Fatal plate reader chase covered up

As right-wing Texas lawmakers have endorsed spy cameras on the state's highways to read every license plate, a tragedy caused by such a device over a year ago in Britain is only now coming to light in America.

When it comes to command state rule, our British friends still haven't topped the standard set by the Contract With America and the Bush regime. Nonetheless, they're forced to deal with this brand of tyranny to some degree.

In Britain's Northumbria region, an automated license plate reader produced an alert about a Renault being driven by an alleged criminal. Police spotted the car and chased it at speeds of up to 94 MPH through a residential neighborhood - with no siren.

The police car smashed into an innocent 16-year-old pedestrian. The teenager died.

It later turned out that the license plate reader and database were wrong, and the driver of the Renault that was being chased was also innocent. So this disaster was all for nothing.

This tragedy should have received more coverage, but this is the first I've heard of it. It illustrates the dangers of the program Texas legislators support - and of treating automated readers as perfect.

There have been countless instances in America of the wrong cars being ticketed for disobeying traffic lights. Inevitably, this gave some kids the bright idea that they could get their teachers and classmates in trouble by making replicas of their license plates, gluing them over the plates of their own cars, and flying through red lights.

The spy state is the scam that keeps on taking.

(Source: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/27/2791.asp)

Pounds protect against disease

This study has been ignored by every major media outlet except the New York Times. When I read this story, a flag immediately went up.

According to this hypothesis (which is put forth by numerous scientists), body fat stores energy and boosts your immune system. This created an advantage for "overweight" individuals during tuberculosis outbreaks in the 19th century.

I should have known it wasn't just a figment of my imagination that underweight people who lived on low-fat foods reported getting sick more often.

It's all coming together now.

Makers of cold and flu medicines bankrolled the government's redefinition of "obesity" of the late '90s - the definition that is still "official" today. Read between the lines.

In case you don't want to read between the lines, I'll put it in plain English: They bankrolled it because they knew people would get sick more often - and buy their products (which don't even work anyway).

If this isn't abundantly clear, then I'm sorry. I can't help you.

But I can help myself. I have, and I will continue to do so. I don't give one flying fuck what corporate-funded weight guidelines say, and I never did. I was suspicious of it 10 years ago, and I don't trust a word of it now.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/health/research/24fat.html)

Failin' Palin under federal investigation?

It's now widely believed that Sarah Palin resigned her governor's throne because she is under a federal investigation.

According to this story, federal investigators are now probing whether Palin and her husband steered lucrative contracts to a construction firm that built their house while she was Wasilla's mayor, in exchange for political favors.

This follows Palin blaming the big, mean media for her own resignation. (Is she talking about the same media that fawned over her throughout the 2008 campaign?)

Palin's singular dedication to right-wing causes in every office she's held is of an aggravating strain that I'm all too familiar with. She comes from a place that's about the same size and type as that where I grew up, and I remember crazy nuts of this sort getting important positions in local government or public agencies.

In the cases in my area, political clout made all the difference. Not unlike in the crazy world of Failin' Palin.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/6/750379/-Why-She-Suddenly-Quit:-Palin-Under-Federal-Investigation-)

East German nostalgia grows

How much of an authoritarian command state has modern Germany become under its present conservative leadership?

It's gotten so bad that a new poll shows that a majority of folks in eastern Germany believe life was better under the old East German communist system.

You're going to scoff at this story, but it's true. If you don't believe it, blame the poll, not me.

Why is there such a sudden nostalgia for East Germany? I can guess. Maybe it's because of social controls that have defined reunified Germany under the Merkel administration. For instance, the German government recently decided to completely ban all video games it deems "violent."

This followed Germany's total ban on paintball.

As personal conduct is regimented more and more, powerful corporations are allowed to operate with fewer and fewer limits. Even if the first scourge plagued old East Germany, the second did not.

One German said, "Most East German citizens had a nice life." He points out that while East Germany had a secret police, so does reunified Germany - as its broadcasting agency collects information about the public.

Maybe this nostalgia will cease once reunified Germany gets a democratic government. It's hard to claim it has one now, after the video game debacle.

Reunified Germany also cedes much of its autonomy to the European Union, which recently had a succession of several right-leaning presidents itself. Like the Bush regime, the EU has been guided by the policy of "regulation for thee, not for me." As Germany follows this mantra, dissidents call modern Germany a "dictatorship of capital."

Another little tidbit I found a while back: East German students did not wear school uniforms. Public school uniforms remain rare in reunified Germany, but not completely unheard of.

Apologists for the "dictatorship of capital" will defend surrendering personal freedom in the name of the "free market." Not unlike Americans who defended the dictatorship in Singapore in the '90s. But their argument is bogus on its face.

You can reasonably argue that capitalism and communism are just two sides of the same corroded coin. Indeed, about the only major difference between capitalism and communism as most people know it is that capitalism gives corporations the authoritarian role that governments have under communism.

If you're scratching your head that anyone would prefer East Germany over the current situation, maybe it's because the "free market" is not the perfect system that the media portrays it as.

Like I said, if you doubt this story, blame the pollsters - not me. They conducted this poll. I didn't.

(Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,634122,00.html)

The new Tim

The new Tim isn't like the old Tim.

The 2008 Tim was certainly an improvement over the 2003 Tim. And the 2003 Tim was one hell of a lot better than the 1997 Tim.

Now I'm introducing the 2009 Tim. The 2009 Tim features leather seats, rack-and-pinion steering, AC, and passenger's side airbags. Just joking!

Actually, the 2009 Tim will feature more Allowed Cloud violations than ever before (if that's at all possible after last year). And better, more effective tantrums! Kind of like the 1975 Tim, only more principled, and for the greater good of the country.

I realized yesterday that I had to improve on the 2008 Tim, which was already the greatest Tim to date. The overcast, rainy weather we've had lately is sufficient to drive one loopy, unless you come up with a better mechanism to fight back.

So get ready, 'Pail peeps. Because you ain't seen nothing yet!

Big insurance may be watching you in Ohio

Grab your BB guns, folks.

As Chicago officials consider using red-light cameras to nab folks for the victimless crime of driving uninsured, the same program now threatens to come to Ohio.

The program would check each passing car against insurance company databases.

Let me make this abundantly clear: This is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. End of story.

In their hearts, those who want to bring this program to Ohio are acting in bad faith. This is fascism, and the Free Republic thought controllers seem to be the only ones who support it.

Now I understand why that woman shot out the red-light cam with a BB gun. After that, she should have been appointed Chief Justice.

The '1984' mockery of America that's been expanding in recent years is one in which nobody watches the watchers, and we are considered wards of the government.

(Source: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/06/29/red-light-cameras-now-check-for-insurance-too)

How to look ridiculous without even bubbling (Bubble Gum Weekend)

Why not celebrate the Fourth of July with something as patriotic as gum? It's going to rain all day like it does every Fourth of July, so why not?

Gum may be cool, but gum commercials are a whole new world just waiting to be poked fun at. And Trident is known for some of the silliest ads of all.

A perfect example is this 1986 commersh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByQP4s20h0Y

Nobody bubbles in that commersh, yet each and every person in it manages to look totally ridiculous.

They look completely plumb stupid.

The first 2 chewers literally throw the piece of gum in their mouths like a suspect on 'Cops' trying to hide drugs.

The third chewer (the bespectacled gent) looks like he's about to jump out of the screen and attack you. I guess he's going to slime you with Trident or something.

Gum. The energy source of the new millennium.

Wall Street Journal goes bonkers

I think we can now safely say the Wall Street Journal is outside the mainstream of reasoned political thought.

The Journal has long been a standard-bearer of a very conservative editorial stance, but they're no longer merely conservative. Now they're in another galaxy altogether. This reactionary stance might not come out much in the paper's news coverage, but it certainly afflicts the editorial page.

The Journal is owned by Dow Jones, which was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2007. This despite the fact that News Corp. already owned another daily paper in the same city - the far-right New York Post. The Wall Street Journal was conservative before the Murdoch takeover, but now it's plumb nutty.

This may be no more evident than in the paper's unsigned rant Thursday about the Senate election in Minnesota.

The Journal's editorial board is such a bunch of sore losers that they whined, "The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact."

Not winning the vote but having lawyers creative enough to find weird ways to count the vote? That doesn't sound like anyone we know, does it? (Cough.) Bush. (Cough.)

Um, Al Franken won that Minnesota election, geniuses. I didn't think anyone except Norm Coleman himself seriously disputed that. Nonetheless, the Wall Streeters sniff that "Mr. Coleman didn't lose" and that "Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election."

They even compare this to the gubernatorial election in Washington state in 2004. Yes, they insist Dino Rossi really won that - which shows you how hilariously out of touch they are.

The Wall Street Journal is known to have a much more respectable news department than its editorial division. Its journalists are probably doubled on the floor in laughter over the paper's editorial harangue about the Minnesota election.

This must be one of few recent instances in which such a respected major paper has taken such an extreme editorial position.

The Wall Street Journal is also the only news site I know of that requires commenters to use their real names - which these days is a major privacy concern. Of course, if I ever comment on their loopy editorials, I plan on using a phony name.

IE8 = garbage

Whatever you do, make sure you do not download Internet Explorer 8.

The latest version of Exploder is complete, utter garbage.

It can't do things that probably even the first version could do. Like paste text into a field on Blogger.

And IE8 will rearrange your favorites list. All the time you spent arranging you favorites list, down the drain.

The simplest things in the world for a browser to do, it can't do.

You may have no choice but to download IE8 though, because IE7 forced me to. It didn't tell me it was downloading it, and then it installed it without asking. And it's impossible to go back to IE7, because once you download IE8, it skeeps that it can't reinstall IE7 because you have a newer, more "advanced" Exploder installed.

Does anyone know when IE9 comes out?

DeMint's pals shoot out protesters' tires

Following the overthrow of democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelava (pictured here), soldiers who supported the illegal coup against him are now shooting out the bus tires of pro-Zelava demonstrators.

The troops who are shooting out the tires are Jim DeMint's buds, by the way.

Some of the leaders of the pro-Zelava movement have reportedly been arrested.

Kind of reminds me of what went on when Bush seized power, in a way. Or even before he seized power, for that matter - at least under the Nazis who were in charge of things in Kenton County at the time. (What happened at the Devou Park rally is no different from what DeMint's friends are doing.)

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/03/honduras.video)

DeMint supports overthrow of democratic government

After everything I've said about Mitch Daniels, you might find it hard to believe that there's another high-ranking American public official who's as much of a swinging dick as he is.

And that would be Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina).

This week, the democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a right-wing coup. World leaders including President Obama have condemned the coup.

But DeMint may be the first member of Congress to publicly support the overthrow of Zelaya. He called Zelaya a "Chavez-style dictator" - a reference to Hugo Chavez.

There are no "Chavez-style dictators", Jim. Like Zelaya, Chavez was also democratically elected.

So DeMint is saying that if we don't like who wins the election, we should just stage a coup to depose them?

Maybe Jim DeMint is just angry because nobody asked him to participate in the coup.

(Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/07/02/sen-demint-supports-honduran-coup)

Failin' Palin to resign!

Well, this idiot's 15 minutes of ridicule are over.

Unless of course this story means she's launching her presidential campaign. In which case, her 15 minutes have only just begun.

Failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has announced she is resigning as Governor of Alaska later this month.

As her corrupt, scandal-ridden administration winks into the history books, one can only hope she is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. I know you can hardly wait to see her lose 40 states.

(Source: http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=10641495)

PFC is R.I.P. in northwestern Indiana!

Three down, one to go!

This story is almost too good to be true, but here goes it...

Pathway Family Center (which ran the Kids Helping Kids cult) is already closing the doors of its new facility in Porter County, Indiana. This leaves its Indianapolis center as its only remaining outpost (following its closures in Cincinnati and Detroit).

PFC admits that the failure to recruit more teenagers is part of the reason for the closure. What that really means is that people have finally caught on to its ways.

(I hate to use the Times of northwestern Indiana as a source for this article, since they're among the few outlets that considers PFC to be "acclaimed", but it'll have to do.)

The Porter County closure follows an infusion of $200,000 by county government, which was fueled by bipartisan corruption.

This raises other important questions though. What did PFC do with the $200,000 it got from county taxpayers? What did it do with other money it got from private organizations?

I'm convinced that the Indianapolis facility would be out of business as well if not for state taxpayers recently being looted by a state contract to prop it up.

Either way, the Pathway cult is now presumably only one-fourth the size that it was 9 months ago.

A toast to success! Blub...blub!

(Source: http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2009/07/02/updates/breaking_news/doc4a4cf9bd9a299025934073.txt)

Judge ignores jury's conviction of MySpace fraudster

Another judge for the impeachment block.

After a federal jury convicted Lori Drew of Missouri for her MySpace hoax that led to the death of a 13-year-old girl, one expected at least some penalty to result. But now U.S. District Judge George Wu - a Bush appointee - says he plans to throw out the jury's conviction.

Wu is relying on exactly the type of matchbook law and judicial activism that defines Bush's judicial appointees. Wu's volcanic meanness tainted the trial all along and even prevented jurors from hearing facts that were central to the case.

The judge claimed that if Drew is convicted, then so should anyone else who has ever violated MySpace's terms of service. Except he's forgetting one thing: Most people who violate the terms of service didn't kill or harm anyone. Lori Drew's actions did.

Every cyberstalker in the land has got to be rubbing their hands together in excitement now that they know that crime pays.

As is always the case in BushWorld. After 8 years of an evil criminal in the White House, it's only natural that other evil criminals are coddled.

The next step ought to be tough federal and state laws requiring stiff prison terms for cyberharassment. Anyone who's ever been a victim knows this is among the gravest of crimes.

Congress must also impeach this judge immediately for his failure to follow the laws he swore to uphold.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h8VjD1bEqw_oqHiLz379ftjcFh6QD996GUEG0)

American laws don't apply to foreign goods

Globalism means the loss of good jobs and a lack of accountability for faulty products.

It also means that in America, the laws of every country apply - except those of the United States.

While 53% of items recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission last year were made in China, it's become almost impossible to hold the manufacturers accountable.

These defective goods include highchairs whose seats failed, bicycles whose wheel forks snapped, dune buggies whose seat belts broke, and coffee makers that started fires. Also on this list are a toy chest whose lid fell on a toddler and killed him and a soccer goal net that strangled a child. This list even includes dangerous products that had previously been recalled but continue to be sold.

Why is it so difficult for American consumers to hold these manufacturers accountable in court? These companies manage to convince judges that they did no significant business in the states where they're being sued - even if it's the state where their product was sold, purchased, and used.

Judges are so eager to accept this defense that many American lawyers will no longer take cases against Chinese-made goods. And when plaintiffs win, they find it's almost impossible to collect because the Chinese government won't cooperate in enforcing the judgment.

Luckily, the Senate is now trying to make this outrageous defense harder and require foreign companies to retain American agents who can be subject to legal action.

But what we really need to do in addition to this is pass laws to make foreign-made products comply with American standards.

(Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/70986.html)

Birmingham has 2 Limbaugh affiliates

I'm sure Birmingham, Alabama, isn't the only market plagued by such a waste of wattage, but it has to be one of the larger ones.

Clear Channel has more than its fair share of stations in Birmingham (at least 5), and now it's using 2 of them to simulcast the exact same rightist talk-shit programming - even though the stations have virtually the same coverage area.

In doing so, Clear Channel kills off a rock format on the FM side. Not like most of their rock stations are any damn good either, but that's not the point.

Because of this change, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck now have 2 stations covering the same area.

Why is an AM/FM simulcast even necessary in 2009, when almost all radios now receive both AM and FM? Furthermore, the FCC ruled at least 30 years ago that AM/FM combos in large cities (such as Birmingham) were required to carry separate programming.

Who at the FCC can folks in Birmingham complain to about this abuse of their public airwaves? Will they have to wait until the stations' licenses come up for renewal and the comment period begins?

Virginia election: Republican versus Republican

The Democrats just need to merge with the Republicans already and get it over with. They've become a sham.

In Virginia, the upcoming gubernatorial election is a contest between Republican Bob McDonnell and "Democrat" Creigh Deeds.

The quotation marks are there for a reason. Deeds has announced his support for Virginia's unconstitutional work-for-less law that has long plagued the state.

In other words, his position is identical to that of McDonnell!

Everyone calls this a competitive election, but when the candidates have identical policies, it's effectively a Republican primary rather than a real general election. In fact, it's worse. In most states where one party was dominant in recent decades, even the primary usually featured candidates who differed in some of their views.

You'd think there'd be a third candidate, to win support from real Democrats and populists, but the Wikipedia article about the election lists none.

Is it too late for the Democrats to remove Deeds from the ballot and run a Democrat instead?

As it stands now, Virginia is not a democracy. They don't have a real election.

(Source: http://www.wtkr.com/news/dp-va--virginiagovernor-0702jul02,0,2253628.story)

Crime pays for county officials

If you're an elected county official in Kentucky, crime pays.

To me, this isn't news. Campbell County has had some of the most corrupt officials (usually Republicans) in the state, so this story elicits a yawn among locals.

But now it's been revealed that county officials in Kentucky who break the law get all their legal bills paid for by an insurance policy funded by a lobbying group for the counties.

All for free. Our officials don't have to pay a trime.

For example, this policy covered over $50,000 in legal fees racked up by one county executive who was accused of theft and wasting public money.

The bigger waste of public money though is the fact that the lobbying group that pays for the insurance is funded by the counties, which pay for it with taxpayer dollars.

So not only are officials getting free legal help. They receive it at our expense!

Who says the culture of corruption is just our imagination?

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090701/NEWS0103/907020330)

BTPers go on strike!

"WAAAAAH!!!!! WHY WON'T ANYBODY LISTEN TO US?!?!?!?!?!"

Every time I read about the national Tea Party movement lately, I get the impression that they're beating their heads on the floor because people stopped caring what they think.

And that makes them act even funnier.

Now the LOSEianne crowd is going on strike in an effort to get their way!

On Thursday, July 30, the Tea Party terrorists are planning a nationwide labor stoppage, during which they're going to "call in conservative" (in their words) and skip work. They're also going to launch a day-long boycott of all retailers, restaurants, and other businesses.

Wait a minute here! Doesn't the Taft-Hartley Act (which they support) prohibit political strikes?

It does when our side does it, so why are they above the law?

Because this is all just shit and mirrors.

For most of the diehards in this movement, participating in Tea Party activities is their job. They get paid for it - and they make good money. The movement is bankrolled by corporate interests and right-wing think tanks. So if they take part in this strike, they're actually working!

Honestly, if they had real jobs like you do, don't you think they'd risk being fired if they skipped a day of work all because the election didn't go their way?

They might not be violating Taft-Hartley, but they're sure as hell violating RICO with their boycott. One BTPer boasted, "If this means businesses lose billions of dollars on that day, fine. If this means that travel will be disrupted, good. If this means communication systems are crippled, so be it."

So they're going to put people out of work just because the election didn't go their way. Because elections are so overrated and all (according to them).

If the BTPers weren't such crybabies, people might actually listen to them. But then they'd have nothing left, because their whole movement is built on throwing a tantrum over the election results.

Duke to increase gas rates

When you see a headline that says Kentucky will pay more for gas or electricity, you can bet that Kentucky will, well, pay more for gas or electricity.

This is the state where adults of any age aren't allowed to buy beer in almost half the counties. You're no longer even allowed to buy most fireworks even just before the Fourth of July. But Allowed Clouds end where corporations begin. Utility companies win a rate increase just for the asking.

Duke Energy (the energy monopoly that covers northern Kentucky) decreed yesterday that they have filed to increase natural gas rates - which will cost residential customers a staggering 18% more.

That's nice, considering the minimum wage just went up by - wait, it didn't.

Duke filed this rate hike request with Kentucky regulators, and news accounts act as if regulators have already approved it. That may be fitting, as Kentucky's so-called regulators rubber-stamp every rate hike utility companies ask for.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/Ky-Residents-To-Pay-More-For-Natural-Gas/g6RW_bRl_kKgPRXj2rr9fQ.cspx)

TV coverage of Monday's protest!

At least the media in northern Indiana is more on the ball than in Cincinnati.

This clip is from a South Bend TV station covering Monday's protest against Hephzibah House:



Like I said, I had been invited to that protest to show support for survivors of that facility, and for new legislation to regulate these centers. I may be visible in the background of one of the interviews, but it's hard for me to tell, because my monitor is darker than most.

Then again, me getting my face on TV isn't really what matters. The message of the rally is what matters.

Court lets gas company drill in state park

This is yet another case in which a court puts the law aside and decides to make up policy as it goes along.

Not long ago, Cabot Oil & Gas wanted to build gas wells in Chief Logan State Park in West Virginia. But West Virginia regulators quite rightly cited a state law that prohibits all commercial mineral exploration in state parks - and denied Cabot's application.

The law is sound. More importantly, however, it is the law. Can a court just say that a law that was legally enacted doesn't apply?

I guess it thinks it can.

A Logan County judge has now ruled that regulators have to grant Cabot the permits to build the wells in the state park. He said denying the permits would deprive Cabot of its "private property rights."

Problem is, it's not private property. It's a state park. You don't have private property rights on public property. Plus, the law is very clear about barring mineral exploration in state parks.

Conservatives praise the judge's ruling as a win for individual rights. So Cabot Oil & Gas is an individual now? Even if it was an individual, it still wouldn't have private property rights on public land - especially if they tried to do something that the law specifically prohibits.

Chalk up another tally for judicial activism.

WOWO woes

If you've been reading this blog, you probably don't need to be warned of the sharp practices that pervade the radio stations you once knew.

Countless heritage stations have self-destructed since the 1996 congressional bailout for corporate radio and rightist hate talk. But it's only fair to pick on WOWO in Fort Wayne in particular, because I caught WOWO red-handed on Sunday.

I'd already seen much criticism online of WOWO because of its spectacular downfall. WOWO, like other AM giants, was once a respected full-service station that would announce local emergencies as they happened. Folks today who weren't even in WOWO's primary age group before 1996 have positive recollections of the service aspect of durable AM's like WOWO.

When I was on my trip this week, however, I got a taste of today's WOWO - which is every bit as sorryassed as critics claim.

We got caught in a jam on Interstate 69 and sat in traffic for a half-hour. We thought WOWO would fill us in on it and perhaps briefly advise us on a detour - as stations have been known to do.

We thought we'd at least be apprised of what caused the tie-up. Was it a fatal accident? Was it construction?

But nope. Instead, WOWO was airing Rush Limbaugh. For a half-hour, all we heard was El Rushbo complaining about the same things he's been ranting about for the past 15 years.

Mind you, this was on a Sunday. Isn't Limbaugh a weekday program? The drug-addled has-been does work a long, grueling 15-hour week, you know - so I'm sure he gets Sundays off for all his relentless toil.

In WOWO World, I guess 5 days of Limbaugh each week is no longer enough, so now they have to rerun some of his diatribes on Sundays as well.

If WOWO thought they could get away with it, they'd air nothing but the audio of Rush Limbaugh pooping 24/7. If WOWO was a TV station, it would show nothing but a still photo of the washed-up radio talk show host hovering over the toilet with a column of shit dangling out his ass.

According to the all-powerful and heroic Wikipedia, WOWO's weekday schedule consists of Rush, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage. Weekends are full of Dr. Laura and a Cincinnati-based conservative called Mike McConnell.

What a sad decline for a powerful station that many folks for miles around say was once of the most influential stations in the region.

Mr. Hooper memories ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

"Hooper! The name's Hooper, Big Bird! Hooper!"

You young people today never believe me when I say there used to be an old dude on 'Sesame Street' named Mr. Hooper, who was played by the late Will Lee.

He was a storekeeper whose name was always being mispronounced by Big Bird, who called him Mr. Looper or Mr. Pooper.

Yes, Mr. Hooper was an actual character on the show.

When the actor died in 1982, his character also died. But as late as 1997, he was still being recalled fondly on the show:



See? Now you know ol' Hoops wasn't just a figment of my imagination.

Big Bird's tribute to Mr. Hooper is incorrect on one count though: Mr. Hooper did get angry once. It was because he planned on grinding up Bert to make a banana slurry to throw at shoplifters, and he could never quite catch up with him.

Just joking!

Amendment would allow mandatory school prayer

The Republican Right is so antithetical to the interests of the people that it thinks it can trot out nonsense like this to win back support.

Well, it won't work.

Right-wing Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Missouri) may be best known as the idiot who sent a constituent a letter that concluded, "i think you're an asshole." Now she's proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would in effect make prayer in public schools mandatory.

This amendment would read in part: "Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions."

I'm not concerned with the part about individual prayer - only the part about group prayer. Although the amendment also says states can't require prayer, some of today's matchbook jurists seem to view public schools as not being an arm of the states. That's how we've managed to end up with bizarre rulings lately allowing school policies that 30 years ago would have been overturned.

If this amendment passes, it would be the first time that anything in the Bill of Rights was ever gutted by a later amendment.

If the Constitution is amended, it should be to make the Bill of Rights an entrenched clause that cannot be repealed with new amendments. It's a sad day indeed when public officials seriously consider gutting rights that have not only been constitutionally established for over 200 years but had already existed in nature.

Right-wing suburbs continue War on Fourth of July

In America's outposts of Bushism, there has long been a War on the Fourth of July.

It's a war on you, a war on me, and a war on everything America is supposed to stand for. And each year around this time, this war seems to grow just a little bit more from the previous year.

In 2 right-wing suburbs of Chicago - Mundelein and Vernon Hills - authorities are threatening to throw folks in jail if they even use or possess any fireworks this July 4.

I'm talking about any fireworks at all - not just the artillery shells we've been known to set off at our Independence Day gatherings.

Indeed, Mundelein arrested 3 people last year just for possessing or using small fireworks items.

Frankly, that's fascist.

This prohibition policy has not made the public any safer. In fact, the rate of fireworks accidents has increased as the laws have clamped down harder. These laws are like blue laws. They exist only to keep people from having a good time.

Maybe the town officials are just mad because some residents know how to put on better fireworks displays than the town-sponsored displays.

Don't let anyone try to convince you there's no War on the Fourth. Science and the Constitution are on our side in this war. It's a shame a small number of extremists try to control our behavior, but I have no intent on being hamstrung by these blue laws.

(Source: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1644828,5_1_WA30_SPARKS_S1-090630.article)

GOP leader sentenced over child porn

Thomas Adams was the GOP mayor of Green Oaks, Illinois. He also headed the Lake County Republican Central Committee.

In 2006, Adams, then 67, was charged with numerous child porn offenses. Prosecutors believed he used phony names to send child porn photos and videos online.

Republicans continued to praise Adams despite his actions.

Now that Adams has been convicted on 16 counts of possessing child porn, he's been sentenced to 2½ years of probation, 30 days of periodic imprisonment, 200 hours of community service, and a $10,000 fine. More serious charges of disseminating child porn were dropped because of a plea bargain. He must also register as a sex offender.

A state investigator said that in an online conversation, Adams discussed the possibility of sex with an undercover agent's teenage sons.

Another sick character in the GOP ranks.

(Source: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1645023,5_1_WA30_ADAMS_S1-090630.article)

Pigpen concedes

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled against Norm Coleman's babyish delay of the election outcome from 8 months ago, I guess Coleman has finally realized he has no choice but to tuck his tail between his ass and concede.

It's about damn time!

The Minnesota Supreme Court is hardly a liberal bunch (as they seem to be somewhere to the right of the U.S. Supreme Court much of time), but nonetheless they were at a loss to let Pigpen have his way.

This could have all been avoided if the Senate had seated Al Franken when they were supposed to. But with Harry Reid being such a pushover, seating someone who was known to have won the election was too much to ask, I guess.

Legislators try to pull states out of health care reform

Remember when Tommy Thompson tried to make Wisconsin its own country? The incompetent Republican governor of the '90s decreed that poor families in Wisconsin would no longer be allowed to get federal welfare.

Thompson's legacy of trying to make constituents poor and barefoot lives on in the upside-down world of the rightist brain trust.

Right-wing lawmakers in several states are now mulling legislation to pull their states out of the Obama administration's health care reform - even though such reforms haven't even passed yet.

Under these bills, folks in these states wouldn't even be covered under a national health program.

I'm also reminded of all these right-wing governors trying to bar stimulus money from being used to benefit the people of their states.

Believe it or not, Arizona lawmakers have actually passed a bill to allow a voter initiative to pull the state out of national health care reforms. The initiative though has no chance in hell of passing. Nobody other than the few who are wealthy enough to buy decent private health care are going to vote for it.

I get the feeling that a vast majority of voters are going to say this: "You don't get to decide for me that I can't benefit from a federal program." Not like I expect right-wing legislators to give a shit about people.

Right-wing Arizona State Rep. Nancy Barto, who sponsored the initiative, said, "Our health care freedoms are very much at risk by health care reforms proposed in Washington, D.C." Freedom from what? If anything, health care reform would give us more freedom than what we have now.

Under the current greed-driven system, about the only freedom we have now is to wait a month to see a doctor when we get sick and pay hundreds of dollars just to be glanced at for 3 minutes and get an expensive prescription that doesn't even work.

If Arizona and other states are pulling out of health care reform, then can the states pull out of the 1996 welfare "reform" too? What about that same year's Telecommunications Act? Or all this "preemption" bullshit Bush kept trotting out?

In Wisconsin, right-wing State Rep. Leah Vukmir cried that national health reform is a "federal power grab that flies in the face of the Tenth Amendment." Then what do you call the welfare "reform" law and Bush's "preemption"? Obama's proposals wouldn't force the states to surrender any powers to the federal government. But "preemption", welfare "reform", and the telcom law all did. Under these Republican policies, the states become little more than federally governed provinces.

Countless Americans who worked for media firms were left jobless and hopeless after 1996 just so the 104th Reich could appease corporate broadcasters with a bailout they didn't need. But heaven forfend any of the states restore the station ownership caps that existed before then. The Republicans sure didn't stick up for states' rights then.

ACLU wins homeless case!

The city of Laguna Beach, California, was the site of a living example of right-wing meanness.

The town had passed an "anti-camping" ordinance designed to chase out the homeless. It applied on public property, even public beaches.

But now the ACLU has announced it has reached a settlement with the city. Under this settlement, the city won't cite or arrest homeless people just for sleeping in town for a period of 3 years. There will also be a process for expunging citations and convictions that were issued under the rogue "anti-camping" law.

As far as I'm concerned, city officials reaped what they sowed when they decided to pass such a law. Now that this law has been effectively discontinued, I'd like to see thousands of homeless people descend on the city and sleep right there in front of officials' mansions. That'll teach these officials a lesson.

In my day, public property meant public property. If a person can't use a public beach, when the city won't provide any alternative, then the city deserves to be sued.

(Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-public-settlement-2475051-aclu-sleeping)