When it comes to what’s the legal age of consent for having sex, whether you’re committing a local felony or just enjoying legal lubricious fun depends on what state or country you’re in.
Texas now puts the age of consent for sex and for marriage at 17. Just a few years back Texans lived with 16 for consent. But the Texas Legislature raised it to 17, it’s said because Texas authorities wanted to snare themselves a passel of adult members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose polygamous presence upset nearby boondocks Baptists.
Next door in Arkansas you can consent to canoodle at 14, for getting hitched, at 16.
(See http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm for a worldwide and U.S. rundown of legal consent ages in hither and yon.)
The Fundamentalist Church guys, who apparently screw every young thing that comes along, plainly aren’t too smart. If they’d set up in Arkansas they’d have given themselves three extra years of legal joy–assuming they delayed the pretense of marriage.
However, they didn’t. Now Texas has 462 of their kids in custody while Child Protective Services there (as in most states, fumble but not humble prone) tries to figure out which child is whose and when did the birth mothers actually conceive and undergo a marriage, probably polygamous and therefore also illegal. All this after an armed raid obviously aimed to jug the males involved and so bust up the community disturbing to the orthodox.
No one should tolerate sex forced on anyone, and if Texas can prove that many of the girls had no choice but to “marry” their uncles or the lecher next door a few minutes before being thrown down on a nearby bed, then Texas should apply its rape laws to those who did the dirty deeds. In prison they will learn what rape is like.
Equally, no one should tolerate that anyone is forced to marry once, much less 10 or 15 times, as may be the case with this particular specimen of the insanity of religion. That’s involuntary servitude no matter how you dice it–slavery.
Finally, there has to be a cutoff age enforced by law for consensual sex, with sex with any person under that age being statutory rape–a term much more precise that the current “child abuse.”
It escapes me, however, why willing polygamous marriages among consenting adults are illegal.
It’s quite legal now for 15 women above the age of consent to wive without benefit of marriage with a likewise consenting man and, though unknown, for 15 men to husband one woman. It’s exhausting but not felonious.
The only argument I can reckon against the civil issuance of multiple marriage licenses is clerical convenience. But now with computers surely the state can keep track of one man with his 15 wives.
The religious aspect is plain. If a church says we allow only one marriage at a time, then that’s that for that church’s blessing. But if as with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a theology says as many marriages as you can service, then why should that be outlawed so long as the brides and grooms are adults who volunteer for that miraculous state? Why is that view less upright than that of the Holly Rollers next door who say that you can have only one marriage at a time but as many as you want so long as you divorce in between, that is, practice serial polygamy?
If Texas can prove females of any age were forced to marry and forced to have sex, then the state should hoosegow everyone involved for such rapes and slavery.
But I fear that’s only a secondary aim, that the first aim is rub out a deviant religion that upsets other godly folk. And that’s wrong.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Military Whores "Analyze" War News for Us
On Sunday, April 20, David Barstow of The New York Times unleashed his lengthy investigative piece showing that most of the “military analysts” on national TV and radio–retired generals and admirals, with a sprinkling of colonels and captains-- are whores for the Pentagon and the Bush administration.
Instead of giving viewers and listeners and their sometime employers on the networks unvarnished opinions about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they dish out propaganda prepped for them or prodded for them by Pentagon and White House flacks and political ops.
Many of these gents–no women among them yet–earn $1,000 a pop for appearing on “Meet the Press” and like thumbsucking and news programs.
Beyond that, many turn out to be top officials, often recently hired, of such companies as Blackwater which supply goods and services –often shoddy--to the military at high prices. Some even earn a few hundred thousand now and then as consultants to other companies also pushing and shoving to peddle their skills and manufactures to the Pentagon at inflated prices.
Few of these “analysts” wish to offend former colleagues in the high-ranking officers’ corps or to offend the Secretary of Defense and his lackeys, for fear they will find themselves cut off from the sweet, inside talk that gilds their expertise or, worse, find their companies cut off from sucking on one of Uncle Sam’s sweet money tits.
None of this should surprise, especially not surprise anyone with experience with the military. Used to giving orders, these hookers are also used to taking them. To get to where they had been with eagles and stars on their shoulders, they also had to be political. It is, after all, the current president who makes one a general or admiral in the first place (with the OK of Congress of course, something rarely withheld). And it is a secretary of defense who convinces a president to make your nomination in the first place. You don’t get to be a general or admiral by making waves against the establishment.
The saddest thing Barstow reports is the lack of interest and investigation on the part of the national news machines about whether their hired experts in fact are delivering the straight skinny instead of warmed-over pap from the military propaganda kitchens. Indeed, one fierce news outfit, CNN, refused to even talk to Barstow about their military toy boys. That tells me more about CNN that I wished to know. So much for that channel’s pretense to cover news. It does better trying to cover up its own stained pants.
President Dwight Eisenhower, in his valedictory speech to the nation, warned about the growing power of the military-industrial complex.
Now we should worry about the parasitical power of the military-TVNews complex, complete with house doxies pretending to be men of virtue.
Instead of giving viewers and listeners and their sometime employers on the networks unvarnished opinions about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they dish out propaganda prepped for them or prodded for them by Pentagon and White House flacks and political ops.
Many of these gents–no women among them yet–earn $1,000 a pop for appearing on “Meet the Press” and like thumbsucking and news programs.
Beyond that, many turn out to be top officials, often recently hired, of such companies as Blackwater which supply goods and services –often shoddy--to the military at high prices. Some even earn a few hundred thousand now and then as consultants to other companies also pushing and shoving to peddle their skills and manufactures to the Pentagon at inflated prices.
Few of these “analysts” wish to offend former colleagues in the high-ranking officers’ corps or to offend the Secretary of Defense and his lackeys, for fear they will find themselves cut off from the sweet, inside talk that gilds their expertise or, worse, find their companies cut off from sucking on one of Uncle Sam’s sweet money tits.
None of this should surprise, especially not surprise anyone with experience with the military. Used to giving orders, these hookers are also used to taking them. To get to where they had been with eagles and stars on their shoulders, they also had to be political. It is, after all, the current president who makes one a general or admiral in the first place (with the OK of Congress of course, something rarely withheld). And it is a secretary of defense who convinces a president to make your nomination in the first place. You don’t get to be a general or admiral by making waves against the establishment.
The saddest thing Barstow reports is the lack of interest and investigation on the part of the national news machines about whether their hired experts in fact are delivering the straight skinny instead of warmed-over pap from the military propaganda kitchens. Indeed, one fierce news outfit, CNN, refused to even talk to Barstow about their military toy boys. That tells me more about CNN that I wished to know. So much for that channel’s pretense to cover news. It does better trying to cover up its own stained pants.
President Dwight Eisenhower, in his valedictory speech to the nation, warned about the growing power of the military-industrial complex.
Now we should worry about the parasitical power of the military-TVNews complex, complete with house doxies pretending to be men of virtue.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Bush Finally Acts to Curb Global Warming: No Farts
George W. Bush today called upon the nation to stop farting by 2025 and so stop the emission of one of the worst greenhouse gases causing global warming: Methane.
“Every American, every day, blows out a liter or more of methane from his or her rear,” the president said in a speech in the White House Rose Garden.
“I’m today sending Congress a bill to cause the immediate tapering off of this flatus and outlaw it entirely, with criminal penalties by 2025 that will plug up this threat, when I’ll probably be dead from old age.”
For the first time acknowledging that global warming might cause a trifle of harm, the president also called for an income-tax break for every citizen who daily uses Beano. Beano stock today soared by 20 percent before the stock market closed and another 15 percent once the market’s final bell had rung. Until today Beano stock sold mainly to vegetarian mutual funds.
Bush, taking questions from reporters after his five-minute talk, said “as I speak there are 304 million Americans popping methane into the atmosphere. That’s a lot of methane. And we’re adding five persons every minute to our population, many of them from cultures that eat a lot of beans. It’s not hard to sniff a national emergency here.”
Though an outspoken believer that the Christian God created human beings in God’s own image on day one, the president deflected questions about whether his call for eventual criminal penalties against breaking wind runs counter to holy writ.
“I recognize there’s a good argument that farting is natural and necessary, heavenly. But it’s not as good as the arguments for the unrestricted burning of coal and oil and natural gas to light our houses and move our cars. God ordained those too.”
The Rev. Dooby Norwhale of Evangelicals Against Science said the president “is being mislead by other Ivy Leaguers on his staff, elitists. Global warming not exist. And if it did, it could not be stopped because God wanted it. Farting is a God-given right and necessity.”
Truckles Hortense of the Sierra Club said “it’s good Bush finally acts to curb what he has long denied even existed. I, for one, think we could do better though by piping our anal emissions into jars, for burning in stoves and fireplaces. We could set up special jars in our homes and offices and schools.”
Democratic leaders of Congress said they would withhold comment until they actually had a bill to read from the White House. “We don’t mind passing anything that won’t take effect until 2025,” one said. “But we do mind constraining Americans from a practice all indulge from birth. Expect long and serious hearings on this.”
Bush mentioned that his call for a ban on beans has the support of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association. “Anything that will sell more beef is a good thing,” he said. The Cattlemen’s Association did not respond to repeated press telephone calls for comment.
Roscoe Ripweather of the American Bean Grower’s Association called the president’s call for a ban on beans “a poof that will below away in the wind. He’s truckling to the coal companies and the tree huggers and other cowboys. The right to fart is implicit in the Constitution. We’ll go to the Supreme Court on this if we have to. The Catholic majority there will recognize that once you ban farts you’ll ban incense next.”
“Every American, every day, blows out a liter or more of methane from his or her rear,” the president said in a speech in the White House Rose Garden.
“I’m today sending Congress a bill to cause the immediate tapering off of this flatus and outlaw it entirely, with criminal penalties by 2025 that will plug up this threat, when I’ll probably be dead from old age.”
For the first time acknowledging that global warming might cause a trifle of harm, the president also called for an income-tax break for every citizen who daily uses Beano. Beano stock today soared by 20 percent before the stock market closed and another 15 percent once the market’s final bell had rung. Until today Beano stock sold mainly to vegetarian mutual funds.
Bush, taking questions from reporters after his five-minute talk, said “as I speak there are 304 million Americans popping methane into the atmosphere. That’s a lot of methane. And we’re adding five persons every minute to our population, many of them from cultures that eat a lot of beans. It’s not hard to sniff a national emergency here.”
Though an outspoken believer that the Christian God created human beings in God’s own image on day one, the president deflected questions about whether his call for eventual criminal penalties against breaking wind runs counter to holy writ.
“I recognize there’s a good argument that farting is natural and necessary, heavenly. But it’s not as good as the arguments for the unrestricted burning of coal and oil and natural gas to light our houses and move our cars. God ordained those too.”
The Rev. Dooby Norwhale of Evangelicals Against Science said the president “is being mislead by other Ivy Leaguers on his staff, elitists. Global warming not exist. And if it did, it could not be stopped because God wanted it. Farting is a God-given right and necessity.”
Truckles Hortense of the Sierra Club said “it’s good Bush finally acts to curb what he has long denied even existed. I, for one, think we could do better though by piping our anal emissions into jars, for burning in stoves and fireplaces. We could set up special jars in our homes and offices and schools.”
Democratic leaders of Congress said they would withhold comment until they actually had a bill to read from the White House. “We don’t mind passing anything that won’t take effect until 2025,” one said. “But we do mind constraining Americans from a practice all indulge from birth. Expect long and serious hearings on this.”
Bush mentioned that his call for a ban on beans has the support of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association. “Anything that will sell more beef is a good thing,” he said. The Cattlemen’s Association did not respond to repeated press telephone calls for comment.
Roscoe Ripweather of the American Bean Grower’s Association called the president’s call for a ban on beans “a poof that will below away in the wind. He’s truckling to the coal companies and the tree huggers and other cowboys. The right to fart is implicit in the Constitution. We’ll go to the Supreme Court on this if we have to. The Catholic majority there will recognize that once you ban farts you’ll ban incense next.”
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The War Is Going Fine--All Over Again
The first such commander was Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a vainglorious strut in command of U.N. (read mainly U.S. and South Korean) forces during the Korean War that President Harry Truman, a Democrat, committed American forces to out of military and diplomatic necessity.
When those forces under MacArthur finally staved off the invasion by Communist North Koreans, the Chinese joined in, fell upon the Americans and other forces and damn near wiped them out until MacArthur’s generals held them to stalemate.
Alas, that wasn’t good enough for MacArthur, who wanted to take the war into China (a few nuclear bombs here and there to tonic the Chinese) and couldn’t shut up about it, despite Truman’s orders for MacArthur to sew his tongue to his lips. Truman fired him, creating a great political stew while the stalemate went on.
It took a better and smarter general, Dwight Eisenhower, once MacArthur’s aide, to get himself elected president on a Republican platform that promised to shut down the Korean War–it was achieving little and costing too much in money and blood.
Our generals running the Vietnam War assured all of us over and over and over that more troops, more planes, more killing and bombing and, of course, more casualties, would let us follow that cliche’–the light at the end of the tunnel–right out into the sunlight of victory.
President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, believed them, until the View Cong and North Vietnamese started whipping us fair and square and angry Americans took to the streets to protest and riot.
Johnson decided not to run for re-election and a petty Republican crook, Richard Nixon, whipped the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for the presidency because Humphrey couldn’t get his lips and tongue to say: I’m going to bring all our 500,000 troops home. Nixon said that, lied about it, and made the war go on until with Saigon in flames, our ambassador and other staff had to flee town by helicopter as North Vietnamese troops took over the streets.
Now we have Gen. David Petraeus, American commander in Iraq, and Ambassador David Crocker telling senators and the rest of us that George Bush’s war in Iraq is winnable if–guess what–we just continue to blow up dollars and American soldiers there. All the evidence is to the contrary, with Shiites of the government fighting Shiites of the streets, Sunnis blowing up and shooting us and Shiites when they can, the country’s civilians, including kids, daily dying violently from the war and suicide bombs.
As for Bush himself, he fiddles while Baghdad explodes. No American can leave the so-called Green Zone, our fortress under mortar siege there, to walk the streets of Baghdad one inch without getting shot or bombed.
Worse, Sen. John McCain finds that all jolly; and if he’s elected president, by God, he’ll keep us there fighting for another 100 years; no pansy he. In effect, he already pledges himself to be Bushette and a worse fool (something I never thought possible), because McCain should know better.
As for the Democrats, neither Sens. Hilary Clinton nor Barack Obama can bring themselves to say if I’m elected president I’m withdrawing our Army immediately–no, both maunder about phased withdrawals, supportive presences and other garble as they try to avoid the obvious: We’ve been whipped fair and square in a place we should not have come to in the first place and we’d better get our buns out of there before we ruin our Army and bankrupt our nation.
I expect someday, if I live long enough, to read that Iraqis have swarmed and overwhelmed the Green Zone, that Ambassador Crocker fled by helicopter and that General Petraeus has managed withdraw our forces into Kuwait, a maneuver so brilliant and so bloody that he soon will announce he’s running for president on the peace ticket.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
It's Not the Price of Gas That's Going Up
Where I live in rural Washington State, gasoline prices edge toward $4 a gallon–a price that a year from now, I suspect, I will look back to with envy.
Naturally, a howl arises across the land for the government to do something: I.e., cause gas prices to drop.
A lesser growl provides a bass continuo for the government to punish the oil companies, or at least squeeze more taxes from them.
This latter aim remains within the realm of the possible. The first aim, to force down gas prices, our government, alas, cannot do.
Why?
Well, to begin with, it’s not that the price of gasoline is going up so much as it is that the value of the dollar is plummeting.
It takes more bucks to buy the same thing, especially something derived in large part from overseas. Who can blame Saudi princes for nominally demanding more anemic (and bleeding) bucks in order to maintain their standards for living lavishly? And to have enough of our bucks left to give to Arab terrorist organizations to use against us and any Arab regime that refuses to kiss the Saudis’ glutes?
Half of our present national debt–call it the national curse upon future generations–derives from the reigns of Presidents Reagan, Bush the First and Bush the Whacker. Whacker indeed has created almost a quarter of our national debt himself with his family-revenge war in Iraq, and still spending.
Since George McBush, the Republican presidential candidate, will continue the Iraq slaughter and futility and thus continue to open arteries on the dollar by spending money the United States must borrow from the Saudis and Chinese and now the Russians, there’s no chance if he’s elected for the dollar to recover. No, it will continue to expire and the price of everything from abroad, but especially oil and thus such derivatives as gasoline, will continue shooting for the stars.
Republican and Libertarian No-Nothings squawk that opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Range to drilling will oil away our problems with new supply and so dampen price.
Pure B.S. Even if it were smart to drill the range and bump off the caribou and bears and other critters there, and it’s not, oil from ANWR would not come into production for eight years. At best, according to estimates even from the oil companies, it might make up a quarter of America’s oil thirst.
But that implies the oil so produced would come to the United States. Why should it? Right now half of the oil now produced in Alaska ends up in Japan and other parts of Asia. Oil goes where people pay the most–or the most convenient--price for it. The Chinese have already started to shoulder us worthy Americans to the side in oil bidding, and the American companies producing the oil overseas have reveled in joy to sell crude to them. I hunch the Chinese would hustle just as hard for new oil from Alaska. Why not?
Since the cost of oil and its products goes through our domestic economy like a gulp of castor oil–the greater the cost, the greater our spasms–I expect to be paying $5 a gallon soon for regular. Government won’t be able to do anything about it except moan and borrow more dough from, well, if not our enemies, our competitors and certainly not our friends. Pray they don’t stop buying U.S. Treasury notes.
Naturally, a howl arises across the land for the government to do something: I.e., cause gas prices to drop.
A lesser growl provides a bass continuo for the government to punish the oil companies, or at least squeeze more taxes from them.
This latter aim remains within the realm of the possible. The first aim, to force down gas prices, our government, alas, cannot do.
Why?
Well, to begin with, it’s not that the price of gasoline is going up so much as it is that the value of the dollar is plummeting.
It takes more bucks to buy the same thing, especially something derived in large part from overseas. Who can blame Saudi princes for nominally demanding more anemic (and bleeding) bucks in order to maintain their standards for living lavishly? And to have enough of our bucks left to give to Arab terrorist organizations to use against us and any Arab regime that refuses to kiss the Saudis’ glutes?
Half of our present national debt–call it the national curse upon future generations–derives from the reigns of Presidents Reagan, Bush the First and Bush the Whacker. Whacker indeed has created almost a quarter of our national debt himself with his family-revenge war in Iraq, and still spending.
Since George McBush, the Republican presidential candidate, will continue the Iraq slaughter and futility and thus continue to open arteries on the dollar by spending money the United States must borrow from the Saudis and Chinese and now the Russians, there’s no chance if he’s elected for the dollar to recover. No, it will continue to expire and the price of everything from abroad, but especially oil and thus such derivatives as gasoline, will continue shooting for the stars.
Republican and Libertarian No-Nothings squawk that opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Range to drilling will oil away our problems with new supply and so dampen price.
Pure B.S. Even if it were smart to drill the range and bump off the caribou and bears and other critters there, and it’s not, oil from ANWR would not come into production for eight years. At best, according to estimates even from the oil companies, it might make up a quarter of America’s oil thirst.
But that implies the oil so produced would come to the United States. Why should it? Right now half of the oil now produced in Alaska ends up in Japan and other parts of Asia. Oil goes where people pay the most–or the most convenient--price for it. The Chinese have already started to shoulder us worthy Americans to the side in oil bidding, and the American companies producing the oil overseas have reveled in joy to sell crude to them. I hunch the Chinese would hustle just as hard for new oil from Alaska. Why not?
Since the cost of oil and its products goes through our domestic economy like a gulp of castor oil–the greater the cost, the greater our spasms–I expect to be paying $5 a gallon soon for regular. Government won’t be able to do anything about it except moan and borrow more dough from, well, if not our enemies, our competitors and certainly not our friends. Pray they don’t stop buying U.S. Treasury notes.
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