Andy’s whereIstand Blog

Okay so this story is from the UK, but our notions of sexuality coincide sometimes across the pond. Now I understand the symbolism of virginity is powerful, but some things are just out there:

Mrs Yarborough paid $5,000 (£2,860) to a cosmetic surgeon to stitch her hymen back together so she could “lose her virginity” all over again and her husband would have that thrilling conquest at the grand age of 40.

He did, and after that very expensive moment the ecstatic couple spent a passionate Valentine’s weekend last year having the kind of sex that they had almost forgotten about. Now they are busy telling family, friends and strangers that it is the best money they ever spent and everyone should do it.

“Now my sister is thinking of becoming a virgin again for her 45th birthday to surprise her husband,” says Mrs Yarborough gleefully, as she sits in her modest family home in San Antonio, Texas, talking unabashedly about such intimate matters.

Women have resorted to backstreet hymen repair for centuries in religions and cultures in which marrying as a virgin is sacred and losing your “maidenhead” before matrimony can mean shame, or even being put to death.

Great so right after the backstreet abortion, a lady would get one a backstreet hymen repair surgery, to save her life. So if this sort of symbolic re-taking/re-giving of virginity is consensual and all, then there really is no problem, I just think it both telling and odd that such a notion would pop into people’s minds. Like let’s relive this pain and guilt from causing pain and undoing this unnecessary surgery we just had done for an anniversary gift? I mean I guess couples will go to crazy lengths to spice up a dying love life, but this far? I mean if he wanted to make her bleed, fly his sadistic freak flag, there are other ways not requiring a doctor before hand.

This has been Andy D.

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This is a priceless piece of Drudge Reportage:

President Bush and his top strategist, Karl Rove, say Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be tough to beat in the Democratic presidential primaries of 2008 — but not in the general election!

Reporter Bill Sammon, who joins the WASHINGTON EXAMINER as Senior White House Correspondent, is set to launch his new book, Strategery.

In the Book, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, Rove is quoted on the-record and is unleashed on Hillary:

There is a “brittleness about her” that could prove a weakness in November 2008.

But Rove added that the “hard-driving” Clinton will easily vanquish Democratic primary rivals like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who are merely “preening for the vice presidential slot.”

President Bush cautioned that Hillary Clinton should not be underestimated.

“She is a smart person, and obviously has got a lot of experience,” the president said in an exclusive interview for the book Strategery, which is being published Monday.  “It is helpful, to a certain extent, to have seen the presidency and presidential campaigns firsthand.”

Clinton was a key adviser to her husband Bill in his two successful presidential campaigns. During her eight years as First Lady and five years as a U.S. senator, she has become a political force unto herself.

“I think Hillary Clinton will be a formidable candidate,” Bush said. “And I don’t know the inner workings of the Democrat primary that much, but she will be a formidable candidate in the Democrat primary, is what I meant.”

This is a complete surprise! I can’t believe Bush is even around when Rove is discussing his campaign or any other pertinent strategerizing going down for the Republican Party.

Of course they don’t think she can stand up to whatever they throw at her from their own primary - it is part of the GOP plan to come across as cocksure - to wit John Stewart’s observation that Bush says the most obvious answer to questions, and solutions to problems, as though he came up with them and that the rest of the world is totally retarded for not seeing it already - which of course the rest of the world already has, like twenty years ago.

This has been Andy D.

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On this very site, I have been guilty of using Hitler as the perfect straw man. Now my eyes just sort of glaze over when I read the name Hitler. That said, this post on Church and State (hereafter referred to as CAS) - a site run by Nathan Bradfield purporting to proffer the religious right conservative view on matters of its namesake - succeeds in providing the perfect example of the religious right’s standard arguments against abortion. And with the pending decision in South Dakota that could very well be a coup against Roe V. Wade, we should be seeing a lot from all sides of this issue.

First in this post, of course, there is the belief that sanctified life starts at conception, if not before. Mr. Bradfield then takes the argument up a few notches - doing the opposite of David Irving - and conflating Doctors who perform abortions with Hitler and his bevy of eugenics mad scientists:

Much as we’d like to think we’re light years away from the Nazi Germans of several generations ago, we have disturbing parallels. And one reason may be that we have some of the same ideas circulating among the same social classes—including intellectuals in general and the members of the medical profession in particular.

The trouble started with the main ideas of evolution. Darwin and most Darwinists denied the existence of an immortal soul—"a central tenet," Weikart notes, "of the Judeo-Christian worldview that undergirded the sanctity of human life." They thought morality varied with time and circumstances, existing solely to promote the survival of the race. They stressed the inequality of different species, which led them to stress racial inequalities among people as well.

 

Actually, in his important and interesting work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, Darwin was a regular Saint Francis of Assisi, making a case for humans and non-human animals being more alike than any Judeo-Christian treatment would recognize. Mr. Bradfield uses two new books about the Holocaust - themselves perhaps revisionist - which relate Darwin to Hitler - the post at hand is entitled "Darwin begat Hitler."

Influential Darwinists routinely said things like "the right of the stronger is a natural law." They advocated abortion, euthanasia and suicide; they stated that people with mental limitations were closer to apes than men, and should be killed or sterilized.

Peter Singer - hardly a strict Darwinist - has garnered much criticism for his controversial ideas about when human life becomes sanctified/precious and his ideas justifying infanticide. This is a gross vulgarization of Natural Selection - as what works in any given environment of ecosystem relationships is visible only in hindsight, not while selective pressures are occurring, and they are always occurring and shifting. What’s more is that we are always a part of it. A welfare state can be seen as a selective pressure, keeping those in our society alive regardless of their ability to support themselves. Altruism is also an evolutionary trait - probably one that has kept us alive and let us prosper so well. Evolution is descriptive, not proscriptive - not deterministic. Darwinism does not make moral or ethical decisions. It’s a scientific theory, not a complete worldview.

From one of the books Bradfield references in this post - Doctors from Hell:

And what testimony. Just listen to the matter-of-fact descriptions of the “experiments”:

• Freezing Experiments. "Victims were placed in a tank of ice water for up to three hours, or kept naked outdoors for hours at below freezing temperatures during which numerous victims died."
• Malaria Experiments. "Over one thousand involuntary subjects were infected … many of whom died, while others suffered severe pain and permanent disability."
• Lost (Mustard) Gas Experiments. "Wounds were deliberately inflicted on victims and then infected with poisonous gas … some victims died and others suffered intense pain and injury."
• Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation Experiments. "Sections of bones, muscles, and nerves were removed from the victims, resulting in intense agony, mutilation, permanent disability, and death."

  The people conducting the experiments were doctors—whose mission is always to heal, never to harm. How could they let themselves do this sort of thing?

  The answer: for a cause. It was a twisted patriotism—devotion to their government, their military, their race.

 

I wonder where Mr. Bradfield and CAS stands on the recent death penalty coup doctors staged in California. CAS then goes on to indict "cloners" in stem cell research, and talk about the final judgment of abortionists and Nazis alike. What Mr. Bradfield never mentions is the relationship between the fetus at stake and the woman carrying the thing inside her body - this is the key piece the religious right conveniently leaves out in their righteous diatribes - the issue they constantly skirt. The doctors performing the abortion aren’t the fetus’s doctors, they are it’s potential mother’s. They are looking after her interests and health - it is their right to do this that Roe V. Wade really protects.

Hardly a "corrupt secular moral code" the religious right have yet to adequately show from their own texts and divine sources where Jesus mentions abortion, and why this should play a part in policy making even in light of the (dis)Establishment Clause. Barring this, the people need to convince legislature to rule one way or the other on the issue - I’m sad to say this is what South Dakota is doing right now. But perhaps that’s what it would take to mobilize the pro-choice left, and women in particular to step up to the podium and get louder than the evangelists.

This has been Andy D.

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• What is the most correct way to describe the main adversaries in the debate over abortion?
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• Are there circumstances under which you support capital punishment?

Sexuality is all over the Drudge Report today. I saw this episode of Oprah - I mean, my girlfriend made me watch it, yeah… damn - and found it quite, um, enlightening:

Hold on to your condoms!

Oprah interviewed a woman on Thursday who had engaged in sex with more than 90 men during her life and who was keeping an ongoing list and a video diary about these encounters!

Not to be confused with Howard Stern, Oprah asked: "So you’ve had men ejaculate in your face?"

MORE

The February Sweeps sex special from the nation’s top talkshow host, titled "Guests discuss their sex addictions," raised eyebrows with industry watchers.

"You’ve had, you know, men ejaculating in your face who you don’t even know who they are," asked daytime Winfrey.

WINFREY: OK. So tell me, what’s going on when you’re actually having the sex?…Coming up, Jennifer just admitted that she’s had sex with almost 90 men.

Then you got the military gay sex website story:

The Army has recommended that seven 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers be discharged following allegations they engaged in sex acts shown on a gay pornographic Web site.

Three soldiers face courts-martial on charges of sodomy, pandering and engaging in sex acts for money. Four others received nonjudicial punishments, according to a statement released by the military Friday.

The charges do not mention the name of the site, but the division had previously been investigating allegations that soldiers appeared on a gay pornography Web site. A spokesman for the division said the charges were a result of that investigation.

The charges indicate the soldiers’ behavior is "a much more serious matter than just their sexual orientation," said Steve Ralls, a spokesman for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a legal group that helps gays and lesbians in the military.

"I’m not going to make excuses for service members who are taking part in sexual conduct for money," said Ralls. "It would be absolutely criminal regardless of whether they were heterosexual or gay."

That’s a lot of sex happening on front pages and daytime talk shows in one week. Begin moral panic…. now!

This has been Andy D.

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Holy Crap, Donovan, I know The Sudan is a big place and there is some funky genocide going on right now, but did you see this?

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his ‘wife’ after he was caught having sex with the animal.

And the religious right in this country is worried about a slippery slope.

This has been Andy D.

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Scooter Libby, pending his council getting the charges dropped altogether, has taken the coup to the White House for a last-minute veto on his verdict - I’m sure the Patriot Act has a contingency for this use of executive powers:

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, charged with perjury in the CIA leak case, cannot be told the identity of another government official who is said to have divulged a CIA operative’s identity to reporters, a federal judge ruled Friday.

At the same time, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Libby could have copies of notes he took over 11 months in 2003 and 2004 while serving as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The judge also set the stage for a showdown in late April over the defense’s plans to subpoena reporters and news organizations for notes and other documents in the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity.

During a hearing Friday afternoon, Walton said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald can keep secret the other government official’s identity because that person has not been charged and has a right to privacy.

The judge put off deciding whether Libby can have access to highly classified presidential daily briefs, summaries of intelligence on threats against the United States that Libby and Cheney received six days a week from a CIA official.

Walton said he is concerned that Libby’s request could "sabotage" the case because President Bush probably will invoke executive privilege and refuse to turn over the classified reports.

"The vice president — his boss — said these are the family jewels," the judge said, referring to Cheney’s past description of the daily briefings. "If the executive branch says, ‘This is too important to the welfare of the nation and we’re not going to comply,’ the criminal prosecution goes away."

Bush is obviously not above doing this, as he has yet to show that he is above any abuse of executive power thus far, so why not shell out for Cheney’s boy? It’s not like anyone is going to take Bush Corp to task for it anyway.

This has been Andy D. 

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The only problem I have with government funding is when they are put to use in specifically religious purposes, especially proselytizing. Bully for Massachusetts:

The federal government agreed to stop funding a nationwide program that promotes teen abstinence to settle a lawsuit alleging the money was used for Christian proselytizing.

The agreement was reached Wednesday between the Department of Health and Human Services and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Under the deal, the Silver Ring Thing program won’t be eligible for more funding unless it ensures the money won’t be used for religious purposes.

Yes, now the burden lies with the organization seeking the funds. This is copasetic with both the (dis)Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses is it not? That whole Silver Ring Thing was guilty of being lame if not of being outright religious. I can’t even believe they were getting government funding to begin with.

This has been Andy D.

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• Should government funding be available to religious organizations for the purpose of performing a social good, e.g., feeding the homeless?

Okay, if you are a politician that doesn’t know the Daily Show is a political satire show by now, then either turn on the TV or fire your publicists and handlers:

Blagojevich says he didn’t realize "The Daily Show" was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-puzzled governor.

"It was going to be an interview on contraceptives … that’s all I knew about it," Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday’s editions. "I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was ‘the gay governor.’ "

The interview focused on his executive order requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control.

 

 

I totally remember seeing this episode, and I thought it was damn funny. It just gave me added giggles knowing that at least on some level it was just a little more authentic.

This has been Andy D.

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Just when you thought the Scooter had no more wheels to spin:

Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss his indictment on grounds that the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case lacked authority.

In a court filing, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said his indictment violated the Constitution because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was not appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate.

The defense attorneys also said Fitzgerald’s appointment violated federal law because his investigation was not supervised by the attorney general. They said only Congress can approve such an arrangement.

The lawyers said illegal assignment of "unsupervised and undirected power" to Fitzgerald requires that he be relieved of his duties in the investigation and that all actions he has taken be voided.

Certainly this whole thing will not just be thrown out from some spurious claim. This is just a last-ditch effort by the Defense to seem like all their ducks are in a row right? No way this actually has legitimate merit? That would just suck.

This has been Andy D.

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• Will Special Counsel Fitzgerald indict White House Officials in the Plame case?

So I read this article today after my boss sent me an email about it:

Singer Morrissey was quizzed by the FBI and British intelligence after speaking out against the American and British governments.

The Brit is a famous critic of the US-led war in Iraq and has dubbed President GEORGE W BUSH a "terrorist" - but he was baffled to be hauled in by authorities.

Morrissey explains, "The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I’ve been interviewed and taped and so forth.

"They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn’t take them very long to realise that I’m not.

"I don’t belong to any political groups, I don’t really say anything unless I’m asked directly and I don’t even demonstrate in public. I always assume that so-called authoritarian figures just assume that pop/rock music is slightly insane and an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable.

"My view is that neither England or America are democratic societies. You can’t really speak your mind and if you do you’re investigated."

Then I forwarded it to my girl, to which she responded:

"I always assume that so-called authoritarian figures just assume that pop/rock music is slightly insane and an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable"

Wow, how naive.

So true. As an artist, free speech is a big issue, with tons at stake. But free speech is always at stake in this country, with the judicially-teased-out exceptions like libel, fighting words, obscenity, etc. These exceptions aren’t in the First Amendment, and I wonder why. Moz is still Naive, he should whine out a song about it.

This has been Andy D.

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