MsGuy

Cute twink thugs with English accents, boy/boy sex, full bore nudity, dark and violent, true love romance...what's not to like? Thanks for the heads up, Lucky! And, yes, a bit of window dressing in a review never hurts.

Senator Ron Wyden just announced he would block the bill for this session of Congress. Full article, with short summary of bill

As you say, earmarks don't amount to a hill of beans compared to the real pork. For instance, all kinds of goodies from Highway Trust Fund money to Farm Home mortage money is allocated by state according to distribution formulas embedded in the relevant appropriation bills. Much of the down and dirty political trench warfare in Congress comes in the writing of these formulas. Interestingly enough, funding formula drafting is one of the least partizan activities Congress regularly engages in. All kinds of strange fellows find themselves on the same side of the bed. This process is absolutely opaque to the public but influences the way tens of billions of dollars are spent, i.e. in the bill that provided money to assist cities like NY, Chicago and LA with their hugh anti-terrorism costs, rural senators plugged in a funds distribution formula that resulted in Homeland Security spending billions on silly shit like Segways for my hometown. ---- By the way, the earmark restraint recently pledged by the Republicans is something of a hornswoggle of the Tea Party folks. True they are (temporarily) foreswearing the earmark process by which individual members of Congress slip appropriations into unrelated bills without even acknowledging their authorship but the exact same itemization of funds will be allowed if done through log rolling in subcommittee. There's less in the resolution than meets the eye. (So what else is new? Regardless of party, guys on the Hill live and die by pork and they are the experts in the process. The peasants are up in arms about earmarks? Sure, no problem, pal, we swear not to do "earmarks" any more. See we even signed a pledge. )

Welcome back from the dark side, Lucky!

God bless Mommy. God bless Daddy. God bless Senator Byrd for extending the Greenbush Rural Water Association branch line all the way to our house on Burning Creek Road.

RA1, when you're one of the all time Senatorial Hall of Fame champions at manipulating the appropriation process to funnel money into your home state, voters will tolerate a certain level of senility.

RA1, for the US as a whole, you are correct, of course, but individual states can sucessfully game the system. Localities with lots of military bases/contractors &/or a boat load of poor folks tend to be net winners in the tax dollar lottery while wealthier states usually wind up footing the bill. It's not a pyramid scheme, it's a wealth transfer scheme. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security recently paid for about $25,000 worth of those cute little 2 wheel Segway thingies for my tiny little rural hometown. Now how our elderly part-time night watchman riding around on a Segway to make sure the merchants downtown remembered to lock up after work contributes to our antiterrorism effort is beyond my ken, but that's the distribution formula Congress put in the appropriation bill, so we took the money. It's the fine print that counts.

The Supremes are skiddish about going full bore on constitutional protections when the King's borders (or ability to collect taxes or use the Army) is at stake. Always have been, probably always will be. All in all, they usually do the best they think they safely can. Or, as the Old Darlings themselves once put it, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

In the words of the Holy Father himself,"There may be justified individual cases, for example when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be...a first bit of responsibility." One can only wonder why this particular aspect of the use of condoms was singled out to justify a reversal of a century old opposition by the Holy See to prophylactics.

OK, you've managed to out obscure even me. What the fuck is a "Nicholasian"? The word doesn't even show up on Google. ---- Edit: Oh, that kind of Nicholasian! Sorry to interrupt.

An all American moue: As opposed to the original French version:

I strongly suspect that there remain a few shoes yet to hit the floor. I believe that some of the measures taken to avert catastrophe were wrong headed &/or awkwardly implemented. But I have not the slightest doubt that without the quick, decisive actions of the government of the United States two years back, we would now be mired in the first true world wide depression since the thirties. Thanks Uncle Sam; you did OK. PS: About a million folks associated with the automotive industry send their thanks too.

This Pierre Fitch? In all honesty, if I were a twenty something that looked like that, I'd probably be in need of a reality check myself. When you're young and pretty and gay (& not too bright?), it's awfully easy to lose your bearings.

OK, I am so compulsive I had to check this out. The 46th word business is spot on but as Shakespeare was baptised April 26, 1564, and the KJV was first published in 1611 (I can't find an exact date) it appears more likely than not that he was 47 when it came out. However, given the long lead times required for so massive a publication with the resources available in early 17th Century London, it seems likely that the translation was finalized and approved in 1610, at which time he would have been the magic 46 (I am unable to confirm this hypothesis from online sources). All of which leaves me wondering something. Who the hell was the lunatic who first figured this out?

Actually I was thinking more of this one: "You are not the Censor! This constant demagoguery is getting tiresome. My minimum age is acceptable and legal in all the states of the union. If they are old enough to be reviewed; they are old enough to be cover boy. Feel free to take your politically incorrect ideology somewhere else." This after a fairly mild post by PK to the effect that guys who could pass for 9th graders aren't the best/wisest choice for cover boy. Oh, and don't blame TY. I was the one that brought it up. ---- The new smilies are addictive. I've become a regular emoticon queen. Give me a week or two to have my fun and I'll calm down.

Anyone still remember the situation with amphetamines back in the 60's? Black mollies and white crosses (trucker dope ) were everywhere. Back then, year in and year out, the pharma industry cranked out 4 or 5 times the total amount legally prescribed in the US and nobody blinked an eye. In the early 70's, folks got tired of dealing with all those burned out speed freaks and the Feds clamped down, required the industry to reduce production to about 150% of legal demand and to keep some elementary records of who they delivered the stuff to. Problem solved (well, the transportation industry couldn't afford to reduce production to 100% of legal demand ). So what are the big pharma companies up to now? Only selling about 2 to 4 times the amount of pseudoephedrine actually used to clear up our runny noses. Their numbers, not mine. Turns out pseudoephedrine is the only precusor ingredient in the recipe for meth ( ) that you need a real factory lab to make. And guess who lobbies against any effort to place pseudoephedrine back on the list of prescription medications? "Sales of products containing pseudoephedrine in the United States now amount to nearly $600 million a year. Yet, according to the pharmaceutical industry, only 15 million Americans use the drug to treat their stuffed-up noses, and these people typically buy no more than a package or two ($10 to $20 worth) a year." Full Article Link Mind you I'm not saying that Big Pharma would ever knowingly supply the key chemical to support the meth epidemic in the US, not for a measly couple of hundred million bucks in extra profit. It would be irresponsible liberal demagoguery to suggest any such thing.

Oddly enough, Conway, I came back to this thread specifically to say just that. For the first time in my life I've begun to question whether the US political system as a whole is slipping into the kind of disfunctional fiscal craziness we see in so many states.

Hahahahaha! I can't help wondering if Buster works his way all the way down to posts like this when he googles his own name.

Hey, it ain't as easy as it looks! ---- And I have to agree with lookin. Since the last blow up (and especially since PK got dressed down by Daddy for complaining about quasi-kiddie porn poster boys and took off in a huff), things have gotten downright dull over there. I mean even Glutes' stalking of KMEM has gotten half hearted.

The board washed its hands of the matter. They were, however, quick to point out that the KKK rallies were held a few miles north of the Howell School District boundary and therefore were in no way a reflection on the good folks of Howell. ---- Thanks for the link, marcanthony! The kid was wonderful.

Well, FourAces, your thread has survived a hijack , a hijack of the hijack, drawn a number of thoughtful replies and even lured Marcanthony out of the bushes. All in all, a highly successful post IMHO.

My kind of guy! And thanks for the justusboys.com link. At first glance, it looks like a fun place.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but the main reason I have had to cut back on my posting is the lack of an onsite thumbs up emoticon. I mean think about it. I read some cool thread and want to say at-a-boy and what all but then I gotta minimize the screen and reopen IE (Google is my home page). Then I gotta sit around and think of what search term I used to find that cute smilie last time and then type it in and then, damn!, nope that ain't right so it's back to Google and then, o.k., now I found a bunch of thumbs up but which one, which one? Ooooh, I like that one, it's animated, so I copy the damn thing, and minimize the site (yeah,I know I could just maximize MER but I never remember that in time) and then click on insert image and paste in the URL and click Add Reply. And what do I find when I check out the post (I always check to see if it really posted; who in his right mind trusts the internet?)--- A fucking red X, that's what! So I hit edit and it's back through that whole routine and what now? A freaking thumb that's 24 inches wide and 48 inches deep and I'm lucky even see the tip of the thumb without scrolling for five minutes. Anyhow, that's why I'm not posting replies as much (you listening, TY?).

So here we are 9 months later and what has changed except the camera crews have moved on and a cholera epidemic has been added to the mix? The vast majority of the homeless are still living under makeshift plastic sheets. The UN buracracy has managed to build all of 150 [no, not a typo] permanant structures and erect 18,000 tents since the disaster. The majority of the people are not even being fed. In a country with at least 2 million able bodied adults unemployed there's no public works program even to clean the rubble from the streets or dig sanitary toilets. And why not? And where is all that aid money going? The off shore bank accounts of the Haitian governing elite and the UN bureaucrats might be a good place to start looking. "Why so little progress? Off the record, international aid workers blame Haiti's red tape ... and corruption. It takes an act of God, or a sizeable bribe to get aid and supplies out of the port." You want to know how you die from cholera? You shit yourself to death. You shit out so much watery gruel that you die from dehydration and profound imbalance of your blood electrolytes. Untreated the death rate is up to 40% in a matter of days. You want to know how to treat cholera? Take a bucket of clean water, stir in a couple of cups of sugar, a couple of tablespoons of sodium cloride (table salt) and a teaspoon or so of potassium cloride (the salt substitute available at your neighborhood grocery). Let the cholera patient drink as much as he can hold. Not exactly high tech medicine and it works like a charm. That's it. That's all you need to do: replace the water, replace the electrolyes and throw in some sugar to keep the guy's strength up; he will be just fine in a few days. But maybe those wonderful folks running Haiti are too tied up standing in line waiting their turn to transfer funds to their chosen safe haven. Must be some long lines these days at the wire transfer window.