MontBlanc, Replica MontBlanc Watches, Fake MontBlanc

I got married in New York City on Saturday, March 31, 2012 Windows 7 Key, to my partner of 24 years. I thought planning and executing a wedding, not to mention a nontraditional one, would be a major headache, with the added problems of dealing with friends and family. It was the greatest moment of our lives, and the most profound “family values” moment I’ve ever experienced.

All along we wanted to have some sort of show. A memorable wedding in New York last year was a Four Seasons restaurant extravaganza that featured the Naval ROTC Honor Guard, the Gay Men’s Chorus, and Aretha Franklin as the wedding singer. Since Aretha was unavailable, we opted for a simple show with talented friends from the New York theater and cabaret community.

Once we decided on the date, we contacted an event planner, who assured us that an event at a suitable Manhattan venue with liquor, catering, chairs, tables, flowers, lighting, sound, decorations, staff, musicians, and photographer would require the budget of a Wall Street insider trader. I also discovered that many venues engage in creative price gouging for gullible couples hoping to impress friends, family, and business associates. Forget it. We wanted a simple yet classy and entertaining event, not the Oscars. And the father of the bride would not be paying, because there was no bride.

I then got the idea to hold the wedding in a beautiful cabaret space I’d worked in dozens of times. Far from recoiling from hosting such an event in his establishment, the owner offered us a great package, including cocktails Windows XP Key, hors d’oeuvres, waiters, staff, lighting, sound, piano, everything. It was all already there. All we had to do was show up.

We wanted some loot to replace the dilapidated kitchen items we’d had since college, not to mention the bedclothes destroyed by the cats, so we decided to register. Because Macy’s solicited gay couples to register the moment marriage equality passed in New York last June, we went with them. They were very agreeable and treated us like a typical bride and groom from New Jersey. But to or surprise, they had still not changed the “Bride” and “Groom” categories on the registry to include gay couples, so for the register record, I was the bride. My dad laughed that he was suddenly the father of the bride, but he still would not be paying. But to my great joy, he and my mom would be singing. And, just for the record, they are conservative Christians in their ’80s.

We contacted six friends, all professional entertainers, to possibly perform. Every one of them immediately said yes. We also learned that deciding whom to omit from a wedding invite list is a painful ordeal, but because we were limited to around 90 people, we started with family and filled the remaining spots with our closest friends. Everyone who could possibly come said yes, many of them undoubtedly curious as to what an event like this would be. We would have loved to invite at least 75 more, but there would have been nowhere for them to sit.

Weeks before the wedding, gifts began arriving: wine glasses, Cuisinarts, knives Windows XP Key, dishes, china, comforters, sheets, even the Martha Stewart Rotating Spice Carousel. It seemed that the invited guests were taking our marriage as seriously as we were. People came out of the woodwork to offer their best wishes. I started hearing from octogenarian peers of my parents I hadn’t heard from in years, most of them fellow Southern conservative Christians, all sending us their love and congratulations.

The Monday before the wedding, we went to City Hall to get our license. Far from being an Earth-shattering event in history, it was like waiting in line at Whole Foods: “Now… serving… A… 160… at… window… seven.” When we approached window seven, the bored clerk said, in a New York accent that could cut through built-up bacon grease, “OK, I need ya driver’s licenses, a credit cahd, and $35,” with all the gravitas of collecting a traffic ticket. After we got the license, we posed for a picture in front of the same City Hall backdrop where countless couples have posed. The assembled couples, all straight, applauded us. I thought, “So, this is what destroying the institution of marriage feels like.”

The ceremony was a transcendent experience, with far greater impact than we expected. The performers knocked it out of the park, giving a show anyone in the room would have paid to see, and at the end of the show, my parents sang. I knew what to expect, having watched them sing all my life, but the crowd didn’t know what hit them. Most of the room was sobbing. Friends came up to my parents later and said, “That was incredible. My parents would never have done that.”

Then we had the actual ceremony, which was moving, hilarious, and, yes, sacred. My best friend, at whose wedding I was best man 30 years ago, was my best man. And I don’t care what anyone says: even after 24 years together, when you say marriage vows in front of a room full of people, you feel different afterwards. You feel whole. You feel like you have made a commitment before family, friends, and God.

That audience of family and friends included Orthodox Jews, conservative Christians, Indians, New Yorkers both gay and straight, blacks, Arabs, Latinos, and Asians. All that was missing were the Amish. The oldest in the room was 94 and the youngest 17. Everyone in the room felt the same thing: an avalanche of love.

I share all this not because I want to say, “Look at me, I had a big old gay wedding,” but because I had never truly realized how much our family and friends really love and support us, and how much America’s anti-gay marriage zealots live in an alternative reality. They just don’t live in the real world. Unless it’s an Alabama shotgun wedding or a quickie drunken lark in Vegas, a wedding is a serious expression of love and commitment between two people. It isn’t, as thrice-married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich said, a hallmark of the “rise of paganism” and a “fundamental violation of our civilization.”

The fundamentalist Christians just don’t get it. Marriage equality is the very definition of “family values.” It brought our New York family together with our North Carolina family in a way that was not possible before. It solidified an already solid relationship in the eyes of everyone. It was everything a wedding should be. It wasn’t a “gay wedding” — it was a wedding. If you have problems with this, you really need to get out more.

I wish that Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum could have seen it. They would have loved my parents. Maybe they would have given us a toaster.

Jim David’s first comic novel, You’ll Be Swell, is available on Amazon and other online outlets.

Last week, Bethenny and her loving Hoppy headed to Cabo for some Jose Cuervo SkinnyGirl margs and colorful beach sarongs. It was slightly more relaxing than a train ride when the half-naked homeless man doesn’t sit next you, which says a lot for the neurotic duo. With B’s assistants hanging around replica watches, there were no real tragedies — in fact, there were even tears OF JOY when Bethenny opened her birthday gifts. Miracles all around! But never fear, that was just part one of their Mexican vacay. We’re now embarking on the second act, and dear friends, it’s about to get bumpy.

“Can’t Get Enough of You” Bethenny
- Back at the One & Only Palmilla, our Queen is giving us a lesson in “Haggling 101.” Just so we’re all on the same page: Bloomingdales = a big no-no. Beach / Street hustling = without question. Even though she doled out $30 a scarf, she admitted it felt “sarong but so right.”
- Stooping to hilarious new lows in an attempt to mend their broken marriage by going to drum therapy. As in the instrument. “It was between that and the kill your spouse on the pool deck activity,” B cheerfully said. I commend her choice.
- Embracing the music therapy by picking up various shaped maracas and imagining them as every X-rated body part under the sun. I suppose any therapy helps.
- “Ra Ra” has a moment when they’re all leaving a Cabo chapel because she misses her family. Not quite sure how to respond at first, B says, “We are your New York family,” which ultimately comforts “Ra Ra.” The motherly spirit does exist in B, and now we have video proof. Meanwhile, it’s too emotional for Hoppy and he goes dashing back to Julie where he’s probably burying his head into her shoulder, sobbing and begging her not to leave him.
- Asking “Ra Ra” if she would be the mother to Bryn if anything were to ever happen to her or Hoppy, like if they overdosed on SkinnyGirl mix and went at each other with Cookie’s toys.
- Spotting the same beach vendor who she not at all inappropriately named “Hermano” and bargaining the price of several bracelets made from what appears to be bottle caps and aluminum foil. “$300 is my final offer” … and that’s the opposite of how it’s done.
- Applauding Julie for going after what she wants and leaving the sweatshop assistant job for good. God knows she’s put up with enough.

Total: 7

“Run for Your Life” Bethenny
- Standing in a chapel when Hoppy brings up the idea of possibly renewing their vows. B shouts out how preposterous the idea is considering how short a time they’ve been married. This is about the time Hoppy realizes she has no clue when their anniversary is. Annnnd they seal the thought with an empty kiss.
- On the verge of killing an animal with her bare hands and eating it live when Cabo’s culinary festival meal is taking far too long. She loses interest so quickly, so she begins messing with a clearly unstable woman who joined the party late. “Of course I’m Marianne,” B says. A few minutes later replica watches, she can’t hold the lie and comes clean. If this is the kind of role-playing she and Hoppy are doing, things are worse than I thought.
- Mixing drinks under fireworks with the whole gang and toasting to their mini vacation, until Hoppy breaks the news that they’re all being evicted from their apartment in 30 days. B flies up, readjusts her bra, and the gloves are off. “I can’t!”
- Heading on another boat tour. This time, it only lasts 45 minutes (not the 21-hour excursion Dr. A so carefully planned). Problem #1: Not everyone can fit in one boat. Problem #2: Water already looks rough. Panic ensues.
- A touch of seawater wafts through the air and onto B’s flat-ironed hair and that’s enough to get her demanding the sea line ASAP. Meanwhile, in another boat, Hoppy is envisioning the quesadilla in his stomach coming out in mere moments, and Maggie the intern is so seasick she’s just about ready to end her life. Luckily for B’s bank account, she didn’t. Instead, the shy intern makes her way back to the sand just long enough before potentially quitting her job. Run far away, Maggie, and never return.
- At dinner, Hoppy tries to talk to B about how he’s frustrated with his career because he hasn’t found “the one thing” he loves that would make a Monday enjoyable. Instead of letting him vent, B’s back on the storyline of when she wasn’t able to pay her rent. We’ve been hearing this since “RHONY” days, let’s let Hoppy share his sob story now, K?
- Letting her husband know that he’s starting to resent her a little bit — oh and that he’s probably just threatened. Way to highlight the gender roles. If that’s not a surefire way to get the sparks flying again, I truly know nothing at all.
- B sits by herself, pouting, while Hoppy checks out his behind in the One & Only Palmilla bathroom mirror. Once he returns to the “disaster,” the pleasant couple sits in silence, until alcohol brings them together in a much-needed tequila sip. “It’s not money or infidelity, we just can’t stand each other.” Toasts all around!

Total: 8

It was nearly a tie, but Bethenny’s “Run for Your Life” side came out on top this week. Not only did her intern Maggie call it quits after the second boat ride from hell of the season replica watches, but a romantic dinner for the happy couple quickly turned into a competition of who once lived a worse lifestyle. On the bright side, if B and Hoppy end up killing each other, the loving “Ra Ra” has agreed to take on the role of mommy. And money would never be an issue considering she and Bryn would be able to live off selling the thousands of sarongs B purchased from her beach vendor pal, Hermano. The good and bad all rolled together like one big bipolar mess — and I for one cannot wait for more. Till next week!

American Crossroads GPS, the group co-founded by Karl Rove in 2010, has been fueled by massive donations since its inception, according to recently released tax documents.

The group’s tax filings reveal mostly large donations, coming from either wealthy individuals or corporations. Since the group’s inception, 24 donations of over $1 million have accounted for 87 percent of its total fundraising.

Only donations of more than $5,000 are disclosed to the IRS Tools For Tattooing, but among those the average value has nearly equaled $800,000. In its most recent tax documents, dating back to last June Tattoo Grips, GPS’s largest donation amounted to $10 million; the second largest, $4.3 million. The group has taken 12 donations of more than $2 million and two donations of $10 million or more since its founding.

The group has raised at least $76.8 million in total.

Crossroads GPS does not disclose its donors, making it difficult or impossible to know where the money came from. The group released its tax filings to reporters on Tuesday.

Encouraged by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie dreamed up two new outlets for Republican megadonors: the super PAC American Crossroads and the 501(c)4 American Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (GPS). Both take in unlimited corporate donations and spend them on election ads. As a super PAC, American Crossroads discloses its donors to the Federal Election Commission; Crossroads GPS, as a “social-welfare” group under IRS code, keeps its donors secret but is required by the IRS to expend less than half of its effort on direct electoral politics.

To maintain that balance, Crossroads GPS has spent $17.1 million on campaign politics and $27.1 million on “grassroots issue advocacy”–a category that includes issue ads that can mention a candidate, and even express an opinion of that candidate, as long as the IRS does not deem them tantamount to election advertising.

The Campaign Legal Center and other advocates have called for an IRS audit of Crossroads GPS to determine whether a majority of its activity crosses the campaign-politics boundary and violates the requirements for “social welfare” tax-exempt status under section 501(c)4 of the U.S. tax code.

The group has also donated $15.9 million to related tax-exempt, GOP-aligned groups. The largest beneficiaries have been Americans for Tax Reform (which received $4 million), the National Federation of Independent Business ($3.7 million), the Center for Individual Freedom ($2.75 million), and National Right to Life ($2 million).

While Crossroads GPS does not control how that money is spent, and while those groups do engage in political activity, those groups are subject to the same stipulations over campaign-politics and issue-advocacy.

Together, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have spent at least $94.5 million since their creation. The 501(c)4 Crossroads GPS has spent more than twice its super PAC counterpart: Crossroads GPS has spent a total of $64.7 million Iron Tattoo Machines, while American Crossroads has spent $29 million.

This month, Crossroads GPS began running its first anti-Obama ad of 2012, attacking the president for high gas prices.

SHOWS: This Week World News

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney accused Barack Obama of politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden Tattoos Guns Kits, while the U.S. president flew to Afghanistan on the first anniversary of the daring raid.

Although overshadowed by Obama’s unannounced trip, Romney staged some September 11 symbolism of his own, eating pizza with firefighters and former mayor Rudy Giuliani at a Manhattan firehouse that lost 11 firefighters in the 2001 attacks.

The former Massachusetts governor tried for the second day to push back against claims by the Obama camp that he might not have given the order to kill bin Laden if he had been president.

“I think it was very disappointing for the president to make this a political item by suggesting that I wouldn’t have ordered such a raid. Of course I would have. Any American, any thinking American, would have ordered exactly the same thing,” Romney told CBS’ “This Morning.”

Later, he told reporters, “Had I been president of the United States, I would have made the same decision as the president made.”

Around the time Romney spoke, Obama was landing secretly in Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base before visiting Kabul. He was to deliver a televised address to Americans on Tuesday, in remarks to remind voters of his presidential clout.

Obama backers are quick to point to remarks Romney made in his 2008 race for president when then-candidate Obama said he would go after “high-value terrorist targets” within Pakistan with or without the approval of Pakistan’s president.

Romney at the time said he did not agree, and refused on Tuesday to back off those comments.

“It was a very, if you will, fragile and flammable time in Pakistan, but I thought it was a mistake for (Obama), as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, to announce that he would go in,” Romney said in New York.

He acknowledged earlier that Obama “has every right to take credit for commanding that attack” that killed bin Laden.

POLITICAL FIGHT

Both sides are engaging in brutal campaign tactics to try to get a leg up on the other in a race that is already close and figures to be for the next six months until the November 6 election, when voters will decide whether to give Obama a second term or install former businessman Romney.

The Obama campaign opened a new front with a television ad to run in the battleground states of Virginia, Ohio and Iowa.

It accuses Romney, a former private equity executive, of backing policies that would lead to the outsourcing of American jobs overseas.

“As a corporate CEO, he shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China,” the ad’s voiceover says.

In response, the Romney campaign accused Obama of seeking to take attention away from the president’s handling of the U.S. economy, still struggling with 8.2 percent unemployment.

“With the worst job creation record in modern history and the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, President Obama is trying to distract Americans from the real issues with a series of sideshows,” said Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg.

The Obama campaign is seeking to raise doubts about how Romney would deal with the U.S. economy, faced with polls showing Americans believe Romney would handle economic affairs better than the president.

Where Romney lags Obama is on personal likability, a point that his wife, Ann Romney, attempted to address in the CBS interview.

“He’s funny Rotary Tattoo Machines,” she said. “I still look at him as this Tattoo Of Tattoo Machine, this is the boy that I met, in high school, when he was pulling all the jokes, and really just being crazy. Pretty crazy. So there’s a wild and crazy man inside of him … just waiting to come out,” Ann Romney said.

Romney, seeking to bolster ties among conservatives who were suspicious of him throughout a long primary battle, is to meet with his last major conservative challenger, Rick Santorum, on Friday but an endorsement is not expected.

Another rival, former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, is to formally withdraw from the race on Wednesday.

Romney met New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, sources close to both men said, in what may be a bid by the presumptive nominee to seek the popular mayor’s endorsement.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Deborah Charles in Washington, Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jackie Frank)

Afghanistan Osama bin Laden

Jacob Ostreicher’s wife attempting to console her grandson at today’s rally in front of the Bolivian mission. Miriam Ungar, organized a protest on Ostreicher’s behalf on May 3 opposite Bolivia’s United Nations mission in New York. Photo: Shimon Gifter

New York – Supporters say he’s an innocent man caught up in the tentacles of a corrupt Latin American regime.

Authorities in Bolivia, however, allege that he’s a shady businessman with ties to drug dealers and money launderers.

What’s certain is that Jacob Ostreicher, a 53-year-old Chasidic Jew from New York, is in a state of limbo, sitting in a jail in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz waiting to be tried or released on bail.

Advertisement:

Four weeks ago, in a bid to pressure authorities to expedite the handling of his case, Ostreicher began a hunger strike.

“Every human rights violation is being broken in my case,” he told JTA this week in a telephone interview from prison. “I have no alternative to getting my freedom unless I become ill and it becomes a humanitarian issue.”

The hunger strike he launched April 15 follows 10 months of appeals to the U.S. State Department. His wife Cheap Chloe Dresses, Miriam Ungar Cheap DKNY Clothing, organized a protest on Ostreicher’s behalf on May 3 opposite Bolivia’s United Nations mission.

Full story at JTA 

2009 Audi TTS – Click above for high-res image gallery Tattoo Supplies

The Audi TT is a highly entertaining package — good looks, great personality, terrific cabin feel, solid handling and a good price. Yet with the TTS here and the TT-RS on the way (well, not for us Americans, but…), the TT becomes something like The Girl Next Door who you just found out has two hotter siblings. That doesn’t mean you have to stop loving The Girl Next Door… but you’re eyes may have a tendency to wander. Autoblog spent a week with the middle sister who was out to steal our hearts with an upgraded turbocharged engine Tattoo Supplies, brilliant all-wheel drive and a flamboyant paint job. Follow the jump to find out if she kept our attention.

Related GalleryReview: 2009 Audi TTS
Photos Copyright ©2009 Jonathon R. Ramsey / Weblogs, Inc.

Click image for a gallery of the LP550 spy shots Buy White Herve leger

Last week, Inside Line reported that Lamborghini would use the Geneva Motor Show to unveil a facelifted, juiced-up Gallardo that would take a new name: LP550. Now, Brenda Priddy’s spies have caught the updated Lambo covered head-to-toe in black tape. That’s OK, though, because the car’s updated details remain visible Buy DKNY Dresses, and you can now get an idea of what’s in store for Geneva. In front, the two primary intakes retain their shape Buy Hale Bob Dresses, but the front air dam itself is now much deeper and more pronounced, with a pair of new struts hanging down and framing what appears to be a third, central intake below the front bumper. New vents also adorn the leading edges of the front wheel wells. Out back Cheap DKNY Clothes, a new rear fascia incorporates reshaped (thinner) grillework for engine heat dissipation, as well as rehaped openings for the exhausts Replica Emilio Pucci Dresses, which now use double-barreled tips. As Inside Line originally reported Buy Christian Audigier Clothing, the car’s V10 grows to displace 5.2 liters and dishes out 550 horsepower. According to Priddy’s shooter, it’s also very quiet at idle. Don’t worry, though — the photographer also reports that it makes all the right noises under power. We’ll be there when the big reveal happens in Geneva. In the meantime, you can compare the spy pics to shots of the current Gallardo to see the differences.

UPDATE: An Italian mag has published shots of the real thing — scans are in the spy shot gallery. The revised front and rear ends are there for you to see sans tape. The rear grillework is now a single piece that stretches the width of the car. Overall, it looks good.

Related GallerySpy Shots: 2009 Lamborghini LP550
[Source: Brenda Priddy & Co.]

Sen. John McCain

Last week the McCain campaign was roundly criticized, even among some of his Republican allies, for running several misleading ads about Barack Obama. Many voters seemed to agree: A CNN poll showed that four in 10 thought McCain had attacked Obama unfairly.

Yet his aides say it was the best week McCain has had in a while. And their happiness may eventually be justified. It is an accepted piece of campaign conventional wisdom that negative ads work. McCain’s latest barrage will test whether hypocrisy still matters.

Advertisement

McCain’s aides were pleased because they had controlled a few consecutive news cycles for the first time in ages, and they put their opponent on the defensive. They also think they’ve finally found a coherent Cheap Karen Millen Dresses, easy-to-understand way to frame the race: McCain = Country First. Obama = Obama First.

It may be negative Buy BCBG Dresses, and people say they don’t like negative ads—but they listen to them. In the Democratic primaries, exit polls routinely showed that Hillary Clinton won handily among those voters who thought she had attacked Obama unfairly. And if voters will tolerate some negativity, maybe they don’t mind a little hypocrisy.

All candidates say they’re going to tell the truth and then don’t. But McCain has made truth-telling the central theme of his campaigns. His bus is called the Straight Talk Express, and he promises candor at nearly every event. And yet his ads aren’t truthful—they’re not necessarily mean Buy DKNY Clothes, just untrue. McCain has also pledged to run a clean campaign. And suggesting Obama was too media crazed to make time to visit wounded troops on his recent overseas trip, even though he visited woulded soldiers in Iraq, wasn’t clean.

Now is the time to make the sophisticated point that these kinds of distortions are hardly surprising. This is politics, after all. Sure Cheap DKNY Clothing, but there has to be a hypocrisy tripwire somewhere. Someone has to say it: Railing against headwear while wearing a top hat is insincere, if not dishonest.

If there are any qualms about the new strategy in the McCain campaign, they’re hard to find. In a bad political environment, with the press stacked against them, aides appear to be at ease with over-reaching if they believe it counterbalances the forces working against them. They can also take comfort in another fact: Barack Obama didn’t pay a hypocrisy penalty for his attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Pundits have compared McCain’s tactics to Karl Rove’s, but there are more recent parallels in Obama’s record during the Democratic primaries. Obama founded his campaign on the promise of a new high-minded brand of politics. But last fall, Obama supporters were worried that despite his big rallies, Obama wasn’t closing the gap with Clinton. So Obama telegraphed in an interview with the New York Times that he was going to go after Clinton more aggressively. His target? Her veracity. He didn’t make a policy argument. In fact Buy BCBG Dresses, Obama often pointed out that the two were pretty close to agreement on most policy issues. The issue with Clinton was whether voters could trust her. It was the same kind of values-based argument McCain is making about Obama now as he tries to stoke fears about his opponent’s underlying character.

The difference between McCain now and Obama then is that Obama was more subtle, and he escalated his attacks slowly. He ran ads hinting that Clinton was a political opportunist but didn’t say so explicitly. His slogan Replica BCBG Dresses, “Change You Can Believe In,” let voters come to the implied point that Clinton was offering change you can’t believe in. But after Obama’s popular-vote losses in Ohio and Texas, his aides launched a full-out assault on Clinton’s honesty that matched just the tit-for-tat behavior Obama was campaigning against. Democratic voters didn’t penalize Obama. Surely McCain’s aides took notice. And if voters in the general election are as forgiving to McCain as they were to Obama in the Democratic primaries, then maybe McCain aides have a reason to smile.

When did the rat become a metaphor for an informer?

Photograph by iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

New York City police officers called attendees of the Brooklyn’s West Indian Day   Parade “savages” and “animals” in a series of Facebook posts full of complaints about being assigned to the event. Some members of the online group warned others to watch their words, which could get them in trouble with “rats” from Internal Affairs, the New York Times reported on Monday. When did people start calling snitches “rats”?

In the first half of the 19th century. We’ve been denigrating each other for behaving like rats since the 16th century or before DKNY Clothing sale, but the usage of rat to mean informer is more recent. Perhaps the first appearance of the word as a reference to a tattletale comes from Thomas Moore’s 1819 satire The Fudge Family in Paris, in which the father Phil Fudge praises the “peaching Rat … false enough to shirk [his] friends” (to peach here means to snitch). By 1859 John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary would define a rat as “a sneak, an informer Buy Herve leger strapless, a turncoat,” and by the 1950s this meaning of rat was firmly entrenched in pop culture. In one LIFE magazine story from 1958, a gang member named Gus turns to a gang member named Rat and says, “Cause you a rat, is all. All you guys in the Fifth is rats. You ratted on us.”

It’s unclear exactly why people started to use rat in this way, but there are some possible explanations. Rat, as an epithet, has long referred to many different kinds of dishonorable people. Before calling someone a “rat” meant calling them an informant, it signified a drunkard Cheap Karen Millen Dresses, a cheating husband, or a pirate. It could also be used to label a deserter, in a reference to the animals’ legendary tendency to flee collapsing houses and sinking ships. This was especially true in politics: Jeremy Bentham, discussing what he saw as Silas’ defection from the Apostles of Jesus, wrote that “In the language of the modern party Discount Christian Audigier Clothes, Silas was a rat.”

Advertisement

Rat has since taken on even more meanings. Around the time that rat could first be employed in place of tattletale, it was also used by unions, especially in the U.S. printing industry, to describe those who refused to strike with the union. Americans started to “not give a rat’s ass” in the 1950s. In other cultures, rats conjure up similar associations. For example Replica Chanel Dresses, in Spanish, a selfish miser can be called a rata, and to skip school is “hacerse la rata.” However, in some cultures, rats are thought to be more noble animals. In Hinduism, the god Ganesha is commonly accompanied by a rat, and the rats of the Karni Mata temple are considered sacred. Rats are also eaten in restaurants in many parts of Asia.

Of course rats aren’t the only double-crossers in the animal kingdom. Stool pigeon originally referred to a pigeon attached to a stool as a lure, but soon the phrase was used to describe people hired by casinos and other gamblers as decoys (such as to make the odds seem a little sweeter than they were). By the 1840s, the term was interchangeable with police informant, and by the 1920s, it had been shortened to stoolie. In the late 19th century, canary was used to refer to a female vocalist, but it soon became a common underworld term for those who would “sing” to the police. When it comes to moles, spy novelist John le Carré is often credited with inventing the term, but mole was used to refer to undercover agents as early as 1922. Still, le Carré does seem to have made it popular Discount Missoni Dresses, both for the general public and among real-life spies as well. As stated in le Carré’s spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, “a mole is a deep-penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism.”

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus and Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Subtlety and modesty are rare commodities in Vegas this time of year Replica Blancpain Watches, but Hyundai hit all the right spots when customizing their Sonata sedan. The clean styling of the Sonata lends itself well to an understated body kit that looks more OEM in its fit and finish. Black paint couples nicely to the Axis wheels that frame the Brembo big brake kit. The addition of the beefy stoppers is deceiving as the Sonata doesn’t get much in the way of go fast goodies. The stock springs were nixed in favor of a set of Eibach coils and the exhaust was replaced with a custom Fake Oris Watches, dual Studie exhaust.

The clean theme carries into the interior Fake Calvin Klein Watches for sale, with custom suede and leather seats Imitation Tudor Watches, and a steering wheel wrapped in what looks to be alcantara. As for audio, Hyundai elected to replace the stock equipment with units from Infiniti and Kenwood and fitted monitors in the headrests for rear seat passengers.

We’d like to see another trim package for the Sonata above what Hyundai already offers and if this SEMAified ride is any indication Franck Muller Replica Watches, we know that the automaker could do it up right and, ahem Where buy best Replica Technomarine Watches, tastefully.

More pics are available after the jump.