Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun. – Georg Büchner
Well, I’m done with my guest blogging gig at The Agitator; the August crew started on Wednesday, and there will be a third group in September. It was a great experience for me; though it meant a lot of extra work, it allowed me an opportunity to get the message out to a much larger crowd than usual. Radley suggested I use the opportunity to plug my blog as well, and that worked out fabulously: I broke traffic records three times in the first week of guest blogging, and the high point now stands at 4959 visits on July 10th (which was quite a nice anniversary present!) Some of those turned into new regular readers, to whom I bid a warm welcome; I think y’all are going to enjoy it here.
Speaking of enjoyment, I discovered a new source of it while guest blogging: constructing links columns. Radley does one nearly every day, so I continued his tradition by publishing three of them a week; as you may have noticed over the past few Sundays, I had fun thinking of “teaser” phrases intended to make y’all curious enough to click the links. So much fun, in fact, that I’m loath to give it up, so I won’t; as part of my gradual decrease in workload I will henceforth post a links column each Sunday. This will not replace the “That Was the Week That Was” columns, but will instead act as a supplement to them; the items featured there will mostly be non-hookery things I found interesting that week, and a few sex work items presented without much comment. If you’ve enjoyed the last few Sunday columns, these will be more of the same except presented without introductory comments in most cases. And since I can compose the columns during the week while going about my usual internet-canvassing, I can essentially decrease my workload by 14% while still giving y’all a column every day and providing fodder for interesting comment threads.
I only published one new column over there this week, “The Differences That Aren’t”; it’s an answer to those who feel I’m being disingenuous when I say that sex is no different from any other human activity. I also published two links columns, whose contents are below:
- The cat who walks through surveillance.
- Nightmarish conditions at a US-funded military hospital in Afghanistan are covered up by US military officials. Don’t look at these pictures unless you have a strong stomach.
- In Chicago, cops can steal your car by claiming to discover even a tiny amount of marijuana on one of your passengers.
- The conversion of a climate-change skeptic.
- TSA concludes that babies and American G-men are unlikely to blow up airplanes.
- Fellow guest blogger Ken White on why the freedom to express a negative reaction to another’s speech is just as important as the speech itself.
- The apes are rising.
- Welcome to our world.
- Six important sci-fi ideas that were invented by a hack.
- Marines catch “deserter” – five years after his honorable discharge.
- Louisiana teachers’ union threatens to sue private schools that accept vouchers.
- Do 3-D printers make prohibitions impossible?
- Today’s edition of “never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.”
- The most important trade agreement that we know nothing about.
- Cop chastises man for not being grateful that said cop harassed and humiliated him and frightened his daughter.
And last but not least, here are a few items I’ve collected since Tuesday:
- Cop tases 12-year-old girl because her mother has unpaid traffic tickets.
- Mississippi man somehow manages to “commit suicide” with a pistol in the back seat of a police car while his hands are handcuffed behind his back, after being searched twice.
- Read this Harvey Silverglate article carefully, then think long & hard about what one-issue folks call a “War on Women”. (Here’s background on the Gibson Guitar story.)
- A fine example of modern American fascism.
- Lost Dr. Who episodes recovered from deep space.
- In for a penny, in for a pound.
- OK, I’m impressed.
- Bay Area home-invasion robbers targeted Asian escorts.
- A little good news: ACLU stops police robbery gang in Texas.
LMFAO! You’ve been saying that for over a year!! My invasion of Sweden is more REAL than your reduction in workload, my dear! 🙂
Need to clarify the issue with the “military” hospital in Afghanistan. This is not a hospital that treats American soldiers. This is not a hospital that is run by Americans. This is a hospital that is staffed and administered by the Afghan government which treats Afghan soldiers (as well as other Afghans).
The US involvement here? Well – we kind of “fund” that operation. And – as usual, we throw money at a problem and people get rich (Afghan elites) while the goal of spending that money is sorely missed (to say the very least).
Basically, what happened here was we threw money at this problem, which was siphoned off and stolen by Afghan “elites” while their countrymen who were fighting for their freedom were left to rot in this hospital. A very similar thing happened with the regime of Chang Kai-shek in China before the fall of the Nationalist Chinese Government. His top officials were corrupt – and support sent to him by other governments to fight the communists was essentially stolen by the “elites” in his organization.
I’m not excusing the American commander here. He was responsible for overseeing this money and he should spend a long time in jail imo – but he won’t. Like any other officer – he’ll just be retired, and probably with full retirement pay.
The war is Afghanistan is a stalemate at this point, and we have three choices …
1. Get the fuck out and allow the Islamoidiots to use it again as a base to regroup and launch attacks against the west.
2. Continue to fight the war – as we do now – and just accept the fact that we’re going to sacrifice a certain number of our young men and women to policing this damn place.
3. Find another tactic.
I favor finding another tactic – and I think I have one, but it’s complicated and I won’t elaborate on it here. For a cruder tactic … I’d be good with just allowing all the American men who have the nuts to go in and fight it out hand to hand with the Tally’s – and the loser of that great big “cage match” goes the fuck away. I’d volunteer for that in fact.
For balance … here … this is Taliban in action … and this is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil …
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/taliban-calls-murder-of-woman-idiotic-and-horrific.htm
Don’t believe the denials … they did it and I witnessed them do similar things when I was in Afghanistan. We have video of them shooting women in the middle of soccer matches from when THEY had total control of the country. This is the way they operate.
No, seriously, I really am decreasing; it’s just extremely gradual. There’s no way I would’ve had time for that Agitator guest blogging last July. If you can’t tell I’m doing it, that’s exactly what I want! 🙂
Krulac,
The US military has not fought for anyone’s “freedom” since WWII. The military fights for corporations, particularly oil companies. Don’t believe that? Well then take the word of Smedley Butler, who served as a general in the military before he retired. Before he died he wrote this essay, “War is a Racket”. You can read it for free on the internet. Do a google search and you’ll find it. It will be far more enlightening than reading that paid hack Michael Yon.
I assume you’re arguing about this statement I made?
Since I only mentioned the word “freedom” once – I assume that’s what you’re talking about – and in this – the “countrymen” who are fighting for freedom are Afghans, Susan – not Americans. There were NO Americans in that hospital.
Also – Afghanistan has no oil – only opium. So I suppose we went there to fight for the drug cartels?
Why people tend to believe the crazed rantings of people like Smedley Butler is beyond me. Literally hundreds of thousands of military people disagree with him but … yeah, okay.
By the way – he was the one who claimed that FDR would be overthrown by the military industrial complex – using armed army vets and retirees.
It never happened – but some people still give this quack credibility.
By the way – let nothing I’ve said be considered a defense of how we’ve conducted the war in Afghanistan – we’ve fucked that up pretty good.
I’d like to point that Smedley Butler was writing in a very different era where the US military was definitely not fighting for other peoples’ freedom.
So his ideas don’t apply to Afghanistan, because it’s not actually a war for corporation profits, but there is still an element of truth to his criticisms of American foreign policy in his era.
And, I’m not trying to make any thing of it, but just hundreds of thousands of people disagree with someone doesn’t actually mean that person is wrong. Yes, the majority can be in the right, but you’re wondering why people don’t think the majority is correct, merely because there are so many of them.
“Literally hundreds of thousands of military people disagree with him but … yeah, okay.”
Hey, if you want to believe that your fighting for “freedom”, be my guest. But Butler was an honorable, retired general, not some obscure crackpot. You can’t dismiss him THAT readily.
and the worst thing is that things dont go so well with Iran and im very much afraid that another war will follow soon.its a pity that soldiers in the U.S are only professionals and that every adult male is not required to serve temorarily in the army,like in Greece where they are required to serve for 12 months and in times of war all men under the age of 45 would be called to serve,not just the professionals.i think it could serve as a prevention to war,since i doubt that regular people would be so eager to ”save”the world or see their loved ones being sent to ”save”it.the public opinion would probably be condemning,no matter the propaganda.
The US had the draft in the 1960s, and Vietnam happened anyway. But, there was also a ginormous anti-war movement, and I sometimes wonder if there might have been one just as big over Iraq if there had been a draft.
90% of America’s peace movement grew from Soviet money. I doubt that such a thing could be done to us now, since people can now be convicted of “aiding terrorist groups” merely for providing legal help or lobbying for a group on the banned list.
The real parallel between Iraq and Vietnam is that both efforts were futile because the majority of Americans wouldn’t let them be finished. It *is* possible to convert an enemy nation to a friend, but you have to be willing to impose colonial rule and keep it in place for 50+ years, as we successfully did to Germany and Japan after 1945. Short of that, the only way anybody is going to stop the atrocities in a country like Afghanistan is to send in the nukes and sterilize the place. (Which I don’t advocate, but I would if they were doing us the kind of ongoing harm that Israel has had to put up with.)
As it turns out, there were enormous protests over Iraq. They just didn’t get much coverage. That’s why I, along with tons of other people, thought that they hadn’t happened.
I can’t say that there were NO Soviet agencies egging on the 1960s anti-war groups, but I almost think they needn’t have bothered. Our own CIA and FBI were egging them on, to the point of actually selling them explosives, LSD, and teaching them how to make bombs. With all of that, the KGB and such could save their rubles for something useful.
I’ll go further now and say that, since nobody has even tried to provide any evidence of this Soviet funding, it probably didn’t happen.
“Teachers union threatens to sue over vouchers”.
Actually, I’m with the union on this. The whole idea of “charter schools” is to crush the teachers union, not to provide a good education for students. And it’s done with taxpayer money to boot. This is a scam, pure and simple.
On the other hand, I do think parents should be able to homeschool their kids or send them to private school
Susan,
Do you also think that parents who send their children to private schools or homeschool should be allowed to withhold the taxes that otherwise go to the teachers’ unions that are doing nothing for them? If not, then why not?
Hey can I have a crack at that? I send my one remaining minor daughter to private school – Catholic school actually. (Hey it was good enough for Maggie! :P)
Here’s the problem … yeah, I pay money that goes to the public schools and I don’t see the benefit from that because I send my daughter to a private one. However, my son – who’s single with no kids – also pays taxes that go to the public schools. It’s really not fair to exempt me unless you exempt him – and others like him also.
If you do that – you won’t have enough funding to run public schools – which I think is fine – the government should get out of public schooling.
My Mom was a public school teacher. She refused to join the unions – partly because the unions used to attempt to kill my father because he was management and had to cross picket lines during strikes. Didn’t matter to the union that my Dad was a former union member who was promoted to management. Another reason my Mom refused to join the union was … and this is a quote I heard many times from her … “I am a Professional – and professionals don’t join unions.”
Mom was hardcore old school.
why do you think there should be no public schools?not every parent has money to pay for private education.i think it would be very unfair for children to be illiterate,because their parents could not afford to send them to private schools.
Personally, I think public schools should be abolished and parents given one voucher per child to send each one to the school of their choice. Not a bullshit partial voucher; a real voucher for about half as much as the public school system spends per student, which is more than the tuition at nearly every private school in the country.
Public schools in the U.S. are NOT designed to educate; they are designed to indoctrinate, and to warehouse adolescents to delay their entry into the workforce. And that’s all they’re good for.
I think only the “customers” of education should pay for it. You and your husband have no kids – why should you pay to educate mine? That’s my main problem with vouchers.
People say I’m advocating for a “tiered” system of education where wealthier kids get better schooling than poorer ones. Yep.
I’m also arguing AGAINST the current system which basically guarantees everyone a lousy education. If we abolish the public schools – none of the private ones that fill the void will give a worse education than is available now in the public system. That’s for sure.
Let’s not overrate education too much here. I learned a lot of things in grade school – but, Junior High and High School? I’ll be damned if I can think of a single thing aside from “typing class” (which I took only to spend time with girls) that I learned anything useful from. The rest of it I just don’t use on a daily basis – I don’t have too, I’m not a rocket scientist.
I never graduated from college (only went there to spend time with girls). I still make as much money as my wife does – and she IS a rocket scientist and between the two of us – we’re considered “rich” by the standards of Obama’s Democratic Party – who plan to tax the hell out of us.
MY RANT ON TAXES: All the liberals seems to LIKE “progressive” tax schemes. What’s so “progressive” about taxing a rocket scientist who sits at a desk every day and goes home to his wife every night at the same rate I’m taxed? I only make as much as the rocket scientist because of my overtime – which I earn by deploying on ships at sea in frigid climates; or extremely hot ones … or fighting off mosquitoes in a tent on the Zambezi … or trying to stay warm in an arctic ice camp. Muthafucker – I got some kind of flesh eating “virus” on my arm last year in the Baltic Sea and the docs couldn’t even chase it away for four weeks and I worked through the whole affair and never could keep the wound free of sea water – which just made it worse. A doc in Iceland finally cured it by giving me some kind of antibiotic – what he called “This is the strongest shit in the world!”. LOL – well … it worked.
Top it off – my overtime PAY is “capped” … but I’m still required to work hours beyond that cap to meet the mission goals. So I work hours that I don’t even get paid for.
Hey – I chose this life – I’m not complaining – I would do it for half the pay I get now because I love it. But still – is it fair that I earn my money this way and others earn an equal amount in a lot easier ways but pay only the same taxes that I do? No – it’s not fair – and OWS doesn’t have shit to say about that! 😛
I think everyone should pay the same taxes regardless. Taxes are the cost of citizenship – and it ought to cost everyone equally to be a citizen. We got almost 50% of the population not paying taxes – and that’s unsatisfactory.
And damn it – I’ll bet you to high heavens that some in that 50% who don’t pay have college degrees whilst I do not.
here the lower classes pay taxes high as fuck,while the richest people in the country evade them with no problem.
Which isn’t too very far from what happens here. The whole ‘half the people don’t pay any taxes at all OMG OMFG AH AH AH!!!11!!!eleven!!!111!!!’ bullshit is a damned by God lie. They don’t pay FEDERAL INCOME TAX. Newsflash, world: that isn’t the only tax there is. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and a few others besides. Meanwhile, General Electric (which is a “person,” apparently) not only payed nothing in federal income taxes, but got money back from the federal government. That’s right: they paid LESS THAN ZERO taxes. And they aren’t the only ones.
But even GE paid payroll taxes, sales taxes, and a few others.
About who does and who doesn’t benefit from public education: you and I and everybody who either doesn’t have kids or sends their kids to private school or locks their kids in the basement or whatever benefits from an educated populace and from kids who aren’t wandering the streets while mommy and daddy are out working for a living. Our public education largely sucks, but it doesn’t have to. Teachers’ unions? Oh hell yes, but political pressure groups also. It isn’t the teachers’ unions pushing creationism oh excuse me intelligent design and ab-only sex-ed.
If you want to educate children, you give them a voucher for about the amount you suggested. If you want to break the teachers union, you give a bullshit pittance.
Yeah, sure you can. You can also withhold taxes paying for roads and sidewalks. But don’t you dare use the roads and sidewalks, then.
Susan,
As an example, up until about 12 years ago our state Fish and Game was funded by license fees. No access to the general fund. Well they’d been doing a really crappy job for the last 10 years before that and people had stopped buying licenses, so they appealed to the legislature to get access to tax funds.
Guess what. Their budget is about 3 times bigger, funded by non-users and they still do a crappy job.
As far as the roads go, there is an excise tax on gasoline that goes for that, both state and federal. Ditto the excise tax on tires. So you are paying the taxes for roads if you’re paying for the means to actually drive on them.
Starting back in the late 80’s there have been groups of congresscritters, both parties, that want to drop the Highway fund into the general fund. I think that you can figure out what’s going to happen.
I think we would be better off with user fees and excise taxes that make the users pay for the things they use rather than the general populace. It would be more efficient and it would limit the role of political pull in gov’t. But the trend seems to be toward evermore dropping everything into one pot and the letting the most connected reap the benefits. I mean, after, Social Security started out as an annuity in a lock box. That lasted about 8 years and was so blatant that by the late 50’s SCOTUS had rule that a citizen did not have a property right in his Social Security. In other words, it ain’t yours. It’s Congress’s and they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
No the idea is to provide a mechanism for parents and students to influence for the better. The scam is taking money from people through taxes then providing a product that can’t stand up to competition.
The teachers union needs to be crushed, both for what they’re doing to kids and for what they’re doing to the whole political system. Search Reason.com for plenty of examples.
Maggie,
I read your posts from Saturday, and under the section “This week in 2010”, “Genesis of a Harlot”, I read the three parts. It answered a lot of the questions that I would have liked to have asked you.
I wished that you would have picked a different mate back in 1987. I wished that from that time on, you could have enjoyed your work as a librarian, could have gotten started on your writing, and had a supportive husband that was proud of you. I wished that your life would have been full of common, ordinary, housewife pursuits like buying houseplants, taking the dog to the vet, getting the house painted, planning vacations, and nothing more stressful than that.
I wished that I could have crossed paths with you. I looked at your timeline, and thought about what you were doing in each of your years, and what I was doing in each of those years. In 1999, when you started stripping, I was successful in my career, and began going to strip bars, because I worked from 7 to 7, and did not have the chance to socialize with women. I was actually looking to find a strippper that I got along with, and could propose some way to see them outside of work.
As I sit here thinking about it, there is no use in regretting not ever having met a girl like you, because there probably aren’t any.
I started stripping in September of 1997, and quit in early November of 1999. As for the rest…I don’t wish it could’ve been different. The universe unfolds as it must, and I’m where I need to be; had things happened differently I wouldn’t be who I am now.
Maggies story is not one filled with regret,in fact if you follow her one year ago column link,you will find that she missed her job when she quit.i really dont understand this tendency to cast sex workers into the role of the victim.care to ask your waitress next time you order coffee if she wanted her life to be different?all the drama and hysteria always about what has to do with sex.im a pso and i got mad when i had”our fucking economy”followed by a look of pity when i told my friends what i do for a living.id rather have ”you fucking whore”followed by a look of disgust.wish another life for the poor souls who work in fast food restaurants,factories and mines for virtually nothing.
Ain’t that the truth! I can’t even imagine watching the day slowly creep by, working like a dog, to make an amount comparable to my cancellation fee – then to watch as the government steals a quarter of it and only gives some of it back later after I beg and plead for my own money (and even then they keep the interest). And on top of it all, to have to dance to some asshole boss’s tune? No, thanks. Sex work is real work; it’s that other crap which is degrading and exploitative.
what i found weird was that when i told the same friends that im seeing a 47 year old man mostly because of the gifts and the luxurious life he gives me,two of them congratulated me for being smart and the other said”damn,youre all the same”(he meant women)in a joking way.none of them looked at me with pity.why when youre whoring with one man,youre smart and when you do it with many youre a victim?
For the exact same reason that one of the most dangerous, addictive drugs is both legal and has a whole romance built up around it, while far less dangerous drugs are demonized and lied about with a lot of nonsense propaganda. And that reason is, most people are incapable of logic and never question what they’re told by “authorities”.
Maggie,
The only bad thing about the ACLU robbery suit was that it wasn’t criminal and the perps didn’t end up in federal prison for violation of civil rights under color of law.
Until we start jailing cops for violating the rights of citizens, this will continue.
But kudos to the ACLU for doing what was within their power. It’s a start.
I’m pretty sure the Dr. Who from space story was a practical joke. Check the byline date. Having some experience in radio astronomy, I can tell you that the story sounds impossible. Radio astronomers deliberately operate in ranges not used by television (to avoid local interference). And the antenna at Arecibo is not designed to translate TV-style modulations.
Good eye.
I did notice the byline date, but I decided to feature it anyhow. Ah, well, it’s too bad; that would have been SO COOL!
You’re telling me! Anytime a new episode is recovered — the last time was in December — all my friends e-mail me about it because they know how excited i get.
What I’m waiting for is the day the BBC starts packaging the 4th & 5th Doctors properly, by season rather than by story.
This week, I learned that it’s possible for a socialist to be in favor of laissez-faire free market economics.
OT: Just ran across this… Bilistiche is a courtesan who won chariot races in the 264 Olympics (and may have been the only female winner…).
Maggie,
Ocean front condominiums. Not everyone can afford to own one. But they can afford to rent one for a week. How do you maximize the amount of time a rental is rented? Timeshare. Everyone knows what week they get each year, and they know what they are going to get, they look forward to it. I know you are retired. But if you weren’t retired, right now you could probably sell out every week of the year if you wanted to, with everyone paying up front. It might make you less money than seeing multiple clients each day, but it would be a different experience. For the guy, it would be like looking forward to, and actually getting to have, a honey moon week, each and every year.
That sounds absolutely dreadful; all of the disadvantages of marriage, with none of the advantages. Ick.
Paging Dr. Johnson…
“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures”
Coolest story, by far and away, is, without doubt, …
Maggie, maybe you can guess, …
The Doctor Who recovered signals from space. That’s beyond the most amazing thing ever. Talk about being rescued from the very edge of obscurity and gifted back to humanity on the whispered breath of the Universe.
If you know the story of the lost episodes, this makes literally the most fantastical and hallucinogenic addition to the saga. It’s pure genius.
It’s so incredible, I literally had to sit up at work and stare for ten minutes. The universe is more miraculous it baffles the imagination over and over again.
Yours in serendipity.
Unfortunately, our resident astronomer is of the opinion that it’s a hoax. *sigh* 🙁
The story about the 3-D printer is pretty awesome. This is only going to get better/worse, depending on what’s being printed and how one feels about that particular item.
It’s also going to destroy most of the manufacturing economy. We are going to have to divorce income from labor; we are going to have to move on from the notion that people must “work for a living.”