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Sexual assault is such a nuisance, not only, but especially, for Republicans.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal editorial board, attempting, with gentlemanly politeness, to dispense with Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh as quickly as possible:

“Yet there is no way to confirm her story after 36 years, and to let it stop Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would ratify what has all the earmarks of a calculated political ambush.

“This is not to say Christine Blasey Ford isn’t sincere in what she remembers.” But . . .

Gary Kohls

12:39 AM (8 hours ago)       to      

 

Duty to Warn

 

When Pharmaceutical, Vaccine and Medical Device Corporations Rule the World’s Healthcare Industries: Too Late, it Already Happened

 

By Gary G. Kohls, MD – 9/18/2018

 

The mantra goes: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. It’s an incantation helping to bind second amendment enthusiasts in raucous indignation over what they see as a threat to their liberty – gun control. Its sentences form the premises of an argument that inevitably concludes against further restrictions on guns.

Gun control advocates hear “Guns don’t kill people.” as a willful disregard for the cause of death of so many innocents. In contrast, gun rights activists hear that same sentence as a well-deserved rebuke to those who obsess about guns as if the weapons themselves possess the malice or negligence necessarily involved in illegal gun deaths. Upon hearing the mantra, the two sides usually respond by talking past each other.

Genre spoofs are among my favorite type of productions, the paragons being Mel Brooks’ parodies, such as his loopy lampooning of the Western in Blazing Saddles. In John O’Keefe’s wonderfully wildly witty and wry All Night Long the conventions of 1950s/1960s sitcoms such as The Donna Reed Show are raked over the comedic coals as America’s nuclear family is exploded.

 

Ironically, before the eponymous Reed starred as the squeaky clean housewife Donna Stone in her 1958-1966 situation comedy, she won an Academy Award for portraying a prostitute in the 1953 classic From Here to Eternity. But this only seems to buttress O’Keefe’s parodying portrait and point that beneath the surface of the all-American family’s façade lurks a surreal world of urges, as the instinctual id clashes with the repressive superego.

 

hy is Vermont planning to spend $7 million to send 200 prisoners to an out-of-state, for-profit prison known for slave labor exploitation, even though Vermont’s in-state prison population has decreased by more than 450 prisoners in the past decade? Even with the decrease, Vermont’s incarceration rate remains four times higher than it was in the 1970s.

According to Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) figures (pages 16, 28) in its 2018 budget request (undated) to the legislature:

Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War is an engaging, extensive, well-researched, well-written account of a topic that still manages to offend me. World War II is sacred history in the United States, the ultimate clash of pure good and evil, the fundamental origin myth of the military industrial complex. It is the top subject of books, films, and shows. Finding a novel angle on World War II that has not yet been exhaustively covered is, at this point, a significant feat. Finding a whole continent is a major victory.

The Tango War tells the story of how Latin America was, at least tangentially, part of World War II. The book’s introduction describes admiration for unrecognized heroes. It notes that “people of Latin American heritage are by far the largest driver of demographic growth in the United States.” One gathers that for the prestige of Latin America, and for the self-respect of Latinos in the United States, South and Central America need to have been in on the most glorious of catastrophes. That’s what offends me, or perhaps depresses me.

To celebrate the 200th tournament of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS), three concurrent events will be held across the globe in the United States, Mexico and the Netherlands across two days where top Duelists around the world will compete for prizes and a chance to earn a spot at the 2019 World Championship Qualifier. Everyone from novices to veterans will be in attendance to show off their best Decks and greatest strategies.

The 200TH YU-GI-OH! Championship Series will be held at the Columbus Convention Center, Exhibit Hall D, September 22-23. 

All Duelists who submit their registration form, entry fee and valid, legal Deck List will receive an exclusive Participation Game Mat and Field Center Card to commemorate the 200th celebration, while supplies last.

Shortly after JFK was assassinated by more than one shooter on 11/22/63 (making the assassination a true conspiracy – rather than a non-conspiratorial “lone-gunman” shooting) the CIA devised a cunning ploy by inventing the pejorative “conspiracy theorist” terminology in order to cast doubt upon and discredit those who had taken on as their patriotic duty the need to investigate what was indeed just another of the Big Lies that regularly come from political entities that want our trust and votes.

 

Big Lies also come in advertising campaigns from corporations that want our trust and money; from government and military entities that want our taxes, trust and allegiance; and from the for-profit media entities that want our trust and purchases. All those entities were somehow involved in the crime - and the cover-up - of the events of 9/11/01.

 

As JFK researcher and James Fetzer collaborator Charles Drago was quoted as saying:

Black! - written and performed by Michael Washington Brown - is not a solo show solely about the African American experience per se. Instead, it is a broader look at people of African origin in England, Jamaica, the U.S.A. and sub-Saharan Africa. In this one-man show Brown incarnates men from these various locations (in fact, in the post-colonial segment of this 90-minute one-acter, he portrays both an interviewer and his interviewee), exploring what the playwright/actor calls in the L.A. premiere’s program the “distinct differences, yet, a very definite similarity between Black people from all walks of life” in disparate parts of our globalized planet.

In doing so Brown confronts stereotypes and varies his accent and demeanor as still and moving images (including of iconic Blacks like boxer/draft resister Muhammad Ali) projected on a screen behind Brown (technical design by Caitlin Rucker) punctuate his extended monologues. The gifted Brown seems to be a likely candidate for this dramatic exercise that’s often lightened by levity. Of Jamaican and Barbadian ancestry, Brown grew up in London, but since 1992 he has lived in California and New York.

Last weekend I was on Iranian TV being asked about the meeting in Tehran at which the presidents of Iran and Russia had refused to agree with the President of Turkey to stop bombing people in Syria. I said Iran and Russia were wrong.

I also said that nobody involved, least of all the United States, was right.

Not only would the United States and the world be infinitely better off if in response to 9/11 the U.S. government had done nothing at all, as Jon Schwartz tweets each year, but Syria would be dramatically better off if just about any outside force had never gotten in or now got out.

Here’s my 5-step plan for Syria: