Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

Originally posted by Gattigap
Ah, I'm guessing that this is an example of the less than 100% serious Hank post.

Assume at your peril. He gets you chuckling, then . . . snap!
The unassailable logic of his position traps you like paigow's ass.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by ironweed
Assume at your peril. He gets you chuckling, then . . . snap!
The unassailable logic of his position traps you like paigow's ass.

So you're saying that gatti should be manwrapped?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
So you're saying that gatti should be manwrapped?

Remember what happened to GGG when he tried to fight me......

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
So you're saying that gatti should be manwrapped?

Well, there's no fear of getting mantrapped if he's just in the ass. Diseases, maybe. Caught in the viselike grip of the anal sphincter, maybe. Mantrapped, no. Manwrap protects you (usually, though failure rate is not 0%) from being mantrapped, not from being squeezed in too tightly.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Remember what happened to GGG when he tried to fight me......

He became SB's boyfriend?

Wow. You got a Pimp Hank avatar in there somewhere?

[BloatedSlave]

Originally posted by Not Me

It's me, just couldn't remember passwords to my fake email or logon password here, either. Just remembered.

Thanks, hope all is well with you, too.

Nice sock, Penske.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Remember what happened to GGG when he tried to fight me......

Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman? Who knew?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
This guy on the Fashion board, I'm not sure but I think he went to Yale... anyway, he introduced us to his friend Arnold Schwarzenneger. He's a Republican, but he doesn't seem to like what most Republicans think.

If that's really you, i.e., Not Me, I hope you and the baby are doing well.

I didn't apply to Yale, but if I had, they would have had a good laugh at my application.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Of course, inherent in the Star Wars story is the thought that earth was populated by beings from other worlds, and thus life did not spring from the primordial ooze.

I thought Star Wars took place in a Galaxy far far away...... So what does the story have to do with the our Galaxy (the Milkey Way) and Earth?

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Spanky
I didn't apply to Yale, but if I had, they would have had a good laugh at my application.

You were supposed to be Arnold Schwarzenneger in that story!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by BloatedSlave
Nice sock, Penske.

Thanks, did you get the paypal donation I sent?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Spanky
Milkey Way

Club sock, no?

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Watchtower
I ask respect for faith.

Why? What is there to respect in blind belief in a - by definition - unprovable theory? Deliberate ignorance should be abhorred, condemned, mocked and ridiculed, not praised. Intentional abdication of your intellect is deserving of nothing less than disgust and derision. Your request that we respect your choice of nescience is laughable.

[Spanky]

From the Economist - And as usual I agree 100%. Any of you Union lovers, or Xenophobes, want to disparage this legislation?

The best solution so far to one of America's thorniest problems

THERE are many reasons for moderate pragmatists to be irritated by the culture wars that are consuming American politics. They are polarising an already polarised electorate; they are reigniting the politics of personal destruction; and they are filling the airwaves with mind-numbing debates about filibusters. But the biggest reason is that they are diverting attention from other pressing problems.
Immigration is a good example. There is no doubt that America's system is badly broken, with, perhaps, 10m immigrants working in the country illegally and another 1m arriving every year; there is equally no doubt that this imposes huge costs on the country in terms of lawlessness and human misery. On May 12th, two powerful senators, Ted Kennedy and John McCain, proposed a sensible solution. Yet their arguments risk being lost in the babble about John Bolton and judges.


America's present immigration law flies in the face of economic reality. The economy is creating far more low-end jobs than American workers are willing to take (the proportion of native-born Americans dropping out of high school has fallen from half in 1960 to just 10% today). Entire industries—agriculture, food-processing, construction—rely on cheap immigrant labour. But America's yearly quotas are far too small to satisfy its needs.
The resulting black economy undermines the rule of law. Check into a hotel, and you may be the beneficiary of a complex chain of law breaking. The hotel owner may have hired illegal immigrants. The valet-parker may have paid $2,000 to be smuggled across the border by a criminal gang. Several of his friends may have died trying to get in (last year 200 immigrants, including a three-year-old child, died in the Arizona desert). The criminal gang may have engaged in shoot-outs with immigration officials or rival gangs. His $2,000 fee may have been used to subsidise drug-smuggling. Tamar Jacoby, a Manhattan Institute scholar who is a beacon of light in a foggy debate, likens the current immigration laws to prohibition: impossible to enforce, they encourage a whole sub-culture of criminality.
The black economy also threatens two things pretty much all Americans hold dear. The first is the cherished tradition of assimilation. Illegal immigrants live in a shadow world where they are reluctant to put down roots and even visit their children's schools. The other is national security. The easiest way for a terrorist to enter the country without a trace is through Arizona. Forget about visas and background checks. All you need to do is hire a coyote: he will smuggle you across the border, no questions asked, and then plug you into a criminal network that specialises in giving people false identities and hiding them in a huge illegal sub-culture.
The Kennedy-McCain bill is the result of ten months of hard slog. The two senators were still hammering out the details the day before they unveiled their plan. But the product is a hard-nosed law that tries to align America's immigration laws to the economic realities without rewarding illegal behaviour.
The bill provides both illegal workers and law-breaking employers with a ladder out of the shadow world they now inhabit. Illegal workers will be allowed to apply for temporary work permits (which will not be tied to specific jobs, as in earlier schemes). And employers will be allowed to hire immigrant workers if they can demonstrate that no Americans want their jobs. But at the same time the bill avoids being soft on illegal immigration. Any illegal immigrants in the country will pay hefty fines, as well as their back taxes, and go to the back of the queue for green cards. Employers will also face much stricter penalties. Money will be pumped into border security and a new system of tamper-proof identity cards.

Jumping over the congressional barrier
Plenty of people on both sides of the spectrum want to stop this bill. The AFL-CIO union combine has declined to endorse it. A mainly Republican anti-immigration caucus in the House contains around 70 diehards united behind the idea “What part of illegal don't you understand?”; they have just demonstrated their legislative muscle by pushing through a bill that makes it harder for illegals to get driving licences. John Cornyn, the chairman of the Senate sub-committee on immigration, has made it clear that he's opposed to any bill with a “work and stay” provision. Meanwhile, the White House, which has been badly burned on Social Security reform, is reluctant to spend significant amounts of political capital on an issue that so divides Republicans.
Yet immigration reformers also have muscle on their side. Employers' groups and some unions are behind the bill. So are many border-state politicians who know the status quo means chaos. And there is the clout of the two sponsors. Mr Kennedy remains the most determined legislative warhorse in the Senate. Mr McCain is a charismatic reformer with a broad constituency (particularly in the media). Both men are past masters at pushing complicated bipartisan legislation through Congress, including far-reaching reforms of education and campaign finance. They have already recruited Joe Lieberman and Sam Brownback.
The reformers' most important ally, though, is common sense. America has spent millions of dollars trying to tighten up its borders only to see the situation get worse. It now relies on illegal workers to pick its vegetables and build its buildings. Closing the border is impossible without some sort of legalisation for the millions in the country; mass deportation would do irreparable harm both to America's economy and to its traditions as an immigrant-friendly nation.
The problem for Messrs Kennedy and McCain is that common sense needs the oxygen of publicity if it is to breathe. And for the moment all that oxygen is being consumed by tedious debates about the virtues of filibusters.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Not here.

South Korean scientists announce they have made stem cell lines specific for individuals.

Meanwhile, in this country, Bush threatens veto of stem cell research bill.

It's all about the sanctity of [non-preexisting] life.

I just finished an interesting book - The Visitor by Sheri Tepper - where she posits a future society descended from our so-called "right to lifers." As our science improves, the ability to create non-prexisting life will increase to the point that all you will need is a few (or one) cell to create/the life that was or would have been, and where does this lead us? Do I commit murder by shaving? Can society kill me as punishment for a crime, while saving a few cells to reincarnate me later?

On an unrelated note, Tepper also asks what if our "God" is actually an entity that created a world and belief systems designed to select the intelligent, rigorous thinkers from the docile and non-critically accepting. In other words, to select against the dogmatically religious; to quote:

"Humans are unique in holding their gods so cheap the peck at them like pigeons, constantly intruding upon them with prayer! Prayer from all sides of every conflict, prayer before each contest, during every issue. Private prayer, public prayer, shepherded prayer baa-ed from congregation, sports prayer before games, prayer parroted and prayer spontaneous, endless instructions to god, endless plockutta."

"'As everybody's god, what will you do?'

"I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that will inevitably be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.
...
Occasionally, I will do a conspicuous miracle to save one dying child while a thousand children starve elsewhere. This will convince sensible people I am perverse, and they will curse my name. Be sure to recruit those who do, they will be invaluable."
...
I will be a sham, but not a snob. I will let every man, woman or child, no matter how greedy or wicked, claim to have a personal relationship with me. In other words, I will be as arbitrary, inconsistent, ignorant, pushy, and common as humans are, and what more have they ever wanted in a god?"

"The truth!"

"Oh, tush, they never wanted anything of the kind. Creation has the truth written all over it -- the age of the univers, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough."
...
"The sooner we can separate salvageable skeptics from self-righous absolutists, the sooner we can move along."