BootmanLA

I'm sure Covid shut down activity to a trickle in 2020 and into 2021. I think by 2022 most people were back to living mostly normal lives. And these results are consistent with pre-Covid reductions in infections. I'm not one to downplay the role of Big Pharma in pushing its products, but there does seem to be enormous preventative value in PrEP, well-established and well-documented. This, plus treatment advances resulting in U=U, is literally a sea change in the progress of HIV.

Looking at this through the lens of canon law, I would suggest this is the gist of what the Pope is saying: 1. You can't "bless" a gay union in the context of a pseudo-marriage, and the Church must avoid the appearance of endorsing these non-marriage "marriages". If I had to interpret that, I'd say what he means is, a priest can't attend a same-sex wedding ceremony (or anything that, to an outside observer, would look like a wedding) and bless the union. He doesn't seem to want any possibility that someone would interpret the priest's actions as endorsing what the church considers a fake marriage. 2. You CAN bless a particular union, in the sense of recognizing their request of God to help them live better lives. Presumably, since this is supposed to be about two people seeking guidance and not celebrating the union, the lower-key this sort of request, the better. 3. Section (g) basically says (as I read it) says basically not to have blanket policies about such blessings at the diocesan (or other church structural) level, because decisions to bless should be circumstance-specific. So, speaking purely hypothetically, a bishop might endorse blessing of a couple who seek support in one caring for the other through a serious illness, but not the blessing of a couple who simply want to hold themselves out as a couple socially within the Church. Of course, I could be misunderstanding this (though I don't think I am). It's in keeping with what I understand to be the current Pope's views.

In fact, as I recall, John Adams, who served as Vice-President, aligned with the Federalists for his own presidential run while Washington was still in office, while Thomas Jefferson, who was then Secretary of State, aligned with the Democratic Republicans in opposing Adams. So while parties may not have been in place during the two presidential elections won by Washington, they were solidly in place before he left office. And again, while Washington was a non-party man, virtually all of Congress during his term was aligned with one party or the other, certainly so by the end of his second term. The idea that parties weren't part of American politics from the earliest days of the United States as we know it now (that is, under the Constitution, contrasted with under the Articles of Confederation or even the loose alliances of the Revolution) is just silly.

Absolutely. Especially for misogyny against a woman who had a career parallel to her husbands while he held elected office and who dared to take on, as a "First Lady" project, something that related directly to policy. It's true other first ladies have taken up "policy" issues - Betty Ford for breast cancer awareness, for instance - but who's opposed to breast cancer research? Laura Bush was for literacy, Melanoma Trump was against bullying (!). Lady Bird Johnson was for environmentalism, Jackie Kennedy for historical preservation, Pat Nixon for volunteerism - all things everyone could get behind. Clinton had the audacity to support universal health care - something that would inevitably cut off the gravy train for the fat cats who run America's health care "system".

I'm not referring to the constitutional underpinnings, which are only the most rudimentary of frameworks - obviously critical ones, but hardly the basis for our entire electoral system. Washington didn't want parties but they were already a feature of politics even before his presidential terms ended. Parties already had formed for Congressional races as well as state ones, and it was only the universal admiration of Washington - something shared with no president since - that allowed him to stay above the partisan fray. Parties, like it or not, are baked into our system.

Bear in mind that pre, say, 1981, essentially ALL gay porn was bareback porn. Some guys did use condoms IRL to avoid STI's being brought home to an unsuspecting wife, but otherwise, pre-HIV essentially nobody really used them. As for post-HIV bareback porn, except for a few studios that deliberately staked out a transgressive reputation, essentially none had bareback sex until PrEP became available, even once HAART had brought about U=U as a mantra. The kind of video you're talking about - where a performer deliberately tosses away a condom - is more likely from one of those transgressive type studios rather than mainstream ones.

Indeed he does, and this is a possible result from indulging something that probably should have remained a fantasy you thought about on your own. Because yes, "consensual blackmail" is still blackmail, or at least it can easily become blackmail. It's quite possible that nothing bad will ever happen from this. But you have ensured that you can never be certain, no matter what else changes in your life. And you probably find it "hot" that he might one day "want your ass". Chances are he knows you want to be fucked, even if you don't admit it to yourself, and thus he's not about to give you what YOU want. You're much more likely to find him demanding you do things like take naked pics of yourself in a very public setting. Or something equally dangerous, on threat of exposing you to your family. For that matter, there's nothing stopping him one day from just exposing you out of pure meanness, because he decides that HE would get off on ruining your life. Aside from that, depending on what's contained on your DL, you could well be at risk for identity theft - if not from him, from someone who, say, hacks HIS computer. So, this is your bed; you made it, you lie in it. But I will note that sometimes we fantasize about things we would have been much better off leaving in the fantasy realm.

Bear in mind that there are possible health consequences to inserting an object completely into the rectum, not least of which is possibly being unable to remove it without medical assistance. As for disposing of things like wrappers (!) and tissues into a hole, that's just insane. Fantasize all you want about it, but the rectum isn't a trash bin.

I would agree if the Democratic party had a history of coming together behind the eventual nominee and turning out even if one's preferred candidate did not get the nod. That happened in 2020, primarily because so many people understood the threat that Mango Mussolini presented to the constitutional order; and I hope they would again, but voters can be fickle. Look at 2016, when Democratic turnout for Clinton tumbled from Obama's elections, particularly in MI/PA/WI. Had Democratic voters simply turned out for her the way they did for Obama, she would have won all three states and the presidency. It wasn't a case of blue-collar voters switching to vote for Trump; too many of the Democratic votes just stayed home. (And a lot of that was due to decades of lying about Clinton by the hard right, who couldn't stand the thought of a woman being in charge of them.) To a lesser extent that was true in 2000, when "Clinton Fatigue" was cited by a large number of non-voters as a reason to stay home, especially as Gore was seen as an extension of Clinton. And a lot of disaffected leftists have a habit of voting third party (Stein, Nader, etc.) rather than vote for a "compromised" Democrat. Nader was the worst example, of course, because the 97,000 votes he got in Florida almost certainly would have swung at least 2-1 (if not 3-1 or 4-1) for Gore, obliterating that >600 final advantage Shrub held in the state.

Actually, only appropriations legislation must originate in the House. A bill on any other subject may originate in either chamber. In fact, quite a few bills have passed the Senate and are piled up in the House being dutifully ignored by the GOP majority.

And I will add this: I have issues with both parties, too. But my issues with the Democrats are minor, and in any event, the two parties are NOT THE SAME. Not even remotely, and any idiot who says they are probably shouldn't be allowed to wander the streets unsupervised. Yes, both parties are dependent on big money. That's a function of a country with 330 million people, of whom 160 million, give or take 5 million, are registered voters. We have hundreds of media markets in which candidates must campaign. Like it or not, modern campaigning costs money. Those voters are also spread across four major time zones (plus smaller numbers in Alaskan and Hawaiian time zones), which further complicates outreach. And at least in terms of presidential elections, every state has its own rules for qualifying a slate of electors to be on the general election ballot. And that's just for the direct campaign expenditures; the real money is in third-party PAC spending, because generally speaking it's easier to hide who's giving, and there are fewer if any limits on donations from a single entity. Still, it's worth noting that the 2020 elections - including the presidential/vice-presidential race, all 435 members of Congress, 35 Senate seats, 9 governor's races, and hundreds (if not thousands) of state legislative seats - cost roughly $14.4 billion dollars. Americans spend twice that, in a four-year period, just on potato chips. In any event, though: compare the party platforms. Again, if you think the two parties support the same things, you're just not paying any attention AT ALL.

And for what it's worth: I'm all for trying to find common ground with the opposition, sometimes. SOMEtimes. The Mike Johnsons of the world put on a facade of kindness and gentleness and pretend to love all people, even as they're willing to completely fuck you over. Johnson has specifically called for overturning Lawrence v. Texas (a position shared by Clarence Thomas AND Samuel Alito), which would have the effect of immediately criminalizing gay sex in a number of states that have specifically refused to repeal their unconstitutional sodomy laws. Just as the overturning of Roe v. Wade immediately reinstated a bunch of state abortion bans that had been on the books since the 1970's, overturning Lawrence would prompt a sea change in how gays and lesbians are treated under the law. It's true that just a few years ago, a majority of the Court found that "discrimination on the basis of sex" included anti-gay discrimination, at least in terms of employment. But Justice Ginsburg was in that majority, and she's been replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. That means there's possibly four votes already (Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Barrett) to overturn what gay rights ARE recognized. And while Roberts has gone both ways on some of our cases, there's no doubt he would, if presented with a "fresh" question (as opposed to one where there's precedent to consider), strike down any protection we claimed. More importantly, this crowd is getting good at eating away at the edges of decisions until the original is so full of holes it's meaningless. They've already basically given anyone who claims a religious belief against gays (or premarital sex, or birth control, or whatever) a free pass to do what they please regardless of what state law might require. And they've extended that to "closely held corporations" as though a legally fictitious person (which is what a corporation is) somehow has religious rights. Thus far, for instance, public officials have been excused from accommodating same-sex marriages (whether in issuing licenses or performing ceremonies) because there's always been someone else in the office who could issue the license or perform the ceremony. What happens when some county clerk in Bumfuck, Alabama replaces all the staff with bible-thumping mouth-breathers, all of whom insist it's a violation of their religious freedom to be forced to sign off on a same-sex marriage license? The precedent is already set that individuals can't be forced to comply; what happens when there's no one else who WILL comply?

I think that (in the U.S. at least, saying you're "opposed to parties" is like saying you're "opposed to air". Like it or not, our system was designed to support a party-based system, even in cases where offices are officially "non-partisan". For instance, the Nebraska legislature is elected without any partisan information showing on the ballot. But if you don't think people know which ones are sympathetic to the Republican party line and which ones are in line with the Democrats - their campaign rhetoric alone makes it patently clear - then you're hopelessly naive. And despite constant bleating by political analysts that "independents" or "unaffiliated" voters are fast becoming the largest bloc of voters out there, that only refers to *registration*. The vast majority of those voters still vote steadily for one party or the other, election after election, and despite all these "independent" voters, virtually no one gets elected as a true independent to anything of significance. It's true that for some local level offices, truly independent candidates run for and win those local offices - Hi, Jim! - but above the level of, say, county commissioner or whatever the local equivalent is, they just don't happen. Nor, for the most part, do third-party candidates.

As others have mentioned, there could be two things at work here: actual farts (ie the passing of gas produced by your digestive system) and "queefing", which is the expulsion of air that has been driven into your rectum and/or colon during sex. Something to bear in mind is that the entire purpose of the digestive tract is to break down stuff - food, primarily, but it's also going to do its work on other things that end up in there, like semen. (And remember: semen is the fluid, or about 99.9999% of the ejaculate by volume; SPERM are solely the gametes that fertilize eggs in the female mate.) So someone who's getting fucked for an extended period and taking multiple loads may well begin to experience "digestion" (for lack of a better word) of the seminal fluid in his rectum (or up in the lowest reaches of the colon, if any were delivered or seeped that far). And breaking down of ANYTHING in the digestive tract can produce gaseous discharges from the decomposing material.

Oh, feel free to discuss. But I'll note that there seem to be a lot of people who agree with my general premise, that this is kind of juvenile behavior. If that entertains you, by all means, knock yourself out.

and There's nothing wrong with that! If monogamy isn't for you, by all means, avoid it like the plague. I'm in an open relationship myself and monogamy isn't an issue for either of us. But that's just it - neither of us is pretending to be monogamous to the other while cheating on the side. I say this often but I'll say it again: cheating is not "sex with someone other than your partner". Cheating is breaking the rules that you and your partner agree to, implicitly or explicitly, in your relationship. Find a partner who will agree to rules you can both accept (or who has no rules). Or stay single and play the field. Just don't be a cheat. It's low-character.

Unlikely. Unless you have some amazing attribute to set yourself apart from all the thousands of other wannabe rent boys, you'll make an occasional few bucks here and there, and that's about it. And more importantly, this is not "Pretty Woman" where the rich older guy falls for the pretty hooker; chances are that the guys who hire you will want you gone as soon as they ejaculate. Most will be married men who can't manage a side relationship, so they hire a sex worker for the occasional romp, and they're not about to jeopardize their carefully constructed home life by getting involved with a rent boy. If you want an older man because you find older men more attractive, mention that in any online profiles you have, and if you're in a larger city, find out which bars, if any, cater to an older clientele. If you want a sugar daddy, there are sites available for that, too, but again, you'll be competing with a lot of others.

That's like saying "stick with stealing money from your boyfriend's wallet instead of working. Much more satisfying."

Given how pervasive weed has become in this country, with it legalized or all-but-legalized in about half the country, this shouldn't be surprising in the least. There are places where it's very difficult, almost impossible, to avoid being around it.

One reason this may not be familiar is that it's a new name for something we previously knew as "Enterobacter aerogenes". It's regularly found in the human gut, where it causes few problems, but outside the gut, it can be pretty nasty. It's also susceptible to a small group of antibiotics, but otherwise not really affected by most others, so treatment has to be specific. Glad they were able to ID this so they could get an appropriate treatment started.

It's true Florida used to be a swing state, but that was mostly because of a rough balance between a heavily Democratic retiree base in south Florida, particularly Broward and Dade counties, and a much more conservative, quasi-redneck Republican population centered around military bases and support for same in the Panhandle. That Democratic base in south Florida was disproportionately elderly and Jewish (more so than the population as a whole, at least). But those people are slowly dying off, and the big retiree growth has been in places like the Villages - bringing in not northeastern liberals but midwestern conservatives. The Villages has nearly 150,000 residents in its metro area, and it is the fastest growing metropolitan statistical area in the entire country. Most of that population moved there in the last 20 or so years (as recently as the early 1990's, there were fewer than 10,000 residents). And that population is overwhelmingly Republican. That's the kind of change that's tilted Florida into the red-state category, and even a better candidate for statewide office is going to face strong headwinds to get elected. The steps taken by the DeSantis administration to tilt Florida's higher education to the right, in turn, is not only going to push students in that direction, but those more liberal students who might have considered staying in-state (or moving to Florida for college) will also be discouraged from doing so. That's going to affect the youth vote, too. I'd like to think Florida isn't so far gone Republican that it can't change, but I don't see the demographics favoring it at this point.

I think, hntnhole (with much due respect) that this view kind of glides over a lot of racial issues that are present and pervasive in many Latin communities. It may be true that, say, Cuban business owners start out trying to cater to their own communities. But there's frequently a big difference in the way they treat a white customer who happens into their store, or shop, or restaurant, and a black customer. More importantly, though, the wealthy Cuban class that fled the country in the very late 50's and early 60's absolutely considered themselves, if not "white" per se, certainly as close to it as you could get. They absolutely considered themselves socially a cut above (or several cuts above) other Hispanic groups, like Dominicans or Puerto Ricans - not least because those groups were frequently intermarried for generations with the native population. The same is true in South and Central America, where the descendants of the "purer" upper castes of European descent look down on those who came from families mixed with native blood. In other words, many immigrants to this country from Latin countries are already well versed in our racial attitudes because they're used to it back home. What's new, for them, is that the "whitest" South American or Cuban family of immigrants here would still be considered "Hispanic" and lumped in with Mexicans, Guatemalans, and everyone else from south of the US border. And if you don't think that irked the fuck out of Cubans who thought of themselves as essentially white, you never met one of these dispossessed Cuban exiles. I'd venture to say that the reason Cuban immigrants don't get quite as much backlash, though, as other Latin immigrants is that conservatives feel sorry for them. While Cuban refugees come from all social strata there, there's this myth of how everyone who fled Castro was a hard-working well-to-do businessman whose life's work was confiscated by the state - something that certainly happened, but not to nearly as many of the refugees as they make out. It's kind of like how virtually everyone with deep southern US roots thinks of themselves as displaced aristocrats who would have been living a much more leisurely and luxurious life except for that awful invasion by the North that destroyed all their property and turned it over to Yankees. The truth is that very, very few people are descendants of that leisure class, and most are in fact descended from what other generations frankly called poor white trash. (And I'm solidly in that group myself.) Cubans managed to evoke a sympathetic response, particularly among anti-communist conservatives, resulting in much more favorable immigration treatment than any other population in the western hemisphere. None of that, to be clear, is to suggest Cubans don't deserve their hard-working reputation. But then so do the Puerto Ricans who pick up garbage in the streets of big East Coast cities, and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan maids who clean hotel rooms and office bathrooms and the like. They're all hard workers, but we certainly don't treat them all the same.

Again, seems like an awfully complicated game to play, but I guess it takes all kinds. Or at least, there are all kinds.

I get that we all have our kinks and they're hard to explain sometimes, but honestly, this sounds so very much like fifth grade girls trying to find out if Johnny likes them without asking Johnny if he likes them.

Strictly speaking, that might or might not be true. However, there is a proposed "workaround" floating about, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, whereby states that have signed on agree to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote nationwide. It will only take effect when enough states representing a majority of the electoral votes (or 270) sign on. To date, 16 states (plus DC) have passed legislation to implement the Compact: California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. They represent 205 electoral votes, so there's still a ways to go. But more importantly: EVERY one of these states is dominated by Democrats, which belies your statement that "each party only moans about it when lose [sic]". Progressive states are stepping up to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. The truth is that the EC only benefits the right - in this case, the Republican party. We have not had a Democratic president elected by the Electoral College who lost the popular vote. But that happened for both George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. The EC has a solidly pro-GOP bias built into it, and to pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest.