For everyone else (including men)

We seem to have jumped into bed together, my good fellow.

You stay on your side.

I mean it.

I absolutely agree. When I was writing my post, I thought to myself, "do I mention alcohol or just leave well-enough alone, bang out my point, and be done with it?"

Thank you for responding to what I wrote.

...and just for the record, I was staying out of your particular frays last night, but I am willing to go on the record with Mona and say that I also know that you are not a misogynist. Hard to read sometimes, but that's part of your charm.

Since the question of why we don't prohibit alcohol continues to come up, despite what I have posted repeatedly here and elsewhere on salon, and thought could be considered "the last word..."

;~)

In many cultures, alcohol is considered a food. And as we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom have brought their foods and tradition with them, I don't think that sort of prohibition is going to happen again.

The same case cannot be made for other drugs, since they were not fermented from fruits lovingly tended on the vine, or carefully distilled from grains or tubers, etc.

Again, ;~)

You forgot about Nighttrain

Nighttrain?

I don't always get musical references, if that's what this... but I'm even less likely to get drug references.

Fair's got nothing to do with it. I imagine there's a sort of a 'sex club' thing going on at that level of power. Everyone agrees to keep it a secret, knowing as well that anyone can be outed with the right timing and evidence. Beltway roulette.

Fortified liquor, dood. Cheap, chemically vinted in a metal vat. Basically corn syrup, food coloring, artificial flavoring, and alcohol.

Since the question of why we don't prohibit alcohol continues to come up, despite what I have posted repeatedly here and elsewhere on salon, and thought could be considered "the last word..."

As I have already pointed out several times, the moralists are fully aware of and agree with the "harm reductionist" position.

When it comes to alcohol.

I utterly despise double standards and the moralists have raised the art of the double standard to the n'th degree.

The moralists are hypocrites of an extreme variety and, again as I have repeatedly pointed out, Jesus the Christ most often and vigorously denounced hypocrisy out of all the sins.

That the moralists are very often "Christians" makes their blatant hypocrisy even more retch inducing.

Like Obama for instance.

Anonymust, I'm with you. Wine, beer, whiskey -- the lot -- are dangerous foods, but foods nevertheless. (And, I wonder, are they more dangerous than fugu, or even a Quarter-Pounder with Cheeeeeeze?)

Which is not to say, of course, that Aycharaych is wrong in any way about our current madness. In fact, I find myself grinding my teeth sometimes at his eloquence, remembering what happened to some of my friends in past years -- OD's, many-year sentences for trafficking, incarceration in foreign shitholes, etc.

The Sixties weren't all fun and games, not for the meth shooters, the acid-induced schizophrenics, the lets-go-to-Morocco-or-Nepal-and-bring-back-a-buncha-hash grasshoppers, or the being-black-with-a-roach-under-the-front-seat-beautiful-and-good-but-luckless kids who were kids with me then.

Here's to them all, mine and Aych's, then and now, and let's, for God's sake and ours, try to help him end this evil war.

We seem to have jumped into bed together, my good fellow.

You stay on your side.

But I like to snuggle..

Don't worry, my snuggling is strictly platonic these days.

Too much Heavy Metal don'tcha know..

...they just go on living in cyberspace

We'll be dead soon enough -- and then you're on your own.... ;-)

That's dood-ette to you.

Sounds like something we would have called rot-gut. Frankly, I've been a lightweight most of my life, so I would have avoided it.

Not my fault, but I just don't have enough body mass, plus too many relatives/ancestors with too much tolerance... and then women metabolize alcohol differently than men do, and I was "blessed" with one of those "thin" metabolisms. Fast-acting.

I would say that I was a cheap date, but as I like to remind HRH, I was never one for barter. ;~)

As G.G. said: So long as it isn't my partner or spouse, who cares. Prostitution should probably be legal anyway. That said, Spitzer... of all people! What was he thinking?

Is unisex, dood. Get with it, cat.

Present tense of dead?

(No, this isn't morbidity, it's word play. Eh, Anonymust?)

According to the rubric (?) I must not have participated well enough, since I sort of remember the 60's and 70's.

And some of what I remember (seeing) is what you describe. And then there was Michener's The Drifters which I read under very peculiar circumstances the summer I graduated from high school. Considering his age, though, I thought he captured something of that time. If you've read it, would you agree?

I just knew when I saw Glenn Greenwald's usual tripe of a headline that the thread would in moments evolve into garbage, with every middle-aged bagger who would like to sleep with a woman without strings and ever woman trying to prove her liberal credentials both joining in a a chorus about this "victimless crime" and it's need for legalization. (typically blathering about completely disparate representations of the true industry, such as the supposed xanadu of prostitution in the Netherland).

It's all enough to make you want to go join the religious right.

I'm going to inconveniently remind you of a few things:

1. Legal or otherwise prostitution as it exists in any measure around the globe is found where women are the most socially and economically depressed. It's found where there is the most disparity and income inequality and where there is no hope.
2. It's true. think about it. Calcutta-like poverty in the Carribean, ridden with horrible disease. Blocks of dirt poor women in Thailand selling their bony little butts to pay for their parents to eat, women who hate sex, only see it as a commodity and prey on men. Thousands and thousands of little children in Pakistan having sex with western men who fly in specifically to do so. Korean women forced into prostitution and having to give the money to their husbands who beat the crap out of them daily. The desperate women of the collapsed East German economy having to come on to comparatively affluent West German commuters at rest-stops for quickies. Bronx crackgals looking for business in Manhattan. And of course scores and scores of Indian and African prostitutes truly having to sell themselves for a bowl of rice and with HIV rates approaching 80 or 90%. If not higher. And of course no access to medical care either.

   Excuse me, does anyone see glamour and liberation in any of these situations? But it's all legal!

3. There's NOTHING pretty about prostitution where it exists in significant measure legal or otherwise. Even when we scatch the veneer of 4000 dollar/hour service providers it's ugly stuff.

   Naturally we'll hear the same tired "liberated" woman excuse and how well these women are doing as if all North American gals in the business were high-priced internet service providers rather than street whores and airport area massage parlor workers. Regardless, their apologists and patrons in all collective morons, just insist it's the prostitute taking advantage of the man. We should believe it's those liberated hookers have the power, not the johns!

   What a nice little delusion. How many women do YOU know that can shell out 3500 bucks a pop to get laid? Or even 150$

   Plus, even for those botoxed, plastic Barbies of Empireland you'd better believe a closet full of Jimmy Shoo's and real perfume ain't going to make up for a lifetime of dysfunctional relationships and never ever being able to trust a man.. not to mention the stress of diseases AND clients that can kill her.

4. No folks, prostitution is just not a "victimless" crime. It's not pretty. It's not glamorous and it's is always accompanied by poverty, gender inequality and above all, societal dysfunctionalism . Where it exists in big amounts, legal or not, you find astronomically increased rates of crime, predatory behavior and disease. And just ... ugly stuff.
5. In healthy, progressive societies people have sex because they WANT to. Because two consenting individuals are going to enjoy it. It isn't an outlet for some guy to ask a woman he doesn't know to do "unsafe" things or for women to do because there's nothing else they can do that will pay nearly as well.

   Today CNN cites that 1 in 4 teenaged girls already have a sexually transmitted disease. Therefore I have to guess it's not that hard to get laid non-commercially and that we don't need to add catalysts to disease transmission. Guys, really, if you can't get as easily as it seems you SHOULD be able to, then fix yourselves up a little. Read a book instead of hitting worm-ridden porn sites, buy some clothes that actually flatter you, and hit the gym.

   Oh, but wait, you don't WANT to do the work and hit the gym or invest in yourself. Of course not. Of course too you LIKE being able to fly down to the Domincan Republic all Rush Limbaugh style and get a blowjob for 30 bucks from some terribly desperate little thing.

   Well, I guess sacrifices must be made then. Try not to take it too hard when it's YOUR daughter being humilated in the public arena, gets HIV from her philandering husband, or even ends up in the "business" herself to stay alive. For a while.