Free Republic

How to address a bitter, war-torn but still somehow giddy and deeply horny nation. My fellow Americans, we're not as royally screwed as everything Bush has done during his miserable term in office would have you believe.

I am a Gay Republican but I almost never chime in on political issues. I believe in small government, which the Bush administration has not been good at, as well as low taxes and the free market. I don't believe in manmade global warming and I think environmental activism is mostly a cover for people who want to make more rules to control our lives. Social issues don't get me very excited and I know I should be more grateful to my gay forefathers for all their sacrifices, but I've never encountered homophobia in my entire life so gay rights...

In many ways, the U.S. is now just as inhumane and brutal as any Third World regime. Oh well? "We do not torture." Remember it, write it in red crayon on the bathroom wall, tattoo it onto your acid tongue because those very words rang throughout the land like a bleak bell, like a low scream in the night, like a cheese grater rubbing against the teeth of common sense when Dubya mumbled them during a speech not long ago, and it was, at once, hilarious and nauseating and it took all the self-control in the world for everyone in...

San Diego Man May Have New HIV Strain Last Updated: 02-15-05 at 9:47AM Health officials are trying to locate a San Diego man who tested positive for a new strain of HIV. The overly aggressive and drug resistant strain was first discovered in New York City. With this new strain, a person can become infected with HIV and develop Aids in a matter of months, instead of years. One local doctor says there's no need to panic. "Is this going to become a widespread epidemic…this particular strain? No, I don't think it will be," said Doctor Susan Little an associate...

A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...

Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin' companies, and try buying blue Do you care much that greasy ol' Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the GOP last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semirancid meatlike substances just long enough to write a fat check to the conservative Right? Isn't that weirdly fascinating, in a depressing and indigestible sort of way? Does it matter a whit that, say, Fruit of the Loom underwear gave nearly 100 percent of its corporate donations to tighty-whitey-wearing Republicans, nearly every one...

The odds are very good that you are on drugs. Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones. Maybe it's regulating your blood...

You know it's true. You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy. Of course they would. They'd be jumping up and down and saying I told you so and pointing to Volume 18 of "Left Behind" and claiming that this was, of course, God's wrath upon the sinners and the gays and the heathens and sodomites and the tofu eaters and the Toyota Priuses and the yoga studios and the anal sex and the incense...

In its strongest condemnation yet of Spanish government plans to legalize gay marriage the Roman Catholic Church said it was akin to releasing a "deadly virus" into Spanish society. The cabinet of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero this week is expected approve the gay marriage legislation and send it directly to Parliament. A vote is expected early next month and the bill is expected to pass despite opposition from conservatives and the Church. Once it becomes law the first marriages could take place early next year. "This legislation is imposing a virus on society, something false that will have...

This is the great thing about rabid fundamentalism. You really just don't have to give a damn. Take the environment. I mean, isn't it just a little pointless to care so damn deeply about the air and the soil and the water and the stupid little disposable animals on this silly spinning ball of expendable rock when the Second Coming is imminent and a blood-soaked fire-breathin' Jesus who looks remarkably like Mel Gibson will return very soon to smite the heathens and the gays and the vegetarians and the Francophiles, and who will rescue all those who worship patriarchy and...

I am searching for a few good things. Things to counteract, to dissolve the simmering dread, to deflect the waves of nausea and karmic pain induced by the incessantly depressing media maelstrom and the appallingly hateful gloat of the GOP convention and by the most tyrannical administration and least articulate American president in 100 years. You know how it is. And you say to yourself, these things, these radiant gems that live outside the mass-media miasma, I need them because they provide some balm, soften the fact that the nation feels massively off track and blinded and war torn and...

Bunny-curdling screams were heard throughout the Beltway last week and Laura Bush herself got all flustered and confused as vice president and noted hunk of rabid warmongering neoconservatism Dick Cheney broke ranks with his party of other hunks of rabid warmongering neoconservatives and admitted, in public, that he thinks gay people are, you know, mostly OK. Sort of. A little. In small doses. "With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free -- ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they...

When last we left our sneering caped crusaders, Rummy had testified under oath that he didn't really know who ordered what at Abu "Tortures R' Us" Grhraib prison, and George "Wha Happun?" Bush was mumbling into his hand puppet about how he was utterly shocked and aapalled, and was blaming the whole thing on "a coupla bad apples" and gul-dangit, he weren't gunna stan' fer it. And while he still loved Rumsfeld like a drunken frat brother and swore Rummy was doing a "superb job" and stood by him 'til or impeachment they do part, something must be done and...

<p>I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.</p>