Peyton's sister pardoned...

[IJ Reilly]

I was in Sheridan, Wyoming recently, where we stopped at a family restaurant for some much-needed vittles. This restaurant, as far from the coastal culture wars as you can get, had restrooms marked: "Men," "Women," and "Others." I doubt there is legislation in Wyoming mandating such enlightenment (go Google!) but here was a place that was accepting, in their own profit-minded way, the new reality.

Here's the irony that the modern-day campus Torquemadas fail to appreciate. (Trigger warning). It is only the wealth afforded by capitalist societies that allows this new-found luxury of gender and race fluidity. Those societies stuck at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid (90% of the world) are too busy looking for their next meal to worry about which restroom to walk into. Hike the robe and let 'er rip, is the standard practice in most of the world.

So while Churchill and Warren long for a capitalist-free world, they fail to appreciate that once their Chavez's get into power, the age-old problems return, like "what to eat today?"

[Airborne Aircrew]

It struck me last night that, in the usual "Liberal actions intended to be good often have unintended consequences", that with the traitor out of prison the safeguards that were in place to prevent a successful suicide will be absent. Thus, by commuting what is almost a life sentence Obama might be replacing it with a death sentence.

[Cacophonix]

traitor out of prison the safeguards that were in place to prevent a successful suicide will be absent. Thus, by commuting what is almost a life sentence Obama might be replacing it with a death sentence.

"Cum bona voluntate eo"... eh!

You are all heart...

Caco

[Airborne Aircrew]

Merely an observation... You will note I did not opine in either direction.

[Chuks]

Check out this one for something Twain wrote about a special sort of Indian: http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/ ... fense.html

There's a famous German author, Karl May, who made a lot of money inventing stories about the Old West that featured Winnetou the Apache and his blood brother Old Shatterhand. May told about how he'd drawn on his real-life experiences living among the Indians when writing this stuff, but then it came out that he'd only visited the States after he'd written those books, and that he never got west of Chicago then. These books were later filmed, with a Frenchman as Winnetou and Lex "Tarzan" Barker as Old Shatterhand, in Yugoslavia, when they were a big hit. Every summer there's an open-air theatre in Bad Segeberg that puts on performances of this stuff, and they are just now filming it, or just have filmed it, again, this time with an Albanian as Winnetou.

Canada had its very own Grey Owl, Archibald Stansfeld Belaney in real life, who became famous as a First Nations personality working in conservation. He did work in conservation, but he certainly had nothing of First Nations (what Canada now calls Native Americans/American Indians) in him since he was born in England to English parents.

There was a famous Hollywood actor, Iron Eyes Cody, whom you can still see featured on some TV commercials about not peeing on the grizzly bears or whatever, keeping America beautiful. He was a real, live Hollywood Indian, who turned out to be a second-generation Italian-American with nothing whatsoever of Native American in his "de Corti" family background.

I interviewed a "Wounded Warrior" who had Native American-themed stickers on his car, dream-catchers and Kachinas in his flat, a Ward Churchill-style hair-do, mentions of doing "sweat lodges" ... but I did not want to ask him "What's will all this Native American stuff? I thought you were just supposed to be some sort of traumatized Vietnam vet?" since, of course, you could be both! The BS seemed to be deep enough just with the Wounded Warrior stuff so that I left it at that.

No, there's something about being a Native American that just brings out the BS artist in so many people. It's pure catnip that way. That Chelsea is Chelsea and not some random two spirit named Hello Sailor must argue that she's for real.

[Chuks]

Well spotted, Ben! The 1975 film was shot in Darien, Westport, and Fairfield, all in Fairfield County, Connecticut. (That's the county formed by that little handle in southwestern Connecticut that sticks out towards Westchester County, New York.)

I lived in Westport for about eight years, off and on, graduating from high school there before departing for Vietnam.

"Westporting" used to be slang for having an affair.

[Cacophonix]

You'd could forgive some of this fanciful stuff if the would be Native American protagonists had taken enough peyote or its simulacrum to have imagined the whole deal!

I read a book about Archie Belaney (aka Grey Owl). An interesting tale and some of the stuff he did was not without merit as you say Chuks.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grey-Owl-Myste ... 1550501097

In some ways the whole mythos of the Native American and that "culture's" abiding place in the world's imagination is a tribute to the romantic myth of the American West in literature and the latter day all pervading power of Hollywood to romanticise and obfuscate painful reality and the truth itself.

Comedian Rich Hall's take on this phenomenon in a documentary here on BBC recently was very entertaining...

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lheXnx02JYE[/bbvideo]

Caco

[Cukup Sudah]

'It struck me last night'

I suppose that the conditions of her confinement being the cause of the two attempts is just a thought too far.

[IJ Reilly]

As always we can blame most of this on the French, with Rousseau's "Noble Savage" nonsense. It is easy to be an inauthentic Indian once the air conditioning is turned on and the microwave is warming the bison stew. Truth is that life on the plains was not some idyllic utopia, but just another example of a "nasty, brutish and short" existence.

So while we fret over which sex to be today, and which restroom to walk into, and which tribe to belong to and which color our skin should be, others go about life looking for a warm place to sleep and a half-full belly.

It's no surprise that skeptical midwestern hicks and other deplorables see through much of this nonsense, yet find themselves bullied into silence by those fully invested in the game. In the words of Billy Joe Shaver, we're playing checkers, while they're playing chess," so the only way they can express their disgust is to elect another phony, albeit an orange tinted blowhard, to make their case for them.

[Airborne Aircrew]

'It struck me last night'

I suppose that the conditions of her confinement being the cause of the two attempts is just a thought too far.

Then how do you account for the suicide rate amongst trangenders being just over 40% while in the general population it is around 4%. They aren't all in prison you know.

[Cacophonix]

It's no surprise that skeptical midwestern hicks and other deplorables see through much of this nonsense, yet find themselves bullied into silence by those fully invested in the game. In the words of Billy Joe Shaver, we're playing checkers, while they're playing chess," so the only way they can express their disgust is to elect another phony, albeit an orange tinted blowhard, to make their case for them.

As nature may abhor a vacuum so moneyed society does the chiclet chewer! As somebody somewhere might have said “If you can’t afford the board, then don’t play the game”. The abominable naartjie claims he can afford but history is about to learn if he can play the game. It is, as always probably, a bad time to be hick, chiclets chewing, hayseed.

Caco

[Cacophonix]

It's no surprise that skeptical midwestern hicks and other deplorables see through much of this nonsense, yet find themselves bullied into silence by those fully invested in the game. In the words of Billy Joe Shaver, we're playing checkers, while they're playing chess," so the only way they can express their disgust is to elect another phony, albeit an orange tinted blowhard, to make their case for them.

As nature may abhor a vacuum so moneyed society does the chiclets chewer! As somebody somewhere might have said “If you can’t afford the board, then don’t play the game”. The abominable naartjie claims he can afford but history is about to learn if he can play the game. It is, as always probably, a bad time to be a hick, chiclets chewing, hayseed.

Caco

[Cacophonix]

'It struck me last night'

I suppose that the conditions of her confinement being the cause of the two attempts is just a thought too far.

Then how do you account for the suicide rate amongst trangenders being just over 40% while in the general population it is around 4%. They aren't all in prison you know.

So, taking syllogistic logic from its major and minor premises, to a final conclusion, are you suggesting that all transgendered people might be better off incarcerated for their "own protection?"

What a 'Modest Proposal'! Still I am sure that this is not what you meant, surely?

Caco

[Airborne Aircrew]

Caco:

Poor bait... Rancid even...

[Cacophonix]

Oh grasshopper when you can find the excluded middle then you will have won the argument, no matter how rancid it is!

Caco

[Cukup Sudah]

When people are isolated, rejected, humiliated, discriminated against and ridiculed, such as you have on this thread, on a daily basis the number is not surprising.

How any of that causes the conditions in prison not to be a factor, I don't know.

[Cacophonix]

"The floggings will cease when morale improves" Cukup!

Caco

[Airborne Aircrew]

Cukup:

The alternative view to that would be that should someone _choose_ to live on the fringes of the society they live in then that's just fine but they really shouldn't come whining to the rest of us when things aren't going their way.

You lot are priceless... Hawking your enlightenment as if it is some kind of badge of honor, your inclusiveness as if forms the footing for your perceived moral superiority and your forgiveness of a traitor as your compassion. Yet, I made the case that your compassion, enlightenment and perceived moral superiority may end up killing Bradley Manning.

With a better than 4 in 10 chance that Bradley will do the dirty deed one would think that you might say "whoa" to those high horses if even for a second to think. But thinking and liberals generally don't belong in the same sentence do they?

With the way you liberals have demonstrated that all you claim about yourselves is crap since the election of Donald Trump I would not be surprised in the least to find you have a secret dead pool on Manning.

[Cacophonix]

You lot are priceless... Hawking your enlightenment as if it is some kind of badge of honor, your inclusiveness as if forms the footing for your perceived moral superiority and your forgiveness of a traitor as your compassion. Yet, I made the case that your compassion, enlightenment and perceived moral superiority may end up killing Bradley Manning.

Have a couple of chiclets. You'll feel better for that.

Manning has a far bigger chance of being offed by some looney espousing opinions not a million miles from yours AA than from shuffling off this mortal coil by his her own hand.

Caco

[Airborne Aircrew]

Caco:

And, should that happen I will have a completely clear conscience.

This might come as a surprise to you but I have zero feelings about the man. I would no more do him harm than I would piss on him in the gutter if he laid there on fire. He's a traitor to his country. I don't approve. But it doesn't make me get all het up and threaten or carry out violent acts like your friends on the left do. He'll meet his fate and I will shrug and move on while you ponses on the left add ten points to my investments in Kleenex. Thank you for that by the way...