Come to the Twin Cities for the RNC. It looks like a definite possibility that the convention could collapse due to the strategies under discussion. It worked in Seattle, almost ten years ago. It can work here.

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080328130926247

And for the DNC: www.recreate68.org, among others.

The Iraq war, like the Vietnam war before it (I forgot who mentioned General Giap) is an imperialist war of aggression. It's all about profit, which we can plainly see as Big Oil attempts to privatize Iraq's oil. It has caused an avalanche of human suffering, it isn't over yet, and it needs to end now, before it spreads.

Don't you want to be fuckable? Don't you want others to be fuckable? When/if I'm Dame Mirren's age, I hope I have access to a woman like that.

Why would they have chapters in Iran and North Korea? The citizens of those nations can't do nearly as much to resist American imperialism as we can.

I remember a recent survey in The Economist that indicated, among other things, that a large majority of Republicans disapprove of unmarried sex. (Notice the implications of the phrase "premarital sex.") I think the reasoning goes like this: Men who want Viagra are assumed to be married at their age, and thus they are entitled to it. Women seeking birth control are assumed to be hussies, because married women should want as many kids as possible.

Though one other thing you're all forgetting is that an erection can be used for other things besides vaginal intercourse.

I read a quote from a veteran of that milieu who said that if anybody in his office had treated women like that, "he would have been out on his ass," or words to that effect.

I see somebody wearing the Muslim (or otherwise) bedsheets nearly every day at my job. We get way too much sun here, so on the aforementioned rickets are probably not as much of a problem, but on the other... doesn't it get dangerously hot under there? Isn't that a sign that maybe wearing them is *stupid*?

Religion poisons everything.

...Superstition, primitive thinking, backwardness, sexual repression, et cetera. The larger question is this: Why would she choose to wear this? Why would anyone? I'm so tired of this disingenuous defense they sometimes offer, the one that says that at least they aren't wearing "revealing clothing." In other words, you're either skanky or you're veiled.

Vosssov (or however you spell it,) you can cry "prejudice" all you want, but don't expect me, or the French, to kowtow to the most retrograde force in the world today.

And so would a requirement to get modified. If you simply must get married, do it the no-budget, do-it-yourself, punk-rock way.

Those are two different things. I don't think it's hard to tell the difference. Also, is Freakonomics correct? I read a letter in The Economist recently in which the writer described being at an Ivy League graduation and noticing that while there were no Boqueeshas or Nushawns or whatever, there weren't any Krystals or Darlies or Elvises or Billy-Bobs either.

Sometimes there's another problem at work. I know some parents who picked an unusual spelling for their daughter's name because they didn't want it spelled "the stripper way." Unfortunately, this girl has a certain disability that will make it very difficult (though not impossible) to correct all of those who will invariably get it wrong. I can't believe they didn't think of this.

I knew somebody in university who later worked as a teacher for Teach for America in inner-city Baltimore. Her classes were, as far as I could tell, completely black. Her blog entries sometimes read like "Anna amongst the barbarians." It made for fascinating, somewhat depressing reading. Before this, she and several other students got a crash course in TFA during Spring Break. She mentioned that many of her comrades were shell-shocked within a few hours. She didn't like hearing them come to the conclusion that "these kids' parents just don't care," but I wanted to ask her what her explanation was. I wonder if it's like that in the Ozarks and/or Appalachia.

My mother has spent several years noticing demographic changes in the school district that employs her (not as a teacher.) Allegedly, as the schools get less White/Asian, things get worse, as, sure enough, the parents don't care. From 1996-1998, I attended the school at which she works, and while many of the phenomena she mentions were present then, they only seem to have gotten worse. I remember hearing a mention of an NPR story on the same topic, but I didn't hear the full story.

Cubans are well-educated, despite a very low budget and myriad other problems.

I don't really have a position on this, I just wanted to mention what I've heard.

And Ms. Anthropia, you are correct. Why does religion get a free pass and special rights?

MMM: Not in this case, .

Jamilah: They might assume that you're stupid in spite of your skills at your field of study, since you've bought into a ludicrous empty promise, willingly entered the Dark Ages, and, basically, what Ms. Anthropia said. They might assume that you suffer oppression because it's hard to imagine that anyone would wear a tent willingly, and, as such, religious garb serves as a symbol of repression (and not only for women.)

Those are secular states. Iran has a very religious government ruling a much-less-religious society. Does Jamilah (or anyone else) think that the mullahs respect Kobra for her mind?

Didn't they promote it by saying "It's not a show, it's birth control!" or something to that effect?

That sounds great to me.