The Economic Collapse: Why it maybe Your Fault

So whose fault is this economic breakdown? This is the question I hear all the time.

People blame politicians, Wall Street and some people have the gall to blame those who took out sub-prime loans.

I think the large part of the blame lies with the American people. More specifically the ones who voted for Bush. So Karl Rove played them and brought out the anti gay marriage in 11 key states. Americans made a conscious choice that they preferred to have no financial future, support the wealthy so long as we fags and dykes couldn't get married and the brown people continued to get bombed. Didn't even really matter that we were bombing the wrong brown people.

Bush may have lied about many things, but he certainly didnt lie about being a de-regulator. In fact, even now he is proud of this fact.

It was well known to everyone that Bush's tax cuts were ONLY for the wealthy. Even Fox couldn't really spin that.

So here, is in my opinion the learnings of this crisis: DON'T VOTE WITH HATRED FOR OTHERS. It will end up biting you personally in the ass. Don't sacrifice the future of yourself and your children because of your hatred.Now, I wish someone of actual importance would say that on TV.

Women: Stupid, Petty Traitors

Women have always been stereotyped as coy, manipulative and yet stupid. These persistent stereotypes of women as unfaithful, lacking in loyalty and stupid have existed for centuries. A lot of these ideas of a womans inability to understand important concepts such as policies, politics etc were the basis of denying women equal rights. However with the defeat of Hillary Clinton and Mccains picking of Sarah Palin it is obvious that not much has changed.

Picking Palin assumes that women are incapable of separating one woman from another. McCain didn't pick a black man, he and his advisors, didn't think that black people would confuse the difference between Alan Keyes and Obama. No, no one thinks that would happen. However we women are so stupid as a group that clearly we cannot tell the difference between Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What the difference between a pro choice, pro gay rights candidate, an environmentalist vs an anti choice, anti gay rights, environment destroying candidate? They both have vagina's. That as far as we treacherous and stupid women can see.

We don't care about the quality of our candidates. We don't certainly understand the implications of picking one vs the other. Oh no! All we can understand in our infinite pettiness and stupidity is that we will support one vagina when the other has failed.

In fact we are too stupid to even understand that second seat is not shattering a glass ceiling. Second seat has been done before.

Of course so far I have only addressed how the Republican party views women as stupid and petty and vengeful.

Let us look at the Democratic party's response to Palin on the blogospheres. The liberal blogs could attack her on any number of issues. She is everything HRC was NOT. She is anti women, anti gay, anti environment etc but what do they pick? Her ability to mother.

Mostly whether a mother of a three day old child can be a good person if she wants to be Vice President of the United States of America. Apparently she cannot be a good mother. How dare she leave her infant? As far as anyone knows this infant has a father. However apparently this father is not expected to take care of his child, though through hundreds of years women have taken care of babies while their husbands have gone on to do ambitious things with their lives. This baby is going to die from neglect since it will left in its father's care between Sept-Nov. The outrage!!!!

She doesn't have to work, she chose to do this. Hence the immorality. Reinforcing the belief that only men have a right to ambition. We have a right only to supplement income. We should only work if there is no choice in the matter. Our ambitions are never to super cede our children. It doesn't matter if this does not hold true for men. Their ambitions do matter since their work is not considered supplemental.

I don't want to defend Sarah Palin, she stands for everything I don't. I think like Mccain and Bush and Cheney, she is pure evil. But I will support her right to work for ambition and not because she has to.

The twofold attack against the intelligence of women and our desire to control our fates this week have been very disheartening for this feminist.

Saffron Rice with Apricots and Sliced Almonds Recipe

Soak rice for at least an hour in water (1/2 cup per person)

Soak a few saffron threads in warm milk

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Heat a pot of water till it boilsDrain rice and put in water (about 7-9 minutes till done)

Drain rice

Spread rice on a cookie tray so that it doesn’t clump together

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Heat a large wok with a bit of peanut oil/ghee/safflower oil

When hot put in cinnamon stick for a bit

Turn the heat off, put in almonds and apricots

Swirl for a bit

Turn heat back on and start adding rice—stir to mix

Add the saffron milk mixture-- stir to mixAdd salt to taste and a bit of sugar ---stir to mix

Ted Haggard & Larry Craig Doesn't Explain All Homophobes

Very few things piss me of quite as quickly as when people dismiss homophobes as being closeted gays. This squarely shifts the blame from a homophobic society created by the majority to an oppressed minority. Their are many reasons why this argument is utter nonsense but I will first discuss how memory works.

We tend to remember unusual event more than typical events. How well do you remember last Tuesday vs 9/11? Events that are unusual and atypical produce more vivid memories. A well known homophobe such as Ted Haggard being discovered as engaging in homosexual behavior, sticks out in our mind because it's unusual and atypical and also because its well covered in the media. It makes us forget the hundreds of other homophobic pastors, rabbi's, priests and politicians who are not engaging in homosexual acts. Memory is also easier to retrieve if we have emotions attached to it. Having a Larry Craig exposed as cruising in the bathroom causes a lot of media attention, highlighting the event and making it salient. Therefore this event is more likely to stick in your head than your homophobic mother/aunt/grandmother/pastor etc. So we forget our regular mundane straight homophobes while remembering the aberrant homophobe (i.e. the gay homophobe)

Here is another reason I don't buy that homophobes are disproportionately gay. Think about your grandparents generation and how much they do not like gay people. Do you think they were a particularly gay generation? Do we really all have closeted gay grandparents? Was this the gayest generation ever? Now, think about youngsters today, and how much less homophobic they are. (according to most polls, a large percentage of young people support gay marriage). Is this a particularly heterosexual generation?This is one of many reasons i don't buy the "homophobe=closeted gay" argument.

How about cultures that are more homophobic than others? Is Iran really more gay than the Netherlands? Is Palestine more gay than Israel?

Yes some homophobes are gay. I would say the proportion is same as the population. i.e: 1/10th are GLBT.

I also find this argument highly hypocritical. When you meet a racist, do you assume they are black, or part black? When you meet a sexist, do you assume they are part woman? When you meet a xenophobe, do you assume they are part foreign? So why is it this assumption is made just for us. Yes, their are biracial bigots. Hitler is rumored to have been part Jewish, however what about the rest of Germany that went along with that genocide. Were they all part Jewish? No. Similarly there will always be some gays suffering from sever internalized homophobia, but it will always be a small percentage.

The roots of homophobia do not lie in internalized homophobia. It cannot because if there was no hatred of gays from society, an individual gay person could not have internalized any hatred. Just as straight people cannot suffer internalized heterophobia, since heterophobia doesn't exist. Homophobia exists largely because of misogyny and rigid gender roles. There are other theories as to why homophobia exists, but its certainly doesn't and indeed cannot have its roots in internalized homophobia.

It is very dangerous to make this quick assumption that homophobes are gay because it shift the blame of homophobia in society back to gay people. This way society (majority of whom are straight) do not have to take the onus of homophobia. Its like blaming black people for racism. We ignore the institutionalized homophobia in religion, law, customs are point and laugh at Larry Craig's wide stance. This is why I think this assumption is really irresponsible and blames the victims for what is really not their fault.

Fundamental Religious Folk and Their Lack of Faith

My contention is that as much as religious right wingers from all religions preach about their faith in their various Gods, they actually really lack faith in their Gods. God is considered infallible in monotheistic religions such as Islam, Christianity and Judaism. However religious bigots and fundamentalists, consider homosexuals an abomination. This I find a mighty big problem with their 'faith' in God.

Yes, I could see how god made a small mistake, like making Bangladesh under the sea level. Poor things get flooded all the time. However making 10% of the population a mistake, 20% if you count bisexuals and drunken sorority chicks, that is far short of infallible. That is just a poor worker. Now, I don't claim to love my job or excel at it, however even I don't make a mistake 10-20% of the time. The infallible one should make a far lesser percentage of mistakes than me, I can see making a mistake 1 in 10,000 or so, but 1 in 10?

Which brings me back to my original point where is the faith in this? This is literally an outright mutiny against God. Believe that God did the right thing in making homosexuals. He wanted something out of it, maybe you don't understand why... and this is why you need to have FAITH in your God.

Gunman in My Office Building: Exciting day at work

So a couple of my coworkers left the building to have a smoke. When we got to the Lobby we heard the doorman yelling on his radio "there is a guy with a gun in the building!!!!"

Apparently the guy was chasing down his wife's attorney when he got into an altercation with the doorman and showed his gun. Then he took the elevator and was lost in the building

Then a rush of cops come into the building... the block get cordoned off..there were cops running around with shields and doggie police.

Meanwhile people still in our office lock the doors and blockade with file cabinets.

I couldn't get back to work, so my coworkers and I went to get some candy. Yes, we are very jaded new yorkers.

Drama continued with cops rushing in an out for an hour!

Finally guy was dragged out shirtless. REALLY REALLY BAD TATTOO'S is all I have to say. But he seemed happy, all smiley. One wonders why such a mellow guy was running around with a gun

Bisexuality: Why it bothers everyone

As a bisexual person I have often why we are so well disliked. A lot of gay people will openly admit to not wanting to date bi-people, some will state they do not believe bisexuality exist and others just wish we could pick a side and stick with it. Straight boys like femme bi-girls but only because it feeds into a sexual threesome fantasy, bi-boys are universally distrusted and often viewed as disease spreaders.

Bisexuality by itself does present several problems in the gay community, some of which I will address. I am sure heterosexuals have their own prejudices against us but quite frankly hetero prejudices are too boring for me to really delve into. "Hell, abomination, Leviticus, god hates fags" blah blah.. Seriously tiresome stuff.

The first problem that bisexuality presents is that it weakens the choice argument. The argument that homosexuality is innate, biological and immutable is somewhat threatened by bisexuals. Since bisexuals seem to make an apparent choice in the anatomy of their partners, the idea that homosexuality might be a choice needs to be addressed. I have several thoughts about this, one of which is while bisexuals do choose the gender of their partners, the fact that they are attracted to both genders is not a choice for them.

The second is that though we have gotten cornered by the right wingers into this choice argument, there is no moral imperative that says if we had a choice we should be straight. I do not believe that there is a categorical imperative that states if we have a choice we need to be heterosexuals. Quite simply, we don't. A lot of our thoughts and discussions in our community has been shaped because of our need to defend ourselves from fundamental religious bigots, and that is unfortunate. We don't have to be straight, just like black people don't have to be white, even if they had a choice in the matter. We protect choices all the time, such as religious choice. Since Christians choose to be Christians, are they really in any position to tell us that we cant exert choice over own bodies?

The other problem is whether or not one believes that bisexuals are really closeted gays. When I first heard this argument, I thought it was laughable however over the last 10 years I now at least understand where comes from. I was watching the show On the Down Low on Logo a few days ago, with all these gay boys claiming they were bisexual. Dude, really, no one buys that you are bi unless you are out. Bisexuality isn't and shouldn't be synonymous with being closeted. Seriously. So please gay people, come out. Don't take my identity to hide behind.

A friend of mine says that anytime some one says they don't believe in bisexuals he hits them over the head. When they question why he did that, he says it couldn't have happened since he doesn't exist, so clearly the person is imagining things and going crazy! I think this is a very funny and effective tactic.

Some gays will not date bi's, the rationale is that we are more promiscuous and more likely to cheat. Ummm.... yeah. I think the reality is that insecurity is ugly, and projection of said insecurity is uglier. Of course bisexuals cheat on their partners, as do monosexuals of every stripe. Cheating occurs for many reasons, sexual orientation isn't one of them. However if it makes you feel any better to project your insecurity on to me, I suppose you can. It might be healthier to get therapy though. Just a thought. Most gay people however do not indulge in such bigotry.

The idea of disease spreading gays and bi's deserves its own post since really it really has to do with homophobia, racism and several other factors.

The Corruption of Words: Gays and Food

I recently read the book, In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto, by Michael Pollan. In this book he describes a law in 1938 imposed by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. This law required when we buy traditional foods that most of us recognize, such as bread, butter, milk and cheese we should get exactly that. " if a food resembles a standardized food, but does not comply with the standard, that food must be labeled an imitation". However in 1977 the food industry managed to get this law overturned, and fake foods were allowed to pass as the real thing. So bread, that completely isn't what bread used to be, is now considered well.. bread. This new bread has the nutrients leached out of it, and while it pleases the palate and is whiter than before, is nutritionally useless.

Anyhow as I was reading this I was thinking of the corruption of day to day words as it applies to us gay folk. Words that are comforting and provide structure to people like family, values, tradition and morality have been so corrupted, that like fake foods, the shell of the word exist but its meaning is corrupted. We have families and values and tradition and morals, but the right has succeeded to a great degree to deprive these words of their true meaning while still keeping them 'familiar'Corrupted familiar words don't repulse society quite the same way, had Focus on the Family been labeled Focus on Destroying Fags and Dyke's, I am sure society would be far more repulsed. Quite the same way that they would if wonderbread was labeled fake food.

Not only are we becoming nutritionally bankrupt thanks to corrupted words, we are becoming morally bankrupt too.