We are so willing to let people die just to make sure we don't give out a "wrong message."

N.J. legalizes needle exchanges

New Jersey has the fifth highest number of AIDS cases in America, and yesterday became the last state to allow intravenous drug users to get clean needles, hoping it will slow the spread of the deadly virus.

Gov. Jon Corzine ended a 13-year stalemate by signing a law to permit six communities to host needle exchange sites, where clean syringes and referrals to drug treatment will be available.

Needle exchanges could save many lives. But for 13 years it couldn't be approved because people were worried that it would give kids the "wrong message," or that it would make drug use more attractive.

Well first off, I can't even count the times I've bumped into a would-be heroin addict who just couldn't get the habit because clean needles weren't readily available. We are in really bad shape if we think the way to keep people off drugs is to make clean needle availability scarce.

And give the wrong message? Hmmm... like the message that gambling is okay and fun? That I don't need to work, I just need to be lucky? I learned that from the lottery commercial.

Yes indeed - a government run gambling racket, with odds so bad you'd be arrested if you weren't working for the state.

So telling kids that the state thinks so little of them that it lets the suckers who put their earnings into lotto tickets fund their education? It seems to me that the better schools do at teaching logic and statistics the less likely they are to have future lottery players and therefore they get less funding in the future. Weird feedback loop that is.

We are so concerned about the "message" we are sending kids when we don't like the subject. Life has lots of uncomfortable subjects.

Some aren't actually uncomfortable at all really, but cause a lot of discomfort when talked about.

Say... Sex.

See you're afraid to even say it out loud.

Well some people are. And they'd rather have people die than say it.

The vaccine for some cervical cancers was delayed because people were worried it might encourage people to have sex.

Seriously is there a teen out there - in some steamed up car - who at the last moment goes "no Johnny I'm sorry, I'm thinking we should wait because having sex with you may increase, however minimally, my risk for certain types of cervical cancer."

So because of some non-existent threat that a teen somewhere may have sex, they'd rather let people die.

And - you know what - even if they had sex - would that be worse than death? (okay you in the back who yelled "depends who with" - you can leave now).

Okay - and let's get real - they are all having sex before getting married anyway. Everyone except Rick Santorum.

Most Americans have had premarital sex

NEW YORK - More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

- rob 5:46 PM - [PermaLink] -

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There was a scene in the movie A Fish Called Wonda in which a character smuggled a gun onto a plane by simply throwing it up in the air while going through the metal detector and catching it on the other side. He didn't beep, so no one noticed. The movie is a comedy. But so much of our world is these days - don't you think?

Baby is sent through X-ray machine at LAX

A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine.

The early Saturday accident — bizarre but not unprecedented — caught airport workers by surprise, even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.

A screener watching the machine's monitor immediately noticed the outline of a baby and pulled the bin backward on the conveyor belt.
...
Security experts said the incident underscored a more widespread concern about the screening process at LAX and other airports.

"The screeners are still reporting that they're being pushed," said Brian Sullivan, a retired Federal Aviation Administration security agent. "If a baby can get through, what the hell else can get through?"

- rob 5:24 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush appropriates Chanukah moral in depicting current threat from Iran

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (JTA) -- The White House Christmas tree is up, the Christmas cards have been sent, but when it comes to policy, it's beginning to sound a lot like Chanukah.

President Bush and his Cabinet have seized upon the Maccabean message of refusing to give in to tyranny to reinforce Bush's refusal to deal with Iran as a means of resolving Iraq's burgeoning crisis. In at least one closed meeting, Bush made the connection explicitly.

The message is consistent with Bush's resistance to recommendations earlier this month by the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group that the United States engage with Iran.
...
Bush said that despite declarations of piety from Muslim radicals now fighting the United States, he doubted that they believed in God.

"'Terrorists can't be God-believing people,'" Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, quoted Bush as saying.

Okay this is a quote of a quote - but does Bush or anyone really think that? Are we that out of touch with reality. Does Bush so much believe in his and others "God" marketing, that somehow belief in God will make you "good." You know like all those "good" people who burn heretics.

I can see thinking a Islamic terrorist can't be a true Muslim, because their terrorist actions are not what God would want.

Just as I think many Christians in America don't see Christian terrorists (you know the Christians that kill family planning clinic doctors and bomb the Atlanta Olympics - that is terrorism) as true Christians.

But not believing in God? No - they do. They believe God wants them to do what they are doing - that is why so many are so willing to die for it.

Terror, murder, torture - in the name of, and belief in, God is a too real phenomenom and to not understand that is to not understand reality.

- rob 5:19 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Save the Internet!

Watch the great new video

- rob 2:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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If an informed electorate is integral for a democracy to flurish, than the Bush administration is just so much weed killer.

You gotta read to believe: TPMmuckraker: Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us

- rob 4:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Rumsfeld wanted his own CIA.

Sometimes the intelligence community wouldn't reach conclusions that backed up Rummy's recommendations. So he make up his own spy group in the DOD.

It looks like the DOD also got into covert action -

US special forces clash with CIA in war on terror

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - US special forces operating overseas on secret missions have clashed with the CIA and carried out operations in countries that are staunch US allies, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website.

Citing unnamed senior intelligence and military officials, the newspaper reported that the clashes had prompted a push for tighter rules for military units engaged in espionage.
....
But the initiative has also led to several embarrassing incidents for the United States, including a shootout in Paraguay and the exposure of a sensitive intelligence operation in East Africa, according to the paper.

Look its bad enough when the CIA has a history of helping South American dictators - do we want the DOD to get into this line of business?

- rob 2:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Soot Suit

States sue EPA over soot levels - Yahoo! News

ALBANY, N.Y. - More than a dozen states sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to lower soot levels from smokestacks and exhaust pipes, a move the state officials argue would save thousands of lives.
...
Officials from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia joined New York in the action filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

We now have to sue our own government to get it to do what it is supposed to do.

But folks - presently the US government doesn't represent you. It represents Big Multi-nationals.

Here's a bit of trivia: children of execs at big Multi-nationals don't breathe or drink. At least that's what the execs seem to think.

- rob 1:54 PM - [PermaLink] -

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21st Century - thy name is irony

Firm Contracted to Build Fence on US-Mexico Border is Fined for Hiring Illegal Workers

- rob 1:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Classic Get Your War On

High times for farmers as cannabis is named America's biggest cash crop

Marijuana is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, worth more to its growers than corn and wheat combined, according to a new report by a leading American drug reform lobbyist that cites the US government's own figures.

Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. It is the leading cash crop in 12 states, and one of the top five crops in 39 states.

The report's author, Jon Gettman, says it is "larger than cotton in Alabama, larger than grapes, vegetables and hay in California, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and larger than tobacco in South and North Carolina".

Not to sound tin foil hat - but the war on drugs is nothing more than corporate welfare.

Dupont and others are happy to see Hemp (even the non-narcotic variety) criminalized, just as much as big Pharma and Tobacco are.

Seriously - do you think pot is more dangerous than Colt 45?

Meanwhile pot has been getting more dangerous and addictive since (and because of) Reagan's "war on drugs."

Oh did I mention defense contractors make a pretty penny on "the war on drugs?"

- rob 1:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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