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Topics - kpickle39

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1
Hey y'all. . .  here in Dade City, Florida taking a short lunch break.   Hope all is well in fornits land!   

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / My heart and soul are breaking
« on: May 10, 2011, 03:06:43 PM »
My best friend is in his last days . . . .Albert :(

Dogs In Heaven?

An old man and his dog were walking down this dirt road with fences on both sides, they came to a gate in the fence and looked in, it was nice grassy, woody areas, just what a 'huntin' dog and man would like, but, it had a sign saying 'no trespassing' so they walked on. They came to a beautiful gate with a person in white robes standing there. "Welcome to Heaven" he said. The old man was happy and started in with his dog following him. The gatekeeper stopped him. "Dogs aren't allowed, I'm sorry but he can't come with you."

"What kind of Heaven won't allow dogs? If he can't come in, then I will stay out with him. He's been my faithful companion all his life, I can't desert him now."

"Suit yourself, but I have to warn you, the Devil's on this road and he'll try to sweet talk you into his area, he'll promise you anything, but the dog can't go there either. If you won't leave the dog, you'll spend Eternity on this road."

So the old man and dog went on. They came to a rundown fence with a gap in it, no gate, just a hole. Another old man was inside. "S'cuse me Sir, my dog and I are getting mighty tired, mind if we come in and sit in the shade for awhile?"

"Of course, there's some cold water under that tree over there. Make yourselves comfortable"

"You're sure my dog can come in? The man down the road said dogs weren't allowed anywhere."

"Would you come in if you had to leave the dog?"

"No sir, that's why I didn't go to Heaven, he said the dog couldn't come in.
We'll be spending Eternity on this road, and a glass of cold water and some shade would be mighty fine right about now. But, I won't come in if my buddy here can't come too, and that's final."

The man smiled a big smile and said "Welcome to Heaven."

"You mean this is Heaven? Dogs ARE allowed? How come that fellow down the road said they weren't?"

"That was the Devil and he gets all the people who are willing to give up a life long companion for a comfortable place to stay. They soon find out their mistake, but then it's too late. The dogs come here, the fickle people stay there. GOD wouldn't allow dogs to be banned from Heaven. After all, HE created them to be man's companions in life, why would he separate them in death?"

Author Unknown

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Hey WOOF - check your pm
« on: November 24, 2008, 09:19:14 PM »
thanks buddy - kpickle

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / THANKS!!
« on: July 18, 2008, 04:47:56 PM »
thanks so much for the protest and ya'lls efforts...don't do much for the cause anymore, so it's great to see the effots still continue!

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Meet me in St. Pete; week of 11/14-11/18
« on: November 02, 2005, 12:05:00 PM »
Hey anon - I will be in the Tampa Bay area on business the week of Nov 14 thru 18.  Would love to meet you to discuss your problems or what ever you have w/me.  If you really think I am lier, then meet me and we can discuss your concerns.   I am totally serious. my email is [email protected], but I think you already knew that.  Drop me a line, if you are real.

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Hello VCA survivors - I am attending the Summit later this month.  The conference "track" that I will be following deals with "adolescent treatment" programs.  I am wondering if anyone would like to provide me with their thoughts, memories and or experiences about their time in VCA/ or NW light house.  My email is [email protected]

Thanks -

Mike Sherman, Straight Survivor '78 - '80

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I am visiting fornits just to let y'all know that I sent a movie of Newton at the court house to Wes for all to view. It is kinda shakey in places, but it was fun taking the movie.  Enjoy....I sure did.

That guy looked like and is a cooked out old man.

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Tacitus' Realm / fascist neo-cons (the people that are running our country)
« on: February 06, 2005, 02:38:00 PM »
February 14, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative



Hunger for Dictatorship

War to export democracy may wreck our own.


by Scott McConnell


Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, ?the Sixties? (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials?all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.

Nonetheless, there are foreshadowings well worth noting. The last weeks of 2004 saw several explicit warnings from the antiwar Right about the coming of an American fascism. Paul Craig Roberts in these pages wrote of the ?brownshirting? of American conservatism?a word that might not have surprised had it come from Michael Moore or Michael Lerner. But from a Hoover Institution senior fellow, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and one-time Wall Street Journal editor, it was striking.

Several weeks later, Justin Raimondo, editor of the popular Antiwar.com website, wrote a column headlined, ?Today?s Conservatives are Fascists.? Pointing to the justification of torture by conservative legal theorists, widespread support for a militaristic foreign policy, and a retrospective backing of Japanese internment during World War II, Raimondo raised the prospect of ?fascism with a democratic face.? His fellow libertarian, Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell, wrote a year-end piece called ?The Reality of Red State Fascism,? which claimed that ?the most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.?

I would argue that Rockwell?who makes the most systematic argument of the three?overstates the libertarian component of the 1994 Republican victory, which could just as readily be credited to heartland rejection of the ?60s cultural liberalism that came into office with the Clintons. And it is difficult to imagine any scenario, after 9/11, that would not lead to some expansion of federal power. The United States was suddenly at war, mobilizing to strike at a Taliban government on the other side of the world. The emergence of terrorism as the central security issue had to lead, at the very least, to increased domestic surveillance?of Muslim immigrants especially. War is the health of the state, as the libertarians helpfully remind us, but it doesn?t mean that war leads to fascism.

But Rockwell (and Roberts and Raimondo) is correct in drawing attention to a mood among some conservatives that is at least latently fascist. Rockwell describes a populist Right website that originally rallied for the impeachment of Bill Clinton as ?hate-filled ... advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now.? One of the biggest right-wing talk-radio hosts regularly calls for the mass destruction of Arab cities. Letters that come to this magazine from the pro-war Right leave no doubt that their writers would welcome the jailing of dissidents. And of course it?s not just us. When USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote a column suggesting that American troops be brought home sooner rather than later, he was blown away by letters comparing him to Tokyo Rose and demanding that he be tried as a traitor. That mood, Rockwell notes, dwarfs anything that existed during the Cold War. ?It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth?not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.?

The warnings from these three writers would have been significant even if they had not been complemented by what for me was the most striking straw in the wind. Earlier this month the New York Times published a profile of Fritz Stern, the now retired but still very active professor of history at Columbia University and one of my first and most significant mentors. I met Stern as an undergraduate in the spring of 1974. His lecture course on 20th-century Europe combined intellectual lucidity and passion in a way I had never imagined possible. It led me to graduate school, and if I later became diverted from academia into journalism, it was no fault of his. In grad school, I took his seminars and he sat on my orals and dissertation committee. As was likely the case for many of Stern?s students, I read sections of his books The Politics of Cultural Despair and The Failure of Illiberalism again and again in my early twenties, their phraseology becoming imbedded in my own consciousness.

Stern had emigrated from Germany as a child in 1938 and spent a career exploring how what may have been Europe?s most civilized country could have turned to barbarism. Central to his work was the notion that the readiness to abandon democracy has deep cultural roots in German soil and that many Europeans, not only Germans, yearned for the safeties and certainties of something like fascism well before the emergence of fascist parties. One could not come away from his classes without a sense of the fragility of democratic systems, a deep gratitude for their success in the Anglo-American world, and a wary belief that even here human nature and political circumstance could bring something else to the fore.

He is not a man of the Left. He would have been on the Right side of the spectrum of the Ivy League professoriat?seriously anticommunist, and an open and courageous opponent of university concessions to the ?revolutionary students? of 1968. He might have described himself as a conservative social democrat, of the sort that might plausibly gravitate toward neoconservatism. An essay of his in Commentary in the mid-1970s drew my attention to the magazine for the first time.

But he did not go further in that direction, perhaps understanding something about the neocons that I missed at the time. One afternoon in the early 1980s, during a period when I was reading Commentary regularly and was beginning to write for it, he told me, clearly enjoying the pun, that my views had apparently ?Kristolized.?

It is impossible to overstate my pleasure at being on the same side of the barricades with him today. That side is, of course, that of the antiwar movement; the side of a conservatism (or liberalism) that finds Bush?s policies reckless and absurd and the neoconservatives who inspire and implement them deluded and dangerous. In the past year, I had seen Stern?s letters to the editor in the Times (?Now the word ?freedom? has become a newly invoked justification for the occupation of a country that did not attack us, whose people have not greeted our soldiers as liberators. ? The world knows that all manner of traditional rights associated with freedom are threatened in our own country. ... The essential element of a democratic society?trust?has been weakened, as secrecy, mendacity and intimidation have become the hallmarks of this administration. ... Now ?freedom? is being emptied of meaning and reduced to a slogan. But one doesn?t demean the concept without injuring the substance.?) In the profile of him in the Times, he sounds an alarm of the very phenomenon Roberts, Raimondo, and Rockwell are speaking about openly.

To an audience at the Leo Baeck Institute, on the occasion of receiving a prize from Germany?s foreign minister, Stern noted that Hitler had seen himself as ?the instrument of providence? and fused his ?racial dogma with Germanic Christianity.? This ?pseudo?religious transfiguration of politics ? largely ensured his success.? The Times? Chris Hedges asked Stern about the parallels between Germany then and America now. He spoke of national mood?drawing on a lifetime of scholarship that saw fascism coming from below as much as imposed by elites above. ?There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented... for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness. There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood now, although significant differences.?

This is characteristic Stern?measured and precise?but signals to me that the warning from the libertarians ought not be simply dismissed as rhetorical excess. I don?t think there are yet real fascists in the administration, but there is certainly now a constituency for them ?hungry to bomb foreigners and smash those Americans who might object. And when there are constituencies, leaders may not be far behind. They could be propelled into power by a populace ever more frustrated that the imperialist war it has supported?generally for the most banal of patriotic reasons?cannot possibly end in victory. And so scapegoats are sought, and if we can?t bomb Arabs into submission, or the French, domestic critics of Bush will serve.

Stern points to the religious (and more explicitly Protestant) component in the rise of Nazism?but I don?t think the proto-fascist mood is strongest among the so-called Christian Right. The critical letters this magazine receives from self-identified evangelical Christians are almost always civil in tone; those from Christian Zionists may quote Scripture about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in ways that are maddeningly nonrational and indisputably pre-Enlightenment?but these are not the letters foaming with a hatred for those with the presumption to oppose George W. Bush?s wars for freedom and democracy. The genuinely devout are perhaps less inclined to see the United States as ?God marching on earth.?

Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish between a sudden proliferation of fascist tendencies and an imminent danger. There may be, among some neocons and some more populist right-wingers, unmistakable antidemocratic tendencies. But America hasn?t yet experienced organized street violence against dissenters or a state that is willing?in an unambiguous fashion?to jail its critics. The administration certainly has its far Right ideologues?the Washington Post?s recent profile of Alberto Gonzales, whose memos are literally written for him by Cheney aide David Addington, provides striking evidence. But the Bush administration still seems more embarrassed than proud of its most authoritarian aspects. Gonzales takes some pains to present himself as an opponent of torture; hypocrisy in this realm is perhaps preferable to open contempt for international law and the Bill of Rights.

And yet the very fact that the f-word can be seriously raised in an American context is evidence enough that we have moved into a new period. The invasion of Iraq has put the possibility of the end to American democracy on the table and has empowered groups on the Right that would acquiesce to and in some cases welcome the suppression of core American freedoms. That would be the titanic irony of course, the mother of them all?that a war initiated under the pretense of spreading democracy would lead to its destruction in one of its very birthplaces. But as historians know, history is full of ironies.  


February 14, 2005 Issue

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / straight incorporated, Dec 26 1978
« on: December 21, 2004, 10:58:00 PM »
For me, the month of December is a mixed bag.  Christmas, birthday and the 26th.   December the 26th, 1978 I entered straight st. pete.  God, that means............in a few days it will be 26 years ago since day one.    I have been "in- my-head" recently about life at straight, esp the day to day existance.  A vivid memory tonight is after a Friday night open meeting.  3am, come down rap, full blast and in living color.   Just wanting to go home.  Layers and layers of dried sweat, shirt soaked from the hot night.  No AC for us.  Knowing MI's were still to be done.  Dreading the days in group.  Just wanting to fucking sleep.   Knowing that I wanted so bad to run away.  Knowing that it wasn't possible.  Hating myself for going back every day, day in and day out.   The relentless grind.   Never ending.  The shitty food.   Limited liquid.  Constant fear.   Wanting to sleep.  Physically hurting myself to try and stay awake in group, by crushing my fingers under the seat and still nodding off.   The constant mantra.  Being told I 'm a druggie and worthless.  That I am a horrible person for being so bad to my family.   That my parrents divorce was my fault.   That I was destroying my family.  I was told that and then told to sit down.   Then my oldcomer lit into me about it at the foster home.  And sleeping on a fucking cold terrazo floor, with a fucking sheet.  I actually learned to sleep after a while on the floor.  I remember a fucking kick to the ribs the day after my 18th birthday.  My birthday.  Dec 31, 1978.  18 years old.  Freedom day.  My 5th day in the program.  I asked to leave.   Staff member to Mike - "I will not stop you from leaving, but the kids in the group love you so much they will not let you leave..."  Gang tackle Mike.  Fucking sit on Mike.  God, I gotta stop...................          [ This Message was edited by: kpickle39 on 2004-12-21 20:00 ]

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / New DFAF survey
« on: November 05, 2004, 10:36:00 AM »
Hey DFAF has a new poll out on the website about marijuana.  MJ being a dangerous drug or leading to "gateway" of drug use has absolutely no votes.  Vote away straightling friends.

http://www.dfaf.com

BTW - why do they use com when they say they are a not for profit?   The semblers and all their friends in the drug war areana are dicks.  That includes you Dr. MacDonald, Straight's evil Dr. Mengela (sp)    [ This Message was edited by: kpickle39 on 2004-11-05 07:37 ]

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You say that we are winning in Iraq. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, says, "We're in deep trouble." Gen. John P. Abizaid is asking for more troops. Secretary of State Colin Powell admits the insurgency is getting worse. The C.I.A. is pessimistic. Billions of dollars that were earmarked for reconstruction have been diverted for security. Insurgent attacks have quadrupled. Deaths of coalition troops are up. Significant chunks of Iraq are under enemy control. You have no viable military plan to make sure the January elections proceed peacefully and no political plan to reconcile competing factions. Your argument for re-election is that this is too dangerous a time to change direction. But since the direction is obviously wrong, don't we at least need to change drivers??

How has the Iraq war made us safer, if it transformed Iraq from a place whose military was surrounded and contained, into what you have repeatedly called the "central front" in the war on terror?

? Your exit strategy for Iraq begins with successful elections in January. And yet there are many obstacles to those elections, especially in areas where the insurgents hold power. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it doesn't matter if the people in certain regions are unable to vote. Secretary Powell says elections will not be credible unless all Iraqis take part. Do you agree with Secretary Rumsfeld that partial elections are acceptable, or with Secretary Powell that the elections must be nationwide? ?

You have proclaimed that "freedom is on the march" around the globe, but freedom in Russia is in rapid retreat. During the 2000 campaign, you blasted President Vladimir Putin of Russia for "killing children" in Chechnya. Mr. Putin has now been fighting terrorism for years and failing dismally. What lessons do you draw from Russia's experience when considering our own options for fighting terror?

? Compared with when you took office, are we more safe or less safe on the Korean Peninsula? What concrete progress have you made during the past in preventing North Korea from building nuclear weapons?

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Nice update at Wes's website
« on: September 21, 2004, 05:13:00 PM »
Very interesting.  A good read for all straight survivors.    :rofl:

(wow, these little emotion guys are fun)

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Introducing a straight friend to fornits
« on: September 21, 2004, 05:04:00 PM »
Hey, one of my straight buddies is coming over to hang out and chill.  He doesn't have a computer and has never seen any of the straight websites, although I have kept him advised about what is going on.   He has expressed his interest in looking at some sites, so I figured now is the time.  I am interested in his reaction as he reads some of the subjects and posts on fornits.  Maybe I can get him to post.  I'm sure he is a fixin to freak out!!  :grin:

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Scott Travis
« on: September 21, 2004, 12:19:00 PM »
remember the name, but never saw him after he left straight.

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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / Dave McAdams
« on: July 01, 2004, 07:58:00 AM »
Does any one know where Dave McAdams is nowadays?  He was in the St. Pete program and ended up leaving with George Ross to start KHK.  He is (was) a good guy until he let the brainwashing affect his thinking.

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