What do you think? http://videosift.com/video/Cry-Cry-Cry-Cold-Missouri-Waters

http://lyrics.wikia.com/James_Keelaghan:Cold_Missouri_Waters

My name is Dodge, but then you know that
'Cause it's written on the chart there at the foot end of the bed
They think I'm blind or I can't read it
I've read it every word, and every word it says is 'death'
So, Confession - is that the reason that you came
Get it off my chest before I check out of the game
Since you mention it, well there's thirteen things I'll name
Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri waters

August 'Forty-Nine, West Montana
The hottest day on record, the forest tinder dry
Lightning strikes in the mountains
I was crew chief at the jump base; I prepared those boys to fly
Into the drop zone, C-47 comes in low
Feel the tap upon your leg that tells you go
See the circle of that fire down below
Fifteen of us dropped above the cold Missouri waters

I gauged the fire - I'd seen bigger
So I ordered them to sidehill and we'd fight it from below
We'd have our backs to that river
We'd have it licked by morning even if we took it slow
But the fire crowned, it jumped the valley just ahead
There was no way down, we headed for the ridge instead
Too big to fight it, we'd have to fight that slope instead
Flames one step behind above the cold Missouri waters

Sky had turned red, the slope was boiling
Two hundred yards to safety, death was fifty yards behind
I don't know why, I just thought it
I struck a match to waist-high grass, running out of time
Tried to tell them, step into this fire I've set
We can't make it; this is the only chance you'll get
But they cursed me, ran for the rocks above instead
I lay face down and prayed above the cold Missouri waters

And when I rose, like the phoenix
In that world reduced to ashes, there were none but two survived
I stayed that night and one day after
Carried bodies to the river, wondering how I'd stayed alive
Thirteen Stations of the Cross to mark to their fall
I've had my say, I'll confess to nothing more
And I'll join them now, those that left me long before
Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri waters
Thirteen crosses high above the cold Missouri shore

Shenandoah, I long to see you
Far away, you rolling river
Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you
Way down the way, across the wide Missouri

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

So many ways to mince up the map in the US to accommodate everyone. Hell, the west coast is already hemp-friendly and lush, freaks can live in Washorefornia.

Assholes, criminals, politicians-types can have Illinois,Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, and they can all live without guns, drugs, or a fucking clue.

Lesseeee, what new regime runs the east coast from Rhode Island to D.C. because no one south of the Carolinas wants anything to do with them northerners...

Folks from the E.U. can handle the idea..You can fit 5-11 tidy little nations within North America. Dial-in your way of life, restrict travel for assholes and douches between countries only(establish universal test for asshole/douche/shitbag, etc).

Tags for this video have been changed from 'preacher, gay, rights, speech, city council' to 'preacher, gay rights, speech, city council, springfield, missouri' - edited by xxovercastxx

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Kansas City, Missouri, George Cascone, Dorothy Cascone, Murder for Hire, Player' to 'Kansas City, Missouri, George Cascone, Dorothy Cascone, Murder, hitman, ex wife' - edited by xxovercastxx

SPOILER

LOL! Thanks I never saw that one before!

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
This one reminded me of you. Not sure why
http://videosift.com/video/Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-Invades-Missouri
-State

This one reminded me of you. Not sure why
http://videosift.com/video/Flying-Spaghetti-Monster-Invades-Missouri-State

When I was in high school, I had the great privilege of attending a lecture by Grace Hopper in Fulton, Missouri, at Westminster College. This would have been about 1986. She gave every one of us a nanosecond and gave a captivating talk.

I remember clearly one of her stories about going to the Pentagon to "The Room" to ask for funding for one of the early computer projects she was working on. She had never been to "The Room" before and she was very scared because she was asking for, I think, about $500,000. She steeled herself, gave the presentation, and looked at all the generals sitting in "The Room". They were silent for a bit. Finally, one spoke up to say, "Granted." As she was leaving, another General pulled her aside to explain to her that they were all somewhat dumbfounded by her amazing presentation and obvious passion for her work, and oh by the way, no one had ever asked them for less than $5,000,000 prior to that point.

Grace Hopper is also the actual person who found the first computer software "bug". A moth had gotten inside Eniac and was electrocuted in the machine, shorting out some of the circuits involved in the programming.

"You know, we're just better than people that don't live in The City." -- That's the most common one from New Yorkers that I know.

Oh, oh. And "Minnesota/Ohio/Wisconsin/Iowa/Kentucky/Indiana/Louisiana/Tennessee/Kansas/Idaho/Missouri? Is that near Chicago?"

>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:
I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...
Here's our disagreement in a nutshell:
You claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of voters. I claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of people. If your aim is a more pure democracy, which is more desirable?
And your last paragraph simply isn't supported. In a direct election, a candidate must appeal to exactly 50.1% of the electorate, and there is no compulsion to distribute that appeal either demographically or geographically. The college at least forces the candidates to broaden their reach. Look at some of the swing states fought over in the past election: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Nevada. There's a lot of diversity represented there, both geographically and demographically. IMO that's the way it should be in a union of states.


Incorrect, I agree with the assertion that the purest form of democracy represents the majority of the people. But how do you resolve an election where the majority refuses to vote? Either you poll again and again and again, or make the vote compulsory (there goes freedom), or just don't have a head of state.

But your point re: majority of the people undermines EC voting as much as it does direct elections. A state doesn't lose EC votes because people abstain, each state get's it's full quota no matter how many people stay at home.

And how does your statement not support my assertion in the second paragraph? Appealing to swing states with an uneven balance of EC votes is not diversifying, it's focusing their efforts (as demonstrated in the video). Candidates wouldn't waste time on safe seats typically. They certainly wouldn't waste time on safe seats (or alternately seats that are locked down by the opposition) that are severely underrepresented in the EC. The college forces candidates to narrow their focus, not broaden it, in the demographic that actually counts. EC votes to be gained. Demographic and geographic broadening is accidental. If those states were all jammed together in one corner of the country and had similar demographics, would you complain that candidates were narrowing their focus, or just admit they are chasing states that will yield the greatest electoral advantage to them?

The "way it should be" in a union of states is that all men (and women) are equal, not that some states get special attention because of a flawed system set up by people who didn't trust the every day person to make the 'right' choice.

edit: rephrased a sentence for clarity.

>> ^Asmo:

I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...

Here's our disagreement in a nutshell:

You claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of voters. I claim the most pure form of democracy represents the majority of people. If your aim is a more pure democracy, which is more desirable?

And your last paragraph simply isn't supported. In a direct election, a candidate must appeal to exactly 50.1% of the electorate, and there is no compulsion to distribute that appeal either demographically or geographically. The college at least forces the candidates to broaden their reach. Look at some of the swing states fought over in the past election: Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Nevada. There's a lot of diversity represented there, both geographically and demographically. IMO that's the way it should be in a union of states.

In the heat of the Missouri “Mormon War” of 1838, Joseph Smith made the following claim - and threat,

“I will be a second Mohammed to this generation…whose motto, in treating for peace, was 'the Alcoran [Koran] or the Sword,' so shall it be eventually with us, 'Joseph Smith or the Sword.’ ”[1]

@spoco2

Let me get this straight... A young kid gets vaccinated, suffers an adverse reaction to it which leads to "autism like" symptoms. And the vaccine did NOT cause autism? The kid was going to get autism anyway? Bullshit. You have no evidence to back up that position.

BTW, they can make mercury-free vaccines. So why do you statist idiots want to mandate everyone get blasted with neurotoxins?

And typical deflecting argument... you can't argue a position without blurring the debate with ad hominem static. What happened to your false analogy? Did you fart again? You must have if you thought HPV vaccines lower cervical cancer rates. And you're ignoring the unintended consequences of trying to vaccinate a relatively common STD that's usually harmless and goes away without treatment. How's that happen you say? Our body has it's own defense system that eliminates the virus. Maybe we should start vaccinating people for colds, you think? Then no one will have colds anymore!

Neil Miller: "Research has shown that when vaccines only target a small number of strains capable of causing disease, less prevalent strains can replace the targeted vaccine strains. These less prevalent strains graduate from minor factors to major influences and may even become more dangerous. Scientists are now concerned that Gardasil -- which only targets two of at least 15 different cancer-causing HPV strains -- might be allowing HPV strains previously considered minor to flourish and become major influences."

More from the article:
By February 2011, more than 20,500 adverse reaction reports pertaining to Gardasil were filed with the U.S. government -- an average of 12 reports per day [VAERS]. Nearly half of all reports required a doctor or emergency room visit, with hundreds of teenage girls and young women needing extended hospitalization.

In the case reports submitted to the FDA, 89 deaths were described due to blood clots, heart disease and other causes. In addition, many of the vaccine recipients -- young women -- were stricken with serious and life-threatening disabilities, including Guillain-Barre syndrome (paralysis), seizures, convulsions, swollen limbs, chest pain, heart irregularities, kidney failure, visual disturbances, arthritis, difficulty breathing, severe rashes, persistent vomiting, miscarriages, menstrual irregularities, reproductive complications, genital warts, vaginal lesions and HPV infection -- the main reason to vaccinate.

According to Dr. Diane Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, 'The rate of serious adverse events [from Gardasil] is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.' [ABC News (August 19, 2009).]

Gardasil is being promoted as 100 percent effective. However, this is a deceptive assessment of its true ability to protect against cervical cancer. Gardasil is effective against just two strains of cancer-causing HPV -- the ones included in the vaccine -- but researchers have identified at least 15 cancer-causing HPV strains!

Gardasil will not prevent infection with HPV types not contained in the vaccine. In fact, during clinical trials of the vaccine, hundreds of women who received Gardasil contracted HPV disease. Furthermore, the drug maker warns women (in its product insert) that 'vaccination does not substitute for routine cervical cancer screening.'
/source
In other words, your propaganda quote from the NCI is horseshit.