"Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he's done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker." According to a Ms. reporter who attended the Eighth Annual Abstinence Clearinghouse Conference, this metaphor was seriously suggested as a way to teach abstinence. Um...I thought abstinence only education was supposed to discourage kids from having sex. Mmmm...saliva-fouled sucker.

So I've always enjoyed U2's music and respected Bono's various humanitarian activities, but since reading Salman Rushdie's accounts of meeting the band and working with Bono I've had quite the crush on U2's front man. And when he says things like this, how could you not love him? "They say in that in death, a loved one leaves you something - a gift that's not in the will. I think I got this voice from him. In the middle of that song ["Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"], when I sing, 'I know we don't talk, but can you hear me sing?' his voice comes in."

A few weeks ago Creative Loafing did a whole section on how Altanta is an island of mainstream moderate-to-liberal-ness in a giant red sea - definitely confirms Carrie's whole urban-versus-rural notion.
ATL GA
Population 1.1 million 7.1 million
% white 35% 70%
% black 57% 25%
% dem state 85% 35%
legislators

I don't have stats on the next largest cities in the state, but given that we account for 1/7 of the entire state's population, maybe it's about time we had a little more say in state politics and quit putting up with the reputation of being a city full of sinful heathens?

And, oh yeah, no WMDs, new terrorist breeding ground, yep, I feel so much safer now. Glad we did that.

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

And, before I get the verbal smack down from Shelby, let me reiterate the position I've held since the first rumblings of invading Iraq started seeping out of DC - I could swallow getting rid of Saddam and "liberating the Iraqi people" as a justification for some sort of intervention/invasion and the (inevitable) loss of life that would accompany such action. My problems are 1) I had then and still have now absolutely no faith in this administration's ability to successfully plan for and carry out such an action in a way that maximizes benefits to the Iraqi people and minimizes costs to us, 2) given what we know now (and what many intelligent people believed then) nothing significant had changed about the situation in Iraq that warranted such hasty action. It would have behooved us to be patient, concentrate on Afghanistan, garner more international support, and go about this thing in a much more effective manner. And 3) call me cynical, but I just can't believe that Bush and his cronies are really kept awake at night worrying about all the horrible things Saddam did to his own people. Yes, horrible things did happen. And yes, we as a member of the international community have a responsibility to try to do something to stop those horrible things. But it was gross and manipulative and hypocritical for this administration to land on that as a justification for war simply because it was convenient at the time (and all their other justifications turned out to be big fat lies...oops, I meant intelligence failures).
(and no, none of this really matters since we're there now and have to deal with that reality. I just needed to get that off my chest)

Just imagine how much good the $34 million Bush has been withholding from the UNFPA for three years in a row could do right now.

Crowley led a five-member Democratic congressional delegation to Sri Lanka to study the work of the U.N. agency in the island's tsunami-hit coastline.

The agency said it is assisting in obtaining safe childbirth for about 15,000 pregnant women affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami that battered the coast and displaced nearly 1 million survivors. Up to 38,000 Sri Lankans were killed.

-snip-
The U.N. group estimated the money could have helped prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies and nearly 800,000 abortions, 4,700 mothers' deaths in childbirth and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths.

Quick rebuttal - the Bush camp claims they're withholding the money because the UNFPA is complicit in China's forced abortion and one-child policies. This is complete bunk because a) the UNFPA does not involved itself in abortions at all, in any country (the organization decided that abortion was simply too controversial of a topic and they would waste and lose too much time, energy, and money getting involved in that debate, and they have way bigger problems to deal with) and b) the state department's own committee came back from a trip to China with the conclusion that the UNFPA was not complicit in any of these policies and in fact was doing positive work against these policies by only working in provinces that did not implement them and providing other, safe, healthy reproductive alternatives. If you're feeling so inclined, do something to counteract all the inauguration hubris and toss some money to these people.