Posts by Phantom Stranger

6

Who Reads Molly Ivins?

by blondie in

jw
friends

release: thursday, march 4, 2004, and thereafter .

austin, texas -- so the democrats have a candidate at last, and he is about bent over double with gravitas.

i think that means he doesn't a have humorous bone in his body.

The Number of the Beast

by Duncan in

jw
friends

there?s been a few posts about this lately, and it got me thinking?

reflecting back on all the wt literature i studied over a 20 year period, there were among it all some ideas and stuff which you could charitably say were ?right?, plenty of things that were just flat-out wrong, and a fairly high count of ideas that were simply bonkers.

the thing that always struck me, though, about the watchtower teaching to do with the beast and its devilish number 666, was how utterly lame it all was.

Phantom Stranger

I like Heinlein's theory in Number of the Beast - it was 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power, describing the number of parallel universes accessible to a Burroughs time-travel device.

24

Soccer!!!

by Badger in

ole, ole ole ole..... 1) the h.s.

team i coach is on a four game unbeaten streak (3w-0l-1d-13gf-5ga).

2) mls starts soon...dallas!.

Phantom Stranger

Easy, yes... but makes little sense to Yanks... why wouldn't you want to allow that play? "Would make soccer interesting", they mutter to themselves.

That's why indoor is so popular here.

My indoor team had a 1-1 tie Saturday night - my best showing in the goal yet. Much celebrating all round. Now we just need to score!

23

Son's going to Mexico, HELP

by kls in

jw
friends

my two son's ages 20 and 25 are planning a trip to puerto vallarta mexico .i need some advice from anyone who lives there or has vacationed there on what to watch out for .this is their first trip anywhere and they and i are clueless on what to look out for and not be taken advantage of ,and how to stay safe.

any help would be greatly appreciated .

kls

Phantom Stranger

Look, it's not like they are going into the interior of Mexico. Any tourist town like PV is fairly safe -stay in the popular open places and don't go looking for local hangouts.

If they get drunk and belligerent, or if the get popped for drugs, then they get to experience a Mexican jail and you probably get to pay a "fine"... but hey...

46

The Effeminate JW man

by Maverick in

time to pick on the guys!

i was an adult when i was conned into the corporate cult known as jehovahs witnesses.

before that time i hung with a rough crowd of guys who carried guns and did bad things to people they didn't like, or who were stupid enough to let these guys know they disliked them.

Phantom Stranger

I didn't just grow up around construction workers... those were my first jobs. I was a California wood butcher - a framing carpenter's helper, summers and some weekends. I've worked as a carpenter, an electrical apprentice, a ditch-digging laborer. I grew up in schools where fighting was common, usually on racial lines, and I've won and lost fights. What does all that prove? Nothing.

I don't do physical work today - but I could. I'm 38, 6 foot, 220, and I play indoor soccer (usually keeper - lotsa collisions) and I occasionally work on cars and I use power tools and all that. I break up fights in my presence and I keep public domestic disputes from becoming assaults on females in my presence and I don't let kids get beat in public in front of me. But the moments when I act tough - when I get pissed on the soccer field or the basketball court - or even here - are not victories for my masculinity - they are failures of it.

Acting tough is trying to convince yourself of something of which you yourself aren't sure. The dictionary says that masculine is either defined by your genitalia, or by being "strong" and "robust". It's possible to be stong and robust without being a loudmouth blowhard who acts tough - it may be harder, but it's possible.

In fact, when someone is exhibiting machismo (see the definition below) they are actually being focused only on themselves. When one demonstrates strength, they can be doing so for themselves or on behalf or for the sake of someone or something else - some person they care for, some cause they are committed to. But when we try to be tough, we are really trying to convince ourselves of something we doubt. Once we as men believe that we are strong enough and capable enough - that we are enough - once we decide to stop worrying that someone is going to come look at out tickets and order us off the train car that all the other guys get to ride - that's when we start being masculine, and embracing our wholeness as men. The rest is posturing - you can see that at the zoo.

ma·chis·mo
n.

A strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness.
An exaggerated sense of strength or toughness.

4

Interesting article...

by Phantom Stranger in

confidence man .

the case for bush is the case against him.

by william saletan.

Phantom Stranger

Confidence Man The case for Bush is the case against him. By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, March 4, 2004, at 4:24 PM PT

"I know exactly where I want to lead this country," says George W. Bush in one of his new campaign ads. The ad, along with three others that began airing today, concludes with his official campaign theme: "President Bush. Steady leadership in times of change." In the revamped stump speech he has delivered twice in the last two weeks, Bush calls the election "a choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence, or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger."

And how does Bush view his challenger, John Kerry? The title of the attack ad posted on Bush's campaign Web site says it all: "Unprincipled."

Kerry thinks it's the other way around. He's been telling Democrats Bush is "the biggest say-one-thing, do-another" president ever. Yesterday Kerry's campaign responded to Bush's ads by accusing the president of "unsteady leadership." In the Democratic primaries, this accusation worked for Kerry, because liberals think Bush is a liar. But most voters don't, for a good reason: It isn't true. If Kerry makes the election a referendum on Bush's honesty, Bush will win.

How can Kerry persuade moderates to throw out Bush? By turning the president's message against him. Bush is steady and principled. He believes money is better spent by individuals than by the government. He believes the United States should assert its strength in the world. He believes public policy should respect religious faith. Most Americans share these principles and think Bush is sincere about them. The problem Bush has demonstrated in office is that he has no idea how to apply his principles in a changing world. He's a big-picture guy who can't do the job.

From foreign to economic to social policy, Bush's record is a lesson in the limits and perils of conviction. He's too confident to consult a map. He's too strong to heed warnings and too steady to turn the wheel when the road bends. He's too certain to admit error, even after plowing through ditches and telephone poles. He's too preoccupied with principle to understand that principle isn't enough. Watching the stars instead of the road, he has wrecked the budget and the war on terror. Now he's heading for the Constitution. It's time to pull him over and take away the keys.

Bush was right to go to war against the terrorists who struck us on 9/11. He was right to demand the overdue use of force against the scofflaw Iraqi regime. But he couldn't tell the difference between the two threats. He figured that since both Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were evil, they had to be connected. Saddam must have helped orchestrate the 9/11 attacks. He must have built weapons of mass destruction to sell to al-Qaida.

In recent months, congressional hearings and document leaks have unearthed a disturbing history. Again and again in 2001 and 2002, U.S. intelligence agencies sent signals that Bush was wrong. The FBI and CIA debunked putative links between Iraq and al-Qaida. The CIA rejected the claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa. In its National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA calculated that it could take Saddam up to five years to make a nuclear weapon and that he would transfer WMD to terrorists only if he were invaded. The Defense Intelligence Agency advised the administration that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons." The Air Force disputed the suggestion that Iraq had developed aerial drones capable of delivering chemical or biological toxins. Analysts questioned whether the White House was right that Saddam's aluminum tubes were designed for building nukes, or that two trucks the White House found suspicious were designed for making biological weapons.

Bush ignored every one of these warnings. They couldn't be true, because they didn't fit his theory. He couldn't stand the complexity of the facts or the ambiguity of intelligence. "Until we get rid of Saddam Hussein, we won't get rid of uncertainty," he told aides in November 2002. Four months later, on the eve of his invasion of Iraq, he declared, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." After the war, when Diane Sawyer asked Bush about the discrepancy between what he had said--"that there were weapons of mass destruction"--and what U.S. inspectors had found--"the possibility that [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons"--Bush replied, "What's the difference?"

That's Bush all over: Certainty. No doubt. No difference. But it makes a difference to Britain, France, and Mexico, which no longer trust our requests, based on U.S. intelligence, to cancel flights to the United States. And it makes a difference to China, which refuses to accept our report, based on U.S. intelligence, that North Korea is operating a highly enriched uranium program. Bush's overconfidence?reflected in a series of exaggerations wholly unnecessary to the punishment of Saddam for his noncompliance with U.N. inspections?has trashed our credibility and cost us vital help with other terrorist and WMD-related threats.

Bush was right to propose tax cuts in 1999. The economy was booming. The surplus was ballooning. Liberals were itching to spend the money on new programs, despite Bill Clinton's promises to pay down the national debt. Bush wanted to get the money out of Washington before that happened. That's why, under his plan, the size of the tax cut was to grow from year to year. The point was to keep the surplus from piling up, refunding more and more money as it poured in from a growing economy. That's also why Bush cut taxes across the board instead of targeting middle-class families who would spend the money immediately. He wasn't trying to stimulate the economy. He was trying to give the money back to the people who had paid it in, which meant largely the rich.

Then everything changed. The stock market tanked, and the economy slowed. Sept. 11 shook the nation's confidence and drastically altered military budget projections. Bush didn't need to drain a surplus anymore. He needed to fund national defense and stimulate the economy. He needed to get rid of his back-loaded across-the-board tax cut and replace it (as Jonathan Chait has explained) with front-loaded tax cuts aimed at consumers. Instead, Bush claimed that his original tax-cut elixir was just as good for the new malady as for the old one. The deficit exploded, the economy failed to recover the jobs it had lost, and much of the country remained unprotected from terrorism. The world changed, but Bush couldn't.

When Bush banned federal funding of research on new embryonic stem cell lines, he said sufficient research could proceed because "more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist." Bush's HHS secretary, Tommy Thompson, said of the 60 lines, "They're diverse, they're robust, they're viable for research." In truth, nobody knew whether the cell lines were diverse, robust, or viable. To date, only 15 have been made available, and no one knows how many more will turn out to be usable. But Bush hasn't budged. Last fall, in the name of human life, he signed into law a bill that required any doctor performing a second-trimester abortion to cut up the fetus inside the woman instead of removing it intact. Good principle, atrocious policy. His initiative to fund faith-based social programs has been a classic liberal misadventure, adding religious mini-bureaucracies to various Cabinet departments despite a study last year that showed faith-based job training programs were no more effective, and in some ways less effective, than regular job training programs.

Now, to save the family, Bush proposes to monkey with the Constitution. Why is this necessary? Because conservative states might be forced to honor gay marriages performed in liberal states, says Bush. But didn't the Defense of Marriage Act void that requirement? Yes, Bush argues, but DOMA might be struck down. Unwilling to wait for a ruling on DOMA, Bush prefers to circumvent the court system and local democracy by reopening the nation's founding document. He seeks to impose a permanent federal definition of marriage on "any state or city," regardless of what the voters in Boston or San Francisco want.

President Bush. Strength and confidence. Steady leadership in times of change. He knows exactly where he wants to lead this country. And he won't let facts, circumstances, or the Constitution get in his way.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2096654/

46

The Effeminate JW man

by Maverick in

time to pick on the guys!

i was an adult when i was conned into the corporate cult known as jehovahs witnesses.

before that time i hung with a rough crowd of guys who carried guns and did bad things to people they didn't like, or who were stupid enough to let these guys know they disliked them.

Phantom Stranger

So, if I would kick some ass, drink my whiskey straight, and hit on the chicks, then I'm a real man?

You guys crack me up.

I will stipulate that the WTS does noting to support men OR women to experience their wholeness as men or women, or as leaders... but how little that has to do with masculine stereotypes, I can't even tell you on a db...

I seem to be a wussy proto-fag in your estimation, guys (like toughness has jack sh!t to do with homosexuality, btw - you dopes) but just because I don't pick fights, I don't pay women to dance on the pole, and I don't drink the hard stuff unless it's in a margarita, has nothing to do with my masculinity or lack therof.

23