(no subject)

[theweaselking]

New lemurs found.

American government laying the groundwork of lies it believes necessary to justify another invasion of another sovereign country.

As james_nicoll puts it, "It's important to remember that Libertarianism isn't just about regaining the right to own Negroes. It's also about the right to own women."

Speaking of which, rural Iraq proves that hicks are the same the world 'round.

Finally, Americans have the government they asked for. For proof, just look at the new transportation bill.

A mess of thorny devil's club and salmonberries, along with an old chicken coop, surrounds the 40-year-old cabin where Mike Sallee grew up and still lives part time on southeast Alaska's Gravina Island. Sallee's cabin is the very definition of remote. Deer routinely visit his front porch, and black bears and wolves live in the woods out back. The 20-mile-long island, home to fewer than 50 people, has no stores, no restaurants and no paved roads. An airport on the island hosts fewer than 10 commercial flights a day.

"I can take off from the homestead and walk the beach for several miles before I get to any other habitation," says Sallee, a fisherman who also operates a small lumber mill. "There's two main mountain ranges on the island and a big valley of forest and muskeg."

Yet due to funds in a new transportation bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign Wednesday, Sallee and his neighbors may soon receive a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. With a $223 million check from the federal government, the bridge will connect Gravina to the bustling Alaskan metropolis of Ketchikan, pop. 8,000.

How is the bridge going to pay for itself?" asks Susan Walsh, Sallee's wife, who works as a nurse in Ketchikan. She notes that a ferry, which runs every 15 minutes in the summer, already connects Gravina to Ketchikan. "It can get us to the hospital in five minutes. How is this bridge fair to the rest of the country?"

The Gravina Bridge is one of a record 6,371 special projects, or "earmarks," in the Transportation Equity Act, a six-year $286 billion bill that rivals the recent energy bill in its homage to the pork barrel. No politician better flaunts an ability to bring home the bacon than Alaska's Don Young. As chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Alaska's lone congressional representative for 32 years, the elder statesman wrangled $941 million for Alaska in the bill, making Alaska, the nation's third least populated state, the fourth-biggest recipient of transportation funds. The money for the bill is fed by a gas tax at the pump, but this slush fund isn't redistributed to all Americans equally: The bill spends $86 per person on a national average; it spends an estimated $1,500 on every Alaskan.

Comments

[toku666.livejournal.com]

If there are weapons in Iraq that are "clearly, unambiguously" from Iran, it's because we still have the receipt in a junk drawer at the White House somewhere.

Brilliant

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a reason I liked you, Lee.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Quote of my day. :)

Oh, yes, and ...

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

What we do, as a general rule for male neonates, and call "circumcision", is Male Genital Mutilation.
I wasn't asked.
There was no compelling medical need for the procedure.
Therefore, it was unethical, but my parents were probably misinformed by the doctors, who should have known better, so the majority of the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the medical community.

:rolls eyes:

[thormation.livejournal.com]

With the expansive spread of the Internet, I'm sure it would not be that hard for you to connect with a smegma donor to provide you with a steady supply of everything that you've been missing.

Re: :rolls eyes:

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

What you just said is an amazingly retarded thing, but pretty indicative of the side of the debate that doesn't care about male genital mutilation ... and, logically, shouldn't care about female genital mutilation, but nobody said people have to actually have rational belief systems.
If you think that the effects of an intact foreskin is completely constituted by smegma, you must be amazingly ignorant of the facts of the matter. If I tell you that having an intact foreskin means that the male gets more sensation from sexual intercourse, are you going to tell me that's a bad thing because he would climax faster? Because that'd be an amazingly retarded thing to say too, considering that a lifetime of being used to higher sensitivity would counteract any effect like that, but the fact would still remain that an intact male would have better feeling sex than a mutilated one.
Are you going to claim that laziness on the part of parents somehow justifies mutilating their infant sons? (Yes, I've actually seen that retardedly lame excuse used.) That too would be amazingly retarded, since that only shows that the people probably shouldn't be parents if they don't want to put forth the minimal effort which would be required to properly care for their intact son until such time as their son can properly clean himself.
Are you going to try to justify it by appeal to tradition? There is no tradition of male genital mutilation in the Western world priori to the early 20th century for non-Jews, which is when one misguided doctor decided to start a campaign of misinformation by telling people that "circumcision" kept boys from developing such problems as club feet or that it kept them from performing the ungodly act of masturbation.
Do you have any more gems of retarded pseudo-wisdom to share with the world?