Socialism we can use

Obama announces public works initiative.

Department of Book Reports: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Mary Roach is one terrific writer of non-fiction. Her previous books, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (W.W. Norton $13.95) and Spook: Science Takes on the Afterlife (W.W.Norton $13.95), report on different aspects of death. In Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton $24.95; paperback next April at $14.95), Roach grapples with human sexuality and the people who study it.

Included among the many different things she explores in this book are pioneers in the field before Alfred Kinsey and Master and Johnson. Men like Robert Latou Dickinson, who began his work in the 1890's; and John B. Watson, who helped develop the behaviorist school of psychology. She discusses Princess Marie Bonaparte, the grand-great niece of Napoleon, who tried correlating woman's sexual pleasure from measuring the distance of the clitoris from the vagina. Roach examines whether or not the female orgasm boosts fertility by first traveling to a Danish farm where pigs are artificially inseminated ( a really interesting process, and an up close experience for those who handle the sows). Other topics are given their due: penis cams, coital imaging, impotence, transplants and implants, masturbation, and the role of hormones. One of my favorite chapters was about Dr. Ahmed Shafik who studied the effects of polyester on sexuality by dressing lab rats in pants. After a year he found that rats that wore polyester pants had sex less frequently than those rats that wore cotton or wool.

Roach has a felicity with words and integrating her stories with humor and grace. The book reads smoothly and I found myself laughing aloud a great deal. Not to be missed are her footnotes. Some of the best stuff is in the footnotes. In discussing the aforementioned Marie Bonaparte's marriage to Prince George of Greece, a latent homosexual, Roach writes:

"Marie was unaware of her prince's proclivities when they were married. Her suspicion were roused by the drawings of Greek athletes that
George hung on his dressing room walls and later, by his decision to serve as the gymnastics examiner at the Panhellenic Games. Marie had
just given birth to their first son and complained in her diary that while she was home all day 'suckling Peter,' George was off, well, suckling
peter".

Bonk is available at Jackson Street Books and many other Fine Independent Bookstores.

What book is on your bedside table?

démocommié™™™™™©®ç åü courant is conducting his own research into human sexuality. I'm sure he'll report back soon.

In a little less than two hours...

...I answer SL Republican Ron Skytower's request for a second debate with all the seriousness it deserves. At 2 pm Pacific, I will honor him as only one culture warrior may honor another. That is by wrestling him naked in the ancient manner of our Spartan warrior philosophical ancestors. If he shows, oiled flesh shall meet oiled flesh until one warrior domintates the other into submission by driving his mighty spear of dominionistic manliness deep into the others dark cave of shame.

Join us. We'll raise money for Amnesty International (This event is not approved by Amnesty International) and listen to Barry White's greatest hits.

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Bleaching Barney

Terry Leo
Texas Sate School Board

Dear Mrs. Leo,

I read about the ugly confrontation you recently had with Barney the Dinosaur. I know at first glance, it may have seemed like just another attempt by the secularists to poison our children's minds with science, but their choice of Barney hints at an even more sinister purpose.

Just take a look at him. He's as purple as a church deacon in The Castro on a Saturday night. Don't you doubt for a moment why he's colored in that hue. He's purple for a purpose. He's telling the world he's out and proud and here to recruit our children by pushing his homosexual agenda in their schools.

He's a huge threat to our efforts to put God back into the classroom. And you, as one of God's staunchest defenders on the school board, have to stop him. Now, you're not going to get anywhere challenging his science curriculum or attacking his homosexual agenda. We've been trying to defeat both for years without success. You need to take another approach; you need to bring him into Christ's fold.

I suggest you try to convert him to Mormonism. Yes, I know it's kind of cultish and all, but it does offer an advantage you can't find in any other sect--it will bleach the purple right out of his 5000 year-old hide. According to Mormon scripture, his skin will turn "white and delightsome" once he joins the Lord's team. Then, he'll be useless to the Gay and their scientist co-demons.

Heterosexually yours in a chaste and biblically appropriate kind of way,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Help for BNP Members

On Wednesday, I wrote about the British National Party's membership list being published on the internets tubes (you can get it here and here.). That caused a lot of consternation at places like Stormfront and Northwest Nationalists Blog, because most of the BNP members wanted to be secret racists and fascists.

Well, now, their worries may be over. Mr. Ekundayo Dunsimi has stepped up with an offer to help them out:

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Please allow me to introduce myself, I am Mr. Ekundayo Dunsimi and I understand your plight. I grew up under the fear of persecution and am no stranger to violence.

I want to help you and I am able to put you in touch with a Dr. Chizoba Durojaiye, an Internet expert and witch doctor who can remove your name from these despicable Internet lists that have been published to expose you.

He has already helped Mr. Abidemi Gahiji who, if you check, cannot now be found on said lists. A miracle? You may ask. No, Dr. Durojaiye has a gift that he would like to share with you!

He also may be able to present you with a business opportunity to earn a share in $20,000,000!! All he requires is your bank details (he has your name, address and other personal information already) and he will set you free and allow you to cast aside your demons.

Please send the information to free-the-bnp@419.com as an initial payment of $5 will be required for chicken feet (for a potion) will be required.

Thank you and God bless America and the Internet.

Mr. Ekundayo Dunsimi

I will not be emasculated by the internets tubes.

I don't know who's behind this internets tubes gender analysis thingy, but there is no way Jesus' General is only 72% masculine, and it certainly isn't less male than No Blood for Hubris or Shini's World. They're not-men, goddammit.

I'm an 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender, period.

OK, it is time to fight back. Plug this into your analysis:

Guns, war, NASCAR, football, slug you in the shoulder, Coors, taciturnity, balls, package, spit, John Wayne, Engelbert Humperdinck, pork rinds, frito pie, oh fuck it Engelbert Humperdinck, camo, hunting, fighting, combat, ear hair, little soldier, Gene Simmons, 24, Freebird, Doom, 357 magnum, Ann Coulter, beef jerky, Chuck Norris, Doug Giles, cowboy, Dodge Ram truck, hair club, viagra, spartan wrestling.

The Sanctity of the Microphone

Glenn Beck
Frosty Abuser

Dear Mr. Beck,

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you had at a truck stop Wendy's. I don't know what's come over this country if a pudgy little white man can't hang around a truck stop without getting verbally abused by a trucker. I mean, my God, can't a sweater-wearing patriot buy a Frosty without a big, hairy, double-clutching diesel jockey getting in his face, calling him a "racist bigot," and accusing him of ruining the country? Doesn't anyone respect the sanctity of the microphone anymore?

There once was a time when you could get on the radio and rant about nuking Venezuela or ask a black Congressman if he was a terrorist and still be treated respectfully on the street. Hell, CNN would even give you a gig and pretend that you weren't a lying, vicious demagogue. But now, even truckers, who once formed your listener base, are giving you hell and scaring you out of your temple garments. Thank God your security detail was there.

I hope you finally got your frosty,

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Embarrassingly Ignorant

John Ziegler
Talk Show Host in Search of a Station

Dear Mr. Ziegler,

I appreciate your efforts, but you're making us conservatives look bad, like we know nothing about politics. You should do a little research before doing an interview. There is no Sen. Go Fuck Yourself in South Carolina or anywhere else. I looked it up.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

"But I wanted to be a secret racist fascist!"

Someone posted the British National Party's membership list on the web. I'm disappointed to see that Sarah Palin isn't listed. It would give her a little international experience.

You can see and download the list here and here.

BNP members respond:

The most shocking thing is some of the comments by the names!

God help anyone who is in the army, the pison service, health care, police officer or a teacher.

You're all fucked!

***

Me to, I'm on the list, I could be chucked out of the army. What is going on? Piss up in a brewery comes to mind.

***

Fuck me, the reds have the list now.

***

I can't believe it
I own a PC retail outlet and this could ruin me, It makes me want to puke on my shoe

***

I found this list posted on Various Islamic Muslim Forums and Jewish Boards - some of the people on there are nutters and whackos! Shit knows what happens if alqaeda or IDF gets hold of that!

***

What's up with you cowards, many of us are in the public domain and already lost our jobs.
You talk about saving your country and you panic if you think someone knows you.

I thought the lefties were tossers but at least they don't pretend to be heroes

***

The chances of future recruitment of teachers, policemen and prison officers has just faded to zero.

***

STAND UP AND BE PROUD RACISTS OF THIS COUNTRY!

***

Blimey, i'm also named on the list. Now everyone will know how i feel about the bloody pakis and gooks.

Update: The volk at Stormfront are quite upset as well.

We're all adjusting to an Obama America in our own way

Part 2 at slog.

The Good Old Days Before Regulation

The Seven Heads Of Barack Obama

Lisa Miller
Newsweek

Dear Mrs. Miller,

Thank you and Newsweek for addressing our most deeply held beliefs so respectfully. It isn't often we see a sentence like the following in a major news magazine:

The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions but they're not nuts.

You are absolutely right. We are not crazy. It's not like we just dreamed this stuff up during some sort of psychotic break. We study. We read.  We analyze. We evaluate. Then, we state our conclusions. And as my friend, Malacandra, noted in an email to me, we conduct our research using the most authoritative source in existence:

Those who suggest that Obama is the Antichrist have very valid reasons for their belief, based on upon the very specific criteria laid out in scripture.

For example:

Barack Obama rose out of the sea and has seven heads and ten horns.Aside from that, he's like a leopard except with bear's feet and a lion's mouth. and one of his heads was mortally wounded, but then healed.

There's just no denying it.

So thank you again for showing respect for our most sacred beliefs, but, that said, you could have done so much more. Why didn't you report on the secular media's conspiracy to help Obama hide his true nature. Certainly you knew about it. It isn't easy to hide six extra heads, ten horns, a lion's mouth and bear feet. You must have noticed Obama's extra makeup, the lumps in his jacket, and the huge clown shoes he wore. Even if you didn't, you must have wondered why all of Obama's photos spent so much time in Newsweek's PhotoShop lab.

And what about all that business with his birth certificate? Why didn't you look into that? If he just rose out of the sea, it's likely he isn't a natural born citizen. I mean, there's nothing natural about a beast rising from the sea, is there?

Simply telling us we aren't nuts is not enough. You have a lot more reporting to do.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Homophobic Musical Theater Directors Unite!

Scott Eckern
Artistic Director
California Musical Theater

Dear Scott,

Thank you for all you did to help us prevent the gay from having the same rights as real people. Perhaps now, we can return the favor by helping you liberate musical theater from the yoke of homosexual oppression.

I see you are performing Avenue Q and Forever Plaid. No doubt the homosexual cabal that controls musical theater requires you to do so, but you can strike back. As the artistic director, you have the ability to subvert these productions by butching them up a bit. For instance, you could dress the cast of Forever Plaid in leather vests and chaps. That'd butch it up, by God, and the cabal couldn't do a thing about it as long as you painted the leather with a plaid pattern.

Same goes for Avenue Q. Put all those puppet handlers in latex, like those outfits Batman and Robin wear, the ones that look that old Roman breastplates with the nipples and everything--there's nothing more heterosexual than Batman latex or golden Roman nipples.

Then there's the music. You can do something about that. Do you really think anyone would notice if you changed Avenue Q's "If You Were Gay" to the Village People's "In the Navy." Heck, I don't think so. The audience would be too distracted by the patriotism.

Well, I think that's a good start. Your the expert. I'm sure you can come up with more.

Keep on hatin'!

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

p.s. If things don't work out, maybe you can team up with Prince.

Honoring Ron Skytower

As you may have heard, my Inner Frenchman declined to do another debate with Ron Skytower of the  SL Republicans. He says there's no reason to debate Ron again, because conservatism is now irrelevant. Adding insult to injury, he compared Ron to a labrador retreiver, writing:

Arguing with people who think Obama is a secret Muslim communist and the Earth is only 6000 years old is pointless. It's like debating a small child or more accurately, a male labrador retriever. No matter what you say, he'll continue to hump your leg, knowing with certainty that if he just humps long enough, your shoes will bear puppies. All you get out of it is a sticky leg.

Ron, I apologize on the behalf of my Inner Frenchman. He's a damned elitist who doesn't understand why we fear just about everything. He constantly mocks our hatred of the brown, our attempts to dominate our women, our hatred of science, and even the special relationships we form with our livestock.

But I am not my Inner Frenchman. I am a patriot and a warrior for Jesus, and I want to treat you and your ideas with all the seriousness you and they deserve. So I shall honor you, not with a debate (we already agree on everything), but in the way our ancient forebears, the mighty warriors of Sparta, honored each other. Yes, I am challenging you to wrestle me in the nude. Let us grapple, oiled flesh meeting oiled flesh, until one of us achieves victory by driving his hard spear of manhood deep into the other's dark cave of shame.

We shall do it at Wellstone's Donkey to shame my Inner Frenchman by highlighting his cowardice. Let us begin at 2:00 pm SLT (Pacific) and wrestle until one of us is vanquished. And let us do it as a fundraiser for a worthy cause like Books for Soldiers.

My Inner Frenchman embrarrases me again

...by writing to the Mormons.

Harmony Without Justice means Power Without Accountability

_{Image © Austin Cline
Click for full-sized Image}

One issue which is of great concern to many liberals and progressives right now is the extent to which the Obama administration will seriously and vigorously investigate possible crimes committed by the Bush administration. A great deal of responsibility will of course rest with the Congress, and there are good reasons to hope that they will start taking their oversight duties seriously, even if belatedly and in retrospect. The Obama administration will have to become deeply involved too, however, for anything of substance to happen.

Cooperation is necessary in order to find and turn over relevant evidence; action is necessary when it comes to police investigation and perhaps eventual criminal prosecution. Neither a Democratic Congress nor an Obama administration can do it all alone, but together it may be possible for them to get to the bottom of all the secret polices, procedures, and programs that were ostensibly undertaken in the name of the American people, yet were apparently used against the people and kept hidden from them as much as possible.

Insofar as these policies and programs were legal but undesirable from a liberal perspective, it should be enough to simply make all the facts known — we shouldn't try to launch criminal prosecutions over policy differences. Democracy requires that government be as open and transparent as possible, however, and the Bush administration thwarted this principle in every way conceivable. The more we know about what was really done, the more reliably we can evaluate the administration's actions and the more we can do to prevent similar action in the future.

Even if we could know for certain that no investigation would turn up any genuine criminal wrongdoing, the investigations would still be necessary in order to rectify the problem of secrecy and send the message both to the American people and to future administrations that such levels secrecy are not acceptable. Not doing the investigations, or only limiting investigations to where the likelihood of criminal wrongdoing seems high, would send just the opposite message: that extensive but technically legal secrecy is acceptable in American democracy.

Of course, we can't know in advance whether any of the secret programs involved criminal wrongdoing or not, and so long as we believe that crimes should be punished, this is yet another reason to have investigations. Anyone who says that there shouldn't be investigations unless there is clear evidence of crimes is being disingenuous — and that's putting it mildly. Given the cloak of secrecy that has been pulled around the Bush administration's actions, there won't be evidence of guilt or innocence unless and until at least some investigating is done. People who object to investigations without evidence of crimes aren't stupid and surely know this, so their disingenuousness is arguably just an attempt to help cover up possible crimes — and that makes them every bit as guilty as the original criminals.

There is another way in which both Democrats and Republicans have been conspiring to cover up possible crimes by the Bush administration: an appeal to a supposed need for "political harmony." According to this argument, investigations into possible crimes will just create bad feelings which will make it difficult for Republicans and Democrats to work together. Since the business of government requires that they work together, avoiding the investigations is really in everyone's best interests. There is so much wrong with this argument that it's doubtful that there is even anything right with it. The premises are wrong, the inferences are wrong, and motive for offering it is not merely wrong but positively immoral.

The hidden premise that Republicans would be justified in developing hard feelings over investigations of other Republicans is wrong. They'd be justified if the investigations were conducted for partisan political reasons; otherwise, their commitment to justice and liberty should override any partisan political loyalty. If not, then the following inference — that they would be harder to work with — is irrelevant because such Republicans really aren't worth working with in the first place. You don't make political alliances with people who want to subvert justice in order to protect fellow party members, you send them to jail for corruption and covering up crimes.

Technically, the motive for offering an argument can't invalidate the argument itself — arguments must stand or fall on their own based on their own internal logical and the truth of their premises. However, when a person offering a transparently false argument is motivated by a grossly immoral goal, that motive has to be taken into consideration. In this case, the question before us is why anyone would offer a transparently false argument that would possibly allow criminals to get away with potentially horrible crimes without the full extent of the crimes even coming to light, never mind anyone having to take responsibility for and pay for those crimes?

The answer is not too hard to discern: the desire for "political harmony" does not arise out of an interest in getting government work done more efficiently, but rather in protecting a political and corporate class which has become too inbred, too insular, and too chummy for the good of the rest of the nation. Journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and corporate executives have all been sucked into a social circle where membership is so highly prized that they will subvert both law and morality in the interest of maintaining their status in the group.

Holding one another truly accountable for crimes committed against the American people would expose too much and hurt friends, so it's in everyone's interest to hush things up. They're like a sick, dysfunctional family where no one wants to even admit to the addictions and crimes of their relatives, much less try to stop them from molesting the neighborhood kids or call the cops to protect those kids. All that matters is keeping the family safe, no matter what happens to the community and children outside it.

Journalists are guilty of it when they refuse to ask hard questions or do serious investigations lest that damage their access to power. Democrats are guilty of it when they argue against official investigations because it would strain relationships "across the aisle," or when they endeavor to purchase bipartisan good will by tacitly agreeing to ignore past crimes. Well, damn your access to power and damn your precious political relationships. If you conspire in such ways to help conceal possible crimes, then you belong in prison cell right next to the original criminals. In fact, I'd like to see you serve double the prison time — maybe if we come down harder on people who help in the cover up, they won't be so eager to make it so easy for political sociopaths to harm the nation.

This image was originally part of a series of anti-German propaganda posters from World War I.