Friday, December 31, 2004

Like we need more of these - some "Best and Worst of 2004" lists!

Best Albums:
  1. Clutch - Blast Tyrant
  2. Sam Roberts - We Were Born in a Flame (actually released late 2003)
  3. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
  4. Modest Mouse - Good News for those who Love Bad News
  5. Tomohawk - Mit Gas (another late 2003 release)

Best TV Shows (only 3 even worth mentioning):

  1. Now with Bill Moyers
  2. Lost
  3. PBS Newshour

Worst Political Fuck-ups:

  1. Kerry somehow losing to Bush (and especially not opposing the Swift Boat attacks more effectively)
  2. Bush admin oks torture for "detainees" (the long-term negative effects of this here and around the country will be felt for decades)
  3. Bush post-war Iraq planning and execution - this fiasco will now probably last decades and costs hundreds of thousands of lives because of the Bush admin's poor or lack of reconstruction planning
  4. Bush in the first debate (would have been #1 but since he got re-elected I moved it down)
  5. 60 Minutes airing of falsified Bush National Guard records (this tacitly gave the ok for all conservative and even centrist citizens to completely disregard all future scandals involving Bush as nothing more than liberal propaganda

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

America, Inc.

Lets start with basic facts - the top 10 donors to each presidential campaign:
Kerry: 1. University of California (education) 2. Harvard University (education) 3. Time Warner (media & entertainment) 4. Goldman Sachs (business/finance) 5. Citigroup (business/finance)

Bush: 1. Morgan Stanley (business/finance) 2. Merril Lynch (business/finance) 3. PricewaterhouseCooper (business/finance) 4. UBS Americas (business/finance) 5. Goldman Sachs (business/finance)

Notice the dominance of business, especially on the Republican side. Another point of comparison:
-Bush Top 20 Donors: ALL corporations or law firms
-Kerry Top 20 Donors: 16 out of 20 were corporations or law firms (the rest were universities)
It should also be noted that all of the top donors that gave money to both candidates (7 total), with exception of Microsoft, gave substantially more money to Bush than to Kerry but were obviously covering their influence bases in giving generously to both campaigns. If that alone isn't a clear indication that money contributions directly equate to influence and deferential treatment, I don't know what does. Why else would these companies give so much money to both campaigns? Because they know that the pure quantity of their contributions will buy them a seat at the policy table of whichever candidate wins. They obviously also think that Bush is more in tune with their desires and so contributed more to him.

Still think corporate money doesn't rule or at least unduly influence the policy decisions of this country? Go here for far more analysis and data:
http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/index.asp

And then there is the tidy little story still being uncovered (and covered up) of Tom Delay (one of the leaders of the Republican party) taking what could basically be considered bribes (donations) in exchange for corporate-favorable policy decisions. To make it even worse (and that much more obvious that the Republicans are addicted to corporate lobbying and donations), the Republicans subsequently weakened US House of Representatives ethics rules solely for the purpose of covering Delay's corrupt ass! Go here for a full accounting of this mess:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/30/MNG24AINRP1.DTL


Monday, December 27, 2004

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Joy is in the (freezing) Air!

For those of you like me in the frigid northeast, the only thing I can say is find yourself a nice warm fireplace and a couple of good books!!! Warmer weather will be here soon...

Well, I told my brother and his wife about my dressing. They were ok with it, but like my parents, did not want to or were uncertain how to talk about it. That's fine anyways. Now all my immediate family, except my grandmother, knows about Dana! Some of my friends know as well and no one has had a bad reaction to it which is awesome. Goes to show how far things have come in the last few decades. Most people are a lot more open-minded about sexuality and gender than they used to be...

Joy to all and may your fishnet stockings be full of fun and stress-free holiday times.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Are we the bad guys now?

Let's start by looking at a laundry list of recent US gov't actions (and in some cases, inaction):
  • We've killed more than 20,000 innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years
  • We continue to support an under-the-table conscript military force that is poorly paid and under equipped.
  • We officially abandon or ignore the mental and physical ailments of our returning soldiers.
  • We offer up privates and other low-level military personnel as scapegoats for the violent excesses and policies generated by our top military and civilian leaders, who never seem to suffer any consequences for the policies, whether written or not, being carried out by the grunts who in most cases are just following orders.
  • We continue to use, despite a growing body of scientific research about the health risks, uranium-depleted munitions across the world. This poses health risks to our own troops and especially the citizens of those countries where we use those munitions.
  • We justify, legally and ethically condone, and carry out the perpetual confinement without access to a legal system, and in some cases torture (or at least allow other less democratic gov'ts to torture) these so called foreign "detainees."
  • We have unofficially declared ourselves "gods" of international policy; ignoring those that might inconvenience us a little economically or politically in the short-term (Kyoto, Int'l Criminal Court) and declare that we are the only ones capable of judging if premptive military action is justified or not.
  • We allow our own citizens to be detained and held without access to the legal system, lawyers or even a list of charges against them, solely on the orders of a single individual (the Prez).
  • We have given up the beginnings of some crucial civil liberties that once defined this great country (privacy, right to a jury trial, innocent until proven innocent, "thou shall not kill"!), all in the name of the nebulous idea of "national security". And mostly in the name of fear - does anyone really think we can prevent all terrorist attacks, crime or drug use without becoming a completely isolationist, fascist state or dictatorship?
  • We supported the unsuccessful coup of a democratically elected gov't in Venezuela, and have obviously meddled in the democratic elections in Ukraine.
  • We continue to support the Putin, Saudi and Pakistani gov'ts despite the fact that Putin is rolling back liberties and democratic freedoms faster than the media can report it and the Sauds and Pakistanis have been brutal dictators and major supporters of terrorism for decades.
  • We have ignored all international arguments in the pressing issues of global warming and the destruction of the planet's intricately interlocked ecosystems, despite the fact that we are by far the largest generator of pollutants and the largest destroyers of natural lands (via our corporate web).
  • We continue to support and think we can actually win this ridiculously termed "war on terror" (like suddently we think that prior to 9/11 we didn't fight terrorists?). Such a war will NEVER end. The more people we kill, the more join the causes against our perceived capitalist "empire." And we fail to look objectively at our own policies that are a root cause of much of the terrorism to begin with.

Now even if only half of the charges above can be proved (and given more time I'm sure I could quadruple the list above easily), can you understand how a growing percentage of the world outside (and inside) our borders view us as egotistical bullies and materialistic bad guys?


Don't shove your genitalia in my face!

My philosophy is "to each their own" but this I just don't get: some peoples blinding obsession with close ups of the male genetalia. I'm not talking about erotic stuff that includes those parts into a cohesive and artistic whole. I'm talking about the in-your-face amatuer close ups of penises and ass cracks that contain no reference to who they belong to. Those seem to dominate some circles of the internet, and it seems especially the t-girl admirer crowd.

I get PM'd from so many pervs out there that are obsessed with showing me their little packages up close via cam - why? I don't fucking get it. I mean, I like to show off, tease, be sexual as much as anyone else, but that's showing my whole look - the whole package, you know? Maybe I'm just being a prude here, but I find close up images of genitalia in most cases just boring (and that includes most hard core porn) and in some cases, especially when they keep [metaphorically] shoving it in my face, downright revolting and annoying. That especially goes for those obviously lonely souls out there who simply squeeze into a cheap and ill-fitted thong, thrust it into the camera and consider themselves crossdressers and assume just because I'm a crossdresser I should be all ga-ga over them.

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with that if it floats your boat - but don't call yourself a crossdresser when you put so little effort into it! And especially don't insist that I have to or even remotely want to see it! I know, I'm deep into bitchy/elitist mode here, but I just had to get that off my chest...

Please comment if you have a different opinion because I'd really like to get some different perspectives on this.

ps: the reason I went off on this rant is that it just came to my attention that some idiot out there had been passing some of my pics, mixed in with obviously different, faceless pics off as herself. Maybe that's the reason so many panting guys still e-mail me despite the fact that I clearly state on most of my sites that I have zero interest in men. Damn imposters!!!

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Endless war for the US?

We need to wake the fuck up and realize what war is doing to us and to the people we're supposed to be "liberating". Here are some places to get some eye opening visuals about the pure evil of this damn Iraq war:

http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.noarmboy2.jpg
Ali Ismail Abbas, 12, wounded during a U.S. airstrike according to hospital sources, lies in a hospital bed in Baghdad, April 6, 2003. More than a year later the Bush administration refuses to discuss Iraq civilian casualties. (Photo: AFP)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2604.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5365.htm

And here are some pure numbers that may shock some of you:

Number of civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq:
a minimum of 14,591 Iraqi civilians dead, to a max of 16,771 civilians!!!
Think about that - besides the terrible fact that we are approaching 1500 of our soldiers dead, we are responsible for killing about 15,000 Iraqi civilians!!! The only thing we seem to be doing is liberating a lot of them from life...
from: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

And if you care about how much we taxpayers are spending of our hard-earned money on this fiasco, go here:
http://costofwar.com/