Skank is slang and a pejorative term used in English to describe a certain type of female.

The term "skank" differs from that of "slut" in that whereas the latter implies only sexual promiscuity; the former also implies poor taste, personally degrading behaviour and low socioeconomic class.

Also used as slang for lower class female that is dirty or not presenting herself well.

Other skank behaviors can include being obsessed with celebrity lifestyle and emulating it.   more »

“Buddy Jesus” action figures are replacing the once popular GI-Joe in some homes. In the playroom, children make-believe miracles and turn plastic bread into pretend wine.

Gone are the violent games of guns and knives, cowboys and Indians. Jesus even stars in his own video game, a nonviolent action adventure, manufactured by Digital Pleasure.

Christian Rock has become a leader in the music industry, with album sales totaling roughly 43 million in the U.S. last year. Jesus rocks, Jesus rolls, Jesus even raps.

In his song Jesus was Way Cool, King Missile proclaims, “Jesus was way cool / Everybody liked Jesus / Everybody wanted to hang out with him…”   more »

Leftish Democrats dislike Clinton because she still won't admit that her vote in Congress over the Iraq war was a mistake. She's far too canny to walk into that trap.

If she were to admit she was wrong the right would pounce on her with accusations that she was soft on the "war on terror", etc.

That's why American politics will always be right-wing. Bush is the diehard right. Hillary is Republican lite, a decaffeinated conservative.

It's the best you can hope for in what is, essentially, a one-party State.   more »

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective [than a propaganda system imposed in a totalitarian regime].

Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it — or laugh at the notion it even exists.

We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice — and think that, because we have “free” media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.

...the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name.

It isn't just propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda.” It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.   more »

In the West, many right-wing commentators on the Islamic world tend to see the march of political Islam as the triumph of an anti-liberal and irrational 'Islamo-fascism'.

Yet much of the success of the Islamists in countries such as Pakistan comes from the Islamists' ability to portray themselves as champions of social justice, fighting people such as Benazir Bhutto from the Islamic elite that rules most of the Muslim world from Karachi to Beirut, Ramallah and Cairo.

This elite the Islamists successfully depict as rich, corrupt, decadent and Westernised.

Benazir had a reputation for massive corruption. During her government, the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International named Pakistan one of the three most corrupt countries in the world.   more »