When a Crocodile Eats the Sun – Peter Godwin   A memoir about living in Zimbabwe, including the ever-so charming Robert Mugabe .

The Caged Virgin – Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Sexual politics, women and the muslim world.

Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and It’s Consequences – Sarah Schulman.

Creationism’s Trojan Horse – Barbara Forrest, Paul Gross

Thinking in Systems – Donella Meadows

The Dark Side  -  Mayer

Unfriendly Fire  -  Frank

The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction  -  Amar

Self-Esteem  -  McKay and Fanning

The Cost of War, Unnoticed

Why Iraq and Afghanistan Haven’t Squeezed the Average American’s Wallet

By Lori Montgomery  8 May 2007 Washington Post

BOLDFACE EMPHASIS IS MINE     ”Like all debts, however, the bill for Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually come due. While it is unlikely to cause economic upheaval, such as the devastating inflation that followed the Vietnam War, economists foresee substantial increases in government spending to rebuild the nation’s exhausted armed forces, care for its disabled veterans and cover rising interest payments.

Administration officials say those payments will be easier to afford because Bush’s tax cuts strengthened the economy and boosted tax collections. But even many conservative economists are skeptical. Some worry that the bill for Iraq will come just as the baby-boom generation starts retiring, further straining a budget that will require deep cuts, higher taxes or bigger deficits.”

If you ever cross paths with this most formidable of beasts be extremely careful. You  will know her by the mini-van or urban SVU and often as not little heads bobbing around in the vehicle. She is LATE somewhere due to among other things not calculating the REAL driving time between points A and B. And she will drive around, or if need be, over you, without regard to speed limit, oncoming traffic or wait for it folks, AN ACTIVE SCHOOL ZONE.

This morning’s ADISM was trying to pass me while I was doing the speed limit (35mph) northbound in a SCHOOL ZONE at Calvary Christian school around 850am on a two lane road in a FOG BANK with around 60 feet of visibilty. Prior sightings of this vicious predator include the ADISM that flew by me in the school zone just east of  Owyhee Elementary school on Iowa Avenue. She then veered into the school parking lot and parked. Ah on your way to get the kids why not decrease the population by mowing down some in a school zone?

I suppose the defense if caught is “I was late to drop off/pick up my children.”

Yup peachy…. almost as good as the two other universal defenses of the 21st century: ”Hey can’t you see I’m on the phone?” and “I can’t be overdrawn I still have checks left.”

Free Gift

Your “Free Gift” from the credit agency for that shiny new credit card is neither FREE nor it is a GIFT if you READ the 30 pages of 6 point typeface that is your credit agreement. FREE means cost you nothing. GIFT means given without renumeration. Except it did cost you. And you’re gonna pay it back! Surely you didn’t think THEY paid for it? That’s no gift, you bought yourself a present!  That expense was factored into your deal, champ! Ya better believe it!

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Good Christian

Good Christian – OK I have no problem with “individuals of faith”. I mean people who truly believe, or at least allow, there is, or might be, a higher power that can control events in our world. I admire people that have a belief and some adherence to a credo as a result. However whenever someone feels compels to point out to me they are a “GOOD CHRISTIAN” I know something truly skunky is in the offing. My irritation extends from simple matters like someone like with a Bible in their hand helping themselves to my shirt at the laundromat (they seemed shocked I objected when they were leaving the building with it – and of course they said they were just helping me out, it “needed a hanger” which was in their car – WOW the lack of faith on me and didn’t I know they are a GOOD CHRISTIAN…..) up to and including the pulpit thumpers that galvanize their congregations into a righteous frenzy of demonizing other groups of people. HINT: If you need to put GOOD IN FRONT OF CHRISTIAN to describe yourself, you are afraid others won’t recognize either your goodness or your Christianity, WITH REASON.

]]> http://gorchest.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/2-candidates-for-oxymoron-of-the-day/feed/ 0 gorchest http://gorchest.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/what-im-reading/ http://gorchest.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/what-im-reading/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:22:55 +0000 gorchest http://gorchest.wordpress.com/?p=297 ]]> Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium   by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke

Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium by  Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by   William J. Bernstein

The Argument by   Matt Bai

On July 8th, Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy (PA-8) took a major step in the right direction when he became the official lead sponsor for H.R. 1283, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, the Congressional effort to overturn the military’s discriminatory policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

go here to thank him for it.

My comment to our leaders on DADT:

ALL our American service personnel must be HONORED. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) is a disingenuous, unworthy standard of qualification for military service that dishonors every US citizen every moment that it remains in effect. DADT, by the half-measure that it is, weakens America. We are wasting time and resources on discharges and investigations that might be spent on stablizing Iraq and Pakistan, defeating the Taliban, ending stop-loss, and getting our servicepeople home. Further, we simply lack the moral standing to lead other countries into a peaceful, democratic future at present, due to DADT. It is well past time for our Congress to get rid of this hypocrisy, and in doing so, fully honor the sacrifices of every member of our Armed Forces that answers the call to defend this nation!

My personal memories are about the same as Andrew Sullivan’s:  at the 1988 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) Making Change conference in Washington DC, Urvashi Vaid went off literally on a close friend of mine for even mentioning that Gay Marriage was an important issue for the next decade(s). Vaid said (with conviction) that it would be ‘more than 25 years before we even started talking about this’. My friend always was a visionary. Wherever you are my friend, please know I did a little “D— was right’ dance on my front lawn after California and again after Iowa.

A loud wet raspberry for Ms Vaid, not for her opinion, but for HOW she and her close associates behaved that night. It is one thing not to want marriage for yourself (you didn’t Ms Vaid), but quite another as the leader of a major LGBT group to demonize publicly someone else because they did.

My friend said later, on the way home from the conference: “Yes, you can’t imagine wanting to get married now but someday you might feel differently. What if you don’t have the choice because we never pushed for it?”

In 1992 I met someone who later made imagining it quite easy. In 2005, unable to wait for this government to get its act together, we wed in Canada.

July 8, 2009 01:57 PM  The Boston Globe

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, has become the first to challenge the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, saying Congress intruded into a matter that should be left to individual states

“In enacting DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act], Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people,” the state said in a lawsuit filed today in US District Court in Massachusetts.

The suit said that more than 16,000 same-sex couples have married in Massachusetts since gay marriage became legal in the state in 2004 “and the security and stability of families has been strengthened in important ways throughout the state.”

“Despite these developments, same-sex couples in Massachusetts are still denied essential rights and protections because the federal Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] interferes with the Commonwealth’s authority to define and regulate marriage,” the lawsuit said.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which opposes gay marriage, said, “We believe the suit will have no credibility in the federal courts. The federal courts have already ruled that the DOMA is constitutional.”………   to read the rest

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On state’s rights the worm turns !!!!