Georgia Christians Fear Shortage of Child Hookers

Thanks to their hatred of reading and higer edumkation, these fundies are as predictable as the tides.

I understand Ralph Reed’s motives though. If he’s willing to whore himself out to protect the rights of sweatshop owners in the Marianas then it’s not much of a stretch for him and his gang to rush out to protect pimps from the law, too. Like Jeebus said, blessed thee are the exploiters as they shall enter heaven in a luxury car fueled by the blood of children.

Right, has anyone asked what the diversionary program is? Is it anything like the catholics’ diversionary program for altar boys?

Good to see that the spirit of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is still with us.

Sin must be punished.

I think most of them volunteer

The mind boggles that someone could “think” this. Please die Ms. Deadwyler and do it soon.

Speaking of “scared straight” – and in an attempt to divert attention from the awful fact that we are talking about children under the age of sixteen labeled by Gawja as “volunteer” prostitutes – I caught a SeeEnEn blurb about Ted Haggard’s wife’s book at lunchtime here. Seems the wife is much much prouder of hubby for having a “temporary engagement” with buttsecks whereas she would have been “all out of sorts” had he been entangled with another woman. Denial much, Mrs. Haggard?

Disgusting. There’s a big problem with child trafficking in to ATL. It’s one of the biggest spots in the U.S. From a 2006 Bob Herbert column on child prostitutionsexual exploitation in Atlanta:

Atlanta has become a major hub of commercial sex in the U.S. It’s a full-fledged sex-tourism destination, with thousands of strippers, prostitutes and other sex workers accommodating an endless stream of johns from around the country. Under-age girls (some as young as 10 and 11) are a significant part of that trade. Many of them were already carrying the scars of sexual molestation when they got into prostitution.

@Nabisco: Or she’s not a fan of pegging?

Rightious indignation! Moral condemnation! Caricatured demonization of the those I disagree with! Feeling of disgusted superiority.

its a republican thing.
you wouldnt understand

a new solution:

Will Marry for Health Insurance!!

oscar nominations

happy that District 9 got 4 including best picture.

@Capt Howdy: I can’t speak to District 9, as I haven’t seen it, but expanding the Best Picture field to ten was a huge mistake.

@mellbell:
I disagree. it just allows more people to get recognized for good work.
many people did not get District 9 at all. I have heard it called racist. which is absurd because it is an allegory for racism. is simply uses blacks as the racists which is apparently unacceptable.

@SanFranLefty: There does not seem to be any indication of “trafficking” children into Atlanta for prostitution. The article you link to states clearly that Atlanta raises its own crop of troubled, vulnerable girls who get lured into exploitation. The mechanism is clearly explained in the other articles, broken homes, poverty, molestation, delinquency, and a local social milieu in which it is apparently accepted for grown men to “date” pre-teens. Troubled young girls “run away” from problems at home, or problems with the law, into the arms of pimps. No need for any sort of organized importation of girls raised elsewhere.

Georgia Christians work to help end the exploitation of young women, lobby for passage of measure sheilding victims under 16: http://www.streetgrace.org/

China to Barry – meet with the Dalai Lama and we will call in your debt.

Link

ok
they didnt say exactly that.

@Prommie: trafficking isn’t always international, my dear. While cities like El Ay, Ess Eff, and NYC are international points of entry for trafficking, there is an under the radar regional movement. Maybe trafficking isn’t the right word for it because it’s domestic, but there is movement and moving happening. I could link to 20 other studies and articles on this, Herbert’s is the most handy.

You certainly are in a foul mood today.

@SanFranLefty: This news about some religious group schlepping Haitian orphans across the border — legit, or suspect?

@Dodgerblue:
I think its true but they didnt look like child traffickers to me. probably just misguided do gooders in the wrong place at the wrong time.
if they had really been into child sex traffic they probably would not have been caught. dont you think. the reason security so tight is because that is really happening and they are trying to catch the guilty.
but I could be wrong.

@Dodgerblue: The news is legit, the group is not a known operator of orphanages. Word is that they are a group of churches that wanted to evacuate Haitian children “to a better Christian life.” International adoption is a morally complex issue in the best of times, but this appears to be a church on a self-appointed child-saving mission tearing kids willy-nilly away from their destroyed homes when many still had a parent or relative. And forcing the UN, US military, and what remains of the Haitian government to focus on policing that instead of getting basic sustenance to the people is criminal. Agree with Howdy these weren’t sex traffickers – just horribly misguided.

ADD: Per WSJ: Ms. Silsby: “We have been sent by the Lord to rescue these children, and if it’s in the Lord’s plan we will be successful.”

@SanFranLefty: Of course, the old paradigm was of the midwest and Wisconsin runaways streaming into Times Square to enter into the glamorous world of streetwalking and heroin addiction, but nowadays, with the growing immigrant populations, these immigrants bring their even-more-sexist-than-us ways with them, so yes, there are tons of eastern european and asian prostitutes now that are actually, on an organized basis, being imported into the coastal cities, and from there, they travel to massage parlors throughout the heartland of amurrica, I know, duh. But thats not Atlanta’s problem, Atlanta has a purely home-grown social problem, caused by a complete breakdown of local society.

I’m in a goddam bad mood, and I expect something brilliant from Stinque to brighten my morning, and instead its just this too-easy bashing of a too-obvious target. Umm, child prostitution is bad, mmm-kay, umm, Ralph Reed is a douche, mmm-kay.

Next up, outrage expressed over slavery, torture, and murder.

@SanFranLefty: Oh please God, please, let someone explain how Chief Justice Roberts adopted two Irish children when Irish law prohibits the adoption of Irish children by foreigners, and why did Roberts have to go to Honduras to adopt two Irish children, in other words, what conspiracy was hatched, who fraudulently adopted those children to illegally get them out of Ireland and bring them to Honduras and then give them up for adoption by Roberts? This was “child-laundering,” but of course its taboo to ask just how many fucking laws our chief justice was willing to break, because you are involving the children, and they are innocent.

@Prommie: How’s the back?

@Prommie: It’s totally fishy. Whether there were two stages of adoptions or the Irish birth mothers were moved to Central America to give birth for one adoption, it’s totally bizarre. It has nothing to do with the kids, it’s about subverting laws.

@Mistress Cynica: Meh. Better, I am starting to wonder if I really want the steroid epidural Thursday.

This guy is starting to build up a head of steam, he was much more low key when I discovered him: http://jerseyshore.craigslist.org/for/1582067566.html

Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
( John 7:53-8:11)

How much more compassion would Jesus have for little girls forced into sexual slavery through no fault of their own, by circumstance and the lust of evil men?

Those people are not Christians. And if you know me, you know that that is not a judgment I pass lightly.

@SanFranLefty: @Prommie: Atlanta is a transportation nexus for the southeast, and I don’t mean the airport. With I-20 from SC to TX, I-75 from Canada to FL, and I-85 from VA to AL, we’ve had regional human traffickers stopped here. Admittedly, we do have a homegrown problem, as does any city — especially in the southwestern part of Atlanta. The problem exists throughout the state.

So, while a laudable bill gets hammers thrown at it by Jebus’ loving people, the time spent arguing over this shit is taking up legislative oxygen (the clock ends in April for the session) that should be expended on keeping the transit system on life support instead of killing it, and dealing with the budget mess which will surely mean that poor kids will be out on their own in terms of Medicaid and SCHIP. The Governator should marry Sonny Perdue.

Fix me a drink; I can’t get out of here until 2011 (school is taking longer than I thought).

@mellbell:

Not from a marketing standpoint it isn’t!

/off to see if the Up print creative team is in an uproar trying to get “Academy Award Nominee” POP and Package stickers together.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
which is why its a good thing. other wise the nominees this year would have been Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Up In The Air, Precious and the Hurt Locker.

yawn

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: If only the organized Christian churches had a book with his teachings available to them.

@Dodgerblue:

Or actually read the challenging parts once in a while.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
or just watched the discovery channel

@rptrcub: Sounds like you need a visit from a group of hot Chicago bears…

@rptrcub:

You could always come visit LA…plenty of Silverlake bears out here for a growing cub…

@Prommie:

You are pretty grumpy today, Prommie. It sounds like your back is serious, though…are they taking steps? The plan isn’t just to leave you in pain, is it?

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Thank you for this, ‘catt.

@SanFranLefty:

It is one of my favorite passages, but of course it would be with my checkered past.

Quick question for everybody, just because I love to hear what people think: What, in your opinion, was Jesus writing in the dirt in that story?

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Kilgore was Here?

@SanFranLefty:

Hehehe. I always thought it was the names of the guys she slept with in the crowd.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Funny you should ask; I was just about to volunteer my opinion on that topic. One of my religion profs in college theorized that Jesus may have written “Where’s the man?” knowing full well (as the scribes and Pharisees did too, presumably) that the original Old Testament law called for both parties to be stoned, not just the woman:

If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. Leviticus 20:10

@SanFranLefty: “Who Dat?”

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Xs and Os, diagramming a Hail Mary.

@flippin eck: So the law was “everybody must get stoned?”

@flippin eck:

You’d never hear that in a Church, though… too non-patriarchal. Even liberal Churches wouldn’t bring that up. Gay churches, maybe.

@redmanlaw: Xs and Os, I like this. “OK Peter, you’re out on a deep post pattern. Saul, you cross in the seam under Peter. Judas, you drop back in pass protection — watch my left side.”

There was an even larger demonstration by a christian group in favor of the bill, several hours before the fundie press conference.

@Dodgerblue: “You know I got your back, J.C.”

@redmanlaw: The DaVinci “Last Supper” has 13 players at the table. Maybe he was writing “11 — it’s 11, you dummies.”

TJ/ I won my unemployment hearing. I think I’m going to take mah monies and invest in BarBri and maybe become a real lawyer…

@JNOV: Yay! Shall we call you “Lady Justice” today?

ADD: Not exploitive at all.

on FB: “Matthew Ortiz and Javier Gonzales are attending Pancake Breakfast to help the children of Haiti hosted by Angelica Ruiz*.”

* local Santa Fe hack looking to trade up from school board to County Commission. Rocks the Hispanic Jersey Shore look.

@redmanlaw: I am so relieved and so happy! And the hearing was fun! How odd is that?

@JNOV: Congrats!

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: I always assumed that he was continuing, zen-like, with what he had been doing before the interruption: teaching others. I’d never considered what precisely he might have been teaching, though.

@JNOV:
Huzzah

@JNOV: @JNOV:

Congrats! What is a Bar Bri?

Gotta love those administrative hearings; when I used to project manage for a Construction company I had to represent them in a couple of hearings to deny unemployment insurance (my boss was teh ass). I actually had an administrative (isn’t that what they are called in those proceedings?) judge tell me that it was ok for us to use phone messages of someone being “grossly disruptive” because “in an administrative hearing hearsay evidence can be used at the discretion of the Judge”. I still have no idea what that meant but it made me feel important and lawyerish.

Sucked to be on the wrong side though.

@redmanlaw: I love kicking ass in a hearing. I once found out in cross examination that the city zoning department basically made up a standard preventing my client from parking his tow trucks in what was essentially a mixed residential/commercial use area (Social Security Administration office across the street, KMart next door to that, banks, small businesses and office complex across an empty lot, storage units down the block). I beat the fuck out of them with it. The city attorney later became our lesbanian district attorney who prosecuted the guy who killed my cousin.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: I defend employers in termination actions, but it’s usually people who steal from the employer by padding travel claims, embezzlement, or something like that.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: BarBri is an evil syndicate that employs law professors who teach you how to pass the bar, because you didn’t learn any of that stuff in law school. And they charge you a milliondy dollahs.

@All: Thanks, Guys! MWAH!

@Prommie: Feeling of disgusted superiority.

Trust me, feeling superior to these folks is a very minor accomplishment.

@IanJ:

That’s interesting to me… I’ve often wondered if a mystical (or, for the FSM devotees among you, highly evolved or exemplary) being such as Jesus would meditate, like the Buddha, and how much crossover there might be between my own faith patterns and those of other religions.

Now, the question is: Do I sit for the PA or the CA bar? Where will I be living in a year? And CA has no reciprocity, so Boo! Not to mention, I’d have to stay put for like five years before I could waive in somewhere else anyway. So, again, Boo!

@Prommie:

Pot calling kettle black!

@JNOV: Weather is better here in CA.

@JNOV: @Dodgerblue:

I thought the California Bar was the standard against which all other bar exams were measured? If mean, if you can pass the Cali bar doesn’t it pretty much mean that you can pass any of the others?

@homofascist: @Tommmcatt Say Relax: I think I might take up the ‘catt’s suggestion. LA’s warmer, and I’m used to having to drive in shitty traffic to get anywhere in a sprawling metropolis, though Chicago sounds interesting enough… of course, Mr. Cub has to move with me.

@rptrcub:

Oohg, you will LOVE Silverlake. Take my advice and stay out of WeHo, though.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:

pfft
ah memories

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Son of RML was talking over the weekend about how much he enjoyed Ojai. We always like Santa Monica, too.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Its cooler to be bemusedly superior, than outraged-superior, though.

I am reading a wonderful memoir called “Happy Hour Is For Lightweights,” which is a sort of Tucker Max Goes to Law School and Practices Law, and its sheer genius, the man is my idol, he describes the charade perfectly.

@Dodgerblue: Well, now that you can study on your iPhone, I might take CA…

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Hard bars: CA, NY, and TX. CA is especially hard because it’s three days when most (all?) others are 2 days.

Thing is, 1) will I be able to *find* a job in CA; and 2) Should I just take the PA bar and worry about the CA bar *if* I move back out there. I hope to move back out there, but I’m here for now, so, meh.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: I’d add Hollywood period, unless you never sleep and like the clubs.

@Prommie:

I’ll say.

This will amuse, and is a propos of nothing.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Yes, I also find it amusing, especially because it is so random and unconnected to anything we have previously written.

And here I thought I was paying her to mow my lawn. Man, Georgia is confusing.

@rptrcub: I think traffic in ATL is worse than LA, though I’m sure the El Ay bureau might beg to differ.

@JNOV: Is it too late to take the February bar exam here? Does PA have a bar exam in Feb? Which one is cheaper? The CA bar exam application fees probably total over a grand, which is even more of a racket when you consider the low pass rate and how more than half of the people are going to have to retake it.

Take the Utah bar, maybe? ;-P

@JNOV: Congrats, first off. I’m going to cast my bar-taking vote for CA, or some other place you really want to live. You’ve never seemed to be particularly thrilled to be living in PA, and there’s no need to now that JNOV Jr is grown up and heading to college. However, if you pass the bar there, it will be even harder to make your escape. Inertia will keep you there, if you’re anything like me.

@HugKennyLoggins: Oh, look who it is! <3

@Mistress Cynica: I hear you about inertia. Yeah.

ADD: Oh, and thanks!

@SanFranLefty: I’m looking toward July, and yes, it’s a huge racket. I dunno. I’m thinking CA…

ADD: Oh, and PA’s isn’t bad. I studied a week while being harassed, oh three or four times a day by Abusive ExHusband #2 (I was at the local Starbucks, and he kept coming to “visit.” Check up on me or sabotage me is more like it), and I failed by three measly points. I’d actually have to put in some serious effort for CA. But I’d like to be back in CA, and I’d have to sit for it at some point, right? All I could get out of would be the multistate.

@JNOV: Yeah, I have to let him out of the cage every so often, just to change the papers.

@SanFranLefty:

Take the Utah bar, maybe? ;-P

Cheeky monkey!

@nojo and HKL: How’s Esteban Sabado(?)?

@JNOV: Sabado Domingo’s fine, but I still can’t hear him clearly through the stache.

@nojo: He’s got some serious Village People action going on there. I’d like to find out if it tickles…

HEAR THAT, HKL?

@JNOV: There are no jobs, anywhere, as far as I can tell.

@Dodgerblue: Right. I’d sit in July, but I don’t know when I’d move. Plus I’m thinking about starting my own recruiting company if firms ever start using recruiters again, and I don’t need to be licensed for that. But then I could always hang out a shingle and deal with immigration issues or something along those lines. I’m not certain I’m going to sit, but I’m thinking about it. My family thinks I’m a big fat failure, so, yeah.

@Dodgerblue: Other than the dreaded contract doc review, it’s grim. Job market is shit here – not just the legal world.

@JNOV: Go for it here, if that is going to motivate you to move out here. Once you get the bar card you can get on panel lists for appointments, etc. Hardest part about going to solo according to those I know who have done it, is all the crap like malpractice insurance, setting up client trust accounts, doing the accounting correctly, and general business management. Something law schools do absolutely nothing to teach students. When I read the summary of discipline in the State Bar Journal it seems about 90% of it involves financial/accounting fuck ups by attorneys – either maliciously/intentionally or sloppily/due to drug problems.

@JNOV: Hablas espanol?

Note to Nojo: how do I get the inverted question mark in whatever word processing program we’re using here? I tried the usual Word stuff pero no functiona.

@SanFranLefty: So true. Boffing your clients is OK but commingling trust account money — you lose your ticket.

@Dodgerblue: I usually find it somewhere else (usually Wikipedia), then copy and paste. I only know keyboard combos for curly quotes, dashes and ellipses.

@SanFranLefty: Yeah, I mean, if I’m going to do it, I might as well do it for a state I plan to settle in, right?

@Dodgerblue: Not yet! :-) But there are a lot of cognates with French, ¿si?

ADD: Neener neener! On a mac, it’s shift+option+?

@JNOV: Back in ye olden times, if ya were in the top 20% on the multi-state, PA didn’t even look at your written, so I never studied shit for the PA exam; I took NJ and PA during a grim 3 day period, but I got it all over with, and didn’t study for them neither, which was cool.

I have to say this, its the highest achievement of my life, I did not take a review course, and when I took the multistate, I was done in 30 minutes, each session. I felt bad, didn’t want to demoralize the others when I got up to leave. Got a 165. Its all been downhill since then. Taking tests is the only thing I have ever been good at; life, not so much. And now, I have this portobello, and life is over for me, the young whippersnappers pass me by.

@JNOV: You are just messing with me now, ¿no?

@Prommie: Yeah, I always finish first and freak people out. I have little patience for tests.

@Dodgerblue: ¿Que?

I like Scottsdale a lot. Are there any lawyers in Scottsdale? Heh. Seriously, I do love Scottsdale, and if I were to live in a land-locked state, that’s probably the only place I could stomach.

@Dodgerblue: To geek out, the HTML entity for that is “¿”, without the quotation marks. I get frustrated in Word because I have to insert special characters instead of using the entity codes I know from my years encoding things in XML.

¿

Sweet.

@JNOV:

Congrats JNOV!

@Original Andrew: Thanks, Babe! :-*

@rptrcub:

You should totally go to Hell-LAy. The people there are way friendly. One time I visited the Abbey, and I couldn’t go five minutes without a kind stranger massaging my thighs.

@rptrcub:

P.S. I hear ya ’bout grad school. I just turned in my application & docs yesterday and met with a financial aid counselor today.

I was really hoping the words “term paper” wouldn’t be part of my vocabulary in my thirties, but there it is.

@Original Andrew: Heh.

Man, all the disaffected New Yorkers in up in LA. And they’re even meaner than they were in NYC. Nicer people live on the coast, but go five miles inland, and you’re in yell hell.

@JNOV: Remember that Jamie is/was having a hell of a time with the job search in the 602.

“May as well join the fucking Peace Corps.” – Bluto Blutarsky.

@redmanlaw: Dude. Hire me.

@JNOV:

I’m 100% in favor of going somewhere warm, though we’ve had the most gorgeous winter ever here in Seattle. Today, it’s like sunny and 60 degrees–I’ve got the windows open(!). No snow this year, and it hasn’t rained much. !Perfecto!

@Original Andrew: I think the rain would get me down, I mean, I had the worst time of it in the EssEff Bay Area when it rained for three months straight, but I have always thought about coming up your way…

¡Excellente!

Hey — anyone got one of those $99 iPhones?

@JNOV:

Yeah, some years it srsly rains everyday for like six weeks. That’s when my moving to So. Cal/Mexico fantasies kick up a notch to feverish.

Mr. OA put his foot down, though, so no palm trees and sun-soaked beaches for me. Wonntt waaahhh : (

@Original Andrew: Yeah. I can even deal with the occasional snowpocolypse as long as the sun is shining when I shovel.

@JNOV: I would, but I’m still happy with my original wimpy model. If you don’t need the video, the 3G iPhone looks like a good deal.

@nojo: It has video playback but not a video camera. ¿Is that what you mean?

@JNOV: We’re running lean and mean right now with no extra work for associates. My friend Snarky Indian Girl Lawyer (not Jamie, someone else), a former associate with me, wants to come back to the firm as a partner when her government gig is up but is not sure she can build up the client base to make it.

I’ll have been here 10 years this summer. Still learning stuff all the time.

@redmanlaw: That’s cool — then just adopt me.

@JNOV: Correct. Still cam.

Not-So-Silent Creative Partner lurves his 3GS (the videocam model). But Apple tends to update iPhones each summer, so that $200-ish 3GS may be the new $99 model in a few months. If you can hold out until June, I’d wait to see what happens.

@nojo: I thank you and not-so-silent creative partner. I’mma email you…

@Original Andrew: Sounds nice–of course, the one time I made it to the left coast this winter was back in early December when it was all-time cold temps for yall (30s-ish) and pretty much the exact same as Chicago. Cue the woonntt waaahh again.

The only drawback to unusually nice winters is that they undermine all your cred for putting up with it in other years. There’s always someone who’s new to the area ready to tell you that “it’s not so bad” and wondering what all the fuss is about anyway.