Did it take you a long time to get so old, Grandpa?

quote of the day from my 8 year-old grandson... sigh...

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The "seductive mental quicksand of midlife" = Republican

today's opus...



unbelievable as it seems to me, i will be turning 60 in three weeks... yes, that's SIXTY...! SIX-OH...! i calculated my virtual age a few weeks ago and it came up 47 which, oddly enough, is pretty much how old i am feeling... all of the stereotypes of that particular age flash through my mind but absolutely none of them seem to fit... unlike opus, i don't think i will be registering as a republican any time soon...

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Sensationalization

OK, here's the wire service reporting that helped fuel the controversy:

Political storm swirls over psychology journal article on child sex 'abuse'
By Erica Goode, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE, June 24,'1999

Few people took notice last July when Psychological Bulletin, an academic psychology journal, carried a lengthy, jargon-heavy report titled 'A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.'

Nearly a year later, the study, its authors and the American Psychological Association, which publishes the journal, are at the center of a political storm.

The study concludes that the effects of sexual abuse on children are not always severe. Conservatives such as radio talk-show host Laura Schlessinger and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay have declared that the study trivializes the impact of such abuse and condones pedophilia.

Janet Parshall, a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, a fund-raising organization for social conservative causes, said the article 'gives pedophiles a green flag.' Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution in Congress in May condemning the article.

The researchers also questioned the practice, common in many studies, of lumping all types of sexual abuse together. They argued that treating all forms of sexual abuse equally presents problems that, the researchers wrote,''are perhaps most apparent when contrasting cases such as the repeated rape of a 5-year-old girl by her father and the willing sexual involvement of a mature 15-year-old adolescent boy with an unrelated adult.'

In the first case, serious harm may result, Rind and his colleagues maintained, but the second case "may represent only a violation of social norms with no implication for personal harm.'

The authors also suggested that the term 'adult-adolescent sex' or 'adult-child sex' be substituted, in some cases, for 'child sexual abuse.'

Rind, in a statement released by Temple University, said:

'Our article went through rigorous peer review in one of the most difficult journals in psychology to publish in. Even though our study has been criticized by certain persons in the media, many psychologists at academic institutions have praised it as being excellent work.'"

Hey, they've got to sell newspapers.

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this now rogue government

Two salient videos that respond to this now rogue government which has clearly gone astray, include Amy Goodman's interview of Studs Terkel on Democracy Now!

The Huffington Post/Truthout's interview of Jeremy Scahill on the exigent dangers that Blackwater poses to America, is another.

Both videos are well worth your time, by going into explaining the illegitimacy of our government, as it has been unlawfully exercising its authority.

In "DECEPTION 101 - PRIMER ON DECEPTION", it states: "there is no constitutional principle that says that the President of the United States or the Executive Branch must tell the truth." -- Joseph W. Caddell (pdf)

That perhaps explains the cheap shot that George Bush took at teenagers on Tuesday, as if any teenager has ever burned money like him. The off-hand slight appears to have been timed to set the public up for agreement that teenagers are irresponsible, concomitant with government's plans to ram through yet more laws marginalizing kids on the Internet with yet even more child apartheid bills that they are constantly and malevolently springing by the fistfuls.

Next, consider how the deception practiced by government doesn't just trade genocide for oil, or treat people like the Blacks and Native American Indians were treated; they are presumably poised to hand out billions of dollars to private cronies such as Blackwater in order to enforce their frauds. Can you imagine Blackwater with billion dollar computers? Yet additional billions and billions of dollars have gone missing alongside government's myriad deceits, so how does the common man stand against that kind of wicked, crooked and ruthless power? Aside from government's weapons of killing and torture and imprisoning and taxing, deception appears to be their next effective cudgel. Should we believe anything then, that issues from the mouths of government?

By the time people realize that the State has its own sexual appetites and it will not be happy ultimately with its cameras only in the master bedrooms, it should at that point be easier for all to see that government cameras are eventually destined for the children's bedrooms and baths, as well, so that with all this newfangled micro-management, government will know the exact moment that the children step out of line as well.

Incidentally, the record shows that laws against pornography are of historically recent advent and that the initial purpose was to keep children from masturbating at all in the first place. That surely will make former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders scowl.

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Bush mocks teenagers

In an act of monumental hypocrisy, Bush mocked teenagers, in a speech, Tuesday. (from ABC):

The president said Congress is like "a teenager with a new credit card" for wanting to spend $22 billion more than the White House would allow on nonwar-related funding bills."

Bush took the cheap shot at teenagers perhaps because he regards them as essentially powerless to object, as they are still largely denied suffrage and in most cases, cannot vote.

Bush seems to have overlooked better and much-closer-to-home examples of profligate spending such as that by those members of his own party, so notorious for sheer pork-style spending, such as that of Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska's infamous Gravina Island "Bridge to Nowhere".

Bush did manage to avoid invoking the standard and shopworn cliché of "spending like drunken sailors". Presumably, most sailors can vote.

Bush seemed to ignore his own record deficit spending while showering his wealthy and elite supporters, again and again, with fabulous tax breaks. He didn't mention the billions and billions of dollars which have virtually gone missing in his war and on his watch. He didn't mention his affinity for doling out no-bid contracts so generously to his powerful friends, either.

It remains interesting that many prominent people such as HBO's comedian Bill Maher loudly call for amending Section 5 of Article II of the Constitution to allow for Austrian-born, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President. The argument advanced, goes the same as by those that insisted that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution should be repealed, in order to allow Ronald Reagan to run for a 3rd term: "The People should be allowed to choose anyone they want to be their president."

And yet if these same proponents were intellectually honest, they would include calls for repeal of the age requirement clause in Section 5 of Article II as well. But bigots in general do not often rise above hypocrisy. As evidenced by Bush's speech as recently as Tuesday, Ageism is still as popular as ever as rampant bigotry.

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