Demure Thoughts.

Related: Does Revenge Cheating Work? A: Yes, of course it does. How on earth could you even continue (assuming you do continue) without even trying to restore the equilibrium?

I didn't even read the article. So here's a quote:

While many affairs may be based on boredom with a current partner or legitimate attraction to another person, retaliatory infidelity is often something different. In these cases, the motive for the cheating may be an attempt to restore "balance" to the relationship.

But the question remains: is there any way that such a strategy can be beneficial to a relationship that is already in trouble?

"It seems to me that there are only a couple of ways you can consider it in any way beneficial — and I'm not saying that it's beneficial," said Dr. Jacqueline Olds, a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass.

"One is so the aggrieved party does not feel so aggrieved because they made things equal," she explained. "It may make them feel as if they have given a person a taste of their own medicine.

"Another is that sometimes it allows each person to get the sense of feeling wronged out of their system, and often they both find out that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the pasture."

And to the extent that it helps someone turn the tables on an unfaithful partner, revenge cheating may offer some perspective on the damage that can be caused to a relationship through infidelity.

"I think that the advantage — if you could put it this way — of retaliatory infidelity is that it has the potential to help the initially unfaithful person gain some empathy for the pain created by the sense of betrayal, and helps put some perspective on what might be lost otherwise," said Dave Greenfield, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

But in most cases, relationship experts said revenge cheating is a dangerous gamble that usually does far more harm than good.

Duh. They need to cite "sexperts" for this?

Bonus Bad Sex Vids:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:57 PM | Comments (38)
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"Imprudent curiosity," it is said, was the motive.

These were contract employees, though. Low level nitwits caught by the Administration itself.

Nevertheless, expect the geschreien on the left to be (licks fingers) muah! Magnifique!

Posted by: Ace at 05:02 PM | Comments (37)
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Pictured: A chicken coming home to roost in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Seems Hillary has a much more minor Wright problem, too.

And an anonymous blog set up to defend his church offers some compelling photographic evidence of this: A photograph of Wright and President Clinton, which it says was taken on September 11, 1998 -- the date of a White House gathering for religious leaders.

Hillary Clinton, according to her recently-released schedule for the day, was present at the gathering.

That's where Clinton reportedly told the assembled clerics, at the depth of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that he had "repented."

The Politico, by the way, is spinning this as evidence that Wright was a mainstream figure and not merely the "fringe" figure he's being portrayed as now.

Well, David Duke has a great deal of prominence and a fair number of supporters.

Is he too "mainstream" rather than "fringe"?

I think that analogy is rather spot-on, myself.

Isn't it funny that previous bad Democratic behavior is being used by the media to excuse current Democratic bad behavior? Innit funny how that works?

And recall, of course, Clinton summoned this conclave of Squeakin' Deacons to help him "repent" for decorating the Monica Birthday Cake with the Presidential icing.

So... I don't get it. That makes it all all right?

Oh, and say hello to my new Favorite Liberal.

Thanks to The Ghost of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 04:53 PM | Comments (73)
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I know many of you were doubting this story was real. Criminal charges add a nice, Jesse MacBeth-level of reality to it.

A man whose girlfriend authorities say spent nearly two years in a bathroom in their house, sitting on the toilet so long that the seat adhered her body, has been charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult.

A Kansas man whose girlfriend authorities say spent nearly two years in a bathroom -- and one month on the toilet -- was charged Monday with mistreatment of a dependent adult. "This was a very unusual set of circumstances, and this is the law that most closely applied to the situation," the prosecutor said.

McFarren called the Ness County Sheriff's Office in late February to say something was wrong with his girlfriend. When authorities arrived at the home, they found Pam Babcock, 35, stuck to the toilet, which they think she had sat on for about a month.

McFarren told authorities that Babcock feared leaving the bathroom and may not have left it in two years, although said he was unsure how long she was in there. He said that he took her food and water daily, and that he repeatedly asked her to come out but that she usually replied "maybe tomorrow."

"The only thing I am guilty of is I didn't get her help sooner," McFarren told The Associated Press nearly a week ago.

...

Authorities said Babcock sat on the toilet so long that open sores developed and caused her to become attached to the seat. Sheriff Bryan Whipple has said that he used a pry bar to remove the seat from the toilet, and that the woman was taken to the hospital with the seat still attached.

"She would have to be sleeping on the toilet," Whipple said.

I don't want to make light of this, but if a woman ever allowed me to sit on the toilet for two years and brought food and water to me to permit such a thing, I'd marry her. Just mount a flat-panel tv opposite the can and I'm alll good.

They should be giving this guy a medal, not an indictment.

Thanks to Nigel.

Posted by: Ace at 04:13 PM | Comments (37)
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Well! Perhaps Obama really will be able to convince the jihadists he's a man they can do business with! Because they sure seem sympatico!

The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.[...]

In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas." A photo image of the newsletter was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog. The Hamas piece was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism.

According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S.

Marzook's original piece was titled, "Hamas' stand" but was re-titled "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle" by Obama's church newsletter.

So long as we're having that "open, candid" discussion about race we've all so long wanted to have, perhaps we can finally begin to address the virulent anti-semitism infecting large segments of the black population while we're at it, huh?

Or wait-- are we not having that "open, candid" a discussion?

Thanks to Liberrocky.

Posted by: Ace at 04:09 PM | Comments (30)
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Allah posted this at HotAir today, not realizing it had been around for a bit.

Doesn't matter. It's a great story and it bears retelling.

In March of 2006, a surgical team led by (then) Captain John Oh, 759th Medical Detachment, Forward Surgical Team, Task Force Med, removed an unexploded RPG round from the belly of Spc. Channing Moss. The warhead had detached itself from the fuel rod and the detonator, but there was enough there to kill Spc. Moss, and even detached, the unexploded round was a lethal threat to everyone in the room.

Under the guidance of two EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) personnel, they removed the RPG,

And saved his life.

On Feb 1, 2007, Major Oh received the Soldier's Medal for his actions that day in March. The SoldierÂ’s Medal is the ArmyÂ’s highest decoration for valor not involving actual combat with the enemy. Well, he was involved with the enemy's deadly weapon, right in his face, and in the faces of his surgical team.

Assisting him in the procedure, Lt. Col William Brock was awarded the Army Commendation Medal with "V" device. For valor.

LTC Brock, SGT Troy Galvan, awarded the Soldier's medal for pulling a fellow soldier from a burning vehicle at an accident near Ft. Hood, and MAJ Oh

Valor.

UPDATE: Commenter CavMedic (who I'm just guessin is a medic in the 1st Cav, practically a neighbor) reminds us this took place in Afghanistan, adds that the MEDEVAC crew who flew Spc. Moss in were awarded Air Medals with V device, and links a larger pic of the award ceremony for Brock and Oh here.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:04 PM | Comments (19)
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Quick Answer: No, she's more the Mao worshipping type. At least in sartorial attire.

Longer Answer: Apparently, some conspiracy embracing writer at that "reality-based" magazine "The Nation" thinks she is.

I know the far left is imploding over the fall of the Obamessiah. But this is really pushing bullshit and, I believe, religious bigotry, to the outer limits:

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

Ahhh. The Nation citing Mother Jones. Wheels within wheels. Of lunacy.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.

Let me tell you guys something. I know a little something about Hillary Clinton's bible studies, at least as they pertained to her arrival and first few years in the Senate.

One of my previous employers was a United States Senator who attended the same Bible study classes that Hillary Clinton attended. I asked him once if he thought Clinton's joining the class were sincere or if it was a phony political thing.

He told me he believed it to be sincere, and that Clinton was an active participant and that she made valuable contributions to the Bible Study group.

You want to know who lead the Bible study classes?

The Chaplain of the United States Senate. This position was not held by the current Senate Chaplain, but by a predecessor who I am not going to name as he doesn't deserve to be associated with this kind of bullshit. (Neither does Chaplain Barry Black, by the way. But the time period suggested by Nation/Mother Jones may implicate a predeccessor.)

This is among the things that the Senate Chaplain is tasked to do, by the way:

Chaplain BlackÂ’s days are filled with meeting Senators about spiritual and moral issues, assisting SenatorsÂ’ staffs with research on theological and biblical questions, teaching Senate Bible study groups, encouraging such groups as the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, and facilitating discussion and reflection small groups among Senators and staff.

I am actually pissed off about this. I do not believe for one minute in this nefarious cult like "Family." Hillary Clinton, and several of the Senators mentioned in the Nation piece, attended Bible Study. Hillary Clinton attended as a professed Methodist. Other's attended who professed different denominations. Senators from both parties, representing the entire political spectrum, were in attendance at these classes.

This strikes me as the desperate gasps of the supporters of a dying campaign. Having seen their own secular Messiah crucified by his ties to a hate-filled preacher, they are striking back by impugning the one commendable aspect of Sen. Clinton's persona: her religious faith.

The entire article reeks of religious bigotry. Hillary Clinton's attendance at Senate Bible Study classes is in no way equivalent to Sen. Obama's 20 years association with Rev. Jeremiah "Was a Bullfrog" Wright. (Because, apparently, Obama 'never understood a single word he said'.)

I by no means support Hillary Clinton. I oppose her fully and ardently. I believe she, and her husband, represent the worst of sleazy politics. The thought of her getting even as close to the White House as the Democratic nomination disgusts me.

I also believe she is a tougher general election candidate than Obama for McCain to defeat. So I'm not coming to her defense as one who wants to see her prevail.

I'm simply offering a defense of her because of what I know firsthand. I attended one of these classes with my boss. Senator Clinton was present.

By the way. Full disclosure. I've been to The Cedars mentioned in the article.

It's a nice place.

No one has ever called me to invite me back. Or to attempt to have me meet them alone because I knew too much. No one followed me around when I made phone calls outside.

You want me to believe your bullshit is not just hate-filled conspiracy drivel, Nation? Produce some freaking evidence. Put some clips on YouTube.

Like those Wright clips.

I hear they are dynamite.

Posted by: Jack M. at 02:49 PM | Comments (62)
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I'm stung, Senator. I thought none of us were "typical," but each special in our own uniquely wonderful way. How dare you.

/kneejerk liberal pap

Transcript from Philly.com, which I had to correct. They missed the "bred into her experiences" part.

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity," he said. "But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know. . .there's a reaction that's been bred into her experiences that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."

Typical White People.

Savor the Hope and Change.

Oh, and here's the backstory on Granny Grand Dragon.

Basics: the entire claim of his grandmother being afraid of black people comes from (Obama claims) his grandfather's belief she was afraid of an aggressive panhandler because he was black. And not just because she felt physically intimidated his persistent demands.

So, there you go. Nana Exalted Cyclops was getting hassled by a menacing bum, the grandfather didn't feel like driving her to work and said "she's just afraid because he's black," Obama gets a slam-bang anecdote by which to excuse his pastor and political patron's 40 year history of stirring up racial hatred.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (84)
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I linked this a couple of days ago, but if you missed it, it's a corker:

So we've got a pro-Obama preacher puttind down America, and an anti-Obama preacher putting down 54DD tits?

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (55)
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Taken out of Document Dump post for a stand-alone piece.

NewsBusters: Time is spinning like a pulsar in an effort to declare Barack's speech "bold" and "a triumph" and close the file on Jeremiah Wright. Latest salvo: "The incredible ignorance of White America" for not knowing black people were often angry or resentful.

Pssst. Time? We sort of had an idea:

The "big secret" is out of the bag, MSM.

I don't like linking that racially-incendiary video, but you know what? If you fuckers are going to continue insisting that we stupid white folk are ignorant of black anger and resentment -- and sometimes violent black rage -- I'm really not sure what the hell else I can do.

It's not that we don't know, assholes. It's that we reject the notion that a major presidential candidate could ally himself with a vicious font of racewar rhetoric.

There are a lot of whites who share the views, from the opposite perspective, of Rev. Wright. But guess what? We don't allow politicians who closely associate with such vermin to advance to high elective office.

The media has suddenly decided that racism and hatred are pretty natural and normal and not much at all to be fussed about. Shocker of shockers, this occurs at the precise moment a very liberal Democrat is discovered in bed with the black David Duke.

What on earth could account for such eerie serendipity?

I question the timing, yo.

So typical hat the left and the media (but I repeat myself) cannot acknowledge a simple difference in opinion and starting assumptions on this matter.

No, the argument must be due to the ignorance of those who disagree with them. We stupid whitebread crackers with no soul but eleven toes just must not understand that some blacks are angry to the point of paranoia and racism.

Gee willickers, all along I've been convinced that Black People Love Us.

Since we're now so blithely excusing black racism, I guess it's only natural to ask: When will the apologism for white racism begin?

Because, in case the left and the media didn't know this, whites harbor some of their own resentments and anger, too.

So I guess we'll start having that "honest, candid" discussion about race that Senator Obama so courageously began pretty soon, huh?

PS: Reginald Denny's assailant was black. But so too was his rescuer.

Bobby Green is sitting on his couch in suburban Rialto, talking about the night 10 years ago that he saved a man's life, a moment that made him a hero to most and a traitor to others.

Back then, in the first hours of the Los Angeles riots, Green was sitting on another couch, this one in South-Central Los Angeles. He was watching a black man on live TV smash a brick, then another brick, into the head of a white truck driver, who lay writhing on the pavement. It was happening about half a mile away.

The second brick did it.

"That is e-nough," Green decided. He jumped off the couch and rushed out the door. It didn't matter that he was black, or that he, like virtually everyone else in the neighborhood, was mad as hell after that day's not-guilty verdicts for LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating trial. He raced to the scene and helped rescue Reginald O. Denny from a mob of rioters.

That decision still defines Bobby Green. It gives him a credo, crystallizes what he teaches his children about right and wrong. It's what he, his wife and his family are most proud of, decorating their living room with seven of his 14 plaques and commendations. It's the one thing he thinks about every day he starts work.

I linked the Reginald Denny tape not to start any racial fires, but to put the rest this absurd notion of our Enlightened Media Betters that somehow we had forgotten the LA Riots (and OJ, and the Duke Lacrosse Case, and etc.) and we Stupid Whiteys now think everything's just jake and dandy in the black community, and, in the words of Eddie Murphy from some movie, "We cool."

It's idiotic. The arrogance and condescension is repellent. What, my Appalachian inbred-hovel don't have no runnin' 'electricity to run a fucking television?

We know there is hate out there -- among all races.

But until recently, some of us were under the mistaken impression that such hatred was unacceptable. Unacceptable to stew in, unacceptable to even think (and we should look to our better selves to cure it), and certainly unacceptable to preach to entire communities, including impressionable children.

But ah, now we find out from our Media Betters that there's so much nuance surrounding this issue. Very complex nuance, too: black = good, white = bad and Democrat = understandable, Republican = unforgivable.

Well the hell with that. It may be convenient for Barack Obama's supporters and the MSM and the left (but once again, I repeat myself, this time twice) to suddenly declare that a bit of poisonous race-hatred and racial paranoia on par with the worst of the KKK is fine, in moderation, much like red wine; but I strongly disagree.

And by the way: Who the hell considered the hero Bobby Green to be a "traitor"?

The same sorts of people who attend Rev. Wright's hate-church every Sunday for their weekly dose of Psalms and race-war, I reckon.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (38)
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