had just fallen out.

Cue frantic dash to find a discreet private
dentist to make up a serviceable set of
false teeth so the gig could go ahead.

EEEEVIL!

Republican Congressional Candidate Hopes Katrina Victims Don't Move Back...

Louisiana State Senator Craig Romero (R) visited Washington earlier this month under the auspices of raising money for Katrina disaster relief, Roll Call reported today. But the trip was also an opportunity for Romero to drum up support for his run for Congress in Louisiana’s 3rd district now held by Democrat Charlie Melancon.

The Huffington Post has acquired pages from a packet of candidate information that Romero handed out to special interest groups: A main selling point of Romero's candidacy is that if Katrina's victims don't move back home, the district will go Republican.

In the 2004 election, 50.2 percent voted for Democrat Charles Melancon and 49.8 percent for Rep. Billy Tauzin (R).

Romero's campaign information includes a pie chart that shows the district's make-up without the residents who were displaced by Katrina. Leaving those residents out, the chart says the district would be have voted 57.1 percent Republican and 42.9 percent Democrat in the 2004 election.

BLEACHING DOWN UNDER

Discover the joys of anus bleaching at ssonet.com

DELAY!

Birds of a feather FRY TOGETHER! But don't stop there. Now get Frist and impeach Bush! No gripes from me today, honey! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

PUSSY IN A CAN

Can't they just use a can of tuna in oil? I guess it's not deep enough. But wait! It's from Japan? Hmmm. Anyhoo, thanks to Adam for sending me this great link to an imaginative blog which contains photos and commentary from a visit to a japanese sex emporium. Here's a sample.



On the sex toy floor, there was a large wall with dozens and dozens of cans - all of them in different colors and sizes, and all of them with different naked cartoon girls on them. A great deal of Japanese men were perusing this wall, carefully studying and comparing the different cans before making their decision. With nothing in English, it took me a few minutes of analysis to figure out that the cans were actually fake vaginas. They were all similarly priced - suspiciously cheap at 5-600 yen - so I wasn't sure what the difference was, except the girl on the outside. I guess you were meant to pick which naked anime girl you liked the best, and fuck this plastic can while fantasizing about her. Interestingly enough, none of the cans were very long - maybe six inches at the most. I was trying to avoid the whole Asian-men-have-small-penises thing, but they kind of handed it to me on a silver platter. Anyway, this is the vagina can I bought:

for the full post:

demonbaby.com

WILL KILL FOR PUSSY

That's our boys!

WASHINGTON The Army is investigating complaints that soldiers posted photographs of mangled Iraqi corpses on an Internet site in exchange for access to pornographic images on the site, officials said Tuesday.

An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said the Criminal Investigation Division recently began investigating the matter on behalf of Lt. Gen. John Vines, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.

The East Bay Express, a New Times weekly in Emeryville, Ca. last week published a lengthy story about the porn site, and interviewed its owner, who said he gave soldiers free access in exchange for photos of dead or mutilated Iraqis. The soldiers apparently had been having trouble subscribing to the site because of credit card problems. The Online Journalism Review also ran a prominent piece. AmericaBlog, a leading blog, then covered it widely this week, and included links to some of the photos.

full article:

editorandpublisher.com

GOD HATES FAGS

This mp3 on Eugene Mirman is hilarious! Unfortuantely, the anti-gay christian trash actually are this ignorant so it's a little scary, too. This is a real chat with an sales lady phone from a "christian" phone company. The story behind it is here: www.villagevoice.com/blogs/eugene

The must-hear-to-believe phone call is here:

www.villagevoice.com/blogs/eugene

How can you even fight such stupidity? Love that combo of capitalism and hatefulness masquerading as piousness. Too bad it's running our whole country--not just some stupid phone company.

AMY SEDARIS IS BACK!

Doing voiceovers for an R-rated new film called THE PUBERT PALS. This gal can do everthing! From Strangers With Candy to her outrageous Talent Family plays to her upcoming home entertainmet guide which Billy Erb, the designer, gave ma a sneak preview of but I can't share. But be on the lookout for it! And now this:

thetoiletonline.com

WHO'S ON FIRST?

The revised version of this classic comedy bit featuring Dubya and Condi:


George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?

Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.

George: Great. Lay it on me.

Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.

George: That's what I want to know.

Condi: That's what I'm telling you.

George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes.

George: I mean the fellow's name.

Condi: Hu.

George: The guy in China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The new leader of China.

Condi: Hu.

George: The main man in China!

Condi: Hu is leading China.

George: Now whaddya' asking me for?

Condi: I'm telling you, Hu is leading China.

George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?

Condi: That's the man's name.

George: That's who's name?

Condi: Yes.

George: Will you, or will you not, tell me the name of the new leader of China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he's dead in the Middle East.

Condi: That's correct.

George: Then who is in China?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir is in China?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Then who is?

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Yassir?

Condi: No, sir.

George: Look Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.

Condi: Kofi?

George: No, thanks.

Condi: You want Kofi?

George: No.

Condi: You don't want Kofi.

George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi?

George: Milk! Will you please make the call?

Condi: And call who?

George: Who is the guy at the U.N?

Condi: Hu is the guy in China

George: Will you stay out of China?!

Condi: Yes, sir.

George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.

Condi: Kofi.

George: All right! With cream and two sugars.

HIGH AS A KATE

www.stuff.co.nz"

Now they're saying that Kate Moss has admitted to using ketamine, or special K, as we clubbers call it. Calling it "horse tranquilizers" makes it sound like she's the only one who's ever used it and she'd exhausted every drug humans use and then moved on to drugs for other species. (Though that may actually be true!) Well, I guess she might as well get everything out in the open when her situation's already this gloomy. But why are they pouncing on her like this? Because she doesn't give them many interviews? Because she's so beautiful? This article--saw it on my beloved huffington.post.com, which proves it's not above a little tabloid journalism to pep up it's heavier fare--used this demented looking photo where she's in slanty eyeliner which that makes her look quite alien. We all know that she's a versatile model of a thousand faces. But I don't see why this is causing such an international outrage. She's a model, not a role model, for chrissakes! All she's supposed to do is look purdy and the bitch still does! Actually, I've met "the bitch" twice and she could not be nicer or more down to earth. She sat there sweetly eating an apple with no make-up preparing to be shot by Patrick DeMarchelier for Bazaar with yours truly "modelling" beside her. If you don't believe me, then check out the photos in the ABOUT LADY BUNNY/BUNNY IN THE PRESS section of this site. Not that I would ever turn Kate's tragedy into a desperate grab for attention for myself...

But would people really boycott Burberry and the other contracts she may lose because she used drugs? How prudish! She's not under arrest or a coke dealer. Her last contract with RImmel is "being reviewed", but really! Was anyone talking about Rimmel before she revealed her drug use? If they had a little guts they'd stick with her and cash in on all this press with a campy new ad which makes fun of it all...Special Kate's new "line" of cosmetics, perhaps? I still love her!

BUSH USING RITA?

It would not surprise me if Bush didn't force the weather reporters to falsify forecasts in order to exaggerate the danger of Rita. That way he could seem to be more on top of this storm than he was of Katrina. But no photo op is going to remove the whiff of this rotten bastard we all got after Katrina. As if we needed another one.

White House Using Hurricane Rita To Show Bush As Effective Leader During Disaster…

nytimes.com

JUICY GOSSIP!

I was going to write a blog post about some juicy gossip I heard today. It seems that rich ladies on the Manhattan's upper east side are getting botox injections, not only in their face, but IN THEIR FEET as well. It seems the shots ease the pain from those treacherous Manolo Blahniks. It seems a little extreme to me, but I guess it gives new meaning to the old adage "Beauty knows no pain."

But then I heard some even juicier gossip. It's a well-kept secret that I had never heard a whisper of until today. It does NOT concern Jennifer Anus-ton's hairstyle, Oprah's failed Hermes shopping spree in Paris, or even Apple Paltrow vs whatever Britney Spears' ill-fated brat is named. It's way juicier than any words ever written about those gals! (Well, except maybe for the widely-reported rumor that Oprah and her "best friend" Gayle are dyke-lovers.)

In the past few days, an estimated 100,000 people were uprooted from the safety of their homes to face a horrendous situation. No, not Hurricane Rita. I'm talking about the thousands who travelled to yesterday's DC protest to cheer on a bunch of anti-war speakers. One speaker was Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who revealed....drumroll, please...that military recruiters were sent to the Houston Astrodome to sign up Katrina victims! How sickening is that? How depraved is this administration? They got those fucking army recruiters in a lot faster than they got the fucking victims out of New Orleans! Just ask the 1000 + who died. Well, I guess you can't actually ask them., but you get my meaning.

How rancid is that logic? I can just imagine the Pentagon scum thinking: "Well, Katrina refugees might as well enlist. It's not like they've got a home or family to go back to. They've almost just died so their life may be sufficiently devalued to where going to go die an illegal war against Iraq might not seem quite so bad at this point. Recruit quotas and public disapproval of the war are so low that people with futures and families are less likely than ever to sign up. And allowing in gays and people who we've helped cheat on drug and G.E.D. tests isn't working as well as we'd hoped. And hey, these are experienced looters who may actually be an asset in the US looting of Iraq."

C-Span broadcast Cynthia's speech and "poured the tea" on this juicy tidbit and I'm grateful to whoever didn't edit the representative's blistering words. But I've been watching CNN proper for nearly two hours and I've not heard one word about the 100,000 people who created the largest protest since the war began in 2003. Look, I know that hurricanes are buzz-worthy at the moment, and I mean no disrepect to anyone who lost property in the storm, but according to CNN, not one casualty was reported in the aftermath of Rita! Do we really need to dominate every fucking second of every fucking hour of news coverage to Rita while they are pulling out pointless details like an escaped llama in Orange County, Texas? Who gives a flying fuck about a missing llama? (Well, maybe Michael Jackson, if the llama were under a certain age and male...) But my point is the lack of balance between the coverage of Rita and this massive anti-war protest. There's more scandalous gossip ahead, but if you can bear the suspense, check out this link (bradblog.com) which has video clips of speeches by Cindy Sheehan and Jesse Jackson. LOVE the protester with the sign that says "WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?" Now it's been a while since Jesus and I have spoken, but I would guess his answer is still "no one", "thou shalt not kill" or something like that. So who is the god that callous murderer Bush pretends to worship?

Okay! Really juicy gossip for you this time! Bush may be back on the sauce! Enquiring minds want to know, and though I don't place the National Enquirer at the top of the heap when it comes to journalistic integrity, sometimes it's precisely that lack of integrity which allows them to scoop something because they aren't hindered by pesky things like fact-checking or revealing their sources. Here's the link if you don't believe my poison pen: nationalenquirer.com. And I hope that it's true--like daughter, like father! I hope the bastard is totally unravelling in the face of his record low poll numbers. I pray that Bush embarks on such a boozy binge that by the time he's finished, the whole country can see that this man isn't fit to have an outhouse named after his sorry ass, much less an airport or library. He's already proven he's a piss-poor leader in the face of Katrina, for those who may have missed the clueless expression on the dunce's face in that classroom when he learned of 9/11, or the fact that he ignored warnings of 9/11 and then put the blame on CIA head George Tennant. Fast forward to Katrina and we see some other patsy, the FEMA head Michael D. Brown-nose, taking the fall for our government's bungled response in the face of disaster. Then throw in the notion that this bungled response was hampered by the fact that troops and funds were being used up in Iraq, the war which fewer and fewer believe we should be fighting. Oh, just one more goody! Like 9/11 and the civil war in Iraq, a disastrous flooding of New Orleans was predicted to be likely by the government's own experts, yet the Bush administration was so determined to throw caution to the wind and forge on with it's unwise (and now unpopular agenda) that they'd gladly disregard the very people it had chosen as it's advisers! Does this government make you feel safe? I don't care whether you are republican or democrat, at some point your self-preservation instinct has to kick in and tell you, quite plainly, that whether it's terrorist attacks or hurricanes, Dubya does not have your back! And in fact, one could argue that his administration, which denies global warming's existence, is partially responsible for freak weather patterns like Katrina and Rita. Many scientists hold the view that the increase in the hurricanes' severity is a direct result of global warming. Just google Katrina and global warning and read a couple of the articles which come up.

But back to the gossip! You wouln't know it from the shite which masquerades as news these days, but there are other stories of national importance that have been brewing alongside the hurricanes. Maybe you haven't heard that the two top republican congressional leaders, Bill Frist and Tom Delay, are being investigated for "ethical improprieties." Please read through to the end--it contains a bitchy, gossip-y zinger linking Frist to Martha Stewart.

From The Associated Press:

The news that federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into Frist’s sale of stock in HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by his family, comes as a criminal investigation continues of Jack Abramoff, a high-powered Republican lobbyist, and his ties to DeLay of Texas.

Less than a week ago, a former White House official was arrested in the Abramoff investigation.

For Republicans, the timing couldn’t be worse.

“The last thing you needed was a Martha Stewart problem,” Marshall Wittman, a one-time conservative activist who now works for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said of Frist. “He doesn’t even have a good clothing line or a popular television show.”

Maybe some of you don't know or care who Bill Frist or Tom Delay are. Maybe you hate politics and snore through the news until the sports or weather segment comes on. Or maybe you're too busy raising a family and don't care about current affairs until your gas prices go up. Well, I've saved the best, and JUICIEST gossip for last. Shhh...There is a terrorist in your house. Go cautiously and have a peek...in the mirror. IT'S YOU! As long as you ignore the senseless murders of our soldiers and Iraqis, allowing this brutish administration to murder without just cause in YOUR NAME WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS while you sit back and do nothing to try and stop it, YOU share in Bush's guilt. George Bush is the most lethal terrorist in the world right now and if you support his war you are as guilty as any muslim who condones the terrorist attacks emanating from their land. Right after 9/11 I would recoil at the sight of muslims going to those mosques which had been pegged as extremist hotbeds--how could they, in any way, condone the attacks of 9/11, even indirectly? How could anyone going to a church be so morally bankrupt? Now the tables have turned and WE are the nation full of hateful, blood-thirsty religious extremists whose "men of god" recommend assasinating the Venezualan president and blame Katrina on the fact that lovable lesbian talk-show host Ellen Degeneres has been chosen to emcee the Emmy's. Pat asked on a broadcast of The 700 Club, "Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres' hometown" of New Orleans? The fundamentalists are extremist all right, but they just favor wearing pastel prints and going-to-meetin' hats over the muslims' head scarves.

If you don't support the war and do nothing to rectify it, you're only a little better than the christian right (aka christian wrong who are Bush's fan base). As long as a superpower like the US will make pre-emptive attacks on another nation without proof of it's guilt, no one on earth is safe. If you have a voice, use it or lose it, whether you're forwarding emails or speaking out to influence friends, family and co-workers. Even if you have no time to speak out you can donate to organizations like moveon.org who'll speak out for you. Find out which organizations share your beliefs and donate--the coffers of our enemies are chock full thanks to the tax cuts they've given themselves. Or if you just get involved by informing yourself, shutting off the biased, mainstream news outlets and adding a few reliable news sites like www.huffingtonpost.com to your bookmarks, I know you'll be so outraged by the facts which don't make it on the news that you'll HAVE to speak out. Admit it, you were a little shocked to hear about the military recruiters preying on homeless Katrina victims. Maybe not as shocked as you were to hear about zombie Tom Cruise auditioning and then hiring Katie Holmes to be his girlfriend. And maybe not as shocked as I was to learn that ousted FEMA head Michael D. Brown spent the 80's as a lawyer and the 90's as the controversial head of The Internationl Arabian Horse Association. He was clearly unqualified to handle the country's disaster relief efforts but Bush cronies must be rewarded with plum positions, even when our nation's safety is sacrificed. Maybe not as shocked as I was when I received this (admittedly unsubstantiated) claim via email today:

Did you also know that reporters are being told to stop photographing the carnage left behind by Katrina or face being
shot???? They are taking reporters' cameras and emptying them. From what I hear a rogue dog police force has descended on the state. They are also shooting people down there left and right and banning the press from areas where the action is taking place. They are banning them from being around any of the army/police operations. They are making sure the news only reports on quiet rebuilding and that filming and photography be relegated to a few leaks and flooded homes where the action is quiet.

Even if you just have a gossip-monger's taste for scandal, the lies being perpretated by this administration are going to go down as some of the juiciest in our country's history. And do you want the shame of being one of the laughing stocks who blindly supported this liar when so much damning evidence is out there BEGGING to be discovered?

Someone with a screen name of "BODEGA VENDETTA" recently wrote me at ladybunny.net...

"gawd, I always thought Bunny was a coke sniffin' crack smokin' cock suckin' whoreish dragqueen/"performer"??
get off the soapbox piggy and get back to that restroom where you belong."

Now I'm not sure how seriously I should take a note from someone called BODEGA VENDETTA, but I do catch his/her point. (I also did giggle at the quotes around performer casting aspersions on my ability to perform, ya dirty bitch!) And she/he is right. I'm not as light-hearted as I used to be. Not all of my blog posts are comical anymore. But the world isn't what it used to be, either, and current events are too unsettling to ignore. And I've got to do something to get the situation back on track before I can safely return to being a demented clown. I guarantee you, history will remember Bush as a disgrace to the White House. Haven't you ever sat and wondered "How could the people of Nazi Germany sit back and follow Hitler's grisly agenda? A whole nation? What were they thinking?" Well, history always repeats itself and now the shoe's on your foot. Is Bush's murder and propaganda machine that different from Hitler's or that of any other deceitful despot who's murdered thousands without conscience? Are you willing to share in his immense guilt? If a democracy is government by the people then you people had better start fucking governing. Bush plainly can't.

Jordy--no, not the Jordy who settled with Michael Jackson, Queen of Pop, for millions who we'll soon be hearing lots more about thanks to a new World of Wonder documentary based on the book written by a detective on the case which includes
drawings by Jordy of Jacko's nasty, nelly nuts which were "dappled" by skin bleach--but rather Jordy the blogger who thankfully turned me on to the site which hosts 4 of the C-Span speeches from yesterday's protests just sent me another stirring link: virtualmatter.blogspot.com". On it, you'll find a young girl, who obviously has a lot more sense than half the adults in this country, chanting "Impeach Bush!" You're right, sweetheart. We cannot ask for anything less.

Whew! Maybe BODEGA's right. After that tirade, I feel my old self returning and I'm off to hunt down some dick and drugs!

DEATH OF LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD

An excellent yet disturbing article from the NY Times by way of the International Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/22/style/fmlede23.php

HMMM...

This is global warming, says environmental chief

As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist blames climate change

By Michael McCarthy, Environment EditorPublished: 23 September 2005
Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. "The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming."

In a series of outspoken comments - a thinly veiled attack on the Bush administration, Sir John hit out at neoconservatives in the US who still deny the reality of climate change.

Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: "If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation." As he spoke, more than a million people were fleeing north away from the coast of Texas as Rita, one of the most intense storms on record, roared through the Gulf of Mexico. It will probably make landfall tonight or early tomorrow near Houston, America's fourth largest city and the centre of its oil industry. Highways leading inland from Houston were clogged with traffic for up to 100 miles north.

There are real fears that Houston could suffer as badly from Rita just as New Orleans suffered from Hurricane Katrina less than a month ago.

Asked what conclusion the Bush administration should draw from two hurricanes of such high intensity hitting the US in quick succession, Sir John said: "If what looks like is going to be a horrible mess causes the extreme sceptics about climate change in the US to reconsider their opinion, that would be an extremely valuable outcome."

Asked about characterising them as "loonies", he said: "There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate."

"I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."

With his comments, Sir John becomes the third of the leaders of Britain's scientific establishment to attack the US over the Bush government's determination to cast doubt on global warming as a real phenomenon.

Sir John's comments follow and support recent research, much of it from America itself, showing that hurricanes are getting more violent and suggesting climate change is the cause.

A paper by US researchers, last week in the US journal Science, showed that storms of the intensity of Hurricane Katrina have become almost twice as common in the past 35 years.

Although the overall frequency of tropical storms worldwide has remained broadly level since 1970, the number of extreme category 4 and 5 events has sharply risen. In the 1970s, there was an average of about 10 category 4 and 5 hurricanes per year but, since 1990, they have nearly doubled to an average of about 18 a year. During the same period, sea surface temperatures, among the key drivers of hurricane intensity, have increased by an average of 0.5C (0.9F).

Sir John said: "Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun. It's a fair conclusion to draw that global warming, caused to a substantial extent by people, is driving increased sea surface temperatures and increasing the violence of hurricanes."

4 GHOSTS OF THE WHITE HOUSE

One night, George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed. He awakens to see George Washington standing by him Bush asks him, "George, what's the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Set an honest and honorable example, just as I did," Washington advises, and then fades away

The next night, Bush is astir again, and sees the ghost of Thomas Jefferson moving through the darkened bedroom. Bush calls out, "Tom, please!
What is the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Respect the Constitution, as I did," Jefferson advises, and dims from sight................

The third night sleep still does not come for Bush. He awakens to see the ghost of FDR hovering over his bed. Bush whispers, "Franklin, What is the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Help the less fortunate, just as I did," FDR replies and fades into the mist........................

Bush isn't sleeping well the fourth night when he sees another figure moving in the shadows. It is the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Bush pleads, "Abe, what is the best thing I can do right now to help the country?"

Lincoln replies, "Go see a play."

DID AP PICK THIS UP?

President Bush and a giddy Jacques Chirac shake hands on the deal.


President Bush Sells Louisiana Back to the French


BATON ROUGE, LA. - The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000.

"This is a bold step forward for America," said Bush. "And America will be stronger and better as a result. I stand here today in unity with French Prime Minister Jack Sharaq, who was so kind to accept my offer of Louisiana in exchange for 25 million dollars cash."

The state, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild.

"Jack understands full well that this one's a 'fixer upper,'" said Bush. "He and the French people are quite prepared to pump out all that water, and make Louisiana a decent place to live again. And they've got a lot of work to do. But Jack's assured me, if it's not right, they're going to fix it."

The move has been met with incredulity from the beleaguered residents of Louisiana.

"Shuba-pie!" said New Orleans resident Willis Babineaux. "Frafer-perly yum kom drabby sham!"

However, President Bush's decision has been widely lauded by Republicans.

"This is an unexpected but brilliant move by the President," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "Instead of spending billions and billions, and billions of dollars rebuilding the state of Louisiana, we've just made 25 million dollars in pure profit."

"This is indeed a smart move," commented Fox News analyst Brit Hume. "Not only have we stopped the flooding in our own budget, we've made money on the deal. Plus, when the god-awful French are done fixing it up, we can easily invade and take it back again."

The money gained from 'T'he Louisiana Refund' is expected to be immediately pumped into the rebuilding of Iraq.

GLORY HOLE

"I'M MELTING!"

Liz Hurley and Donatella at the re-launch of the Sloane St. Versace boutique. Well, at least her hair looks purdy!

OUTRAGEOUS FILTH!

LOVE IT! Thanks to Joey Macaroni for sending this sickness!

Jurors Will See Judge's Alleged Sex Toy

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 By KELLY KURT, Associated Press Writer (09-20) 15:38 PDT Bristow, Okla. (AP)


Jurors hearing the case against a former judge accused of exposing himself in his Creek County courtroom will be allowed to see the sex toy at the center of the state's allegations, a judge ruled Tuesday in rejecting a defense motion.

They also can hear testimony that a second "penis pump" was seen under former District Judge Donald Thompson's bench, among other evidence Thompson's attorneys sought to have barred from next week's scheduled trial.

"It's so fantastic and so unconnected to factual support, and so prejudicial," attorney Clark Brewster complained in trying to convince Judge C. Allen McCall to suppress some state evidence.

Thompson, 58, who spent more than 20 years on the bench before stepping down more than a year ago, faces three counts of indecent exposure.

Prosecutors allege he masturbated with a penis pump under his robe while presiding over two murder trials and a civil trial in 2003. Thompson denies the allegations and said the penis pump seized in the case was a gag gift from a friend.

Brewster argued that the state should be prevented from submitting the device as evidence, contending that not only did it not function but that it also was sawed in half while in the state's custody.

Prosecutor Pattye High said an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation chemist followed procedure in sawing the pump in two to swab it for DNA evidence. McCall denied the defense request.

The judge also refused a defense motion to prevent testimony from a courtroom reporter who said she discovered a different penis pump under the judge's bench in 2001.

Brewster said there was no evidence to link the pump to his client, but High countered that the testimony would help show "this defendant committed the same crime over and over and over again."

McCall took other issues raised by Thompson's team under advisement, including testimony from a woman who prosecutors said had a sexual relationship with Thompson and the admission of 180 hours of courtroom tapes they said contained the whooshing sound of the penis pump in use.

Brewster said he hadn't received the tapes until Friday and had no time to have an expert evaluate them or verify certain "enhanced" portions provided by prosecutors.

"If the jury is going to listen to these, they're going to need to listen to 180 hours," he also told the judge.

The trial is scheduled to begin Monday when attorneys begin questioning a 350-member jury pool. The trial is expected to last one to two weeks, High said.

Tuesday's hearing offered a glimpse at the lurid details jurors can expect to consider and even see if the judge decides prosecutors can admit a photo they say will be used by a witness to identify Thompson's penis.

Brewster had sought to have much of Tuesday's motions sealed, arguing that they contained anecdotal remarks from hundreds of people "with literally crazy things to say." He said media coverage of the hearing could taint potential jurors.

McCall refused, citing the public's right to know and the media's right to report. He allowed Brewster and High to agree on some of the contested claims before they were argued in the courtroom.

Brewster said some of the state's evidence would never be raised in a routine indecent exposure case.

"Because we've got a public figure, we want to vilify," he said.

But McCall said Thompson would be treated to the same fair trial guaranteed any other citizen.

He also made it clear that the former judge would not receive special treatment. When Thompson, who is free on bond, briefly stepped from the courtroom, McCall admonished Brewster, telling him the former judge should have asked for permission first.

If convicted, Thompson would face up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine on each charge and would have to register as a sex offender upon his release.


for more on penis pumping with ill pix check out http://www.tigerpumping.com

HASSEL TO THE THE HOFF?

from huffingtonpost.com

Ice-T is to produce David Hasselhoff's first hip-hop album.

The pair are neighbours in Los Angeles and are said to have struck up a close friendship.

Hasselhoff has had some success as a singer, releasing seven albums. He's also said to be very popular in Germany.

Ice-T, who was one of the first real hip-hop stars in the late 1980s, said: "The man is a legend. And we are going to show a whole new side of him."

The rapper is said to be convinced that the 51-year-old for Knight Rider and Baywatch actor can take on the biggest names in rap, reports The Sun.

Ice-T added: "He's gonna come out as Hassle The Hoff - I promise you. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills and humour.

MOVIN' ON UP

excerpted article from msn.com:

Dennis R. Hughes, a senior vice president at The Corcoran Group, a division of Cendant, in New York City, recently showed a two-bedroom apartment in the Beekman neighborhood that has a library, sterling silver faucets and 24-karat-gold hardware. It is priced at $17,000 -- per month.

"Not extraordinary at all," is how Hughes, whose rental listings currently range from $4,300 to a startling $27,000 per month, describes the rarity of such prices.

One of his clients, a high-powered businessman, offered to prepay two years of rent -- in cash -- for a place that cost $18,000 per month -- a total of more than $432,000. That made the owner think the place was underpriced, and the deal was called off.

"The luxury end of the market is going very nicely, very strong," Hughes says. "I love this market."

Christ! You prepay 2 years and give them what they want and so they decide that they should have asked for more? The full article includes the 20 most expensive cities in the country and surprise, surprise, NYC is still at the top:

http://realestate.msn.com/Rentals/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=29087>1=6974

KRAMER VS FLAMER

I interviewed the brilliant AIDS activist/playwright/ACT UP founder Larry Kramer for Index magazine several months ago for their fall issue. They canned the piece, so I've posted it on my blog. Larry, the "Bill Cosby of the gay commnity", is as feisty and fascinating as ever as he promotes his incisive new book that should be required reading for every faggot on earth! Larry and Bunny hit all the vital issues from crystal meth, the dirt on Ron Reagan, Jr, the sorry state of the AIDS epidemic--even hand lotion, Hitler and hemorrhoids!


KRAMER VS FLAMER


Thank god for big sunglasses! Sure, they're glamorous as hell and so white-hot at the moment, but they can also hide your tears. And there I was, on a flight to Greensboro, NC sobbing away with my nose buried in Larry Kramer's new book., The Tragedy of Today's gays. And lordy, is it ever a an effective tragedy! Too bad it isn't fiction. It's basically a wake-up call stir gays into outrage and action after gay rights were creamed by the re-election of Bush. "Forget gay marriage, forget..." taunts/rails Larry. And are we prepared to fight back? Nope, we're increasingly lost in a shallow world of sex, drugs and denial and there there isn't much fight left in us. ACT UP, the legendary activist group which Larry founded, has dwindled to a a handful of people at the NYC meetings. Maybe attendance would increase if they offered free crystal! Just kidding! Use of the dastardly crystal meth (or "tina" as it's affectionately known) and barebacking have HIV infections on the rise again, and younger gays, who haven't known many or any of their friends to die and who perceive that the new AIDS drugs are a cure, are often throwing caution to the wind when it comes to condom use.

The book, out on Penguin this summer, contains Larry's blistering speech at NYC's Cooper Union in it's entirety, along with a riveting introduction with a few sensational revelations. Did you know that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were fags? Or that Larry attributes the spread of AIDS to 3 other closet cases: Ed Koch, Krause and Ron Reagan, JR? Or that Hitler used the same formulation of meth that now has gays twirling to their tired circuit beats? (The esteemed author (Faggots, The Normal Heart) even throws in a little black humor here "To the more twisted among you, this may be a turn on.) Many of Larry's pronouncements are so obvious, yet no one else is making them. With 70 million infections worldwide and Russia on the verge of disappearing because of it, we have lost the war on AIDS. And we are doing to ourselves. And the government, which hates us so, loves it. We're doing ourselves in so they don't have too! Not so obvious but equally fascinating, Larry outlines the Lewis Powell manifesto, the how-to manual for the vast right wing conspiracy, whose success will not only strip gays of their rights, but turn back the clock on civil rights for women, minorities, the poor--which should make this speech relevant to many besides gays.

Addressing a capacity crowd from behind the podium at which Abe Lincoln once spoke, Larry seemed physically frail, yet emotionally so powerful. His weak, whispery voice heightened the urgency of his message. Why is this ill man having to fight the battles of perfectly healthy, but gutless fags? I'm guilty too, though I wouldn't exactly say I was slim enough to ever be called gutless. One of the most tear-jerking moments in the book outlines Larry's loss of appetite after a 2001 liver transplant. ..."Dr. John, who had just saved my life, said I had to eat or else I would die, and I just couldn't eat (do you know how strange this is to someone who was always on a diet?) It was New Year's Eve. We were in beautiful downtown Pittsburgh. David had brought a hamper filled with my favorite dishes. And I could not eat anything. Furiously, he crawled into bed with me, boots and all, and started to cry. "we haven't come this far for you to die because you won't eat, he screamed, tears streaming down his face."

So when I rendez-voused with Larry at his smart Fifth Avenue pad, I was shocked to find him....munching away on bread-sticks! After a brief barebacking demonstration (kidding!), I quizzed him about/on his new project/book.


LB: Larry...you're eating! In your book you write that you had such difficulty eating. That was such a moving moment.

L: Well, I don't have much appetite, but that's gotten a little better. You're going to hate this, but I can eat anything and not gain weight.

LB: Why would I hate that, Larry? (cackles) What are you trying to say?

L: Don't take it personally, Bunny.

LB: Well, why would I?

L: I who was on a diet my entire life now can eat, you know, a pie, a cake and a quart of ice cream. Something happened to my metabolism, I guess.

LB: Wow. Well, I guess we should start by having you sum up what you think the tragedy of today's gays is.

L: The tragedy is that there are so many of us and we're such wonderful people, and I go constantly through this book and I say over and over again. I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we're better than other people. I think we're smarter, we're more loving, we're more caring, we're better friends. And the tragedy is that we haven't learned how to make that into something for us, for ourselves, for our movement. And it seems to be getting less and less, worse and worse.

LB: But I mean, I think it's symptomatic of activism falling out of favor with this generation. In the 80's the NY Native was widely read and that was a very political, AIDS-oriented publication. And now the gay rags are full of eye candy and club music and entertainment. One even proudly subtitles itself, "The Politically Incorrect Party Paper". What has caused the activism to die?

L: You tell me. We're becoming more and more invisible. And I happen to think that this current generation--and it's not just because I'm old--it's invisible. I can't see them.

LB: Well, they certainly don't have that spark of activism that you saw in the ACT UP days. Someone mentioned at your speech in the Q & A section that the attendance at ACT UP meetings had dwindled to like 6.

L: Well, ACT UP is a different story.

LB: I've always fought the urge to moan "Oh, back in my day!"--

L: (laughs)

LB: --"Cause I'm not exactly young. I've always fought that urge 'cause you do always look back on the rosier memories, but it just seems that kids don't care about about the activism and they certainly are engaging anew in unsafe sex when the HIV transmission was down for a while. Now it's back up.

L: I have to say I don't know. And I guess the more I stay an activist, the more I stay out there on the front line. In the heyday of AIDS I didn't understand why everybody wasn't fighting to save their own life. And today. I can't understand again why everybody isn't exercising all precautions to stay alive. I just don't understand that. I don't understand why you would wanna purposefully throw away a life. Even if it's accidental, it's not accidental. In the heyday of ACT UP, when we were at our most powerful, there were probably no more than 10,000 of us in this country, in all the cities. There were like 30/340 chapters, but there weren't many of us in each chapter. And considering how many gay people there are in America--there WERE in America, and only 10,000 of us instead of 1,000,000 of us, out there fighting to get those drugs. So even though we had activism out there it didn't represent a very large percentage of our population. And now I don't think there's any activism at all.

LB: And maybe as a testament to gays' obsession with sex, ACT UP seemed to get one if it's biggest media boosts when it became "sexy" to attend the meetings! And there was even like an East Village ACT UP "look"--

L: We invented it.

LB: --with the shaved heads and the overalls- and the combat boots--

L: It came out of nowhere. I don't know where it came from and it happened fast. You know, they showed up fast , the youngsters. And all of a sudden one day I just looked up and said "Holy shit!" These are not the kind of guys I expected to be running the activism. And they're hot!

LB: (Both laugh.) Was it hard to concentrate?

L: And that just made more people come. And that was fine. And I don't know if we created that look but we sure perpetuated it and I guess it's still going on. When we did things like the St. Patrick's day thing and we really showed we were butch and how macho/butch we could be if we wanted to, so they stopped making so many fag jokes on tv. I liked that. It's alright when we make the fag jokes , I think, but it's not alright when they make them. There we were in the black leather and the boots and "Shut up you fuckers!" Mind you, there were plenty of demos when we were all in drag, too, as nurses and doctors. We were just puttin' on shows. I'm sorry that people lost all that 'cause it was fun. The thing about activism that people don't realize is that it's wonderfully moving when a bunch of people thinking the same thing are fighting for the same thing together. That happened to me twice in my life. The early days of GMHC and the early days of ACT UP were just so moving, Bunny, you have no idea. There we were. All of us. All ages. Women were involved too and we were all united in this fight against this wrong. And it t gave us sustenance. I'm sure it changed people's social lives. And people suddenly had ACT UP as a social--there were different meetings every night of the week. You could stay busy all week if you wanted to with something to do. And I think people do need something to do which is positive. And people could bring their skills, whatever they were, you know. Whether you were an accountant and you wanted to take care of the treasury or whether you wanted to deal with clinical trials and help enroll people or whatever. Whether you wanted to put on a show and raise a little money for us, all of that.

LB: Is one of the reasons that people lost interest in activism the perception that the new drugs work? You kid of blast the drugs as daily chemotherapy--

L: Well, they are! But it's easy to take, people think. They are hard to take and they require a lot of attention. It's not just like taking an aspirin. I don't think that's the reason. I think people aren't scared anymore. We were all scared. And I think fear makes for successful activism--you're afraid. We've got plenty to be afraid of. We're afraid all these enemies are going to take us over lock, stock, and barrel, which in fact they have done already. But that doesn't seem to be a fear that registers on anybody's radar when you know, you can live in NY and do whatever you want to do. It certainly should go on your radar if you are living wherever you are from.

LB: Riker's Island?

L: (laughs) And the people who are living there, I guess, are used to being in the closet so I don't know what's going to happen to us. The book is, I think, I hope, an honest appraisal of a very depressing situation so you can either take that as a downer or you can take that as a challenge.

LB: I think one thing that should make your book interesting to everyone except maybe conservative, straight, white men, is this information which I knew nothing about which concerns the Lewis Powell Manifesto. Is that the same vast right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton was referring to when she was denouncing the Ken Starr investigation?

L: Oh yeah. They're all united. It's all part and parcel of the same hideous people, thought, money, movement, whatever and they've been doin' it since 1971. They've got a lot of money and it almost doesn't make any difference who's president, I'm convinced of that. These people have the think tanks and the newspapers, the media and the commentators.

LB: They've definitely got the media.

L: And we have nothing so we become invisible. And they want it that way. I say in the book that they want AIDS to continue because that's the way we destroy ourselves and that's the way they can present us constantly as sick.

LB: I'm wondering how they articulate that and how do they reconcile it with their religious beliefs. Are we just so amoral that they want to rid the earth of us?

L: Indeed. They don't hide it as much as they used to. They're saying it on their own tv stations. God knows, you can get on these mailing lists and get mailed hateful stuff all that you want. I noticed that a lot of the stuff is going into mainstream now. Bush and Cheney are saying all these terrible things about us as a matter of course. And they are united in a way that WE haven't been and I don't think we ever will be. I say they have a meeting once a week and it's called church and everybody goes and so constantly they can preach whatever they're thinking from their pulpit in their social groups and to their children. That's pretty hard to deal with. I know that some of our rich people are starting to begin meeting. They're all meeting in Aspen.

LB: (Hurt) Oh, I wasn't invited.

L: They saw your bank account, dear. (laughs) The Gill Foundation is sponsoring. It's all becoming an education for me because I'm discovering that there are all these really rich gay men and women that I have never heard of. And some of them have foundations like The Gill Foundation. Tim Gill is a billionaire, just about. He invented a software program called Quark Express on which every publication in the world is made. He since sold sold it but he started this foundation which my friend Roger McFarlane who used to run Broadway Cares and GMHC is running. And they're whipping all of this up, trying to get all of the rich people to sit down in one room and talk and say "Alright, this is it, we're in big trouble." Roger wrote the second piece in my book. A great essay. There's a lot of money in the lesbian community. A lot of family money that they've inherited or they've made it on Wall Street and it's time to plough it back into your people. It's a start.

LB: One thing you've said is that the gay organizations are basically--

L: Useless!

LB: --either bankrupt or powerless or both--

L: U-S-E-L-E-S-S!

LB: What should we be demanding of them? Obviously they are strapped for cash.

L: No, some of 'em aren't. HRC has got a lot of money. They just put up a 26 or 19 million dollar building in downtown Washington. I don't know how you shape up the shapeless.

LB: I don't either...but enough jokes about my weight!

L: It's like when the girdle doesn't work. I don't know. I have to say I don't know a lot these days.

LB: (fececiously) What's a girdle? Another interesting contrast is that while the Powell Manifesto is based on success through organization and consistency and I guess you're saying that gays are the opposite--we're an unorganized mess! That we party and our organizations might throw a glamorous dinner with Sharon Stone, but what we actually need to be doing is shaking a hand at an Ohio barbecue saying "Hi!I'm your hairdresser, I'm your next-door neighbor, I'm your banker." That does sound like a huge undertaking. When I think we need that's what needs to be done by us, we need to put the Lewis Powell--instead of the Lewis Carroll--Manifesto into effect--

L: That is funny. Right! We're living the Lewis Carroll one!

LB: I wouldn't know where to start. First of all I don't have millions to contribute.

L: What do we call ourselves--the rank and file of the population. We've done our share, up to a point, through these AIDS years. But the rich people haven't. It's their turn to take the lead, set it up and let us be their foot soldiers again, but they gotta finance this. I'm tired of operating on a shoestring. They have radio stations, they have newspapers, they can afford to take ads in the NY Times. We can't afford to do any of that stuff. And we have to be able to. We gotta to fight fire with fire and it's very expensive. The opposition pours in in millions, billions.

LB: And they hate us--a lot!

L: And they hate us. So I don't think it's a question of shaking hands at a barbecue anymore, you know. You're saying "Go show us what we look like". They know what we look like. We thought if we showed them two women with kids or two guys with kids looking like a loving family that it would make them sympathize with that. That just makes them more angry.

LB: So what would the gay millions be poured into?

L: The gay BILLIONS. Well, every time they come after you, you go into law courts. You fight and say that's illegal, that's discrimination. Right now that's getting harder because they're loading the courts with people who do the dirty work and agree--

LB: With the republican president and congress.

L: You've gotta fight them too. You've gotta fight, fight, fight, ALL the time! And that's what's exhausting. When you're an activist, you have to do it every day. And that's the big mistake of ACT UP. The minute we got the drugs, everybody went home and said "OK, we got the drugs and that was our goal" instead of saying "No, no! We gotta stick this out. There are more fights to fight." Maxine Wolf, the famous lesbian activist, said that to me. "You gotta do it every day." You gotta get up in the morning and you gotta do it 'til you go to bed at night. And our enemies do! They do it mostly through churches and through prayer meetings and all those things that keep them together somehow. And through their universities. And it's gonna get worse! These people are in for long term. As Bill Moyers points out in his speech I quote, they've managed to increase the number of conservative people who agree with them, the percentage from 10%-40%, whatever I say in the book--a lot . So you say Index is a magazine for straight people?

LB: Well, it's for thinking people which encompasses (laughing) some gay people.

L: Well, this should apply to all people because everybody's got rights that they're not getting and I'm hoping...we don't have much support from straight people. That's what I mean when I say 60 million people voted against us. You have to realize that that's hate. That's not dislike, that is hate! And we never face up to the fact that these people hate us and they don't support us. They don't want us to know that 'cause it's too strong a word. "Oh, it's not hate! They just don't want us to get married." Well, honey, I think that's hate--if they're going to protect their precious marriage to the point of death like that.

LB: That's not as frustrating to me as the fact that we gays don't care about ourselves.

L: It's almost as if people say "Oh what did you expect?" or "I'm used to that--it's happened all my life. Why should it be different now?" instead of saying "I won't take it any more".

LB: Some of things in your speech are such obvious conclusions, but no one else is stating them. Like when you say we went from 41 AIDS cases to 70 million, the war on AIDS has been lost.

L: It has been. But that should be obvious to everyone. I mean, how can we not know that? How can we not remember that it was 41 and it's 70 million now and you have to say "Honey, somebody's not tending to the store". And you have to say "Well, they must not want to tend to the store."

LB: The frustrating thing is that AIDS is not like the bubonic plague where you walk outside your door and get it. We know how to prevent it's transmission.

L: You're so right.

LB: And the bare-backing controversy. I'm like, what's the controversy? You don't use a condom and you can die! Another thing that you say that is so obvious is that if you fuck somebody without a condom and you have HIV, you may be murdering them. Or if you're a bottom who throws their legs up without a condom, you may be committing suicide, It just takes longer than if you commit suicide by jumping in front of a bus. That is something that gays are in denial about. And we're ready to chalk getting HIV up to "Oh girl, I was so high!".

L: Or just from being so horny all of a sudden. You can get carried away without any drug, when somebody gorgeous comes along.

LB: But I think caution is especially thrown to the wind when you're under the influence, and it is a hard pill to swallow that as you say, you're probably never going to be able to have sex without a condom again without this worry.

L: Yep! And I should have said it a long time ago. I should have actually used the word "murder". I say in this book that we have been murdering each other since it was discovered to be a virus, which is 1985. From that day on, if we didn't start using condoms we were murdering each other. And that's why everyone of us has killed a few people. When I looked at that list of names of people over the years, it really shook me up. I saved the names of people I've gone to bed with and realized how many of them were dead that I had fucked. And maybe it was my virus and maybe it wasn't, but it sure could have been. This thing between our legs is a lethal weapon--

LB: Yeah, my hemorrhoids are killing me!

L:-- but we don't look upon it that way. It doesn't mean you can't use it with pleasure, if protected.

LB: But whether it's because of the drugs being perceived as a cure, they do refuse to accept the fact that they'll never be able to have anal sex without a condom again and as you point out, the jury's still out on any definitive oral transmission.

L: The jury's not out to me. But you're right. And you know that bare-backing shit started surfacing about 3 or 4 years ago, when it started there was that stupid group called Sex Panic which was saying "How dare you tell us what we can and can not do?" And they really went after me, they crucified me. How dare you say all that? And all you're doing is telling them common fucking sense! Use a condom--stop it! You cannot do this to each other. You cannot murder each other.

LB: Kind of prophetically, you asked in your speech in October, "What's going to happen when these drugs stop working?". And a few months later there's this Super-Bug. And someone called me all worried, saying the new strain goes from HIV to full-blown AIDS in months and it's resistant to the drugs! And I was like "Yeah, but honey, the transmission method is the same." And these people are still playing Russian roulette. That the Super-Bug would worry him more when he should already be engaging in safe sex. People are just not willing to accept--

L: At the beginning of the book I say that one of my motivating forces is my finding out that a good friend of mine had sero-converted and another good friend had become hooked on crystal meth. And I thought, Holy shit! Both of these guys are intelligent, up-market, they've got brains, they've got money. They had a place in the community and good strong egos--they had no reason to be so depressed. And I said Holy shit! If THESE guys are going to fall of the wagon, we're in real trouble." We're not talking about silly ditzes. And of course they're both ashamed and they're both "Oh, I don't know what happened" and the guy who started the crystal meth said " Well, I'd been feeling down for such a while and I just wanted to try it a few times. And I had no idea it was so addictive. Before I knew it it was too late." And the guy who sero-converted, you know, admits" I was just stupid." But if the smart ones are going to be stupid...

LB: Well, that crystal is so diabolical because it short-circuits the serotonin-manufacturing process in the brain---

L: Really?

LB:--and the serotonins are what make you feel happy, so when you get hooked on it and try to get off of it, you're serotonins are whacked. So you may never be able to feel good again, or at least for a long while. But what's guaranteed to make you feel good? Another bump of crystal. That's why it's so tough to get off of it.

L: Is it expensive?

LB: Why you wanna buy some? (reaching into pocket) I'll give you a good deal.

L: (Laughs) It's a serotonin, is it?

LB: No it's not. But when you are addicted, it affects the way your brains natural serotonins are manufactured.

L: Because I am terrified of heights. And I have been ever since I was 10 or 12. I've spent zillions of dollars on analysts couches trying to find out why I panic when I go up high. I just totally panic. I start to sweat and all that. And I've always thought "I should be able to lick this somehow!" I'm going out here yelling at all these people to do this and that and yet if you live on the 12th floor, I can't come up to your house. And then about a year ago the NIH has done a study and they've discovered that people who have extreme phobias like I have, it's got to do with the serotonin levels in your brain. So that there is an actual physical cause for all this and I feel so relieved. I can say fuck you, I'm not going to come up there 'cause I've got whatever in my brain. So I'm no longer that kind of sissy.

LB: Try some crystal. Then you can really go up high.

L: (laughs) That's what I'm afraid of, I'll go up there and jump!

LB: Why do you claim that this the most difficult speech you've ever written?

L: Because I was going to use the word "murder". I was going to say we are murdering each other. I've never said that out loud before. I've thought it, and I'd thought of it, and I'm angry at myself that I didn't start saying it in 1985. And I knew somehow the next speech I'd make, whenever it would be, that I'd have to do that.

LB: Well, it's another of those obvious conclusions. On a different note, in the forward which you've added to the speech, you blame 3 guys for the rise of AIDS--

L: For the whole plague!

LB: One is Ronald Reagan, Jr. How sickened were you by the pomp of his dad's funeral?

L: I wrote a letter that they published in the Advocate. I was saying that this man has murdered more people than Hitler.

LB: Watching the reverent news coverage I felt such a big disconnect--Reagan was the president who tried to make ketch-up a vegetable and couldn't utter the word AIDS!

L: Let's talk about the kid. How can you stand by--whether he's gay or not, I happen to think he's gay and I happen to have a lot of miscellaneous information that backs that up. He went to Yale for a year and I'm well-plugged in at Yale.

LB: And little Ronnie was also "well-plugged" at Yale?

L: Evidently he carried on there. He was a ballet dancer in a ballet company. If he wasn't gay, he certainly was surrounded by gay people. He's gotta have had a lot of gay friends. How he could have stood by and watched all these friends die and know it was because his old man and his mother weren't out there saying let's do something about this? He must be very fucked-up in the head. Just like Mary Cheney. She must be very fucked up in the head to stick around with THAT family--

LB: Which got a big laugh during the speech. And you think the big reasons that the Reagans wouldn't touch the AIDS issue was that they didn't want the nation to focus on their son's homosexuality?

L: I'm convinced. Ron Jr. got married awfully sudden, got married to a woman much older than he was--not that that means anything--he got married to a woman who his mother did not like then.

LB: Did that sour-faced bitch like anyone, ever?

L: She's happy with him now I think, but he suddenly became another person. He must been slapped into place. So basically, the point I make is that this AIDS plague was really caused by 3 gay people: Ed Koch, Ron Reagan, Jr.--although I was not allowed to use that term "gay" in the book. I had to write around all that because of the lawyers. And the third man was Dr. Richard Krause, who was the head of the part of the NIH, which dealt with communicable diseases. He was GAY and he did nothing, NOTHING for those first 5 years. And I got that from all other people who worked there. And certainly we know Ed Koch did nothing for all the people who worked here. So 3 closeted gay people killed us. That's how much we haven't got our act together. You can't call people gay in print most of the time. I can do it now because of Krause is out and Ed Koch, we have enough information from other people that he is. And besides you can't liable a famous person because they can sue. And I haven't been able to find anybody to tell me that Ron Jr. was gay, I just get a lot of gossip. A lot of gay kids that were at Yale say "I know so-and-so who slept with him". But I haven't got the goods on him like I got it on Ed Koch. We actually know who the lover was.

LB: How bitter were you when the lover was going to come forward and then didn't? That must have been crushing to see that ray of hope--

L: There were so many things like that you just say "OK, what do we do next?" That's what activism really is. You play with the cards that you were dealt that day. You make it up as you go along. Half the time you wanna call somebody that you were talking to at such-and-such an agency or drug company and you call back and that person's no longer there. And you've got to start all over again. It was always like that. The whole thing's been very slippery. I wish we could realize that they want all this to happen and we're doing just what they want us to do. They want us to kill ourselves. Maybe that will help people to say "Fuck you, we're NOT going to!"

LB: I wonder how and where is this articulated among the powers that be? Does someone pat George Bush on the back behind closed doors and say "Good job! We still didn't release those approved AIDS drugs and funding yet."?

L: I'm very interested in Hitler and Nazi Germany and the psychology of all of that. And there's a fantastic book--the name of which I can't remember--by a professor at the University of Leeds about how Hitler never said all the things that his people did. He didn't tell everybody "Go out and kill all the jews". He never said that. He said "I don't like the jews" but he never said "go out there and kill them". It's just that all his people knew how he felt and they did what they thought he wanted. And that's what's going on here. All of the people who work for Bush--they know us, what has to be done.

LB: But it seems like such an intricate plan--

L: It's not a plan. You just look the other way. The bill gets defeated in Congress or the judge rules it's illegal. Bush has $6 billion which has been acquired and none of it's gone out. He can say "Look, I got $6 billion from Congress for AIDS". In the meantime, his person who's running the bank is not writing the check. So...

LB: And he's not approving the AIDS drugs, either.

L: Did you know that you cannot submit an application for any kind of research funding to the NIH that has the word "homosexual" in it? You won't won't get your money. So if you want to test drugs on gay people, they can't say that. More and more these little things sneak into the rules and regulations. And there are so many of them and there aren't enough people fighting back. You'll see an article about it--all these things have been exposed. The Times runs an article every day of yet some new, awful thing that they're up to. But there's not enough energy to confront each and every thing every day. The democrats are just totally invisible.

LB: Well, the same people who put Bush in power control most people's news, You have to watch BBC World to get balanced coverage.

L: It's true. Do you?

LB: I try, but I admit I do keep CNN on a lot. Lately republicans are harping about the liberal news media and I'm like who? Air America?

L: No, that's what they say. It's like Ed Koch has denied everything that I said in my book, saying he's done all these incredible things and spent more money on this than any other state and it's just one lie after another in his denial. And many will believe him, or people will say he's full of shit and that's the end of it.

LB: Or people believe the commercials between every break on CNN that say "George Bush is trying to say social security" when the opposite is true--

L: That is such a red herring! That is such an issue that is never going to get anywhere that he keeps on the front pages so that he doesn't have to deal with the other issues that are more troublesome. He's such a sneak, such a liar, such a cheat!

LB: And I love that you point out in your speech that with the $150 billion spent in an unnecessary, unjust war on Iraq we could have stopped AIDS AND world hunger. The new findings that the evidence on which the war was based was dead wrong was totally eclipsed by the Terri Schiavo coverage and the pope.

L: There's another one. We sat here and watched it all happen. You just KNEW that war was a load of shit. I f you said it everybody said "You're un-American. You don't love your country".

LB: But what I don't understand is that I (I in italics) have no access to intelligence findings or government dossiers, but the democratic members of Congress did. How could they have voted for the war? To appease their vengeful constituents after 9/11 so they could stay in office?

L: I don't think there are any more democrats. The democratic party is so totally invisible. I don't think there are more than 3 of them there--Barbara Boxer, and Ted Kennedy and you tell me who else? I don't even know their names anymore. It didn't use to be like that. There used to be a lot of democrats you could rattle off. Everybody knows this! We're not saying anything that should be news to anybody.

LB: I don't think people have many outlets for real news. That's one promising development: a lot of young people are getting their news from the internet so they bypass Fox and the like.

L: What do use for your skin? For dry skin? (itching a dry patch)

LB: For my skin? Just Vaseline.

L: Just regular Vaseline?

LB: According to the No-Nonsense Medically-Based Beauty Book, they say Vaseline.

L: Just regular, hard Vaseline? Not Vaseline Intensive Care?

LB: Well that's a lotion, so it's an infusion of water and petrolatum, so it's weaker. The purpose of any moisturizer is to seal in moisture, so just wet your skin and slather on Vaseline or cocoa butter or olive oil.

L: I have this one spot that never goes away.

LB: Maybe some cortisone.

L: That might do it. I've got some of that. I'll give it a try. What were we talking about? Oh! Let me tell you about activism again. You don't need other people, you can do it yourself. One person can stand up somewhere with a sign. You may feel like an asshole, but after you've finished, you feel real good. I've done that, a lot of times, when I couldn't get anyone else to come with me. Someone is appearing in public and you stand up near 'em with a sign and everybody stares at you and you do feel like an asshole. But so what, you're getting the message across and maybe somebody will take the picture and put it somewhere. And you'll make somebody think. You don't have to have an ACT UP, you don't have to have a gang of people. So I want everybody here to get a sign!

LB: Speaking of being considered an asshole, I understand that you were asked to leave the Fire Island Pines.

L: That was after the publication of Faggots, because the climax of Faggots takes in the Fire Island Pines in the meat-rack.

LB: And they didn't want their tales told.

L: They didn't want their tales told so I was asked to leave.

LB: By individuals? Or...

L: No it was one of the men who owned the grocery store who was sort of a big community representative. Now dead. If we make a movie of The Normal Heart, which YOU didn't see---

LB: Oops! (giggles nervously)

L: --I hope we might be able to shoot a lot of it at Fire Island. We've got a lot of community cooperation now.

LB: One thing from the speech that I'd like for you to elaborate on is the notion that HIV enables them to sell ourselves as sick. And that kills off our usefulness both in our own minds--

L: It allows THEM to sell us as sick. They can say we're sick. So how can we be believed or admitted into their family, into their world, all these sick people. And then THAT has an effect on on our visions of ourselves because they're harping on us all the time. "You're sick, you're sick, you're sick!" And most people agree with it because that's what we were brought up to believe, a lot of us, as children.

LB: That we're not just physically sick but mentally sick, so it blends in with the self-worth issues--

L: Completely, completely.

LB: --and makes us engage in some of these behaviors to kill the pain.

L: Oh, I have no question that's how that whole mechanism works. The more they call us sick, the more it chips away at our self-image. And let's face it, most people have trouble enough with their self-image. Life is hard for everybody. It's hard to keep your strength up all the time. It took me a long time not to give a fuck what other people thought. But this is all wearing me down, all the stuff that they're doing to us now. Because, we're not fighting back. That also decreases the sense of our self-worth if we can't even fight back. So we're participating in our own destruction somehow. It's very sad.

LB: Do you see anything that makes you hopeful?

L: No. I can't see it. Who makes the decisions for us? We have no elected officials, we have no organizations that represent us as a group and when anybody at the head of an organization speaks out as if he's speaking for everybody, people get mad. "I don't agree with you. How dare you say those things on behalf of all gay people." We have no way of governing ourselves or ruling ourselves. We have no way to meet like in a congress to have different views debated and decisions reached through compromise--we have none of that. So we're really just a lot of people wondering around lost in the wilderness.

LB: And very divided, and not connected to our history. The younger generation hasn't watched as many of their friends die.

L: And one organization doesn't work with another organization doesn't work with a third organization and they all get mad at each other because "You're in my territory! You've usurped my issue." instead of saying "Let's all sit down and try and work on this together". So they all cancel each other out.

LB: At the speech, you got a big laugh when you dropped your red, white and blue flag sweater on the ground and you also used a very effective theatrical device of repeating, several times in your speech, the bit about "I love being gay, I love gay people, I think we're better than other people...." Are you perhaps thinking of another theatrical venture? You say that you're doing a film of The Normal Heart--

L: I didn't say that officially. There will be a movie of The Normal Heart. I can't say more than that right now.

LB: How about your book The American People, which you've been working on since 1978. It's already 3,000 pages. What's that about?

L: I've described it before. It's a history of America and it starts with the monkeys in the jungle. It's a history of gay people in America 'cause we've been here since the beginning even though we didn't have a name. And it's a history of minorities--

LB: Will there be more details about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington being gay?

L: There's a lot in there.

LB: Go ahead with the minorities, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

L: Well, I've discovered a lot of awful things that they've done to us over the years, over the centuries.

LB: And about the minorities...

L: There's a lot of about how the minorities were treated especially gays and jews and blacks. And about how this virus has managed to grow. The virus itself is a character in the book. It's been around a long time. It's supposed to have crossed over from monkeys into people in the 16th Century. And it's a history of AIDS. I'm the only writer who's left alive who's been on the front line since the beginning. And I know all the bodies that were buried, literally and figuratively.

LB: Another great question you ask in the speech is "Why isn't anyone else speaking out about this?".

L: That's one of those "I don't know" questions.

LB: Well, I hope that your book will stimulate such speeches.

L: I hope so too.

LB: (Laughing) So there's SOME hope?

L: Well, you never don't have hope, but I'm not very hopeful right now.

PORN AGAIN

That wacky porn-star Michael Lucas is at it again! I received his new prick flick STRAIGHT TO PRAGUE in the mail today, with the press release which contains the following:

But you'll never believe this one scene on the Bonus Director's Cut Disk: Anal water squirtinging, enema, anal douching, colonic irrigation--whatever you call it, it's still simply remarkable! Get you and your friends now if they want to see one of the greatest combinations of sex, play and humor that I've ever seen in my life! Michael actually challenged the guys to an anal squirting enama contest! And there's some great water sports action as well.

IN NYC?

Gay? Then don't miss a rare appearance by a brilliant man, "The Bill Cosby of the gay community", Larry Kramer.

A Conversation with Larry Kramer and The New Yorker's Michael Specter
Strand Bookstore
828 Broadway @12th street
Second Floor
September 29 06:30PM - 08:30PM
Event Free and Open to the Public.
Michael Specter, a staff writer at the New Yorker who focuses on medicine and public health, will moderate this conversation around Kramer's book, The Tragedy of Today's Gays. Specter has written about AIDS since 1984, most recently in a series about AIDS in Russia, Africa, and Europe. He also wrote The New Yorker's profile of Kramer.

I'M BUSTED!

http://www.strangereports.com/portabletoiletv.php?fname=Lady&lname=Bunny&city=New+York+City

Man Caught Peeping In Toilet

Police were called to a parking lot in New York City, Monday afternoon where they caughta man identified as Lady Bunny. Apparently, he had dressed himself in clothing madeof trash bags and crawled into a portable toilet. A woman discovered Lady vomiting onhimself and gasping for air in the 130 degree temperatures. Police had to cut the toilet open to remove Bunny. "We don't even know how he managed to get in there in the first place." SaidOfficer Jack O'Conner. When asked why he was in the portable toilet, Bunny responded, "I was looking for treasure." Bunny will be sent to the Sunnydale Mental Health Facility in Sunnydale, California for mental analysis and observation. Officials suspect that he may have beenhiding in the portable toilet for nearly 6 hours, until the midday sun heated it to nearlylethal temperatures. Why he was hiding in the toilet is still unclear. But, they do know thathe was lucky to get out alive.

Deputies hosed Bunny off before letting him into the back of their car, where he was then escorted to the police station for questioning.


PORTABLE TOILET SIMILAR TO THE ONE LADY BUNNY WAS FOUND IN

PERUVIAN THROWS

Hi All:
One of my parents is selling beautiful, hand made Peruvian throws. You know what they are, the thing that you throw over your bed to keep you warm. I only have the one attached sample to show you now.

They are $60.00 each ---- I know it sounds expensive, but they are really good quality. I have 2 --- one for my bed and one for my sofa and I love 'em.

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9/11 AND THE SPORT OF GOD

Larry Kramer forwarded me this email. It's a long, but definitely worth it read, containing some shocking biblical passages about a violent, veangeful god which don't often see the light of day. It's also contains a rarely heard (by me anyway) liberal christian viewpoint stressing the importance of the separation of church and state, which is totally lost on Bush's fanatical fan base. As a treat for those of you who make it through the article, I've added some pornographic images to keep your "interests" up and to demonstrate that I proudly represent the sodomites and their "hordes of hell." ---Lady Beelzebub



Published on Friday, September 9, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
* 9/11 And The Sport of God *
*by Bill Moyers*

This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union
Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received
the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions
to faith and reason in America.

At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized
in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do.

My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who
embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others.
"Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter Roger
Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan
authority over his conscience. Baptists there were a "pitiful negligible
minority" but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as
"incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding to their belief in that
great democracy of faith - the priesthood of all believers. For refusing
to pay tribute to the state religion they were fined, flogged, and
exiled. In 1651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a
three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion
with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. His friends offered to pay
his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink
to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the
love of liberty, he said, "that must free the soul."

Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and
Bill of Rights "a haven for the cause of conscience." No longer could
magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and
recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would "the loathsome
combination of church and state" - as Thomas Jefferson described it - be
the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with
religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no
sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and
politics would make inevitable. The First Amendment neither inculcates
religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the
Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to
God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a
remarkable arrangement that guaranteed "soul freedom."

It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of
9/11 is an appropriate time to think about it.



Four years ago this week, the poet's prophetic metaphor became real
again and "the great dark birds of history" plunged into our lives.

They came in the name of God. They came bent on murder and martyrdom. It
was as if they rode to earth on the fierce breath of Allah himself, for
the sacred scriptures that had nurtured these murderous young men are
steeped in images of a violent and vengeful God who wills life for the
faithful and horrific torment for unbelievers.

Yes, the Koran speaks of mercy and compassion and calls for ethical
living. But such passages are no match for the ferocity of instruction
found there for waging war for God's sake. The scholar Jack
Nelson-Pallmeyer carefully traces this trail of holy violence in his
important book, /Is Religion Killing Us? / [Trinity Press International.
2003]. He highlights many of the verses in the Koran that the Islamic
terrorists could have had in their hearts and on their lips four years
ago as they moved toward their gruesome rendezvous. As I read some of
them, close your eyes and recall the scenes of that bright September
morning which began in the bright sun under a blue sky:

"Those who believe Fight in the cause of Allah, and Those who reject
Faith Fight in the cause of Evil."(4:76)

"So We sent against them A furious Wind through days of disaster, that
We might Give them a taste of a Penalty of humiliation In this Life; but
The Penalty of the Hereafter will be More Humiliating still: And they
Will find No help." (41:16)

"Then watch thou For the Day That the sky will Bring forth a kind Of
smoke (or mist) Plainly visible, Enveloping the people: This will be
a Penalty
Grievous." (44:10-11)

"Did the people of the towns Feel Secure against the coming Of Our
Wrath by night While they were asleep? Or else did they feel
Secure against its coming in Broad daylight while they Played
About (carefree)? Did they then feel secure Against the Plan of
Allah? - But no one can feel Secure from the Plan of Allah,
except those (Doomed) to ruin." (7:97-99)

So the holy warriors came - an airborne death cult, their sights on
God's enemies: regular folks, starting the day's routine. One minute
they're pulling off their jackets, shaking Sweet n' Low into their
coffee, adjusting the height of their chair or a picture of a child or
sweetheart or spouse in a frame on their desk, booting up their computer
- and in the next, they are engulfed by a horrendous cataclysm. God's
will. Poof!



But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure
their work. It is also the number of the living - the survivors - taken
hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our
heads - deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever
again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working to
bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said
"the human heart is the first home of democracy." Fill that heart with
fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances
of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to
its foundations.

In the days leading up to 9/11 our daughter and husband adopted their
first baby. On the morning of September 11th our son-in-law passed
through the shadow of the World Trade Center toward his office a few
blocks up the street. He arrived as the horrors erupted. He saw the
flames, the falling bodies, the devastation. His building was evacuated
and for long awful moments he couldn't reach his wife, our daughter, to
say he was okay. Even after they connected it wasn't until the next
morning that he was able to make it home. Throughout that fearful night
our daughter was alone with their new baby. Later she told us that for
weeks thereafter she would lie awake at night, wondering where and when
it might happen again, going to the computer at three in the morning to
check out what she could about bioterrorism, germ warfare, anthrax and
the vulnerability of children. The terrorists had violated a mother's
deepest space.

Who was not vulnerable? That morning Judith and I made it to our office
at Channel Thirteen on West 33rd Street just after the second plane
struck. Our building was evacuated although the two of us remained with
other colleagues to do what we could to keep the station on the air. The
next day it was evacuated again because of a bomb scare at the Empire
State Building nearby. We had just ended a live broadcast for PBS when
security officers swept through and ordered everyone out. This time we
left. As we were making our way down the stairs I took Judith's arm and
was struck by the thought: Is this the last time I'll touch her? Could
what we had begun together a half century ago end here on this dim, bare
staircase? I forced the thought from my mind, willed it away, but in the
early hours of morning, as I sat at the window of our apartment looking
out at the sky, the sinister intruder crept back.

Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and every
imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.


They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful,
imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots
have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if
we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike
first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear
of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason
together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind. Yes, we are
vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us
in.

So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only the
horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, when
through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, and
sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I
keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it makes life
worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take it from us.

But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic.
And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The
historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of
journalists. He wrote: "The theologians may indulge the pleasing task of
describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native
purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian [read:
journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a
weak and degenerate race of beings."

The other side of the story:

Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson-Pallmayer
points out, God's violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a
deep and troubling pathology "so pervasive, vindictive, and destructive"
that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages
that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.

For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf
Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and
suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and
old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet;
stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage;
families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water
jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her
dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people
struggling desperately to survive.

Now transport those current scenes from our newspapers and television
back to the first Book of the Bible - the Book of Genesis. They bring to
life what we rarely imagine so graphically when we read of the great
flood that devastated the known world. If you read the Bible as
literally true, as fundamentalists do, this flood was ordered by God.
"And God said to Noah, 'I have determined to make an end of all flesh...
behold, I will destroy them with the earth." (6:5-13). "I will bring a
flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the
breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall
die." (6:17-19) Noah and his family are the only humans spared - they
were, after all, God's chosen. But for everyone else: "... the waters
prevailed so mightily... that all the high mountains....were
covered....And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle,
beasts...and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was
the breath of life, died...." (7:17-23).

The flood is merely Act One. Read on: This God first "hardens the heart
of Pharaoh" to make sure the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the
plea of Moses to let his people go. Then because Pharaoh's heart is
hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so people cannot drink its water
and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied with the results, God sends
swarms of locusts and flies to torture them; rains hail and fire and
thunder on them destroys the trees and plants of the field until nothing
green remains; orders every first-born child to be slaughtered, from the
first-born of Pharaoh right on down to "the first-born of the
maidservant behind the mill." An equal-murderous God, you might say. The
massacre continues until "there is not a house where one was not dead."
While the Egyptian families mourn their dead, God orders Moses to loot
from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God's
thirst for blood is satisfied, God pauses to rest - and boasts: "I have
made sport of the Egyptians."

Violence: the sport of God. God, the progenitor of shock and awe.



And that's just Act II. As the story unfolds women and children are
hacked to death on God's order; unborn infants are ripped from their
mother's wombs; cities are leveled - their women killed if they have had
sex, the virgins taken at God's command for the pleasure of his holy
warriors. When his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives God
is furious and sends Moses back to rebuke them and tell them to finish
the job. One tribe after another falls to God-ordered genocide: the
Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites,
the Jebusites - names so ancient they have disappeared into the mists as
fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, grandparents and
grandchildren, infants in arms, shepherds, threshers, carpenters,
merchants, housewives - living human beings, flesh and blood: "And when
the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you
must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and
show no mercy to them...(and) your eyes shall not pity them."

So it is written - in the Holy Bible.

Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the
blood-soaked trail of God's sport, decreed that anything that disagrees
with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted
spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the
literal Biblical sense of God "is repugnant to every principle of faith
as well as reason" and that we must therefore read the scriptures
through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible and
construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature (as I
have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God of wrath
was supplanted by the Gospel's God of love [See /The God of Evil/ ,
Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]

I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know that
the "violence-of-God" tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of
monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over and
at home consider the "sacred texts" to be literally God's word on all
matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible
allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin
birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of
the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is
sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage - that God slaughters.

Millions believe it.

Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering
when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to
proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a corrupted
America. They said the government had adopted the agenda "of the pagans,
and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians"
not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way (The God of the
Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and
Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Just
as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now -
disgusted with a decadent America - "God almighty is lifting his
protection from us." Critics said such comments were deranged. But
millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn't think so.
They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with
the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful
nations - the terrorists were meant to be God's wake-up call: better get
right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama
bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally,
and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a "fierce
Judeo-Christian campaign" against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance
"to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him."

Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a "holy war" as defined by
fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in
General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had taken
up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members
apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning
warriors "to the spiritual warfare for souls." After Boykin had led
Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: "I know
my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his
God was an idol." Now Boykin was going about evangelical revivals
preaching that America was in a holy war as "a Christian nation"
battling Satan and that America's Muslim adversaries will be defeated
"only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." For such an hour,
America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it
was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless
wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, "was not elected
by a majority of the voters - he was appointed by God." Not surprising,
instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, General
Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
(Just as it isn't surprising that despite his public call for the
assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson's Operation
Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the
President's Faith-Based Initiative for "relief work" on the Gulf Coast.)

We can't wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly:
"This is a problem we can't walk away from." We're talking about a
powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what's
on God's mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their
interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the
nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of
their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement.

True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of
the Bible to bear on American laws and morals - this very seminary is
part of that tradition; it's the American way, encouraged and protected
by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical
religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great
political parties - the country is not yet a theocracy but the
Republican Party is - and they are driving American politics, using God
as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment,
foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social
services and so on.

What's also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have
brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists,
and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance - their loathing of
other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an
independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for
objective knowledge - has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for
state power. They use the language of faith to demonize political
opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists,
ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot
soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests
and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political
ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers as
ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ (the
"Christograph") on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners of his
legions and routed his rivals in Rome. Never mind that the Emperor
himself was never baptized into the faith; it served him well enough to
make the God worshipped by Christians his most important ally and turn
the Sign of Christ into the one imperial symbol most widely recognized
and feared from east to west.



Let's take a brief detour to Ohio and I'll show you what I am talking
about. In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project
has been launched to identify and train thousands of "Patriot Pastors"
to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press
reports, the leader of the movement - the senior pastor of a large
church in suburban Columbus - casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic
clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell." The
fear and loathing in his message is palpable: He denounces public
schools that won't teach creationism, require teachers to read the Bible
in class, or allow children to pray. He rails against the "secular
jihadists" who have "hijacked" America and prevent school kids from
learning that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist." He links abortion to
children who murder their parents. He blasts the "pagan left" for trying
to redefine marriage. He declares that "homosexual rights" will bring "a
flood of demonic oppression." On his church website you read that
"Reclaiming the teaching of our Christian heritage among America's youth
is paramount to a sense of national destiny that God has invested into
this nation."

One of the prominent allies of the Ohio Restoration Project is a popular
televangelist in Columbus who heads a $40 million-a-year ministry that
is accessible worldwide via 1,400 TV stations and cable affiliates.
Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a
"Christocrat" - a gladiator for God marching against "the very hordes of
hell in our society" - he nonetheless has been spotted with so many
Republican politicians in Washington and elsewhere that he has been
publicly described as a"spiritual advisor" to the party. The journalist
Marley Greiner has been following his ministry for the organization,
FreePress. She writes that because he considers the separation of church
and state to be "a lie perpetrated on Americans - especially believers
in Jesus Christ" - he identifies himself as a "wall builder" and "wall
buster." As a wall builder he will "restore Godly presence in government
and culture; as a wall buster he will tear down the church-state wall."
He sees the Christian church as a sleeping giant that has the ability
and the anointing from God to transform America. The giant is stirring.
At a rally in July he proclaimed to a packed house: "Let the Revolution
begin!" And the congregation roared back: "Let the Revolution begin!"

(The Revolution's first goal, by the way, is to elect as governor next
year the current Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election
process in 2004 year when a surge in Christian voters narrowly carried
George Bush to victory. As General Boykin suggested of President Bush's
anointment, this fellow has acknowledged that "God wanted him as
secretary of state during 2004" because it was such a critical election.
Now he is criss-crossing Ohio meeting with Patriot Pastors and their
congregations proclaiming that "America is at its best when God is at
its center.") [For the complete stories from which this information has
been extracted, see: "An evening with Rod Parsley, by Marley Greiner,
FreePress, July 20, 2005; Patriot Pastors," Marilyn Warfield, /Cleveland
Jewish News/, July 29, 2005; "Ohio televangelist has plenty of
influence, but he wants more", Ted Wendling, /Religion News Service/,
Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2005; "Shaping Politics from the pulpits,"
Susan Page, /USA Today/ , Aug. 3, 2005; "Religion and Politics Should Be
Mixed Says Ohio Secretary of State," WTOL-TV Toledo, October 29, 2004].

The Ohio Restoration Project is spreading. In one month alone last year
in the president's home state of Texas, a single Baptist preacher added
2000 "Patriot Pastors" to the rolls. On his website he now encourages
pastors to "speak out on the great moral issues of our day...to restore
and reclaim America for Christ."

Alas, these "great moral issues" do not include building a moral
economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based
Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in
America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the
government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the
first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners - people
who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The
nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely
maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting
the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor
people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year
one million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty.
And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of Americans has
dropped almost nine percent.

None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the
radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political
power they have cut a deal with America's richest class and their
partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to "starve" the
government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit
everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and
larger tax cuts for the rich.

How else to explain the vacuum in their "great moral issues" of the
plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the
gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew
government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary
taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record
high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy
conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the
pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country;
yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no
mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)

This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but
revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant
force in America's governing party. Without them the government would
not be in the hands of people who don't believe in government. They are
culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw
last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on
they are crusading for a government "of, by, and for the people" in
favor of one based on Biblical authority.

This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there
is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that
religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong.
They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know
what it means. Behind their malicious attacks on the courts ("vermin in
black robes," as one of their talk show allies recently put it,) is a
fierce longing to hold judges accountable for interpreting the
Constitution according to standards of biblical revelation as
fundamentalists define it. To get those judges they needed a party
beholden to them. So the Grand Old Party - the GOP - has become God's
Own Party, its ranks made up of God's Own People "marching as to war."

Go now to the website of an organization called America 21
(http://www.america21.us/Home.cfm ). There, on a red, white, and blue
home page, you find praise for President Bush's agenda - including his
effort to phase out Social Security and protect corporations from law
suits by aggrieved citizens. On the same home page is a reminder that
"There are 7,177 hours until our next National Election....ENLIST NOW."
Now click again and you will read a summons calling Christian pastors
"to lead God's people in the turning that can save America from our
enemies." Under the headline "Remember - Repent - Return" language
reminiscent of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell reminds you that "one of
the unmistakable lessons [of 9/11] is that America has lost the full
measure of God's hedge of protection. When we ask ourselves why, the
scriptures remind us that ancient Israel was invaded by its foreign
enemy, Babylon, in 586 B.C. ....(and) Jerusalem was destroyed by another
invading foreign power in 70 A.D. .... Psalm 106:37 says that these
judgments of God ...were because of Israel's idolatry. Israel, the apple
of God's eye, was destroyed ... because the people failed... to repent."
If America is to avoid a similar fate, the warning continues, we must
"remember the legacy of our heritage under God and our covenant with Him
and, in the words of II Chronicles 7:14: 'Turn from our wicked ways.'"

Just what does this have to do with the president's political agenda
praised on the home page? Well, squint and look at the fine print at the
bottom of the site. It reads: America21 is a not-for-profit organization
whose mission is to educate, engage and mobilize Christians to influence
national policy at every level. Founded in 1989 by a
multi-denominational group of pastors and businessmen, it is dedicated
to being a catalyst for revival and reform of the culture /and the
government/ ." (emphasis added).

The corporate, political and religious right converge here, led by a
president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is
the most powerful fundamentalist in American history.

What are the stakes? In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a
prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that "the attack against
reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade."
To save the American Dream, "we desperately need to reaffirm the
principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life
which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of
whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or
gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The
alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear
the United States apart in the name of their "separate realities' or to
wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and
subjective brand of reality on all the rest."

That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was
setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he
warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of
the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.

It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because
of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled
because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational
people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried
appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the
Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and
paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they
will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God
as Republicans do, they're talking gobbledygook, compromising the
strongest thing going for them - the case for a moral economy and the
moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made
America "a safe haven for the cause of conscience."

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one
lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies - political
bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies - cannot be appeased;
they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is
never easy; these guys don't fight fair; "Robert's Rules of Order" is
not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front - and especially
freedom of conscience - never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping
someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism requires us to
see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on.
Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy
love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and
wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life,
put it this way: "When we talk about love we have to become mature or we
will become sentimental. Basically love means...being responsible,
responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the
pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind."



Christian realists aren't afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who
came upon a brawl in the street and asked, "Is this a private fight or
can anyone get in it?" we have to take that love where the action is. Or
the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program
NOW With Bill Moyers. Moyers also serves as president of the Schumann
Center for Media and Democracy.

STREISAND GETS STREET???

I love it when people send me things, whether funny links or photos, interesting articles, even "sexy" messages like this one:

Hi, I have a question, when a straight man is humping a transexual, is he getting pussy or ass because gay men say that when a man is humping them, they say do you like my ass?? When women are getting hump by a man she say do you like my pussy?? I weird because tranny's are women are they??

Honey, I forwarded this to my dad for a full answer. But I also received the following note with a link to Barbra Streisand's new Junior Vasquez remix of her new song, NIGHT OF MY LIFE.

Hi bunny,

I have been jamming to your tunes latley and love them! Well, I loved the google linc in your blog this morning ... so, I wanted to share this barbra remix with ya ... just incase you have not been hearing it ten thousand times allready... ( At Barbra's website I had to send five people the information about her new album in order to get this linc... lol ... so here is the linc)

http://www.sonymusic.com/clips/selection/fu/A03272/A03272_01_01_full_100.asx

its for "night of my life"

Crazy... she really gets all street babs' in it and breaks it down.. with saying "AINT" ... lol ... I love the remix!

"Aint no early warning.. tell me that you want it! Tell me what I do for you!"


Regards,

Shane



The notion of "street babs" was just too intoxicating to ignore. I visited the link and I'm not as thrilled as Shane about the remix. I haven't heard the original version of the song, but the remix is awful. My mom tells me I it's more polite to say that "I don't care for something" rather than "I hate it." So I don't care for it. In my opinion, it should never have been remixed. I prefer dance songs that are written to be dance songs. Occasionally a ballad can withstand a remix (Heather Headley's I WISH I WASN'T and Deborah Cox's NOBODY'S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE are good examples), but I usually resent the tracks which fail on the r&b charts so the record company remixes them for the gays. Just throw a beat behind and the fags will love it, gurl! It can be kind of mindless. I'll never forget that cheap remix of Mary J. Blige's YOUR CHILD that was big in gay clubs a few years ago. Mary's album cut is a gut-wrenching ballad about about a dead-beat dad who has the nerve to deny his paternity of his child, whose eyes look just like his. Admittedly, the word "girlfriend" is used prominently, but it struck me as a very poor idea to swirl up this ballad in a bunch of cheap "circuit"-sonding synths and hard beats, so that muscle marys could swish gaily to an upbeat version of Mary's heartfelt original. Some songs just shouldn't be remixed.

Others should not be recorded at all! I'm perhaps not the best judge of Barbra's music--take away my gay card but I've always preferred her movies--however, I can safely say that this remix is dreadful. Against the "dark" production, the major chords sound even cheesier. And it sounds like the music is too fast for the song. As much as I'd love to see Miss Streisand on the gay club circuit with a dance diva comeback a la Cher, this remix seems so out of touch. I'd be curious to hear what others think of it. Her voice still sounds powerful, but I'll take STONEY END over this junk any day.

But to her credit, B.S. did do a song and video relating to the Iraq war. "Wearing an evening gown and intense expression", no less. Good ol' liberal Barbra!

from newyorktimes.com by Geoff Boucher

Streisand's "Stranger in a Strange Land" debuted Tuesday on a notable parcel of Internet real estate — it will spend one week as an exclusive (and free) streaming video on the home page of merchant Amazon.com. It is culled from "Guilty Pleasures," the singer's upcoming collaboration album with Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb, who wrote and produced all the songs for the project, slated for a Sept. 30 release. Twenty-five years ago, the pair teamed for the Grammy-winning album "Guilty," and its hits, among them "A Woman in Love" and the title track.

The video shows Streisand, wearing an evening gown and an intense expression, singing lyrics that include "You may be someone else's sweetheart / Fighting someone else's war, / And if you suffer for the millions / Then it's what you're fighting for." The video intercuts her studio performance with footage of American troops shipping off to theaters of war past and present.


And winding up, I heard a cute Barbra tale in LA. A friend attended the Oscars a few years ago and was told by his date that La Stresand was there, to which he shrieked "BARBRA FUCKING STREISAND?!" so loudly that the diva overheard him. Mortified, his group was later introduced to her and after meeting everyone she sweetly took him aside and said "By the way, it's just Barbra Streisand."

HUGE DC PROTEST

WITH MISS UNDERSTOOD AND LINDA SIMPSON AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION


from: http://www.unitedforpeace.org


END THE WAR ON IRAQ BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Leave no military bases behind
End the looting of Iraq
Stop the torture
Stop bankrupting our communities
No military recruitment in our schools


More than two years after the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion of Iraq, the nightmare continues. More than 1600 U.S. soldiers have died, at least another 15,000 have been wounded; even the most conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths number in the tens of thousands. Iraq, a once sovereign nation, now lies in ruins under the military and corporate occupation of the United States; U.S. promises to rebuild have not been kept and Iraqis still lack food, water, electricity, and other basic needs.

A majority of Americans believe that this war never should have happened, but our elected representatives in Washington continue to rubber-stamp the Bush Administration's disastrous Iraq policies. They have given military recruiters nearly unrestricted access to our schools -- and the Pentagon nearly unrestricted access to our tax dollars. At a time when our vital social programs are eroding or completely decimated, an overwhelming majority in Congress recently approved Bush's request for an additional $82 billion in war funding, and there's already talk of another $50 billion appropriation this fall.

It's time to hold all pro-war politicians accountable for the deaths, the destruction, the lies, and the toll on our communities! Join United for Peace and Justice in Washington, D.C. for three massive days of action against the war: a major march, rally, and festival on Saturday, September 24; an interfaith religious service and day of grassroots trainings on Sunday, September 25; and a large-scale grassroots lobbying day and mass nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience on Monday, September 26.

From every corner of this country, people will travel to Washington to bring our demands directly to the policymakers responsible for this unjust war. These three days of actions will send a clear message to the White House and Congress: The Iraq war must end. It's time to bring all the troops home, leaving no U.S. military bases behind, and to stop the corporate theft of Iraq's resources. Instead of draining our national treasury for endless war, we demand that our tax dollars be used to repair the damage done to Iraq and to fund services in our communities. We call for an immediate end to our government's assault on immigrants, the unethical pressures on our young people to join the military, and the undermining of democracy through relentless attacks on everyone's basic rights.

Our mobilization will coincide with the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, whose economic policies place corporate profits ahead of basic human needs worldwide. We will speak out against the corporate theft of Iraq's resources and the decimation of the Iraqi economy through privatization and "free trade."

Join our weekend of action to stop this war, and help prevent any new wars!

SKUNK!

WHAT IS THIS FREAK? IS THIS THE FACE OF A LEADER?

Honey, I know better than anyone that everybody takes a bad photo from time to time. But even if I didn't know the many reasons why Bush was a flop leader, doesn't this photo sum him up post-Katrina? It's really disturbing. And it was taken in the early phases of his Katrina response when he felt that all he needed to do was fly overhead and make a few comments about the disaster. That face! A shaken, bewildered skunk! I'd like to thank Cindy Sheehan for partially creating his expression. This is not the face of someone refreshed by a vacation! I'm sorry that it took a disaster like Katrina to discredit him, but I'm not sorry that this troll will, because of Katrina, crawl out of the White House with it's tail so far between it's legs that it won't even have an out-house named after it.

PIZZA IN THE FUTURE

DISGUSTING BUT TRUE! http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

Make sure you click on TAKE ACTION and sign the form after watching the presentation if so inclined.

LAURA BUSH ON SEX

Heard on AIR AMERICA's Jerry Springer show:

"Hello, I'm Laura Bush. When George and I were dating, he always wanted to abstain from sex until he was president. That way he could screw the whole country."

Also heard:

Jerry Springer: "If a hurricane hits Florida then god is clearly going after those red states. Just kidding."

BLIND DATE WITH A CRACK HO

Hilarious Blind Date parody video at http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/blinddateparody.html

I have not been able to get it to play all the way through, but what is there is hysterical.

THANK GOD FOR KATRINA

Pat Robertson's not the only right-wing religious freak to blame Katrina on gays. Here's a group which assembled outside the Human Rights Campaign's DC office recently. Bush has such a noble, enlightened core group of supporters.

And while I'm on the subject of religious freaks, the Catholic Diocese of Austin, Texas is investigating Rev Arthur Michalka. It seems he pricked 15 children with an unsterilized pin so they could have a taste of Christ's suffering on the crucifix. Honey, considering the "pricks" that other kids have been stuck with by child-molesting priests nationwide, these children got off easy. Amen.

BUSH: ROE VS WADE

Q: What does George Bush think about Roe vs Wade?

A: He doesn't care how people got out of New Orleans.

PATTI GOSSIP

Apparently, Patti Labelle tore it up sanging The Pretender's beautiful STAND BY ME at the World Music Awards. (I missed it, but I've heard her cover this on her new album, the boringly titled CLASSIC MOMENTS.) She insisted on doing a song from her new album, which is being poorly promoted by her new label. My sources tell me that after slaying the crowd, her label head approached her saying--as if he were hearing it for the first time-- "Great song!" and Patti replied "IT'S ON MY ALBUM!" So you see, even a legend with a 40 year career has to second-guess their label heads. And anybody who watched Gladys Knight tearing it up on the BET Awards recently know that new-school soul divas have nothing on the old-school soul divas. Sorry Beyonce, Ciara and Amerie, but I doubt if anyone will be wanting to see y'all singing a medley of ballads in 30 years, which is how long ago Gladys hit with IF I WERE YOUR WOMAN, NEITHER ONE OF US, and MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA. Y'all are cute with a beat and a smoke machine, but I defy any of you to kill with a show-stopping ballad. Beyonce, remember the Tony's that one year?

Anyhoo, CLASSIC MOMENTS has some great tracks on it, but also some misses. AIN'T NO WAY with Mary J is one of the misses. And Patti, I hate to say it cuz I give you points just for resurrecting these chestnuts, but SILLY should have been left for songbird Deniece Williams and you haven't topped The Jones Girls' version of YOU GONNA MAKE ME LOVE SOMEBODY ELSE either. (I am fascinated that Patti changed the first line of YOU GONNA... from "I ain't DID nothin' to ya" to the (I suppose more acceptable/classy "I ain't DONE nothin' to ya. I guess that makes the lyric a little more proper. Unlike Alicia Keys, who changed Gladys's IF I WERE YOUR WOMAN to IF I WAS YOUR WOMAN to make it more street.) But then again, if you don't know the originals then Patti's new versions may be a treat. This is one heifer I'll give the benefit of a doubt to. I guess she is just trying to snatch a little of the success other artists like Rod Stewart have had with cover albums. At least she does soul classics instead of those wretched, worn-out standards.

But George Benson's exquisite LOVE BALLAD is turned into a heavenly slow jam and Rose Royce's plaintive LOVE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE is everything that you'd hope for from the most dramatic of divas. (Didn't Madoodoo attempt to cover this a while back?) But the corker is I KEEP FORGETTING. I know you may consider this muzak, but it's good enough muzak for the Neptunes to sample on their second album. Patti's voice soars over this down-tempo funk--OK, muzak/funk. And the last track is not as widely known, but definitely worth discovering. Fags will know it from Kristine W's first album LAND OF THE LIVING, and Kristine duets with Patti here. The electro/house-y flavor of the original is replaced with an Incognito-like uptempo acid jazz with YES! a dramatic key change which modulates the track into a frenzy. Also worth checking out: DIDN'T I (BLOW YOUR MIND THIS TIME).

ONE, TWO SPLIT

Ciara showing her goodies on Good Morning America.

MUSTO ON BETTY BUTTERFIELD

AND HER NO-SHOW, NO-CALL CANCELLATION AT WIGSTOCK

http://villagevoice.com/nyclife/0537,musto,67733,15.html

"VAGINA-EQUIPPED"

MAMIE VAN DOREN THEN

AND MAMIE NOW--IN daisy dukes, no less!

Please rush to blonde bombshell Mamie van Doren's site: www.mamievandoren.com, for loads of glamour pix, videos and articles like these:

November 11, 2003
The following two stories, The Penis Master Debate and The Penis Master Debate Revisited appeared approximately a year apart. The first was written for Glamour Girls: Then and Now in response to a survey about the penis sizes women prefer. The second was a kind of follow up. I am posting them here since it is as plain as the nose on your face or the dick in your pants that penis size is a national obsession--at least on the internet. I must receive 150 emails a day claiming that they can increase my penis size at least three inches. Really? They're addressed to "Mamie" for pete's sake! Do they think someone named "Mamie" needs a bigger dick? (Well, come to think of it...) Anyway, herewith my responses to the concerns about a guy's best friend, favorite toy, and lifelong playmate.



The Great Debate
(Is Bigger Better?
Or Is More than a Handful a Waste?)
by
Mamie Van Doren


In my autobiography,"Playing the Field," I was one of the first to discuss the penis size of the men I knew. Because of that, the book caused quite a stir in its day. (I'll be re-issuing "Playing the Field" in a new, expanded Collector's Edition in 1999.) Talk show hosts, especially men, were very intimidated by a woman who frankly evaluated men the way men had evaluated women over the years—by inches. (How many times have we heard, "...And the new Miss America's measurements are 36-24-36...") I'm very happy that Steve Sullivan asked me to do this little color commentary for Glamour Girls: Then and Now, allowing me to sound off about every girl's favorite subject.

I don't pretend to speak for all women. Judging from the other ladies' responses to the survey, we all differ greatly in our opinions, requirements, and desires. Diversity is everything, loves. What follows are the opinions of one woman who has, let's say, seen a few. Penis size has been, for me, one of those things that, um, comes and goes. There have been times in my life when bigger was better, and there have been times when less was more. I think that may be hard to understand if you're not vagina-equipped. Suffice to say that, over time, my tastes changed, sometimes leaning toward a lover who was not King Kong, and other times revisiting that Big Banana.

This is stuff that girls really talk about, fellas. And when they do—look out! Your date last night is probably giving her friends a shrewd evaluation of your firmness, angle, size, and shape (more about that in a minute). Most likely she'll have a critique of your ability to make her come, your willingness to do so, your imagination in achieving it, and the duration of your enthusiasm for the task.

Now...shape. I can't recall seeing any studies on this subject, but as a girl with any experience at all will tell you, there are some weird curves and contours behind those zippers out there. And some of them, no matter how suave and sexy the operator is, just don't fit that well. Okay, here's the long and short of it. Size is important, but we're talking about sex here, not calling up roto-rooter. There is such a thing as pleasure. And while a big dick can be really fun, it's not always a ticket to paradise for me. Not always.

I dated a guy for some time who was really huge—we're talking major kielbasa here—a highly sexed Latin who, as luck would have it, had lots of money to go along with a really enormous penis. For a while, it was like having a new yacht or a fast car, and it was fun to take it out for a spin whenever I got a chance. But after the initial novelty wore off, it became sort of an ordeal, jousting with a dick, so to speak. He acted like he had to defeat me with the thing each time we had sex. Before long, I became bored with his game of let-me-amaze-you-with-my-wang. If anything else went wrong in the relationship (and, believe me, things started going wrong in a big hurry—he was possessive and jealous!), he assumed that he could fix it with that big tool.

In the Survey, I said that 7 1/2 inches was the ideal size for me. What, you may ask, is the basis for such a specific measurement? It is a complicated equation, to be sure—part astrology, part East Indian Kamasutra, and part old-fashioned carpenter's tape measure. And experience. It's the Scientific Method: experimentation. Go figure. It's the right size.

Since a lot of guys are reading this, pay close attention. If you have a BIG one, you may have quite an asset. And if you have a small one, it probably works about as well as any of them. But neither of you is necessarily toting a passport into the famous fucker hall of fame in your shorts. You still have to pay attention to the little things—attitude, humor, creativity. Guys packing the really heavy artillery may not be as creative in their love-making as some of the smaller caliber men. Often they don't need to be.

Small guys tend to be more creative, but not always. And sometimes it's so little there's just nothing you can do. I went for an evening with a really famous muscle man (he was Mr. Universe and you'd know his name, believe me! Never mind the year.) He was very full of himself and his minor acting career, but I brought him back to my hotel room after dinner anyway and we got down to it. We necked hot and heavy, and undressed each other. I marveled at his gorgeous body as I peeled away his clothes. Until, that is, the bikini underwear came off and revealed what must have been THE WORLD'S SMALLEST PENIS! It was difficult not to laugh because it looked like a toy—just like a big one, only really teeny-tiny. I developed a headache and he had to leave, un-consummated. That's not something that's happened to me often, but, with this guy, it was his bearing of wise ass and micro phallus that put me off. You see, some small guys have an attitude too. They're cruising, cocky (so to speak), and always hitting on the next girl they see to prove that they're adequate.

Over the past few years, there's been a lot of talk about Presidential cocksmanship. Gennifer Flowers held press conferences during the first Clinton term to say that the President was not hung much better than average. I'm reminded of a quote of Truman Capote's from "Capote: A Biography" by Gerald Clarke. Truman had stayed at Gloria Guinesses' house in Palm Beach, which shared a private beach with the nearby Kennedy compound. From the window of his guest cottage, Truman had watched Jack, Bobby, and Ted swimming nude in the surf at various times, and was later quoted as saying, "...I don't understand why everyone said the Kennedys were so sexy. I know a lot about cocks—I've seen an awful lot of them—and if you put all the Kennedys together you wouldn't have one good one." Truman must have been looking through his binoculars. Maybe it was the cold Atlantic water.

Rock Hudson, who I recently wrote about in Bedtime Stories had a very respectably sized one. On the night I describe, Rock proved to my satisfaction that he was at least bisexual. Steve McQueen was also spectacularly outfitted, and my adventures with him and LSD are featured in a Bedtime Stories piece as well.

My old friend, the late Forrest Tucker was rumored to have one of the biggest cocks in Hollywood. He was a tall, good-looking guy with blond hair and a great tan even in his mid-sixties, and it wouldn't have been surprising. Forrest and I were in a show back in the mid-1980's, and after a performance one night we took a limo to a Polynesian restaurant for drinks and dinner. On the ride to the restaurant, I asked him if all the rumors were true and he told me the following story.

Forrest and another actor were drinking at Slapsy Maxy's, a famous Hollywood watering hole back in the 1940's owned by the prizefighter, Slapsy Maxy Rosenblum. On this evening everyone got pretty well oiled and there was considerable bragging about sexual exploits. It finally got down to the size of their penises. The argument got more and more serious, and by closing time, money started getting thrown on the bar and a sizable bet was made. Slapsy rummaged around under the bar and came up with a ruler, and the contestants unzipped to settle the matter then and there.

"I pulled mine out, Mamie," Forrest told me while the limo driver strained to hear from the front seat, Aand it was between eleven and twelve. I thought I had the bet won! Then this guy who could not have been more than five feet three or four hauled his out..."
He paused for effect. "And? And?" I asked.

"And it hung over the end!"

"Who was it, Forrest?" I asked.

He grinned. "Never underestimate those short guys. It was George Raft."

Like Kurt Vonnegut said in Breakfast of Champions, you never know who's going to get one. So it goes. No one gets to choose their penis size. If you did, I'm sure all of you would choose a big one. But its an unfair world and in the process of being born, all you guys get to play in the penis lottery. Afterward, you spend the rest of your lives playing with the penis lottery. We girls are lucky because we get to watch and reap the benefits. So take my advice and make the best of what ever tool size you got. How? By tuning in to your partner's needs and giving up some dedicated, honest love-making. What else can you do?

The Penis Master Debate Revisited

There has been a god awful controversy since I wrote about penis size. This is a throbbing issue among men as well as women. After printing my preference for certain, um, dimensions, I have had communiqués from disgruntled guys who fall short and fellows who, well, exceed expectations.
From a German fan....

"...I am 28 centimeters and I would like to take care of you all night long..."

My husband whips out his handy metric conversion tool, plays with it a moment, and says, "Jesus, that's nearly eleven inches."

"Tempting," I say. "Maybe he'll send just his penis over." "Just have him leave it on the doorstep."

I get pictures of guys with their dicks in their hands and captions that read, "Mamie, this could all be yours." Guys jerking off in the glare of the flash. What are they thinking? I always wonder who took the pictures.

Small guys write complaining that they're missing the boat. Not so. There's only a certain amount of pounding a girl can take from one of those anacondas. Ask Pam Anderson. No matter what a guy's size, there's a girl somewhere that will make a good fit. Truly.

Big dicks get a lot of good press. Small ones get a lot of jokes. The same with breasts. And you can be sure that a guy with a whale-sized wang has some of the same problems as a girl with large hooters. Care and maintenance can be a drag. You can't jog, or sit down, or wear normal clothes. Oh, sure, there's always that moment of truth when you slip a hand down some guy's pants and a big, big smile spreads across your face. Just remember that day after day, year after year, he's got to carry it around and pee out of it and buy that special pouch underwear.

Small guys, please don't come crying to me. It is not the end of the world. You've probably compensated beautifully by developing a great sense of humor or becoming a smooth lambada dancer or a skillful bridge player. Or maybe you've trained your tongue to do things not even imagined by the guys with the maxi-salamis.

For that sacrifice, you boys who can get a dime out of a coke bottle with only your tongue, my pants are off to you.

CONDO-LOSER'S LOGIC

from www.huffingtonpost.com

On the "deadliest day of violence in Baghdad since the U.S. invasion more than two years ago," Bill O'Reilly sat down with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to examine the real issues in Iraq: It's all about the lattes.

O'Reilly: The truth of the matter is our correspondents at Fox News can't go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad.

Rice: Bill, that's tough. It's tough. But what — would they have wanted to have gone out for a cup of coffee when Saddam Hussein was in power?

MYTH BUSH IS DEAD

from Salon.com

Breach of a myth
After Katrina, the country no longer believes in Bush the protector. His presidency is ruined.

By Sidney Blumenthal



Sept. 15, 2005 | Bush's America is gone with the wind. It lasted just short of four years, from Sept. 11, 2001, to Aug. 29, 2005. The devastation of New Orleans was the watery equivalent of a dirty bomb, but Hurricane Katrina approached the homeland with advance warnings, scientific anticipation and a personal briefing of the president by the director of the National Hurricane Center, alerting him about a possible breaching of the levees. It was as predictable as though Osama bin Laden had phoned in every detail to the television networks. No future terrorist attack would or could be as completely foreseen as Katrina.

Bush's entire presidency and reelection campaign were organized around one master idea: He stood as the protector and savior of the American people under siege. On this mystique he built his persona as a decisive man of conviction and action. In the 2004 election, a critical mass of voters believed that because of his unabashed patriotism and unembarrassed religiosity he would do more to protect the country. They also believed that his fervor must be strength. The criticism of Bush that he was overzealous, simplistic and single-minded only served to reinforce his image.

The deepest wound is not that he was incapable of defending the country but that he has shown he lacks the will to do so. In Bush's own evangelical language, he revealed his heart.

Overnight, the press disclosed a petulant, vacillating president it had not noticed before. It was as if there were a new man in the White House. Time magazine described a "rigid and top-down" White House where aides are petrified to deliver bad news to a "yelling" president. Newsweek reported that two days after the hurricane, top White House aides, who "cringe" before the "cold and snappish" president, met to decide which of them would be assigned the miserable task of telling Bush he would have to cut short his summer vacation. "The [hurricane's] reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night."

With each of his three trips (so far) to survey the toxic floodwaters of New Orleans, Bush drifted farther out to sea. On his most recent voyage on Monday, asked about his earlier statement -- "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" -- he said, "When that storm came through at first, people said, Whew. There was a sense of relaxation." In fact, the levees began to be breached even before the eye of the storm hit the city. Queried about the sudden resignation that day of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael "Brownie, You've Done a Heck of a Job" Brown, Bush told the press, "Maybe you know something I don't know." On Tuesday, all else having failed, he tried a novel tactic to deflect the "blame game," as he called it. "To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right," he declared, "I take responsibility." "Extent" was the loophole allowing his magnanimity to be bestowed on the distant abstraction of government.

It was easier for Bush to renounce alcohol at age 40 than ideology at almost 60. Bush had radicalized Ronald Reagan's conservatism, but never has Reagan's credo from his first inaugural rung so hollow: "Government is not the solution to our problem." Yet social Darwinism cannot protect the homeland. That 20,000 mostly poor blacks were locked in the New Orleans Convention Center without food and water for several days without the knowledge of federal officials is not an urban legend.

Poverty, previously unmentionable, has increased about 9 percent since Bush assumed office. The disparity between the superpower's evangelical mission to democratize the world and its indifference at home is a foreign policy crisis of new dimension. Can Iraq be saved if Louisiana is lost? Bush's credibility gap is a geopolitical problem without a geopolitical solution. Assuming a new mission, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wears her racial identity to witness for Bush's purity of heart. So long as Bush could wrap himself in 9/11 his image was shielded; he could even justify Iraq by flashing the non sequitur to his base. But once another event of magnitude thundered over his central claim as national defender, the Bush myth crumbled. It would take another event of this scale to begin to restore it. But it would also require a different set of responses from Bush. Now his evocation of 9/11 only reminds the public of his failed promise.

The rest of the Bush presidency will consist of his strained efforts to cobble his myth together again while others cope with the consequences of his damage. The hurricane has tossed and turned the country but will not deposit it on firm ground for at least the three and half years remaining of the ruined Bush presidency.

MASTERCARD WEDDING

You gotta love this guy.....

This is a true story about a recent wedding that took place at Clemson University. It was in the local newspaper and even Jay Leno mentioned it.

It was a huge wedding with about 300 guests.

After the wedding at the reception, the groom got up on stage with a microphone to talk to the crowd. He said he wanted to thank everyone for coming, many from long distances, to support them at their wedding. He especially wanted to thank the bride's and his family and to thank his new father-in-law for providing such a lavish reception.

As a token of his deep appreciation he said he wanted to give everyone a special gift just from him. So taped to the bottom of everyone's chair, including the wedding party, was a manila envelope. He said this was his gift to everyone, and asked them to open their envelope. Inside each manila envelope was an 8x10 glossy of his bride having sex with the best man.

The groom had gotten suspicious of them weeks earlier and had hired a private detective to tail them. After just standing there, just watching the guests' reactions for a couple of minutes, he turned to the best man and said, "F--- you!".

Then he turned to his bride and said, "F--- you!".

Then he turned to the dumbfounded crowd and said, "I'm outta here." He had the marriage annulled first thing in the morning.

While most people would have canceled the wedding immediately after finding out about the affair, this guy goes through with the charade, as if nothing were wrong. His revenge...making the bride's parents pay over $32,000 for a 300 guest wedding and reception, and best of all, trashing the bride's and best man's reputations in front of 300 friends and family members.

This guy has balls the size of church bells. Do you think we might get a MasterCard "priceless" commercial out of this?

Elegant wedding reception for 300 family members and friends......................................$32,000

Wedding photographs commemorating the occasion..........................................$3,000

Deluxe two week honeymoon accommodations in Maui..............................................$8,500

The look on everyone's face when they see the 8x10 glossy of the bride humping the best man..........Priceless!

There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's MASTERCARD.

THE NUT BRA

I thought this was pretty funny for MTV 2.

THE NUT BRA

http://www.alldumb.com/item/12983/

MADGE = OLDFRAPP

from popbitch.com

>> Hang up your mic, Madonna <<
Gwen has Madge running scared

Madonna has recorded a new single, Hung Up,
She played it to a friend recently who said,
"Its quite Gwen Stefani isn't it?"

Madonna's reply? "That cunt's been stealing
from me for the last ten years so I thought
it was about time I paid her back".

Sadly her reply is better than the record.
Hung Up is less Gwen Stefani, more
Dannii Minogue.

FYI: Staff at Warner Records in London have
a new nickname for Madge: "Oldfrapp".

WHERE DO YOU STAND MORALLY?

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By
giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which
you will have to make a decision.

Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous. Please
scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

THE SITUATION
You are in New Orleans to be specific. There is chaos all around you
caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical

proportions. You are photo journalist working for a major newspaper,
and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.

The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making
photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some
disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its
destructive fury.

THE TEST

Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life,
trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow
the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's the
President, George W. Bush.

At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take
him under forever. You have two options- you can save the life of the
President, or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo,
documenting the death of one of the world's most famous men.

THE QUESTION

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer.......




Would you select high contrast colour film, or would you go with the
classic simplicity of black and white?

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...

Siouxsie Soux? Christine the Strawberry Girl? Happy House? Brilliant! Got this email from Austin Young, a photographer friend in LA who just shot his gorgeous pic of she-who-always-had-the-best-new-wave-drag make-up. The bitch looks the same as she did 25 years ago!

from Austin (www.austinyoung.com): I have to share this.... the new Siouxsie dvd, "Dreamshow," is the #1 music dvd in the UK right now.... and features my new photos of Siouxsie Sioux!! She is in top form. And sings live with a full Orchestra.

xoxoxo,
Austin
you can see clips from the video here:
http://video-c.co.uk/artistfeatures/siouxsiesoux/clip4.html

ANN COULTER'S BEAUTY SECRET

CONSERVATIVE VIRGINS DONATE BLOOD FOR ANN COULTER'S BATH


humor by Scott C at World O' Crap

When best-selling author Ann Coulter arrived at Charles Coughlin College in Lynchville, Illinois, Ceci Lawrence was shocked." She looked so different from her photos," the 22-year old co-ed marveled." She had these long, bony fingers, and her skin was all stretched and thin like rice paper, and I remember thinking during her speech: she looks like a talking kite." It was then that Ceci and several of her sorority sisters resolved to do something for their distinguished visitor.

"We decided to have a blood drive," Ceci said, "So that Ann could renew the unholy forces which animate her flesh by bathing in the blood of the innocent. Let’s face it—she travels all the time and that’s got to play havoc with any sort of rigorous beauty regimen. After all, the average human body only contains six quarts of blood, so you can imagine how many virgins it would take to fill up even one of those crappy little tubs at the Ramada Inn. I mean, come on—she can’t just keep dropping by Townhall.com and draining Ben Shapiro for a pint—he’s starting to look bleached."

Finding a sufficient number of uncontaminated maidens, even on the campus of a conservative bible college, proved to be a chore. "Yeah," observed Ceci. "It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. Ann is my role model."

Ceci explained that she began college as a Speech Communications major. "I wanted to be on TV, so I was studying to be a spokesmodel. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, but that was like way too much work, thank you very much. But then I saw Ann on Fox News, and realized that you could be a lawyer even if you didn’t practice law, or go to court, or know anything about the constitution. And even better, people would like. . .pay you to go on TV and say bitchy stuff about people! It’s like somebody saying, ‘Hey! Spreading rumors that all the smart girls are lesbians and then locking yourself in your dorm room and masturbating to Whittaker Chamber’s Witness is actually a job. We’ll pay you for that!’ My god! Having Fox News in your life is like having a rich boyfriend who’s too Episcopalian to demand a handjob! Anywat. . . The very next day I switched my major, and next year after I graduate, I hope to follow in Ann’s footsteps and attend the Barbizon School of Law."

Asked if the arduous, daylong blood drive was worth it, Ceci was unequivocal. "Absolutely! For one thing, Ann and I have become very friendly as a result. And for another, I’m pretty sure that if she’d gone one more day without blood she would have started killing my roommates."

And how does Ann Coulter herself feel about this outpouring of admiration and blood? The blanched and hollow-eyed pundit flashed an enthusiastic thumbs-up as she lowered her emaciated carcass into a hip-bath brimming with virgin gore. "Ahh," she said, splashing the ruddy, life-giving fluid over her bony chest, "This is the life. Or the undeath, anyway."

Born in the Hungary in 1560 as Elizabeth Bathory, the conservative sensation changed her name to Countess Marya Zaleska upon first coming to the United States in 1936. She later opted for the more Anglo-sounding Ann Coulter because, in her words, "I wanted my very name to announce my patriotic devotion to America," and because, "The FBI was closing in."

Asked whether soaking in the blood of virgins might alienate the GOP’s fundamentalist Christian base, Coulter waved a bone-white hand and uttered a dismissive, "Pah!"

She added knowingly, "Look how enthusiastically the base has supported President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. To me, that’s a clear sign that the Heartland has given those of us in the upper echelons of society the go-ahead to live off the blood of our social inferiors. The way I like to think of it is: red states are red corpuscle states, brimming with life and vitality. While the blue states are blood cells depleted of oxygen, the same way the Democrat party is depleted of ideas and morality. If American values and ideals are to survive, we must confront our political opponents, rip out their throats with our sharp incisors, and feed upon the warm blood flowing from their ruptured arteries."

As a tired Ceci poured the last bucketful of blood into her idol’s copper bath, she paused to reflect on the day’s labors. "I’ve learned more from Ann in one day than I think I’ve learned from all my professors over the past four years. I’ve learned that liberals are traitors who want to destroy the nuclear family. I’ve learned that plasma is an excellent humectant. And I’ve learned which girls are really virgins, and which are letting the snake into the garden, if you know what I mean, because if Ann bathes in the blood of an soiled woman, she starts to smoke and shriek like a banshee. It’s kind of like when you drop a piece of magnesium in water. Except for the shrieking."

CRUISE CUNT-TROLL

stolen directly from Andy Towle's www.towleroad.com (exact link is http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/elsewhere/index.html)

Kathy Griffin talked to Chicago's Windy City Times about her recent reality show (at the moment there won't be a second season), her best gays, and the fall of Tom Cruise: "You know what I love? Gay people don't even want him now, he's too fucking crazy. You know all the years I had to listen to all of you telling me about how you had a cousin that blew him in the bathroom at the Spike and after all those years of hearing, 'I had a friend who had a friend who went to his hotel room and fucked him' and now nobody even wants him. Now, they're like, 'We don't want him either, we've moved on to Colin Farrell.'"

WHO'S YO' DADDY?

When someone puts in for Child Support, the proper thing to do is find out who the father is and see why he is not providing support. The following are all replies that Dallas women have written on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing father's details. Or putting it another way......Who's yo Daddy! These are genuine excerpts from the forms. Be sure to check out number 11..... it takes the prize and #3 is runner up.


1. Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, child A was fatheredby Jim Munson. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child B, but I believe that he was conceived on the same night.

2. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

3. I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 3600 Grand Avenue where I had unprotected sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track! down the father, can you send me his phone number? Thanks.

4. I don't know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he's had it replaced.

5. I have never had sex with a man. I am still a Virginian. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son?s conception was immaculate and that he is Christ risen again.

6. I cannot tell you the name of child A?s dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country. Please advise.

7. I do not know who the father of my child was as all blacks look the same to me.

8. Peter Smith is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs? Child B who was also borned at the same time.... well I don't have a clue.

9. From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.


10. So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I'd have stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 146 Miller Drive, mine might have remained unfertilized.


11. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all when you eat a can of beans you can't be sure which one made you fart.


Yep, you guessed it right. You are all paying taxes to support these dim bulbs

BUSH: LITERALLY FULL O' SHIT

Ok, I know that laughing at the fact that Dubya shits is infantile. But what I love is the idea that yahoo.com and editorsandpublishers.com would be reporting on stuff like this. The press, now that Bush has been branded unpoopular, is willing to take any potty shot at him, no matter how insignificant and childish. Trust me. The media has done their market research and like any old ham-bone performer, they give 'em what they want. So people must really be indicating, through feedback to news outlets, their desire to Bush Bash. It's now "in." Hooray!

Today, White House correspondent Danna Bash previewed the president's NOLA address tonight saying (quoting from pot-addled memory here) "that the goal of tonight's speech was to show the American people that he cares." Clearly, the 2 weeks worth of devastation in NOLA only images can't be spun in Dubya's favor this time. Candy Crowley, with glossy, newly colored burgundy locks and (for her) heavy eye make-up, snickered that the Bush team is already issuing rebuttals to the inevitable criticisms of his speech, even though the public doesn't know for sure what's in it! Meaning: those bastards know they're fucked!

Are democratic leaders stepping up to the plate, dropping well-planned bombs on the Bush administration? Nope. Is there any unified democratic leadership? C'mon people! Democrats need to be a little more cut-throat a la Delay. Let's kick this muddled bastard while he's down and then use it to smear the whole republican party and their greed over public safety/concerns so that they won't have a chance of re-election. Link Katrina to his father's downfall in popularity over HIS hurricane scandal and smear the whole Bush dynasty. Get creative, for chrissakes! Now's you're chance. Trot out Barbra and the Rolling Stones and Green Day and Kanye West for a nationwide peace tour. They've all got new records out. Make some waves! Yeah, that's it! Add Katrina and the Waves to the roster to sing WALKIN' ON SUNSHINE. (Actually, they did plan a solo album called TURNING THE TIDE but I think they yanked it's release after the hurricane hit.)

Reuters Photog Captures Bush at U.N. With 'Bathroom Break' Note

By E&P Staff

Published: September 14, 2005 7:35 PM ET updated Thursday 9:30 AM
NEW YORK In what seems destined to become one of the most joked about photos of the month, a well-known Reuters photographer on Wednesday captured President George W. Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a session at the United Nations. On the note is a message revolving around the need to take a "bathroom break."

The photo, which appeared on Reuters' official photo site, was quickly published all over the Web, though dismissed by some as a likely photoshop special. Others suggestged that surely someone must have hacked the Reuters site. But a Reuters spokesman on Thursday told E&P the photo was legit.

"The photographer and editors on this story were looking for other angles in their coverage of this event, something that went beyond the stock pictures of talking heads that these kind of forums usually offer," explained Reuters' Stephen Naru. "This picture certainly does that."

The photo by Denver-based Rick Wilking, taken over a man's shoulder, shows an official -- identified in the caption as President Bush -- scribbling in pencil on a small white piece of paper that already contains the words: "I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break?" It is unclear if Bush is in the process of responding to that message or wrote it himself.

BIRD OF A FEATHER...

Something about this former exterminator always "bugged" me. Hmmm. Now 2 more of his associates are busted for criminal conspiracy to violate election law in Texas. Do the "conspiracy" theories that Bush stole the White House twice seem so far-fetched now? Delay is the House Majority leader. Think his crony Bush is so different? Under the cloak of religion, these weasels will stop at NOTHING!

Grand Jury Indicts Two DeLay Associates
By APRIL CASTRO, AP

AUSTIN (Sept. 13) - Two associates of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay were indicted Tuesday on additional felony charges of violating Texas election law and criminal conspiracy to violate election law for their role in the 2002 legislative races.

The indictment was the latest from a grand jury investigating the use of corporate money in the campaigns that gave Republicans control of the Texas House.

In Texas, state law prohibits using corporate contributions to advocate the election or defeat of state candidates.

The two men indicted Tuesday, Jim Ellis, who heads Americans for a Republican Majority, and John Colyandro, former executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, already faced charges of money laundering in the case. Colyandro also faces 13 counts of unlawful acceptance of a corporate political contribution.

full article at http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050913183709990012

GRILL THIS TURD!

Bush admitted yesterday that he bungled the federal response to Katrina. Wow! This administration never admits to any of it's heinous crimes. Remember how they were dragged into other commissions? Bush refusing to be grilled unless Cheney would hold his hand and Condo-loser Rice refusing to take an oath? Rotted, lying crooks! So Bush's admission of guilt can ONLY mean that his feet are really in the fire over Katrina, and only by taking a little of the blame can he take the heat off his miserable ass without admitting to the mother lode of mishandlings which will surely spew forth if there is an independent commission investigating this! So if you want him out, or even if you like him and want to know the truth for once, SIGN THIS PETITION AND PASS IT ON TO OTHERS. I really don't see how anyone could NOT sign it. Even if it's out of self-preservation. If this boob responded poorly to THEIR natural disaster, how the hell is he going to be equipped to protect your ass should the need arise? This is asking for an independent, bi-partisan commission. How on earth could you NOT want that, regardless of your own party affiliations?

from moveon.org

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it's clear that we're less safe than we thought. Four years after September 11th, the federal government failed to respond to an emergency every bit as dire as a terrorist attack—and it is likely thousands died.

We need an independent Katrina Commission, modeled after the 9/11 Commission, to find out what went wrong. But the White House, working off a "Don't Look Back" strategy, refuses to consider one.1 Instead, President Bush has suggested that he and his Republican allies in Congress will lead the investigation—a recipe for a cover up.2

Will you sign our petition for an independent Katrina Commission?

http://political.moveon.org/katrinacommission/?id=5988-1644652-iyHjm79yvAcOkRNnxBoESg&t=4

Senators, including many moderate Republicans, are deciding whether to support a Katrina Commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission, this week. We need a really big number of people to sign the petition to show senators and representatives how much support there is for the Katrina Commission.

President Bush will address the nation about Hurricane Katrina on Thursday.3 We'll start delivering the petitions to Congress starting Friday morning so senators and representatives will hear what you think the very next day. The goal is to get 250,000 petition signers quickly. So, after you sign the petition please forward this e-mail to your friends, family and colleagues and ask them to sign it too.

Here's why we need a Katrina Commission:

We need to learn from Hurricane Katrina. The scale of the disaster makes it urgent that we learn from mistakes. The government can't investigate itself. That means appointing an independent group of experts to sort through the data.

We need to find the other Michael Browns. Yesterday, FEMA director Michael Brown resigned. Brown had no experience in emergency management—his last job was as the director of the International Arabian Horses Association. And there are many other political appointees like him who could get in the way during a future emergency.

When President Bush investigates his own government, no one is held accountable. When Bush and his allies have led investigations in the past, they've been whitewashes. The WMD Commission, led by Republicans in the Senate, concluded that no one was really to blame for the falsified intelligence about WMDs in Iraq. And the White House was entirely opposed to the 9/11 Commission until victims' families made it a politically impossible position.
The 9/11 Commission is a good model for the Katrina Commission. It was independent, bipartisan and provided all Americans with an honest and frank assessment of what happened on September 11th—they even published the results as a book. Support for the Katrina Commission is growing. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton introduced legislation last week that would establish the one.

STORM HITS UK!

From a friend in England: With all the news on TV lately about the hurricanes that America is experiencing, the typhoons in China, flooding in Switzerland and recent mud slides in South America, we shouldn't forget that the UK has its share of devastating weather too.

Attached is a photo illustrating the damage caused to my friend's home in Nottingham from the storm that passed through last night. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.

Take care of yourselves and be safe.

Adam

I HOPE HE'S RIGHT!

Washington Post: End of the Bush Era by E. J. Dionne Jr. September 13

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

PETA'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY GALA

This past Saturday, after a Friday night dj gig in Cranberry, PA (My Cranberry debut!), I attended the glittering PETA 25 Gala on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Immediately upon exiting my date's flashy Honda Civic, the paparrazi went nuts, shouting "Bunny, over here! I mean over there! Get out of the way! We can't see Pamela Anderson with your big ass in the way!" Harumph! So perhaps I'm a little better known on the east coast. Big deal.



Undaunted, I opted to eat my jealousy and show Pamela a few new poses which might add pizzazz to her usual "I'm a slut" repetoire. She almost got the hang of it. I guess that particular pose works a little better when you're wearing a thrift store skirt-as-cape/dress/mini-moo-moo effect which enables you to work your pleated wings and fly away. But I suppose "the Marilyn Monroe of our day" doesn't have a gut to conceal. That tall, handsome gentleman on the left is Dan Matthews, the brilliant pr whiz and general nutcase behind PETA's popular "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" ads.



Even taller than Dan (and just as handsome) is his boyfriend Todd, who at almost 7 feet, is one of the few men who can actually dwarf me and make me look petite. But don't let the good looks fool ya--this thing is DEMENTED!



Bumped into Elaine Lancaster of Miami and the divine Casandra Peterson (aka Elvira) and met Tracy Bingham, who seems like a lot of fun. She was dragging us all over that red carpet! Speaking of Divine, my post-Wigstock pot and desserts binge has paid off. A couple of people were even shouting "Divine!" Not that means I look like her, even though Divine did have a very pretty face. But people have also called out RuPaul or Boy George at me. I guess to some people, all of us trannies look alike.



I marched up to PETA spokesman Alec Baldwin and demurely asked him if "I could have a picture with the handsomest man there?" He said "Sure!" and I asked him to move out of the way so I could get to a guy who stood behind him, at which he howled and then took a couple snaps with me. I'd never met him, but I always figure that celebs get so sick of ass-kissers that they probably WANT obnoxious kooks to break the monotony a bit.



New PETA spokesmodel and puerto rican temptress Roselyn Sanchez looked hot in what Kathy Najimy described later at the awards ceremony as a "doily." Now Kathy, from one pig to another, you know good and well you'd LOVE to be able to wear that fucking doily if we only could. Well, maybe as a scarf.



Always wanted to see this sexy devil from No Doubt up close and personal-like. So many celebs in LA! Last night I went to a restaurant called the Silver Spoon where it's said that Shelly Winters (with half a mouthful of teeth) hangs out. I wonder if she uses Madame's old line: "These are my summer teeth. Summer there, and some ain't!" Another regular is Rip Taylor. Apparently they shot his cameo in The Aristocrats there cuz it was the only place they could find him! Also at the PETA affair: Ron Jeremy, Shirley Jone, and Denise Rod-wo-man. Oh, and presenters included Jamie Lee Curtis, in a sImple knee-length black dress which nicely concealed her donkey-dick. Retarded Elaine greeted Jamie with "Mama!" on the red carpet and Jamie was the only star to ignore her. So Elaine said, "Oh, grandmama?" as Jamie marched by. The producer of the QTV segment Elaine was doing interviews for told Elaine to be nice so they could come back. So Elaine asked her producer, "What on earth would a drag queen cause so much trauma in her for? Is she a transsexual or hermaphrodite or something? Or was it that her father was a bi-sexual or something?" Elaine rules--occasionally!



I always told myself that I would not load up my site with dumb ME WITH CELEB photos, but here I am doing it. Digital cameras and blogger.com have made it so easy! Of course, that's if you know how to operate the camera, which several people I handed it to did not. One said "It's red and it's flickering." "Sounds like my asshole!" I fired back. Enough "hot" talk. So here I am, not only loading up a zillion pix with me and celebs, but one that's so blurry you can barely make out the star. It's PINK, who I referred to as STINK all night. She was in great spirits and gave a rousing bad-ass acceptance speech for her award, looking quite beautiful with her mom in tow. When the mom asked me for a photo I complained to Pink that her mama was bugging me and asked if alcoholism ran in her family. She replied with a hiccup.



Kristine W (left) was there to perform a number with Sheila E, who tore it up with one of her explosive drum solos. In case you haven't heard it, Kristine and Patti Labelle have covered Kristine' s beautiful song LAND OF THE LIVING on Patti's new album. Definitely worth checking out on itunes.



After I had alienated most of the celebrities with photo requests and by whispering to them during dinner that I had a flask filled with chicken gravy if they wanted any, I decided to hang out with some of the little people. I didn't mind as I've always been one to eye the help at fancy catered affairs. So to all 30 of the mexican cooks I gave my number too, I'm still waiting, caballeros! These PETA gals were a hoot.



After a few too many vegan white russians, I do declare I can scarcely recall how the night ended...





(Looks like someone ate a little "meat" at the PETA event.)

FROM WAGGING THE DOG

by Laura Rozen in the current Village Voice:

"FEMA management has been revealed in multiple news reports as staffed from top to bottom by Bush-Cheney campaign veterans, advance men, and political appointees rather than those with emergency management experience. Perhaps predictably, they defined their duties in the aftermath of Katrina as being about making the Bush administration response look effective. Indeed, a memo by FEMA chief Michael Brown leaked to the press directed employees to “convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public.”

GO TO GOOGLE.COM,

type in "failure" and see who comes up! (No, it isn't me!)

PENIS HILTON

I'M AGREEING WITH JAMES ST. JAMES??? (This is from the fantastic blog worldofwonder.net, which James contributes to.)

If you're like me, when you heard that Paris Hilton was going to be gracing the cover of the October issue of Vanity Fair, you wondered what ON EARTH they could possibly tell us about her at this point that we didn't already know, and what sort of revelation would possibly warrant a COVER STORY in the once-upper-middlebrow-now-hopelessly-tabloid-and-quite-suddenly-irrelevant magazine?

Well, it's a doozy. Apparently SHE HAS A PENIS! Yes! It's true! The girl is packing! That's a tuck if I've ever seen one! SHE LOOKS LIKE FREAKIN' CRISTIANO RONOLDO! Also, it seems she is so dull, so stupid, and so vacant that it took the combined gobbledegook of Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf to make her even slightly interesting!
Graydon, Graydon, Graydon, it's time to air out your office and stop hanging out with Fran Lebowitz. You're losing your touch, babe.

– James St. James

Also from worldofwonder.net:

MAHER, MAHER, MAHER!

By Roger Smith

I know that smart-ass late night cable television does NOT represent the thinking of the mass of Americans. Nor does it represent the height of sophisticated political thinking, however brilliant I personally may think Jon Stewart is.

But...tonight's HBO showing of "Late Night with Bill Maher" proved, I think, some sort of leading indicator of the impact of Katrina on Bush & Co. Nearly an hour of total anti-Bush ridicule and tirades by Bill and such guests as George Carlin was only slightly offset by half-hearted attempts by the evening's guests from the Right, James Glassman and Joe Scarborough at spreading the blame beyond Bush . And every anti-Bush remark was greeted by riotous applause by the studio audience. (Yes, I know this is NOT a scientific poll.)

But the real caper was Bill Maher's closing--presented as an open message to George Bush in deep tones of mock-serious. I think you'll have almost as much fun reading this set piece by Maher as I did listening to it. Here it is:

"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.' "

Yes, it's just late-night humor. But it's hard to imagine Bush recovering his ability to govern with any success once this sort of ridicule becomes widespread--and totally acceptable. Bless you, Bill Maher.

BUSH ON VACATION

FROM CRAIG'S LIST

I can smell your creamy monkey turds dropping from the orifices of your Daddy’s mouth after he has ate you. Smelling like hot chicken shit gas to me!

My question: How many orifices could this person's father have?

PATHETICPERSONALS.COM

This fun site also offers links to actual personals like this one: AOL-speak Dorkus of the Month



In my own words
i think i grew up 2 fast.........
i know im onlee 22 but 2 me....
if god was 2 come back down and he decided to continue wif life as a human being and he ask me, 2 tell him 1 thing AND ONLEE 1 thing he should kno 2 survive and not fail in life.
i would tell him 2 "live n learn".... straight up!!!!! dats what i would say...
i kno not alot of ya peeps would agree and hey its my opinon.....u got sumin u wanna say on dis matter then holla back.. and trust me.. i wont hold back on my words..

BUSH NOT THE ONLY MORON

For everyone who has ever had or given an evaluation - just remember, it could have been worse. These are actual quotes taken from Federal Government employee performance evaluations.

1. "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has started to dig."

2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."

3. "This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."

4. "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

5. "When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."

6. "This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

7. "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

8. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

9. "This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better."

10. "Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together."

11. "A gross ignoramus -- 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."

12. "He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

15. "He's been working with glue too much."

16. "He would argue with a signpost."

17. "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."

18. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."

19. "If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."

20. "A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."

21. "A prime candidate for natural de-selection."

22. "Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."

23. "Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."

24. "He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."

25. "If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."

26. "If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."

27.. "If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."

28. "It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."

29. "One neuron short of a synapse."

30. "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."

31. "Takes him 2 hours to watch '60-minutes'."

32. "The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead

A MESSAGE FROM TINA LOUISE...

...on the Death of Bob Denver (aka Gilligan from Gilligan's Island)

"Its a sad, sad day. I felt really sad while walking down the
street here in NY today. Tears.. . .My condolences to wife Drema
and his family. Bob is TV history! .....He will be missed by so
many friends for his life and talent....The fun, the laughter, and
joy will continue forever. His boyish charm worked for both
children & adults..he will be so missed...."

Tina Louise 9/6/05

ESCAPE FROM KATRINA?

After watching 6 hours of Katrina coverage on Sunday, I realized I had to get out more. The weather in NYC has been exquisite for a week and I've been glued to the disaster on TVin my tiny apartment. When you live in NYC, you normally pay a fortune for a shoebox-sized apartment, but on perfect days like the ones we've had when everyone and everything is out on the streets, you feel like you own a piece of a great city.

So determined to get out more, I caught a couple flicks this weekend. One was a flop at Lincoln Center called PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN--absolutely abysmal but it stars Ava Gardner at the height of her allure. Ava is fairly forgotten, but she truly was a rare beauty. Undeniably sexy, but never trashy like a bleached blonde "I-want-to-please-you"-type bimbo. More like, "I'm an imperious fox whose majesty you are fortunate to gaze upon." To use a word I hate, she's CLASSY, even though she was traish from North Carolina--as I am.



I couldn't sit through the whole feature with Lypstinka--who else would you attend a forgotten Ava vehicle with?-- with it's pompous voiceovers by leading "man", James Mason, but it was worth it to see a beauty at the height of her powers lit so beautifully in colors and costumes designed specifically for her. I'm partially color-blind--I know, I know, that explains many of my outfits--but I hung on each lip color change! For an hour and a half, anyway.

I always forget holidays like Labor Day cuz I ain't got no regular job. But luckily a friend didn't, and we got tickets to see another "Gardner"--A CONSTANT GARDENER, which Time Out listed as DON'T MISS. At the last minute, GARDENER seemed a little too Katrina-ish with it's government conspiracy plot so we switched the tix to GRIZZLY MAN. OHMIGOD! ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! HYSTERICAL! RETARDED! EVEN HEARTWARMING? I knew nothing about his film other except what my friend told me: a guy goes to live in the wild with bears and gets killed by them. I couldn't imagine what kept one's interest with such a long set-up and inevitable ending. I'll tell you what. HE's A FAG! Or at least faggy/ a closet case. A ridiculous closet case who films himself with the bears and foxes doing different takes to make sure that his blond hair is fixed just right with a variety of "butch" bandanas and kooky sunglasses. Director/narrator Werner Herzog found a goldmine in this guy's footage and assembles it with some newly shot interviews. The humor comes from how spazzy the guy is and of course, since you know how it ends, all of his vain pronouncements about his kinship with the bears are rendered all the more ridiculous! The audience didn't want to laugh at first (I didn't even know it was 'sposed to be a comedy) but we were guffawing by the end. It's even touching at some points because even though we may laugh at new revelations like his assumed name (Timothy Treadwell) or the way he met his business partner (at a medieval-themed restaurant where he played a squire!) he basically did something with his life/death that meant a lot to him, was fully aware of the dangers and was prepared to die doing it. I'm not really director-savvy enough to tell you what else Werner Herzog has directed, but he handled this so well that I'll definitely keep my eye out for his new projects.

SENT BY ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK!

Here's a lovely piece from the WaPo about New Orleans:

Star-Crossed Times For the Crescent City
By Ken Ringle, Special to The Washington Post, 8-31-2005

It helps a little bit, even as your heart is breaking over those TV hurricanescapes of New Orleans under water, to remember that "the city that care forgot" has always danced with death.

New Orleans was born amid ghastly yellow fever epidemics, where corpses stained with black vomit were piled on carts to be hauled to above-ground crypts. The sepulcher flower vases bred the fever-freighted mosquitoes.

Climate, Catholicism and voodoo shaped the city, along with Latin fatalism, languorous hedonism and an atmosphere of poignant and elegant decay. It's no accident that Anne Rice lived there to pen her vampire tales.

And yet, inseparable though they may be, New Orleans has always been more about the dance than about the death. Somewhere in the shade of its majestic live oaks and the shadows of its lacework balconies, among the saxophone riffs in its echoing alleys and the soft magenta glow of its crape myrtles at twilight, the flickering ghosts that haunt New Orleans whisper huskily of sweaty, sensual love and the promise of enduring memory. Even the street names whisper promises: Desire, Amour, Abundance; Pleasure, Treasure and Joy.

It is not comforting to realize that, in the wake of Katrina, bloated bodies are floating on those streets today. But to speak of New Orleans's resilience is simply to cite its history -- a demographic and cultural melting pot of German industry and French and Spanish elitism, of Irish gregariousness and Sicilian emotionalism, of African exuberance and American frontier cussedness that embraces death, too, as a part of life.

Lives, levees and live oaks are merely temporary in any case. Katrina's catastrophes will no more define New Orleans than the Nazi occupation defined Paris, though they may last almost as long.

For those of us lucky enough to have come of age in New Orleans -- even more than for the tourist who falls for her instantly -- the decadent majesty of the city is like a forbidden love. You want desperately to explain the depths of your enchantment, but you know in your heart that others will acknowledge it merely as an easy infatuation or a passing fling. You know they will never awaken at night drunk on the coffee-and-banana fragrance of her docks or the beery sweat of her pre-dawn streets or the humid hum of her streetcar summers. How could they ever understand the depth of your passion?

How could they understand your love for a city in which life itself is an art form and the poorest, least privileged inhabitant a knowledgeable artist?

Thus with children one seeks to inculcate a New Orleanian view of life at the proper age, by carefully introducing the concept of breakfast beignets, jazz lunches and gardenia-scented patio dinners, where they set fire to dessert.

One instructs them to notice the immense cultural difference between the growling, attempted intimidation of street beggars in Washington ("Spare some change?") and the amused, self-confident hustle of New Orleans street people who will bet you $5 they can tell you where you got them shoes. ("On yo FEET!")

This catechism usually works, but not always in the way intended.

One April Sunday afternoon in the French Quarter, you are bemoaning the touristy changes of the city and the decline of its music when you come upon a Dixieland band playing in the middle of Bourbon Street with a musical integrity, artistry and enthusiasm unheard in decades.

Shaking hands with the drummer afterward to impress on him an appreciation of his New Orleans authenticity, you learn how much New Orleans energizes the global culture.

" Ich bin ein Berliner ," he says with a grin. "Is great privilege to play where is born Louis Armstrong."

Yesterday, agonizing over the TV pictures of breached levees and rooftop rescues, of overturned trucks and flooded freeways and all the detritus of a drowning city, you wonder at the fate of all the wacky and wonderful Orleanians you've known who give the Big Easy its peculiar charm -- the green-haired white punks and the stoned Gypsy juggler, the young black saxophone player on the corner playing Gershwin with amazing grace. The old black carriage driver with the mule named Mother-in-Law. Jerry Strahan, who manages the bun-shaped Lucky Dog carts and their eccentric French Quarter vendors -- and also wrote a respected book of World War II history. The exterminator who defends New Orleans from the voracious Formosa termites -- futilely -- and all the hand-crafters of Mardi Gras beads and floats.

You want to know that blues singer Marva Wright is safe, and the wise-cracking guy who dips the gravy onto poor-boy sandwiches at Mother's, and the map curator at the New Orleans Collection museum. You want to know about the woman who gets the alligator meat for restaurateur Dickie Brennan ("Gucci gets the hides") and the waiter who ignites the Cafe Brulot at Arnaud's.

You learn a few comforting things about New Orleans's resilience from television. Yesterday one amazed newsman reported that the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the Quarter refused to have its Orleanian style diminished. The kitchen staff pulled a gas grill from the patio into the dining room to cook a full Creole breakfast for stranded hotel guests, complete with a piano player serenading the diners with "Stormy Weather."

Some TV anchors, however, will drive you crazy with their New Orleans "knowledge," claiming that "A Streetcar Named Desire" took place in the Garden District and that voodoo queen Marie Laveau is buried "in St. Peter Cemetery in the French Quarter." Marlon Brando yelling "STELLLLLLLA!" in the Garden District? I don't think so. That was the French Quarter. Marie Laveau's tomb is in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 across Rampart Street, right next to the tomb of Dutch Morial, the first black mayor of New Orleans, who even in death knows the value of a good location.

A few years ago, I took my youngest daughter on her first visit to New Orleans. Then 11, she bought a cape and took to drifting wanly in it among the tombs near Marie like some waif out of Charlotte Bronte. She had her palm read by an amiable Gypsy, shopped for crystal balls and tarot cards and took ghoulish delight in the voodoo museum. She seemed to understand intuitively that death, particularly ghastly death, is part of the historic warp and woof of New Orleans. It has always been part of the theater of the city, even part of the fun.

But that, of course, is in the abstract.

Just last month, as she sat eating incomparable fried eggplant with powdered sugar at Christian's Restaurant, a onetime Lutheran church where the food comes out of the kitchen right where the altar used to be, the now 16-year-old, eyes rapturous with delight, asked why she couldn't go to college at Tulane "so I can be around wonderful people like this all the time."

Today Christian's is not far from the levee break on the Industrial Canal and is likely under water. Along with those wonderful people. What can I tell her now?

2 DAYS AFTER KATRINA, AS 1000'S DROWNED

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz)

BLACK PEOPLE "LOOT", WHITES "FIND"

CONDO-LOSER SHOPS UP A STORM

http://www.gawker.com/news/condoleezza-rice/index.php#breaking-condi-rice-spends-salary-on-shoes-123467

DEAR MR. BUSH

Letter from Michael Moore


Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore

"NO ONE CAN SAY THEY DIDN'T SEE IT COMING"

By Sidney Blumenthal (from Der Spiegel)

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."


"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

IN SEARCH OF A LEADER

In case you missed this editorial from the NY Times:

Published: September 1, 2005

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.


We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

BUNNY'S TOO TIGHT TO MENTION

from POPBITCH.COM


Sydney man loves rabbits to death

An Australian man has been arrested after
having sex with 18 rabbits. Sydney police have
charged Brendan McMahon, 36, with bestiality
and aggravated cruelty, after finding a pile
of sodomised rabbit corpses dumped in a lane
in The Rocks.

In his defence, McMahon claimed that he had sex
with the rabbits while high on crystal meth.
His lawyer unsuccessfully applied for bail,
stating that McMahon was willing to surrender
his passport and would undertake not to go
within 50 metres of a pet shop.

MORE WIG PIX

LADY MISS KIER
GORGEOUS MAKE-UP ON WORLD FAMOUS BOB

(photos by Cator Sparks)

WIG PIX

LA ESCUELITA'S HARMONICA SUNBEAM
SEXY REGINE FROM LIPS
MIKE ALBO, AUTHOR OF THE UNDERMINER
JIMMY JAMES AS BETTY DAVIS
CHRIS MARCH, MY WIG DESIGNER (www.gr8bighair.com)
HATTIE B. DEMILLE, ONE OF WIGSTOCK'S FOUNDERS

DINA MARTINA FROM P'TOWN--WHAT A TUCK!
MR. MURRAY HILL HELPED ME EMCEE
SADE PENDARVIS KILLED "EM WITH TAKIN' IT TO THE STREETS
MADAME STOPPED BY
GLAMOROUS REPORTER AMNESIA SPARKLES

For those of you who missed the show, here are some pix from WIGSTOCK 2005. The weather was close to perfect, the crowd estimated at 15,000 and some really great performers. I flew to Miami the next day to dj and just got these photos together. In truth, I feel a bit foolish tooting my own horn in the wake of Katrina, but maybe the pix will give y'all a giggle. (More pix on www.wigstock.nu---AND GORGEOUS T-SHIRTS FOR SALE!)