"Lifestyle" is a buzzword in conservative Christian circles. It's a signal of the belief, and the policy position, that homosexuality is not an innate condition but a hedonistic way of living, one devoted to partying, drugs and wanton sex that ends, often, in illness and early death.
The Lifestyle: Group Sex in the Suburbs, by director David Schisgall, whose "Orange County subjects are largely conservative, suburban and patriotic. They mow their lawns, vote Republican, dote over their grandchildren, own motorboats, eat red meat, and talk about the dog and cat. On weekends they 'party' — engage in sex with similar white, married couples who have taken up 'sport fucking' as passionately as other retirees tie flies or paint watercolors."
Speaking in code 24/7 gets awfully confusing, even for those who want to goose-step to the Horst Wessel Lied.
The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.
The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.
The data will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze large amounts of data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.
"The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service," according to the official notice of the program.
[...]
Some information on high school students already is given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Recruiters have been using the information to contact students at home, angering some parents and school districts around the country.
No Child Left Behind in the perpetual campaign for Republican hegemony.
Parents, wake up. They want to kill your kids for imaginary WMDs.
Army recruiting quotas are not being met. Now, in this time of need, the nation's focus should rightfully focus on the clerics of the religious right: Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, Parsley, etc. Can they focus? Can they refocus? Can they get the job done? Perhaps many of these clerics are hesitant to focus on military recruiting because they are former unfocused draft-dodgers. They need to get past their unfocused youthful follies. They need to refocus their focus on military recruiting.
According to religious-right reports (not propaganda), at least two to three million potential recruits have attended taxpayer-funded meetings, where they have "signed" one of the most important of all pledges: No sex before marriage. These are ideal military recruits. Certainly, the clerics can make changes where the lady pledges can focus on appropriate gender-specific tasks under the focus of their natural masters. This clerical focus should focus exclusively on the Army and Marine Corps, where all the killing is focused. Let those other people (you know who I mean) populate the Navy and the Air Force.
Yes, it is important to get everyone in the world to admit that the entire universe is 6006 (some silly heretics say 6022, others 6044) years old. And, yes, it is very important to do away with all science, and all of its complications, by just letting our all-knowing clerics explain everything to us by using the simplistic, catch-all concept of "intelligent" design. And, of course, it is important to replace all judges with robots by Robertson.
But, right now, the focus needs to be on military recruiting. Our country needs to come first. It's time for our religious right clerics to focus on military recruiting. In brief, it's time to refocus the focus.
Robert N. Conley Chandlersville
He's got a point. If you're young and abstinent, you might as well be killing someone.
...I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories [evolution and "intelligent design"]. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Our Flying Spaghetti Monster, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy will be done!
Federal prosecutors have built a criminal case against KPMG LLP for obstruction of justice and the sale of abusive tax shelters, igniting a debate among top Justice Department officials over whether to seek an indictment -- at the risk of killing one of the four remaining big accounting firms.
[...]
The threat of an indictment could persuade KPMG to settle the case with substantial financial penalties under a deferred-prosecution agreement or other settlement. For Justice Department officials, avoiding an indictment could avert serious damage to KPMG -- an "Andersen scenario" that could cost thousands of employees their jobs and deprive KPMG's hundreds of clients of a choice for accounting services.
Just two weeks ago the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of the big accounting firm Arthur Andersen, which collapsed after being indicted by the Justice Department for obstruction of justice in connection with its role in the Enron Corp. scandal. The Andersen reversal also provided a reminder that the government can lose these big cases. Any trial involving accounting will be highly complex for a jury and difficult to argue for prosecutors.
[...]
The case against KPMG and some of its former executives centers on the promotion of tax shelters aimed at wealthy individuals and in great demand during the 1990s economic boom. KPMG's tax-shelter products cost government as much as $1.4 billion in lost revenue, the IRS has said.
The shelters, known by acronyms FLIP, OPIS, BLIPS and SC2, among others, were the subject of a U.S. Senate investigation two years ago. A November 2003 report concluded that "dubious tax shelters are no longer the province of shady, fly-by-night companies, ... they are now big business."
The investigation singled out KPMG, saying "although KPMG denies being a tax-shelter promoter, the evidence establishes that KPMG devoted substantial resources to, and obtained significant fees from ... potentially abusive and illegal tax shelters ... costing the U.S. Treasury billions." In the years since the shelters were exposed, hundreds of clients have settled with the IRS, turning over millions of dollars. Many clients, in turn, have sued KPMG.
So, who cares?
There are two aspects that are relevant to today's political climate. First, the government was willing to indict a company (Arthur Andersen) whose activities contributed to the financial damage of a large but limited number of private individuals and institutions (Enron employees and shareholders). Now the same government appears to be unwilling to indict a competing company whose activities contributed to the financial damage of every US taxpayer, that is, the public at large. This inconsistency suggests that the Justice Department is misnamed.
Second, this larger inconsistency, and the fact of the Andersen conviction being overturned, support one of the pet theories of this blog: namely, that the de facto destruction of Arthur Andersen (the lack of legality of the conviction doesn't affect that Andersen is now for all purposes a corporate corpse) was simultaneously a sideshow to move the heat of the spotlight from Enron senior management to its undoubtedly guilty but less pivotal auditor, as well as a cover for the vice president.
So spare us the violins if KPMG goes down. As accessory to the theft of $1.4 billion from the US Treasury, KPMG deserves a big "fuck you" sung from taxpayers from sea to shining sea.
For a trip down memory lane, you can see older posts on this topic here, here, and here. Note that one of KPMG's notorious rich tax shelter clients was none other than Terri Schiavo's ophthamologist, kitten killer Bill Frist.
26 August 2003: Florida Governor Jeb Bush asks court to appoint new guardian for Mrs Schiavo; court does not act
17 September 2003: Judge orders feeding tube removal on 15 October
22 September 2003: Parents petition Federal Court
15 October 2003: Doctors remove Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube
21 October 2003: Florida's lower house passes a law giving Jeb Bush the power to order doctors to feed Mrs Schiavo - the law is known as "Terri's Law"
22 October 2003: Doctors start giving fluids to Mrs Schiavo and a day later her feeding tube is reinserted
30 October 2003: Michael Schiavo asks Florida Court to strike down Terri's law as unconstitutional
6 May 2004: County Court rules that Terri's Law is unconstitutional and a violation of the right to privacy
23 September 2004: Florida's Supreme Court strikes down Terri's Law
4 October 2004: Jeb Bush files motion for rehearing of Mrs Schiavo's case
1 December 2004: Jeb Bush asks US Supreme court to accept the case for review
25 January 2005: US Supreme Court rejects Jeb Bush's appeal to change ruling
23 February 2005: Judge extends a last-minute stay and orders that doctors must wait for a further court ruling before removing Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube
25 February 2005: County Court judge issues a three week stay
12 March 2005: Michael Schiavo refuses an offer of $1m (£520,000) from a Californian businessman to keep his wife alive
16 March 2005: Florida Appeals Court refuses to block removal of Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube and sets 18 March 2005 as the day the tube will be removed
17 March 2005: The Schindlers file an emergency motion at the US Supreme Court to block the removal of Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube.
They say lower courts need time to consider whether their daughter's religious freedom and due process rights have been violated.
18 March 2005: The US House of Representatives and US Senate both move to block the removal of Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube - but Judge Greer rejects the manoeuvres and orders the tube removed.
20 March 2005: The Senate passes an emergency bill calling for a federal court to review the case.
21 March 2005: The House of Representatives backs the bill in the early hours of the morning, and it is signed almost immediately into law by President Bush.
22 March 2005: A Florida judge refuses to order doctors to resume feeding, on the grounds that the family is unlikely to win a new court case.
23 March 2005: A panel of appeal judges backs the Florida decision.
24 March 2005: The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an emergency appeal by Mrs Schiavo's parents, and later a Florida judge rejects a petition by Governor Jeb Bush to become her legal guardian.
Eighteen months is a long time to pander, but those Bush boys seem to have unlimited stamina for wrong-headedness (cf. George W and his limp take-it-to-the-shills campaign for Social Security privatization).
Someday we'll need to remember how profoundly Jeb Bush pandered to his perceived base, in all opposition to actual public opinion.
The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.
Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
America's powerful central banker hasn't suddenly lurched to the left of Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean. His solution is better education today to create a flexible workforce for tomorrow - not confiscation of plutocrats' yachts.
Holy shit! The stability of democratic capitalism is itself threatened by current trends in income? Oh my God! Who should we blame?
Instead of simply reporting on the facts that bolster his assertion in the first graf, Peter Grier, the author of this monstrosity, chooses to gratuitously swipe at liberals twice within the next two grafs.
Since when is Howard Dean the ne plus ultra of American leftism? Why is liberalism itself such a prominent feature of this story? Aren't talking points a more characteristic tactic of the monolithic Right than the slapdash, ineffectual Left?
Later in the article we get these gems of journalistic integrity: "So are liberals overjoyed by these words from a man who is the high priest of capitalism? Not really, or at least not entirely." Liberals overjoyed about income equality just because it's validated by Greenspan? Peter, what are you smoking?
Or this: "On the other hand, some conservatives label the whole inequality debate a myth. The media's recent focus on the subject stems from its liberal bias and clever press management by Democrats, they say."
Peter, what the fuck? Get your head out of your ass. Liberals aren't the problem — plutocrats, their yachts, and their lackeys in the press and in government are the problem.
Look in the mirror. Now look at your yacht. Don't have a yacht? Then you're a lackey. Stop kissing pork-greased plutocratic ass already.
GOP sex party. Belatedly we learn about a documentary on suburban swinging, whose "Orange County subjects are largely conservative, suburban and patriotic. They mow their lawns, vote Republican, dote over their grandchildren, own motorboats, eat red meat, and talk about the dog and cat. On weekends they 'party' — engage in sex with similar white, married couples who have taken up 'sport fucking' as passionately as other retirees tie flies or paint watercolors."
The documentary, The Lifestyle: Group Sex in the Suburbs by director David Schisgall, came out in those innocent months before the Supreme Court selected Dubya for his first term in office. Don't get me wrong, this is not disapproval of what Orange County Republican swingers are doing. My take is that consenting folks should always be free to do as they please among themselves. The problem they will face is that their conservative comrades — just like those of the Log Cabin Republicans — are on a relentless crusade to destroy their sexual privacy and their non-coercive adult enjoyments. In other words, they have partnered with the wrong political ideology, and need to wake up and realize that they are big-tent Democrats trapped in O.C. bodies.
Orgy-loving white suburban Schwarzenegger Republicans, be afraid, be very afraid: your cheery sport fucking will soon go the way of medical marijuana if the Confederate Republicans get all their sanctimonious, invasive Christmas wishes.
Mr. Donaldson clearly angered big business and some in the Republican Party with measures he pushed in his 28-month tenure. They included hefty fines for corporate wrongdoers, more independence for mutual-fund companies' boards, registration of many hedge funds' advisers and a requirement that stock marketplaces always give investors the best possible price.
[...]
In 1995, Rep. Cox sponsored the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which restricted the ability of investors to sue for securities fraud. It became law despite a veto by President Clinton, which was overridden. During his tenure in Congress, Rep. Cox has served on numerous committees that have had oversight of the SEC.
SEC critics are clearly relishing the chance to replace Mr. Donaldson with someone less regulation-minded.
If you aren't in favor of "always giving investors the best possible price," as Donaldson was, then you're against it (I'm indulging in a bit of presidential logic here), and therefore also against investors. Alternately, if you're sponsoring legislation that "restricts the ability of investors to sue for securities fraud," then you're clearly in favor of securities fraud, as Cox evidently is.
One of my criticisms of Social Security privatization has been the high fees, which suffer multiple levels of regulatory inattention (at the securities level, at the mutual fund level, at the annuities level, and so on), inattention that Donaldson tried unsuccessfully to address. The fees will eat the returns out of your accounts, enough to create substantially lower standards of living for retirees while Wall Street revels in its own calculated (and indeed legislated) inefficiencies.
So now Christopher Cox, congressional promoter of securities fraud, will head the SEC. He certainly fits the donor-beholden criminal pattern of the Bush administration much better than Donaldson did.
