Gathering data from self-identified penis sizes from hook up site Manhunt, here's a list of what fellas are packing in each state. At #1: Washington, D.C. with a 7.59” average; followed by NY at 7.5” and Calif. at 7.45”. And sorry Levi Johnston lovers, Alaska ranks last with a 6.34” average.
Let's just say that self-reported penis size on hook-up sites is not exactly a random data set. And Washingtonians are good at lying.
Jack Shepherd notes, "This is a 30-second primer on how to go from a pudgy douchebag to a totally buff douchebag in just one year."
Stratfor's George Friedman thinks we could be closer to the brink in the Middle East than many now believe:
We are reminded of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis only in this sense: We get the sense that everyone is misreading everyone else.
In the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Americans didn’t believe the Soviets would take the risks they did and the Soviets didn’t believe the Americans would react as they did. In this case, the Iranians believe the United States will play its old game and control the Israelis. Washington doesn’t really understand that Netanyahu may see this as the decisive moment. And the Russians believe Netanyahu will be controlled by an Obama afraid of an even broader conflict than he already has on his hands.
The current situation is not as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis was, but it has this in common: Everyone thinks we are on a known roadmap, when in reality, one of the players — Israel — has the ability and interest to redraw the roadmap. Netanyahu has been signaling in many ways that he intends to do just this. Everyone seems to believe he won’t. We aren’t so sure.
I believe Netanyahu is perfectly capable of striking Iran – soon. Think Cheney.
Larison wades into the debate:
One reason that I am not disappointed with Thatcher at all as a result of these reports is that I am leery of criticism made twenty years after the fact, especially when the criticism is being made with the certain knowledge that the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and eventual dissolution of the USSR occurred largely peacefully. People who want to find fault with Thatcher over this are generally the sort of people who think that Bush’s speech in Kiev in the summer of 1991 was some unpardonable betrayal of freedom and goodness. These people are foolish. The speech was, on the contrary, a sober and serious one that deserves to remembered for what Bush actually said and not the caricature that his hawkish critics have made of it ever since. Thatcher’s statements and actions in 1989-90 ought to be viewed with a similar respect for context and with an awareness of the uncertainty that Western governments experienced in coping with the collapse of a huge imperial system.
Agreed. But the Germanophobia was silly, reactionary and disproved by subsequent events. The neocon silence has been deafening, though, hasn't it?
Eddie Izzard finishes his 43rd marathon in 52 days – for charity. And he still looks a little chubby.
DiA makes many good points while explaining the significance of the UN report released yesterday:
Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation. That, as Aluf Benn writes in Ha'aretz, was dumb: it means the report can include no Israeli response to the allegations. We have no idea what the tank commanders thought they saw, or whether the destruction of the flour mill was an excusable mistake. With such damning evidence from Palestinian accusers, and no exculpatory evidence from Israeli soldiers, it's hard to see how America can avoid calling on Israel to investigate.
Israel's response has been to launch a campaign to discredit the report as "biased". Few, apart from Israelis themselves, are likely to be convinced. The report credits allegations of war crimes by Hamas as well, including charges that Hamas militants failed to exercise their Geneva Conventions responsibilty to keep away from the civilian population, which is precisely the charge Israel levels at them. Hamas, meanwhile, issued similar accusations of bias. As Juan Cole, a Middle East expert, points out, this suggests the report is probably on target. And Israel simply lacks the credibility to accuse a panel headed by Judge Goldstone, a hero of the anti-apartheid movement, of bias.
Demonizing Goldstone, given his record, seems wrong to me. That war was a moral disgrace; it lost Israel friends and support; and its achievements are minimal.
(Photo: a child victim of the Gaza attack, by Thair Hasani/Getty.)
No arrests were made on sex or drug charges – only for dancing in underwear. But, according to several complainants lodged with the police, the cops enjoyed themselves:
• One man said officers grabbed patrons who didn't immediately lie down by the neck and forced them to the ground. The man said he was kicked in the ribs while lying down. "Then I heard laughing and giggling and
saying this is more fun than raiding niggers with crack.
They also told us to shut the fuck up unless we were spoken too [sic]." The man said he heard one person told that if he spoke again he would be hit by a chair. He also reported that one officer "said to everyone in general that all you all do is flash your asses and show your cocks."
• An Eagle employee said he did not know what he was charged with until he got to jail. "A lot of officers were laughing and high-fiving each other, and I heard one officer say I thought this was a sex club."
• Another patron described listening to officers chat about their cell phone plans as he lay on the ground. "I was forced down by physical force. They grabbed my neck and pushed me down. They put their boot on my back and told me to stay down. … If anyone asked anything they were told to 'shut the fuck up.'"
A boot on the back: a summary of some police attitudes toward homosexuals.
The real tragedy is that the failure of Lehman has left Wall Street's survivors both bigger in relative terms and more secure politically. As long as the big banks feel confident that they can count on the government to bail them out – for who would now risk "another Lehman"? – they can more or less ignore calls for lower leverage and saner compensation. If only we had learnt from Lehman that no bank should be "too big to fail", we might still have a real capitalist system, instead of the state-guaranteed monstrosity that is the real legacy of last year's crisis. If only.
Glenn Greenwald unloads:
[W]hat is the point of closing Guantanamo if all of its architecture and defining traits — indefinite detentions with no trials — will be preserved and simply moved elsewhere? What made Guantanamo evil and destructive isn't that it was located in Cuba. What made it such was that that — to use Obama's melodramatic campaign language — it was a "legal black hole." Closing it, only to re-create its core tyrannies in Bagram and re-build it as part of some "preventive detention" scheme, is worse than useless: it's actively misleading. There will be some American journalists and probably some hardened Obama loyalists who believe that closing Guantanamo — while moving and re-creating its core features — is some sort of "change." But the rest of the world is highly unlikely to be tricked.
It's where Beck's mentor Skousen is still taught as part of the Mormon-American literature. And, of course, there's a blog devoted to sniping at it:
I became interested in this subject when a relative of mine blew through her college savings at George Wythe College before realizing she had little to show for the time and money spent there. When I looked into the school and its founders, things smelled fishy, so I kept digging. Putting the pieces together on the history of George Wythe College has become somewhat of a hobby for me. The purpose of this blog is to share what I have found. Why am I anonymous? I don't want this blog to define me. I'm providing it as a service. I will however reveal my biases: I am a church-going Mormon and am not opposed to quality homeschooling.
The Dish 