Hawks and Doves

It is because of media, that women have a poor self image in general anyway. It’s media, that gives the world its ideas on what the female figure should look like. None of those women in that ad are fat, by any means. But you’re an idiot!

Wow, if this isn’t an example of discrimination and hate speech, I don’t know what is.

Replace the word “fat chicks” with “muslims”, “jews” or “homosexuals” or some such thing and the FBI would arrest this person.

I guess since “fat chicks” aren’t loved by the media and hollywood, they are free game for those people who can do nothing but hate.

any ad that can get women to feel good about how they look is 30 minutes I don’t have to spend listening to my wife complain about having to go on a diet to look “good.”

Mapplethorpe was an arts elitist who eschewed the very idea of government funding. He never wrote grant proposals; he f*cked for money.

…To deny RM’s sexual context is of course absurd, but RM himself actively contributed to the notion that he was a “fine artist”. He was extremely pretentious in his endeavors and was often successful. He exhibited at the leading fine art gallery during his life (Light Gallery) and has been collected by serious photo collectors (including Sam Wagstaff) from early in his career.

looking at photography from a comfortable distance. Mapplethorpe’s subjects are not Arbus’ fragmented and marginalized “freaks.” Even if some of his subjects are posed in a “shy, textbook manner,” they also seem conscious of the juxtaposition in which they’ve been placed.
Maybe the subject’s awareness of the line between the pose and the reality, is what I find shocking.

one might overlook some of Hitchens’ eccentricities but his attacks on the Roman Church are pure venom that would put him in good company with Rev. Ian Paisley or the Indiana Klan of the 1920s.

There are 55 million Roman Catholics in America and their participation in public life from top to bottom as Democrats and Republicans, left and right, in the White House and the state houses, on the bench and in our legislatures is well known and ought to have long ago put to rest the old-time Protestant paranoia about hocus pocus and the Pope of Rome sending orders through Jesuits.

Not apparently for Hitchens, who does not seem to know or care that leading American Catholics of the past two generations have inlcuded the entire Kennedy clan, Mario Cuomo, Chris Dodd and John Kerry, to name just a few. So let me get this justification for discrimination against American communicants with the Roman Church based on the Church’s role in civil matters right: we should make sure we ask Catholics who may pass throught Senate confirmation process how their religious convictions might affect their views and governmental decisions but not ask the same of Protestants, Jews or others?

Hitch’s rant reminds me of the vile, nativist Thomas Nast cartoon where the threat of bishops, their mitres drawn to resemble alligator jaws, came crawling up on America’s shores. Beware! Beware of the Papist horde. Soon he’ll be telling us that nuns are killing babies in the convents, as said in a widely circulated (and believed) anti-Catholic screed of the 19th century.

First, the whole account is third level hearsay which does not ring true based upon how close to the vest Roberts has kept his views.

Second, Roberts went to Regis, a Jesuit prep school. If you tell most conservative priests you went to a Jesuit school, they will tell you it’s a shame that you never had a catholic education. Jesuit training incorporates precisely the type of outcome determinative manipulation to reach the desired result as law encompasses, in other words, he can justify any legal result even if it is inconsistent with a Papal decree…

Third, historically, catholic jurists have been no enemy of the right to abortion. Look at Brennan. Further, all over catholic europe, catholic politicians are thumbing their nose at the church by approving gay marriage, etc, etc. Nobody has been excommunicated…

…even a broken clock is right twice a day … I expected a right wing religious freak. But, Bush must have been advised that the cultural war is better as a moot battle than the real thing, because this guy is not an ideologue unless he is truly the ManchurianConservative. He will certainly be no less conservative than O’Connor, but he is no Bork. If you start picking about his catholic faith, you are reaching.

The right question is directly related to what Hitchens focuses on – the church’s newly minted threats to excommunicate politicians who vote in favor of abortion rights. The question for Roberts should properly be something along the lines of, “On the Supreme Court, you may author a decision, or vote in a case in a way that could lead the Vatican to excommunicate you, as it has said it may excommunicate politicians who vote in certain ways or take certain public positions. Are you willing to risk excommunication from your church if you feel the U.S. Constitution requires a decision by you that contradicts Rome?”

Something like that.

I’m getting tired of being governed by our American Royalty. By 2008, we will have had 20 years of government by a Bush or a Clinton. With the prospect of Hillary or Jeb running, we could easily envision scenarios when it becomes thirty.

Multiple generations getting into the “family business” of politics is not new–there are examples on both sides (Gore … Daley, Jackson). Nor is spousal involvement (Dole, Cheney).

… I’m tired of chance at running for the presidency left to a few (royal) families. And if fatigue with those royal families specifically (or celebrities in general) sets in with the electorate, then it’s another argument against Hillary winning.

One of the key factors in the sharp escalation of housing values that we have witnessed in a number of cities is a renaissance of urbanism. Consumers are apparently willing to trade the space and luxuries of the suburbs for the dense vitality of cities. Zoning regulations play a crucial role in defining and maintaining the character of urban areas. And, as Landsman correctly notes, new construction in cities with careful regulation, rigorous review, and community activists is likely to command a higher price than in cities that allow development to proceed haphazardly. In this sense, zoning laws, like scarcity of land or the cost of construction, represent a fundamental part of a property’s value.

The Republicans will continue to control the federal government, and will still be in power when stem-cell based cures for diabetes and multiple sclerosis are developed in (respectively) South Korea and France, in 2016.

Throughout 2016, Fox News will feature investigative report after investigative report about the “fetus mills” being used by “shadowy European and Asian conglomerates,” but will be surprisingly uninterested in the fact that most of them are partly owned by American pharmaceutical companies.

In early 2017, A bill will be introduced in the House to impose economic sanctions on all nations that participate in “fetal slavery,” but will fall short of the 60-vote majority needed to break a Democratic filibuster.
 
…Shortly thereafter, in 2020 or 2021, the remnants of the liberal media will start running news stories about prominent Republicans and their family members who “snuck away” to Europe and Asia in an effort to secretly avail themselves of the stem-cell based medical treatments for diabetes or MS that are legally available to them overseas.

This will result in proposed Republican legislation to imprison anyone found guilty of “implicit fetucide” while abroad, and proposed Democratic legislation to lift the ban on stem-cell treatments. Neither bill will pass.

By 2023, the Federal government will order the Centers for Disease Control to stop collecting data on the statistical incidence of specific diseases in the American population, citing the expense of such studies, their limited scientific utility, and “privacy concerns.” The left-leaning blogosphere will resonate with rumors that the decision was politically motivated. Rumors will circulate, also, that American life expectancy at birth is now 15 years shorter than the rest of the industrialized world and dropping…

Actually, it’ll probably be a genetically tweaked version of your 18-year-old self.

Unless, of course, you didn’t like yourself at 18, in which case you’ll have to shell out some extra $$ for an immune-suppressed version of someone you DO want to be.