meehawl

Possibly Related? Strom Thurmond Expires

So with the US Supreme Court deciding that the State can have no involvement in private physical relations between consenting adults, non-exclusive vaginal-penile sexual relations are now legal in Michigan. That’s a relief, especially when visiting the in-laws. And probably french tickers are okay as well, but I have no firm evidence for that one. Where now can we go in the world for some relaxing hours of muff diving with the added thrill of lawbreaking? There’s a few holdouts, but most of them seem to be very hot places, with little AC.

FYI, these are the US States where it was formerly illegal for non-exclusive vaginal-penile genital contact between opposite-gender or same-gender sexual partners:
Alabama
Florida
Idaho
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
North Carolina
Puerto Rico
South Carolina
Utah
Virginia

And these were the US States that specifically discriminated against same-gender sexual partners:
Kansas
Missouri
Oklahoma
Texas

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$15 Amazon gift card for registering your Mastercard number with Amazon. I don’t see why not! Except for more spam, I guess.

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We were saying it back in March, but it’s nice to see some more solid evidence replace rumour:

Also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled Shulsky’s–and which has not previously been reported–prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon’s office, not inside Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad–which prides itself on extreme professionalism–had views closer to the CIA’s, not the Pentagon’s, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa.

Earlier here.

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Work on the basis that each placenta weighs approximately 1/6 of the baby’s weight. To prepare a placenta, cut the meat away from the membranes with a sharp knife. Discard the membranes.

Roast Placenta

1-3lb fresh placenta (must be no more than 3 days old)
1 onion
1 green or red pepper (green will add colour)
1 cup tomato sauce
1 sleeve saltine crackers
1 tspn bay leaves
1 tspn black pepper
1 tspn white pepper
1 clove garlic (roasted and minced)

Method
(Preheat oven to 350 degrees)
Chop the onion and the pepper & crush the saltines into crumbs.
Combine the placenta, onion, pepper, saltines, bay leaves, white and black pepper, garlic and tomato sauce.
Place in a loaf pan, cover then bake for one and a half hours, occasionally pouring off excess liquid.
Serve and enjoy!

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Ingredients:
1 fresh placenta, prepared as above
1 tblspn butter
1 large can tomato puree
2 cans crushed pear tomatoes
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tblspn molasses
1 bay leaf
1 tblspn rosemary
1 tspn each of: salt, honey, oregano, basil, and fennel

Method:
Cut the placenta meat into bite-sized pieces, then brown quickly in the butter and olive oil. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 1-1.5 hours. Serve. Yummy!

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This indicates that the Iraqis were hiding heavy weaponry within residential areas. I wonder what the US military’s urban defence doctrine has to say about artillery placement and residential areas? But I digress. Anyway, I think journalists are prone to declare every large missile platform they see a “Scud” – I am not aware of any confirmed Scud sightings. If she is correct in her description of the Pentagon’s statement, then they obviously later backed away from admitting deliberately targeting civilian areas to avoid responsibity for any of the marketplace massacres.

After the first marketplace bombing we heard there had been a hit and we were able to go there in our own vehicle. We got lost and a couple of blocks from where the two missiles had hit there was a Scud missile launcher with a Scud on top. We then realised the Iraqis were hiding Scuds in residential areas. If I’d said that I think we would have been thrown out the next day” … the American military issued a statement about the marketplace bombing, saying they had been aiming at eight or nine missile launchers in the area. However, the Americans later retracted this statement.

And what happened to the “investigations” that the Pentagon promised, repeatedly, were ongoing?

WHENEVER REPORTERS asked about civilian deaths in the invasion of Iraq, US military officials reflexively plunged into a numbing prattle about the precision of our weaponry, precaution to avoid needless carnage, and promises to investigate possible mistakes.
…
Two and a half months after the prattle, we now have the terrible truth. There never was an investigation. That fact was embedded (pun intended) in an Associated Press report this week that it has so far counted 3,240 Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion, including nearly 1,900 in Baghdad. The AP quoted Central Command spokesman John Morgan confirming the nonexistence of an investigation.

Earlier here.

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“The administration wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more secure,” said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. “As an insider, I saw the things that weren’t being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out.” … The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, he said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States’ counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits … He thinks the war in Afghanistan was a job begun, then abandoned. Rather than destroying al Qaeda terrorists, the fighting only dispersed them … “if you’re looking at things from a political perspective, it’s easier to go to war.” … “[the White House culture] is a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There’s almost a religious kind of certainty. There’s no curiosity about opposing points of view. It’s very scary. There’s kind of a ghost agenda.”

Earlier here.

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One of the core postulates of social psychology is that our perceptions of the world are not absolute, but instead constrained and filtered by the webs of discourse within which we exist. The Platonic ideal of form over substance is a convenient, reductionist fiction. Ideological pressure, conscious or unconscious, can indeed convince us to emit signs of a particular, preposterous flavour. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

a Los Angeles Times poll showed that 59 percent of respondents were convinced, despite all available evidence, that Saddam was either partly or mostly responsible for Sept. 11.

a third of respondents in a University of Maryland poll believed that [WMD] have been uncovered.

A fifth of those polled think Iraq actually used [WMD] in the war.

Half of those polled believed Iraqis were among the Sept. 11 hijackers who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But none of those 19 hijackers came from Iraq. Most were from Saudi Arabia.

“Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention,” Kull said, “this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance.” In other words, they won’t accept facts that conflict with their biases. Kull said most of those who believed weapons had been found were supporters of the war.

‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’
‘Yes,’ said Winston.
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
‘Four.’
‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?’

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The Bush administration took office pledging to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House. And it’s true: Bush has not gotten caught having sex with an intern or lying about it under oath. But he has engaged in a pattern of deception concerning the most fundamental decisions a government must make. The United States may have been justified in going to war in Iraq–there were, after all, other rationales for doing so–but it was not justified in doing so on the national security grounds that President Bush put forth throughout last fall and winter. He deceived Americans about what was known of the threat from Iraq and deprived Congress of its ability to make an informed decision about whether or not to take the country to war.

Earlier here.

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