James Hoffa, Jr. is trying to make it look like he is reforming the Teamsters by forcing out Robert Hogan, former President of Teamsters Local 714, a member of a long time, corruption prone union family.

The IRB alleged that Hogan had acted against the best interests of union members by hiring Robert Riley as a business agent and organizing director, even though Riley had been barred from the union. The IRB also charged that the local union was failing to represent its membership, had corrupt relationships with companies where members worked, and was using favoritism and nepotism to secure jobs for associates of the Hogan family.

Hogan's family have been union thugs since the Depression era, but he has at last signed an agreement with the Independent Review Board (IRB) of Teamsters National that he will leave all union activities behind and never again attempt to become involved with the Teamsters.

Naturally, Hogan claims he is a victim of Hoffa's political triangulation and that he is totally innocent.

Local 714 has been under the control of the national union since June of this year, with Hoffa claiming he is making inroads into eliminating the corruption of this long-time, troubled local.

Time will tell, but it would be shocking if it turned out to be true instead of just a turn over from one group of corrupt officials for the newest set of corrupt union officials. Here's the new boss, same as the old boss.

Via Drudge we get the recognition that Time Magazine has once again placed the Obamessiah on its cover. This makes the 7th time in the space of a year that Obama has graced the cover of Time Magazine.

Thus far, McCain has found the favor of the front cover precisely two times.

In the tank much?

Naahhh! Can't be.

It MUST be just a coinkiedink.

(Image credit: time.com)

Congratulate yourselves as being among the leading edge in Americans interested in the news. According to a recent Pew survey 37 percent of America's news consumers go to the Internet for their news. But it isn't all good news for our sources of news. For one thing, this survey also shows that many of us are logging on at work. This is the sort of thing that could be hurt if more and more businesses ban Internet use, as some have.

Of course, there is more bad news for newspapers as well as TV viewers here, too.

Since the early 1990s, the proportion of Americans saying they read a newspaper on a typical day has declined by about 40%; the proportion that regularly watches nightly network news has fallen by half.

...Most of the loss in readership since 2006 has come among those who read the print newspaper; just 27% say they read only the print version of a daily newspaper yesterday, down from 34% in 2006.

Man, that is a huge loss. No wonder the papers are firing staffers by the hundreds all across the country!

But, the Internet is steadily growing as an important news source.

Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly (at least three days a week) as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%).

But, there was one tiny little portion of this survey that is ominous, not for the Old Media, but for ALL of us.

In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998.

This is scary. Young people increasingly do not care about the news? We are losing a whole generation, folks. Who is to blame for this? I say it is our fetid schools.

Also, one last bit. CNN has grown in viewers that claim they are members of the Democratic Party.

As in past news consumption surveys, the audiences for specific cable news outlets remain divided along political lines. Currently 51% of regular CNN viewers are Democrats, up from 45% two years ago. Nearly four-in-ten regular Fox News viewers are Republicans (39%), about the same as in 2006.

This obviously means that CNN is becoming less "balanced" every day if they are growing so much in one direction. Meanwhile, Fox News has held steady at 39% of the audience that claim to be Republican viewers. Looks like Fox has pretty much stayed on their "Fair and Balanced" mission.

Go on over to Pew and check out these interesting results.

(Also see a Timesonline.com article)

(Image credit: http://www.aggiecatholic.org/)

Orlando Magazine (FL) published the amazing life's story of Florida artist Mark Pulliam in their August issue. It was an amazing story of a man who seemingly did everything. Played Major League Baseball, hobnobbed with the likes of Paul McCartney, Madonna, and Tiger Woods as well as finding great success as a local artist. Oh, it seemed a whirlwind life. One little problem. Little of it was true and Orlando editor Mike Boslet want you to know he's sorry.

Unfortunately for Orlando Magazine, they simply took Mark Pulliam's word for it all, ran with the story, and were informed by readers that many of the details didn't seem to pan out. So, on second look, the editors of Orlando sent an investigator to track down the various factoids that Pulliam told them about his personal history. It turned out little of what Pulliam claimed was true.

After the story was published, a reader alerted us that he believed Mark Pulliam, 48, hadn’t played Major League Baseball. A baseball encyclopedia did not list Pulliam’s name, this reader wrote in an e-mail to me. I immediately called the Yankees and the colleges Pulliam claimed to have attended as a student athlete.

From there many aspects of the life that Pulliam claimed was his began to prove to be the life story of a man Pulliam went to high school with. Pulliam had simply stolen the details of high school pal Larry Mikesell's life and told the magazine writer that all were his. Unbeknownst to Orlando Magazine AND pal Mikesell, Pulliam had been peddling this tall tale for several years.

Some of the things that Orlando Magazine found out to contradict the story that Pulliam told them are as follows:

• Pulliam never played for the Yankees, said team spokesman Michael Margolis. Pulliam had said the team drafted him out of the University of Florida, a claim Margolis also denied.
• Team owner George Steinbrenner did not commission a Pulliam painting of Yankee Stadium, said Margolis. Shown a photo of the painting via e-mail, Margolis said it had never hung in the Yankees’ front offices, as Pulliam claimed.
• Pulliam didn’t play ball at the University of Florida, said John Hines, assistant director of communications at UF.
• UF has no record of Pulliam being enrolled there, according to Ron Wayne, a school spokesman. Pulliam had claimed that he returned to the school and earned a bachelor of fine arts degree after suffering a career-ending injury with the Yankees.
• Pulliam did attend Brevard Community College from 1977 to mid-1981, said Kate Brennan, a spokeswoman for the school. BCC’s athletic director, Jamie Howell, said he could not confirm that Pulliam had played on the school’s baseball team.

Oh, there was more, but this suffices to show how much BS Pulliam shoveled into the willing notebook of the Orlando reporter who wrote the story.

Of course, it's a good thing that Orlando Magazine has come out in a forthright manner to say that they were "duped" by Pulliam's fantastical tales about his supposed life. We applaud the magazine for doing so. But, it also deserve a drubbing for its complete lack of fact checking information that is easily discovered -- especially considering the zeal with which Baseball records are kept.

This is the sort of failure of due diligence that makes one doubt every media outlet out there. How often does this happen, one wonders?

In any case, the egg on Orlando Magazine's face makes for an interesting, if not cautionary, tale. As New York Magazine quips, perhaps Orlando Magazine is next preparing a cover story on famous Mets pitcher Sidd Finch?

Go HERE to see some of Pulliam's paintings.

Members of the carpenters union in New York City have ruined any chance that authorities there will take their union out of government oversight by beating unconscious William Davenport, a union dissident running for office in the union.

After an August 5 candidates forum, the candidate was beaten by members of the carpenters union audience outside a church. Outside a CHURCH!

This thuggery along with continued Mob involvement, indictments and convictions on corruption of union members convinced Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. not to release the union from government oversight.

The assault last week on the dissident union candidate, William Davenport, undermined the union’s assertions of a change in its internal culture. Mr. Davenport, according to several accounts, was heckled when he spoke at the union meeting, which was attended by about 500 members. Despite the presence of two retired police detectives hired to maintain order, a group of men stood up in the front rows and screamed, according to one longtime union dissident who was there.

One union member said that "It was disgraceful -- thugs took over the meeting." I'd say that thugs are more common in unions than not.

In any case, the carpenters are outta luck to get control of their union back. The judge did mention that the union had done better since it originally went into government oversight, but that it is way too early to claim that the Mob influence and corruption is excised from the union. We may all have a long, long wait for that to happen.

In the meantime, the corrupt, mob infested, thug populated New York City carpenters union will stay under the control of government watchdogs. Good thing, too.

I thought this whole McCain as Computer illiterate meme had finally faded, but Time Magazine comes to the rescue of this pointless attack once again. The last time we saw this attack it was by the chief geek over at PCmag.com, Lance Ulanoff. This time it is Lev Grossman from Time Magazine in one titled "The Off-Line American." Painting McCain as "behind the times" and "way behind" Grossman also takes the occasion to link McCain with "recently indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens." Lots of slams yet much ado about nothing. But, anything to try to make McCain look bad, of course.

First of all, it is a bit humorous that Time and Grossman's goal is to make it look like McCain is Internet illiterate, yet with the very first use of the word, in the first sentence of the very first paragraph of the story, Internet is misspelled by splitting it into two words.

It's hard to tell exactly how much or how little John McCain knows about the Inter net.

Time publishes an article about the Internet, calling it the "Inter net," and they have the gall to make fun of McCain, or President Bush for saying "The Google"? Now THAT is irony.

Next, Grossman tries to link McCain to one disgraced Senator and a president he assumes is disgraced even though it really has little to do with the story.

On the grand scale of wired politicians, he's probably somewhere between recently indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who famously described the Internet as a "series of tubes," and our current President, who once proudly explained to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo how he uses "the Google." (As for Obama, he's well known to be a BlackBerry addict.) What exactly does it mean that the next President of the U.S. might be a newbie?

That was merely a way for Grossman to try and tarnish McCain as much as he can it should be realized. It certainly does nothing to further the story.

Anyway, McCain has confessed that he doesn't e-mail and that he relies on his wife for computer help and in this piece we get the same old nonsense we have gotten elsewhere several times from those scoffing at McCain's computer illiteracy -- the main criticism being that he will not be able to understand the upcoming Net issues that the country will have to deal with, most likely soon.

What's more worrying is the idea that McCain is disconnected from the social, cultural and economic realities of the Internet. We are way past the point where we can treat the Internet as if it were some kind of nerd Narnia only tangentially connected to the real world. In the next few years, the President is going to have to make decisions about Internet surveillance, Net neutrality, cyber warfare (which, after years as an urban myth, has become quite real) and online privacy, just to name a few issues.

While even Grossman here understands that on a practical level McCain's computer illiteracy is a "nonissue," he also assumes far too much of computer literacy and the presidency.

First of all, the president will not be much involved in these computer issues because it is really an issue for Congress. Grossman seems unaware that a president doesn't write legislation. But, even on this practical level, there is no reason that a president cannot rely on his advisors to guide him in unfamiliar territory. After all, it has been reported that Barack Obama literally has 300 foreign policy advisors showing that Obama has absolutely NO foreign policy knowledge, yet I don't see the Old Media beating him up for that.

In fact, Obama's lack of foreign policy knowledge would seem just a tad more dangerous to the country than the fact that McCain doesn't e-mail, wouldn't you say? Yet not a word has been spoken against the ranks of the 300 foreign policy advisors Obama is forced to employ while we've gotten a half dozen of these articles attacking McCain because he doesn't e-mail.

Talk about focusing on a "nonissue" while ignoring a real leadership deficit on the other side!

Finally, I have to reiterate an important point that every single one of these McCain/computer articles has ignored. And that is the fact that no president will be using email anyway. At least not until the over litigiousness and enmity between the presidency and Congress comes to an end. Here was my point from July in reply to the Ulanoff pice:

But, let's face reality about computers and the president, any president. Thanks to the over use of the attack dogs called "special prosecutors," and the overweening interference of the Executive Branch by Congress, no president is even going to bother using e-mail and computers very much.

Last May, Bush even claimed that he looks forward to using e-mail to contact friends and family again after he leaves office. In a report on the president's remarks, a New York Times blog reported that "Mr. Bush stopped e-mailing when he entered the White House, citing security worries, and the Oval Office does not have a computer in it."

We will see this reticence to use email continued by most future presidents faced with the buttinskis in Congress. So, in the end, it really doesn't matter a hill of beans if McCain likes e-mail or not because as president he won't be using it anyway.

It seems that this Grossman piece was little else than a McCain attack piece disguised as an article.

(Photo credit: levgrossman.com)

Do you like your silly little Olympic games? Well, I hope you are really, really enjoying it because your support, your watching of this garbage makes you a direct, unequivocal party to the torture, imprisonment and oppression of the Chinese people. So, you, Mr. Olympics watcher, get a gold medal in torture. Congratulations. Feel proud.

It's so easy to just shut your eyes and pretend that you are innocent, of course. After all, you didn't send thousands of storm troopers through the streets of Beijing to round up homeless people, prostitutes, the elderly, or unwanted races like black immigrants from Africa and have them sent to interment camps a mere 30 miles from where the games are being held, right? Why you just bought a ticket to attend, or merely turned on your TV to watch the games. You can console yourself that you had nothing to do with these torture camps being filled up with less than telegenic Chinese people that wouldn't look good on TV. You just want to see some guy swim, some girls play volleyball or some people running.

You're innocent, right?

Wrong. You are directly responsible for thousands of people being beaten, displaced, tied to a bench for days on end, forced to go without clothing as punishment, and told that "re-education through labor" is the ideal... just like the Nazis used to tell their victims that "work makes you free."

Yes, be very proud of yourself.

Oh, you didn't know? You weren't aware that during the year before the Beijing Olympics made its fraud filled opening (what with lipsyncing girl singers, fake fireworks and fraudulent "ethnics") that the Chinese government marauded through the area to rid it of "undesirables"? You didn't know that torture camps and forced labor camps were set up mere miles away from where the wondrous new buildings and media enclaves were so grandly erected? You didn't know that immigrants were rounded up and imprisoned merely because they weren't of Han Chinese ancestry? You say you didn't know that thousands of China's least protected people were rounded up, forced to work unhealthy hours through the night, beaten, forced to live in cramped cells of squalor, and tortured constantly?

Well, it doesn't really matter if you knew about this specific and newest spate of imprisonment and torture. Because if you'd have paid any attention to China at all since the 1940s you'd have known that many billions of its people have been imprisoned, tortured, oppressed and ultimately murdered by its government.

But, the problem is, you don't want to know. You want to blindly enjoy some fun and games while people were tortured to make your experience as enjoyable as possible. Your hedonism is responsible for torture and murder, but you'd don't want to be faced with it.

In fact, your selfish fun makes you a traitor to liberty and freedom. Every last western athlete, every last western leader, and every single western attendee as well as all the media are guilty. And so is every TV watcher, newspaper reader, and radio listener who bothers with these murderous games.

But, wait. You say that in the Greek tradition of these grand games that the Olympics are supposed to be a time when war and politics are left at the door and all are to come together in the spirit of healthy competition? Fist of all, the games ended in Greece exactly because even they, the originators of the games, could not live up to that ideal. But even the modern history of the reconstituted Olympics games never excised world politics.

Some foolishly point to the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany as proof that the games are meaningful. They say that when Jesse Owens, an American black man, won his little footrace that it showed the world that Nazis were less than glorious.

To that I say Bull hookie.

After the Nazi games were held, Germany was thought to have created the perfect modern nation. Most people were awed by Hitler's Germany and he was viewed favorably by most of the world after the games because of his theatrics there. Even more to the point, Jesse Owens little jaunt around that stadium in front of Adolph Hitler did not change one tiny thing of the horror that was then being visited on Germany and would soon be unleashed upon the world. Not one soldier was spared, not one Jew saved from the ovens because Jesse Owens got to run around in his pointless exercise. NOTHING was positively affected by the 1936 Olympics but Hitler's burnished and shining reputation, a reputation that was only tarnished by his later actions in WWII.

The Olympics meant nothing in 1936 but the legitimizing of a murderous regime in Nazi Germany. And the same is happening here in 2008 for the murderous Chinese.

And now let’s anticipate the self-loathing left’s argument of why this all doesn’t matter. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. They will say that these two famed places will make the USA “just like” the Chinese. And they will then question my outrage. But, let me say to them that their faux outrage over the two aforementioned places is even more questionable. After all, if the tiny, isolated, and completely unsanctioned actions of abuse that might have happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are grounds for outrage, the generations of torture perpetrated by the Chinese is even more so. And, if you excuse the Chinese because of abuse that barely registers as such perpetrated by America, then you really have no business bringing up torture as a concern at all. You are a hypocrite. The gold for hypocrisy goes to you, too.

So, yes. Pop the tab on another beer and settle back to enjoy these fetid games. But know that you are responsible for torture and murder. Know that your support of this Olympics is responsible for mass imprisonment. Realize that your hands are red with the blood of the most vulnerable.

Congratulations. The gold is yours.

(Photo credit: telegraph.co.uk)

Many of you are aware of the kerfuffle surrounding the "cone of silence" complaint being ginned up by the Obama campaign after the recent Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency on Saturday, August 16. The claim made by Obama and his willing accomplices in the Old Media (like Andrea Mitchell, not to mention the DailyKos) is that John McCain "cheated" by hearing the questions proffered to Obama, who was first up to be questioned by moderator Rick Warren. McCain's answers were just too glib, the Obama meme posits, so he must have heard the questions ahead of time instead of being placed in an area off stage where he could not hear the proceedings. Yes, they are saying he cheated.

On Sunday, August 17, The New York Times did its level best to assist the Obama campaign to further that mistaken conception -- well, all right, that outright lie -- even as they debunked the story. How? By making their headline seem to support the Obama claim that McCain cheated, that's how.

Now, remember, that the claim from the Obama camp is that John McCain somehow snuck out of the "cone of silence" he was supposed to be in while backstage. This so-called "cone of silence" was supposed to be an area backstage where McCain was not able to hear the questioning. Keep in mind that the Obama camp is saying McCain left this area unauthorized and that he, therefore, cheated. Now check out the New York Times headline:

Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t in a ‘Cone of Silence’

Now, if you were to read only this headline and skip the story, it would seem to verify that the Obama campaign was right. McCain was not in this "cone of silence." It would be very easy to conclude that McCain then did hear the questions and did cheat. And it isn't just the headline. The first short paragraph also made it seem as if Obama was right about his "cheating" charge.

Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

But wait. It turns out that John McCain wasn't even at the venue to hear the questions.

...Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed... Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

So, yes, he wasn't in the vaunted "cone of silence" but he also wasn't any where near the stage where the questions were being asked and that means he certainly did not "cheat" as the Obama camp and the Old Media are charging.

Unfortunately, while the Times gets points for telling the full truth eventually, the first paragraph and the headline seem to support the opposite of the truth and casual readers that only read headlines and the first few lines are easily led to imagine that Obama's charges are correct.

You may recall the news that the brother of the chief of the extremist, leftist, activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) stole $1 million dollars from the organization? Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade, embezzled the money in 2000.

Well, now it has been determined who tried to secretly pay off the theft so that no one would get in trouble. It appears that Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation a purveyor of leftist tropes, slipped ACORN the cool mil so that Wade Rathke could keep his little bro out of jail.

As the New York Times reports, the Tides Foundation has since 2000 provided over $400 million dollars to various far left organizations and causes. The Tides Foundation has said that none of their money went to ACORN and that Pike was on a "leave of absence" from their board.

ACORN did its level best to keep everything secret and off the books, too. They way they tried to paper over the theft and pay back is worthy of the best cloak-and-dagger book plot.

That agreement was carried on the books of an affiliate, Citizens Consulting Inc., as a loan to an officer. Sometime in June, Mr. Pike bought the loan from the affiliate, according to e-mail messages between senior executives at Acorn that were provided to a reporter by Acorn employees, who requested anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.

But e-mail messages among Acorn’s senior executives discuss how to keep Mr. Pike’s identity secret, even as they acknowledge that some of the foundations and philanthropic advisers that have supported Acorn and its affiliates know that he bought the note.

All this secrecy is alarming. It should be stressed that this was done to hide the theft from authorities to shield the criminal brother of founder Rathke as well as to hide a potentially embarrassing situation from becoming public knowledge.

And these are the sorts of crooks and cover-up artists that imagine they should be the ones running the economy as well as the rest of the country! They are also the ones closest to Barack Obama and the people he WILL be bringing into government should he win the White House.

Question: Isn't it big news when a leading candidate for president of the U.S. admits that since 2003 he has been lying about a vote he once made? Even more to the point, isn't it big news when the candidate himself was on TV not long before that admission saying that everyone else is the liar? So, why is the media silent on the 180 degree about face that the Obama campaign has just made concerning Obama's BAIP vote?

As I reported on August 13, the media pretty much ignored the great work by Jill Stanek in uncovering the truth that contradicted nearly 6 years of claims that Obama made concerning his vote on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act when he was in the Illinois State Senate. Obama claimed that the Federal "neutrality clause" wasn't in the Illinois bill and that if it were he would have voted for the bill instead of against it. Stanek proved that the exact same clause Obama said wasn't in the bill was actually placed in the bill by the very committee Obama chaired. Yet he still voted against it.

Since the August 13 report, Obama was a guest with CBN's David Brody File where he told the world that anyone who doubts his word on his Illinois BAIP vote is a "liar."

Here in part is what Obama told David Brody in Saturday's August 16 interview:

Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying.

I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say - that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion.

That was not the bill that was presented at the state level.

The same day the interview aired, the Obama campaign did a 180 on the issue admitting that Obama did vote against the very bill with the very language in it that Obama has claimed for 6 years did not exist. This from the New York Sun:

His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.

So, even with the same "neutrality clause" in the bill, placed there by the very committee of which he chaired, Obama still voted against the bill. Even though for 6 years he has claimed he would have voted for the bill if the "neutrality clause" was there -- that he has been saying this whole time that the lack of that clause made him vote against the bill -- even with that claim being proven a lie, the media stays silent.

The fact is, Obama's abortion record is far more extreme than he and his willing Old Media accomplices are allowing for. Obama is in favor of allowing babies to die from neglect even if born completely healthy, but unwanted by the Mother. This is an extreme view.

So, where is the media reporting this admission of an outright lie? Why have they not pounced on Obama with sharpened talons exposing his lie?

You tell me.

Isn't it grand that in the United States of America you are free to hold a political position or affiliation, free to donate your money to any political party you desire, and not lose your job over it? The United States has always been the epitome of freedom of political speech.

... unless you are a gay guy that wants to support John McCain. In that case, all bets are off.

At least this is what a fellow named Jonathan Crutchley discovered when he decided that John McCain would be a better president in this age of Jihadi terror and donated $2,300 to McCain's campaign. Apparently, freedom of political choice is not allowed in gay circles.

You see, Mr. Crutchley happens to be the chairman of the board that runs a gay dating site named Manhunt. And the intolerant gays surrounding him have forced him to quit his job. To be sure, Crutchley didn't donate company money and didn't make any announcements that his gay website was sponsoring his efforts or McCain's. It was a personal donation quietly made with his own money.

Yet here is what the hate filled gays in his company have officially said of him:

"It should be known that Jonathan Crutchley's donation to McCain left the entire Board in disbelief. I am disappointed that we have lost some customers, and I understand the anger. It is too bad for the web site if we lose customers, but PLEASE never refer to me as a Republican. I consider it an offense.

Crutchley admitted to this donation forthrightly. In the comments of an article about the Manhunt site posted on onlinepersonalswatch.com (that have since been removed) in April of 2007, Crutchley said that he thinks that McCain is a more experienced candidate for the White House.(Note, you can see a screen capture of Crutchley's reply at www.towleroad.com)

Welcome to the age of the Internet, where everyone's private life becomes public. Yes, my contribution to John McCain’s campaign for president was listed on Huffington post. I believe McCain will be a better commander-in-chief than Obama, who also opposes gay marriage. If we have an experienced, seasoned person defending the country in this dangerous age, we will be able to argue about the gay agenda later. Yes, I am a Massachusetts Republican, which is about the same as being an Alabama Democrat. But don't call e a "liberal." That's an insult.

No matter what you think of Crutchley or his vocation as a gay website operator, he has a right to expect not to be fired over his political affiliation in America the land of liberty.

Obviously, however, gays are too intolerant to agree. How unAmerican they are.

I am amused that the operator of the towleroad.com site was indignant enough to demand that John McCain return this donation, too. There is no reason McCain should feel compelled to do so, though. None at all.

And, by the way, some of the links here go to adult, gay sites, so if you are offended by their hedonism, don't click on them!

(Photo credit: onlinepersonalswatch.com)

Another day another "study" of dubious worth. This time it is Science Daily letting us know that "Latinas" in the United States have high rates of depression because of that dreaded "Americanization" they apparently unfairly face. So now, just the gall-darn, odiousness of becoming "Americanized" is enough to send "Latinas" to the funny farm, I guess. But, it seems to me that this "study" tends to say that it is single motherhood and out of wedlock pregnancies causing the depression not the fact that they are "Latinas" that have become acculturated to American ways.

Just look how horrible it is for Latinas to become Americans:

A study of 439 U.S. and Mexican-born Latinas seeking pregnancy and postpartum services at public health clinics in San Antonio uncovered elevated levels of depression among the more "Americanized" women, report researchers from The University of Texas School of Public Health and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

First of all, I have to say that the term "Latina" is ridiculous in the first place, just as is the word "Latino." The term Latino covers far too many cultures, nationalities, races and languages to be a useful term. A Haitian person has a different culture than does a Mexican and those "Latinas" actually born in the United States (women such as appear in this study) have absolutely no cultural connection to a Bolivian... yet they are all supposedly "Latino." The term Latino is completely unacceptable for its imprecision to be used as a category in any serious study.

Another main problem with this study is that it seems to proclaim that Latino women are more prone to depression if they have been "Americanized" yet from the article it doesn't seem as if any effort was made to quantify what being acculturated and not being acculturated means in relationship to depression. Further, the study seems to be about unwed mothers and out of wedlock births, not "Americanization." It seems more like the fact that the women wished to conduct their interviews in English was incidental. The entire study seems to be placing some onerous weight upon having become Americanized. As if acting like Americans was troublesome, or somehow bad for these women in and of itself.

It seems that this study is cursory at best.

Now, let me posit a possibility for woman of Hispanic or Latino birth being depressed when they find themselves pregnant and unmarried. It can be summed up in one word and that one word is not Americanized. Here is that one word: Catholic.

The largest portion of Mexicans, South Americans, Latin language speakers, et al, are culturally Catholic, they are largely more religious than many native born white Americans, and Catholicism spurns out of wedlock births. So, they feel shame -- as well they should given their religious convictions. This just maybe, sortta, might cause them to become a tad bit depressed, seeing as how their entire cultural upbringing tells them that having a baby and no hubby is a bad thing.

Here we all take a minute to say, "DUH!"

But, no, this "study" links it with the fact that these women wish to be considered "Americanized." It seems a totally unproven supposition.

Let me also suggest a reason why we might see women who wanted to conduct their interviews in Spanish not announcing that they were "depressed" to the interviewers. They were probably illegals and were happy to be getting their helathcare for free, so wouldn't complain too much for fear of losing it (the American born women not in as much fear of that and, therefore, freer to whine to the interviewers).

There is one last absurdity to note in this study. If a woman is born in this country, how is it that she is considered "Americanized" as if it were some conscious choice? If she was born here is she not just American as opposed to "Americanized"?

I have to say that this looks like just another study of no worth made with the singular purpose of casting blame, doubt or aspersions on being an American. No doubt researcher and graduate student of UT School of Public Health Marivel Davila is merely looking for more funding for her "work" to continue so went for what might sound sensational: "Americanized" Latinas have it harder than everyone else (give me money to "study" more, please).

(Art work credit: Freeclipartnow.com)