MEMORIES

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I just found this photo in long forgotten file within my computer:

I took it in 1984.  I was in a bar located in a bad part of Paris. I was really, really drunk, and I saw this really pretty girl. So I went up to her and told her I wanted to take a photo of her with her hands over her face.

“Pour quoi? ” she asked.

I distinctly remember her asking that, but I don’t remember what I said in response. I seem to recall it wasn’t very polite.

Years later I photoshopped it into what you see now.

Can’t say I wasted my youth, eh?

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THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS WAR

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I consider myself a Republican, conservative Christian man of faith. The problem is that I am Greek Orthodox, which the vast majority of the GOP base does not recognize as being Christian.

I cherish my freedoms, including the freedom to worship the Almighty the way I want. I will be damned if anyone is going to use the political process to impress their religious views upon me – and that is exactly what thehNew Republican Party is hell-bent on doing./

At it’s heart, this conflict is about the same things that caused and fueled the European religious wars of past centuries as well as every Jihadi’s fervor.  This conflict is about power and hate – in particular, the power to hurt those you hate.

The New Republican Party hates women.  Allow me to rephrase that – it hates independent, educated, thinking women who work outside of the home. Let’s call them modern women. And the reason why they hate these women is because their social, intellectual, economic and sexual independence violates a myopic interpretation of antiquated religious doctrine that has nothing to do with the central message that Jesus came to us to teach.

The New Republican Party is waging a war on modern women, and they have corrupted Jesus to do it.  They want to force women out of the job market, out of public life, out of graduate school and back into the four walls of the male dominated homes where ancient Semitic women were imprisoned and enslaved.

The revolutionary message central to Jesus’ teachings – and the reason the political system of his day murdered him – is charity, freedom and love.  This American crusade against women is about selfishness, control and hate.

And, to get the power to hurt the women they hate, these American Taliban have taken over and corrupted the GOP.  They support insurance coverage for Viagra to foster men having sex, but they are dead-set against insurance coverage for contraception or the use of tax dollars to pay for an abortion.

And who pays the ultimate price for this draconian scheme?  Women.  Like a male chimpanzee, a man has recreational sex and then walks away.  The women pays the price for that mutual decision by having no choice but to carry that embryo to term and then raise that child by herself.  She cannot work. She cannot go to school. She cannot participate in any meaningful way in the political process.  She is back where she belongs.

And what is the New Republican Party’s solution to this horrible conundrum?  Just ask Rick Santorum. He will tell you with absolute certainty that his solution is not just correct, but pleases God.  His solution is, essentially, to outlaw sex for any other purpose than procreation.  If Santorum, and the millions of right wing Americans who support him, get their way, the power of government can and should be used to make sure that every single time two people have sex they had better be prepared to have a child, and if they don’t want a baby, then they simply better not have any sex.

This is only one example of what the New Republican Party wants to do to America.  They want to use the power of government to force each and every one of us to live lives no different than the Puritan’s lived in Salem back in the 1600’s.  They pick and choose among the ideals of our Founding Fathers, agreeing with the freedom to bear arms but disagreeing with the separation of church and state.  They want our every day lives, what we do in the privacy of our own homes, to be regulated, to be dominated, by their perverted view of Christian values.

They are masters at self-deception and outright lying.  They try to minimize what they are doing by calling it “social issues.”  When the world found out that the Virginia legislature – dominated by right wing religious fanatics – was passing a bill that would force every woman who wants an abortion to first get a big stick shoved up their vaginas, the outcry was so powerful that those responsible for that repulsive law scurried around like the cockroaches that they are and revised the law.  And the governor of Virginia expressed his disappointment that Virginia’s consideration of a “social issue” would get such a negative reaction.

One person’s social issue is another person’s freedom.  By legislating social issues, the New Republican party is trying to take away everyone else’s freedoms.

Our founding fathers were personally aware of the wreckage the European religious wars caused.  For thirty years, what is now Germany was the battlefield for protestant armies fighting catholic armies. Thirty years.  Our founders decided to spare the people of the new nation they were creating that same pain.  To do it, they manufactured, for the first time in world history, a nation where people could worship God any way they wanted, so long as that worship didn’t mix with political power.

But that separation of church and state our founders created no longer exists.  Santorum – who could actually be elected our next president – actually states publically that there should be no separation of church and state.

The result is going to be the very war the Founding Fathers sought to avoid.  But what the hell. As Tom Petty sang, everybody’s had to fight to be free.

I am prepared to fight to keep these people out of my bedroom and out of my wife’s vagina.  What are you prepared to do?

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HEADLINE – Russia Elevates Warning About U.S. Missile Defense Shield Plan

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MOSCOW — Russia will deploy its own missiles if the United States moves forward with its plans for a missile-defense system in Europe, President Dmitri A. Medvedev warned on Wednesday.

“If you set up a system designed to shoot down missiles, we will target our missiles at those bases,” Mr. Medvedev said.

“We realize your system will shoot down our missiles, but that’s all we’ve got,” Medvedev added.

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