Sex Doll Sugar Daddy

It's 6.20 in the morning - I've been up for an hour reading the online editions of quality newspapers like The New York Times but nothing has taken my fancy like English tabloid's The Sun, which reports today on Canadian father of 2, David Hockey, 57, who takes his six nubile sex dolls on holidays with him around the to the UK and now, to the USA.

"I think the dolls are pretty - any man is lying if he says they aren't."


Well, that's made my day!

The Arizona Shootings: What The NRA Have To Say

The New York Times reported today on What The NRA Have To Say about the Arizona Shootings - which is, presently, not much.

My favorite quote from the article is by a Mr. Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners Of America, who said: 

“These politicians need to remember that these rights aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God-given rights. They can’t be infringed or limited in any way. What are they going to do: limit it two or three rounds? 

Having lots of ammunition is critical, especially if the police are not around and you need to be able to defend yourself against mobs.”

Mobs?

Er...what has God got to do with a misrepresentation of (is it) the Second Amendment? 

Jesus frickin' Christ and these people think they're the world's police!

The Arizona Shootings: Three More Reader Responses

One of the highlights of the reading week for me is the pleasant banter in the New York Times between political moderates, David Brooks (Right) and Gail Collins (Left). Here, they gave their take on The Arizona Shootings with Does Moderation Work? and I've selected threee more reader responses for your perusal.

N.B.: These comments aren't actually about moderation in Politics but they are interesting points in the Arizona shootings debate:

"Two truths: 


It is true that we will never completely outlaw guns in this country. 


And it is true that recreation and self protection with firearms do not require owning a gun that can shoot 30 bullets without reloading. 


Can we finally get the moderate solution and ban assault weapons? 


David, are to advocate, moderately or even passionately, for that?"

"Why it is that when Islamic terrorists commit acts of violence, the explanation is always sought in their socio-cultural and religious environment? 

But, when acts of violence like the one in Arizona happen, we are always reluctant to look for socio-cultural explanations and instead look for individual motivations. 

Already, the mainstream view has emerged that this was a singular, one-off, lone act by a mentally-disturbed individual. It's almost as if people are afraid to find out whether this might be linked to something larger in our culture. It's more comforting to know that the perpetrator was just a crazy person."

"One thing that's missing from the entire debate is any admission of responsibility. Other than Loughner's parents, I have not seen a single person accept any blame. It's actually a healthy thing to examine your actions, see if you might have contributed to a bad thing that has happened and then apologize. It clears the air and makes others feel better and makes you look more mature. 

Would it kill Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin to do so?"

The Arizona Shootings: Two Reader Responses

Two readers comments in response to Dr. Paul Krugman's article on the  Arizona Shootings in the New York Times.

"The recent shootings raise two issues for an observer from across the Pond: 

• the foolishness of a gun-culture which allows an apparently mentally unstable young man easy access to a semi-automatic weapon & 
• a political culture that encourages bigots to share their hatred and contempt for anyone they disagree with.

A sensible and mature society puts limits on both, by legal restraint and through a political discourse that does not tolerate the manipulation of the most basic instincts of hatred and violence. 

Sheltering behind a constitution drawn up in an different world to the one we now inhabit in order to defend the indefensible, seems bizarre and infantile. We Europeans sometime despair about the future direction of your society."

Jakedog

England

*****

"When I was a teenager, back in the '80s, we used to blow things up.

Nothing major, of course but someone had access to black powder explosive and we'd make powerful fireworks with it. Probably not even illegal in that western state at that time (maybe not even now). One guy, let's call him Jeff, was oddly enthusiastic about this, and wanted to make the charges bigger and bigger.

We also feuded with local Latino kids who rode around in lowriders but nothing truly violent or outside of the ordinary tension between groups of teenagers. There was, however, a lot of big talk and it got pretty hateful. Again, I think this was an adolescent thing with some adolescent thrill about saying awful and extreme things and ratcheting each other up - even though this was about kids we'd actually grown up with and played with when we were younger. Deep down at the time, and for sure later in life, we felt shocked at ourselves.

Jeff, however, didn't seem to have the same fundamental inner restraint, at least at the time. He started into joking about blowing up a lowrider, and we began to realize that he was actually kind of serious about it - his plan might actually have gotten someone hurt. I still remember there being a long silence when he'd suggested something kind of extreme, and one of us (not me, alas) said "those are human beings you're talking about". It's what everyone was thinking.

It was like a fever had broken after that. We all sort of realized what had been going on and though we didn't talk about it the whole thing dropped - even for Jeff. We started doing other things for fun and some of us eventually were able to at least hang out with some of the kids we'd been antagonizing.

I like to think that our little community was kind of like the cadmium rods in the nuclear reactor, keeping it from running away. I'll never know if, absent that, anyone would have come to actual harm. But, I worry, in this era of free-floating right wing hatred and social atomization, does that sort of restraint exist? The rhetoric of the Becks, Palins, and Limbaughs of today remind me a lot of that ratcheting and transgressive adolescent talk. 

[New York Times columnist] Krugman is right, of course, that the right wing has created a truly toxic nexus, and it's unmoored from any real counteracting force. I imagine Jeff with a radio, instead of a bunch of adolescent who, while jerks, are still human. And I feel fear."

Martin

Portland, Oregon