Bits
What's better than a senator sleeping with his aide, a president getting a blowjob on the clock, a governor flying to Argentina to be with his not-wife soulmate, and a wide-stance in an airport restroom? (Well, maybe the last one, that's hard to top.) A chairwoman of a state board of education writing online erotica!
Kristin Maguire, an Upstate evangelical and one of South Carolina’s most respected social conservatives, has been one of the governor’s closest education policy advisors for years. She’s also Sanford’s appointment to the S.C. Board of Education, which last year elected her its Chairwoman.
What else is she?
The prolific author of hardcore erotic fiction on the Internet, according to documents provided to the governor’s office earlier this summer and later obtained by FITS.
She's also a creationist and a staunch pro-lifer. This would be a joke if it didn't happen so often.
FITS did their homework on this one:
FITS was able to use conversations in various Internet chat rooms, however, to link at least two “erotic stories” to Maguire’s alleged pen name, “Bridget Keeney.” From there, numerous similarities between “Bridget” and Maguire emerged, including commonalities in age, geographic location, engineering background, hobbies (knitting, for example) and number of children. One comment left in an erotic chat room by “Bridget” even reveals the name of a professor who was at Clemson University’s College of Engineering at the time when Maguire was a student there, while another comment references a specific medical procedure that Maguire underwent several years ago.
Confronted with these numerous identifying markers, Maguire spoke to FITS of difficult times in her life and acknowledged that she had visited certain websites where such material was posted and reviewed. She did not admit to authoring erotic fiction, however.
Maguire posted her stories on Literotica, the largest free erotica on the net, but sadly they've been deleted (probably by Maguire herself). However FITS have obtained at least two of them, and you can read them in all of their steamy glory. (Needless to say, they aren't work safe, so view at your own risk.)
"Continental Cuisine" -- An American tourist in Europe sucking off a German and a Dane on a train:
Marta would be so proud of me if she could see me now. She told me I should come to Europe to loosen up a bit. I don't think I could feel any looser than I do right now, sucking off a guy that I didn't know eight hours ago.
*thumbs up*
"Lauren's Masturbatory Musings" -- A sex-starved wife leaves her workaholic hubby a sex letter, and it apparently does it's job:
He picked up his phone and buzzed his secretary. "Rachel, cancel all my appointments for the rest of the week. An urgent family issue has come up."
Something else came too.
From archived threads on Literotica's forum, there may have been more, and she certainly had a fanbase that missed her:
"Where are Chicklet, Bridget, KillerMuffin and WhisperSecret? Rewards for them."
"I've often wondered that [where Bridget went]. She was so lovely to me."
"Bridget Keeney ain't half bad either. She's wise beyond her years."
"If you add 'I hate second person' I'll vote for that. Although I did read a story in which the main part was a letter to a lover in the second person, that worked quite well. Lauren's Masturbatory Musings by Bridget Keeney"
FITS also found out from former staff members in Sanford's governorship that Maguire's behavior may have extended beyond crappy sex stories on the Internet.
I shouldn't be picking on her though. I've done and read far worse than that stuff I don't care what people do in their spare time, and if this was a result of personal issues she'd rather not discuss, I don't care. But there may be more to it than that. FITS also found out from former staff members in Sanford's governorship that Maguire's behavior included... lap dances?
For example, several sources have related to FITS an incident involving Maguire and [the governor’s chief of staff] Scott English at a Columbia area bar at the end of the 2004 legislative session.
“She was giving him a lap dance,” says a witness at the bar. “There’s no other way to describe it.”
Another former Sanford staffer tells FITS that Maguire once unbuttoned her blouse and hiked up her skirt in front of him to show off her see-thru, light blue underwear. This incident allegedly occurred not at a bar, but inside the governor’s office - at the unoccupied desk of First Lady Jenny Sanford, no less.
Sounds like someone is sexually frustrated... not unlike "Lauren". Hmmm.
Either way, erotica is one thing, lap dances in the frickin' governor's offices are another. That's unbecoming behavior from an elected official. If she's got problems at home, maybe she really needs to write that erotic letter instead of trolling for fresh meat at work, but I don't know her situation. Either way, there's marriage counseling in her future.
She has resigned, but only following this incident, which goes to show that everything in politics is okay until you get caught. Including blowjobs, affairs, and lap dances.
The CDC is considering using male circumcision as a preventative measure against HIV in this country based on successes in Africa:
Recently, studies showed that in African countries hit hard by AIDS, men who were circumcised reduced their infection risk by half. But the clinical trials in Africa focused on heterosexual men who are at risk of getting H.I.V. from infected female partners....
Clinical trials in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda found that heterosexual men who were circumcised were up to 60 percent less likely to become infected with H.I.V. over the course of the trials than those who were not circumcised.
Naturally this doesn't target the high-risk population for HIV in this country -- homosexuals. No data exist for determining that impact, and any kind of preventative measure needs to work across the board.
But Dr. Peter Kilmarx, chief of epidemiology for the division of H.I.V./AIDS prevention at the C.D.C., said that any step that could thwart the spread of H.I.V. must be given serious consideration.
“We have a significant H.I.V. epidemic in this country, and we really need to look carefully at any potential intervention that could be another tool in the toolbox we use to address the epidemic,” Dr. Kilmarx said. “What we’ve heard from our consultants is that there would be a benefit for infants from infant circumcision, and that the benefits outweigh the risks.”
Here's a tip: tell the guys when they become sexually active to use condoms. Those cut your risk of infection by 85% and are cheaper and more versatile, obviously, than circumcision. And it works on the gay and straight.
The topic was discussed at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta last week, and I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall then.
But well-reasoned discussion doesn't stop Rush Limbaugh from proving that he has no comprehension skills at all:
It is President Obama who wants [to] mandate circumcision ... And that means, if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama.
SAVE YOUR PENIS FROM THE BLACK MAN. I wouldn't be surprised if Rush'll say that Obama has used black magic to steal his penis next. If so, I think he has a fetish.
Racist Israel is racist:
The state had tried to compromise with the schools, saying that they only had to allow a few Ethiopian Jewish students in, as a token measure, but the schools refused.
Ethiopian Jews who have immigrated to Israel face multiple forms of discrimination within Israeli society, some of which are inscribed into law.
Token. Yeah, they'd definitely be that.
Funny related story: Roma are said to be "thieves" and "not to be trusted" in Italy's constitution. Fucking hell this Jim Crow-esque shit.
In this case, the state-funded religious schools argued that since private religious schools in Israel are allowed to discriminate against Ethiopians, then they should be allowed to discriminate too. They had asked that the heads of private religious schools be included in their conversations with the Israeli government on the matter.
But the Israeli Education Ministry replied that the schools in question should be held to a different standard than private schools because they are state-funded.
That's how it should work. State-funded means equal opportunity, or no discrimination.
Still, the discrimination among private schools is regrettable, and more and more incident like this and worse are occurring there. Israel has become so incredibly insular that they've become bigoted themselves and posturing the same kind of stupid nonsense thinking that the many killers and marginalizers throughout history of done to them. But if you say that, you're labeled anti-Semitic, and the ADL crawls into your ass and tears at your colon. It's insane, and what happens when politics becomes as blistering as fundamentalist religion. God forbid we criticize you.
Ed Brayton, who I <3, refers me to Hanna Rosin writing on Andrew Sullivan's blog about the fearmongering rhetoric against the healthcare bill. She's found that the same talking points -- socialism, communism, fascism, taking our freedoms away, etc. -- were said of Medicare 50 years ago by -- naturally -- Ronald Reagan:
If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free....
One of the traditional methods of imposing statism, or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.
And Ed says the same were said of the New Deal by Herbert Hoover:
Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 .... These ideas were first suggested by Gerald Swope (of the General Electric Company)... [and] the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true.
Same tactics, different time periods. I'm guessing the evil spectre of communism marched in by evil Soviets will stay with us for as long as this country exist.
Finally, last week was the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of a telescope to peer into the heavens:
As commemorated by the International Year of Astronomy and observed elsewhere on this site, 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the year that astronomer Galileo Galilei began fashioning his own telescopes and turning them to the heavens. Before long, he started to characterize the surface of the moon, discovered a quartet of Jupiter's moons, and began to revolutionize our view of Earth's place in the universe.
Here's to 400 years of astronomy! And do check out the International Year of Astronomy website. They have cool stuff, including the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, to celebrate a little astronomy each day from science lovers like you!