“Plano ISD have Internet filters to keep kids from seeing this and then they’re showing them,” Marquis said. “They’re presenting it on a big screen and forcing kids to comment and compare. Maybe it’s OK for a college art student but not for 14-year-olds.

What could this concerned parent be so terribly concerned about? Why pornography and obscenity, of course! How dare the school district use a textbook for a gifted and talented humanities class that includes such horrifyingly disgusting images as these:

Indeed, that’s some horribly perverted and mind-damaging imagery! It could warp a 14 year old’s thought processes beyond all hope! Or not. I’m betting not. Your average American 14 year old sees things more obscene and pornographic than this simply by existing in our culture.

Thankfully, the school district came to its senses and realized quickly that banning the textbook was ignorant and reversed their decision –though only after other parents and students became outraged about the ban. I’m rather surprised, considering it’s a school district in Northeast Texas, which is an area generally not known for common sense concerning “protect the children” issues. Maybe there’s hope for our educational system after all.

And if Jeremy Marquis and his wife think these are examples of the darkest expressions of art, neither of them has spent any time at all looking at art.

How about a little political craziness to get your election day off to a great start and put you in the correct state of mind?

Right-wing blogger watches video of the Halloween celebration at the White House and goes off on a maniacal giggling fit about one child being dressed as The “Obama” Joker. Except … the kid isn’t dressed as The Joker at all. He’s a skeleton (or at least some sort of undead human), and the President didn’t actually push him out of the way angrily. Always amazing to see people living in such a delusional world they can’t even see reality right in front of them. For added entertainment … read some of the comments.
(Hat tip to WWJD? and LGF)

Sharon Angle receives a cease and desist letter from Hasbro for using their Monopoly game for political purposes (and without asking first). Thus far, she’s ignoring it. Yet more proof Republicans (and Tea Party members) believe in property rights … as in their right to use whatever property they like, whether they own it or not.

Governor Perry (of Texas) has a book coming out after the election. Some of it accidentally made it to the public eye before they’d planned to release any excerpts, and I can see why he would want to wait until after he wins his fourth term (hope he doesn’t, but he probably will) for rational folks to get a gander at it.

“Prohibition on school prayer, the redefinition of marriage, the nationalization of health care, the proliferation of federal criminal laws, interference with local education, the increased regulation of food — even telling us what kind of lightbulbs we can use — there is seemingly no end to the reach of Washington.”

“That the Court makes policy can hardly be debated – and that many of these policy choices affect the citizen at the core of his personal conscience is equally beyond question. Consider that it is our courts that routinely decide, with little or no chance of further appeal, how and where we may and may not pray to God, when life begins, whether contraception must be allowed to be sold, whether and how we can celebrate religious holidays, what level of pornography and vulgarity must be allowed, whether those other than man and woman must be allowed to marry, what level of discrimination may or even must be carried out (in the name of ending discrimination), whether a state must allow women to attend an all-male military academy, who may be executed and whether we may execute criminals at all, and generally any issue involving social preferences, morality, and our collective concept of right and wrong.”

First off, most of this is total bullshit, and what’s not bullshit is stuff I would put into the “good” category … like regulating food. What the hell, Perry? Corporations have proven time and again that unless they are MADE to manufacture foods that won’t kill people, they’ll do whatever they damn well please! But wait, there’s more!

“We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive, what kind of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see, and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit.”

Another great example of someone living in their own delusional world. No one has told me to do or not to do anything of these things. Oh, some things have been suggested … like that too much salt is bad for one’s health, but that doesn’t stop me from picking up the salt shaker when I want some salt. These things he thinks are restricted? They aren’t.

Oh, and he said Social Security has been a failure and is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. Well, I wish all government projects were such failures, because last time I checked, Social Security was working as intended and keeping old people from starving or eating dog food under bridges.

And I do hate having to go into this yet again, but…

“I am not going to apologize because I’m bothered by a religion that says kill the infidel, especially when I am the infidel,” Phillips wrote on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday. “Should we vote out Keith Ellison just because he is a Muslim? No. But his beliefs define his character and his character is a central issue.”

“A majority of Tea Party members, I suspect, are not fans of Islam,” Phillips said. “I, personally have a real problem with Islam. With Islam, you have a religion that says kill the Jews, kill the infidels. It bothers me when a religion says kill the infidels. It bothers me a lot more when I am the infidel.”

I realize one would actually have to take the time to read the Qur’an and comprehend what it’s saying, and I am certain Judson Phillips hasn’t bothered, but the least these people could do is listen to others who have taken the time to do so explain YET AGAIN why Muslims aren’t out to kill Christians and Jews. Let me put this as simply as possible:

Christians and Jews are not infidels, because they too are “people of the book” … meaning they worship the exact same god as Muslims. Seriously. The god of the Muslims is the same god Jews and Christians worship. Now atheists, agnostics, polytheists, and other such heathens? Those are infidels according to Islam.

But wait, they say … there are Muslims out there who think Christians and Jews are infidels and should be killed!!! Yes, and there are Christian fanatics who think their god hates soldiers and that he sends storms and earthquakes to punish America for allowing gays to live. There are, in fact, crazy people willing to twist religions texts to their own purposes in EVERY religion. Doesn’t make the religion itself evil.

Now please, PLEASE … if you haven’t already, get out there today and vote out the crazy!!!

The Rally to Restore Sanity was great today. Ended up not going to the one downtown, because someone worked just a little too hard in the garden yesterday (so worth it though). Of course, once the rally was over –and even before– everyone was trying to determine how many people were there. Was it larger than Glenn Becks?!?!?! That seemed to be the thing everyone wanted to know.

CBS uses a service that takes aerial photos to make attendance estimates, and so far, I have always tended to agree with their results. I mean, they at least aren’t wildly inaccurate. They’ve said 200,000 people attended the rally today, and after looking at photos and watching it on TV, I have to say that seems about right. The same group said 87,000 attended Beck’s rally, and that also seems in the general ballpark.

But everyone has to throw numbers out there, and they all have their own biases and agendas. Some people were claiming a million people were at Beck’s rally, and there’s just no way. It wasn’t that large a crowd. I’ve seen what it looks like when there actually are a million or more people in the Mall. Anyway, there are a lot of numbers flying around about both rallies right now, and there’s some REALLY incorrect information being spread as the given truth.

The National Park Service saying there were 300,000 people at the Beck rally? A fabrication. They did no such thing. They stopped even hinting at estimates of crowd sizes over a decade ago after a kerfuffle over the Million Man March. And it isn’t just the Drudge Report saying they did give an estimate for Beck’s rally either.

The National Park Service stopped offering official attendance figures in 1997 because it allegedly under-sized the “Million Man March” in 1995. Organizers of events usually have higher attendance figures and the media commonly shoot lower.

CBS has a completely different tactic. It commissions a company to take aerial photos and then comes up with an estimate later. In August, CBS estimated Glenn Beck’s attendance at 87,000. National Park Service estimates between 300,000 and 325,000 people attended the Glenn Beck rally.

Isn’t it interesting how in one paragraph they state the Park Service stopped giving estimates in 1997, and in the very NEXT paragraph they spread the lie that said Park Service gave Beck an estimate of 300,000-325,000 people in attendance. That, right there, is crappy journalism. Pick a story and stick to it! If you want to lie, go ahead, but don’t refute yourself in the same damn article!

Anyway, the crowd there today was HUGE, and 200,000 or so seems like a close enough estimate … and there are a lot of lying liars out there who keep insisting the Park Service said Beck’s rally had over 300,000 in attendance when it’s a lie they gave any number at all, and there’s no way there were that many people there.

Now I need to go take a shower and go to bed. I’m beat, and tomorrow is our anniversary. Not that we are DOING anything, but I’d at least like to be awake for it. LOL!

In order to prepare for the major league rant to come today, I need to clear out the links I currently have open in my browser so … link dump!

Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day is an excellent round-up of the lies that have been spread by the right wing about, well, everything. Nice to have them all gathered in one place with supporting links, not that it will do any good. My experience is that once someone comes to believe the lie, there’s no showing them the truth. The like the way the lie sounds better, since it’s what they want to hear.

David Dukes makes an appearance to stand up for white rights in a ten minute diatribe about stupidity and racism. Worth watching just so you can see someone with his frame of mind calmly discussing why America needs to stay as lily-white as possible … and to remind oneself that people like this still exist. Since I can’t imagine too many people having the stomach to listen to the whole thing (or any of it), let me give you a couple of the real zingers.

In 1790, our forefathers passed America’s first immigration act. it limited immigration to quote … free white people … unquote. Ironically, the propaganda is so thick today that I forgive young people that think it’s anti-American to want to preserve our white heritage.

The biggest threat to us are not some freaks running around the desert of Pakistan, it’s the freaks running the media, who are teaching our children the sexual habits of bonobo monkeys.

Randy Quaid and his wife have apparently lost their collective minds.

During their hearing last week, the couple told Canada’s immigration board they are being persecuted in the United States. Randy Quaid said he and his wife plan to apply for refugee status in Canada because the couple are seeking asylum from “the murderers of Hollywood.”

Evi Quaid begged a Canadian immigration adjudicator not to force them to return, saying their friends, such as actors David Carradine and Heath Ledger, have been “murdered” under mysterious circumstances and she worried something would happen to her husband next.

As has Charlie Sheen…

Charlie Sheen was hospitalized Tuesday for a psychiatric evaluation after a woman told police he was throwing furniture and yelling in his hotel room, a law enforcement official said. His publicist blamed an allergic reaction to medication.

You’ve probably heard that “Hiccup Girl” has been involved in a murder, but did you hear her lawyer plans to defend her actions by blaming it on her having Tourette’s Syndrome? Yeah, sounds like a pretty week defense to me too.

A herd of 1,400 cows is being milked between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. under the theory that they will produce more sleep inducing melatonin in their milk at a time when they are usually lying down in the dark.

To further boost the melatonin production, the bovines are fed clover and soothed under warm red lights to lower stress levels while being milked. And during the day when the weather is good, the pampered animals are turned out in a pen with grass and deep, cozy sand, which the workers call “cow beach.”

This is pseudo-science bullshit, of course, but naturally, people are buying into it. People will buy into anything, if your marketing is good enough. I say how about we let cows be cows and stop trying to turn them into sleeping pill factories.

One-ninth of our ability to blow the world to smithereens was malfunctioning for 45 minutes the other day! Everybody panic!

Officials stressed that there was no possibility the missiles could have launched accidentally, nor was there any indication that foreign governments or terrorists had hacked into the system. If the U.S. had needed to fire the Minuteman III missiles in the affected squadron during the outage Saturday, officials said, backup systems could have been used.

Don’t worry, America! We could have still shot off those 50 missiles and brought down the Russians (or whoever it is we’re supposed to be protecting ourselves against with our overwhelming world-destroying power)!

And now to start collecting information for today’s expected and planned rant. Though I think I might go do the grocery shopping first, so I’ll have all the time in the world to write a few thousand words on the state of aggressive white male behavior in the USA today and other such non-trivial topics.

The United States military, for the first time, is allowing its recruiters to accept openly gay and lesbian applicants.

The historic move follows a series of decisions by a federal judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips, who ruled last month that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law violates the equal protection and First Amendment rights of service members. On Oct. 12, she ordered the military to stop enforcing the law.
–NYT

About damn time. Though, of course, the case will be moving up the judicial ladder on appeal, but I think this is the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. At least I certainly hope so.

Additionally, military members who were discharged under DADT are heading to recruiters to rejoin.

A number of other former service members have been walking into recruiters’ offices. Dan Choi showed up at the Times Square recruiting station last evening. He served in the military for 11 years. He was in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 and he graduated West Point with degrees in Arabic and environmental engineering. He was discharged after he came out as gay on MSNBC.
–NPR

Mr. DAN CHOI (Former Military Service Member): It was, in a way, a homecoming.

ADLER: He first tried to get into the Marines, but was told at 29 he was too old to join. But the Army, he said, takes people up to 41.

Mr. CHOI: They were very excited that I had prior service and I was willing to go on back. And I talked about being gay. I said I’m gay and I was kicked out under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. And they said it’s very good to have you and it’s wonderful that you’re here. And they were absolutely professional. They were motivating and inspiring.

Women who take a popular hormone replacement drug after menopause not only increase their chances of getting breast cancer but also seem to face an increased risk of dying from the disease, according to new results of a landmark federal study.

So now we find out for certain that taking hormone replacement therapy really isn’t so great for a number of reasons. I’m not at all surprised. As a general rule, any time one tries to fight something the body naturally wants to do, it tends to lead to problems. I assure you, once the whole Change of Life stage started for me, I looked into my options, read all the current studies, and I decided that even a small risk of cancer and/or death was too great. But not all doctors think the slight chance of death from lung or breast cancer is a reason to avoid hormone therapy.

“Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water,” Taylor said. “Hormonal symptoms can really be life-changing for many women – changing their ability to concentrate, their mood, their personality. It can be really horrendous. Just because there is a very small risk associated with a therapy doesn’t necessarily mean we completely abandon it.”

Yes, the hot flashes, mood swings, lack of concentration, feelings of fatigue, insomnia, dry skin (and adult acne, yuck), and other things that happen when hormone levels change dramatically suck beyond belief. It sucks as badly as puberty. Maybe worse. But after trying a bunch of natural therapies (herbs and such) and not really finding anything that really did much to help without causing other issues, I decided to just stick it out and let nature take its course. I’m glad I did that, and I am also glad I didn’t give in to the pressure to do hormone replacement therapy. In general, I try to avoid doing things that could lead to my death (no matter how small the risk), especially when the thing I am trying to avoid by taking Pill X is something that isn’t something that might kill me. Menopause, for all the pain and suffering it can cause is a naturally occurring event that women through the ages have gotten passed without any medical help at all, and though it does suck mightily, its not deadly.

What I have found during the last few years of menopausal misery is that a good attitude about it goes much further than any pill can … as does having an understanding spouse and family. I accepted it for what it was –a sign I am growing older– and accepted the fact that I am growing older. So my skin is dry and not nearly as youthful as it was in my twenties. Well, it shouldn’t be now should it? I’m not twenty anymore, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I am occasionally very cranky and snappish. I do my best not to act out on those feelings and when I do, my loved-ones have been warned and know it’s just me having a bad day. So I sometimes have days when I feel like I am moving through molasses and can’t get anything done, either because I feel entirely fatigued or because my brain just isn’t quite able to focus on what it needs to focus on. Then I just take things slower and don’t stress about it. I’m getting older. No sense fighting it tooth and nail.

But it passes! All by itself, it works itself out and things get better. This year there have been fewer of those awful hot flashes (and they are awful), and when I do have one, it’s not nearly as bad as before … and there are still some days when I just have problems getting moving and getting things done, but then I had that problem before it all started anyway. Sometimes my skin still just freaks the hell out, but to be honest, it’s not much worse than it ever was. My skin used to freak out once a month anyway, and now it’s not nearly that often (though sometimes it is much worse when it does). And the mood swings have become a really rare event too, which is nice. The added bonus is that I haven’t had a visit from Aunt Flo is so long I can’t remember when the last time was. So I think I am almost through this Change of Life thing, and I got through it without risking illness or death … or extending the misery, as I have heard taking the hormone therapies can.

Yes, I am an advocate for not messing with nature. Sometimes it leads to things sucking for a while, but in the end, it tends to be less risky. There may be women out there for whom the change in hormone levels at middle age is far more awful than it was for me –though all my friends assure me I’ve had it bad– and maybe for them the small risk of cancer or death is a good choice, but to most women I would say to just try going through it as much as possible without doing much of anything at all but changing one’s attitude about the situation. It’s really the healthiest option. And if it seems like it’s all too much to bear without the help of pills, think back to puberty. You do remember puberty don’t you? Think about how badly THAT sucked (and you know it did). There wasn’t a pill for that, and we all went through it and came out the other side unscathed. Menopause is just the same. It comes, it’s miserable, it goes, and then we come out the other side unscathed … and no longer having to deal with the “joy” of monthly hormonal shifts, cramps, and all the suffering associated with that. So try the natural route and don’t fight it. If nothing else, you’ll be avoiding one small chance of getting cancer and dying. That’s a good thing, right?