Exit stage left GWB

Now that US president #43 has finished his job, our thoughts go to what his legacy will be. A big part of any former president's claim in history is his presidential library.
In the case of GWB it's a straightforward thing: there will be only one book on the shelf.

Gays prefer Kerry to Obama

Every last little electoral demographic is being poured over in the USA to determine who likes what more than the next guy, presumably to better hone the messages for the intended target next time.
A "surprising" factoid came to light that 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry scored better with teh gayz than Obama did this year, 7% better.
Why would that be?
My hunch is that, putting my shallow thinking cap on, we have to look at what Kerry and McCain have in common, rather than what sets Obama apart from McCain for gays. And that's rather obvious: they both have glamorous, filthy rich wives. Cindy "Anheuser-Busch" McCain and Teresa "Heinz" Kerry. Perhaps many (closeted and otherwise) gay men quite fancy the life of a kept boy by a rich woman, and then be able to do what you like. Not my idea of a good life but maybe many think it's less arduous than being married to a career wife such as Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Fewer are clinging bitterly

The United States of America finally dragged itself into the 20th Century with the election of a non-Caucasian president. Maybe next time round they will manage to get with the play of the 21st Century by electing a woman. Hell will freeze over, of course, before they will ever join the Enlightenment and actually elect a queer person (Lincoln excepted, perhaps) or, even more unimaginable, an atheist.
Considering the outcome of the latest cultural war battle, the gay marriage referendums in California and Florida, America is obviously not ready for a real kind of change.
We can be rather smug in New Zealand on that score, even though there has never been a Maori (or, to my knowledge, queer) Prime Minister. But we have already managed to get women twice - and the choice on Saturday is far broader than what was on offer in that democratic bastion of consumer choice, USA.

Still time to be bitter and clinging?

A two-year long, three-ring circus, every four years. You wish you could away from it at the other end of the world but there is nowhere to run and hide anymore.
And what a contrast with a subdued, cheap and short electoral cycle in New Zealand. And so much more democratic too (not completely though: we'd have to wait for a full list electoral system by getting rid of all the general and Maori electorate seats). Whatever happened to the one-man-one-vote credo? The political filtering is not only done by money but by distorting political systems too. It's sad to see no-one in the US is bitter about that.

The Lolcatz keep purring

Sarah Palin has picked out an All-American set of names for her children. There's Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
Ever wonder, What would your name be if Sarah Palin was your mother? Well now you can find out here.

Mine's Strike Chipper Palin. Woohoo.

Link via Mulholland

Dog-sledding, moose killing, hockey dads, who can resist them?

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Are you glad to be in America?

Guns, beer, smokes, sagging shorts, unfenced pool, electric boombox... What is wrong with this all-American picture?

12 months of politicking ahead, oh joy!

Next year there will be general elections in New Zealand and the United States, so we better get the fun bits out of the way before the nasty stuff starts.
USA Today has a nifty little test for you where they ask you questions and then match your views with a presidential candidate.
It turns out I should be voting for Dennis Kucinich, a fair enough choice for my case, I think. It was far more disconcerting to see the runner up choices for me would be Republicans Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

UPDATE: I've redone the test because I forgot to set the sliders. Now my result is 1. Kucinich, 2. Rudy Giuliani, 3. Mike Gravel

New Zealand ruling Satan's empire

An interesting map (via JoeMyGod) comparing the GDP of individual American states with overseas countries, showing how large (or small) state economies are: California = France, Indiana = Denmark, Massachusetts = Belgium.
I'm quite pleased to see New Zealand = Washington DC. Helen Clark would make a good replacement for the current Commander in Chief there.

News works in mysterious ways

What I can't get my head around is the tendency for all news networks to clear their schedules when something like an American school shooting happens with a few dozen casualties. Incidents like that happen every day in Iraq or Darfur or Afghanistan or Chechnya and those barely cause a mention anymore on the airwaves.
American lives are obviously worth many times that of a dead Iraqi or a Darfur genocide victim.

The national Dutch television news reporter in Virginia at the scene of the massacre said 12-year-olds in the state can buy rifles without parental permission. And it's true. But fat chance that any gun control is on the cards.
To paraphrase the Sex Pistols: There is no future in America's dreaming.

A gay frat house

New York University has accepted a chapter of Delta Lambda Phi, the American fraternity founded by gay men for all men. Good news, it seems, for all fun-loving, hormonally-charged male students who want to walk on the wild side of academic life. But, sadly, no:

"The NYU chapter, with 11 members, forbids hazing and incorporates an "education" rather than a "pledging" process that requires new recruits to know the fraternity's mission, memorize the Greek alphabet and learn Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure. By offering fraternity brotherhood to gay men, it "breaks boundaries," according to chapter president Matt Maggiacomo."

Oh dear, how sad. Why else would you want to join a frat if it was not for all those pledge games? A politically correct frat does seem to me an oxymoron. But hey, this is America after all. The ABC TV report continues:

"The fraternity's mascot is the centaur, adapted from Greek mythology as the essence of masculinity — the Lambdas' version depicts a younger, clean-shaven man-horse with short hair. The fraternity motto is "Lambda men are making their presence known," and the Toast Song is "Once There Was a Mighty Man."

Forgive me for gagging. Now this is more like it:

"Last year at the University of Vermont, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity was suspended for allegedly serving drinks to underage students and making prospective members wear cowboy outfits while they were taunted with homophobic language during a party that had a theme on the gay-based movie "Brokeback Mountain."

I prefer my men to behave like total boys when they're at college.

Bloody British foreigners

A sarcastic but rather sad Vanity Fair column on British expatriates living in New York, painting a very unflattering picture of Englishmen in New York behaving rather like the erstwhile British Raj in India but with worse personal hygiene habits than the Victorians.
One extract rang a bell with me:

"British men can be identified by their cropped hair, which they shave to obscure their genetically endemic premature hair loss. They imagine it gives them a street-hard look. Most Americans think they look like gay Marines with deformed ears."

This is exactly what I felt Americans thought of me when I visited San Francisco for the first and, thankfully, only time. You can't but feel a foreigner in America, it's safer that way. You really don't want to fit in with their homogeneous style, attitudes and tastes.
I think I would rather look like a gay marine with deformed ears than having to be one for real in Iraq.

Link via Andrew Sullivan, who, of course, would rather be dead than be considered British.

Happy 4th anniversary, dudes

We know it's been a hard slog, slaving your asses off in the desert for us.
But it's good to see that in the end it has all been worth it.
3,000+ will not have died in vain now that you can enjoy a pool party at Saddam's place:

Tip from Gay Porn Blog

But is self-love OK?

The Bush administration has issued strict new guidelines on issues such as "abstinence" (they are for use by organisations applying for funding grants for abstinence-only education programmes):

Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: “Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”

It basically means that you should never be taught or informed about any form of sexual contact, ever, and you have to abstain as an adult if you are unmarried, regardless of age or sexual orientation.
That last point is pregnant with possibilities for satire as Condi Rice can't have sex, ever, until she marries the President; and, naturellement, Jeff Gannon's gay whoring within the White House and the armed services is out too.
And let's not forget the two White House ambassadrixes of chastity and clean living, Jenna and Not-Jenna. Surely daddy's edicts won't cramp their lifestyle?

That paragon of wickedness

The Washington Times, affectionately known as The Moonie Times, never attracted any great intellectual contributions, but a recent column was worth reading. (Re-published by The Brussels Journal) It compared the history of Amsterdam with that of New Orleans in geographical and economic terms and the lessons New Orleans could learn from the Dutch in dealing with storm floods and dike breaks.
All very earnest and serious stuff, while we all know why we really love Amsterdam and New Orleans.
This was expertly brought out by a commentator on the piece and worth quoting:

"The thought that anything of modern Dutch conception should be emulated is bizarre wickedness. Amsterdam, that paragon of wickedness in which women are displayed by the numbers for the sexual gratification of passers-by, while euthanasia grows as a cancer within it and the whole city a drug Mecca for the worst of the earth should be a role model for New Orleans, itself a mere child of below sea level wickedness in comparison is the classic lie of free willers everywhere: "Look what we did. You Too can 'do it' if you try."

If you want heaven on earth or be raptured out of your brain, Amsterdam - and hopefully soon again New Orleans too - is the place to be.

Hollywood only makes liberal movies

He's a human killing machine. Taught to stalk. Trained to kill. Programmed to destroy. He's played by their rules... Until now.

Tagline for "Red Scorpion". Produced by Jack Abramoff. Yup, that one.

Political analysis of the week

Lawrence O'Donnell comments on President Bush's post-Rita speech (on The McLaughlin Group):

There are few Presidents in our history more lost than that. [Members of panel laugh out loud.] For him to find this desperate pathway from Katrina, from lives lost because of government mishandling of the hurricane that hit New Orleans. To get a path from there to his war on terror, and somehow link the hurricane to Al Qaeda, is as large as possible flight of mental illness as we've seen in a President.

What US state should you live in?

What state should you live in? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as LOUISIANA. THE BIG EASY IS FOR YOU...LOUISIANA LOUISIANA 58% California 50% FLORIDA 42% WASHINGTON 42% NEVADA 42% NEW YORK 34% WYOMING 33% UTAH 0%

Considering the political score earlier, would they have me in Louisiana?
Mind you, Al-Qaeda TV's first newscast featured Hurricane Katrina as

the wrath of Allah that visited the city of homosexuals.

Maybe I'd feel at home there after all. And, by the way, if Allah smote New Orleans for its faggot citizenry, why didn't he flood the French Quarter, but instead the neighbourhoods of the very people He recruits most among in America?

Are you glad to live in the greatest country in the whole goddamn world?

Are societies these days basically held together by fear and economic exploitation rather than by solidarity and a sense of belonging?
After you have escaped the flood in your SUV, do you still need to think about the society you have left behind to drown, starve or perish? Or did you play "Bye, Bye, Blackbird"?
How can you call yourself the "United" States when there is no unity, sense of purpose, a helping hand when you are waist deep in water?
Where "law and order" only means armed white national guards pointing at black men "shopping" for foodstuffs and water?
Is New Orleans basically the end of the line, the bottom of the dung heap, where the detritus of American society and the dregs of the Mississippi converge beneath sea level?
And therefore the city's immobile do not matter one jot as long as they are being kept coralled between the levees and Lake Pointchartrain? Between the French Quarter and Desire? Out of sight, out of mind, at the bottom of the sea.
When even porn stars rant and rave against this insane situation, you should be warned that your society is not all what it is cracked up to be, and in grave danger.
Some Christians are right to call for repentance: atomised societies are an oxymoron and only have a very short half life.

A sparkly Monday in the South Pacific, shame about the windy conditions in Louisiana

To the good people in New Orleans: don't worry too much about the hurricane. Just pump the water out and throw a fabulous party. We're thinking of you! I hope to visit your fine decadence one day and contribute to its lewd image. It has always sounded just like my kinda town!
Bilmon describes the situation soberly without having to resort to apocalyptic metaphors. It looks like the future of New Orleans is either non-existent or as a North American version of Venice. I'm sure they will come up with a creative solution.
Yesterday we spent an agreeable lunch time on the beach, a first since last summer ended. The assorted beached whales, as we affectionately call the unattired men who people the beach day in day out, no matter the weather, flapped about in the light swell. They hooted the water was the warmest so far this winter. I believed them but I wasn't game to try it out. I even kept all my clothes on - a first too!