Bigmack
Bigmack's JournalI posted - on FB - the pic of the Marine kissing his boyfriend...
.. in homecoming.
I think I stole my comment from somebody here on DU...
"If you feel the joy in this, you're part of the future. If you only feel outrage, you're part of the past."
Got 20 positive comments and 18 "likes" and one guy - in the medical wing of the Army - who said ...
"Why don't we just frame every other important discussion in the nation this way? To heck with trying to build consensus, let's just use inflammatory language and create division...almost as if there were only two positions on this topic. Saul Alinsky would be proud! For a person of my faith that would be like feeling joy for those men in the picture when they lied, cheated, stole, or otherwise transgressed the laws of God. It logically follows that if I feel no joy for sin and I believe that homosexual activity is a sin, then I feel no joy for homosexual activity. And yes, it does say in the Bible that homosexual activity is a sin."
I responded: "Glad to be able to polarize the discussion.... oh... wait... I wasn't the one who polarized it, was I? Seems like the paradigm for this discussion was set by the anti-gay crusaders.... all that talk about "sin", "perversion" and "disgusting" stuff. People in favor of equality for all Americans seldom go to those lengths.
I'm so liberal that I agree with Barry Goldwater... the ultra-conservative Republican candidate for president in 1964. He famously said... "Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.... You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight." Of course, Goldwater would be drummed out of the current Republican party.... and he'd be glad to go... before his death Goldwater went so far as to address establishment Republicans by saying, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have."
"Saul Alinsky... Where the hell did that come from? Conservatives and Regressives have gotten so used to framing the words... and framing the debate... that they don't seem to be able to argue without claiming Alinsky... or Rev. Wright.. are behind all thinking from the Left.
You’re in a medical unit, and in the military, you people are - literally - gods. In the Marine Corps, Navy corpsmen can do a lot of things nobody else can do. They can backtalk officers, for example. In our outfit, corpsmen couldn’t buy their own beer. They were sacred... specialists in keeping us alive and (reasonably) healthy. We never wanted them to yell “I don’t do housecalls!” when we yelled “Corpsman Up!”, so they were, as I said, gods.
OK... that was the buttering up...
You talk of sin and morality..... Unless the line infantry outfits have changed drastically, sin and morality... specifically sexual sin and morality... is not a consideration. All the heterosexual Marines I knew had sex with practically anyone - or any thing!
One only has to mention the word Olongapo, and sailors and Marines remember a town that was a cross between the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie and a New Orleans brothel on steroids. I remember one time ........ wait.... family audience.... never mind!
I remember the “joyboats” in Hong Kong, and the R&Rs in Bankok. I remember the “boom-boom” girls in Vietnam. There are bargirls in every GI bar in the world.
I know now that the gay Marines I served with must have gotten laid on leave and liberty, too. If the grunts hired child prostitutes, and married men - officers even - with kids had live-in girlfriends, why wouldn’t gay Marines indulge?
So, if the topic is the morality of homosexuality in the military, heterosexuals need to clean up their act - a LOT -before they throw stones at the gays for their sexual activities.
Money is broken...
Wonderful piece that Ms. Bigmack found in the Guardian.... it's directed at the Brit system, but it relates.
- - - - - -
Suspend Your Belief in Cash..
The true value of money – or why you can't fart a crashing plane back into the sky
Banknotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief
Money is broken, and until we admit that, any attempts to fix the economy seem doomed to fail. We're like passengers on a nosediving plane thinking if we all fart hard enough, we can lift it back into the sky. So should we be storming the cockpit or hunting for parachutes instead? I don't know: I ran out of metaphor after the fart gag. You're on your own from hereon in.
The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story, or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It's certainly nowhere near as well thought-out and executed.
(A British banker)... earns more than a million pounds for performing enigmatic actions behind the scenes at a publicly owned bank. And on top of his huge wage, he was in line for a massive bonus. To most people, that's downright cheeky: like a man getting a blowjob from your spouse while asking you to make him a cup of tea.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/12/banknotes-not-worth-their-paper
I used Roundup (reluctantly) to kill English Ivy..
that was taking over.
Anybody know how long to wait before planting garden veggies on that spot.
I know... I know.... shouldn't use Roundup...
but...
Damned ivy had 1/ 1/2" trunks laying on the ground.
I've done some research, and it seems like that shit breaks down relatively quickly, but does anybody have any direct, expert experience?
More for the Church to concern itself about...
.. than the rules that govern everybody's fucking.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/Catholic-Churtch-Los-Angeles-Archdiocese-Priests-Accused-Pedophile-Molest-Children-139129294.html
Priests Accused of Molesting Children Hiding in Plain Sight
Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese for molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.
Ray Boucher has mapped sixty locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.
“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”
Church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.
“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”
U.S. military says Taliban set to retake power: report
The United States military has said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, Britain's Times of London newspaper said Wednesday.
"Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban," the newspaper said, quoting the report. "Once ISAF (NATO-led forces) is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable," it quoted the report.
The Times said the "highly classified" report was put together by the U.S. military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan for top NATO officers last month. The BBC also carried a report on the leaked document.
Large swathes of Afghanistan have already been handed back to Afghan security forces, with the last foreign combat troops due to leave by the end of 2014.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-afghan-nato-report-idUSTRE81006N20120201
At what point does a religion...
become so disconnected from its members that it no longer functions?
I have read that 98% of US Catholic women use birth control.... http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/14/us-most-catholic-women-us-use-birth-cont-idUSTRE73D4SZ20110414
... and that American Catholic women have a higher abortion rate than protestant women......
http://factcheck.org/2007/12/abortions-comparing-catholic-and-protestant-women/
Abortion and birth control are two biggies in the church.
So..... WTF?
Like Carlin...."I was born an Irish Catholic... now I'm an American."
The ROE didn't include...
... the phrase "shoot first and ask questions later."
The ROE didn't include shooting granny in bed.
The ROE didn't include taking 5 men out and executing them... not in the heat of a firefight, but executing them.
The ROE didn't include shooting into rooms containing women and children... shooting that was not random, but well-aimed and center of body-mass shots.
Wuterich was a Staff NCO...in charge of seeing that the Marines under him followed the ROE, the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions, and any other orders from his superiors.
He failed miserably. He failed to control his Marines, and in fact led them to commit war crimes.
In my war, we took innocent lives... by accident. Regrettable, and I feel them today. But we had NCOs who controlled the situation and made sure we followed orders.
This man is a disgrace to the Corps. He violated the prime code of honor of the Marine Corps... (From the Marine Corps Code of Honor) ... "And, above all, honor mandates that a Marine never sully the reputation of his Corps."
Clean out your headgear!
I was MOS 0331, and I was in the shit enough to know when somebody is talking thru their ass.
Sugar should be a controlled substance....!
I've fought my weight my whole life. Always in good shape, but way too heavy. Very active... hiking and doing lots of physical type work.
My doc has always been after me to lose weight, of course. "Diet and exercise"....
Shit, I was watching what I ate.. diet pop and the whole thing.
I was in to see him in June, and he changed the script... he said that sugar should be a controlled substance... that it's addictive for most people.
He said to cut out sugar and white carbs and anything that tells your body it is sweet. He said that you'll have withdrawal symptoms for a couple of weeks, but then you'll be better.
I did it.
Cut all sugar out.... except honey in my coffee and one glass of wine about 5 nights a week.
The doc was right... withdrawal pains and amazing cravings. I stuck it out and after about two weeks I felt no cravings.
Since June of 2011, I have lost 35 lbs.
It's not a diet... I eat a LOT! Instead of a bagel, I have a whole wheat wrap. Instead of chips and salsa, I have cauliflower and salsa or apples and salsa. Big breakfast of fake egg omelet with lots of onion and real bacon bits on a wrap. Lunch is cottage cheese and fruit... lots of it... and some nuts. Dinner... lots of anything that isn't white (whole wheat is OK) and fruit for desert.
I don't suffer at all.
It does piss me off that sugar is in everything! You have to watch carefully. Yoghurt, for instance, has 25-30 grams of sugar... I think companies could sell horse shit in little containers if they put enough sugar in it.
I think that sugar made my body hungry and demanded more food. I don't feel those cravings anymore.
I'm not even worried about regaining the weight... I'm not on a diet.
I'm not defending them... but....
.. the people of this country have no fucking idea what war is really about.
Pissing on their dead...? You think that's the worst..?
You think their moms taught them to do that..?
Nope...WE did.
WE are the ones who have made a society so involved in war/death/revenge that pissing on the dead is nothing! We have killed hundreds of thousands... actually, millions... of innocents in our march to Empire. Hell, we killed innocents today!
We have to stop being an Empire. We have to stop putting our people in these situations. We have to stop making so many veterans.
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Member since: Mon Apr 12, 2004, 08:50 PMNumber of posts: 8,020
