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Categories Absurd Comical Common Sense Current Affairs Election Night Energy Fait and Begorrah Will Ye Looka Tha? Hypocrisy Lessons of History Possibilities Scumbags State The Day After Tomorrow Tragedy Your money, honey About Blog powered by Typepad Blogroll blue girl BobGeiger.com By Neddie Jingo! Diary of a Heretic DMI Blog Esprit de L'Escalier Intravenus De Milo James Wolcott John Hall for Congress Jon Swift February 18, 2009 God Hates Georgia The State University of New York is being targeted by Albany for a disproportionately deep 10% budget cut. Other state agencies face lesser cuts, and this has caused leaders of the academic community to cry foul. Turns out, SUNY has gotten off pretty easily. Were our schools located in the modest and demure redneck utopia that is Georgia, USA, they would be subject to unabashed, ideologically driven and targeted attacks against 'diversity', surely 'elitism', 'profanity' and the 'godlessness' that all good simple Christian folk hate. See, Georgia State teaches classes in Human Sexuality! Those amoral leftist perverts even have the audacity to get down low and dirty on the taxpayer's dime! Depraved Georgia colleges present offerings of classes with names like "The Social Meaning of Oral Sex". Shocking to a Georgia Peach, to be sure, but also an issue that became highly visible when President Clinton stranded oral sex at the side of the road by sternly pointing a finger and pronouncing "I did not have sex with that woman" (who gave me a bj). A class called "Queer Theory" taught at the University of Georgia defends its perversity by asserting that "the representation of homosexuals in literature and the world is a respected course of study throughout the nation". Enough to give a good ole boy the vapors! FInally, in what I'm certain was unintentionally misleading, it was said and written by a radical fellow Christian Coalition traveler in the Georgia state legislature that a third class called "Male Prostitution" was available to our innocents. One might think students were being offered a business school class covering "how to be a successful male prostitute", but there is no such class. Just a sociology/public health professor name Kirk Elifson on staff, who is an expert on male prostitution and the risk factors associated with the spread of HIV. No need to split hairs. I could easily have been a class, right? And is it wrong to make uninformed policy decisions when there is so much political capital to gain? Getting Professor Elifson fired could guarantee re-election for the ill-informed bigot leading the misleading: State Rep. Calvin Hill, the Republican vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in Georgia. In the reality based world, it is said that the cultural clash between the academic "elitists" and the softheaded know-nothings is really a battle in a fiscal war. Georgia faces a massive deficit and, rather than accept "stimulus" money, Republicans will attack and skin the institutions that offend the delicate sensibilities of their constituents. This is just another venal implementation of the old, reliable Southern Strategy that has been used by the GOP since Nixon was picking locks. Rouse the passions of the freedom-hating social conservatives and they'll storm the gates of the Ivory Towers of Academia with torches and pitchforks - even though their children - like Bristol Palin - desperately need to understand sex and sexuality in the context of a greater world than Georgia. February 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0) New Blog! After some thought, I have concluded that ridiculing the southern strategy has mostly lost its relevance, so I've begun a new blog called High Crass. The idea behind it is to ridicule members of our species whose detachment from reality is particularly crass. I hope you'll visit and give me the same hard time you gave me here :) www.highcrass.com February 18, 2009 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) January 02, 2009 Happy New Year! Welcome to 2009! 2008 was a hell of a year, wasn't it? But, we must move on - and like the song says "let auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind". Right? Yes, of course. With a few small exceptions: the Wall St. bailout funding exorbitant severance packages and the 50 year inflation protected bonds our kids and grandkids will cover to pay for them the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the War on Terror(TM) the auto industry bankruptcies the Illinois governor Gitmo Katrina The Great Depression II Deflation Unemployment Healthcare The Great Wealth Transfer Boondoggle Georgia Ukraine Gazprom China Africa China in Africa ...and the beat goes on. My New Years Resolution is to get back into this blogging game and write about them and more! What's yours? January 02, 2009 in The Day After Tomorrow | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) April 04, 2008 We Have a Dream In case you were not aware, today, April 4 th , 2008, marks the 40 th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Television, radio, print and internet journalists, publishers and pundits poured forth with memorials, remembrances and lessons borne from their experiences with, or memories of King. Jesse Jackson, in a widely published opinion piece reminded us that there is more work to be done to bring justice to all the peoples of America. That Dr. King would have been satisfied to know that today’s America – a place where the adjusted-for-inflation median income of African Americans has doubled in the time since his death – has before it a Black man and a woman leading the competition for the highest office in the land. He reminds us that America has become more like the Promised Land that Dr. King spoke of in his most famous speech. Look at our leaders! See what this country has become! Yet, we’re reminded that there’s more work to be done. Jesse Jackson is right. There is more work to be done to bring justice to these shores. There is more work to be done to bring equality to this place. Work to be done, indeed. But I believe that the time for leadership is over. I will spare you a long list of failures. I won’t remind you of the imperfect humanity that lies beneath the skin of every man and woman who seeks to lead, because their weakness, their humanity, is the same weakness and humanity as yours and mine. I believe that America has become inured to the sweet seductions of demagogues and demi-gods. We see the weaknesses in our leaders and we lose faith in them, and lose faith in their ability to lead us from darkness to light, and consequently, we lose faith in the system of leadership. We retreat to our iPods and iPhones, youtube and Colbert. We seek solace from the harsh realities that loom over us like the dark shadows of a million rain clouds. We live our lives as though there isn’t a war in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Israel, Pakistan, India, China, Tibet, Colombia. We act as though $100 a barrel oil is just not all that. We think the credit crisis is some wealthy banker’s problem. We ignore the scaffold-toppling wind-storms in New York, deadly lightning in Arkansas, drought in Africa, cracking ice, filthy air, filthy water, poverty, and our neighbors with negative-savings suffering foreclosure. I used to joke that as long as the malls were open and they took credit cards, nothing in this country would ever change. I see a government falling over itself to ensure that nothing in this country will ever change. I see attempts to allay the consequences of reckless fiscal policy with even more heavy-handed and more reckless fiscal policy. I see hard times ahead for everyone. I live in Beacon, New York and have occasion to see Pete Seeger. On MLK day in 2008, I played bass with his loosely assembled band at an MLK memorial at the Springfield Baptist Church. I listened to what he said about his time with Dr. King. I listened to other veterans of Selma and Montgomery speak about...