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"BoBo? It's Syndee. You ready, girl? The convention starts in an hour, and the senators are salivating!" "Hi, Syn! Almost ready! Just finishing my makeup. Hey, which outfit you think I should wear tonight? My red, white, and blue glitter spandex halter with the peekaboo panties, or the red vinyl skirt with the Velcro tear-away crotch and the big picture of the M-1 tank on the butt?" "Oooh, I'd go with the tank, Bo. This is the GOP convention, girl! These Republicans love their war, you know? It's all about big phallic missiles and manly howitzers and 'weapons of ass...

Are you there, God? It's me, George W. Come in, Almighty. Do you read me? It's about 8:00 pm and it's just after my last bubble bath of the day and here I am again, kneeling here in the Oval Office all by myself in my most favoritest PJs, the funny ones with the little M-1 tanks and baseball players all over them. I gots some problems, Lord. Look, I've done everything you asked. I've been good. Haven't I? I take the message to the people, don't I? I spout that evangelical born-again crap in pisswater Podunk conservative churches across...

Just in time for your morning breakfast sausage, it's all-American rape and torture and rampant entirely condoned military sadism. Mmm, patriotism. The pictures are worth a thousand disgusted moans. It's all flag-draped coffins and dog chains and forced masturbation and pistol whippings and miserable bloody hooded Iraqi men -- not terrorists, just men -- with wires attached to their fingers and genitals and made to stand up for hours and days on end until their feet swell and their lungs collapse and their livers fail, and you can hear our stunned death-drunk nation cry: Hey, whatever happened to our nice,...

Can you hear the outcry? Can you feel the snippy puritanical heat? Can you feel John Ashcroft's hot, predatory breath bearing down on your life and your box of vibrators and your adult DVD collection and snatching away your copy of "Weapons of A-- Destruction #2" and smacking you across the face with a Bible, all before skipping off to the dungeon to feed the flying monkeys? Because while 9/11 and the process of gleefully decimating your civil liberties via the USA Patriot Act may have delayed him a few years, Ashcroft & Co. is back on the anti-porn warpath,...

Because what the world really needs now is more uptight little companies from Utah that will help us all block out the random messy naked blood n' guts of the world. Companies that will, without anyone asking them to, protect us from media evildoers and exposed flesh and scary exploding things and that part in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" wherein the universe is blessed, for the briefest of moments, with the joy of Kate Winslet's radiant nipples. This is what is happening. This is the happy godlike agenda of Utah's ClearPlay, a twee and shrill little corporation that...

Perhaps you, like so many across the planet, are more than a bit baffled by the runaway success of "The Passion of the Christ." Perhaps you, furthermore, are more than slightly disturbed that millions have flocked to this bizarre ultraviolent blood-drenched revisionist flick and that so many actually believe its story to be absolutely true, and that it just surpassed "The Return of the King" in total box office and is the No. 8 most successful film of all time and it was No. 1 again across BushCo's flyover states during Easter weekend and has sold 650,000 books and 125,000...

<p>Kneel down. Put your hands together. Offer thanks right this very moment to whatever deity you desire that that you are not 18 years old and gay and living in the state of Kansas right now.</p> <p>This gratitude, it is a given. This is so much of a given you might not even need to hear why. You just say to yourself, oh my freaking God, I can only imagine.</p>

<p>Here it comes again, another dumbly predictable, panicky little outcry from terrified parents' groups and petrified dads all aflutter over the recent sexed-up, "racy" Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, just in time to stuff your proverbial stocking.</p> <p>You know the one, that new A&F Christmas catalog that dared to go so far as to show actual young half-naked models laying around in half-naked splendor doing half-naked nothing much. Same as it ever was.</p>

<p>This Thanksgiving, as you sip the wine and hug the family and toast the friends and hoard the stuffing and curse the airport security, remember to give thanks you are not G.W. Bush. Hey, it's important.</p> <p>1) Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya's massive crushing karmic burden, as wrought by inflicting heaps of environmental disaster and vicious unnecessary war and a stunning string of lies lies lies like a firehose of giblet gravy splattered all over the planet.</p>

For most people, deciding which bathroom to use in the Regenstein Library does not require mental gymnastics. But for some, a trip to the restroom is less simple, with gay, lesbian, and transgendered students worried about the implications of which bathrooms they enter. At the Center for Gender Studies on Wednesday night, a panel of four discussed the need for gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, specifically one in the Regenstein and one in Cobb Hall. Members of Feminist Majority, Queers & Associates, and the Center for Gender Studies organized the panel as part of the Coalition for a Queer Safe Campus....

<p>The gays are marching in. The end is near. Sheer unadulterated evil and scary anal sex and superlative hair products and new blasts of fresh happy love are to be unleashed anew upon the country. Horror is nigh. Everyone into the bunker.</p>

<p>Of course it's all just glittery New Age froufrou moonbeam crapola that don't mean nuthin'. Sure it is.</p> <p>Of course it's all just easily dismissible astrological hooey, just another big everyday lunar eclipse that just so happens to coincide with an incredibly rare and unusual and truly beautiful planetary configuration that, if you believe the signs, heralds a potentially enormous and profound spiritual awakening for humans (that's you) not seen since 1987's famous Harmonic Convergence, and not really even then.</p>

As columnist Charles Krauthammer recently observed: "The world is experiencing the worst resurgence of anti-Semitism in 50 years. Its main objective is the demonization and delegitimation of Israel, to the point that the idea of eradicating... the world's only Jewish state becomes respectable, indeed laudable. The psychological grounds for the final solution are being prepared." Party to this grim preparation is one Tony Judt, former Oxford don and now a history professor at New York University. Accomplished in the academy, where Israel is widely vilified, he has evidently, as a Jew, suffered discomfiting criticism among his colleagues - perhaps even...

<p>The good people of Rodeo -- who like animals as much as anyone else, especially for breakfast -- declared Tuesday that their precious heritage is worth more than $20,000 in veggie burgers.</p> <p>"They can keep their veggie burgers,'' said Doug Boyum. "I'm not going to sell out for a veggie burger. I'm not going to sell out, period.''</p>

<p>Did you hug a priest today? Run from a scary homosexual person? Coo over a copy of Bride's magazine? Fall on your knees and thank God Almighty that your child isn't yet gay or pagan or libertarian and if she is that's OK because it's nothing that regular lithium and electroshock therapy can't "cure"?</p>

<p>These are the things to corrupt young gullible minds and short-circuit self-expression and demean the desperately needed impulse toward spontaneous self-awareness and individuality and happy guiltless vaginal investigations.</p> <p>These are the things to make Mary-Kate and Ashley's alarming and utterly demonic stranglehold on the world of vacuous saccharine multimillion-dollar teendom seem like a boring day at the mall, with lots of makeup and tube tops and Hot Dog on a Stick.</p>

<p>Oh great, so here you are, two full years later.</p> <p>Two full years after the 9/11 maelstrom and two years during which the term "hero" has been molested and slapped around and "patriotism" has been smashed and reconfigured into some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin, a conservative plastic surgeon's wet dream, all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado you no longer relate to in the slightest.</p>

<p>Do you feel the pulse? The surging urge for delicious politician-free change? That's right! It's recall time!</p> <p>Because this is your opening. This is your chance. Here is the insane inane circus of the California recall, and here is this huge gaping maw of political idiocy and infighting, and apparently they just really, really want you to know that all you really need is a million bucks and a million signatures and you too can change history to suit your whiny conservative whims. Ah, democracy.</p>

<p>Hey, remember that dramatic CNN footage of that big statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled by U.S. forces in that Baghdad square a few months back, during the "war"? Remember how powerfully symbolic it was supposed to be?</p> <p>Remember, later, seeing the wide-angle shot on the Internet, the one of all the U.S. tanks surrounding the square and the whole bogus setup of how they staged the event, complete with a big crane and some strong cable and strategically positioned "citizens" cheering their "liberation" as the statue fell, as just off camera, a handful of genuine Iraqis loitered nearby, looking confused and bored?</p>

      Several weeks ago, ChronWatch ran an item about Michael Ballou, a professor at Santa Rosa Junior College.  According to reports, the professor gave his students the assignment of doing a composition on ''Kill the President.''  The professor saw the item and sent ChronWatch an e-mail message suggesting that we visit his website to get his side of the story.  We have done so, and the story from the website is shown below for your convenience.  I leave it to the reader to judge the professor, his competence, his bias, and his assignment.        Note: I've got to tell you my fellow American Citizens,...

In pursuit of ethnic harmony Waukesha activists seek to end racism by 2006 By SCOTT WILLIAMSswilliams@journalsentinel.com Last Updated: July 30, 2003 Waukesha - Convinced that American racism played a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Waukesha County activists are planning a major new effort to promote racial and ethnic harmony. Quotable We need to understand the world; we need to accept theworld. - Mary Baer,co-chairwoman of the Waukesha County Diversity Task Force The kickoff date: the second anniversary of the day of horror. A coalition that includes the YWCA of Waukesha, Waukesha School District and many other groups will...

<p>This is what happens when it's all a house of cards.</p> <p>This is what happens when you build your entire presidency on an intricate network of aww-shucks glibness and bad hair and cronyism and corporate fellatio and warmongering and sham enemies and economy-gutting policies and endless blank-eyed smirks that tell the world, every single day, whelp, sure 'nuff, the U.S. is full of it.</p>

Racist Yale LaureateBy John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | July 24, 2003 In February of this year, the African American Cultural Center (AACC) at Yale University announced that it would be sponsoring a special tea party where students could come and listen to guest speaker Amiri Baraka, a poet and college professor whom the AACC described as “the controversial, provocative, and brilliant former Poet Laureate of New Jersey.” “This is an opportunity,” the announcement read, “to hear this brilliant man speak, and your chance to meet the man and the growing legend in person. It is sure to inspire, provoke, and motivate...

<p>SF Gate's lead columnist, Mark Morford, has won first place in the online columnists division of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists contest.</p> <p>In addition, Chronicle television columnist Tim Goodman won the society's Herb Caen Memorial Award for notes/item columns.</p>

<p>Stop. You've found it. This is the place. Americana HQ. Patriotism in a giant tin bucket. This is where souls recoil, children wail, dreams die.</p> <p>This is Wal-Mart. The glorious consumer mecca, the epic wonderland/wasteland of prefab landfill merch, not only the world's largest and most powerful retailer and the most aggressive snarling frightening happy-place marketer and quite possibly the most hideously overlit soul-draining monster empire you will ever know in your entire lifetime, but also the very multibillion-dollar pseudo-Christian kingdom that censors their offerings and refuses to sell certain music CDs and bans "risqué" beer-'n'-babes mags like Maxim and FHM and Stuff, because, you know, pretty girls are evil.</p>

<p>Those damnable jerks. You'd think they'd be grateful. You'd think they'd applaud and cheer wildly and grovel and offer us their prettiest first-born daughters or at least politely and on bended knee acknowledge our big oily happy capitalist Christian largesse.</p>

As ASUCR closed out their year last Thursday with one last meeting, student groups came out in a final attempt this year to secure funding to increase safety for women of color. "We stand in solidarity with women of color," said a representative of the Student Coalition for Peace. "There is a war in the United States and here at UCR. We want funding and security not UCR affiliated to protect against UCPD and the Greek community. The anger expressed by a number of students at the meeting stemmed from the allocation and subsequent de-allocation of funds for a safe...

<p>There is the wild and crazily cute fetish-object success of the Mini Cooper and the minor sensation that is the eco-friendly GOP-smackin' Toyota Prius and the imminent arrival of the insanely funkytiny DaimlerChrysler Smart car in the U.S., maybe, someday soon, let's hope.</p>

<p>Barry Schwartz was sickened by what he took to be the softball coverage of the fall of Baghdad. So the 44-year-old artist turned off CNN and went out to do an errand, determined to provoke deeper reflection along his way.</p>

STRATHAM - Hardly predawn, but early for a Sunday morning, a group of approximately 50 people gather at the Stratham Hill Park parking lot. Within the hour most will take part in a unique international spelling bee, one that has gained its reputation for scripting out peace messages with naked bodies, rather than for any aptitude in orthography. There are a few dog walkers and a couple of park workers about. None appear to pay attention to the largely female group. Though many of these women will choose to remain anonymous, their hope is that people will soon pay them...

By Ed Offley Now that the U.S. Central Command has formally announced that combat operations are over in Iraq, it’s time to assess the campaign and cite the outstanding, if not other-worldly, performance of key players. Not the military campaign: We know how that went. It went like a hot bayonet through butter. After deploying over 250,000 American and British military forces in the Persian Gulf region, the U.S. Central Command on March 19, 2003, simultaneously launched a ground invasion and precision air strikes aimed at isolating and neutralizing Iraqi command authorities. Less visible, special operations forces roamed from the...

<p>San Francisco -- The anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco have proved to be a powerful magnet, drawing law-breaking protesters from as far south as Mexico, as far north as Washington state and as far east as Connecticut -- but only a minority from the city itself, arrest records show.</p>

<p>Captain Bill Cooper of the UC Berkeley police said today that 119 protesters have been arrested at a sit-in this afternoon in the lobby of Sproul Hall.</p> <p>Cooper said none of the protesters were charged with resisting arrest and were cited and released.</p>

Win the contest! For the past 18 months the blogosphere and Free Republic has covered crackpots and weirdos peddling notions that range from the merely illiogical to full blown psychosis. Jimmy Carter may have won the Fiskie Award, but for sheer unhinged looniness there are people who top him easily. So, here's your challenge: top this one... if you can. You see, it's all about the Stargate: "This study provides an exopolitical analysis of the policy dimensions of an historic extraterrestrial presence that is pertinent to Iraq and a US led preemptive attack. It will be argued that competing clandestine...

Men: Natural Born Killers(Editor's note: Anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldecott delivered this speech below at a recent teach-in hosted by Code Pink, a women’s anti-war organization.) I wrote an article for Marvel comics recently; they’re doing a book on non-violence. Marvel comics are read predominantly by men between the ages of 24 and 35. I just sat down to write this article and it just poured out of me, I didn’t even have to think about it. So I thought I would read it as an introduction to what I have to say today and to what’s happening at the moment...

<p>San Francisco -- San Francisco police arrested 157 members of an anti-war splinter group for blocking traffic on Mission Street and detained about 65 more a few blocks away on Saturday.</p> <p>The splinter group, whose members tend to wear black clothing with black bandannas over their faces, split away from the main peace march in Jefferson Park about 2:20 p.m.</p>

<p>10:19 a.m. -- In a protest aimed at shutting down the Pacific Stock Exchange, hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered in downtown San Francisco this morning, blocking streets and snarling traffic.</p> <p>The demonstrators failed to close the exchange. "We had absolutely no disruptions to trading," said stock exchange spokesman John Werts.</p>

<p>A chicken protest led by the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde turned into a near riot over the weekend when angry diners attacked her for ruining their meals.</p> <p>The rocker joined a dozen animal activists in a protest raid on a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food restaurant in Seattle, Wash.</p>

<p>SOON AFTER Sept.11, 2001, the blue burqa became the symbol for the Taliban's repressive regime in Afghanistan. Americans bemoaned the fate of Afghan women, who were prohibited from leaving home without wearing a garment that covered them from head to toe.</p>

<p>Anti-war activists will hold a news conference Tuesday in San Francisco calling for a shutdown of the city's financial district if war breaks out.</p> <p>Representatives from the group organizing the news conference, Direct Action to Stop the War, will call on Bay Area residents to walk out of school and work if war is declared, and conduct mass civil disobedience in San Francisco.</p>

<p>Some see the cartoon in a brochure aimed at students as insensitive to Latinos.</p> <p>A cartoon of a sombrero-sporting student working at "Taco Town" included in a state financial aid newsletter distributed to nearly a half-million students, has been condemned as offensive and derogatory to Latinos.</p>

<p>When East Bay rapper Paris' new album is released in April, it's bound to create some noise.</p> <p>The cover of "Sonic Jihad" depicts a commercial jetliner headed for the White House, evoking the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.</p>

<p>Wanna know what conservatives really hate?</p> <p>What makes everyone from harmless GOP dittoheads to ultra-right-wing nutjobs full of rage and hiss and homophobia and blind jingoism roll their eyes and throw up their hands and scamper for their Bibles for reassurance that life is still repressed and we're still going to war and Dubya is still smackin' 'round the envurment along with them wimmin and homosekshuls and furriners?</p>

<p>Can you feel the machismo? Can you feel the pulsing manly manhood just throbbing there in your hand, ready to silence a playground full of children or drop a charging elephant at 50 yards or annihilate a few hundred tofu-suckin' liberal jackass pacifist commie tree-huggers, protesting out there in the street? Mmm, phallic.</p>

Ruined Snow Penis Stimulates Debate When a few members of the Harvard crew team decided to build a snowy representation of the male anatomy on Feb. 11, they never imagined it would be so hard to keep it up. The 9-foot snow phallus, constructed in Tercentenary Theater, was torn down just hours after its erection. But its impression still sparked an intense debate, from dining halls to dorm rooms, over the appropriateness of public displays of genitalia. Even The Economist magazine weighed in on the discussion, offering the destruction of the sculpture as evidence of American prudishness on its usually...

<p>San Francisco -- As organizers rest up after Sunday's enormous, peaceful anti-war protest, they face a troublesome issue: how to ensure that their message isn't stained by bottle throwers and window smashers.</p> <p>The diverse coalition behind the peace rally took pains Monday to distance itself from a breakaway demonstration of about 1,000 people who chucked rocks, paint balls and broken bottles at police Sunday.</p>

<p>A group of demonstrators broke away from the huge crowd at San Francisco's Civic Center area at the end of Sunday's anti-war march and clashed later with police on Market Street during a 4-hour confrontation marked by hit-and-run vandalism.</p> <p>Members of the group broke windows at several businesses and on a pair of police cars during their rampage. They spray-painted buildings and other objects with graffiti. They burned trash, climbed onto a cable car, and later tossed bottles and other objects at mounted police who were trying to control them.</p>

<p>San Francisco -- The four co-sponsors of Sunday's anti-war rally in San Francisco are wildly different umbrella groups united for the day by their opposition to war in Iraq -- and their desire to attract the broadest trail of supporters.</p>

Council passes anti-war resolution Boulder reverses earlier decision to avoid Iraq statement By Greg Avery, Camera Staff Writer January 22, 2003 Boulder's City Council on Tuesday formally expressed opposition to a United States-led war with Iraq, reversing its skepticism about such a declaration last fall. Responding to a growing push by hundreds of people around the city — peace activists, students, business owners, religious leaders, elementary school teachers and others — the council voted 7-2 in support of a resolution urging diplomacy instead of war. Boulder joined a growing list of at least 42 cities around the country that have...

A single lawn placard, the only one thus far on my side of North High Street, is plainly visible from my front door. As I leave my home in the morning and make my way back in the afternoon, its message never fails to provoke a sense of fleeting happiness; it simply reads in all upper case and navy blue letters: "NO IRAQ WAR." I notice how the letter "O," akin to the shape of an open mouth, encases a single white star, one reminiscent of the Stars and Stripes. According to the Flag Resolution of June 14, 1777, it...