happy birthday Tom Brady!! one of the celebrities on my top 5 list (of people that it would be ok to cheat on your s.o. with)

I just found out it was his birthday. 

He's only 30!

I thought he was older than that for some reason....

the oldest guy I've hooked up with was 30.....

bad, bad memory which I am trying to burn out of my mind, but I am just saying....

proximity

and, since I havent gotten any action in almost 6 months, I'd pretty much do anything that moves right about now. But he's really pretty. Even though he's kind of a man ho with the babys mama drama with the brazilian model or whatever. grrr....

there was a guy who always came into the restaurant last year who looked a lot like him and I told him that. He said I was the first person to say that. Being bored at work, I check out cute customers - what else would I do

well, I didnt tell him that last part. 

Anyway, Tom Brady is hot ,and last night when Jon Stewart (also on my list) interviewed Matt Damon on his show (not on my list, but very close) it was orgasmic

see what I mean....

and i watched scrubs season 1 and drooled over zach braff. he is on the cusp of the list. it depends what mood I am in. 

Apparently congress authorized lots and lots of money to rebuild a bridge across the tigris river. but not our own bridges in our own damn country. just thousands of earmarks and irrelevant shit in our country that gets passed and its irrelevant so people always bitch that congress never does anything

and that bridge across the tigris probably got blown to bits just a while later by an IED or something. shit

I had to drive over a smallish bridge over a smallish river on livernois when i went to the dr this morning. man did I fly over that thing. 

so, um, i'm going to turn off CNN and stop looking at pictures of this thing.

mood: bored music: Van Morrison

I'm postponing my Elizabeth Edwards rant.... however, I will get to that eventually b.c it is much deserved

however, so is my obama rant

which I will do now

am I a bad Democrat if i really really dont like him? am I going to burn in democrat hell?

haha i just got a hilarious vision of what democrat hell would look like. 

He actually called Hillary "Bush-Cheney Lite" .... what a tool.

I'm really not a Hillary fan but I am starting to accept that there is a good chance that she could get the nomination and that my beloved Bill Richardson will not. And I would vote for her over Obama. The only way I'd vote for Obama would be if he ran against Sam Brownback or some other crazyfuck Republican along those lines

He criticizes her for voting for the war originally and says that he opposed it from the start

Hey, Barack... YOU WEREN'T IN CONGRESS WHEN THE WAR STARTED!! YOU'VE BEEN IN THERE FOR 2 YEARS!! SHE IS MORE EXPERIENCED AND A MORE POLISHED POLITICIAN THAN YOU ARE!

I can understand why she voted for it. Well, ok, I cant. I was 16 when the war started and even then I knew it was a bad idea. The whole it will be over in a month thing, Saddam Hussein was tied to 9/11 and has wmds, even as a wee high school soph. I knew was a lot of crap. However, if the Bush white house if shoving misinformation and "you're with us or with the terrorists" rhetoric down the throats of Congress as well as Americans, and Congress deals with pressure as is and is in the public eye, then, yeah, she was probably feeling pressure to vote a certain way. Still, I don't agree with it. But I think it's preposterous that Obama is criticizing her for that because he wasnt even in the Senate at the time. Ok, he's opposing it now, but so is she. And she is trying to make up for it, but the whole trying to annul her original vote thing is really stupid b.c she's trying to vindicate herself. she needs to just admit her mistake, call Obama out on his crap, and move on.

which i think she is doing, as far as Obama. He is an empty vessel into which strategists pour politics of change, fixing the bush administration, new ideas rhetoric. His ideas arent that new; people older than him can have fresh and reform ideas; just because he is young and new to washington doenst mean a damn thing.

He is milking his democratic convention speech and playing the good speaker card all the way to the white house. or at least trying to. It's annoying as shit. and I'm getting really annoyed with people who, when they find out I'm not a huge fan of him, are like, "Why Karista? Because he's black?"

NO! NOT BECAUSE HE IS BLACK!!! I know my friends say it jokingly but ITS NOT BECAUSE HE'S BLACK! ITS BECAUSE HE HAS ZERO EXPERIENCE WITH NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS!!

i feel the same way about giuliani. you're a fucking mayor. that's another rant in and of itself. however, he doesnt totally irk me. and ER is on now so i dont know how much longer I am going to go on. 

Anyway, Obama does spew off lots of idealistic crap. the whole cat fight started over whether or not they were going to meet with "dangerous" world leaders (Iran, Syria, Venezuela; although I learned in DDHR that Iran is NOT that "dangerous" and we freak out much more than is necessary - another rant/tangent neither here nor there).

However, I am somewhat of a Wilsonian Isolationist. Especially after this war, we have our own problems we have to deal with and we definately need to fix our own problems here at home before we go about fixing the worlds problems. I really felt more strongly after DDHR b.c of our in vain efforts to promote democracy abroad and the ineffectiveness of the UN and how its actually a joke. no child left behind sucks, we have poverty that is unacceptable for the wealthiest country in the world, healthcare needs to be fixed.... we cant deal with international issues when our country is in this kind of shape - and this is the kind of democracy we're promoting abroad? with the dumbing down of politics which is another rant as well

and possibly a SIP topic; anti-intellectualism, the MTV generation's ridiculousness when it comes to politics. I get trying to appeal to younger voters, but I hate that it is dumbed down - its ruining the beauty of politics. 

grrz

ok, i cant find the damn remote. and its irking me greatly b.c i cant engage in my typical spaztic flipping of channels at commercials. 

remote, where art thou?

mood: Out of it music: Smokey Robinson

tomorrow (or maybe even sooner because of the time difference) are the elections in Turkey. Because democracy in Turkey was my poli sci research paper topic last quarter, I'm quite engrossed in this and plan on paying lots of attention

besides, what else am I going to do? all of my friends are ditching me for harry potter. hmph. 

however, many a time I have refused to hang out when ER has been on and last year i skipped out on hookah because the closer and saved were on back to back. and I dont have tivo/on demand/a good vcr that tapes shit. so, I guess it is sort of the same thing.

In any case, I got hooked on Turkey and its culture, history, and politics. It's location is obvi cool - istanbul is the only city on 2 cities and the country is on 2 continents. it has lots of strategic importance for the U.S, which is why we want to promote democracy there (what my paper was about). It is proximal to Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, South Central Asia - areas in which we have taken interested in the past few decades.

But what i find most interesting is, although it has a 98% Muslim population, is secularized. they probalby have a greater separation of religion and state than we do, especially with our string of right wing presidents. Exceedingly rare for Islam because it is supposed to govern all aspects of their life. However, in Turkey, it is illegal to publish the Quran in Arabic, which is incredible, because muslims believe that Allah gave his message to Mohammad in Arabic and therefore muslims could only understand his teachings in Arabic. however, in order to separate religion and state, the quran, and calls to prayer, all have to be in Turkish, and also because of their strong nationalist identity, very "we are Turkish" their language, which has a latin alphabet, is used completely. 

women can vote, hold office, wear miniskirts and heels, people can buy booze across the street from mosques; Ataturk abolished the caliphate and put religious institutions and schoosl under state control

Ataturk was essentially the shit. and a genius.

However, now politicians are trying to reclaim traditional muslim values; the foreign minister even claiming that his goal was to "cover all women of the world everywhere" as in cover with clothing. students protested againt him because his wife wore a head scarf.

fortunately, his run for prime minister got blocked by parliament. 

another major issue is getting Turkey full membership in the EU, which I would also like to see happen. the U.S supports this (heh - something i agree with) and it would be nice have a Muslim country inside the "christian club" that is the EU. Sarkozy and Merkel dont want Turkey in the EU. and the EU has actually been pissy; it has issued requirements, Turkey has always made reforms to westernizing while still retaining its kemalist history, but still the EU is being obnoxious. They dont like the strong military, the treatment of the Kurds in the Kurdish region, and the media is sometimes supressed. 

oh no - *gaasp* diversity!! and sarkozy is a tool - he's like "Turkey isnt culturally a part of Europe" but according to one of the sources I used for my paper, legally, it is, and for political and economic purposes, it has been treated and used as a part of europe. so it can be used when its convenient but not actually be part of the EU. 

Fabulous

I find so much of this applicable to myself, and to the U.S. as well, but of course, since we think we are flawless, and omg, what could we ever learn from a muslim country?!?! so I really do think it needs to be a part of a western governing body. It did become part of NATO after WWII (Truman again - fuck yea!!)  because it feared the USSR, as did the U.S. (although Turkey had more reason to; it was actually CLOSE to the USSR while we kind of just blew it out of proportion; at least thats my take on the soviet union and im sticking to it) but I'd like to see Turkey get more respect and prominence that it definately deserves

anyway; why I find it applicable: a woman interviewed yesterday on CNN was like, "others tell us we are not real Muslims but we are, and we can be good muslims too" or something to that extent. And I totally agree with that. Other muslim nations really rail against Turkey because of their more secularist policies and social freedoms, regarding women and booze. 

It's like saying I'm less of a Christian because I dont go to church every sunday. Or because I dont "honor my father and my mother like the commandment says.

Or because I'm not catholic. I've been told by catholics that I'm going to hell because I'm protestant

actually, it's God's judgment who goes to hell and who does not. It is not up to humans, fleshy beings, to determine. that is a sin because it is arrogant and thinking one is endowed with God's powers. 

I almost said it's like saying i'm less of a Christian because I support gay rights and abortion, but that would be different. Way different.

I will pay $1,000 to anyone who can find the words gay, fag, homosexual, abortion, fetus, pro choice, pro life in the Bible

I dont have that much money but guess what Christian whackjobs? THOSE WORDS ARENT IN THERE!!! the words homo/heterosexual didnt enter the english language until about the 18th century. So that would be Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the worst out of the 3 Fred Phelps all being absolutely ridiculous, and then brainwashing people. I wish Falwell were still alive so i could call him out on his shit. I dont even want to be within 100 miles of Fred Phelps; he makes me sick.

However, stuff about women is in the Quran; as it is in the Bible, which prompted Falwell to blame 9/11 on feminists.

I probably have more to say and I'd like to think of something witty with which to close but I cant think of anything right now

so, next time on political blogging with Karista: ripping on Elizabeth Edwards' comments about Hillarly Clinton

and I dont even like Hillarly Clinton

mood: blah