Truespeak

This is too damn funny!

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa is hoping to stamp out the sex trade by taxing pimps and prostitutes, then jailing them when they don't pay.

A pimp tax? Are you shitting me? Now I could be wrong, but I've got to believe that pimps aren't exactly filling out their 540EZs as accurately as they should be. And prostitutes? I'd love to see what these people would be writing down for their personal information.

Goldtooth Tony: Alright le'see... Name... Anthony Turillo... Occupation... Pimp...

OR

Bubbles: Name... Tina Jones... Occupation... Whore...

I'm sorry, but I just don't see this happening. What's next? Are they going to start taxing Jimmy for selling dimebags on the corner? Or Trevor for selling meth? Do they think these guys keep records that they can audit? Are they going to go through their receipts? "Now it says here that you sold fifty-two dimebags to a Mr. Smith, but you're only reporting income for forty-eight."

This is just too funny. They want to get rid of the estate tax, and instead they want to start taxing pimps and hos. That's Republican ingenuity at its finest, right there folks.

Sorry guys. I am in the weeds with school work. I spent all day looking for a funding source for a grant proposal. I don't even know what happened in the world. I feel so out of touch. As soon as I can I'll get back to posting. Hopefully, it will be this week.

Take care and I'll see you soon (I hope).

Click to listen. (Safe for work.)

Howard Dean has just what the Doctor ordered for the Democrats - Balls.

Watch the video or read it all here.

DEAN: Republicans are great at sending other peoples' kids to war, but not so good at following up. You know, it's not good enough to just be tough. You've got to be tough and smart. Here we are. North Korea is in the process of firing a missile, a test missile. George Bush has been in office for 5 1/2 years, has done nothing about that.

We've got 200,000 brave troops pinned down in Iraq. You can't trust the president to defend America, not because they don't want to defend America, because they're not smart enough to defend America.

Oooooooo...

Truespeak will be going on hiatus this week. Summer classes have started and I need a week to get my feet under me. I'll see you all next Monday. Take care!

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Source

Al-Zarqawi's body was taken to a secure location, visually identified by "scars and tattoos consistent with what had been reported and what we knew about him," and by fingerprints, [U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Bill] Caldwell said. "We have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Zarqawi was in the house. It was 100 percent identification."

Aren't tattoos strictly prohibited by the Muslim faith?

Two years today.

Two years and over 10,000 visitors. Thanks to everyone. This is a very therapeutic release for me. I appreciate your friendship.

On this date in 1981, tragedy struck. For it was on this day that the Centers for Disease Control, in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, remarked on a strange group of pneumonia cases in five gay men. Originally known as GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, this fatal disease would eventually become known as AIDS. Now, twenty-five years later, AIDS has infected an estimated 65 million people worldwide, 25 million of which have died. It has become the scourge of many countries around the world killing five people evey minute. In the United States alone, over 500,000 people have died of the AIDs virus - more than ten times the number of Americans killed in Vietnam - with an estimated 40,000 new cases diagnosed each year.

During that first year, 339 cases of AIDS were diagnosed in the United States. Five years later, that number had grown to 19,404 - an increase of almost 6000%. You might think that this would prompt some sort of reaction fom the government, but you would be wrong.

The president at the time was, of course, Ronald Reagan, the great communicator insensitive bastard who once claimed that people were homeless "by choice." During his eight year tenure in the White House, Reagan only used the word AIDS on record one time. It was never mentioned in any of his eight State of the Union addresses, but in a statement to the press in September of 1985. To understand the Reagan administration's true view on the disease, we only need to look at a transcript from an October, 1982, press conference by White Deputy House Press Secretary Larry Speakes.

Les Kinsolving: Larry, does the president have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

Larry Speakes: What’s AIDS?

Kinsolving: Over a third of [the victims] have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (laughter) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the president is aware of it?

Speakes: I don’t have it. Do you? (laughter)

Kinsolving: No, I don’t.

Speakes: You didn’t answer my question.

Kinsolving: Well, I just wondered, does the president—

Speakes: How do you know? (laughter)

Kinsolving: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

Speakes: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester.

Kinsolving: Does the president, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

Speakes: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any—

Kinsolving: Nobody knows?

Speakes: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Kinsolving: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—

Speakes: I checked thoroughly with [Reagan’s personal physician] Dr. Ruge this morning, and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

The sensitivity is underwhelming, to say the least.

For another example of the administration's crass indifference, one only needs to be reminded of this well known story:

At a 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty, Ronald Reagan and his wife were sitting next to French President Francois Mitterand and his wife, Danielle. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners Hope quipped, “I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS but she doesn’t know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.” As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterands looked shocked. The Reagans were laughing hysterically.

Certainly, I'm not blaming Ronald Reagan for the spread of the AIDS disease. Nor am blaming him for our continued inability to find a cure. What I will blame him for, however, is contributing to a culture that ridiculed and demeaned those who were suffering. It was through insensitive remarks like those made by his staff, that many here in the United States considered AIDS and homosexuality to be a laughing matter. (I even remember my eighth grade Civics teacher making a joke about AIDS one day during class.) This attitude, no doubt, greatly hindered forward progress toward a public acceptance and understanding of a horrifyingly deadly disease.

Had the Reagan administration not treated AIDS as a laughing matter during those early years, we may have reached our current state of treatment much sooner. I shudder to think of the number of lives that may have been saved if Reagan hadn't thought it was such a fucking joke.

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