TakeYourMedicine

According to well placed sources, Dubya takes lots of testosterone in order to be "at the top of his game" in combatting terrorists.

Dubya's swollen balls date back to his gubanatorial days, when he submitted to drug testing before beginning his presidential campaign, mostly to reassure James Baker III and Laura that he wasn't doing drugs. The tests revealed instead a high level of testosterone, something that he got into through his baseball connections. Since he wasn't competing athletically, just politically, his handlers let their boy have his way. (It makes his defense of his baseball player friends during the doping scandal even more amusing, too... no?)

In any case, all that bring 'em on rhetoric --In fact, our whole damn foreign policy-- has no doubt been enhanced by Bush's hormonal power pack.

America on steroids. It starts at the top.

A few weeks ago my long-time friend (as opposed to longtime companion... we've never Done It) Karen Zipdrive was nyah-nyah-nyahing the poor sales of Mary Cheney's book, Now It's My Turn. Not too long after Karen's un-compassionate, un-conservative tirade, a snarky review in the New York Times Book Review weighed in on the volume's deficiencies.

Well!I was raised in Orange County, California, where I learned at my mama's knee the nature of the basically wicked nature of the Liberal Media, so I determined to give the lass a chance, though one that wouldn't cost me any money. (Mary, after all, received a million dollar advance, whereas I now work for $11.03 an hour.) I went down to my friendly local bookstore and found the copy, not in the desperately remaindered pile for $2.98 as I'd hoped (Zippy DID say that the book's sales were miserable), but on the corner of a table in a big stack.Mary's rich relatives are probably threatening the publishers with expanded executive branch powers in order to keep the book from being shredded.

But I digress. Once I hunkered down with this volume, I learned all sorts of important things:
Her father is a man of Honesty and Integrity;
John Edwards fusses with his hair too much;
She and her dad have a lot of quality father-daughter moments shooting animals and stuff, here and abroad;
Her parents don't believe the same stuff as the other Republicans on the subject of gay people;
Her family just wants her to Be Happy.

All I can say is Wow. No wonder she got her own book, and she didn't even mention that her partner was a transgendered Dustin Hoffman, as you can see above. (I wondered what had happened to him. Don't you believe that nonsense about playing field hockey together in college.) Wotta read!

Run, don't walk, to your favorite book store to read Mary's memoir for free in the little designer coffee cafe that's appended to most bookstore these days. Save your money for the iced mocha with whipped cream on top. Remember, Mary's already got her million buck advance, and she doesn't really need the money. Not with Halliburton's profits what they are.

There's nothing like enjoying the Wit of the Fundie Right when they har-har about it being Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. "It ain't Natural," they scold.

Ah, nature. According to the June/July issue of Seed, 450 species of vertibrates have been identified as practicing homosexual behavior in the wild. According to Joan Roughgarden, professor of biology at Stanford University and author of Evolution's Rainbow, a new explanation of sexual behavior is in order. The evidence indicates that mating isn't only about multiplying; animals also have sex for fun and for formalizing social bonds. Male big horn sheep, giraffes, killer whales, grey whales, and bottlenose dolphins all engage in all-male orgies. Japanese macaques and bonobos are enthusiastic lesbians.

The list of species exhibiting homosexual behavior includes buffalo and bison, gray seals, squirrels, herons, and wolves. Dogs and cats, bunnies and duckies. Now I know why the laughing gull is laughing. Now I know what the blowfly blows.

In nature the sexual spectrum is less binary, more a continuum. Roughgarden sees the hetero-and homosexual distinctions as cultural creations rather than biological fact. Roughgarden predicts that our own dichotomies will break down further in the next 50 years.

Not if Dubya's base has anything to say about it, of course. It's going to be interesting to see how much longer his successors will remain in thrall to the shrill perspectives of that group.

In the meantime, get a copy of Seed and check out the exhaustive list of your new brothers and sisters! Bears and belugas, koalas and kestrels, walrus and wallaby share the love that dares not speak its name!

1. I would probably have Photoshop on my computer at work.

2. I could take advantage of this photo of Rick Santorum and create a whole new breed of hand turkeys.

3. I could then have them chatting about what a non-revelation it is for America to be having, as Santorum put it, "a war against the war."

This is obviously a profound observation to Santorum, who was probably still pooping his pants when we were in the mire of Viet Nam. I find myself wondering if the White House ever clues in these witless Legionaires: "Look, we're bullshitting the American people about Saddam and WMD, but we thought we'd give you a heads up on our real motivations..." or whether Rick is genuinely perplexed about this war against the war.

Maybe Rick is just a good Catholic boy who believes what the President and Pope tell him, no matter what.

You don't need no Constitution if you' re Rick Santorum.

Nebraska may not be a high profile state, but it has garnered the distinction of having the nastiest anti-gay law on the books since folks started seeking respect for their unions.

The great Legal Minds protecting the sanctity of marriage went all out on this one. A three-judge panel reinstated Nebraska's anti-gay constitutional amendment.

It's a doozy. Not only did it reinforce that man-and-a-woman language that makes everybody feel nice and tight with Adam and Eve, but it forbids the recognition of any form of union or domestic partnership within the state.

And whatever you do, if you must live in Nebraska, take your vitamins. Do not die there. A few years ago a proposed law to grant same sex couples the right to bury their deceased partners was withdrawn after the attorney general ruled that the very idea violated the amendment.

Well! This from a state whose motto is Equality Under the Law!

Triple ugh. What's sad is that these folks probably think that the Lord is well pleased.

As I've said here before, I miss Al Gore. I miss him even more as I read Greg Palast's account of the Republican theft of the last two national elections in Armed Madhouse.

I had to put down Greg's book for a couple of weeks and retreat from blogging in general, so depressing is the news of how the Republicans have deprived Black, Native American, and Hispanic voters of their franchise on a national scale, then distracted them with the so-called "moral" issue of gay marriage, just to keep them in the fold to which they'll never really belong.

Armed Madhouse is a very well documented explanation of the specific methods of how we have come to this un-pretty pass, and it bears the widest reading possible. If that book doesn't get into the hands of the voters most impacted by these policies, we may never see the legal action needed to reverse this decline. I wonder if the Southern Poverty Law Center might take it on in the absence of the NAACP. The ACLU, fractured by infighting, is not on the scene, either.

In the meantime, here stands Al, possibly strengthened by his star turn in An Inconvenient Truth. There he is, talking about what means most to him, unencumbered by political handlers trying to "improve" his image. He was, as much as anything, a victim of his campaign staff. Is it any wonder that James Carville is married to Mary Matalin? That they stay together tells you something: chiefly that for them, the principles matter less than the potency of punditry, the cum of the contest.

Al, lose these losers and come on home.

In the meantime, readers (if you exist after my prolonged absence), get over to Greg's blog and/or to a bookstore to purchase and read Armed Madhouse, and then let's get some people power going on these stolen elections. For now, the Republicans can get away with fielding Bugs Bunny and still carry the day.