MsGuy

Pay Up!

Hito, I'm so happy to see you're back. (and no, don't ever give up on your Prince Charming.)

Way too many steroids for me. And actually I prefer the ears natural w/o any metal. And, honestly, don't you think he looks more dumb than dumbo? But other than that, hey, why not?

The real reason Grandma finds herself in urgent need of a husband. Unless she's been messing around with Mr. Justice Alito, the Supreme Court ain't got nothing to do with it.

About 17% of voters surveyed report that gay marriage is a "very important" issue for them. That's 17% total including both for and against so it's just not of sufficient weight to be all that useful as a wedge issue for either the Dems or the Repubs. So why are the Dems all embracing the Supreme Court ruling and so many Repubs are trying to back away from the issue? You think maybe their deeply held personal convictions have suddenly evolved like a certain South Carolina governor 'evolved' last week on the issue of the Confederate battle flag? Yea, me neither. Which still begs the question of what environmental factor might be driving this evolution of views by so many pols. Why are Dems rushing to embrace us and so many Repubs rushing for the door? This statistician thinks he's found the answer. He thinks that while gay marriage is no longer useful as a wedge issue, it does act as an important threshold issue. Seems that even those people for whom our issue is of minor importance in and of itself find folks who carry on against it off-putting. Rant on against gay marriage and they just tune you out on other issues you might well expect to be able to reach them on. Don't know if that is right but it does kinda explain the recent behavior of our pols.

And would he have had anything posted that would have drawn an "Oh, my!" from Sandra Day O'Conner? [sen. Ted] Cruz served as a law clerk to then Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. One day, he was standing behind Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. “We were in front of a large computer screen gazing at explicit, hard-core pornography,” Cruz wrote. The reason? The court was considering a case challenging a law that regulated online porn. The clerks were older and not well-versed in the Internet, so court librarians set up a tutorial for the justices and their clerks on how easy it was to find porn online. Cruz watched as the librarian typed in the word “cantaloupe,” though it was misspelled. “A slew of hard-core, explicit images showed up onscreen,” he wrote. “As we watched these graphic pictures fill our screens, wide-eyed, no one said a word. Except for Justice O’Connor, who lowered her head, squinted slightly, and muttered, ‘Oh, my.’”

My spirit is willing but my mind is weak. I'd blame it on the low blood oxy but I'm starting to suspect old-timers. Sadly, the flesh is weak too. Besides my cousin the doctor said he would cut me off my viagra if I didn't promise not to double & triple up on the dose. Something about catastrophic blood pressure drop, medical board investigations and losing his drug license or some such bull shit.

Fuck Sprayberry, I just want to know where I can be 16 again.

Please take a look at my post #4 in the other marriage equality thread.

Jgoo, underlying all the legal reasoning (both for and against marriage equality) lies a fundamentally different perception of homosexuality. If you see Gays pretty much as regular people trying to get on with their lives, then the equal protection arguments will make intuitive sense to you. If you see queers as ridiculous & kinda creepy perverts, then it's obvious to you that their lives are subject to regulation at the whim of normal people. Maybe I'll get some guys here pissed off with me for saying this but a perfectly sound legal argument can be constructed both for and against equal protection for gay people. Which argument will appeal to you depends largely on how you think about gays on a much more fundamental level than legal rationalizations. And yes, RA1, that's the way legal reasoning really works. Because that's the way the human reasoning process works. If you don't buy this, just go back and actually read Plessy vs. Ferguson or the Dred Scott decision. They're both actually fairly readable.

A long time ago someone said "Brazil is the country of the future...and always will be", meaning that no matter how bright things might look at any given time, Brazilians would find a way to fuck things up. Brazil has a long, long history of dizzy booms, followed by sharp crashes and long periods of stagnation. Let's hope for the sake of our friends down south this time will be different.

Well, I guess I'm going to have to break my iron clad rule against giving money to pols I don't know personally and ship ole Hillary a few bucks. 5 to 4? And the consevatives, each and every one, making a point of individually denouncing Kennedy's opinion from the bench? Justice Ruth, bless her feisty little heart, just doesn't have 10 more years left in her.

Well, sometime between tomorrow (Thurs.) and Monday we will know. I'm more than a little apprehensive myself. There's any number of ways this could go sideways on us. For one thing Justice Kennedy has hinted before ( in Lawrence vs. Texas ?) that he wasn't comfortable ruling on the marriage question. For another, in past cases Kennedy has shied away from explicitly holding that gays as a class are entitled to the same level of court protection ("heightened scrutiny") that racial cases, for instance, require. On the other hand, he opinions in those same cases have applied what amounts to a de facto heightened scrutiny standard, so who knows. At any rate, I don't see how he's going to rule positively for us on the marriage cases w/o admitting that he's using that legal standard. Last, finding a national constitutional requirement that all states recognize same sex marriages is a big ask from the court, pretty much on the same level as Roe vs. Wade and the Court is well aware of all the grief they let themselves in on that one. Cross your fingers on this one.

Well, I don't know much about how cocker-roaches might taste but they look nasty as hell if you squish them.

In a special press release today Rachel Dolezal offered herself as the perfect role model for closeted conservative politicians. "Just tell folks you identify as straight."

"I wonder if it's too late to change room mates."

+1 for Charlie.

Exchange student? Peace Corp? Fulbright scholarship to study the mating customs of Chech adolescents? Don't leave us hanging like that!

You must not have grown up in the South.

That's funny.

For nearly all purposes halal is the same as kosher. In the absence of a certified halal butcher, most Muslims have no problem eating kosher meat. And yes some do the job themselves but most take their goat or lamb or whatever to someone in the community better set up to handle the messy part.

For me the dogs were the main point. Who eats lamb?

That's a neat article, AS. Thanks.

Mvan1, the last thirty years or so China has spent a humongous amount of money building out an ultra modern rail transport system (some would say greatly overbuilding it but that's another question). In the course of that building binge they have developed world class rail design and construction firms. True some of the technology was initially imported but much is now home grown. The Chinese rail boom is tailing off sharply. There's just not all that much left worth building in China. A lot of spare capacity now exists in China and they are busy shopping top flight equipment around the world at bargain prices. And the government is offering very attractive financing terms if you buy Chinese gear. For a country like Brazil, cash strapped and with a very narrow market to support a domestic capacity, it makes sense to import from abroad. Witness the mess a similar 'built in Brazil' policy for oil production gear has made in the development of the Pre Sal offshore oil fields. FYI, the Chinese are trying to put together a consortium between Brazil, Bolivia (& Peru?) to build a new Atlantic to Pacific railway tailored to haul the type of stuff China buys from South America. What with the current economic conditions, the deal may fall through but, if it's done, that also will be with Chinese financing.

BBB, you're back!