no flood damage

there is no flood damage... at least in my neighborhood. in other parts of the county, yes there is. and in neighboring counties. and other states, too. in the local region, 4 people died from the flooding. and $100,000,000 damage, according to governor pataki, who was here yesterday. there were sooooo many helicopters flying overhead yesterday, one flew right over my house and it was really loud. i didn’t go anywhere, except on a short walk to the community college and back to visit my dad, who went to work despite the fact that he has the whole summer off and nobody else is there. well ok there was maybe a grand total of ten people on the entire bcc campus. but you get the picture. so yeah, the damage is devastating, in broome county, tioga county, delaware county, and just south of us in pennsylvania, things are also bad there. when i wrote the last post i was kind of nervous because i had no idea what was going on except what i had heard on the radio, and there was not much in the news about it. today the newspaper is entirely devoted to the flood and this is the main article. so i don’t think they really arrested anyone for driving around or anything, but there was an order not to drive unless it was an absolute emergency. in tioga county, they actually said they would arrest people for driving on the roads, but not here in broome county. anyway, there was flooding in all sorts of low-lying areas near the rivers, and all of the most densely populated areas with the most stuff are near the rivers. like i said, i’m on the side of a hill, so no prob here. i was just totally freaking out the last time i posted here. but i’m fine. some people lost their homes and cars and stuff, and 4 people actually died. i’m supposed to mow the rest of the lawn today, since all the rain that went on for days kept me from finishing up the lawn before. that should be annoying, mowing the wet grass... but i have to, or else i will be severely punished. even though the yard is like a swamp. and the weather outside is hot and sunny now... i think there are going to be lots of medical problems in the region, since all the doctors have offices on riverside drive, which is on the side of the river, and i think that got flooded. i have an appointment on riverside drive tomorrow. so, i will see, on that day, if that building still stands, and if it is turned to mush, and if my psychologist is there, he will probably either tell me how he is disappointed in me or excited for me, but i can never tell which he will be beforehand, and it is usually a mixture of both. usually he is mostly disappointed but finds at least one thing to stay excited about, one area where i seem to have made some progress. but today i need to mow the wet, soggy, grass, you know, the grass out in the swamp around my house, because it’s snot a lawn anymore. the lawnmower will probably explode in flames. but i need to do that shit or else i get punished. meanwhile, people who lost their homes and stuff are now off living in the binghamton university event center, which, like i said, is kind of like the new orleans superdome. except, it seems, this one is actually managed properly, and they were able to deal with it much better. actually, they seem to have done an amazingly good job at emergency management around here, i think. there were fricken helicopters everywhere, like i said. my dad is upstairs replacing the old plastic shower head with a new shiny metal one and cleaning the ceiling of the bathtub with bleach. as the new shower head once said, “bite my shiny metal ass!” or was that bender on futurama? anyway, i need to go out and mow the damn lawn. other people in the neighborhood are mowing their lawns now. none of the services ever got shut off, and although we get our water from the binghamton city water supply, they managed to keep it going without issuing a boil water advisory like in another nearby town. but there are some places that were just utterly destroyed by the flooding, like conklin or walton, according to the news. my mom went on a bike ride yesterday with a camera and photographed some pretty awful flooding that is just 2 blocks downhill from here, actually within walking distance. next to interstate 81 is the parking lot for the church just down the street and their parking lot is like a soup bowl that is full; at least one s.u.v. is now clam chowder, and my mom has the photos to prove it. but my car is high and dry, as they say. so, it’s time for my gas-powered lawnmower to use up some fossil fuels and put more goddamn greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to cause more natural disasters. thanks for the warning, al gore, but you are too late! next time, get a time machine! peace, i’m out!

what is this hurricane katrina?

jesus fucking christ. binghamton is totally flooded. it’s like hurricane katrina all over again, except in upstate new york. it’s in the local news, and on the weather channel’s national report, but apparently binghamton isn’t important enough for this to make the national news. so there is like, a travel ban... we aren’t allowed to drive on the roads. actually there isn’t really flooding everywhere. i actually have no idea where the flooding is. somewhere in broome county. dammit! at least i live on the side of a hill. the hill will protect me. i wish i knew the name of the hill. what the hell is the name of the hill my house is on the side of? so deer lake has flooded. where the hell is deer lake? i never heard of deer lake. it’s somewhere in the county. most of the flooding is in parts of the county that are not the place where i am. ya know, low lying places near rivers. but they are evacuating the entire east side of binghamton, apparently, since it is surrounded by 2 rivers (chenango and susquehanna). sending people to the binghamton university event center. this is gonna be just like the superdome in new orleans, i swear. this shit is all because of global warming, i guarantee it. i saw al gore’s movie the other day, an inconvenient truth, and it scared the hell outta me. but really, aren’t we gonna have global thermonuclear war wipe us out? isn’t that what steven hawking was talking about the other day, along with “catastrophic global warming” and “a genetically engineered virus”? i was sure that nuclear war was gonna be the way the world would end. that’s why we need to fund the nunn-lugar program and ted turner’s nuclear threat initiative. and ronald reagan should have listened to mikhail gorbachev when he said he wanted to ban nuclear weapons. jackass. but shit... pretty soon we oughtta start loading up 2 of every species, if ya know what i mean. except this time, we go to mars! i read steve squyres’s book about mars rovers, and it just made me feel like a total dumbass for never getting to know him when he was my professor at cornell. steven hawking’s idea of going to the moon or mars sounds pretty smart to me, right about now. this planet is fucked up! when is it going to stop raining? like, ok, we have enough rain here already. can’t someone make it stop? we need like, a giant laser on the moon to vaporize clouds before they start producing rain. ok, i admit, that is from austin powers, the giant laser on the moon thing. you know, i bet the democratic party doesn’t even exist anymore, because the binghamton headquarters are right next to the place where the 2 rivers meet on the east side of binghamton. and without a binghamton headquarters... a political party is finished. yes, binghamton is that important. hah. ok, so maybe the rest of the country thinks we are expendable, judging by the lack of national news coverage of the flooding. wtf is the deal with cnn.com and msnbc.com? like, i bet there might actually be 1 or 2 people who get injured in these floods, or maybe even someone dead. that is like, the worst natural disaster in the history of the world. well at least in binghamton, while i have been alive. maybe. except for the tornados. or the lightning. or something. dammit, there is a flood and it’s illegal for me to drive my car on the streets! this is some serious shit. i wonder, if this shit fucks up the landscape, how long will it take before i can look at this shit on google earth? what the fuck? just stop raining... it’s not funny anymore. seriously. why is everyone declaring a state of emergency in the county and the city and town and village and whatever? what does “state of emergency” even mean in the first place? i mean, i am kind of pissed off about the weather disrupting normal everyday life for myself and other people in my community. we need to, like, kill mother nature by polluting as much as possible, and that will stop all the weather from happening and then people will control everything. or maybe, i dunno... sell our cars and buy boats? what is this venice or something? i didn’t get any sleep all night because the rain was so loud all night... and my window was closed. and there is a boil water advisory. oh great. i hope they declare “martian law”, like on sealab 2021 on adult swim. we need to like, not die. it’s actually not that bad right where i am, in fact things are perfectly fine in my neighborhood. too bad about those other parts of the county, though... huh. well, i suppose i’ll just see what happens, and, umm, try to avoid any sorts of flooding disaster that might be happening around here? we still have electricity and cable tv and internet and running water... for now. i’m gonna go, like, eat food or something... this weather is kinda dumb. at least i’m not, like, dead or something. i wonder if the downtown area will even exist tomorrow. at least my house will be fine. ugh... i’m going to eat now.

drat! foiled again...

our evil plans have been foiled again. comrade markos moulitsas zúniga, or “kos” as we refer to him in code-speak, is the supreme leader of the glorious blogistan liberation front. the blogistan liberation front is a blogofascist secret society which is quietly planning the people’s proletarian revolution of the blogosphere. jason zengerle, of the counterrevolutionary new republic, has exposed our evil plot to the world. alas! now righteousness shall triumph yet again...

now the new republic are denying that they are counterrevolutionaries, by stating how they share many of the same ideas as kos’s blogistan liberation front. lies! has nobody forgotten about stephen glass? these new republicans at the new republic claim to be democrats but they are really just full of lies and elitist snobs. the new republic may agree with us “progressives” on almost all domestic issues, but their counterrevolutionary foreign policy is shameful, what with their support for the war in iraq and all. and in the 80s they supported reagan’s support of the contras in nicaragua in the iran-contra scandal. on the other hand, the blogistan liberation front, including the kossacks, are big supporters of metajesus, whose teachings describe the proper way to carry out the people’s revolution of the blogosphere. kossacks also tend to use mozilla firefox, while counterrevolutionaries avocate internet explorer. even david brooks at the new york times has taken up the jihad against daily kos, joining the new republic and the national review online. while i am a steadfast ally of kos in the proletarian struggle, i am afraid that the politburo diktat is that the kossacks will be defeated, despite the temporary triumphs of the las vegas yearlykos convention. thanks for nothing, subcomandante markos!

quantum politics

in politics, there are often multiple points of view that are bitterly divided against each other, not only disagreeing on opinions, but on facts. quantum physics has demolished the myth of objective reality, just as einstein’s theory of relativity demolished the myth of time. let me explain. the theory of relativity states that, to different observers, the order in which 2 events occur may appear to be different; moreover, it states that each observer is correct, in their own frame of reference, and neither is more correct than each other. the notion of “simultaneous” events is disproven by albert einstein’s theory of relativity. if we look out into space and watch things that supposedly happened billions of years ago, by looking at stars billions of light-years away, we are actually looking at things that are happening right now, at least in our own frame of reference. when we say that we are looking at things that happened billions of years ago, this is made based on the implicit assumption that there exists something known as time which is objective and universal, and that certain things happened at certain times. but this is a lie. time does not exist in any sort of universal sense, which you can prove by having 2 identical twins with identical watches and sending one into space near the speed of light and having them come back younger than the one that stayed put, with a watch that didn’t go thru as much time. time, like space, is something that matter and energy can move thru, but not everything goes at the same speed, and there is no universal “now”, because i can look in the sky at things that happened billions of years ago in distant galaxies, and they are really happening now according to my frame of reference. billions of years after we are all gone, space aliens billions of light years away may look at us through a telescope, and you know what? in their frame of reference, we will be their contemporaries, alive at the same time. this is the paradox of time, and why time itself is a big lie.

in quantum physics, the heisenberg uncertainty principle plays a central role. it states that you cannot observe something without changing it, and it is impossible to know everything about any particle you are trying to study. originally this heisenberg uncertainty principle only applied to the velocity and momentum of a particle, but since then it has been expanded to apply to all properties of any particle, or wave. another interesting paradox is the dual particle-wave nature of both matter and energy such as light (electromagnetic radiation). things behave in a manner that does not comply with traditional views of logic or of an objective reality. it turns out traditional views of objective reality are highly flawed and do not work at all when studying things on a subatomic level; the empirical data from experiments disproves objective reality. instead, there is something called a wave function, something every subatomic particle has. the wave function covers all possibilities, and a particle/wave is not limited to any single possibility until the act of observation is performed on it. observation causes what is known as wavefunction collapse, causing all possibilities but 1 to be eliminated, and producing the illusion of an objective reality. but objective reality only exists at the moment of observation, and in between observations, particles and waves can cover all possibilities simultaneously, despite the apparant contradictions to anyone who believes in only one objective reality.

so what does this have to do with politics? well, john von neumann wrote a great book about quantum physics in the early 1930s, in german. remember him? he helped invent computers, helped develop nuclear bombs in the manhattan project, and was a leading scientist of his time. in his book, he asserted that observation and wave function collapse can only occur inside the brain of a living organism capable of reflective thought. he specifically said that wave function collapse occurs at the moment a memory is recorded in the brain. seeing something with your eyes is not enough, for example, to collapse a wave function, if you do not record what happened in your brain’s memory. when a record is created of what happened, in an irreversible process, it seems this may be what collapses wavefunctions and eliminates possibilities. one particular interpretation of quantum physics is called the many-minds interpretation. according to this, every sentient being sort of has their own parallel universe, their own reality. we interact with each other, but we have different realities. through interaction, the contradictions between various different realities can be eliminated, by people convincing each other what the truth is. so according to this theory, insane people who say things that appear to be false to everyone else, might actually be correct about everything they say. this can also explain the parallel realities of democrats and republicans. all through the magic of quantum physics.

but i am not a fan of that rubbish. i think the many-minds interpretation of quantum physics is complete bullshit. and while i was once a fan and advocate of the many-worlds interpretation, i have given up on it as well. i still think the copenhagen interpretation is garbage, too. now, there is this new interpretation, called decoherence, which is actually backed by experimental data. decoherence theory actually explains how reality comes about existing, and where objective reality originates out of the chaos of subatomic contradictions. any reasonable theory needs to account for the perceived existence of objective reality on the macroscopic scale, to explain why things appear that way to human beings in their everyday life. simply put, any theory which contradicts basic human observations about everyday life, such as the sky being blue, gravity making things fall, people getting older over time... any such theory is simply rubbish. decoherence is one way to force quantum physics into compliance with human observations about everyday reality, but it is rather a blunt instrument, and does not explain why things work the way they do, just how to do the mathematical calculations. for a reason why, we really need to pick between determinism and randomness. the vast majority of quantum theories postulate randomness as the fundamental basis of subjective reality, and deny objective reality outright. but there is one theory, the bohm interpretation of quantum physics, which embraces determinism and objective reality, in sharp contrast to all the other theories. this makes the bohm interpretation quite controversial among physicists in the field of quantum physics, but the bohm interpretation is a better fit for everyday observations about reality made by ordinary people than those other theories. simply put, the bohm interpretation actually makes sense, explains things logically, and has not been disproven (nor has it been proven). superstring theory also plays into this somewhat, but i am unsure how. i do not understand string theory well enough to know how it fits into the scheme of quantum physics and its various interpretations. perhaps the bohm interpretation is wrong, but for me, it is what makes sense, and what i believe in, because it says objective reality really is real, and things happen for a reason, and randomness is simply a misunderstanding caused by observers who cannot discern the true pattern because they lack complete information about the universe. the bohm interpretation is a non-local hidden variable theory, and resolves all paradoxes. there are some scientists who claim to have disproven the bohm interpretation, but bohm advocates claim to have refuted all the arguments against their theory. so, who knows? all i know is, it works better to believe in reality than not to. so, i reject the many-minds interpretation and its hidden implication that in politics, when people disagree on fundamental facts, both sides can simultaneously be correct. despite what the physicists say, i think we ordinary non-physicist mortals ought to believe in objective reality, because things simply work much better that way. because, if many-minds really is true, then if people start questioning everything, this could disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum... “mind over matter”. utterly ridiculous. in fact, the ridiculous many-minds interpretation might even make magic and psychics real possibilities, according to very warped views of the laws of physics. i reject that entirely, and advocate real reality. i am an advocate for the universe we are in, the one we know exists. so let us acknowledge reality and move on.

joe klein sucks

i have read time magazine for years and i have always been in awe of how much joe klein sucks. his articles are not your typical unbiased news stories, nor are they opinion pieces. here is his latest one. he tries to write a different kind of article, one that is full of opinions but tries to be fair and balanced to the democrats and republicans. he mostly seems to write about the various strategies of public relations and propaganda done by both sides, and their supposed effectiveness. but the ironic part is, he usually gets brainwashed by much of the propaganda, not always from the same side, of course. like, he thinks immediate withdrawal of u.s. troops from iraq would be disastrous. ok, fine, maybe that is correct, who knows. but he also says a timetable, getting it done by the end of the year would be disastrous. but then he goes on to contradict himself, talking about the zarqawi assassination. he headlines his article about how bush is still winning the war at home, even though bush’s poll numbers are rock bottom and republicans are all trying to distance themselves from him. and then later on, joe klein talks about bush and rove being liars and having failed policies, yet he keeps harping on the democrats and john kerry failing in their attempts at public discourse regarding the war in iraq. what is most notable is, joe klein constantly contradicts himself, again and again, and he does not seem to have many coherent viewpoints on things, often having one opinion early in an article and a completely opposite opinion later on in the same article. his efforts to correct misinformation are laudable nonetheless, but it is questionable what joe klein is motivated by, who he supports, what his agenda is. does he want democrats or republicans to win in november, or is he simply an observer who will report what he sees without passing judgement? he does pass judgement quite often in his articles, but he keeps flip-flopping so fast it leaves me breathless. i am a critical thinker and i always try to evaluate the bias of every article i read, questioning the writer’s motivations and agenda. but with joe klein, i come up blank. i simply cannot understand him at all, based on what he writes. it just leaves me dumbfounded. and i think, if he were a better writer, it would not cause that reaction in me. most political commentators write straightforward one-sided polemics, which i find much easier to deal with. i am able to see their point of view quite clearly, and it makes sense, and i feel i have learned something after reading what they have to say. but joe klein simply writes in a pseudo-journalistic pseudo-balanced style that is really off-putting, and makes you really wonder what kind of hidden agenda he has. why does he always try to diss on both sides equally? it does not seem like natural human behavior, to act so balanced and diss equally on both sides, which is what raises suspicions that he is simply putting on a sort of act, parroting other people’s views rather than stating his own. the natural human response in a conflict such as republicans versus democrats is to take sides, at least partially. like you can say, you don’t like either side, but you think one is not quite as bad as the other. what makes joe klein the impartial arbiter of acceptable political discourse, though? it seems his purpose is to frown upon things he disagrees with, in both parties, to encourage more centrist tendencies. but i am not even sure about that. what i do know is, the american people are ignored by politicians, each party ignores its base, and instead they pursue policies considered prudent by elitist pundits such as joe klein, rather than respecting the views of public opinion. our democracy has been hijacked by the media, who have gone from simply reporting on what happens, to being active participants in politics who frame the debates and set things up to achieve predetermined outcomes. but these media elites distrust mass popular movements, so that is the source of this centrism: they hedge their bets between the 2 parties, while trying to undermine both liberal and conservative activists. however, i remain convinced that grassroots activists are the solution, and the centrist elites such as those in the media are the problem. i think both parties need to embrace their activist grassroots bases, re-invigorate themselves, radicalize, abandon all centrism of the type where the corporate media frames the debate for the politicians. like, although i disagree with the republicans on pretty much every issue, i do have some hints: get tough on illegal immigration, cut government spending enough to eliminate the deficit, change strategy in iraq so you can win the war, and never compromise on core principles. for the democrats, who i support: unite against the war and illegal wiretaps, don’t be afraid to talk about impeachment or where you stand on things, stop caving in to wealthy corporate interests since they are republicans anyway, raise the minimum wage and make it apply to foreigners in this country just like citizens, and never compromise on core principles. i don’t think anyone should embrace washington-style centrism, because centrism is for the weak, and for those who have small minds and cannot frame the debate, and simply let the media and washington insiders dictate to them, without having any core principles to base decisions on. joe klein’s worldview, as i see it, is nihilistic, believing in nothing other than doing what is practical at this moment in time, where how you do public relations is more important than what you are actually doing... there is no higher principle, no guide to what is right and what is wrong. and this is what leads to all the contradictions in his writing, and why he is so out of touch with what ordinary americans think. this is what is so dangerous... it is unprincipled republican nihilism that has brought us all of the problems we face today. (“reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” - dick cheney, showing a complete lack of any moral principles in his reasoning.) now maybe joe klein really is a liberal; maybe i misunderstood him. but i don’t care; he needs to be a better writer, regardless of what he really thinks. so, in short, joe klein sucks.

pro-sex or anti-sex?

you know, a whole lot of social issues relate to sex. and they are all interconnected. but, overall, everyone is either pro-sex or anti-sex or somewhere in between on the spectrum. pro-sex people basically believe in freedom, that people should be free to control their own sex lives without the government or anyone else getting in their way. anti-sex people want to oppress everyone and prevent them from getting their jollies. but most people are not entirely pro-sex or anti-sex, instead falling somewhere in between. i, on the other hand, am quite pro-sex, because i am radically pro-freedom, especially on social issues. so here is a rundown of the different components of my pro-sex position:

1) pro-sex means premaritax sex is ok

some people on the religious right say that premarital sex is sinful and means you will go to hell. obviously these people just don’t want anybody to have any fun in life, and they want to use fear of hell to frighten people into remaining virgins. i of course think nothing is wrong with premarital sex.

2) pro-sex means all sexual orientations are ok

people have the right to decide for themselves who they are attracted to, and act on this accordingly, as long as their sexual partners consent. this is a clear moral principle. discrimination against homosexuals or transsexuals or bisexuals or asexuals is just not right, nor should anyone badmouth heterosexuals either. a texas law banning homosexual sex was rightly struck down by the u.s. supreme court, a victory for the pro-sex movement. also, full recognition of homosexuality entails full recognition of marriages between 2 homosexuals of the same gender. we must not limit marriage to only benefit heterosexuals.

3) pro-sex means interracial sex is ok

some people argue in favor of racial purity or other stupid racist concepts, and use this as a basis to argue against interracial sex. people used to look down on interracial sex, and it is still looked down upon in some cultures. however, it is clear that people should be allowed to choose freely among all potential consenting partners, rather than just those of the same race.

4) pro-sex means all types of sex are ok

so not just coitus is ok... also fellatio, cunnilingis, anal sex, or any other type of sex, no matter how kinky. and of course this includes masturbation. yes all types of sex are perfectly fine and we should not discriminate against people who engage in bizarre sexual practices, as long as it is consensual. some feminists oppose fellatio, claiming some “patriarchy” conspiracy is oppressing them. nonsense! if a woman does not like fellatio, it is her choice not to do it. but, nobody should be forcing their views on everyone else and telling them what kinds of sex they can and cannot have. any woman who really believes there is some patriarchy conspiracy of men oppressing women simply needs to assume a dominant role in her own relationships with men, or become a lesbian, and then her problem is solved, thus proving the nonexistence of the so-called patriarchy. now in some societies in this world, it is true that patriarchy still does exist, but anywhere like the united states where women are allowed to be dominant and make their own decisions, patriarchy is dead. the fact that female college graduates each year now exceed male college graduates in the united states dramatically underscores this fact.

5) pro-sex means birth control is great and abortion is ok

condoms, birth control pills, female condoms, and morning-after pills are just some of the forms of birth control out there. they are all good. for people to be able to freely enjoy the benefits of consensual sex, they must be able to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy. otherwise, the risk of unwanted pregnancy would jeapordize their sexual freedom and make them slaves to an unborn child. abortion is not quite as clear-cut, since there is a fetus that is being killed. but, at the end of the day, a fetus is not a sentient human being, it is just a very young organism with the potential to someday become a sentient human being. then again, every sperm and egg cell also has this same potential. so, since it is ok to kill animals despite the fact that animals have feelings and emotions and other things similar to humans (this is justified by humans being the only sentient beings that can reason about things), we can therefore surmise that a fetus is still an animal, not yet a human, and therefore ok to kill.

6) pro-sex means rape or pedophilia or other coerced sex is wrong

that’s right, pro-sex does not actually include all sex. you see, pro-sex is really a subset of pro-freedom, and basically pro-sex is short for pro-sexual-freedom. any act of rape or coercive sexual behavior to force someone to engage in sexual acts against their will violates the principle of sexual freedom. the ultimate aim of being pro-sex is to maximize every individual’s rights and privileges to make their own decisions about their sex life, without having the government or religious groups or feminists or rapists or anyone at all intrude upon their sexual freedom. rape is an act that traumatizes a person for life and makes them never enjoy sex again. it would hardly be pro-sex to support allowing people to be traumatized so that they do not enjoy sex anymore, because the reason people have sex in the first place is because they enjoy it. ultimately, pursuit of sex is “pursuit of happiness”, a basic human right enshrined in the declaration of independence. now, obviously, if rape occurs, only the rapist should be punished. “honor killings” of rape victims are indefensible. and if one person is much older than the other person, who is a child or young teenager, this is also a very unequal, coercive relationship, and almost certainly is rape, so pedophilia is also something that must be illegal.

7) pro-sex means adultery/cheating is ok, as is group sex, but not polygamy (but divorce is fine)

since every individual owns their own body (it is the only thing that nobody else can ever take away from them), they naturally have the right to decide what other bodies they are willing to have their body have sex with. this right does not end after marriage or after joining a committed relationship. adultery used to be illegal across the united states, and still is illegal in some countries, or in some places, adulterers are stoned to death. group sex is an extension of the right of people to have sex with different people at different times; people have the right to have sex with different people at the same time, by having group sex. but polygamy, or being married to more than 1 person, is not ok. polygamy creates unequal relationships between the 2 genders, and allows people to share marriage benefits with as many people as they want, which is unfair to all the people in monogamous marriages. (imagine sharing hospital visitation rights and health insurance and doing taxes together with 100 wives... not fair to other people.) polygamous marriages distort the male/female ratio to a much greater extent than the existence of homosexuals or asexuals, which could doom many people to remain single against their will and thus create social unrest. divorce, however, is fine, because it reinforces sexual freedom, and people have the right to change their minds about what to do with their bodies, the same way they have the right to change their mind about how to invest their money or about who to vote for.

8) pro-sex means nudity and pornography are fine, as long as there is consent

the natural state of us humans is nudity; it is how we are born, and it is how all the species of animals in nature live. clothing is a human invention, and its ubiquitous covering of the human form is simply a result of which societal customs we happen to have in our society. self-expression entails the right to express ourselves through how we decorate our bodies through piercings or tatoos or the like, and how we dress, and if we choose to be naked, this is our natural right. the use of coersive power to dictate to people how they can and cannot clothe themselves is not justifiable, unless the clothing itself poses a danger to society (such as if you made a jacket out of trinitrotoluene or t.n.t.) someone who is naked is ipso facto not a threat because they cannot be carrying a concealed weapon or anything like that (unless it is up their ass or something crazy). pornography is another form of self-expression, an art form, which, while commercialized and aimed at entertaining the consumer, is nonetheless a type of performance art just like television shows or movies. pornography might be viewed by some people as exploitation, but, in reality, most pornography is done by people who consent to be in it in exchange for financial benefit, so really, everybody benefits and nobody is hurt. to ban pornography would be to ban something that benefits everyone involved and does not hurt anyone. however, there is a small percentage of pornography that involves people who are coerced or threatened, or people younger than the age of consent, or people who did not consent to be filmed or photographed. this type is not ok, but the vast majority of pornography is.

9) pro-sex means prostitution is ok

prostitution normally involves one person paying another person money in exchange for consensual sexual intercourse between both people. since people have a natural right to control who they have sex with, and since this is a capitalist economic system that we have in the united states and most other countries, it is discriminatory to prosecute people who want to sell sex but to allow people to sell other things that there is demand for. if it is ok to sell televisions and automobiles, why is it not ok to sell sex, if both people consent to the sex? there is no logical reason for it. arguments against prostitution invariably resort to faith-based reasoning or to circumstantial evidence, but they are not logically sound. prostitution is a mutually beneficial capitalist sexual relationship, and since under natural law people own their own bodies, they can decide who to have consensual sex with. now some people might be forced into prostitution against their will, or otherwise coerced; this is completely unacceptable and the people who keep these prostitutes trapped should be severely punished by the law. but prostitutes, and their customers, are blameless, and should never be subject to prosecution unless they engage in other activities which are illegal. someone of either gender can be a prostitute, and they can cater to customers of either gender. and there is nothing wrong with that, because prostitutes exist to fulfill a basic human need.

10) pro-sex means people need maximal protection from sexually transmitted diseases, but also have responsibilities

sexually transmitted diseases are a horror story that has plagued sexually active people around the world for as long as people have existed. even animals have sexually transmitted diseases. like any diseases, people need to look for cures for stds, to eradicate this menace to the public health. also, condoms or abstinence can be used to try to avoid these plagues. but, people still need to have sex without condoms, at least sometimes, to replenish the population. so people have certain responsibilities they must fulfill in order to make sex something safe and fun, rather than dangerous and worrisome. first of all, people have a responsibility to get tested for stds if they can. secondly, they have a responsibility not to lie to other people about matters concerning stds, and not to have sex with uninfected people if they know they have an std. if someone knows they have an std and has sex with someone who is uninfected, or if someone lies about whether they have an std or whether they have been tested in order to get sex, this should be considered attempted murder and severely punished under the law. now, when we talk about whether someone lied about if they have stds, this kind of thing is hard to prove in a court of law. but it should be prosecuted when there is proof, at least. and people have a responsibility to take care of their own bodies and their own health, and to not willfully inflict harm upon others. ultimately, it is a failure of people to live up to these responsibilities that makes stds so prevalent. so, there should be services for people with stds to find potential mates who have the same stds as them but not any other ones. and we as a society need to remove any stigma attached to people with stds and not look down upon them or discriminate against them, because this will simply perpetuate the spread of stds by making people avoid getting tested or making them lie about it. if people meet their responsibilities, the threat of stds should eventually become a thing of the past, but this will likely take many years before that can finally happen. and the pro-sex position, being more properly the pro-sexual-freedom position, naturally entails giving individuals as much power as possible to make sexual decisions in their own lives, but with power comes responsibility, so we must also recognize the responsibilities people take on in a society that recognizes their sexual rights.

now, it is mostly republicans who oppose sexual freedom, whether through opposing birth control or abortion or gay rights or gay marriage. and many countries in this world have a lot less sexual freedom than the united states. but, there is definitely a correlation with the amount of sexual freedom a country has, and the standard of living. so, pro-sex policies most likely have clear benefits for a country, economically speaking, and lead to a higher standard of living. the countries that still have a patriarchy are quite anti-sex, but pro-sex policies liberate not just women but also men, not just homosexuals but also heterosexuals and everybody else. it is rather fundamental to recognize people’s right to do with their own physical bodies as they see fit as long as this does not intrude upon anybody else’s right to do likewise. and that foundation, based upon the obvious fact that you own your own body, naturally leads to all of the pro-sex policies. therefore, policies that conflict with the pro-sex position are clearly immoral, as they restrict people’s rights to self-determination (determining what to do with themselves, or rather, their bodies). while some feminists are pro-sex, there are also many who are not, and really this is a betrayal of the right of all people (including women) to make their own decisions about how to live their lives as long as they do not oppress others without consent. and so i have written this in an effort to help society cast aside old, outdated rules that are no longer any good, rules that simply existed to maintain order by controlling people’s lives, and served no useful morally justifiable purpose. i am of the firm belief that moral values are not absolutes, and they change and evolve over time, from one generation to the next, from one civilization to the next, over thousands of years. over the past few hundred years, this process of moral evolution has accelerated, and it is my aim to accelerate it further still, so that human society can adapt to changing circumstances and rediscover what right and wrong really mean. and i believe in sex, i believe in the power of sex, and i believe sex is something that is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but often misunderstood or not viewed correctly. if i have a son or daughter i will teach them the same things about sex, and i will not restrict their rights to act freely as individuals, as long as they do not oppress others and uphold their responsibilities, the responsibilities that come with having rights. i will not use coercive power to oppress others, because that is not something i believe in. i hope others make the same choice. i believe children should trust their parents, and parents should behave in a way that makes them worthy of being trusted in the first place, by not doing things like lying about santa claus, or anything else that might disrupt the child’s trust. and i believe society needs to adapt its morality to the realities of this changing world, so that morality can remain relevant, and does not get discarded completely by future generations. people’s views regarding bill clinton’s relationship with monica lewinsky, and how he got impeached for it, and how people do not want to give homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals, these things disturb me deeply, since it often seems that morality itself is immoral, at least the morality that some people believe in. but if we want to say it is immoral to start a war based on lies, this implies we still believe in morality, so morality has to be reformed, not discarded. and the reason i call my morality pro-sex is because traditional morality is so anti-sex. if people want to really enjoy sex, they need a new system of morality that lets them actually enjoy their sexuality without feeling guilty about it. and that is what this post has been all about, because for much of my life i was burdened with notions from traditional morality that saddened me with unnecessary guilt and shame, but i have liberated myself from those oppressive ideas and you can too.

why the focus on ann coulter?

people may be wondering why my blog has had such a focus on ann coulter lately. it is very simple. i went to cornell university. at cornell, political discourse is a very complicated and pervasive thing. politics is everywhere at cornell. before i went there, i had much less exposure to politics. i had volunteered for congressman maurice hinchey’s campaign in 1998. i had obsessively read every single word in every single issue of time magazine, throughout the latter half of the 1990s when i was a teenager in high school. but, i didn’t really feel any sense that politics affected me. at the end of the day, i felt politics was a debate about whether to help out the poor and minority groups, or help out wealthy businessmen and christian fundamentalists who don’t need any help. to me, the democrats were the party of tolerance, diversity, and charity towards the poor, while the republicans were the party of greed, intolerance, bigotry, and ridiculous stupidity. it baffled me why anyone would possibly support republicans, even though back in 1988, when bush was running against dukakis, and i was 5 or 6 years old, i supported bush, because i couldn’t pronounce the name dukakis and didn’t know what it meant, which made me suspicious. by 1992, of course, i had become a staunch democrat, and i thought bill clinton was the greatest president ever, supporting him in 1992 and 1996. see, in 1991, we started a war with iraq, which made no sense to me, so i opposed it. iraq had started a war with kuwait, and invaded it, and been mean and evil and killed people. but now that was over with. so then we wanted to do the same thing to iraq, start a war with them and invade them, to teach them the lesson that they can’t go around invading countries. see i was 8 or 9 around that time. so i was a little kid who hated being bossed around by adults and i thought it was unfair. adults and bullies always seemed the same to me, except bullies were evil and adults were good, but they behaved the same mostly. so the united states was acting like the adult who would punish the bully iraq for picking on the defenseless nerd kuwait. my thinking was, i hate adults, so why the hell should our country act like one? we should act like kids! that was the very beginning of my political awakening, but it took years for my ideas to get more sophisticated.

anyway, throughout junior high and high school, i gradually became more politically aware and eventually became a liberal democrat, reasonably partisan, but i was not really innately hostile to republicans or anything. i just thought they were pure evil. but i was not really that hostile to the idea of evil, since i was pretty evil myself. but i figured, even if i am an asshole who hates other people, i should still try to vote and take positions in politics based on helping other people and making the world a better place, even if i don’t feel like it. see, it was a moral obligation. as a social outcast with no friends, i felt a visceral hatred for most people that i kept inside and never talked about, and i was incredibly shy and could not talk to anyone, so there was quite a temptation for me to just go “fuck them all, i will support the republicans because i hate everyone.” but, in the end, i knew that would be wrong, so i supported the democrats instead. really the people i hated were my fellow high school students, not all of humanity, but i suspected my fellow students reflected human nature and that all people are just like them and therefore bad and evil. eventually i outgrew my hateful evil thoughts towards other people, but i still feel the moral obligation to support democrats. but the real reason i developed into a liberal democrat was, i needed to find some way to justify myself, to tell myself i am a good person deep inside, and not really evil after all. if i had become a republican, there is no way i could have ever lived with myself; i would have felt horrible about it. also, the impeachment scandal with bill clinton really touched off a nerve in me. i thought, how dare these republican bastards tar and slime bill clinton, who did nothing wrong except cheat on his wife with a young woman he was not married to? what the hell is so wrong about that? i saw nothing wrong with what bill clinton did in his personal life, and i still see nothing wrong with it. i mean, hillary and chelsea seem fine, right? but the impeachment really convinced me that republicans were uniformly a bunch of crazy ultra-right-wing religious fanatics who were totally out of touch with reality. that is still what i think about most of them. i mean, what did bill clinton really do that they charged him with, that was impeachable? lying about sex? nothing wrong with that. i hate anti-sex prudes! to me, sex is obviously a good thing, so anti-sex republicans should not have been bitching about bill clinton getting some on the side, especially when they are all hypocrites who do the same thing (newt gingrich, henry hyde, etc.)

so that is about where things were when i went off to cornell. and once i got there i found that cornell was mostly quite liberal, but there was quite a nasty infestation of ultra-right-wing republican crazies. you see, at cornell, the vast majority of people are sensible, tolerant, open-minded liberals, who can actually do critical thinking. but occasionally you come across crazy right-wingers. and the cornell review has a long history of being a crazy right-wing student newspaper. i read pretty much every word of every issue when i was there. and i was always struck by how crazy it all was. the people who wrote it were real psychopaths. i wondered, why can’t we have these people committed to an insane asylum? that is how nutty the cornell review was, at least when i was there. the cornell review always tried to alienate and offend as many people as possible (except christian fundamentalist white males with lots of money). they would write about the “drunken debauchery” of slope day, and there was always a segment at the end called the “clocktower sniper”. they threatened to tear down ujamaa, the dorm for black people, because they didn’t think black people should get to have their own dorm since there wasn’t a whites only dorm. so basically they came off sounding like a bunch of white supremacists. their editor joe sabia routinely criticized anyone who did not agree with his fundamentalist christianity. they pretty much always came off as a bunch of arrogant, elitist, wealthy white male preppy snobs, who had nothing better to do than go around insulting everyone who was different from them. and who founded the cornell review and had pioneered its style of offensive, provocative bullshit? ann coulter. that’s right, when ann coulter was a cornell undergrad, she was a sorority bitch, but she was also founder and editor of the cornell review. she was the one who really pioneered all of its shenanigans. back in the early years, they even wrote editorials praising south africa’s apartheid system! real nutcases. anyway, by the time i was at cornell, ann coulter was already a famous author of the book slander, i think, and she was also ubiquitous on all the talk shows and all over cable news. i had seen her on tv a bunch of times, and read about her books, and she seemed like the biggest nutcase of them all. and she was the real proof that republicans are all loony nutcases: they all supported her, all along! and the cornell review was still acting just the same way as she did, rather than repudiating her views. so throughout all those years of going to cornell and reading the cornell review, always, it was in the back of my mind, ann coulter is behind this, she is the one who started the cornell review.

i have always wondered, are there sane republicans? republicans who do not abandon common sense and logic and reason, ones who actually have valid moral principles they believe in, who are not wacky theocratic religious fundamentalists, or hateful bigots? and, while i do think there have to be at least some, there are not really any that i know of. i cannot name any names of republicans who would fit this description, or for that matter, conservatives who fit that description. at cornell there was this guy i knew in my freshman philosophy class. he was a fundamentalist and believed in biblical creationism, rejecting darwinian evolution completely. it was kind of hard to talk to him. i never really told him i disagreed with him, actually. i was too put off by what he said and too afraid of what would happen if i disagreed, so i pretended to agree with him, although deep inside i felt totally creeped out and was thinking what the hell is wrong with this guy? and i knew this other guy who actually wrote for the cornell review and was a big republican, except he was from canada and jewish, and not really a united states person so being republican wasn’t quite as meaningful given canada’s completely different political parties. but anyway, this guy who wrote for the review, i never really talked with him about politics cuz i thought, what is the point. he just seemed really nutty about the whole thing. he was a very pro-israel zionist and i was always wondering, ok, so does he support it when the israeli army kills innocent civilians in cold blood? i never asked him that, of course, because i am quite a non-confrontational person, or at least i was at the time. he was studying in industrial labor relations, or in other words, the cornellian version of pre-law. he wanted to go off and become a lawyer and make lots of money and not pay taxes on any of it... greed personified, i thought to myself. there was also a very pretty girl i knew at cornell who was quite liberal and she was also very anti-israel. she majored in near eastern studies. she ended up learning arabic in her classes, and doing study abroad in egypt, and when she came back in senior year, she had become a muslim. back before she learned arabic and became muslim, though, she was more of a party girl, i think (not really sure). like i heard she had sex with lots of guys but i wasn’t sure if i believed it, since she never had sex with me. anyway, she was very influential in my views on the israeli-palestinian conflict. you see, it was like: i could agree with the hot girl, and get along with her better, or disagree, and have conflict. it was pretty much a no-brainer, plus i was already leaning in the anti-israeli direction anyway. so anyway, when she came back from egypt and was muslim, i was pretty shocked (although i kept that to myself and i acted like i was totally cool with it and supported it). she was not really a close friend in the first place; she was someone i talked to or hung out with occasionally throughout college, but pretty rarely on average. so i was kinda stunned, like i said, since she had been an atheist before, and i clearly remembered her saying she didn’t believe in god. i had felt a sense of atheist solidarity with her before, but now she had abandoned her atheism and i felt lost. why would somebody who knows the truth abandon it for falsehood? i knew i was being judgemental, but i am also judgemental with republicans, and i feel the same way about muslims. luckily she was not a fundamentalist or anything, she was a very moderate muslim. but i was still like... what the fuck?

so anyway, back to ann coulter. i remember soon after 9/11, finding out about her controversial remarks that got her fired from the national review. the national review is sort of like the national version of the cornell review, except much more civilized and less ridiculous, but still... it was kind of surprising that they would actually fire someone for being too radical of a right-winger. you see, ann coulter had said we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity. a little later, after john walker lindh was found in afghanistan, she said we should execute john walker lindh to indimidate liberals and show them we can kill them too. and i read up on her online, and i found out she had said her only regret with timothy mcveigh was that he did not attack the new york times building. now, after 9/11, i was pretty frightened, and pretty pissed. i actually would watch don rumsfeld’s briefings on c-span, and i thought rumsfeld was the greatest guy ever. i still didn’t like bush, but rumsfeld seemed like he might be the proverbial sentient republican, one who is actually logical and sensible. then again, i also read something noam chomsky wrote right before we invaded afghanistan, and i also thought noam chomsky was a wonderful guy and agreed with most of what he said. it was kind of confusing for me, supporting noam chomsky and don rumsfeld at the same time. anyway, i still thought bush was a dumbass after 9/11, but for a few months, i thought, maybe he’s not so bad, maybe i can live with this guy being president, since didn’t bill clinton have his problems too but i supported clinton anyway? but this usa patriot act and the words homeland security started to scare me, pretty soon. i started worrying the united states would become a fascist dictatorship, and we would abandon democracy completely. what really worried me was how the democrats in washington suddenly became bush’s lapdogs after 9/11, and went along with the republicans on everything. the democrats were just one disappointment after another, and for quite awhile, i had given up on the democratic party, especially after they lost so bad in the 2002 congressional election. i was thinking of maybe joining the green party or something because the democrats totally sucked ass.

then howard dean came. in early 2003 i was watching debates between potential democratic candiates for president. most of them were complete disappointments. a few months earlier, bush started this psychotic drive to start a war in iraq, and that is when he really lost me for good and convinced me that there is no way i can live with having bush as president. bush had just started this stupid war on false pretenses, and it was obvious to me that he was a psycho liar who had to be stopped. most of the democratic candidates for president were complete losers, whose lame-ass messages did not resonate with me at all, instead pissing me off. there were only 3 candidates who actually made some fucking sense, the same 3 who opposed the war: howard dean, dennis kucinich, and al sharpton. dennis kucinich, the more i watched him, came off as a real ideologue, extremely passionate, but he kind of scared me sometimes and i thought maybe he was a little too left-wing. al sharpton did great in debates and speeches, but since he had never held elected office, was a religious leader, and was black, i felt he could never get elected, plus he kind of seemed like he didn’t take things seriously enough to me, showing up late and stuff like that. and of course he had scandal in his past. but howard dean... howard dean... this was the man who told the truth, who made sense, who said exactly what i was thinking, who seemed to have the same positions as me on every issue. i could not get enough of him, i thought he was perfect in every way. he is the one who kept me in the democratic party, who kept me from going off into some third party because my voice wasn’t being heard. because my voice was being heard, and it was his voice, because he always said what i thought. it was like, finally some sanity had been restored to the world, after everyone had gone crazy after 9/11 and decided to attack iraq. it was a great disappointment to me when howard dean lost in the iowa caucus and the new hampshire primary, and then pulled out of the race and endorsed john kerry. to me, john kerry was a complete dick, because he had trashed howard dean when dean was #1, even though he could not make up his mind on iraq despite it being obvious that the war was wrong. so i voted for dennis kucinich in the new york primary, since he had not yet withdrawn from the race, and i wanted to show my dissatisfaction with john kerry. eventually i gave in and became a reluctant john kerry supporter, but mainly, i wanted anyone but bush. i never really liked john kerry, although he would have made a much better president than george w. bush. nowhere near as good as howard dean, but still, better than nothing.

so now... now we are climbing our way out of the black hole our nation has fallen into. the black hole of republicanism, of george w. bush, of fighting wars in iraq, of anti-sex government policy, of helping out rich bastards while the poor people starve or die from lack of medical care. bush was still going strong until hurricane katrina struck. it is good that people have finally woken up to all the cronyism and corruption and incompetence of the republicans who control all 3 branches of government. these republican misleaders of ours are completely indefensible. but i feel a serene sense of confidence that things will be fine, that the republicans will be defeated in the elections and we democrats will hold them accountable. yes, i said we democrats, because i am a democrat. in 2001 or 2002 or 2003, democrat would be a shameful thing, since the democratic leaders of that era were cowardly collaborators of the republicans. i was still a democrat then, but i was not proud of it. but i stood by the democratic party, through thick and thin, even when our leaders were complete dopes who had no clue, who did whatever the republicans said. because it is my party and not theirs. we the people own this country, and we the people own our political parties because we vote in primaries. whatever my party leadership does, i can at least remain loyal to the party base, because we of the base are not sellouts. we are activists. we make phone calls on the party’s behalf, or pass out pamphlets door-to-door, or take part in voter registration drives. this is not out of loyalty to what the party is, but what it should be. because each of us activists has an idea of how things should be done, and at some level, some of the high-ranking activists are actually becoming policy advisors or politicians themselves. we activists are the source of new politicians. and since the politicians depend on us, and since each of us activists know other activists, and talk with them about stuff, we know how we all think. and there is no way the politicians can rely on our support if they do not carry out their responsibilities, and do their jobs, and represent the views of their supporters and constituents. so while i do not know if the democratic party would be beholden to corporate special interests if it came into power in congress, i do know that the activists are beholden to nobody. if the party stops representing our views, we will become activists for another party, or another organization, or perhaps even give up in disgust. so our party leaders are absolutely required to fight the good fight, because if they stopped, there would be nobody left to make phone calls or hand out pamphlets or run voter registration drives. all those people would find something else to do. john kerry got lucky, because he was in the right place at the right time. but all of us who were trying to get him elected, we only supported him as the lesser of 2 evils, because the other evil was so much worse. in the future, we can’t count on the other side always being so much worse. so we have to be better. but ann coulter... she brings down the republican party. she pulls down her republican allies to her level of bullshit and mudslinging. she makes them all look bad. and anyone who likes her views or her books is obviously someone who agreed with her in the first place. because she does not allow any dissenting viewpoint. to her, anyone who is not a supporter of the bush administration is evil. she said that the jersey girls, the 4 9/11 widows who were outspoken supporters of kerry, that nobody should listen to them because the grief of a widow does not give someone some kind of license to infallibility or whatever. ok. nobody is infallible, duh. but then why is bush infallible, or why does ann coulter think she is infallible? is there any way whatsoever that ann coulter is superior to any of the 4 widows? if we shouldn’t listen to the widows, is there a single reason anyone should listen to ann coulter, a single redeeming quality or virtue about ms. coulter? no. but what is remarkable about her is how spectacularly bad it is to listen to her, how everything she says is full of lies, half-truths, logical fallacies, bigotry, offensive insults, bullshit, grossly dishonest historical revisionism, and mindlesss party-line propaganda. and how, despite all of that, she still has so many fans and supporters. this really unmasks the true nature of republicans, in my view. it shows them to be the crazy fanatics that i knew they were, all along.

so i suppose i am a liberal. i suppose anyone who dares to question the conservative republican bullshit is a liberal. i admit, i am a democrat. yes, there is a two-party system, and if you hate one party enough, you are morally obligated to join the other party to fight the one that you know is wrong. the democratic party does not stand for anything. we have no common beliefs. republicans say this to bash us. but, we democrats are remarkable for our diversity of opinion. democratic activists like me, on the other hand, have much more uniform views on most things, opposing pretty much everything the republicans have to offer. that is what unites us, the strong opposition to everything the republicans believe in, everything the republicans stand for. we may differ as to what the best positive alternative would be, how to best run things if we come to power; there is hardly any agreement on that, to be honest. but we will take things as they come. for now, we democrats believe in balanced budgets, in ending the war, in raising taxes on the wealthiest 1%, in investigating the bush administration with oversight hearings and perhaps special prosecutors or impeachment, in universal health care. some of us might be pacifists and some might just disagree with the war in iraq or how it was waged. and some of us share the republican fascination with tax cuts and want to make some of our own, whereas some other democrats are pretty much socialists. some of us are internationalists, some of us are nationalists, and some of us are isolationists. some of us want to bring back tariffs and others want free trade. some of us want amnesty for illegal immigrants, while others want to deport them all, or at least severely punish anyone who gives them jobs. but our tradition of tolerance for minorities, our tradition of liberalism that goes back to franklin delano roosevelt, and our current collective hatred of all bush policies, these things unite us democrats. but for me, ann coulter has played a central role in it all. she founded the cornell review, which was very influential on me in college, persuading me to be as liberal as possible. and her public statements have made me ashamed to be a cornellian, to be from the same university as her. and that is why i write about her.

ann coulter: official spokesthing of reprehensible party

well ann coulter is triumphant. just read its latest column. brilliant! it (the alien space creature that poses as a woman) has emerged victorious from all of the “liberal” media’s halfhearted attempts to rebuke it. tonight i saw it on the tonight show with jay leno, sitting next to george carlin, and not a word of criticism from him! george carlin just sat back and watched it put on its schtick. jay leno was very sympathetic and nice to it, lobbing softball questions. and the audience didn’t boo or anything; they loved it, and cheered for it. it was kind of unnerving. who the fuck are these pod people anyway? are they undead or something? i know that ann coulter, being a space alien who is the sole survivor of the destruction of its parallel universe, has brought with it advanced technology, including mind-control rays. but this is something else. anyway, i would like to respond to the allegations that this alien space creature has repeated in its latest column.

1) liberals are godless. fuck yeah we are godless! god doesn’t exist. (god is defined as omniscient and omnipotent. if he is omniscient he can predict the future. if he is omnipotent he can act differently from how he predicted, thus contradicting his omniscience. therefore he cannot exist.) now there are many liberals who actually do believe in god. but i am not one of them and i do not speak for them. but anyway, the use of “godless” as a pejorative term is laughable. the only people who think godless is an insult are all right-wing fanatics anyway, so they are basically a lost cause. as for me, i thank the alien space creature for this praise. and the charges of treason and slander from earlier books, yup, i also agree that those are correct, sure, why not. i mean, the right-wingers like ann coulter have all redefined treason to mean “questioning official government policy in a time of war”, i.e., anyone who does not suspend all critical thought, who does not automatically believe everything the government leaders say is infallible, has commited treason. the swift-boaters who tarred john kerry’s reputation hated him for this crime of treason, committed back during vietnam; the young john kerry had treasonously questioned whether official government policies were correct, in a time of war. so of course, such a horrible treasonous person should never be allowed to be president, and must be kept out of office by any means necessary, including little white lies, preferably as many as possible. as for slander, slander means saying anything that isn’t true about somebody else. everybody commits slander all the time. ann coulter is actually a real live human being, a real woman. see? i just committed slander right there! fuck yeah! and george w. bush actually does care about black people, despite what kayne west said. oops, committed slander again! so sue me in england, bitches! bwhahahahahahahahaha!

2) bill clinton is a rapist. yes, ann coulter said it, and nobody questioned it, so it must be true. hey, i believe it. i mean, it’s not like there was a special prosecutor investigating bill clinton for many years on an unholy crusade to find anything at all to make bill clinton look bad, who was unable to make a single charge stick despite republican control of both houses of congress as well as talk radio and a good portion of the news media. nope. kenneth starr? the man does not exist. impeachment hearings? never happened. i mean come on. bill clinton did have a consensual relationship with monica lewinsky, and the liberal media kept emphasizing it and calling for his impeachment for having oral sex with monica lewinsky, because they knew this would brainwash the public into thinking women would actually be willing to consent to have sex with bill clinton. in actual fact, bill clinton can only have sex through forcible rape or by paying money to a prostitute, because there is not a single woman on the planet earth who would ever consent to sex with him willingly in a million years. this is because he is butt ugly, smells like ass, has zero charm or charisma whatsoever, and 100% of everybody hates his guts, including him. no news reporter ever wrote stories about his charm and charisma, and his popularity ratings were always very very low, even when everything in the country was going perfectly. so of course he raped a woman! it’s not like he could ever get a woman to consent with sex with him! don’t be ridiculous! and as we know, oral sex is not really sex. he did not have sexual relations with that woman, miss lewinsky. because if he had tried, she would have smacked him upside the head so hard it would’ve knocked his head clean off and out the window, decapitating and defenestrating him in one fell swoop. luckily that never happened, since it would have been unconstitutional, but the point is, we need to believe everything ann coulter says because alien space creatures from canada in a parallel universe never lie about anything.

so, that being said, i am glad that the reprehensible party is offering its unwavering support to ann coulter and has made it their official spokesthing. dubya’s approval ratings might not be 29% in most polls, but they are still pretty damn low, and he needs some help. he needs someone smart like ann coulter, to point out the obvious facts that everyone else is too afraid to mention, like that all liberals are treasonous traitors who commit slander and are godless, and by the way bill clinton is a rapist. you know, this so-called kenneth starr, who we all know is fictional, but, pretending for a moment that he does exist, he has got to be the most incompetent prosecutor who ever existed in the history of the universe, because bill clinton was obviously a rapist yet this so-called prosecutor didn’t even bother to prosecute him for it. what a joke! anyway, as a treasonous godless slanderous liberal who hates america and loves terrorists and communists (yes, ann coulter is correct about all of those things), i am very disappointed by how she has been able to unmask this great liberal conspiracy. oh yes, we had a conspiracy all right! you conservatives thought you controlled everything just because ultra-conservative reprehensible party hacks controlled all 3 branches of government, but guess what! we liberals secretly control all of your politicians, who are just puppets that we manipulate into pretending to be conservatives, but actually enacting far-left-wing communist/socialist policies, as part of a communist united nations conspiracy for world domination! and we have been undermining the war on terror all along, very purposefully, to help out our terrorist allies in al qaeda, since we liberals are all devout followers of the prophet muhammad, peace be upon him! this is all true, factual, and well documented! if it weren’t for ann coulter, we would have easily been able to put one over on you and succeed in turning the entire world into an islamofascist communist one world government new world order, with zero resistance whatsoever! but unfortunately ann coulter has uncovered our evil plan and shown us to be godless and horrible people who wanted to make the world as bad as possible on purpose just to make everyone miserable! ann coulter, on the other hand, is a devoted servant of god, who always does and says exactly what god would do in the same situation, if god were a bizarre alien space creature from canada in a parallel universe. and ann has also unmasked how we liberals control the entire media! yes, the media, which is owned by large corporations, naturally tends to be ultra-left-wing, because top executives in big business are naturally all communist hippie tree-hugging marxists, and they enforce rigid marxist ideology throughout their news-propaganda operations. but now, it is all over, unfortunately. somehow, the conservatives have won, and the world has been saved from our diabolical plans. righteousness has been restored. it is a new day in america. praise jesus! and re-elect the reprehensible party to power in november! don’t worry, the voting machines have all been fixed, so you can go ahead and vote without worrying about making mistakes! just remember: the status quo is 100% perfect, so since everyone in the government is doing such a fantastic job, and since congress is doing such an excellent job of oversight, we should re-elect all of them! hells yeah!

reminder about cousin’s film

just to remind everyone, my cousin siân héder won 3rd place in the cannes film festival with her movie mother. she spells her name siân heder because she thinks one accent is enough, but i am also a part of the héder family, and i spell it héder, because i am hungarian and not some mormon who played napoleon dynamite. in my previous blog post i put the carat above the i instead of the a in her first name, showing that i cannot spell. anyway her film is called mother, and the category it was 3rd place in was the cinéfoundation category. it was actually a tie for 3rd place, with a hungarian film, which is interesting because siân and i are both half-hungarian. she got her award handed to her by tim burton, who said he loved her film, now please get out of los angeles. this was a reference to how her movie was about a crazy rich woman in los angeles who is a complete failure as a mother. the short film is actually based on a true story, when my cousin baby-sat for such a person, in a hotel. but the story is not quite the same as what really happened, because my cousin replaced herself with a homeless girl. now my cousin has a boyfriend named david newsom, who is part of the supporting cast of the new show windfall on nbc. david newsom has been in a great deal of tv shows and you have probably seen him but would not really remember it too well because it is not like you would remember every episode of every tv show you ever saw, and every minor character that appeared in it. but, despite not knowing who he is, still... you have probably seen him on the tv. he also helped with the movie. my parents are in the credits, as people who donated. it is just like the little old ladies who donated to the producers, but never got back money for the smash broadway hit springtime for hitler. and i have 2 other cousins that are also going into the movie business in hollywood, both of them also heders that don’t use the accent. as for me, i have 3 accents in my full name, and i am keeping all of them, including the one in héder. one of the other cousins who is going into the movie business is siân’s little sister, who just graduated college, but i am not naming her name because i have a policy against giving out names of people who are not already famous on this blog. it is actually her birthday today (siân’s sister). i just hope that alfie gets to celebrate. alfie is their pet turtle. i played a lot with alfie the last time i visited, because i like pets, but what i really want for myself is a doggie.

now today at quaker meeting (just because i go does not imply i believe in all aspects of quakerism, but it is a major influence on my life), there was a professor from swarthmore who is an expert in war tax resistance. a certified public accountant with a law degree who teaches tax law. but his message is about the quaker peace testimony, and how it is really against the quaker religion to pay money to fund a war, just as much as it is against the quaker religion to participate in a war or help build a military-industrial complex. apparently, the internal revenue service does not go after you if you are a “sympathetic case” because there would be bad publicity. so, people can actually refuse to pay taxes, and not be punished, because the government is afraid that if they put the people on trial they would lose. for example, if this professor were to refuse to pay any taxes that finance war (i am not exactly sure whether he does or not) he would be a sympathetic case and the internal revenue service would not put him on trial or go after him, because he is an expert in tax law and could easily represent himself. but he actually lobbies congress, in person, once a year. he goes down to d.c., and visits the offices of everyone in congress and the senate, and talks to them or their staff about this issue of war tax resistance. there is actually a bill they are trying to pass, which would create a legal framework for people to refuse to finance the military. people could register as conscientious objectors with the treasury department, by filling out some form, and then their taxes would go into a special fund that could finance any part of the government except for the defense department. if only a few people did this, it would not affect the defense department at all. but suppose the defense department consumes 50% of the budget. then if more than 50% of taxpayers register as conscientious objectors, this will start to reduce the military budget. if 75% of taxpayers signed up, the defense department would be down to a maximum of 25% of the budget. but, any reduction in defense spending would occur only if that is the will of the american people. this would be the ultimate form of democracy: voting with your money. and as long as less than half of the public signs up, it would not really impact defense spending at all. so there is no real reason anyone would have to oppose this modest measure. but until then, it will continue to be the religious duty of some quakers and members of other historic peace churches to refuse to pay taxes that fund war. he got the american friends service committee friends committee on national legislation, the quaker lobbying group, to agree with him on this issue, but it is not high enough on their priority list for them to actually lobby politicians on it, because they have so little money... they rely on donations from quakers. and i wish i could be a quaker, but that is a very serious decision, to officially become a quaker, and i am not sure if my beliefs regarding the existence of god are compatible with quaker teachings. i agree with other quaker beliefs aside from the existence of god, but they are ostensibly predicated upon god’s existence, although in my mind, they are simply sound moral principles that stand on their own and do not need any external justification since they speak for themselves. quakers believe in peace, not war, and they believe everyone is equal, and in tolerance for those who are different. these types of universal moral principles transcend other questions such as god’s existence, and can bring together people from different belief systems. as an atheist i can endorse quaker principles, just as many christians reject those same principles, despite quakers being traditionally viewed as a subgroup of christians. i believe in jesus, not the son of god who rose from the dead and performed miracles, but the son of man who taught his followers peace and tolerance and charity, and then was executed by the roman empire for his beliefs. but those jesii were the same man, it is just that some of his followers were more superstitious and prone to ascribing supernatural causes to normal events that could be explained rationally. the jesus i believe in was the son of joseph and mary, and lived in the occupied palestinian territories. or the occupied judean territories. or something. but jesus wasn’t republican, and he didn’t support george w. bush, nor would he be republican or support bush if he were alive today. he would be a democrat. i should make bumper stickers that say “jesus voted democrat 2,000 years ago - i demand a recount”. that’s some pretty funny stuff. well my dad is going to have half his colon removed and all that will be left is a semicolon, and i need to mow the lawn again. i am going to have my computer’s motherboard replaced, like i discussed in earlier blog posts. i have taken the motherboard out and put it back in the box and i am looking for the receipt now or else i will have to pay $25 for the repairs. and on saturday i was at a meeting to help plan for creating a new chapter of the young democrats for broome county. it sucks that official party organizations such as the young democrats are barred from endorsing specific candidates in primaries, but apparently that is how the laws are written, and if you want to help a specific candidate you can join their campaign. there are some people working on drafting a constitution for this local chapter of the young democrats. i was mostly thinking about positions we could take on various issues, stuff like that. or, how to recruit people. anyway i have to go to bed and sleep and stuff. it is starting to bother me how bloggers all think alike, either in the liberal camp or the conservative camp. i am starting to find bothersome not just the terms “wingnuts” and “moonbats” and other ones like “idiotarians”, but also the choices of people to criticize or support. why do liberal bloggers all like harry reid but dislike nancy pelosi, despite the fact that nancy pelosi is more progressive than harry reid, and why do they dislike chris matthews so much and call him “tweety”? it is just kind of disturbing to me that on the internet, apparently nobody likes chris matthews, yet those very same people still watch his show hardball on msnbc. i am worried that bloggers are becoming a self-brainwashing force and might reinforce a collective disconnect from reality. i must resist both the brainwashing effects of the mainstream media (or m.s.m.) as well as the blogosphere (or blogistan). perhaps the best way to resist their effects is to pay attention to neither. good night.

post from june 7th

most of this post is gonna be something i meant to post on june 7th, but this damned blogger/blogspot website was offline for maintenance. since that time, abu musab al-zarqawi has finally been killed, and i am rejoicing in his demise. he killed a friend of a friend (one of my friends was friends with nicholas berg, who was beheaded). now nicholas berg’s dad is not rejoicing in the death of zarqawi, since he is a pacifist. ok. i respect that. at least ONE person who respects the sanctity of human life. but as for me... i think this zarqawi chap was kinda asking for it, and we gave him what he wanted, which was martyrdom. i am all for killing terrorists (which, incidentally, also helps fight overpopulation). and iraq has finally filled the posts of interior minister and defense minister. now, some people don’t think the issue of iraq is important; instead they think the most important issue facing this nation is gay marriage. those dumbasses all voted for bush, and they are the only supporters he has left, which is why 49 senators were retarded enough to vote for the dumbest constitutional amendment ever proposed. all but one were republicans. but not all republicans are evil theocratic wingnuts who want to oppress us; senate judiciary committee chairman arlen specter of pennsylvania is one of the few who actually stands up for what is right occasionally. this might explain why he is more popular in the blue state of pennsylvania than the crazy ultra-religious senator rick santorum, who pennsylvanians are probably not going to re-elect. i saw arlen specter on c-span questioning some dickhead from the justice department, and specter totally kicked his ass from here to chinatown. still, arlen specter is still not as good as a real democrat (you should have seen pat leahy tear the justice department dumbass a new rear end); if i had my way, the government would be 100% democrats and 0% republicans. or maybe i would put in some people from the green party or the libertarians, or some socialists or independents or even reform party people, or something... but not a single goddamn republican, hell no, those people are creeps. the voters of duke cunningham’s district in california selected another republican, brian bilbray, instead of democrat francine busby, in a special election; some asshat pundidiots are saying that since a republican won in this open seat, republicans will win in november. umm yeah guess what... it is a heavily republican district, francine busby never had a chance, and what is remarkable is how close she still managed to come despite it all. but the majority of seats in this country are not heavily republican, so there is no comparison. anyway that is about it for stuff that happened since the time i wrote the upcoming rant, so here is the rant that i tried to publish on june 7th but couldn’t because the goddamn website was down for maintenance, all in one big gigantic mega-paragraph that is unreadable:

ok, so everyone is pissed at ann coulter for being a lunatic prostitute who says provocative evil bullshit all the time. ann coulter criticized 4 of the 9/11 widows in her book and now hillary clinton has spoken out against ann coulter. i have been listening to rush limbaugh and sean hannity on the radio the last few days and it is very interesting to listen to these lunatics who have no grasp on reality. they are such crazy fucks. they talk about bill clinton’s love life and ted kennedy getting into a car accident long ago and other irrelevant stuff that has nothing to do with the issues that affect us at this time. ann coulter is on the radio now, it is hilarious. she is dissing on darwinian evolution and saying it isn’t true; what a fucking moron. and rush limbaugh loves to talk about global warming being false. these idiots have such a complete lack of any grasp on reality it is amazing. and ann coulter thinks anyone who disses on bush, cheney, rumsfeld, etc. is automatically evil and deserves to be verbally assaulted in a drive-by insulting; her level of insults is even lower than “yo mamma so fat” jokes. and ann coulter says liberalism is a “religion” because we liberals believe in darwinism and global warming and other proven scientific theories. instead she wants to believe in some ridiculous religious dogma that directly contradicts proven scientific theories. if she really wants to question science, why doesn’t she actually study science in depth, become a real scientist, and perform experiments to disprove evolution and global warming? what the hell kind of “mental midget” (one of rush limbaugh’s favorite phrases) would reject proven scientific theories? if they hate science so much, why the hell do they use modern medicine, drive cars, and use computers? anyone who disses on science ought to have all the benefits of science taken away from them, and have to live like a caveman, so they can see how great it is to have a belief system based on unthinking faith instead of logic and reason. and these conservative talk radio hosts are all up in arms about illegal immigrants, they hate them so much, and they keep dissing on everyone who voted in favor of a guest worker program in the senate, since they want to completely get rid of all the illegal immigrants somehow. ok arch-conservative hypocrites, if you hate a guest worker program so much, why don’t you criticize the president, since he has been the main leader in advocating a guest worker program? oh yeah, because you still support that crazy messianic dumbass for some reason, even though he keeps betraying you every chance he gets. does president bush actually do a good job at anything? no, but you shitheads keep supporting him because your brains have been washed cleaner than tom delay’s laundered money. and rush limbaugh keeps talking about “radical feminists”. it’s like wtf mate? who the fuck are these radical feminists anyway? i’ve never met anyone that fits that description. i think i have probably met feminists, but i never remember any that showed any obvious signs of having a hatred of all men. el rushbo talks about the “feminization” of our culture. we could use some goddamn feminization in our violent, corrupt, militaristic society. people killing each other all the time and whatnot; a feminized culture wouldn’t be like that. rushie poo keeps talking about the “eib network” or occasionally calling it the “excellence in broadcasting network” as if such a network actually exists and he is on it. guess what, rush? you are an egotistical prick, there is no excellence whatsoever in your broadcasting, and your constant need for shameless self-promotion shows what a megalomaniac you are, and how deep inside you feel very low self-esteem so you have to offset this emotional imbalance by constantly praising yourself. and i just heard ann coulter on the radio say that we have “dominion over the earth” and shouldn’t care about preserving nature or the environment. what a dumbass. if we destroy nature and the environment, humanity will no longer be able to survive. is she really trying to make humanity extinct or what? she is saying we should care more about humanity and people than nature. what a ridiculous argument. environmentalists care more about humanity and people than anyone else does; they are trying to save the environment so we humans can survive. these arch-conservative anti-environmentalists basically want to destroy nature and ultimately kill all humans; they actually believe that destroying nature will not have any bad effects on us, because they do not even understand the concept of cause and effect in the first place. but it is so fun to listen to them. i get so much more dirt on these right-wing loonies if i listen to their radio shows than if i just read the news on the internet or watch it on tv. every word they say incriminates them as amoral, dogmatic, insane idiots. see, i am trying to listen to these morons so i can understand them better, because this anti-gay marriage amendment is the most ridiculous piece of shit i have ever heard of. everyone who supports an anti-gay marriage amendment ought to have their sexual organs forcibly removed so they are incapable of producing offspring as idiotic as their parents. i really think these conservatives are lower on the evolutionary ladder than everyone else. just think about the poor people in america’s heartland who vote republican. republicans cut funds for all the services that help the poor, and then give huge tax cuts for the wealthy. and the brainwashed poor people keep voting against their own economic interests, and they never learn, and their lives never improve. and guess what the bipartisan 9/11 commission said the other day? they gave the bush administration an f for homeland security and protecting us from terrorists. and this commission is bipartisan, half republican. so if you ever hear anyone say bush is protecting us from terrorists or doing a good job fighting the war on terror... bullshit. we haven’t found osama bin laden, and we are allies with saudi arabia despite their complicity in the 9/11 attacks (15 of the 19 hijackers were saudi, and they did not let us interrogate friends or family of the terrorists, which shows where the saudis’ true alliegience lies). it is funny how people keep attacking cindy sheehan, when all she wants to do is keep other people from dying as pointlessly and in vain as her son. so what if she is a radical left-winger now? the more right-wing this country gets, the more radical people need to get to fight back. once things are fixed and back to normal, we can quit being radical. and the reich wing keep repeating discredited lies about john kerry and the swift boat shit. everyone with half a brain knows that the swift-boaters said nothing but lies and bullshit about john kerry, and anyone who actually believes these swift-boaters should just commit suicide because they are a sorry excuse for a human being. ann coulter says liberals are hypocrites and liberalism is a religion but i just don’t see it. how are we hypocrites? how is it a religion? i mean, we simply believe things that are true, and don’t believe things that are false. liberalism is pretty goddamn simple. nowadays being a liberal basically means you are someone who knows the difference between fantasy and reality. the conservative pundits like rush limbaugh and ann coulter love to condemn “political correctness”, meaning they want to be free to make unsupported generalizations about large and diverse demographic groups of people without letting anyone else criticize them. they get cheap laughs by making fun of homosexuals, but what is the point? the point is, they hate homosexuals because their crazy religious beliefs teach them homosexuality is somehow immoral (since their “morality” is completely amoral and anti-humanist and anti-utilitarian) so they want to oppress people who are different and use humor as a weapon to convince people to join them in the crusade so that eventually they can change government policy to be oppressive towards homosexuals. i have nothing against humor or making fun of people, but you have to look at people’s agendas, and if they are making jokes with the intention of convincing people to oppress, mistreat, and abuse each other, you have to call them on it. that’s all political correctness is about, exposing people’s hidden agendas. these reich-wingers keep repeating this lie that liberals believe in the government as their savior and trust the government. yeah fucking right! liberals hate the government more than anyone! who the hell do you think opposes the government coming into people’s bedrooms and telling them who they can fuck? who thinks the government is part of a conspiracy behind 9/11? who doesn’t trust the government to protect civil liberties, is afraid of fascism, and doesn’t want the national security agency spying on them? those people are all liberals, goddammit! i don’t know a single liberal who is pro-government, at least not pro-the-current-government. i hate the government more than anyone in the fucking world, and i am as bleeding-heart as liberals come! we liberals don’t want to destroy government though; we aren’t a bunch of fucking anarchist loonies who want complete chaos and free-for-all. we want to fucking fix the government, which is completely full of problems right now, but we don’t want to get rid of it. to quote thomas jefferson, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. we liberal democrats do not trust any politicians, not even our own. that is why democrats are so internally divided, because we actually have our own opinions and don’t all think exactly the same like the republicans do. if liberalism is such a dogmatic ideology as the reich-wingers complain it is, then how come liberals have such internal divisions? why does cindy sheehan come out and call hillary clinton evil? now some people might be like, oh but the republicans have diverse points of view too. yeah, some of them care more about the religious right, and others care more about helping large corporations. that’s the only reason there is republican division about illegal immigration. some republicans are mainly corporatists and others are mainly theocrats. the republicans and conservatives are the biggest unholy alliance ever made: corporatists who only care about the wealthy and redistributing money from the poor to the rich, and theocrats who want to legislate morality and make this country like the taliban or saudi arabia. the most ironic part is, jesus said “it is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven”. so any real christian has a moral and religious duty to be a socialist, and capitalism is heresy, worship of the false idol mammon. it is baffling how the theocrats have been able to brainwash themselves into thinking capitalism is perfectly fine even when there is no safety net for the poor. they claim to uphold the word-for-word validity of the bible, but it is obvious they are very selective about which particular verses they uphold and which they completely ignore. so obviously they are hypocrites, because of this particular bible verse i have mentioned. liberals, on the other hand, do not have any holy books that they claim are word-for-word infallible. we liberals do not have any sacred cows. we might be initially shocked if someone says something racist, homophobic, or sexist, but guess what... we do not really have any sacred cows, we just get suspicious about whether someone has a hidden agenda to promote oppression. dave chappelle, for example, had a lot of stuff in his tv show that was racist if you take it literally, but if you pay careful attention it is obvious that he does this to make fun of racism and ridicule racists, and he is not actually a racist himself. see, you have to read between the lines, look for the hidden agenda. now interestingly enough it seems to me that the conservatives have outgrown racism, and today’s conservatives are not really racist in my opinion; however they are still quite sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic. it is hard to make this distinction between xenophobia and racism, but i think it is pretty simple: most conservatives hate illegal immigrants from latin america, but they do not hate hispanics in general. there are in fact many hispanics who are conservative. the situation with black people is a little more complex. conservatives hate the rap/gangs/ghetto culture of today’s young black people, because it violates all of their biblical christian values they hold dear, and they also think it is stupid of black people to vote democrat in such overwhelming numbers year after year, despite a percieved lack of positive results. this is not actually racism though. there are still many of racist conservative republicans, but i think they are just a loud but vocal minority. but i think, essentially, conservative and republican values are really empty and devoid of any real morality; it is just based on dogma with no critical thinking, which means people who have this view of morality cannot really tell the difference between right and wrong, and often get the two confused, as with the debate over gay marriage, or prayer in public school, or flag burning. now as for the issue of abortion, that is one of the rare issues where i have some problems with the point of view of most liberals and somewhat sympathize with the conservative point of view, because abortion is a true moral dilemma, where you are faced with two choices, neither of which is righteous or good; instead it is a question of the lesser of two evils. is it worse to kill an unborn human fetus, or to force a woman to go through pregnancy for 9 months and give birth against her will? and what if the woman was raped, or if it was incest, or if pregnancy might endanger her life? there are no easy answers to this kind of thing, and anyone who thinks they can dogmatically come up with the correct answers to any moral dilemma really has no understanding of morality. i call people amoral unless they actually take moral questions like this seriously instead of just arrogantly claiming that they can magically come up with all the right answers without even thinking about it first. some 2,000 year old book is not going to magically give us all the answers to solve any moral dilemma, and anyone who holds to the belief that it does is amoral, by my definition, because they just do not take morality seriously enough to actually think about it before they start spouting nonsense and frothing at the mouth about gays or whatever. ann coulter is a perfect example of someone who does not take any issue seriously and magically comes up with the answers to everything without thinking before she speaks, and often makes ridiculous insults or says utterly outrageous and indefensible things, because she is the absolute epitome of this problem. she should not be silenced, she should be made white house press secretary, the official spokeswoman for the bush administration. if we continue to highlight people like ann coulter and pat robertson and portray them as official spokespeople for the republicans, this will devastate republican electoral chances by alienating all of the sane people who are left. republicans provide a warm embrace to anyone who speaks out in favor of them, no matter how radical, crazy, or out of the mainstream. democrats, on the other hand, have the good sense to keep their distance from any loony folks, and that is to their credit. anyhow, it is hard for me to understand how anyone can listen to this conservative talk radio and actually believe any of the bullshit they spew; it reminds me of someone reading pravda in the soviet union who actually believes every word it says. so, to all of you people who have lost your fucking minds: find ’em! nero fiddled while rome burned, dubya read my pet goat while the twin towers fell, and condi rice shopped for shoes when hurricane katrina killed her fellow african-americans. it is time for some new leaders who actually give a damn about what happens to this country, instead of the same old corrupt bullshitters. i swear, the 29% who still support bush, if he told them all to commit suicide, they’d do it. these people can see no evil in the man, they think he’s like the fucking messiah or some shit like that. one lady i heard on the radio was saying, how dare they criticize bush and rumsfeld and cheney, those are all good christian men, and the people who criticize them ought to be ashamed of themselves. ok, so now, someone’s religious affiliation is justification for them to be above criticism? nobody should be above criticism. anyway, i hope the republicans nominate ann coulter for president in 2008. i would love to see her run for that office. we need to promote that bitch, and tell people, this is what republicans are like. so fuck that shit about how the media shouldn’t promote her intolerant bigotry and her endless lies and ridiculous statements. she is the democrats’ and liberals’ secret weapon, because she singlehandedly manages to make all of our critics look like crazy morons just like her, by getting them to embrace and support her views. thankfully the republicans do not have any prominent advocates who actually use logic and reason and tell the truth, because this would make it actually be justifiable to be republican, rather than reprehensible. but, the way things are, it makes perfect sense to call them the reprehensible party, since that is exactly what they are. so, everyone should go out and buy ann coulter’s book, and talk about her and write about her and promote her career so that she can continue to make her entire reprehensible party look, well, reprehensible.