Corrente

Yeah, that's the ticket. Get the cash to the Caryle Group now while the price is high. 'Cause it's hard to sell off a port when it's radioactive... Read below the fold...

Yes, this is a little out of our usual line of topics, but I ask what you would do when faced on a gray drizzly February Tennessee morning with a headline, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette no less, that reads

BODY PART TURNS OUT TO BE SEX TOY

What a gas station clerk in McKeesport thought at first glance was a severed penis was actually a urine-filled sex toy.

read on...if you dare. Read below the fold...

I actually watched the Olympics last night. So, the figure-skating: All I could hear was the sound of women crashing onto the ice. WTF?<--break--> Read below the fold...

What a surprise! AP:

Sen. Rick ["Man on Dog"] Santorum (news, bio, voting record)'s charity donated about 40 percent of the $1.25 million it spent during a four-year period, well below Better Business Bureau standards — paying out the rest for overhead, including several hundred thousand dollars to campaign aides on the charity payroll.

Read below the fold...

Well, you know, war is hell and all that. But who says hell can't be fun? I'm telling you, I want to party with these guys! All the vim and vigor, patriotism, hot gay sex on the internet...it must be a good time to be a warmongering Tough Guy these days. Think of the parties, winger readers, that your tax dollars are paying for so these guys can be adulterous homosexual drunks. I've been to a couple, and I can tell you: they're fabulous. Don't think for a minute that just because green is your color you can't embrace your inner Diva: Read below the fold...

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It's been nearly two weeks since a few hundred protestors showed up at Cesar Chavez and Broadway (at the gateway to L.A.'s Chinatown) to make the public aware of the brutal treatment of animals by participants in the fur trade in China proper. People don't usually volunteer to look at images of dogs and cats skinned alive, but some of us do take those hard looks, and it kicks the shit out of us every time. But we can't turn away without bearing witness, because the animals deserve (in our opinions and in our hearts) champions to share the horrible truth of their respective plights. Abu Grahib comes from the same horrible place that slitting a dog open alive for a few yards of fur comes from: that really hard place where we absent our humanity and destroy the garden and bring suffering to the world. We do not turn away until it it breaks us down, and believe me, it breaks many of us down. As a liberal, I believe that is what separates compassion from judgement. Read below the fold...

We aren't the only ones with social conflict over abortion. I always try to get those who favor government regulation of the subject--who always seem to assume that the only possible side for the government to come down on would be "pro-life"-- to see that what a government can ban one day it can mandate the next, so long as it is up to the government to make such decisions rather than the individual. China, I tell them. Look at China.

There's another country with an abortion problem, but the basis is from a totally different direction than ours. Read below the fold...

AP:

"[BUSH] The more people learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my government, the more they'll be comforted that our ports will be secure,'' Bush said.

Um, George? The government isn't yours. See, e.g., Article I, section 18, clause 18 of the Constitution of the United States, you lying sack of shit. Read below the fold...

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China says no to live/cartoon combos

Thank goodness I didn't go ahead with "The Prophet and Peter Pan in 'Fire Island Follies'Project." Read below the fold...

UPDATE 3/10/06: roundup and discussion of yesterday's "resolution" to the PortGate debacle here. Read below the fold...

What Jane said:

South Dakota has now passed legislation making it illegal for a woman to have an abortion even in the case of rape or incest. It's a law perfectly timed to test the new Supreme Court now that Samuel Alito has joined their ranks. How exactly did we get to this place?

Read below the fold...

All of we unworthy people should bow down before Brad's superior work. He's documenting how your democracy is being slain, technowidget by infrared sensor:
Read below the fold...

This started off as one of the usual depressing morning reading selections that have been the routine of my day for going on six years now. But then I saw this, from the mouth of the beast itself:

Today we are engaged in the first war in history -- unconventional and irregular as it is -- in an era of:

E-mail;

Blogs;

Blackberries;

Instant messaging;

Digital cameras;

A global Internet with no inhibitions;

Cell phones;

Read below the fold...

WaPo:

The White House yesterday released two 'fact sheets' on the port deal and on relations with the United Arab Emirates.

"'Fact sheets'"--in quotes. Snicker. Or, given this President, not. Read below the fold...