Dumb question of the day

Seriously, I saw this poll question on the website of a California newspaper:

"Is the economic downturn responsible for Tehama County's double-digit unemployment rate?"

Maybe the next poll question they'll have will be, "Is rain responsible for the fact that it's raining?"

And newspapers wonder why they can't stay in business even with a website? Of course they're going out of business, if they ask dumb questions like that.

Or maybe this is like during the so-called economic "boom" of several years ago when everyone was out of work but denied there was a recession.

Another funny dream to interpret

A couple weeks ago, I had another weird dream.

In this dream, I saw an episode of 'King Of The Hill' in which Bobby buys a large piece of plywood from a home improvement store for some project to impress his friends. He discovers the wood is infested with ticks, so he returns it to the store.

While he is at the store demanding a refund, Hank lectures him about his unreasonable expectation that the plywood would be free of ticks.

Needless to say, it was pretty damn funny.

"Bobby, don't you know?! When you get plywood, it's gonna have ticks!"

The moral of this dream? Probably to check for mites when you buy plywood.

If the United States was a piece of plywood, Bush conservatives would be the ticks infesting it.

Happy now, DLC?

Hey DLC, it was just sooooo important for Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, wasn't it?

And that's what set into motion the events that led to the potential disaster that may be unfolding in New York's 20th District.

In the interest of disclosure, I was against Clinton's presidential run. She has supported the illegal Iraq War all along. When it came down to it, she was the DLC candidate. (I'm a registered Green now, thanks to the DLC, but that's beside the point.)

And let's get this clear too: Everyone knows Republicans have rigged elections for years, but that's just sort of a built-in assumption now. Not much point in going into detail about that, because you all know it happens.

The DLC has always acted like it's so concerned with the Democratic Party's electoral viability, but look how well their Hillary demands worked this time. New York's 20th House district was a fairly safe seat before it went vacant, which never would have happened if they'd just left Clinton in the Senate for now.

Or maybe David Paterson could have at least appointed someone other than Kirsten Gillibrand to Clinton's Senate seat. That way, Gillibrand could have held the House seat, which was probably safe as long as she held it. Still, that wouldn't be an issue but for the supposed need to appoint Clinton as Secretary of State. (Of course, Paterson is the man who tried enacting the aspartame subsidy, so nobody here said he was all that grand.)

After this display, nobody in the Democratic Party should listen to a single damn word the DLC says ever again. But they don't fucking learn, do they? They sure have a way to snatch defeat from the mandibles of victory.

Incidentally, Scott Murphy is leading today's election by only a few dozen votes. But if Disco Duck beats him, the DLC deserves the lion's share of the blame.

Another close election

I thought we'd have a winner tonight in that special election in New York state, but right now it's 50.01% to 49.99%.

Sorry, folks, but it looks like election watchdogs like me are going to have to stay up all night again! Which I practically do anyway, thanks to Daylight Wasting Time, but that's another matter.

Sore loser prepares to lose sorely

There's a special congressional election in upstate New York today, and already the waterworks are looming.

Republican candidate Jim Tedisco took the strange step of filing a motion to stall the vote certification in case he loses. Tedisco's main opponent is Democrat Scott Murphy. It's unknown if there are any third party candidates.

On page 9 of Tedisco's motion, he sought a restraining order to prevent the certification of his opponent's win, regardless of the margin of victory.

In other words, Tedisco wanted an order saying that if he lost, his opponent couldn't be declared the winner.

Waaah waaah waaah.

Needless to say, the court struck down that paragraph on sight.

If the Republicans spent as much effort finding decent candidates as they do crying over elections they lose, they might actually start winning more elections again. But nope. They'll never learn.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/31/711733/-NY-20:-Tedisco-Preps-for-Loss,-Using-Courts-to-Try-and-Block-Murphy-Win)

When I violated Taft-Hartley

We interrupt this blog with this important late-breaking news story...

Hi, it's me. Tim.

Remember me? Well, it's time I confront something that can no longer be ignored: I violated the Taft-Hartley Act.

It's as violated as a bird!

I violated it just last night, in fact. Did anyone else notice? Here's a hint: It was in my entry about Joe the Plumber's idiocy.

The Taft-Hartley Act is a giant Allowed Cloud that has long hamstrung the American worker. In addition to forcing union employees to subsidize antiunion activity, this law also has other methods of keeping workers down. For instance, it broadly expanded presidential strike-breaking powers (which Reagan later abused).

I live to violate unreasonable Allowed Clouds. (I'm just fine with reasonable Allowed Clouds.) I started doing this because somebody needed to stand up against personal conduct being tightly regimented - or the problem would just get worse.

Last year, for instance, I violated an Allowed Cloud by smuggling Pepsi into Riverfest.

Anystink, the Taft-Hartley Act outlaws political strikes. In other words, it bans work stoppages designed to achieve political goals. These strikes used to be legal, and still are in most of the world. But not under Taft-Hartley.

Last night, I suggested a general strike might be necessary to force EFCA to pass.

I knew this would violate Taft-Hartley. But what else was I supposed to do? Are we supposed to tolerate a Congress that won't pass EFCA but lets the Patriot Act and the '96 Telecommunications Act stand unchallenged? We have a right to expect better from a Democratic-led Congress.

When a law is unconstitutional, can you really blame one for violating it? Make no mistake: The Taft-Hartley provision against political strikes is unconstitutional. End of story.

Funny thing is, I probably won't get in trouble for violating the Allowed Cloud against political strikes. Do you really think prosecutors want to make a martyr out of me? They've got a toothless law, and I'm rubbing their faces in it.

And I may defy this Allowed Cloud again if the need arises.

You love it when I'm defiant like this. This blog spent last year being defiant, and everyone ate it up. Most of you probably agreed with each act of defiance, but the rest of you were probably indifferent and just wanted the amusement of seeing how I'd react if I got arrested. Well, I haven't been arrested since the NKU showdown 14 years ago, and I don't think the authorities want to embarrass themselves again.

What did I tell ya?

Well, looky here.

How many times did I say that this pseudoephedrine log bullshit affects only the innocent, because people who actually abuse the drug can find ways around the law?

Now, a report by KYTV-TV in Springfield, Missouri, says that people who actually abuse the drug are finding ways around the law.

(Slaps forehead.)

Gee, I never saw that coming, did you?

Of course, the report seems to be trying to use this as an excuse to implement even tougher laws. So the vicious cycle continues.

If tougher laws are passed, things are just going to get worse. That's an ironclad guarantee.

It's time we face reality: The restrictions on pseudoephedrine don't work, and they inconvenience only the innocent. We need to go back to the way it was before the 2000s by repealing the laws that limit purchases of over-the-counter allergy drugs.

And we must expose the wicked politicians who stand in our way.

(Source: http://www.ky3.com/news/local/42152887.html)

Please won't you be my neighbor?

I mentioned in The Last Word before about how I had a neighbor who vandalized the Peace Bike, threatened to rub dog shit on the other neighbors' front door, and shoved rotten food into their own refrigerator drain (apparently hoping that the next person would have to deal with it).

Well, some moron in Toronto also terrorized his neighbors for no apparent reason - for 7 years. And now he's been convicted on 49 charges over his ongoing campaign.

This had to go on for 7 years before the law did anything about it?

It went on that long before ANYONE did anything about it?

Time was, people didn't tolerate bullies like that. Nowadays, everyone learns early in life that if they look at a bully cockeyed, the bully isn't the one who gets punished. So people are conditioned to think there's really no point in ever fighting back.

We've seen the results of this mentality in schools - and now in neighborhoods.

(Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090327.wscala0327/BNStory/National/home)

Utility giant another step closer to rate hike

Duke Energy has just reached an agreement that brings it another step closer to yet another rate hike for its Ohio customers.

You need to check out some of the comments on the Cincinnati Enquirer's website. It sounds exactly like what people said about Unitil a couple months back...

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090331/BIZ01/303310016

Who was it who insisted I was the only critic of the local utility monopoly? Was it one of these same geniuses who thought Bush would win New Jersey?

Dog may be killed

In recent years, the pendulum has swung too far: People are so worried about nebulous concerns of the collective that basic nature is denied.

That's what all this "danger to yourself or others" bushwa in the nation's "mental hygiene" laws is about. There's a whole system that's so concerned about the convenience of a few that it's willing to gut someone's basic human rights without even any due process.

I think the same concept is at work now in Wake County, North Carolina. Now a dog that reportedly bit a jogger has been seized by the county from her owners over this incident and may be killed by the county.

One thing is for sure: Killing the dog is unconscionable to me. And 30 years ago, the dog would have probably been safe from this fate. But not these days.

In modern America, a man who intentionally almost burned his own son to death walks free. An athlete who gnaws his opponent's ear off faces almost no penalty. A maniac who runs over participants in an antiwar rally with his truck suffers no punishment other than being fined a few dollars.

But a dog bites someone, and it's over.

I don't know the dog's owners, so I have no idea whether they'd been mistreating the dog. I don't know the bite victim, so I have no idea whether she provoked the dog. But make no mistake about it: When dogs feel threatened, they can bite. Dogs will be dogs.

I was biking in northern Kentucky about a year ago and had a confrontation with a scary dog. This was the most frightening dog I'd ever seen. If I had been bitten, I feel that would have been the fault of the dog's owners - not a reason to kill the dog.

I'd rather save a dog than worry about the convenience of the human population.

(Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1463526.html)

15 minutes of infamy lasts a lifetime online

I really hate having to encourage legislative action over something like this, but it wouldn't be necessary if Google was on the ball like it should be.

For years, Usenet has been the elephant in the room for the Internet. Usenet's prominence isn't nearly what it once was, but it lingers around like a scar on the landscape from a sanitary sewer that was left half-finished.

As Carmine Guzman would say, let's cut to the chase: People have personal problems (which weren't their fault), they get the wrong prescription, their brains get fried, and they say foolish things on the Internet. Or someone posts idiotic crap online under their name.

Google archives Usenet posts going back for years. So these things stick around, if you know where to find them. Because we all know the victims of this shit haven't suffered enough in their lives. (That last sentence is sarcasm, people.)

The problem here is that Google makes it extremely - and I mean extremely - difficult for people to delete their own years-old posts in its archive.

If they were posted under a dead account, you have to fill out a detailed form listing all your personal information and a reason why you want the posts deleted. The form is supposed to let you list all the message ID's of the posts you want erased. This used to work, but it works no longer. Instead, you have to go back and find the URL's of the posts as they appear in the archive.

Often, it takes 5 or 6 tries for Google to even pay any heed to your request.

Then, after the messages are deleted, they often pop back up again later - sometimes several years after they were erased!

And this doesn't even account for the posts that were phony to begin with. I've determined that it's probably impossible these days to get Google to delete forged Usenet posts.

Why does Google make it so hard to erase old posts? Beats the celery green shit out of me. They probably have some high-sounding reason like their desire for "completeness."

Personally, however, I think privacy and respect for those in need are more important. Usenet peaked during an incoherent time when many Americans' lives were shattered. People deserve the right to ache privately. How were they to know that their posts would still be online years and years later?

If they're your posts, you own them. Google doesn't. For years, I kept hearing about how others' Usenet posts were automatically copyrighted once they were posted (regardless of whether they included a copyright notice). Doesn't that principle apply here? Or is it "copyright for me, not for thee"?

If they're not your posts, and are just someone pulling a hoax, then the posts were fraudulent. This type of fraud is criminal. By not deleting these phony posts, Google is just letting the fraud continue to pay off for the fraudster.

I think it's time for some strong online privacy legislation. At minimum, Google shouldn't be allowed to ask for a reason why you want your own posts removed. Under the right-wing DMCA, Disney and Viacom don't have to give a reason to get YouTube to yank videos. So why should you have to give a reason to get posts that you own removed?

The law should also require Usenet archive sites like Google to remove hoax posts upon the victim's demand.

These are the minimum that we have a right to expect. Leaving old crap laying around doesn't accomplish anything unless it's to "get" someone.

DHL may get tax breaks to return to facility it abandoned

Shipping giant DHL was happy to receive corporate welfare - even in an era when assistance to poor families was being slashed.

In 1998, DHL got $17,000,000 from Kentucky taxpayers to help construct airplane parking areas at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Around 2004, DHL opened a $220,000,000 building at this airfield. But DHL abandoned the airport entirely in 2005 - taking the taxpayers' parking lot money with it and leaving its brand-new building empty. DHL moved out of Kentucky and went to Wilmington, Ohio.

Then DHL pulled out of domestic U.S. business entirely. DHL largely abandoned Wilmington, leaving 5,000 people out of work just in that small town. Only its international business remains there.

Now DHL is considering returning to the airport in northern Kentucky. If it does so, it may again be on the backs of the taxpayers. That's because Kentucky has just approved nearly $2,000,000 in tax breaks for the shipper. This too is in effect corporate welfare.

We all want and need jobs in this region, but honestly, how much is going to be spent on corporate welfare?

Also, DHL is no longer an American-based company. It's headquartered in Bonn, Germany. Shouldn't our priorities be with American firms?

It's bad enough DHL left the area after getting all that state money for its airplane parking lot. Hopefully, the lot hasn't become full of potholes in the years DHL has left it behind.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090331/BIZ01/903310340)

Smacking down the Senate's biggest horse's ass

Meet the Senate's biggest horse's ass (well, except Saxby Clueless). It's Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina).

Look at that ugly sneer. Just look!

A few weeks ago, DumbMint really thunk he had us like a big pie in the face when he said, "I can see why liberals don't mind if the tax rate goes up because they're not going to pay it anyway." This was a reference to Tom Daschle's tax woes.

Ha ha, Jim, you're a really funny guy!

But wait! Now what's this?!

Now (as I told you on Thursday) several Republican members of Congress have been caught evading taxes by using the homestead exemption for their D.C. digs - a big no-no. Yes, folks, that's an Allowed Cloud.

One of them - Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) - is known to be an ardent backer of a 30% national sales tax. And possibly the others are too. Steve King was the most arrogant of the congressmen caught in this tax evasion scandal.

Well, you know what I have to say about that? Just change one word in DeMint's statement, so it reads: I can see why conservatives don't mind if the tax rate goes up because they're not going to pay it anyway.

As we said in the '70s: Burn!

It's true. This scandal shows that conservatives don't pay their taxes, so they don't give a shit what the tax rate is.

Joe the Plumber clogs things up

I thought the 15 minutes of fame were over for Joe Wurzelbacher - the infamous Joe the Plumber who became a hero to right-wingers. I thought that pretty soon he'd be forgotten forever - like that weirdo who had his kids preach at their teachers every time they got in trouble at school.

But nope! Ol' Joe is back for more humiliation!

Wurzelbacher really wasn't even a plumber. In his jurisdiction, one needs a license to do plumbing work - which he didn't have. According to the Toledo Blade, Wurzelbacher was "not registered to operate as a plumber in Ohio, which means he's not a plumber."

But now he's taking his campaign of right-wing angst on the road.

Wurzelbacher was supposed to appear in Pittsburgh today for a rally against the much-needed Employee Free Choice Act. The plumbers' union, however, was furious at this grandstanding by someone who's not even a licensed plumber - so the union conducted its own gathering to support EFCA.

Unfortunately, many observers believe EFCA is already dead - which proves how lightweight today's congressional leadership is. With the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress for once, you'd think passing EFCA would be a slam-dunk. Sadly, however, the current crop of congressional Democrats would rather pass laws requiring Sudafed logs than EFCA. (Now you know why I switched to the Greens.)

We may have to have a nationwide general strike to pass EFCA.

(Source: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09089/959354-100.stm)

Meet the twelvos

What can you say when the other side gets outvoted so spectacularly that you can almost smell their tears?

I don't know, because we've run out of tears ourselves from having to fight them for so long. Trust me, if I thought 15 years ago that America's PUBLIC schools would start requiring uniforms, I would have run off to hide in the woods forever with no Internet and only berries for food.

But at long last, this story proves what happens when a public school at least makes an effort to conduct an accurate survey of the school community.

In Boonville, Indiana - not exactly an ultraliberal town - school officials sent out a survey about whether to require students to wear uniforms. Well, the results are in, and uniforms won the support of only - get this - 12%.

That's right - 12%! Nothing more. I've long guessed that's about how much support mandatory public school uniforms would receive in a scientific nationwide poll.

From now on, let's just call the uniform supporters the 12-percenters - or simply the twelvos.

They should be made to walk around every day with each digit of the number 12 painted on each side of their face. They should have all their shirts emblazoned with the number 12. They should be made to wear size 12 underpants. They should be obligated to scribble the number 12 on the backs of their hands and greet each other by saying, "12 out of 12!"

Then they'll know what it's like being forced to wear something they abhor.

There's some serious principles involved here. If a worker doesn't like a uniform, you can fire them. If an athlete doesn't like a uniform, you can kick them off the team. But school is compulsory. You can't just tell students to stay home if they don't like the uniform.

And it's not just students who despise the uniform. After a new report revealed that the school uniform industry was exploiting sweatshop labor, I'm sure a lot of people don't like it. Yet some schools continue to require families to buy uniforms made in abusive sweatshops. (Maybe it's because schools themselves are abusive sweatshops?)

Will the twelvos shut up following their amazing 12% support? Don't hold your breath. That genie was let out of the bottle years ago, and unfortunately, we're stuck with their babblings.

(Source: http://www.tristate-media.com/articles/2009/03/28/warricknews/news/doc49cba5fbc441d271797986.txt)

Harassment of convention protesters continues

It's bad enough the Twin Cities had to be blighted by the 2008 Republican National Convention, but the stink still hasn't worn off 7 months later.

Before and during the convention, police charged folks just for organizing peaceful protests against the event. A group of 8 people who were charged now calls themselves the RNC 8.

On Saturday, the RNC 8 organized a bike tour of the places where they were raided. This event drew dozens of locals. Nothing illegal about this outing at all. It's a bit like the Tim Brown Expulsion Tour, in which we show folks the schools I got kicked out of by driving past them.

Nonetheless, when the cyclists stopped at a local church for a scheduled lunch, they noticed the cops were on their tail. They found 6 bike cops and several police vehicles waiting for them outside the church. It appeared to be a joint effort by 20 to 30 local and federal law enforcement officers.

Although the cyclists broke no laws, Minneapolis police had the chance to arrest one of them for disorderly conduct when he had to leave the event early.

Doesn't the city have anything better to do than harass people over last year's GOP convention?

All this after the FBI informant who is central to the case against the RNC 8 was found guilty on assault and property damage charges in an unrelated case.

With so many RNC protesters being acquitted, you'd think authorities would figure out by now that they don't have a case against them.

(Source: http://twincities.indymedia.org/2009/mar/letter-minneapolis-police-chief-tim-dolan-about-continuing-post-rnc-harassment)

Power company blasted at hearings

If you're from New England and think Unitil customers are alone in their plight, then you need to read this brief article about Duke Energy's monopoly in Cincinnati.

If you're the type who sighs loudly and scowls every time someone dares to criticize a major corporation, you also need to read this article.

If you think this blog's longtime criticism of Duke Energy is exaggerated and unwarranted, you need to read this article.

If you're anyone, you need to read this article...

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090330/BIZ01/903300317/1055/NEWS

(Granted, that's a dinosaur media piece, but it'll have to do.)

Pay special attention to the paragraph near the end that begins, "Customers ..." Apparently, people have complained about the fact that the power often goes out even in fine weather - not to mention Duke raising customers' bills to pay for the September blackout.

Now Dook wants yet another rate hike - separate from that.

If Duke thinks it needs the money so badly, maybe it needs to end the sweetheart deals it has with other major corporations (which we're already paying for).

"I don't get it"

You know you've really pushed conservatives' buttons when they're still sending you nasty e-mail 2 weeks after the fact.

I got another one on Saturday from one of the Cincinnati Tea Party cultists. Like some of the others, this one practically admitted that they stayed at the swanky Westin. It says:

"I don't get it? What's the problem with the Westin?"

Reminds me of Bert of 'Sesame Street' looking at the camera and saying, "I don't get it," when Ernie wins a segment.

The problem with the Westin? It's one of the most expensive hotels in Cincinnati. A rally can't very well pass itself off as a populist gathering when so many of its participants stay at the Westin. (As if the "Thank the rich" sign didn't already dash their claims to populism.)

If I traveled to another city for any reason, I wouldn't in a billion years expect to lodge at a Westin - even if my trip was mostly paid for by some think tank or party leaders (as the Tea Party farces are). If I got a Motel 6, I'd feel like I was being treated like a king.

The person who sent me this note isn't just from out of town. They're from Portugal, in fact. They came all the way from Portugal to make a fool of themselves on Fountain Square! Evidently, they spend most of their time making right-wing comments on YouTube videos - earning themselves much ridicule.

The conservative (bowel) movement ran the United States for 28 years consecutively, yet their brains haven't even evolved past the amebic stage yet?

Woman jailed for being poor

Although the United States abolished debtors' prison in the 1830s, postdemocratic America has seen the revival of this hated practice.

A woman from Escanaba, Michigan, has been jailed because she is too poor to reimburse the court for her teenage son's sentence in juvenile detention.

Making people pay to be sentenced to jail or detention is itself a practice that gained height with the class-charged incarceration boom of the '90s. It's fundamentally wrong, as the punishment for the crime is supposed to be only jail (unless there's some additional penalty).

When the judge sends you to jail, that's the penalty. The punishment isn't supposed to also include paying for the jail stay. Running a jail is a cost the county has to pay.

It's unclear what crime was committed by the teenager in this story. One thing is for sure: There's a whole system in place designed to throw the book at young people as well as adults for things that weren't even illegal 30 years ago. With the laws these days, the average American probably breaks the law monthly without even knowing it.

The mother in the Michigan case was initially found in contempt of court because she couldn't pay for her son's detention. She had also been denied a court-appointed attorney, even though the Constitution requires her to be provided with one.

When she finally got paid at work, the jail took that money too - and kept her incarcerated. So it sounds like a vicious cycle: Can't pay, go to jail, rack up more jail bills, can't pay again, stay in jail, and so on. It's a nifty little racket the system has.

The ACLU of Michigan has taken up the woman's case. The Michigan ACLU also successfully represented a disabled man recently whose probation was extended because he was too poor to pay the supervision fee.

(Source: http://aclumich.org/issues/due-process/2009-03/1353)

Cops shoot unarmed college student over marijuana

Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and the drug warriors being completely out of control.

Two weeks ago, police in Michigan barged into the apartment of a 20-year-old man and shot him in the chest - nearly killing him. His only crime was that he had a tiny amount of marijuana in his possession.

The young man never threatened the police - and he was unarmed.

The incident has prompted rallies at Grand Valley State University, where he attends college. Meanwhile, he is still recovering from a punctured lung, a shattered liver, and broken ribs.

I've said a lot about the failed War on Drugs in the past few days, and this incident proves yet again what a disaster the drug war is. Not only does it breed outright corruption, but it also fosters a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude.

(Source: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x1984813816/GVSU-student-shot-in-drug-raid-calls-for-patience-in-investigation)

No insurance for you!

I thought the government finally cracked down on this years ago. But after Newt and little George erased 60 years of progress, I guess the country is back to the sepsis and bedbug days.

It seems that in today's America, not a single decision is made about anything unless an insurance company approves it. This is worse than merely annoying. It can be deadly. Everyone remembers about a year ago when a young person died because she was denied life-saving medical treatment by her insurer. This happens more than you realize.

Insurers actually have more power than doctors in making medical decisions.

Sadly, this trend continues unchecked.

Now it's been revealed that health insurance companies secretly blacklist patients with certain conditions or who take certain medications.

If you have gallstones, for instance, you'll be denied coverage automatically. If you take certain diabetes drugs, you'll be denied as well. If you have asthma or if you're even slightly overweight, odds are you'll be denied too.

Suppose you get the bright idea to fib a little and tell your insurer that you don't have these conditions or don't take these drugs. Well, that probably won't work. That's becuz insurers hire data-mining companies who will sell them all your health information.

Isn't your health data supposed to be confidential? I thought there were laws to protect you from having your health history blabbed everywhere.

Several of these data miners have been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act by not letting folks see the data about them.

Insurers have their own confidential, secret documents that they use as a guide to deny coverage.

This scandal is a key reason why insurers can't be part of any serious health care reform. In the meantime though, we should pass laws barring insurers from denying coverage in this manner.

America's greed-driven health care system is broken.

(Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/323/story/973158.html)

End the War on Drugs? ('Pail Poll)

You came through again in last week's 'Pail Poll!

This survey asked whether you'd favor shortening the standard work week in the U.S. from 40 hours to 35 hours.

Understandably, this was a contentious issue, thanks to the fear that working shorter hours might make workers less money. In the comment section of last week's entry though, I hinted that there is an obvious solution for this. Surprisingly, none of you seemed to figure out what it is.

Can you figure out what it is? The comment section is open below...

Nonetheless, you voted 12 to 7 in favor of a shorter work week.

This week's 'Pail Poll asks about the failed War on Drugs. Almost daily now, we see more evidence that the drug war is a failure. The battles in Mexico are just the latest example.

The latest survey here asks whether you'd support ending the War on Drugs in its current form. By that, I mean the current line of drug war methods that has been carried out since the Reagan era or longer.

So vote and peep!

Idiot bubbles while dancing in street (Bubble Gum Weekend)

In the '80s and well into the '90s, there was no end to the unlikely situations in which bubble gum commercials would depict bubbling as a suitable activity.

We all remember the Care-Free gum commercials with the "bubble blowin' sugar-free" song. These ads evolved from some with a more bombastic jingle, and they started out featuring people bubbling while engaging in various athletic activities such as tennis or lifting weights.

Eventually though - when blowing bubbles that burst all over one's face was ceasing to be the phenomenon it once was - Care-Free started taking a very slightly different tack. This ridiculous 1988 commersh uses a similar jingle as before, but the activities aren't as strenuous, and no bubbles pop on any faces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub15Hpe5fg8

That commersh grows increasingly absurd throughout its mere 15 seconds. It finally culminates with a balding man in a goofy yellow t-shirt dancing in the middle of a city street while bubbling.

Hell of a stupid way to hold up traffic, huh? You can almost hear motorists yelling, "Get out of the road, you idiot!" But he seems to be paying no attention to these cries, as he is more concerned about his bubbling.

And yes, this ad played on the now-familiar fallacy that assumed the bubbling public would rather get bladder cancer from artificial sweeteners than get cavities from sugar. Considering it's been years since I've seen anyone chew Care-Free, that appeal didn't seem to work too well.

Traffic cams to appease insurance racket?

A new proposal in Chicago is like a corporatist's wet dream.

One of the major concerns Americans have had about red light cameras is the obvious potential for expansion. Apologists for traffic cams, however, have always tried to assure us that we have nothing to fear as long as we're innocent. The cameras are for our own good, you see.

Maybe it's true that those of us who aren't guilty of running red lights have little to fear - unless of course the camera misreads someone else's license plate so you get sent a citation (which happens often).

We may have little to fear, that is, until the cameras start tracking lesser offenses.

And now - to the surprise of nobody who paid heed to our warnings - a new proposal would do just that.

See why we were so concerned about traffic cams? I bet more people wish they'd listened to us now.

Chicago Alderman Edward Burke now wants red light scameras to also catch motorists who drive uninsured. His primary rationale is that it would generate money for the city through fines.

I don't doubt the city is cash-strapped, but come on! Using traffic cams to catch uninsured drivers to generate revenue is like if you go out and rob a bank because your boss won't pay you.

How would the cameras know who's uninsured? I was almost afraid to find out, because I knew the proposed method would be unconstitutional. And it is. The license plate of each car would be scanned, and then checked against a national database to see if the car's insurance is up to date.

Remember when law enforcement used to need something called probable cause to conduct a search like this?

If you don't know the real purpose of car insurance laws, you probably haven't been reading me for very long. It's not about safety. Mandatory insurance was enacted because insurance companies lobbied lawmakers for it to pad their profits.

Yet, even though states mandate insurance, they have repeatedly rejected bills to require insurers to lower the costs of their product. They say that limiting the cost of insurance violates the "free market", you see. Well, then what do you think the law requiring people to buy insurance does? I guess regulating the economy is A-OK as long as it pours more money into the deep coffers of big corporations like insurance companies.

It isn't just insurance companies anymore. Now it's also companies that run the databases that verify motorists' insurance information. Indeed, these companies are lobbying Chicago City Council to pass the insurance camera proposal.

ACLU spokesman Jay Stanley said, "If all the talk is about revenue, I think it's a good indication that there's something fishy about this." I'd say so. Someone needs to investigate to see if there's kickbacks involved between the city and insurance companies.

Incidentally, Burke in 2007 proposed a ban of devices that let travelers detect red light cameras. So, with his support of prohibition of everyday devices, Burke was already a little too far removed from our constitutional foundation.

(Source: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/red-light-cameras-at-traffic-intersections-to-spot-out-uninsured-vehicles_100172422.html)

Another "Jump the Shark" moment for 'Cops'?

I've long enjoyed the TV series 'Cops', but the War on Drugs chest-pounding has put a damper on this long-running actuality show.

You might say 'Cops' jumped the shark around mid-decade when it seemed like every episode was a "special edition." Much of the time, the subject of the episode was..."War On Drugs"!

I believe this was shortly after it was revealed that the Bush regime was ordering TV shows and magazines to include drug warrior propaganda.

I checked the TV listings for tonight, and I noticed the second episode of 'Cops' is called...'"High Crimes #4"!

Gee, I wonder what that's about. Ponder, ponder.

If I was a betting man, I'd wager that this episode is another series of endless lectures full of trite drug war talking points and the police telling suspects, "You know, I really hate dope."

And these are the episodes I try to miss deliberately.

Luckily, "High Crimes #4" is the 8:30 episode, so it starts at the same time as the Earth Hour blackout, in case I opt to participate in that.

This comes on the heels of New York state's long-awaited elimination of its antiquated Rockefeller drug laws.

While we're at it, let's discuss the latest drug law reform in New York. What parts are good? What parts are bad? Leave your comments below...

(I know the comment section has been slow here lately, but this blog has enough readers that it shouldn't be. Trust me on that. I see how many people read this blog each day, and it's a miracle Blogspot doesn't restrict this blog for getting too many visitors.)

Teen may be labeled sex offender over MySpace photos

Just to be clear: The sex offender registry was never meant to list teenagers who post naked photos of themselves on MySpace.

I think we should come down hard on child molesters and other serious sex criminals. Child molesters are the thugs I hate the worst.

But it's not fair for a 14-year-old girl to have to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life all because she posted a naked picture of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to find. The mother who was behind the passage of Megan's Law agrees with my stance.

Law enforcement in New Jersey, however, does not agree. And they're throwing the book at the teen in this story.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to put naked photos of yourself on MySpace. Frankly, I think it's stupid. But this case is clearly not something that should invoke Megan's Law.

The real inconsistency is this: why is the teenager in this case being regarded as a major sex offender, when some folks who clearly are major sex offenders are not?

There's a whole corrupt system in place to mollycoddle adults who abuse children, especially in institutional settings. The system tells victims that they're liars right to their faces. Abusers are rarely punished - so they keep doing the same things for years.

Is that fair? I don't think so.

(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/03/26/2009-03-26_14yearold_new_jersey_girl_may_get_sex_of.html)

Rockefeller drug laws vanishing

For almost 40 years, the state of New York has been plagued by the draconian Rockefeller drug laws.

These laws mandate stiff prison terms for even minor drug offenses. Every once in a while, lawmakers succeed at relaxing the laws somewhat. But conservatives have prevented these laws from being completely consigned to the toilet where they belong.

Now Gov. David Paterson and legislative leaders are just about to finally erase what remains of the Rockefeller drug laws.

Few will miss these laws. Except the Republicans, of course, who accuse supporters of this move of coddling criminals.

Yeah, I know, because we've all seen how well the Rockefeller drug laws and other Republican policies have worked at fighting crime. Here's a hint: They haven't worked. Not one bit.

This latest reform doesn't let drug dealers run wild by any means: Although the deal eliminates mandatory minimum prison terms, it also stiffifies punishment for drug kingpins. Even so, there'll be no more mandatory minimums for every college student who gets caught smoking a joint.

(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/27/2009-03-27_end_is_near_for_rockefeller_drug_laws_go-1.html)

Um, Harry?

If you look up the word 'lightweight' in the dictionary, it should have Harry Reid's picture next to it.

Today, the Senate's Democratic leader lamented John Roberts's dishonesty in a Christian Science Monitor forum.

Uh, Harry? Whose fault is it that Roberts got away with lying about being such a right-wing activist jurist?

I know Reid voted against confirming Roberts, but it's not like Reid did anything else to stop Roberts from being approved. Reid couldn't even get half his own party members to oppose Roberts.

If Reid had listened to progressives, he would have known all along that Roberts was full of shit.

Since the 2000 campaign, it's been clear to me not to trust Bush to protect even a carpet fuzz. So why the hell did anyone trust Bush with a Chief Justice nominee?

The way Bush kept getting his nominees through by pretending they were moderate reminds me of how Lucy of the Peanuts comic strip kept promising not to yank the football away from Charlie Brown, and how Charlie Brown always fell for it.

Fuck the "moderates." The courts are going to need some decidedly progressive judges to outweigh the right-wing ideologues who have been allowed to serve. And it's all because of lightweights sitting on their asses for years.

(Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20560.html)

Draconian drug laws fuel Mexico violence

Drug violence in Mexico is gaining attention from the Obama administration. But one has to ask why it's gotten so out of control in the first place.

If you don't know the answer, you haven't been reading my writings for the past 15 years.

Drug prohibition - more specifically, drug laws that are outrageously rigid - fuel violence by drug gangs.

We've seen it in the United States. Violent gangs flourish while small-time drug offenders get ruinous (often lifelong) prison terms.

Now it's fueling the Mexican battles too.

The #1 culprit is the Patriot Act's crackdown on even innocent purchasers of pseudoephedrine allergy drugs.

Frankly, I don't believe statistics that say these laws have reduced meth labs. I've seen other statistics that show the opposite. Also, statistics that claim a reduction are put out by the drug warriors, who want an excuse to keep the laws in place. That way, they can keep hitting up the government for funding for neater weapons.

Perhaps the real issue here is that the new laws have actually promoted the importation of meth ingredients. Meth cooks get around rules that allergy sufferers cannot.

So they bring it in from Mexico. And that feeds the shootouts on the border.

Another factor though is that Mexico began cracking down on previously legal pseudoephedrine drugs just before the current wave of violence started. The fact that violence followed the enactment of a harsher law is more proof of the failure of prohibition.

Let's end the War on Drugs. Just end it. The drug war doesn't work.

(Source: http://www.mccookgazette.com/story/1525654.html)

Tear down this wall!

Since we're on the topic of Newport, Kentucky (my birthplace!) I think it's time I mention an important local topic that I don't think I've brung up yet.

I'm not a professional civil engineer (because that opportunity was robbed from me), but the engineer in me needs to speak about this before local highway departments make mistakes that'll make us wish we clawed out our own eyes so we didn't have to drive on them. (Ooh, that's edgy!)

It has to do with the ramp from southbound Interstate 471 to KY 8. Yes, the first ramp when you cross from Cincinnati into Newport - the one for northern Bellevue and Newport on the Levee.

Everyone agrees the traffic on KY 8 in that area fucking stinks to high hell. I've had this apartment for 12 years, and traffic has gotten progressively worse the entire time.

For now, I'm proposing one very simple change that'll ease much of it.

Well, notice how the ramp in question dumps you on Park Avenue. It seems like it could go straight ahead on 3rd Street, but nope, it has a tiny curve at the end that automatically places you on Park.

It is in effect a barrier to keep you from going southwest on 3rd. It's not literally a wall, but it is in the figurative sense.

Why is it like this? Because some opulent, gentrified neighborhoods didn't want to share the traffic burden. According to this so-called "logic", it's fine to clog the other roads. Just not theirs.

Granted, the area right around the intersection is fairly working-class. But it was other blocks that raised the stink.

My proposal: tear down this wall! Remove the traffic island, and let motorists continue southwest on 3rd. While we're at it, you can probably make it so you can also go the other way on Park.

Locals have noted that the work could be done in a single day - and very inexpensively.

This change hasn't happened, because richer neighborhoods are generally against it, and they have the clout.

This is kind of like what happened with the rerouting of KY 17 in south central Covington in 2007. Affluent, leafy neighborhoods wanted traffic off their roads - so highway officials obliged by designating KY 17 to follow other streets, which encouraged motorists to use and clog them.

Money talks. And we all pay - with crumbling roads, traffic jams, and blunted interest in our working-class neighborhoods we worked so hard to build.

Lexington gets stores; what about Newport?

In the Cincinnati area, greed too often rules the roost, and our downtowns die.

But in nearby Lexington, Kentucky, when a downtown store closes, it often gets replaced.

Last year, a Rite Aid drugstore in downtown Lexington closed. To fill the void, a locally owned drugstore has already opened nearby, and a CVS pharmacy with an expanded grocery section is also in the works. I don't know what stood on the sites of these new stores before, but at least now there's a store to serve the public.

Other cities can learn from this. In most American regions (Cincinnati included), it seems like the only new stores being built are big box retailers in the exurbs - where folks in poor urban neighborhoods can't reach them. Ironically, new businesses built in city areas now often cater to upscale suburbanites.

Take Newport, Kentucky, for instance. This city across from Cincinnati has been blighted for some 5 years by the closure of the Thriftway supermarket downtown. The city has let the building sit empty since the early 2000s. I saw it just recently, and it was still vacant.

But the city wanted more retail space. So it abused eminent domain to gut a working-class neighborhood on Grand Avenue and turn the property over to a development firm. The developer had promised not to build a Wal-Mart, but then tried going back on this pledge. Luckily, a public outcry killed the Wal-Mart plan. But the retail complex is going through. Last I heard, it would contain a super-sized Kroger and possibly a gargantuan Lowe's home improvement store.

If the city needed a Kroger so badly, why not use the old Thriftway site? If nobody wants to build a grocery there, why not an electronics store? Every time I want to buy electronic goods, I have to order them off the Internet, because the closest stores that have them are usually 15 miles out of town.

Greed drove the decision to wreck southeastern Newport instead of adding a store on the old downtown Thriftway site.

Just to be clear: it's illegal to use eminent domain to take private residences and turn them over to developers. There had been court rulings in Kentucky that say this much. If Newport wanted more space to bring in stores, it should have condemned and purchased the Thriftway site, kept ownership of it instead of reselling it, and leased it to a retailer - under conditions that uphold the spirit of public use.

I don't know what's going to become of that old Thriftway. I thought someone told me the county now wants it for courthouse parking, but I must have been half-asleep when I heard this, because I can't find anything about it.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/179/story/740505.html)

Hilarious poll numbers for Bunning

Election Day 2010 has the potential for yet another night of laughs at the GOP's expense.

Now we know why embattled Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky gets so defensive when people ask him what his poll numbers are. It's because they ain't good. In fact, he's losing to one possible opponent by almost 2 to 1.

It's been reported that a poll sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee shows Bunning trailing possible Democratic challenger Dan Mongiardo 56% to 29%.

Granted, that's a party-sponsored poll - but you also have to realize that if anyone wants accurate polls, it's the parties and candidates themselves. Otherwise, they'd just be throwing good money after bad.

Bunning is losing almost 2 to 1 to Dan Mongiardo, for crying out loud! If the Democrats ran rip-roaring populists like they used to, just think how badly Bunning would be getting clobbered!

And if the media would have also covered Bunning using his supposedly nonprofit charity to make a profit, think how badly he'd be losing.

I've waited since I was in 8th grade to see Jim Bunning lose an election, and I may live long enough to see it!

Of course, this story assumes Bunning doesn't lose the Republican primary to someone more likely to keep this Senate seat in GOP hands. It also assumes he doesn't resign just to spite the party leaders who don't want him running again.

(Source: http://theruraldemocrat.typepad.com/the_rural_democrat/2009/03/breaking-leaked-dscc-us-senate-poll-numbers-for-kentucky.html)

Freeper fails geography

The LOSEianne protesters are still upset that I made fun of their stupid rally on Fountain Square?

Poor babies.

A few days ago, I got yet another nasty e-mail from one of the BTPers. They complained about how I violated their True Free Speach Now (tm) by not posting every single comment of theirs, and repeated their usual ignorance about downtown parking garages. (They still think there's only one garage.)

"I highly doubt locals stayed at an expensive hotel for a 3pm LOCAL event," they scoffed.

Uh, that's because for a majority of the protesters, it wasn't local. Like I said before, a majority of them were out-of-town hired agitators.

The e-mail concludes with this run-on sentence: "You're from Ft. Thomas you should have a little more intelligence than that."

I'm from Fort Thomas now??? That's news to me.

They attack me for allegedly not knowing the geography of parking garages, when they don't even know that Fort Thomas, Highland Heights, and Bellevue are different cities?

Freepers are funny when mad.

Congressman who cried about others' tax problems dodged taxes

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is a scuzzy fuck who ought to resign immediately.

King got a Conservative Fool Of The Day entry on the old blog because he praised Joe McCarthy and because of his bill (as a state legislator) to expand workplace drug testing. (So if conservatives are so worried about the unemployed not having to take drug tests while the employed do, it's the conservatives' own fucking fault.)

Now Steve King is one of 4 congressmen - all Republicans - named in a Roll Call report describing their tax evasion. The others are Tom Petri of Wisconsin, Phil Gingrey of Georgia, and Mike Rogers of Alabama.

According to this report, the legislators are improperly claiming tax deductions on second residences in the Washington, D.C., area. King is getting a homestead tax deduction on his Washington condo.

The homestead tax credit is supposed to apply only for homes that you use as your primary residence - not as your second home. But King's official primary residence is in Iowa. Otherwise, he wouldn't be allowed to run for Congress from Iowa.

What a goddamn tax cheat.

Now here's the real bipper: In February, Steve King criticized Tom Daschle for his tax problems. King said, "Confirming Tom Daschle as Health Secretary would be an insult to the millions of Americans who work hard and pay their taxes on time. If President Obama continues to press for Daschle's confirmation, it sends a message to the American people that paying taxes is irrelevant and unnecessary. This nomination represents the height of hypocrisy from an Administration that promised change and new levels of transparency in government."

What about your own damn tax problems, Steve? If King thought Daschle shouldn't be confirmed because of his tax woes, then that means King should resign himself for his own tax issues.

Of course, King blamed the whole debacle on the D.C. tax department.

Yep, nothing's ever a Republican congressperson's fault, is it?

(Source: http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/26/news/local/a4a7beff29050e748625758500097706.txt)

School system won't send surveys to uniform opponents

Well, this is just fucking royal, isn't it?

School bureaucrats seem to place their reliance on pointless rules such as uniforms above all other concerns - so much so that anyone who dares to dissent is written off as some sort of pariah. It happened in my youth, and it happens now.

I've written before how schools that are considering requiring uniforms have sent surveys to parents - and how parents who are thought to be against uniforms suspiciously never receive a survey.

Now the exact same thing is happening in Muncie, Indiana.

As Muncie's so-called public school system is considering a uniform sumptuary law, it claims to have sent a survey to all parents asking if they'd support requiring uniforms.

But that is an outright lie.

A parent who opposes uniforms because she can't afford them never received the survey.

Hell of a way for the schools to rig the survey, isn't it? Then again, it's not like I haven't encountered school systems that lied about everything, so it's hardly surprising.

This follows the educratic disaster that unfurled in nearby Anderson, Indiana. When Anderson's alleged public schools adopted uniforms, a family promptly sued the school district. Outrageously, a right-wing federal judge ordered the family to pay the school's legal bills, totaling some $40,000.

Last I heard, the plaintiffs were standing up against the school system by announcing that they were refusing to pay the schools' legal fees. It's unclear whether the school system was dumb enough to try to collect.

Ironically, Muncie plans to use the Anderson dress code as a template. I guess the Muncie schools enjoy getting sued too.

(Source: http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20090326/NEWS01/903260354/1002)

Classist brain trust on autopilot

Just because the Nazis seem to be reduced to background noise doesn't mean you shouldn't still be vigilant against their recycled hate. Now the right-wing brain trust is rehashing a failed idea that tasted like shit to begin with: forced drug tests of folks who get government benefits.

Let me be clear: Anyone who supports this bullshit should stay home on Election Day, because they obviously don't understand basic civics.

I'm telling you point blank that this idea is evil.

The first wave of this fascism, back in the '90s, was derailed when a federal court correctly ruled that drug testing welfare recipients was unconstitutional. Did lawmakers learn? Of course not, because they're fucking stupid.

Now legislators in at least 8 states are trying to require drug tests for people who receive welfare, unemployment benefits, or food stamps. Their usual excuse is that people who have jobs often have to take drug tests, so why not those who don't?

Um, probably because not everyone who gets welfare is jobless, perhaps? To get most forms of assistance (other than unemployment), you must be poor - not necessarily unemployed. The working poor are called the working poor because they work. (It's been proven before that a disproportionate number of Wal-Mart employees make so little money that they qualify for food stamps.)

So this proposed law is about classism. Nothing but.

If legislators are so worried about people with jobs having to take drug tests, why don't they propose a law to limit employers' powers to require such tests?

In West Virginia, far-right Republican Del. Craig Blair whimpered, "Nobody's being forced into these assistance programs." Hey, Craig? Have you seen the poverty and unemployment statistics lately? Or are your math skills as limited as your civics knowledge?

As more proof of Blair's idiocy, he made a website touting his drug test idea, graced with a goofy caricature of himself.

Luckily, other West Virginia legislators aren't so receptive to the idea. Democratic Del. Sally Susman told Blair in a letter, "Your latest legislative proposal is such staggering nonsense I was surprised the members of your own party did not laugh you out of the House of Delegates."

Blair's proposal is so idiotic, in fact, that Susman actually thought someone submitted the bill using Blair's stationery just as a joke.

Maybe the first folks who ought to be tested are legislators. They must be smoking something pretty powerful to come up with the shit they come up with.

It gets worse: The Kansas House approved a similar measure. The Oklahoma Senate passed such a bill unanimously. Then again, you can expect that from Oklahoma lawmakers, after they tried to censor a biologist's speech because it disagreed with the Answers in Genesis cult that most state legislators are a member of.

Of all the humiliating, cruel things to do, why test poor people for drugs? Bank executives who waste bailout money don't have to be tested, so why the poor? If this passes in any state, there ought to be marches in the streets of every town. Forced drug tests of the poor used to be considered an unthinkable taboo anywhere outside Nazi Germany. Now it's become taboo just to remember that it ever was taboo.

In their hearts, the fascists are fighting a higher power.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hWSQNKlnu1j_2qJbg2HdBi_HUEaQD975O5Q80;
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_062212021.html)

Singer Dan Seals dies

Singer Dan Seals died yesterday at the age of 61 from lymphoma complications.

You may remember Seals as England Dan - who was half of the '70s pop music duo England Dan & John Ford Coley. Seals was born and raised in Texas, but he acquired the nickname England Dan because of his admiration for the Beatles. Also, his brother was Jim Seals of Seals & Crofts.

Dan Seals was later known for his successful country music career, which included his 1985 hit single "Bop." A couple years ago, I got in a debate on a Cincinnati radio forum over whether pop station WCLU played "Bop." I distinctly remember WCLU playing it, which would not be unusual, as it nearly hit the top 40 of Billboard's Hot 100. Someone who worked at the station denied it, however.

Seals was quite an influential musician for many years.

Lawmakers investigate evolution speech

Oh, the stupid. It burns.

It really is hard to believe that the Oklahoma legislature has nothing better to do than this.

Early this month, the University of Oklahoma hosted a speech by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins - a noted expert on the science of evolution. This sent right-wing lawmakers into a screeching shitfit. In an attempt to avert the speech, legislators tried to bar Dawkins from delivering it.

Lawmakers' stupidity in trying to ban Dawkins was almost enough to make one scratch their own face off with their keys.

But the silliness continues.

Now the legislature is launching an investigation into the speech and into the university for daring to allow the event.

Just to be clear: the legislature can't do this. There have been cases dating back decades that say lawmakers can't investigate speeches just because they disagree with them.

Conservatives are always crying about how "big, mean libs" are stifling academic freedom. This story, however, proves that suppression of academic liberty comes not from the left, but from the right.

Ironically, the legislative resolution opposing Dawkins's speech said that the university "should be open to all ideas" and "not indoctrinate students in one-sided study and thinking." But by trying to disinvite Dawkins from the state, the resolution itself was stifling ideas and being one-sided. This resolution went on to say that evolution itself was "indoctrination."

Do lawmakers not have anything more important to work on than this Stone Age hypocrisy?

(Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/06/1726211;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/oklahoma-legislature-inve_b_177473.html)

When a Statue of Liberty puzzle got ru

Since I've given up on the pop-up media for the rest of the day, how about another story about the Statue of Liberty?

I know you're in the mood for it, since I talked about the old 'Sesame Street' closing credits earlier today. So how about it?

When I was growing up, we had a round Statue of Liberty jigsaw puzzle. It was cool. I think it had 256 pieces, and each and every one of them was in pristine condition.

Until one day.

I don't remember who the culprit was in this act of mischief. It had to have been either one of the neighbor kids or an offspring of some family friends. I know it wasn't one of my relatives, because nobody with such a similar DNA would do something as incredibly stupid as what transpired that day.

Anyway, the young one responsible for this incident somehow made his way into the den, where the puzzle had been put together on the floor. He then sat in the middle of the circular puzzle and cradled on his hands and knees.

Mind you, this kid was maybe 8 or so, so he was too old to be doing that shit.

Of course, my folks blamed me, because I failed to stop him. I didn't get in too much trouble though.

The Statue of Liberty puzzle, however, wasn't so lucky. Because of this incident, several of the cardboard pieces were frayed and appeared to have some of their colors torn off. One could still assemble this puzz, but damage to the pieces was clearly evident.

Not long after, it became someone else's problem. We sold the puzzle at a yard sale (probably right about the same time we sold the Fritos t-shirt that had been thrown in the toilet).

The young visitor's ruinment of our Statue of Liberty puzzle is symbolic of our liberty later being chipped away little by little.

Another far-rightist who needs to be fired

Lovely. America still has Clinton's Justice Department and (worse) Bush's FBI.

FBI Director Robert Mueller III is now asking lawmakers to renew Patriot Act provisions that are scheduled to expire in December.

Let me be frank: The Idiot Act is bullshit and should be flushed down the johndola where it belongs. Courts have periodically struck down portions of it as unconstitutional - but not nearly quickly enough. The Patriot Act should be repealed at once.

But not according to dinosaurs like Mueller (a Bush appointee). He wants unconstitutional provisions that allow the probing of Americans' financial and phone records to remain on the books.

Dissenters from the Mueller order have a tough road ahead. That's because Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. supports renewing these provisions too. Sadly, this isn't much of a surprise, considering Holder's involvement in the Clinton Justice Department. While Bush was the most hostile administration ever to basic liberties, the Clinton era also saw its share of infringements on our freedom. (Who remembers the NKU arrest scandal?)

One asks why Mueller was confirmed 98 to 0, because only 10 years ago, support for anything that's in the Patriot Act now would have probably been considered outside the political mainstream.

How can America be truly free if Bush's conspirators such as Mueller are allowed to stay in control of law enforcement?

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032501862.html)

Another babyish censorship episode

You'd think the moral panic crowd would get bored with raising childish stinks over stuff like this, but I guess not.

At Roxboro Middle School in northeastern Ohio, the November ish of Nintendo Power magazine has been yanked from the school library because the principal considered its cover to be "violent."

I know, man. A big fist might pop out of the magazine cover and punch someone, or something like that.

The librarian was outraged at the principal's act of censorship, because he didn't even bother to follow school district policy. But the school bored (in all its foolishness) sided with the principal.

Sometimes I think school boards have some sort of disorder that prevents them from experiencing happiness unless they're defending censorship.

Also, it's amazing that while Federalist Society whack-a-doos like Samuel Alito think school bullying is free speech, those who favor Alito's position also support some principal infringing on free speech by arbitrarily limiting an entire school's access to a Nintendo Power magazine that's perfectly legal.

(Source: http://columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/03/24/amag.html)

Music industry bullying continues

Songwriters and musicians are among the world's greatest creators of art, and they deserve to be paid for their work.

But the RIAA and the major record labels don't give a shit about them. They're more interested in exploiting the artists' work and pocketing many times as much money as the artists get.

When the industry speaks, it's never about protecting performers and writers. It's always about padding corporations' coffers - even as they refuse to adapt their business model to the digital age.

Now the industry is trying to mandate a "3 strikes" policy for alleged file sharers. In a few countries, they've already begun this. EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner got Eircom - Ireland's leading Internet provider - to begin yanking accounts of users accused of illegally downloading copyrighted music.

Just as bad, Eircom promised to begin blocking a website that directs users to illegal downloads.

Even if a site does tell folks where to download music illegally, blocking it is improper and may be illegal (depending on a country's laws). It's not much different from a phone company snooping at customers' phone conversations and cutting them off.

The industry - ever gleeful about its victories in Ireland and elsewhere - are now trying the same shit in the good ol' U.S. and A.

Under this plan, folks who are accused of 3 illegal music downloads would be banned for life from ever accessing the Internet again.

Since when do we go around punishing people based on mere accusations instead of actual convictions? And since when do we place the power to punish in the hands of corporations instead of a judicial system that represents the people?

Under this proposal, criminal charges wouldn't even have to be filed. Your ISP or some record label could just accuse you, and you'd be considered guilty (whether you're really guilty or not). There would be no recourse.

The Internet is so central to modern America that banning someone from it for life would be like banning them from the phone for life. Even the most durable phone harassers don't face such a penalty. (In Kentucky, they don't face any penalty, as I've seen.)

While it's reasonable to bar certain violent predators from the Internet because they endanger the public, unproven allegations of copyright infringement are a different matter entirely.

The industry is working with public officials to try to work out a "3 strikes" system, but it would require collusion by ISP's. After the telcom industry conspired with Bush in the illegal wiretap program, I don't expect ISP's not to buckle under.

This follows years of RIAA bullying. For most of the decade, the RIAA has been extorting money by accusing folks of copying music, demanding money from them, and threatening to sue for a larger amount if they don't pay up.

If the "3 strikes" policy takes effect, ISP's may try to hide behind contracts with customers that supposedly give the ISP's permission to cut off their access. Under current U.S. laws, however, that would likely be illegal. Still, the laws may need to be strengthened to provide greater protection for consumers against such quirky contract clauses.

Statue of Liberty dances, Big Bird gets laryngitis ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

I grew up watching 'Sesame Street' in the '70s. So if I happened to see it in the '80s, I considered its themes and trappings to be not quite as grand as they were previously.

When kids who grew up on it in the '80s saw it in the '90s, they didn't think it was quite what it was in their day.

Now folks who grew up on 'Sesame Street' in the '90s actually long for what it was in that era.

Old schoolers like me never would have predicted that 'Sesame Street' graphics we thought were too cheesily newfangled would now be considered classics, but I guess we were wrong!

'Sesame Street' around 1992 to 1995 featured a bizarre closing sequence. This was the standard closer for only about 3 years, but I happened to catch it once around the time I was in college (possibly because some other students were watching it on the giant TV in the University Center lounge). My heart sank, because I knew things would never be the same as they once were.

Now, however, this closing sequence looks like one of the all-time greats:



Although this theme was mostly retired around 1995, I happened to tune in to 'Sesame Street' one day about 2 years ago, and imagine my surprise when I found that they had brung this sequence back just for one episode!

This actually may well be the most humorous 'Sesame Street' ending ever. It starts off with a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty dancing to the theme music, and it doesn't get much less funny from there.

About 50 seconds into the sequence, a child starts dancing with Big Bird. Throughout this scene, Big Bird repeatedly opens his beak as wide as it will go, but no sound emerges. It reminds me of when my dog chewed a piece of bubble gum. Near the end of the clip though, Big Bird recovers from his laryngitis.

However, this theme misses the funky music bed that previously accompanied the all-text funding credits at the end. For this sequence, that music was replaced by what sounds like an oboe rendition of the 'Sesame Street' theme.

Also, I noticed years ago that the funding credits mention the 'Sesame Street' sign being a registered trademark of Children's Television Workshop. Does that mean that if some town had a road called Sesame Street that it couldn't post a sign for it without risking a lawsuit by CTW?

This '90s outro of 'Sesame Street' is now recalled so fondly that one commenter on YouTube said that "this is one of those things that should be illegal to change."

I'm sure that even the Cincinnati Tea Party crowd would agree. Nah, they hate everything that doesn't involve Glenn Beck.

Science skeptics censor New Scientist

I've had to put this story on the backburner for a bit, because I've had so much fun this month crashing stupid right-wing rallies and taking the Peace Bike about town, but anyway...

I'm going to be perfectly frank about this: Creationism is nonsense.

I'm not against Christianity. I'm not against religion in general. But the creationist party line is utter insanity - no matter how much the Bush regime (which was never friendly to science) tried legitimizing it.

Recently, New Scientist magazine ran an article called "How To Spot A Hidden Religious Agenda" by the magazine's book editor Amanda Gefter. It focused largely on code words used by creationists to push their anti-people schema.

But then a creationist complained. So the article was removed from the website.

One person complained, so the article is bye-bye. New Scientist didn't even have the courage to defend the article from a single, solitary complaint.

If New Scientist was afraid of being attacked if they kept the article online, it's not like they'd be the only ones assailed. Today's creationist zealots attack everyone who doesn't toe their party line completely. And not just on the issue of creationism either: They're movement conservatives, so even if you disagree with them on taxes or the Iraq War, their response is always the same. They manage to shoehorn every major political issue into their dogma.

Creationist fanaticism is more virulent than I've indicated before. I've noticed one website in particular in my area has turned into a Freeper-like lovefest praising the laughable Creation Museum, which is run by the Answers in Genesis cult.

It's one thing if readers of the site considered the museum just a comedy act, but apparently they take it seriously.

You can laugh all you want at the Creation Museum. But I draw the line when the museum attempts to recruit children into its cult. And that they do. So the cult is actually pretty dangerous.

Last thing America needs is another generation of "values voters" to bring scientific progress to a standstill.

(Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-4112-Skepticism-Examiner~y2009m3d14-New-Scientist-pulls-story-on-creationist-code)

School appeals strip search case

I've followed the case of the illegal strip search in Safford, Arizona, for years.

Six years ago, a 13-year-old girl was strip-searched by Nazi school officials who accused her of bringing prescription drugs to school. No drugs were found.

The victim of the search sued. Unbelievably, she initially lost - but the court reversed itself, and she emerged victorious.

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing this case.

Which means only one thing: After losing the case, the school actually wasted taxpayers' money and time appealing.

And for what? The school system is so eager to conduct strip searches of 13-year-olds that it's spending all this money in the hopes of being able to do so! Talk about sticking by a failed, indefensible policy.

The school wouldn't have appealed if they weren't intent on strip-searching other kids in the future.

Why aren't the school officials who conducted the strip search in jail where they belong? While the Supreme Court is hearing the case, folks in Arizona ought to be circulating a petition for the prosecution of the school officials. The school officials should be doing life with no parole.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html)

O'Reilly thuggery

The rank sickness of Bill O'Reilly is on display again.

Regarding the 2006 rape and murder of a young woman, O'Reilly callously blamed the victim.

But then a blogger who criticized O'Reilly's insensitivity promptly found herself in the crosshairs of the O'Reilly team.

O'Reilly's producer and cameraman sought out the blogger while she was on vacation out of town and accosted her on the street. The producer shouted questions at the blogger and accused her of causing "pain and suffering" to rape victims.

But how? It was Bill O'Reilly (not the blogger who exposed O'Reilly) who blamed an 18-year-old woman for being raped and murdered.

It's bad enough that O'Reilly had members of his production crew stalk a blogger on her vacation. But they wouldn't have known where she was going on vacation if they hadn't staked out her apartment and followed her for 2 hours when she left. (The blogger had told nobody where she was going.)

When the blogger was being confronted, she tried to ascertain why the O'Reilly thugs were bothering her. The thugs then told her it was because she was part of the "smear pipeline", which they claimed was "Soros-funded." Then they filmed her as she walked down the street.

This is how a supposedly mainstream network like Fox News behaves? Then again, Fox isn't exactly credible as a real news outlet.

Bill O'Reilly is a grown man with a broken child's mind.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/23/712005/-The-Stalkerish-Thuggery-of-Bill-OReillys-Program;
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/23/watters-ambush)

Alaska volcano puts on show

Last month, right-wing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal scoffed at the notion of funding volcano monitors. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington," the possible Republican presidential hopeless complained.

Well, he may have lost Alaska's electoral votes right there.

Jindal apparently didn't know that the country has several active volcanoes perilously close to large cities. Among them is Mount Redoubt, only 100 miles from Anchorage.

Since last night, Mount Redoubt has erupted at least 5 times, sending a plume of ashes 9 miles into the air.

Volcanoes can be spectacular. One pictures Mount Redoubt with its limbs glowing in the springtime sun and emitting beauty from its face.

But this beauty can be disastrous.

Many flights in and out of Anchorage International Airport have had to be canceled because of the eruptions. Locals have been warned of more eruptions.

Methinks this sort of knocks the wind out of the sails of Jindal's readiness to abandon vital government programs just to prove what a big conservative he is. Apparently, he forgot that he's supposed to represent the people, not the ideologically driven Republican party bosses.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/Mount-Redoubt-erupts-five-times-more-expected/vQtV5s39t0O_t0TQWWy0qA.cspx)

Dodd steps in it, but media still doesn't get it

I think it's just about time to give up on the pop-up media.

Christopher Dodd walked right into this one, but the media smells blood, and doesn't even seem to get its issues straight.

Last week's debunked media claim about Dodd writing protections for execs' bonuses had nothing to do with the legal clause Dodd stumbled over. Now the media continues to stick by its efforts to confuse the public as to what provision of the law is at issue.

CNN, for instance, ran a story falsely claiming that economic recovery bill language required bonuses for AIG execs to "stay in place."

Uh, no.

The finger-pointing doesn't stop there, of course. Pathological fabricator Rush Limbaugh claimed that "not one Republican" voted for the TARP bailout law.

As Depeche Mode has been singing lately: Wrong! (Doo doo doo doo...) Wrong!

Many congressional Republicans voted for the disastrous bailout bill, and Bush signed it into law.

The dinosaur media's stance seems to be that because Democrats like Dodd tripped up over a law Congress passed, it absolves the Republicans from all responsibility in allowing greedy execs to use bailout money to give themselves huge bonuses.

Luckily, the media's Republican partisanship isn't as effective as it was 15 years ago. Otherwise I would have gotten to this story earlier. The GOP is now just a regional party: The only significant support it still has is in the South and in other states' exurbs.

So all that blood the media smells is just an illusion.

(Source: http://mediamatters.org/items/200903180031;
http://mediamatters.org/items/200903180032)

The return of the tea terrorists

Looks like the Westin is going to have another busy day.

I read the puff piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer today about the local organizer of the recent Tea Party farce. Although right-wing foundations hire people to organize and participate in these events all over the country, the local organizer reportedly spent $3,000 of his own money on the event.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that's true. But where does anyone around here get $3,000 to throw away on something like this? Must be nice to be rich.

(Of course, I haven't seen one word in the regular media about that other, "secret" rally on Thursday, but that was out of my reach anyway because of its time and location.)

Participants in last Sunday's Tea Party threatened and spit on news crews that were there.

The expenses by the Tea Party's local organizer and right-wing foundations turned out to be all for nothing. Phony populism such as theirs seems to be more of a laughingstock than ever locally, while my blog is as popular as before.

But they didn't learn. Most stupid people don't.

They're going to keep wasting money to make themselves look like fools.

On Wednesday, April 15, the BTPers are going to be back in Cincinnati. At 11:30 AM, they're launching a march from Fountain Square to City Hall, carrying petitions they signed.

Yes, April 15. Because that's tax day, you see. Get it? I guess since they support a 30% national sales tax, April 15 is the best day for their idiotic march.

You know, it's nice that they're writers like I am so their schedules are flexible enough that they can take time off on a weekday. It's really great that they want to work nights and weekends to make up for the time they took off.

What? You mean they're not writers? Conservative foundations are hiring them to come to town again? Oh.

I don't know if I'll be able to make it downtown to keep an eye on these sore losers again, but they've already threatened me for helping to expose their expensive tastes. I'll promise you this: If they lay one hand on me, they go straight to jail.

35-hour work week: an idea whose time has come? ('Pail Poll)

You did well on last week's 'Pail Poll on populist feeling. Most of you aren't ashamed of your populism, as your answers to the question "Are you proud to be an economic populist?" break down as follows:

Yes. I flaunt it every chance I get: 5
Usually. I flaunt it everywhere except around known elitists: 0
Usually not. I flaunt it only in approved company: 2
No. I hide my populism in shame: 2

This week's 'Pail Poll asks whether you'd support the United States changing to a 35-hour work week (from 40 hours).

A lot of you are familiar with how overtime rules work and have expressed interest in shortening the work week. Well, pretty much the entire world has already shortened their work week from 40. The biggest exceptions are countries with sweatshop economies, and I don't think we want to take cues from their regimes.

In France, the legally established work week was 35 hours before Sarkozy weakened the law. In Samoa, the average work week is 30.

So why is the United States working workers longer and harder? With the long commute times, there's no time left for family and rest.

We really do need to take a serious look at a shortened work week.

Gag orders sought against doctor reviews

So now it's illegal to criticize bad medical care?

With websites around to review everything from hotels to books, it should be no surprise that some sites let you review doctors.

If you see one negative review about a physician, there's a chance it could just be a disgruntled patient spouting off for no reason. But if a doctor has 20 bad reviews, that should raise a red flag.

So some physicians are trying to prevent bad reviews by making patients sign a waiver agreeing not to publicly criticize the doctor.

America's medical system expends all this effort trying to muzzle criticism, when it won't even improve its own level of service?

You can post reviews about dumb books and whatnot, but you can't even post reviews about professionals who have your life in their hands? What would the reaction be if authors forced anyone who buys their book off Amazon to agree never to post a bad review of it?

I've had decent doctors before, but if I get an incompetent quack, shouldn't I be allowed to say so?

The practice of forcing patients to sign these waivers should be outlawed.

(Source: http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=106&sid=1615563)

Idiot Pawlenty thinks cars run by themselves

I think we're almost at the point where we ought to seriously consider a recall election against any elected official with that nasty Republican label next to their name.

Not just because they seem to be wrong almost every time they open their mouths - but because they're stupidly wrong. That can't be good for the country, can it?

Now Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has made a fool of himself yet again.

In trying to find an excuse to switch from a gasoline tax to a mileage-based tax (which has been a conservative cause celebre lately), self-styled road expert Pawlempty declared, "We realize that in the future, cars aren't going to be powered by fuel."

Hahaha, that's hilarious!

He thinks cars are just going to move by themselves?

So in the future, all we're going to need to do to get a car to run is wave our arms, say some magic words, and the car starts moving. Seriously, he said that.

Nobody here is saying cars have to run on gasoline. But they have to run on something, whether it's gas, hydrogen, electricity, or pee.

Not only does Pawlenty's mileage tax plan reward inefficient cars. A satellite-based mileage tax would also be unconstitutional under the right to privacy.

You're a loon, T'Pau.

(Source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/18/mileage_tax)

More bunker blast bubblin' (Bubble Gum Weekend)

Because it's so damn uproarious that bubble gum was ever invented at all, you keep demanding that I regale you with more old bubble gum ads.

Bubble gum is a U.S. invention, but Mexico had its share of creative gum commercials too. This commersh from the '80s was for a brand of gum that is not known to have ever been distributed in the U.S. of A.:



Hilariously, this commersh seems to be rife with bathroom humor.

At the beginning, a yellow gumball seems to emerge when the cartoon leopard takes a dump. On several occasions during this ad when people bubble, a farting sound is heard. (Actually, it appears as if they didn't really bubble. The bubblings seem to just be computer generated over the live action scenes.)

Some of the geniuses from my old high school would have loved that ad, since it had gum and flatulence simultaneously.

Politician banned from Canada for antiwar views

George Galloway is a Scottish author and longtime member of Britain's Parliament best known for his opposition to the illegal Iraq War.

In the Labour Party's rush to the far right, the party expelled Galloway in 2003 because of his antiwar position and because he correctly stated that Bush was a liar.

Galloway was scheduled to speak at 2 University of Toronto campuses later this month about Middle East violence. But today, Canada's Harper administration announced that Galloway was not allowed to set foot in the country because of his antiwar views. (Ooh, an Allowed Cloud!)

Of course, Stephen Harper has already tried to dissolve Canada's Parliament because it doesn't want to reinstall him as Prime Minister. Because Harper runs Canada like a dictatorship, who's surprised that he keeps war opponents out (even though he lets war criminals like Bush in)?

If the Harper regime is going to ban George Galloway, then they're going to have to ban me too, because (like Galloway) I've been against the Iraq War from the get-go.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/20/george-galloway-banned-canada)

School calls cops on student for chewing gum during test

Kids who goof off during a test at school should probably expect to get skeeped at.

But if they goof off during a statewide standardized test - whooooo, man! In today's schools, that's considered sacrilege!

In Fort Walton Beach, Florida (where else?) a 13-year-old girl found herself in trouble with the law because she acted up during the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

FCAT is like a state religion. All residents of the Sunshine State are expected to bow before it and show reverence in its presence.

Reportedly, the student finished the test within 2 minutes and began loudly popping bubble gum. When the teacher glared at her, the student exclaimed, "What?!"

(Already, this entry is starting to sound like a hilarious Last Word narrative about a years-old school incident. Except nobody farted.)

The student also tried chitchatting with classmates and fell out of her chair.

The school's reaction? Why, it called the cops, of course.

It's really interesting these days how minor disciplinary incidents result in police intervention, isn't it?

The student was then cited for the capital offense of disrupting a school function.

If anything disrupts school, it's FCAT. With FCAT, teachers and students are forced to waste valuable class time studying to the test instead of to relevant class material.

The school called the police because someone chewed gum, yet serial bullies don't even get after-school detention?

(Source: http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/girl_15960___article.html/beach_walton.html)

Wingnuts cry "hoax!" over Westin video

The flap about Tea Party protesters staying at one of Cincinnati's most expensive hotels has legs - or at least it would if the pop-up media would pick it up (which of course it won't). It's gotten quite a bit of play in the blogosphere.

I was there filming it, and I caught the BTPers entering the swanky Westin Hotel. From that alone, it's clear they either stayed at the Westin or tromped through its lobby despite not staying there. Others have pointed out that the Westin parking garage is different from the Fountain Square garage (despite what the BTPers have claimed), so if the latter was true, they must have been using the Westin garage despite not staying there.

When some of them posted nasty comments in which they stopped not even an inch short of boasting about staying at the Westin, all bets were off for those who claimed they were just using the garage. Clearly, many of these so-called "grassroots" protesters had lodged at this expensive inn.

Not exactly a populist bunch, are they? (As if their "Thank the rich" sign didn't prove where they actually stood.)

Now that they've been called on their contradictions, the wingnuts have resorted to a new tack. And it's far more laughable than their previous defense.

Now they claim the clip that I made is a hoax. I got a message from some Freeper bot today calling it a "fabrication video."

So according to them, I hired dozens of people to carry signs into the Westin that were perfect replicas of those held by the LOSEianne protesters. And I posed them perfectly so nobody would notice it was staged.

Seriously, that's what they're claiming.

Do they have any idea how ridiculous that is?

In another hilarious wingnut meltdown, they're claiming my video of the protesters goofing off during the national anthem is "dishonest." Then they had the nerve to accuse me of disrespecting America by posting the clip.

Uh, I wasn't the one who was walking around and playing with paper flexagons during "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The irrationality of the loudmouths who are attacking me for my clips is about on par with that of the programmies who popped off at us during our protests against Kids Helping Kids. In fact, they're probably worse. I've been told that some of the programmies are just frustrated parents who'll come to their senses once they realize KHK was a cult. But the indignation of the BTPers is more permanent. It's guided them their whole lives.

AIG sues government for millions

Sometimes you have to do a double-take when reading about the nerve of some folks.

After AIG asked for and got a government bailout and promptly squandered this money on executive bonuses, now it turns out that AIG has the gall to sue the government, demanding that the government pay back over $300,000,000 in taxes.

Some of these payments were related to deals conducted via offshore tax havens. Obviously, AIG was at some point avoiding taxes, if it used tax havens.

It gets worse. It appears that AIG is using bailout money to pursue its lawsuit.

A major corporation receives taxpayer dollars and expects not to have to pay taxes? Sort of like, oh, all those corporations that haven't paid taxes since 1998, I guess.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/business/20aig.html)

More RNC protesters acquitted!

With any luck, we might be at the point where it no longer pays for the thought guardians to suppress dissent.

During the Republican National Convention last year in St. Paul, police arrested many dissenters against the GOP order on trumped-up, ridiculous charges. Little by little, however, these bogus charges are falling by the wayside.

Now 2 more RNC protesters have been acquitted. They had been charged with parading without a permit, disorderly conduct, and unlawful assembly.

Unlawful assembly? Doesn't the Bill of Rights protect freedom of assembly? This is like charging someone with unlawful speech or unlawful religion.

Well, the judge dismissed the parading charge, and jurors found the demonstrators not guilty of the other charges.

In January, charges against 7 other defendants were dismissed by a judge. No defendants in the protests against the 2008 GOP convention have been convicted following a trial.

Maybe for their next convention the Republicans ought to try allowing free speech. It's amazing how well freedom works.

(Source: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/03/19/two-more-rnc-protesters-acquitted.html)

What? A power outage? You gotta be kidding me!

My place has had at least 2 or 3 power outages just in the past 6 months - and that's actually fewer than what some local neighborhoods have experienced, or what I've experienced in similar time frames.

Our local electric monopoly is Duke Energy. For those unfamiliar with Dook and the kind of problems it has, they're a lot like Unitil in New England. Unitil is so wretched that some towns have tried to get a different power provider - a story that got some national attention.

Duke is a lot like Unitil: high bills and unreliable performance.

And Duke expects us (its customers) to pay when it doesn't deliver. After Dook took days to restore power during the Blackout of '08, it demanded a rate increase to make up for the resulting loss of business. Naturally, regulators rubber-stamped this demand - just as they rubber-stamp Duke's many other requests for rate increases.

Making us pay for power that wasn't even being delivered is exactly like if a bubble gum company sues everyone who was born before bubble gum was invented.

Fast forward to this week.

Tuesday was one of few days in the past few months that has had decent weather. There was no significant wind, no rain, no lightning, and certainly no ice.

So guess what? The power went out at Northern Kentucky University for well over an hour. Electric was knocked out to over half the campus for almost 90 minutes. As a result, NKU was forced to cancel evening classes.

The silver lining is that it was at NKU instead of at a school that actually has a First Amendment. NKU's suppression of dissent has become legendary. But that's beside the point.

Reportedly, the cause of the power outage has not been found.

Well, I think I've found the cause: it's Duke Energy. With Dook, weather doesn't have to be bad for power to go out. Often, it'll just - poof! - go out.

There doesn't have to be a reason. It happens because it happens.

Under Duke, the area basically has a Third World electricity infrastructure. But we're forced to keep throwing money at it, even as it never improves.

Of course, this is the same company that was allowed to charge customers for building a new nuclear plant even if the plant was never actually built. (The fact that they even wanted to build a nuclear plant is proof they didn't learn a thing from Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.)

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090318/NEWS0103/303180009;
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=2692277)

Bush aide sent to prison

The Reagan administration was so corrupt that I remember how for years after Reagan left office, members of his administration still kept facing legal troubles.

Because Bush was even more corrupt, I think the same is going to happen with members of the GeeDumbya regime.

Felipe Sixto was a powerful aide in the Bush White House. Before then, he worked for something called the Center for a Free Cuba, which is said to be a government program designed to promote democracy in Cuba.

Well, now it turns out that Sixto stole almost $600,000 from that program. And now he's been sentenced to 2½ years in federal prison and fined $10,000 for this theft.

Oops.

Another day, another Republican big shot disgraced.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/Former-Bush-aide-gets-30-months-in-prison/vH1dAxVkb0yM3EN4BNdkzA.cspx)

ACORN raid politically motivated (imagine that!)

And in other news: the sun is hot and snow is cold.

During the election, the right-wing thought cops had a hard-on against ACORN. It was a bogus story, of course, but the story was fed by the media.

Just before the election, an ACORN office in Nevada was raided by federal agents. The official reasons for this raid stemmed from allegations of voter registration fraud.

The unofficial reason though was a different matter. Based on the timing of the raid, it was plainly obvious that it was politically motivated.

Last fall, we kept hearing about ACORN and election fraud, but no evidence was ever found that ACORN had committed any such fraud. As a dirty tricks operation, Republican operatives in the Cleveland area had tried to submit phony voter registrations through ACORN, but ACORN caught them early.

Now Nevada officials report that the raid in that state was instigated by a U.S. attorney appointed by Bush and by the FBI. This despite the fact that the U.S. attorney - Gregory Brower - previously claimed no involvement by either the FBI or his own office.

Federal rules require agencies that investigate alleged election fraud avoid action that impacts upcoming elections. But in this case, agencies ignored these rules.

But this is a pattern. Back in 2006, a U.S. attorney for Missouri announced the indictments of 4 former ACORN workers on voter registration fraud charges only 5 days before the election. These charges were also bogus, and lawmakers later blasted the U.S. attorney's office in that case.

As for Brower, it turns out he was appointed by Bush to replace the U.S. attorney for Nevada that the Bush regime had fired in its round of politically motivated firings. The firing scandal is now under official investigation.

Many of the firings had resulted when the attorneys refused to prosecute the Bush regime's ongoing claims of voter fraud.

Under Bush, everything was about pursuing an agenda. There was no limit to how irrational or arrogant the regime's methods were.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/NV_State_Officials_say_feds_involved_0316.html)

Citigroup wastes millions on suite

Greedygroup is at it again.

Now Citigroup - one of the biggest recipients of federal bailout money - is using this money to build a $10,000,000 executive suite for its CEO.

This after Shittypoop agreed to limit executive perks. Well, that pledge by Citigroup lasted all of about 3 seconds, didn't it?

They never learn, do they?

The government needs to just take back all the bailout money Greedygroup got.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=adLGVE_YzvUU)

Shrink's drug research questioned

Every few months, a new story emerges about how some psychiatrist who praises a drug turns out to have been paid by the drug maker. And oops, they did it again!

Every time a new psychiatric drug comes out, apologists for it always talk about how much better it is than those bad drugs of old. Twenty years ago, for instance, Trilafon (perphenazine) was hailed as a great advancement over earlier poisons (despite its permanent side effects).

Later, newer drugs were praised as improvements over Trilafon: "Trilafon? Oh, we don't use that anymore. The new drugs aren't like that."

This is an important issue because of the rise of coerced druggings of Americans - especially children.

Now Dr. S. Charles Schulz of the University of Minnesota is under scrutiny because of his research on Seroquel. An internal study by Seroquel maker AstraZeneca found that this drug is no better than dangerous older drugs. But this report wasn't made public.

However, Schulz reported publicly that Seroquel is actually much better.

Why did Schulz's public report contradict private findings?

Gee, I don't know. But it turns out that over a span of about 5 years, Schulz received $112,000 in consulting fees and university grants from AstraZeneca.

AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!

Schulz also received almost $450,000 from Eli Lilly & Co. So if Schulz has given high marks to Lilly drugs too, that should also be questioned. Since then, however, Schulz has decided to stop accepting lecture fees from drug companies, because of the perception of bias.

The drug industry has long been hiding negative research, and researchers have long been accepting drug racket money while putting out positive but false data about drugs.

While Schulz was praising Seroquel, another study showed that Seroquel and 3 other newer drugs were no better than the awful Trilafon.

Seroquel sales have since tapered off after it was found to cause diabetes.

This story follows last year's report in the New England Journal of Medicine that exposed the fact that drug research that yields positive results is almost always published, while negative studies are almost always distorted or not published.

(Source: http://www.twincities.com/ci_11945154?nclick_check=1)

BTP meltdown pictures, part 7

This is my final installment of photos of Sunday's siege of Cincinnati by the LOSEianne protesters. And if you think they were making fools of themselves on Sunday, now they're really melting down over the Westin flap.


The sign near the lower left is another damning display of the Tea Party's elitist economic interests. It says, "Thank the rich." Thank the rich for what???


This one says, "Taxed Enough Already." This was the same slogan used in the mid-'90s in a spate of pseudo-populist letters to local newspapers. So the people involved in this event are the same professional operatives who have been gumming up the works for at least 15 years.


This sign implores, "Stop wealth redistribution." Because we all saw how well this message worked for the McCain campaign, right?


The national sales tax crew strikes again!

That's all, folks!

Singapore fines Wall Street Journal editor

The totalitarian government of Singapore has long been a darling of American conservatives, who often seek to emulate it.

But you'd think at least the Wall Street Journal would be safe from censorship there, given that paper's right-of-center stance. Well, think again. Government censorship is so pervasive in Singapore that copies of the paper distributed there often feature blank spaces where articles once stood.

Now Singapore has fined a Wall Street Journal editor the equivalent of roughly $6,600 for "contempt" regarding 3 articles - after fining the paper's publisher, Dow Jones & Co., for these same pieces.

In Singapore, the definition of "contempt" apparently means offending the government. The court said, "Public interest requires that the individuals who were responsible for the publication of the offending materials be also held accountable for their actions."

It seems that the editor was fined because the articles dared to criticize Singapore's court system.

Right-wing dictatorships in Singapore have won damages from foreign media outlets before just for publishing articles that political leaders didn't like.

Since the Wall Street Journal is an American publication, why the hell should it even pay the fine? That's no different than if Singapore tried fining me over articles in The Last Word.

And believe me, it would if it could. In the late '90s, one of my old Internet accounts was on a shit list that was distributed on Usenet by Singapore officials - which led to my postings on public newsgroups being blocked.

The free flow of ideas is not permitted in Singapore.

(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE52I2YM20090319)

Economy protest moved to Beechmont

I've just received word that the Take Back the Economy rally that was supposed to occur downtown tomorrow has been utterly movimated.

I support this protest - yet it's hard to find much information about it.

Now it's been moved way out to 8070 Beechmont Avenue, where the local AIG office is.

That's much harder to get to, especially early in the morning - and especially in cold weather. I live in Kentucky, you know, where cars aren't for the poor. So now I won't be able to go. I've biked just as far on other roads, but this is Beechmont we're talking about, and it's going to be very early and very cold. And it's a very long trip. And my arthritis is very bad.

I could have still gone, except I didn't even have time to plan ahead.

I have no idea why the event was moved. If it turns out that it's because Cincinnati wouldn't let the protest happen downtown, that's cause for a lawsuit against the city right there - especially because the Tea Party mockery was allowed to go on with no restrictions.

In any event, the rally is out of reach - but it'll go on.

For information about events in your area, check this site:

http://takebacktheeconomy.org

BTP meltdown pictures, part 6

This installment of photos and videos from the Tea Party shitfit in Cincinnati includes some of the ones that are among the most damning to their "cause."

What is their "cause" anyway? To hear themselves yell? Because they sure as shit didn't accomplish much...


They spent all that money printing up this fancy sign? Oh well. Nobody said the BTPers were smart.


The losers' FairTax support is one of the biggest smoking guns. This so-called Tea Party was billed as an anti-tax event, yet the FairTax is a proposed 30% national sales tax. Oops!


Aw, let's have a pity party for the BTPers! The poor rich crybabies have to pay taxes like we do. Poor things.


Quick! Call the museum! We've found a Rush Limbaugh fan!


Proof the FairTax backers weren't uninvited guests. The speaker declared, "FairTax! FairTax! FairTax!" and I knew I had to start filming so the evidence of the event's national sales tax support could be preserved. She seems to think that failure to support FairTax is some type of conspiracy to hoard power, when it's actually FairTax backers who are guilty of such powermongering.

We have to start wrapping up this photo shoot, because a real grassroots event might take place tomorrow.

Another child bruised by school beating

In America's schools, count on hefty doses of corporal punishment. Stories like this emerge every few months, and little is being done to curtail this abuse.

At Fairlane Elementary School in Macon County, Tennessee, a 5-year-old girl was bruised heavily when she was paddled by her kindergarten teacher.

Bruises = abuse. End of story.

What "crime" did the little girl possibly commit beforehand? I'm warning you, dear readers, this is a real shocker: She made barking sounds at lunch.

That's all she did. Nothing more.

When I was in school, people thought there was something wrong with you if you didn't bark at lunch. The school expects a 5-year-old to display impeccable manners?

The girl was paddled once - then paddled again after allegedly saying the first paddling didn't hurt. This shows that the teacher is even more lacking in self-control than it first appeared.

The teacher was barely punished: She was suspended for 5 days, but not fired. She ought to be in jail.

And Disaster Daniels thinks schools are being sued too much?

(Source: http://www.wsmv.com/news/18952076/detail.html)

BTP meltdown pictures, part 5

Hey, I think part 4 really was the best the LOSEianners could do! Losers.


Treason treason treason lololololololololololololololol!!!


"Sovereignty for Kentucky!"? What the hell do you think I was trying to do after the Contract With America? (Remember New America?) They wouldn't respect our sovereignty then - so they blew it.


Mandatory right-wing misspelling: "steriods."


"Read on!"


OK, then I guess paleo-Marxism is allowed.

A funny bunch the BTPers are, aren't they?

BTP meltdown pictures, part 4

You really thought I had only 3 batches of LOSEianne photos? Well, they're getting gradually more interesting.


The above video shows what some horses who were parked on the street think about the Tea Party tantrum. The equines were stomping their hooves and snorting. You could almost hear them saying, "This is what we think of the BTPers."


A picture of Fountain Square's giant screen, which depicts one of the LOSEianners displaying a sign saying, "Nazi Pelosi." Ooh, godwin's law, godwin's law, lolololololololololololol!


Conservative America may come back - but Bushist America won't.


I've paid my bills for years. Now what?


Uh, Freeper person? 1977 called. It wants its GOP angst back.

Honestly, this is the best they can do?

The finer things keep shinin' through...

The LOSEianne protesters who gathered on Fountain Square on Sunday enjoy the finer things in life.

Let's get a few things clear:

1) The Tea Party protests are being bankrolled by right-wing foundations and corporate interests. That was unearthed weeks ago. They keep denying it, but it's true.

2) The protests appeal only to the financially secure. That's clear from photos I'll post later - and from some I've already posted.

3) A majority of the protesters were out-of-town hired agitators, and many of them stayed at one of Cincinnati's most expensive hotels.

That inn is the Westin downtown.

And their Westin stay is the talk of the blogosphere now.

I've already posted a video on YouTube to this effect:



The BTPers' defense? Well, they claim they were just using the Fountain Square garage, which they claim is accessed via the Westin lobby.

Wrong. The Fountain Square garage and the Westin garage are 2 different facilities. Others have pointed this out - yet the LOSEianners keep insisting they are the same garage, although they are not.

Assuming they used the Westin garage, this means one of 2 things:

1) They stayed at the Westin; or

2) They traipsed through the Westin's lobby despite not being guests there.

Take your pick.

Well, guess what? They stayed at the Westin. I've received several nasty comments from them, and many fall into the mold of, "Who cares? Successful people like us deserve the nicest hotels." Another now-familiar cry from them is, "Grassroots doesn't mean poor."

Those comments are damning, even as other BTPers denied staying at the Westin.

That they stayed in any hotel proves they're from out of town. Nothing wrong with that, but why do so many of them keep denying it?

Verbatim samples of right-wing comments I've received:

"... if I stayed at the Westin I am then part of some vast right wing conspiracy? You are paranoid."

"This is further evidence to the extent if [sic] lies and false propaganda the fascist left need to portray so thier [sic] 'social engineering experiement [sic]' can be continued. If working - financially INDEPENDENT people chose to stay at the Westin....GREAT. ..."

Make up your mind, idiots. Did you stay at the Westin or not?

I'm not going to give these spoiled babies a forum for their lies. They were on the lookout for someone calling them out just so they could swoop in and try to discredit them with a labyrinth of falsehoods and contradictions. I've been generous in allowing folks to comment on my works, but the other side already has Freak Rethuglic, a zillion right-wing blogs, talk radio, and much of the mainstream media to spout their propaganda.

But this time, nobody believes their lies. Boo hoo.

'Sesame Street' filmed a right-wing rally? ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

Look, everyone! It turns out that 'Sesame Street' once filmed the participants of a right-wing rally:



The only inaccuracy is the car, for the right-wing brain trust tends to prefer luxury models. For today's young viewers, they need to reshoot this clip by replacing the fuel-efficient '70s AMC with a modern hulking gas guzzler.

Other than that, it's pretty accurate: The Tea Party mockeries consist of about 10 clowns.

On second thought, maybe they should keep the AMC. One of the LOSEianne protesters I witnessed the other day held a sign bashing Jimmy Carter, so they're obviously stuck in that era.

Right-wing media machine making up shit again

Because the sun rose in the east and set in the west today, this is yet another day in which Rush Limbaugh and the Foxfux have made up nonsense out of thin air.

An article from the Fox network's foxbusiness.com site complains that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) is trying to undo protections for bank execs' bonuses that he himself put in the stimulus bill.

Trouble with that statement is, Dodd added no such protections to the bill to begin with.

Naturally, Drudge Report picked up this erroneous statement as if it was a fact.

Limbaugh made the same bogus claim as Fox.

Where is this claim coming from??? It sounds to me like this is yet another sham talking point sent by the Republican National Committee to its media mouthpieces.

Actually, Dodd's measure limited execs' bonuses. It didn't protect bonuses at all.

I'm not very partisan, but I will call out the right-wing noise machine on its lies.

(Source: http://mediamatters.org/items/200903170026)

Ohio gives food stamps to rich

Ohio seemed to be near the forefront of the "soak the poor" wave of the Contract With America era. The state's Republican lawmakers were always eager to cut off welfare to poor Ohioans who truly needed aid.

But what a minute! What's this?!

Now Ohio has become mighty generous with food stamps - not for the poor, but for the very rich.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services has now declared that the wealthy can get food stamps - if they don't have a job. My Buckeye friends must be thrilled to know their tax dollars are going to welfare for the rich.

If a poor person doesn't have a job, the media calls them lazy bums. But if a rich person doesn't have a job, that's considered important government research, I guess.

This fleecing was unearthed by the discovery that a woman from suburban Cincinnati was getting food stamps even though she has $80,000 in the bank, a $300,000 mansion (which is paid off), and a Mercedes.

Hell, I make hardly anything from my work, and I'm sure I don't qualify for food stamps. So why does a Mercedes-driving mansion-dweller qualify?

When Warren County commissioners learned of this scam, they threatened to pull the county out of the food stamp program altogether and aid the poor through its own general fund.

What's the reaction from the local chattering class about efforts to rein in this abuse? "WAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"

Funny. The first people to advocate cutting off welfare for the poor are now upset because folks want to cut off welfare for the rich? What a bunch of CRYBABIES!!!

Talk about having a sense of entitlement!

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090317/NEWS01/903170375)

Thought police censors Steve Martin play

Cue the outraged soccer parent music again!

The book burners are on a rampage in La Grande, Oregon.

At La Grande High School, a class production of Steve Martin's play 'Picasso At The Lapin Agile' had been planned. This play has aroused absolutely no controversy whatsoever at gabillions of high schools all over this fine land.

But a small group of right-wing parents in La Grande complained about the play because it featured "people drinking in bars."

Thirty years ago, if a high school was confronted by censors making a stink over something like this, the school probably would have just ignored the censors. These days, however, all it takes is one person to object, and the play gets canceled (which dispels the myth that society has grown more permissive since the '70s).

True to form, the school bored scrapped the play.

When Steve Martin heard about this, he offered to foot the bill for the students to present the play - not at their own high school but at Eastern Oregon University. A Student Democrats group has helped raise money for this production. Leftover money that is raised will be used for acting scholarships.

In other words, the book burners' efforts to censor the play backfired - because now they've drawn positive attention to the play from far and wide.

The moral panic crowd never learns, do they?

(Source: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=114&sid=1624759)

What a real grassroots rally should sound like

The Cincinnati media hyped the phony Tea Party for weeks before it happened. But I just now found out about what appears to me to be a real grassroots event that's supposed to take place 3 days from now - which the media has completely swept under the rug.

It's called Take Back the Economy. This fine event is supported by labor and other grassroots organizations, and has amassed strong support by various individuals.

Judging by the website, Take Back the Economy is what a real grassroots event should sound like. The event supports worker choice and health care reform.

It happens this Thursday, March 19. It will take place in various cities nationwide outside the offices of banks and other corporations.

The Cincinnati event is slated to be outside the U.S. Bank office at 425 Walnut Street from 11 AM to 1 PM. And as long as we're on the public right of way, guess what? It's legal. It's called free speech, you know.

I wish I had known about this before, but like I said, the local media has completely ignored it. So I don't know If I can make plans to be there. Thanks a heap, media.

Because of the lack of media coverage, you can't expect 150,000 people to show up. But surely, some will.

And there may be a Take Back the Economy rally in your city too. Check here for details:

http://takebacktheeconomy.org

More Bushstapo meanness

Bush has been out of office 2 months, but new information still keeps emerging about what a heartless bunch of pricks filled his fascist regime.

As the Bush-fueled recession swelled the number of homeless forced to seek shelter at America's major airports, a little-known tidbit has emerged that was swept under the rug until now.

It turns out that back in 2005, the Bush regime labeled airport homeless as a security threat. The excuse was that terrorists might disguise themselves as homeless people to conduct surveillance on potential targets.

That is a filthy fucking lie. Terrorists can just as easily disguise themselves as well-off executives or folks trying to catch a flight to see a sick relative.

The homeless were being singled out because they were homeless. End of story.

Luckily, airports seemed to have ignored Bush's irrational alarmism. The nation's airfields didn't pay much attention to the government's class-charged warning.

The world's busiest airport - Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson - reported not a single security threat from all the homeless people who live there.

I'm in favor of trying to find better shelter for the homeless. But the government calling the homeless a security threat was economic profiling - and downright evil.

Who in the Bush regime made this declaration? Was this in the era of Tom Ridge, who has a history of hating the poor? Or was some other ogre responsible? Whoever it was needs to be exposed like the heartless creep they are.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/513/story/727976.html)

BTP meltdown pictures, part 3

By this time, it's clear the Tea Party in Cincinnati yesterday wasn't primarily an anti-tax protest, but was a rally for a host of right-wing grievances.

So here's more photos of their mind-numbing display...


This sign of theirs says, "Global warming equals scam." Um??? What does this have to do with taxes or the stimulus package?


The apparently cardboard sign declares, "It's America, stupid." Uh, yeah. The BTPers should be thankful they have a President who lets them speak out. Millions of people worldwide don't.


This screed says, "Follow Oklahoma's lead; sovereignty is what we need." We're supposed to follow the "lead" of a state that now has one of the highest rates of hard drug abuse and teenage pregnancy?


This sign implores, "You want socialism? Move to Europe." I'd hate to say this, but the conservos are the ones who wanted a judicial system with corporal punishment so badly in the '90s. You want caning? Move to Singapore.


Um, conservos? Ever hear the words, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's"? I'm not a very churchy guy, yet even I know about this quote.

I still don't think we've gotten to the funniest photos yet. That may be a couple days, because I might take the Peace Bike out tomorrow. (But that's a big, big if.)

AIG smackdown looms?

Since the Bush regime gave insurance giant AIG tens of billions of dollars, AIG has spent tens of billions - on banks in foreign countries and bonuses for its wealthy executives.

One of the supposed purposes of the bailout was to keep the American economy afloat - yet the money that AIG looted from the American taxpayers went to Europe instead. Or to execs who were millionaires to begin with.

While Republicans are big on showering corporations with dough, Democrats are big on the strongly worded letter. Many Democratic-leaning blogs are familiar with the strongly worded letter as an empty warning.

It goes like this: Some Democratic official will send out a letter to some corporation or corrupt big shot telling them where they stand. Everyone gets their hopes up, because it looks like some corporate or government crook is about to be reined in. But, after the strongly worded letter is sent out, no real action is ever taken.

Now that AIG is using taxpayer money to dish out $165,000,000 to top execs, the Obama administration appears to be taking action. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been asked by Obama to block AIG from wasting our money on these bonuses.

I know what you're saying: "Ooh! A strongly worded letter!" But one hopes it's more than just that.

The government needs to take back every penny it gave to AIG.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17obama.html)

Channel 12 receives threats too

Why did I get the feeling that Channel 9 wasn't the only news crew threatened by the Tea Party terrorists in Cincinnati?

Turns out my suspicion was right.

Channel 12 reports being threatened as well.

Channel 12????? Nobody's safe, I guess.

Channel 12's reporter had to seek police protection because of threats by participants in the rally. Several reporters and photographers were in fact spit on and chased.

(Source: http://www.local12.com/mostpopular/story/Tea-Party-Protesters-Angry-Over-Stimulus/APT0AtMFz0KPlQEyo26n_Q.cspx)

BTP meltdown pictures, part 2

This is the second installment of my photos of the itinerant circus freaks who peopled the Tea Party yesterday in Cincinnati.

My Facebook feed has been very spotty about picking up these pictures. (Surprise, surprise.) So if you can't see all these photos on Facebook, go to my blog's main site:

http://onlinelunchpail.blogspot.com


Treason, treason, treason! This anti-Obama sign says, "I hope he fails." But I guess we can expect such an unpatriotic attitude from the BTPers, after they goofed off during the national anthem.


"Government is the problem"? For once, I agree: It's the government that launches failed wars, keeps glaucoma patients from getting medicine, compels union workers to pay for nonunion employees, and doesn't allow...ah, you get the idea.


Now here's a dumb one: "Legalize capitalism." Could you possibly come up with a stupider sign if you tried?


"Don't punish individual success"??? What a big baby.


"Free markets, not freeloaders"? How about all those corporations that haven't paid taxes in 11 years? They're for the free market.

Oh, and these aren't even the funniest pictures. There's still more to come.

Tea Party hacks threaten news crew

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, BTPers.

You'd think that after all the positive press by the local media in the run-up to yesterday's Tea Party farce in Cincinnati, participants wouldn't treat news crews like shit.

But of course, they do.

One or more Cincinnati television news crew was run off from the event by threats.

I don't know whether Channel 5 was run off. Perhaps not, because Channel 5 has a recent history of cheering on right-wing causes. The story on its website about the event was one-sided - with no space given to those who disagreed with the rally. You may recall that in 2004, Channel 5 preempted the popular 'American Dreams' with a Bush rally and claimed the famous Bush National Guard memos were fake (although most experts had determined they were real).

It is known, however, that Channel 9 was run off. The station reports that a group of BTPers threatened the news crew's safety - forcing the crew to leave early.

According to another account, a reporter from Channel 9 was spit on by participants of the rally.

If they treat the media this way, think how they treat most people.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/Thousands-Support-Cincinnati-Tea-Party/jEByecYgr0ikWevbeXm5wQ.cspx)

Homeowners association tries to foreclose

Homeowners associations are kind of a trickle-down tyranny: They used to be associated with areas that were fairly exclusive. But now, working-class areas have also been saddled with the labyrinthine diktats of homeowners associations - especially in fast-growing regions.

Much of it is because governments actually encourage it.

As a result, you see neighborhoods hamstrung by illogical rules that micromanage everything from mailbox color to swing sets to what kind of car you can have. Often these rules are passed by boards that meet behind closed doors.

I have no idea whether the neighborhood in this story is rich or poor, but anyway...

In San Antonio, Texas, a homeowners association is now trying to foreclose on 84 homes because the residents failed to pay their association dues. This represents over one-fifth of all the houses in the neighborhood.

Foreclosure???

Foreclosures are something mortgage lenders do (and often). It's not something homeowners associations are supposed to be able to do.

If you think someone owes you money, sue them. You can't just foreclose. Can I foreclose on a high school I attended just because it stole from me? Can I foreclose on a former neighbor who vandalized my bike?

Some of the residents refused to pay the dues because the association hasn't developed a community park like it promised, and because the association is so unresponsive. Others didn't pay because the association gave them the wrong date as to when the payment was due.

Why is the county even enforcing these foreclosures? Is it a county that just rubber-stamps things like this?

We should pass new laws to rein in homeowners associations.

(Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/real_estate/HOA_moves_to_foreclose_on_84_Mission_Creek_homes.html)

BTP meltdown pictures, part 1

I got the goods on you, Freepers!

This is going to take several parts, but man, is it sweet! The set of photos from the Tea Party in Cincinnati shows the Freepers in all their so-called glory.

I thought the circus had left town weeks ago, but I guess not.


Ahem. Ahem, ahem, ahem. The above photo shows the crowd on Fountain Square. The square is not completely full, as you can see.


Almost immediately, I saw the BTPers playing the class card. "Stop war on success"??? What spoiled baby came up with that? Why should a successful person even fear a war against them?


When the national anthem plays, you should stop and stand respectfully. Of course, the BTPers didn't. Instead, they walked around and goofed off, as this video shows. (No, I'm not referring to the policeman, for he was busy directing traffic. I'm referring to the protesters behind the barriers.)


Well, today I worked. And I ate. Funny, because I did that yesterday too.


Damn, now that's...that's...creative. Not!

More photos and videos to come!

BTPers throw fit over media coverage

After the local media hyped the Tea Party so much, one certainly would expect it to draw more people than it did. But nope. It didn't.

Even if it drew the 5,000 that its organizers claim (which it didn't), it was dwarfed by the 30,000 who went to Obama's Cincinnati rally.

The media hyped the Tea Party, yet it was practically a bust.

Despite the friendly coverage by the media, I just saw on the news that the BTPers berated news crews that showed up there - accusing them of intentionally arriving late.

I guess they think all 4 local news stations are supposed to be "all Tea Party, all the time."

That's fine - because this blog is going to give the BTPers plenty of coverage in the upcoming days. But they're not going to like what they see.

BTPer doublespeak

The Tea Party comedy routine on Cincinnati's Fountain Square today is over, and the amount of doublespeak there was astounding.

I know you're interested in one thing above all else: Did they spill tea? Evidently not. I didn't see any tea being dumped in the fountain, despite their apparent threats to do so.

Apparently, some participants were upset about bailouts, but it was their guy (Bush) who bailed out the big banks with no strings attached.

More hypocrisy: one of the speakers also complained about the stimulus money supposedly being used on school metal detectors to treat schoolchildren like criminals. I'd hate to tell the BTPers this, but the rise of prison schools was also a conservative idea.

So we're supposed to repeal the entire stimulus law just because a school system squanders stimulus money on metal detectors? I don't like money being wasted either, and that's why the Obama administration took steps to reduce wasteful expenses like this.

If this was a rally against bank bailouts and fortified schools, I'd be all in favor of the rally.

Generally, however, it wasn't. It was about a small number of affluent individuals complaining because the stimulus might help the poor more than it helps the rich. The entire event was rife with class-baiting against the poor - much of it thinly veiled, but some of it rather blatant.

Perhaps the biggest hypocrisy of all was that they claim to have modeled the protest on the Boston Tea Party - even though the event turned out to be not really anti-tax at all. I thought they'd at least be smart enough not to involve the FairTax crowd. But nope, the FairTax cult was out in full force.

For those who don't know, FairTax is a national sales tax long sought by conservatives. According to Wikipedia, it would be a 30% sales tax. (This percentage generally grows a little each year, as the FairTax crowd thinks of ways to make it more onerous.)

One of the speakers declared, "FairTax, FairTax, FairTax!" - and the crowd went absolutely wild! As you'll see when I post the photos, this faction made their presence known.

In other words, much of this so-called anti-tax rally was spent advocating a 30% national sales tax. You can't make this stuff up: They actually had a so-called Boston Tea Party reenactment to support higher taxes!

In the BushWorld in which the BTPers continue to live in, war is peace, up is down, and higher taxes are lower taxes.

BTPers even more pathetic than expected

As the old Cheerios commercial used to say: I did it!

I went to Fountain Square in Cincinnati today to witness the Tea Party farce. This so-called grassroots event wasn't grassroots at all: It was actually bankrolled by right-wing foundations and corporations, and most of the rally participants were professional right-wing agitators who travel from city to city for events like this.

The fact that they are professional rabble-rousers is the main reason the various cities' Tea Parties aren't all on the same day. It's because they can't be in all the cities at once.

Nothing wrong with showing your support for a cause in different cities, but why do they have to deny it?

Suffice it to say, the BTPers made even bigger fools of themselves today than I could have ever expected.

The event certainly did not attract the 3,000 to 5,000 people there they claimed. They had enough people to nearly fill Fountain Square, but Fountain Square ain't that big. (It takes up less than half of a small city block.) It certainly wasn't standing room only.

In fact, it was pathetic. They were such clowns that I'm going to be posting the hilarious (if not damning) photos and videos of the event for days. This is an embarrassment to savor!

And yes, there were counterdemonstrators. That includes the motorcyclists who jeered at the BTPers. (That was a great moment!)

I didn't confront the BTPers, because they've become such background noise that they have almost no effect anymore. In short, they're not even worth it. They're kind of like the neo-Nazis I saw at the laundromat yesterday. Losers through and through.

Hell, you could barely hear the nobodies who they had on the stage speaking! It sounded like they didn't even figure out how to turn the microphone on until 10 minutes into the speeches!

Lots of laughs today! And more details are coming.

Right-wing parents get war lesson banned

Dam them libruuls. They're always trying to ban everything lololol.

But wait! What's this? Conservatives got a school lesson banned because it depicted staged violence?

Yes, folks, you read it here.

Schools in Appleton, Wisconsin, have a tradition. For years, to cap off the history chapter about the Civil War, 5th-graders have participated in a 20-minute mock battle, sponsored by the schools. It's just a friendly game like a sporting event. Nobody gets hurt, and everyone has a great time.

But now a group of right-wing parents has complained about this tradition because...it looks like violence.

Well, yeah. The whole point of staged violence is to look like real violence.

Did Jack Thompson move to Wisconsin when nobody was looking? Seriously, those who wanted the war reenactment banned are displaying the same sentiment that's behind the moral panic types' attempts to ban video games and "violent" music.

The right-wing parent group cited the school system's "zero tolerance" policy on "look-alike" weapons as an excuse for discontinuing the mock battle.

Lovely. Now there's moral panic types actually pushing schools for stricter enforcement of their "zero tolerance" rules. You can't make this stuff up.

The mock battle was designed to give students a feel for Civil War conditions. That's called learning, you know. And kids loved it.

But I guess the school system isn't interested in kids learning. So it promptly buckled under to the panickeers and ended the mock battle tradition.

Think of the children lololz!

(Source: http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20090312/APC0101/903120521/1003/APC01)

Proud to be a populist? ('Pail Poll)

Because the elites who organized the Tea Party mockeries like to resort to emotional appeals, how about if we all did, just for one week? (Last week was a slow news week, after all.)

The latest 'Pail Poll appeals to the feelings of pride that well up when you fight the elites (such as phony populists like the BTPers).

You did well on last week's 'Pail Poll. Regarding Arne Duncan's hinting at a longer school year, 13 of you voted no, only 5 of you voted yes, and one of you voted yes only in states that had a shorter school year. (Obama has been an above-average President so far, but he needs better Cabinet picks.)

So how about another 'Pail Poll?

And by the way - in case you're reading this through my Facebook feed - this poll appears on my populist blog, The Online Lunchpail:

http://onlinelunchpail.blogspot.com

Magic gum makes animated people float away (Bubble Gum Weekend)

The existence of bubble gum is funny because it is.

Bubblicious's commercials in the '80s followed a predictable plot: In these ads, animated people (particularly teenagers) would blow bubbles and float into outer space.

Often, commercials about embarrassing topics like diarrhea and toilet paper feature animated characters instead of on-screen actors, because the actors don't want to be associated with these subjects. Apparently, the folks at Bubblicious felt bubble gum was the same way.

Anyway, I found this uproarious old Bubblicious commersh on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFlvd19lVqQ

That ad is probably from the late '70s, because it looks like it's laying the foundation for the '80s ads. It features a cartoon of a band that pays more attention to its bubbling than to its music during its concerts.

The most hilarious moment is about halfway through it: The entire audience at the concert all bubbles at the exact same time, and they float into space along with the band.

Another amusing thing about Bubblicious: its logo always appeared to be blowing a bubble, which emerged from the lower right of the logo. This technique is seen on the yellow pack of gum at the start of this ad.

If the bubbles blown by the people in this ad burst while they were floating around in space, would they fall back to Earth? Or would they just continue to float around out there, orbiting the planet forever?

Facebook: where real time isn't

When everyone finally got used to Facebook changing its layout just a few months ago, it's been changed yet again - and not for the better.

Facebook's latest brag is that all the updates for you and your friends are in "real time."

Well, they're not. I had to make some important updates to my previous entry here, and Facebook never picked them up - forcing me to stop importing entries and restart.

It would have been easier for me to fix this problem satisfactorily, except that I try to run a very orderly blog. Things are expected to work in a consistent fashion. There's a reason for order, you know.

Also, when Facebook switched to the new layout, it lost several entries that had been imported. And later, some of the entries appeared out of order.

The trouble with the previous entry could have been avoided if Facebook allowed users to edit their imported entries. But it doesn't.

I guess Facebook is also never going to fix its failure to import YouTube videos properly. When I e-mailed them about this almost 2 weeks ago, they said they were aware of the problem. But others have been complaining about it for months, and it hasn't been fixed.

This despite the fact that Facebook tried importing my YouTube favorites list even though I had that marked as private.

Facebook was more interested in rolling out a faulty update to its layout than in fixing its inability to properly import from YouTube.

I really, really despise bigotry

Seriously, I do.

Yes, I know what you're going to say: economic liberal = social conservative. Well, that's a myth, and this myth doesn't work for this blog (or most other things).

I believe that you can't judge someone based on their race, their sexual orientation, or certain other characteristics. Most of you agree with me. If I supported bigotry, I wouldn't be writing a blog like this.

But today, I almost had a close encounter of the Nazi kind.

I went to the laundromat, and while my clothes were in the dryer, 2 guys (who were maybe in their late teens or so) entered the place. They appeared to just be doing laundry, so I had no idea yet what was in store.

But then one of them strolled over to the bulletin board and promptly tacked a National Alliance flier or newsletter to it.

National Alliance is the name of what is quite frankly a neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization based in Hillsboro, West Virginia. In addition to disgracing a good set of initials, the National Alliance has praised Hitler and has been listed by opponents as a neo-Nazi group. I knew the newsletter was from the same National Alliance, because it had a Hillsboro address.

I shut my eyes and summoned the personal strength not to confront these right-wing losers who were patronizing the laundromat. Idiots like this aren't even worth it anymore.

What's amazing is that they posted the flier in full view of several other customers. And the laundromat happens to have a security camera. I'm sure these guys knew I'd disapprove, because almost everyone in Campbell County already knows I hate bigotry.

This dumb duo was still in the laundromat when I had to leave. But I'm sure someone else found their flier and tossed it squarely in the dumpster where it belongs. That's because the Geoff Davis voters who posted it were dumb enough to post it in Bellevue, instead of in certain places in the county where more people would actually believe the right-wing shit they spew.

(You could say that I underreacted, but I was surrounded by racist losers like this in high school, so I had steeled myself for their nonsense.)

Raw racists can publish all the hate-filled propaganda they choose (even though I disagree with their views). But if there's any sort of official investigation into neo-Nazi activities in this part of town, I'll be more than happy to provide authorities with a description of the 2 individuals at the laundromat.

(For this entry, I should be using the symbol from the key to describe racism, but that would've just distracted from this story.)

Due process? Not in Ohio schools!

This story proves America's judicial system is just pulling ideas out of its ass as it's going along.

Make no mistake about it: Student athletes are often mollycoddled and not held to the same stringent standards as other students. This is true from grade school through college. We all know that if an athlete breaks a school rule, they are likely to face a far milder penalty than other students who violate the same rule.

The same is true if an athlete commits a crime.

We've all seen this double standard firsthand, so let's not kid ourselves. It's like this because schools don't want to lose their players.

But is it fair for schools to punish athletes whose alleged crime took place away from school and who might be innocent?

Of course not. But an Ohio appeals court thinks...it is!

Due process took a beating yesterday in the Cincinnati-based state court, when the court ruled that public school students who participate in sports or other extracurricular activities can be punished for conduct that takes place away from school, even if they have not been proven guilty - even if the alleged offense occurs during summer break.

This ruling sprouted from a case in which a high school football player was cited for under-age drinking and possession of alcohol. The incident did not occur at school or any school-related function. In fact, it was during summer vacation.

And he was never convicted, so his guilt was never proven.

Despite this, he was required to sit out several games.

Ohio law used to allow students to appeal certain school-imposed punishments. But the legislature - which at the time was Republican-controlled - gutted this law.

The court's ruling yesterday says students have no right to an appeal - or to any due process. The jurists' so-called reasoning for robbing due process of pupils accused of off-campus offenses is that public schools are statutory boards.

Appeals Court Judge Mark Painter wrote, "School boards are statutory boards created by the Ohio General Assembly. There is no right to appeal a school board's decision absent an express statutory right to appeal."

Um??? If they're statutory boards (i.e., the government), shouldn't that mean that there is a right to appeal?

Painter also wrote that it is not the role of the court "to create a right to appeal" because "the legislature is the only body that may create such a right."

Er, nope. That right was already listed under the Constitution's due process safeguards. You don't have to create a right that already exists. Most rights listed by America's great Constitution are natural rights that all humans are endowed with - so these rights predate even the Constitution.

I guess Ohio is no longer part of the world, if a natural right like due process can be taken away. This ruling is judicial activism at its near-worst.

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090314/NEWS0102/903140326/-1/NEWS010703)

Posting problems continue (sigh)

I've just been informed that the problems users have had commenting here have started back up again. Of course.

So just keep trying to post until your comment gets through.

It will bring you fame and fortune as far as the eagle flies!

Glenn Beck says killers are just victims of "political correctness"

Glenn Beck is the raving maniac whose propaganda wins sponsorship from commissioners in Boone County, Kentucky.

Beck now claims spree killers are actually just poor, innocent victims who were "pushed to the wall" by "liberals" and "political correctness."

In a discussion with Bill O'Reilly, Beck said he was worried about conservatives feeling "disenfranchised." He whined that "every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness." So - according to Beck's "logic" - this makes them become dangerous mass killers.

So I guess Bush conservatives have such weak coping skills that any criticism turns them into deranged violent criminals.

In other words, Bushists are so unhinged that when people point out how out of touch they are, they go bonkers and start shooting.

That's psychology Glenn Beck-style, I guess.

(Source: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/beck_people_‘pushed_to_the_wall’_by_‘political_correctness’_launch_spree_killings.php)

Big Business gets its way again

Folks in West Virginia thought they'd scored a victory when state regulators split the state's area code instead of instituting a cumbersome, inconvenient overlay.

But when Big Business yelps, good ideas don't last very long.

Regulators had made the area code change in probably the best way they could: by splitting the existing area code and giving the new code to the area that had seen the most growth in cell phones. If an area's growth causes a split, the growing area should bear the costs of the new code. Fair is fair.

But the phone industry griped about this, because it would have cost them to change the existing numbers. So regulators reversed their initial ruling and decided to implement the overlay instead.

Nice. Instead of costing the phone company, they're costing consumers.

Because of this rubber-stamping of phone company complaints, West Virginians now have to dial 10 digits to make a local call in the same area code.

Overlays serve nobody except phone companies and other large businesses.

Evidently, phone companies are already allowed to block YouTube with no consequences. A certain phone company high-speed ISP in the Midwest has blocked YouTube all day, as a matter of fact. (As proof that YouTube is blocked by this ISP, one can access YouTube as well as ever through proxy servers.) So what more can the phone industry ask for? Does it want each of its customers to kiss its feet?

Big Business needs to shut its damn gizzard tight. If there's enough new customers for a new area code, then the phone company obviously isn't hurting for money. So it can afford to foot the bill for splitting the state.

(Source: http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/502197.html)

Ari Fleischer lies, gets smacked down

Every major policy by the Bush regime was built on a carefully woven pattern of lies. Every damn one of them.

Bush is out of office now, but his crew of nation-destroyers still won't give up their sorry falsehoods.

Like a day or two ago, when Bush's former press secretary Ari Fleischer was interviewed by Chris Matthews.

In this interview, Fleischer once again claimed Iraq had something to do with 9/11 - a view that had long since been discredited. In fact, the Bush regime knew from the start it wasn't true. I'm not even going into detail about it again here. But the Bushists claimed Iraq was behind 9/11 just so there'd be an excuse to start a war there.

In short, Fleischer and other members of Bush's regime are nothing but big liars.

Of course, the media fed this lie for years. It rarely questioned it.

Until the Matthews interview, when it finally started to come undone.

Matthews aired a tape of the interview, in which Fleischer said, "Chris, and I believe this still today, and of course you can disagree with it, but after September 11th, having been hit once, how could we take a chance Saddam might not strike again? ..."

Matthews cut away from the tape and discussed Fleischer's dishonesty.

For Saddam to have struck again, he had to have struck once. But he didn't. The regime in Iraq had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or 9/11.

Ari Fleischer got smacked down by Chris Matthews, of all people!

CHRIS MATTHEWS!!!

Matthews has usually been friendly to the right-wing brain trust (as it were), but I guess even he couldn't let Fleischer's blatant fibbing muck up the airwaves.

Maybe we should be asking ourselves why anyone was supposed to give a shit what Ari Fleischer thinks. Maybe he's becoming another Newt Gingrich or William Kristol in that he's going to keep being interviewed by every channel about every news event for years after he's past his prime.

Eight years after 9/11, Bush regime officials keep telling the same tired lies.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/12/181428/110/7/707827)

Had a dream...I was born...to find a better high school...

If you've read this blog but not my other writings, you probably don't know how legendary my battle against a certain right-wing Catholic high school I once attended is.

I started high school at that campus and went there for 3 years. And suffice it to say, it was a terrible school.

For several years around the early 2000s (when I was about 30), I had a recurring dream in which I somehow escaped this school and started attending the area's public high school instead - and everything worked out in the end.

Dreams are interesting, and I think they're meant to be interpreted. In a way, I later went on to do what I felt this dream told me to do.

In real life, the Catholic school I attended was bound to be an automatic disaster, and I don't know why anyone actually thought it wouldn't be. I never attended the public high school in my county, but I guarantee you it would have sucked too - only not as badly. Instead of getting beaten up during each class, I would have probably only gotten beaten up between each class.

I've been told in recent years that I would have encountered few problems at the public school, because I'd have enough allies to defend me. I doubt that - but I'm sure it couldn't have been as bad as the Catholic school.

I'll never know, because I was never allowed to attend the public high school in my own district. I personally got in an argument with one of the school officials about this. The apparent reason for my exclusion was that I got kicked out of the middle school for cussing out a teacher who hit me.

Despite never attending the public high school, I feel much more of a part of its community than I do of the Catholic high school I attended for 3 years.

I still struggle daily with things that happened at school almost 25 years ago. I still have flashbacks and insomnia. But I thought I'd resolved the issue of contrasting the Catholic high school versus the public high school, which was the subject of the recurring dream.

Yesterday morning, however, I had this dream again. It was my final dream before waking up - which is supposed to be the night's defining dream. The dream was satisfying at first, but later in the day it got to be frightening.

What does it mean? I think the dream is related to the rise of Facebook - but I'm certainly not joining a Facebook group whose description seems to exclude me.

Dreams are fascinating. And the reemergence of this dream is going to be resolved sooner or later.

Unemployed? Perry doesn't care

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has long been a known liar. And this story continues to prove what a fucking asshole he is.

When Louisiana's Bobby Jindal refused to accept stimulus money to pay for unemployment insurance for workers in his state, it was bad enough. But a similar tantrum by Perry makes it even more plain how mean-spirited the Republican intelligentsia (as it were) has become.

Obama's stimulus package set aside $555,000,000 for unemployed Texans. But Rick Perry has decreed that Texas can't have this money.

If you're unemployed in the Lone Star State, you won't be seeing stimulus money - all because Perry decided not to let you have it.

He doesn't even want to help his own constituents? How hateful can you get?

And why? Just so he can make a point about what a big conservative he is - just to please the Republican party faithful.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/12/national/a124857D51.DTL)

My view on View-Master

View-Master.

Who doesn't love View-Master?

Apparently, the people who make View-Master don't.

I grew up on View-Master. View-Master was a little toy that used small paper discs featuring photographs of various things. You could look through your View-Master and see 3-D images of your favorite cartoon characters, TV shows, and (perhaps best of all) national parks.

Some View-Master reels had an audio disc that was actually a tiny record. These could be played in a battery-operated viewer that featured sound.

A poorly made View-Master reel might lose the glue that held the photos on the disc. So if you collected View-Master reels, you might eventually find yourself with piles of minuscule photographic slides that could never be reattached to the reels. Overall, however, it was a high-quality toy.

View-Master though is now owned by Fisher-Price - which unfortunately has announced that it's discontinuing this classic plaything, according to Wikipedia.

However, another account says Fisher-Price will keep making reels for cartoon characters such as Shrek and Dora the Explorer. But View-Master reels for our great national parks have been discontinued - never to be seen again.

View-Master's national park reels weren't just fun. They were educational. But now they're gone.

Fisher-Price's rationale for discontinuing national park reels is that families who visit national parks now prefer to spend the trip home watching DVD's instead of looking at View-Master reels.

Really? DVD's in the car? Won't they warp?

The America we grew up with is dead. It's dumbed down, wussified, gone into thin air, down the memory hole.

This story is like the one about Crayola giving awful, sickly sweet names to its colors or the attempt by 'Sesame Street' to downplay Oscar the Grouch. I'm surprised the reason for phasing out View-Master isn't something totally idiotic, like small children being afraid of the viewer because it looks too much like a comic book villain.

View-Master is yet another entry in the long list of things being robbed from today's children (and adults).

(Source: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/40705617.html)

Plane drops debris on Queens

The "regulation for thee, not for me" cult is known for excusing every airline blunder that might possibly occur. If a commercial jet crashes in a residential neighborhood and kills people in their homes, the excuse is always, "It had to crash somewhere."

Frankly, I'm fed up with this corporate apologism, and I don't need to be subjected to it again. But I know what the excuse is going to be following this story: "It had to drop its debris somewhere."

Commercial airliners dropping red-hot plane parts in urban areas is one of America's most covered-up stories. The problem has heightened for years, and the government has shown no interest in reining in the airlines.

So it continues.

No regulation, no consequences, no nothing.

This laissez-faire policy is driven by airlines' greed.

Yesterday, it happened again - this time in Queens. An American Airlines plane that launched from LaGuardia Airport dropped hundreds of pieces of hot metal from 1,800 feet onto a major commercial district.

An FAA investigation called it an "uncontained engine failure."

When you're dealing with major corporations such as airlines, it's uncontained everything, isn't it? In today's America, personal behavior is regulated; corporations are not.

Is somebody going to end up being killed by airline debris (if it hasn't happened already) before the government reregulates the industry?

The government needs to impose heavy fines - in the billions - against airlines that expel debris.

(Source: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyplan0312,0,1570664.story)

New York Times hires yet another conservative columnist

Another day, yet another conservative talking head hired by the New York Times: Ross Douthat.

I hate to bellyache, but I have to: Douthat is 6 years younger than me, yet already he gets hired by the largest paper in America. I've been in the opinion business much longer than he has, yet he gets his diatribes printed in major papers simply because of politics.

If there was any doubt at all that the media has a right-wing bias, this should dash those doubts. All a conservative has to do to get a major writing gig is scribble down some garbledygoop, and they're hired.

They don't have to think. They don't have to use logic. They just have to say something, no matter how little sense it makes.

Every day, we see stories about the decline of newspapers. It seems like papers go out of business faster than remaining papers can report it. I don't think the rise of the Internet is the only factor. If it was, papers wouldn't be slashing their online activities too, and more papers would be continuing as online publications.

I think the media's right-wing bias is just as big of a factor. I stopped buying the print edition of the Cincinnati Post precisely because of its one-sided coverage. (This occurred even before the print paper was discontinued.)

Right-wing bias continues to plague the local media. An article appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer today hyping this Sunday's Tea Party mockery - and it failed to even mention the fact that the event was secretly bankrolled by corporate interests. Then again, this is the Enquirer, which has long supported corporate causes and opposed organized labor. The more important point is that this bias certainly isn't endearing to readers.

If the print media was the watchdog for the public that it should be, it could have certainly grown its online operations instead of withering and dying. There should be a strong market for competing online papers in every American city.

(Source: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--newyorktimes-newc0311mar11,0,2729692.story)

Coleman posts credit card numbers, blames hackers

Allow me to make this clear, Pigpen: You can't do this shit.

Now it turns out that Norm Coleman - the sore loser in Minnesota - was dumb enough to post the database featuring his campaign donors' credit card numbers online. Yes, it featured all the numbers plus the 3-digit security codes.

In public. For the whole wide world to ogle (beep).

Coleman learned of this security flaw 6 weeks ago - but dismissed it. Thus, it wasn't repaired.

And now Coleman is blaming the whole thing on hackers - even though his campaign posted the data itself.

In any event, Coleman has now had the unpleasant task of telling his contributors that they should replace their credit cards, after this fuck-up exposed their card numbers. Still, he refuses to apologize.

It also raises the question of whether Coleman violated state law when he failed to report the security breach immediately.

How Norm Coleman ever expected to be trusted as a senator is beyond me.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/12/2489/23886/304/707522)

County sponsors (ugh!) Glenn Beck show

The fact that radio and TV host Glenn Beck (pictured here) is a shitmouth thug must be what endears him to certain public officials in northern Kentucky.

Beck has used his program to threaten Michael Moore's life. Beck once said, "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out - is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus band Do [sic], and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now."

After that, of course, so-called news outlets gave Glenn Beck even more face time.

Now Boone County is actually sponsoring an airing of a Beck-hosted show.

Commissioner Cathy Flaig has organized a viewing party of Beck's show tomorrow at 5 PM at the Briarwood Banquet Center in Hebron. The show is titled 'We Surround Them' and is scheduled to air on the discredited Fox News Channel. Reportedly, 'We Surround Them' is nothing but a recycled right-wing rant taking the form of a TV special.

Nice to know Boone County has dethroned Campbell County as northern Kentucky's leader in right-wing machine politics. (Exurbs will do that.) An activist far-right government has been a constant in Boone County since the late '90s when it tried to scuttle Halloween trick-or-treating because county officials felt it was un-Christian.

Once again, they've gone much too far.

Cathy Flaig should resign immediately for her support of a scumbag like Glenn Beck who threatened to assassinate an accomplished filmmaker.

If Flaig does not resign, she should be recalled.

I won't get to protest the viewing party, because I instead plan on going to a nice family meal where I won't have to be subjected to the Boone County machine's propaganda and deception. Besides, Flaig decided to hold the party at a place that working-class folks from the city can't actually, like, get to. (Not like the event is supposed to do anything except energize wealthy right-wing exurbanites.)

When you're a public official like a county commissioner, you're supposed to represent the public. Not use your position to whip up support for fascist thugs like Glenn Beck.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090312/NEWS0103/903120350)

Writer invents Wikipedia scandal to gripe about

What sort of idiot actually thinks Wikipedia has a liberal bias? A dumb one.

In the past few days, the fuckheadosphere has screamed its ugly face off about Wikipedia allegedly scrubbing any negative stories about President Obama. Naturally, Fox News dutifully picked up this story.

This couldn't possibly be the same Wikipedia where volunteer editors yanked the entry about The Online Lunchpail because of this blog's politics, could it? Why yes, it is. The Foxfux are delusional enough to believe Wikipedia has a liberal bias, even after that.

To nobody's surprise, it turns out the wingnuts' story of Obama-themed censorship is completely bogus.

The story was initially spread by Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem correspondent for far-right hate site WorldNetDaily. Klein is a major contributor to right-wing news organizations such as Fox News and the recently defunct incarnation of the far-right New York Sun.

Any story by someone from WorldNutDaily should be dismissed out of hand. That site has no credibility. At all. Fox just had to pump up this story though, didn't they?

It turns out though that someone working for Klein made the edits to the Obama entry that other Wikipedia users reverted. The edits were made under Klein's direction. Why were they reverted? Because they were designed to spread discredited conspiracy theories, like the birth certificate flap that was already debunked last year.

In other words, the Wikipedia flap is a manufactured story. Klein directed the posting of bogus information on Wikipedia - just so he'd have a reason to accuse "liberals" at Wikipedia of "censoring" it.

Aaron Klein calls himself a journalist? A real journalist would never pull this shit.

When another blog reported Klein's deception, Klein cried that he was being "defamed" - even though what the blog printed was true. Klein admitted that he oversaw the edits, but claimed it was "entirely legitimate journalistic practice." Uh, no. It's not.

I know this, because I studied mass media in college. What mass media classes did you take, Aaron?

Perhaps the bigger story is that Fox deliberately distorted the news by latching onto Klein's fraudulent story.

The FCC used to look very, very dimly upon stations distorting news. Other commenters here have pointed this out before and invited folks to read about the WLBT case. That case involved one of the most severe actions ever taken by the FCC against a station.

If the FCC was as on the ball now as it was in the '60s, there's no question Fox would be facing stiff sanctions.

My message for Aaron Klein: Obama won. Get over it.

(Source: http://valleywag.gawker.com/5167585/right+wing-writer-invents-his-own-obama-wikipedia-scandal)

Right-wing station owner loses defamation case, goes bankrupt

Several years ago, John Stokes purchased KGEZ radio in Kalispell, Montana. Stokes promptly made KGEZ a soapbox for his conservative ideology.

Not long ago, however, a jury ordered Stokes to pay $3,800,000 for defaming 2 local businessmen over the air. Now, because of this ruling, Stokes has had to declare bankruptcy.

The unhinged maniac has had quite a history with KGEZ. After buying the station, he began broadcasting local environmentalists' home addresses and encouraging listeners to pay them hostile visits. Stokes once said of environmentalists, "Finish them off and make sure they don't have babies."

He was also the subject of controversy over Nazi-themed signs he posted near neighbors' property. This followed the neighbors' refusal to sell Stokes their property (because he didn't make a good offer), and the mysterious disappearance of the neighbors' "for sale" signs. "It is well-known I have been associated with swastikas," Stokes boasted.

Stokes has long been criticized for views many locals feel to be racist and anti-Semitic. He has also demanded cutting off the limbs of anyone who can't speak English.

The FCC won't give me a broadcasting license, but they let John Stokes have one? If anyone doubted there was a deliberate effort by Bush's FCC to foster the growth of right-wing media, at the expense of opposing viewpoints, this should lay these doubts to rest.

While a defamation suit against a rare single owner like Stokes can have a small impact, what about the major right-wing corporations that each own hundreds of stations that spew the same type of nonsense and similarly defame opponents?

(Source: http://www.kxmc.com/News/342468.asp;
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/01/orca-killers.html;
http://missoulian.com/articles/2007/09/16/news/local/news04.txt;
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2008/07/08/news/news04.txt;
http://the698update.blogspot.com/2008/10/swiss-give-up-banking-clients-secrecy.html;
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/blog/2009/01/30/sticks-and-stones)

Bert, you call that planning?! ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

This is yet another of the 'Sesame Street' sketches I've been hoarding using YouTube's favorites feature...

In this skit from 1977, Bert tries to give his orange-haired infant nephew Brad a bath, but Ernie notices something is wrong...



Uh, Ernie??? The lack of bath toys isn't the biggest problem.

The far more serious issue is that I think that's a toilet, not a bathtub. Notice that it's making a flushing sound at the beginning. It looks like one of those tankless toilets schools like to buy.

"Bert! Bert! You're not gonna put the baby in a tub like that!"

"What's wrong, what is it, what is it?!"

"Uh, Bert, that giant turd I left in there last night didn't go all the way down when you flushed it!"

After Ernie clogs the porcelain receptacle with all those bath toys, Gordon and Susan must be thankful that Bert and Ernie got the basement apartment instead of the one on the top floor!

Right-wing millionaire planned dirty bomb

James G. Cummings was a right-wing trust fund millionaire from Maine who was slain by his wife in December.

Cummings was known for his opposition to Obama. Much of his vitriol was of the sort you might see on any right-wing blog these days.

But it turns out Cummings was also a Nazi sympathizer who filled out a form to join a Nazi organization and displayed a flag with a Nazi swastika. And it also turns out that Cummings tried to make a dirty bomb. He had all the ingredients - even uranium - and tried making the bomb in his kitchen sink.

He planned to set off the bomb as a protest against Obama's election.

Cummings's wife also told police that he subjected her to years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse.

This millionaire was a nuclear Timothy McVeigh - yet the media outside Maine didn't cover the story. That's because he was practically a creation of the strain of right-wing vitriol that dominates talk radio and the wingnutosphere.

For years, international terrorism has been held out as America's greatest threat. But there's one bigger threat that's been ignored: right-wing domestic terrorism.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Slain_white_supremacist_had_components_for_0309.html)

Georgia on my mind

About Georgia: It was on my mind.

This entry is another that contrasts the sense of entitlement the rightist brain trust seems to possess versus the relative humility that everyone else has.

When I read about a certain GOP politician harboring a grudge against the Democrats because he thinks Jimmy Carter kept his family from going on vacation when he was 10, I got the impression that they probably went on vacation more than once that year. I grew up in the '70s, and I know that Republicans who opposed Carter on economic issues were usually financially secure, and probably didn't have to worry about not having enough money to go on a trip.

If a working-class kid from Kentucky like me went on 2 vacations in 1978 (albeit within Kentucky and Ohio), the average Republican household could likely afford 3.

The attitude of the politician in question reminds me of the reaction of some of my classmates regarding the 8th grade class trip - which I wrote about in my book 'The Fight That Never Ends'. Indeed, I got ridiculed in high school because I'd never been to Florida.

Normally, as long as I can travel outside a radius of 50 miles or so once a year, I'm more than satisfied. And a couple weeks ago, I did so in Georgia.

This was just a one-night trip, and it was in the very closest corner of the Peachtree State. One of the purposes of this fact-finding mission was to test a new GPS a family member buyed. And trust me, I worked on this blog while I was away. This was only my third overnight trip in the history of this blog.

What facts did I find? Fact #1: it rains a lot on my trips. Fact #2: the GPS works. Fact #3: I amassed over 100 photos and videos with the Eyewitness Cam:

http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09a.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09b.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09c.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09d.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09e.html

One Allowed Cloud was seen in that photo set that's just begging for defiance: the "no cruising zone" in Athens, Georgia. It's unconstitutional under the freedom of assembly, of course, but who's keeping track? (Me.)

Diaper Dave throws tantrum at airport

For most people, even very reasonable airline behavior can get them charged with air piracy and probably placed on the terror watch list for life. Airlines leave passengers stranded on the ground for hours with the restroom locked, yet heaven forbid the states regulate the airlines.

But right-wing scumbags like Sen. Dave Vitter (R-Louisiana) can throw a screeching tantrum because they miss a flight, and it's called "art."

Vitter - known for his appearance on a prostitution client list and his diaper fetish - missed his flight from Washington to New Orleans last week. After missing the flight, he opened an armed security door, set off an alarm, and chewed out an airline employee.

Diaper Dave's harangue followed the now-familiar "do-you-know-who-I-am" mold. Talk about a sense of entitlement!

Maybe his diaper was getting poopy, and he needed to use the restroom on the plane.

Congressional Republicans seem to have problems with airport behavior in the past few years. There's the Larry Craig scandal, of course, and there was John Hostettler's attempt to bring a gun on board. (John Hostettler, a vicious anti-Semite, only got elected in the first place because the so-called election was rigged.)

Anybip, employees called airline security on Vitter, but Vitter yelled back that they could call security and the local police if they wanted. Then he stomped off like a big baby.

If most people acted this way, they would have been arrested on sight. But David Vitter gets (ahem) pampered.

If the missed flight was because of some airline fuck-up, maybe it should teach Vitter a lesson about his own support for deregulating big corporations. But he'll never learn, because most stupid people don't.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/GOP_senator_flips_out_at_airline_0311.html)

Students punished for opposing test

If anyone still thinks American schools don't try to police thoughts, this story should kablammo that notion to tiny shards.

In Storm Lake, Iowa, officials at Storm Lake High School forced bilingual students to take an English test that was meant for small children who are not proficient in English. This despite the fact that many of the students forced to take the test are completely fluent in the English language.

The test asked questions like what sound a cow makes and what a chair is.

One student refused to take the test, because it was so far beneath her abilities. The test would have been a complete waste of time.

In a satisfying show of solidarity, other students walked out of class to show support for their schoolmate.

The result? These students were promptly given detention for the thoughtcrime of daring to stand in solidarity with a classmate.

And the student who refused the test? Well, she received 3 days of in-school suspension and may be punished further. Talk about schools policing thoughts!

The school's excuse is that the test was federally mandated. Then why don't we hear about this test being required in other school districts? If this is indeed some No Child Left Behind bullshit, then maybe someone should have told Bush that he didn't get to decide how communities run their schools.

And so it continues. See what I mean about thought control in our schools?

(Source: http://www.kcautv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9962851&nav=1kgl)

Chuck Norris goes completely bonkers

Twenty years ago, Chuck Norris was one of the most admired celebrities in America. So it's truly sad to see him become the babbling mess of a man he is now.

Quite frankly, I'm almost in tears to see how far Norris has declined. I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels the same way.

Lately, some of the kookier neighborhoods of the wingnutosphere have demanded that the U.S. military refuse any order President Obama gives them. This would be illegal, of course, as the President is Commander-in-Chief. But this demand underscores what a bunch of sore losers the wingnuts are.

Now it's getting beyond the point where it's no longer funny but simply sad.

Now Chuck Norris has joined this call by claiming there are thousands of right-wing cell groups willing to back him up in a revolt against the government.

In an appearance on Glenn Beck's talk-shit radio show, Norris said he might "run for President of Texas." Norris said he can do this because Texas never was part of the United States in the first place. He said Texas is actually a separate country.

Well, if Texas was never part of the United States, that means the Bushes didn't live in the U.S. when they ran for President. The Constitution says you had to have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years to be President.

I guess that means we can erase everything the Bush royal family did in the White House, huh, Chuck?

It was conservative politicians who broke the social contract in the '90s, so if anyone had cause to secede, it was the less conservative areas - to avoid being hamstrung by illegitimate America-hating "leaders" like Newt Gingrich and little Georgie.

And believe me, they were illegitimate. The electoral events of 1994 had little more legitimacy than Bush's bogus 2000 "win", and it is our duty to say so.

We were force-fed leadership we didn't like for decades, and if we dared to criticized it, we were ignored, ridiculed, fought - before most folks realized we were right. Now it's Chuck Norris's turn to have to live under leadership he doesn't like.

School lacks librarian so it can track mandatory service work

Let's get a few things clear: "Mandatory volunteerism" is an oxymoron - and it violates the spirit of what volunteering is all about.

And I think a public school having unpaid service requirements for graduation is unconstitutional. Courts haven't agreed, because constitutional law isn't exactly a high priority in America's courts these days, but that's another matter.

I haven't favored such programs, and I think these requirements go against the grain of community.

However, one school in Boulder, Colorado, sees things a bit differently from how a constitutional legal eagle should. New Vista High School is so eager to implement its new mandatory unpaid labor requirement that it's willing to sacrifice literacy for it.

The school has assigned faculty members to track whether students comply with the new rule and determine whether students' service projects meet the school's goals.

That comes at a massive cost to the school. So how does the school pay for it? By eliminating the school librarian's job. "The way we pay for it is we don't have a librarian," the principal boasted.

The school likes having its library books scattered and inaccessible, I guess.

I also get the feeling the school won't approve students' service projects unless they meet the school's ideology. America has been down this road before: One school that required "community service" for graduation prohibited students from volunteering for organizations that supported relaxing America's draconian marijuana laws. However, the school allowed pupils to volunteer for organizations that took the opposite stance.

Schools have also forced students to fulfill their "community service" requirements by working for free at for-profit businesses. This is a problem not just from the unpaid labor standpoint: It also takes jobs away from paid workers.

These requirements also take time away from students who already have a job.

It doesn't matter how progressive a city or county is: America's schools are almost always on the right wing of the spectrum. And they're probably not going to approve service projects that dissent from this order.

Of course, that doesn't stop one local activist from demanding the Boulder Valley School District make "community service" a requirement in all its schools, at every grade level.

It's a shame that in modern America, schools are considered the final arbiters of community life. With the poor quality and bad attitudes displayed by our schools, that's worse than simply unwieldy.

(Source: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/mar/09/community-service-requirement-pitched-to-boulder)

Alabama AG under investigation

Another little idiot is in the fight of his political life, and we're none too surprised.

Troy King, a Republican, is Alabama's Attorney General. King is a major purveyor of the new Rockefeller drug laws against pseudoephedrine, and he also pushed new voter ID requirements designed to suppress turnout and intimidate voters.

King got interested in politics when he was 10 because he thought it was Jimmy Carter's fault his family couldn't go on vacation. Which is bullshit, because he turned 10 in one of the few years that my family went on vacation twice.

My family didn't get to go on vacation the year I turned 10, because of Reagan's recession. So we're even, Troy. In fact, I know folks my age who probably didn't leave the Tri-State basic trading area once during the '80s, thanks to Reagan's excuse for an economy.

In 2007, it was discovered that King had accepted free tickets, food, and skybox access to an Atlanta Braves game from Alabama Power Company. The utility hadn't reported these "gifts" to ethics agencies until a newspaper asked about it. The obvious conflict is that King's job is supposed to be to represent his state's residents, many of whom are Alabama Power customers.

Oops.

A former investigator with Troy King's office later claimed King had ordered a politically motivated probe of a judge.

Now King is under a federal investigation.

It's unclear exactly what the investigation is about, but 6 former members of his staff were questioned by a grand jury last week about their connections to King allies (including one who admitted involvement in a bribery scandal).

Troy King is an attorney general who has consistently proven that he does the bidding of Big Business, not the people of his state. So it's hard for me to trust a word he says.

Of course, his apologists are crying that the probe against him is politically motivated. They really do want me to use the sore loser symbol again, don't they?

(Source: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/03/alabama_ag_reportedly_under_fe.html)

Don't leave home without it. On second thought, do.

American Express likes to tell folks not to leave home without it. But for many customers, it no longer makes much of a difference.

The credit card giant is now placing a hold on many customers' cards without warning - even customers who have had American Express cards for years and have never been late with a payment.

As you might guess, while a credit card is frozen, it's no good.

While American Express freezes customers' cards, it asks these customers to fill out an IRS form to get their tax records going back 3 years.

Corporations are asking for tax records now? Why??? Is this even legal? It sounds like a sure route to identity theft to me, since the records also include Social Security numbers. Bear in mind that these tax records are going overseas where American authorities have a harder time keeping track of what happens to them.

American Express has warned customers that if they don't allow their tax records to be released, their credit cards will be canceled for good within 5 days.

You'd think American Express would want to keep every customer it can, but I guess not. Maybe the company is going after customers who pay their bills on time because these customers aren't Making much Money for them.

(Source: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/amexholds.html)

Eric Cantor. A dumbass.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) ranked high on the list of Republican vice-presidential prospects in 2008. So nobody expects him to not sound like a total fartpipe at least some of the time.

Cantor, the House Republican Whip, is truly living down to expectations.

In a CNN interview, Cantor spouted off about President Obama's restoration of stem cell research. Cantor said, "Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job #1. Let's focus on what needs to be done."

Then what the fuck do you think all that economic stimulus stuff was about, Eric?

You know. The stimulus bill you voted against, Eric.

This is really Cantor's way of admitting that disallowing stem cell research isn't ethically supportable. So he tried changing the subject.

I want to talk about the economy too. But just not on terms that are unilaterally set by the GOP. The right-wing brain trust seems hell-bent on blaming Obama for the recession. (You can't make this stuff up, folks.)

(Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/08/obama.stem.cells)

Surprise, surprise: Meth production soars because of new laws

Just to be clear, the laws limiting Sudafed purchases aren't working in the fight against meth. We knew they weren't working, and we knew when they first passed that they wouldn't work.

Apologists for these laws have long spewed their propaganda about how failsafe their laws are, but now it's starting to come apart for them. So maybe now we can finally have a two-sided debate about these draconian laws.

Because of the new laws, the state of Indiana has just posted its second-highest number of meth labs ever - a 31% increase from the year before.

In just the first 2 months of the year, police in Tulsa have uncovered 28 meth labs - compared with 41 for all of last year. So Tulsa is on track to see a fourfold increase in meth labs, after passage of the new laws.

Officials say meth makers aren't affected by the new laws, because they evade limits on psuedophedrine-containing products by getting small quantities from various retailers, instead of just one store. Like we couldn't see from the get-go that this would happen?

So what's the answer? Well, considering the drug warriors live in a Bizarro World, their answer is...yet more laws to inconvenience innocent people. Of course.

The vicious cycle of tyranny creep continues: A problem was identified, ineffective laws were passed to "fight" it, the problem got worse, so more laws are planned.

But the idiots never learn, do they? If they did, I wouldn't be writing about this now. I for one am tired of having to expose a law that was doomed to fail from the start.

Next time you have allergies, you should protest these laws by buying small quantities of pseudoephedrine products at different stores, just so the authorities have some extra work to do going after someone who's completely innocent. They'll never know what hit them.

(Source: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090308/LOCAL/903080416;
http://www.kten.com/Global/story.asp?S=9968307)

My Daylight Wasting Time proposal

Now that Daylight Wasting Time has (unfortunately for this region) beginned anew, here's my tongue-in-cheek proposal to appease the Far Right...

Regulars of Free Republic can continue to sleep all day, except when they're reposting and commenting on RNC press releases.

Members of Congress can continue to sleep on the job.

CEO's of major banks that got bailout money can sleep while our tax dollars fund their huge salary bonuses they gave themselves.

Everyone else shall spend each night sleepless while they wait 5 years to see a doctor under America's broken health care system. You have cancer? Oh, they might call you in 4½ years.

It's about the global economy and competition, folks!

Double your laughter again! (Bubble Gum Weekend)

A couple months ago, I told you about a Doublemint commersh from 1994 in which this brand of gum caused an aging man to completely change his mood.

Unfortunately, this ad hurt someone's feelings, so YouPube pulled it. Fortunately, another copy of this commercial remains intact:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ2W1WxcWZ8

To ridicule Doublemint's apparent claim to be a good laughing gas substitute, I made a parody today of that scene. I didn't happen to have any Doublemint laying around though, so I had to use sliced cheese instead:



Next time I have my once-a-decade dentist visit, I want some Doublemint!

A bad day for Metric Man

This is your lighthearted news story for this weekend...

An expensive endeavor is drawing to a close, and Corporate America must be none too pleased.

In the '80s, Interstate 19 in Arizona began using the metric system (usually to the complete exclusion of U.S. units such as miles) to sign its distances. Even some staunch opponents of metric imperialism such as myself could excuse this, because I-19 carried much traffic from Mexico, where the metric system is official.

But now the government is ending this "experiment" and reverting I-19 back to mile-based signage.

It goes to show how costly the switch to metric was in the first place.

Perhaps the more important issue is that this indicates we may be able to breathe a sigh of relief that the U.S. won't be muscled into adopting the metric system any time soon (if ever). In this age of computers, why switch? If the gloBULL economy is what's at stake, large businesses should have the tools to do our metric conversions for us.

You may not realize how close the United States came under the elder Bush to making the metric system official and banishing the U.S. customary system. If Clinton had one positive achievement that had a far greater impact than anyone thinks, it may have been his scuttling of Bush's metric edict.

Forced metrication would have benefited very few outside of Big Business - and cost most Americans time and money.

(Source: http://www.sahuaritasun.com/articles/2009/03/06/breaking_news/00mileposts0308.txt)

Hunting instructor expels Obama backers

How nasty and babyish is the Newtstapo even today?

Right-wing meanness has come to light again, this time in Tulsa.

A 13-year-old boy was told by his father that he'd be allowed to take a hunting safety course if he got his grades up. This safety course is a major step towards getting a hunting license.

But when the boy and his dad showed up for the class, they were met with a rude surprise.

The volunteer instructor asked the folks in his class if any of them had voted for Obama. The dad raised his hand.

The fact that someone in the hunting class had dared to vote for Obama sent the instructor into a screeching tirade. According to numerous people who were present, the teacher called Obama "the next thing to the Antichrist" and ordered Obama's supporters to leave.

When the 13-year-old and his dad refused to disappear, the instructor declared he would not teach "liberals" and that he'd cancel the course altogether unless they left.

The 13-year-old's father was a former Marine, yet some Bushbot has the nerve to treat him like this all because he voted for Obama?

Anyway, several folks walked out when the instructor launched his diatribe.

It's important to note that the instructor was conducting a state-sponsored class - on behalf of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife. So his harangue was on Oklahoma taxpayers' dime.

He won't be using taxpayer dollars for any other political rants like this though. When the agency found out about this incident, it promptly fired him.

It's also important to note that the hunting teacher is probably just repeating what's been fed to him by the right-wing brain trust, where the nonsense he spewed is pervasive.

(Source: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090307_16_A1_Thirte498540)

Ooh! Threats!

One of the great myths that many Americans actually believe is that corporations don't take political stances.

But they do - and they do it quite loudly when they feel their greed-driven hegemony is threatened.

Take their reaction to the Employee Free Choice Act, for instance. EFCA is a much-needed bill supported by workers and the Obama administration. It would ease workplace organization by letting workers simply sign cards if they want to unionize.

However, the incoherent ideologues of Coprorate (sic) America call EFCA a one-way path to bolshevism. Some companies do favor EFCA, but many large businesses do not.

Powerful executives are entitled to their opinions, of course. But what corporations are not entitled to do is bully workers and public officials to force them to abandon EFCA. Naturally, corporations are now doing precisely that.

The Consumer Electronics Association is an industry group that represents electronics companies. According to the group, some of its member companies are threatening to move factories to foreign countries if EFCA passes.

It's unclear which companies. But one thing is clear: I don't like threats.

When a company uses threats with the goal of driving down wages, you know what that's called? Racketeering. Any company that makes a threat like this should be charged under RICO.

What Big Business is doing is a crime. And we have to muster the political will and people power to resist it. Otherwise, we working Americans will lose yet again. Policies of the past quarter-century have already fostered chronic underemployment, and if the trend continues, America will be even more unrecognizable before long.

America needs EFCA, and we can't afford to buckle under to high-handed threats.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638372783358077.html)

Church leaders lobby against sex abuse bill

Stories like this leave me utterly speechless.

But I'm going to be completely unambiguous about this: Some so-called leaders in the Catholic Church are supporting child molesters. That's an indisputable fact.

I'm referring to the New York State Catholic Conference - which has resumed its lobbying against a bill in the state of New York that would allow lawsuits over clergy sex abuse to be revived.

The conference's excuse for opposing the bill is that it would permit more lawsuits - thereby costing the Church money. One Church official whined that the bill "is just a device to bankrupt us."

BOO HOO FUCKING HOO!!!!!

I don't know what else I can say other than this: The Church should have done something about abusive priests decades ago. It chose not to. So it should pay the consequences.

A similar bill had repeatedly passed the lower house of the New York legislature. But it was killed by the New York Senate because of Church officials' lobbying.

Now lawmakers say the bill might pass - because the New York Senate recently flipped from Republican to Democratic control.

In other words, it's not just the New York State Catholic Conference that supports child molesters. The Republican Party of New York supports them too. (Big surprise, huh?)

When a diocese allows sexual abuse of children, it deserves to be sued for everything it's worth.

(Source: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202428834924)

Stem cell research ban to be lifted

I'm an economic populist first and foremost. But the other side has always thought they had such a big statement to make about culture war issues that I don't always get to talk about the economy.

Since it's a weekend, I'm going to be brief but clear: The Bush regime's ban on stem cell research was wrong. Not much more to say about it.

I suspect Bush's cultists knew it, but didn't care, because making a point was more important to them.

But now President Obama is set to overturn this ban.

Is it just me, or does it seem like most of Obama's time in office has been spent reversing Bush's many errors? It's good that Obama's doing this, of course, but it's a shame Bush was such a cretin that his misrule has forced everything else to be delayed.

As an example of Bush standing in the way of progress, he twice vetoed efforts that would have overturned his stem cell research ban.

But now science is finally winning the day - at long last.

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602285.html)

Cold medicine prescription bill defeated!

This may be the first major inroad in blunting the government's war against innocent Americans who dare to find boogers in their noses.

In Missouri, right-wing State Sen. Jason Crowell (R-Cape Girardeau) had introduced a provision that would have made certain over-the-counter allergy and cold medicines available by prescription only. The rationale for this was that someone might misuse these drugs to make meth.

If it had passed, the bill would have punished only the innocent. And it would have clogged doctor's offices and spread germs by forcing patients to visit the doctor just to get a drug that a family member should be able to get for them over-the-counter. (Not like any cold medicine you get at a drugstore works worth shit anyway.)

I've said before that Missouri doesn't get to decide what drugs are by prescription. Federal law already says these drugs are over-the-counter. Period.

But the Missouri Senate has now defeated this bill 18 to 6.

A lot of Missourians won't be inconvenienced now - much to the drug warriors' chagrin.

(Source: http://www.fox4kc.com/news/sns-ap-mo-xgr--meth-prescriptions,0,7285196.story)

The Conservative Fool Of The Day is...Zach Wamp!

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tennessee) was one of the kook-a-loons elected in the right-wing tidal wave of 1994.

This dinosaur lied when he pledged to serve only 12 years in the House - opting to run again in 2006.

Wamp grew up with the finest things in life, including a prep school education. That's no excuse for being as completely out of step with hard-working Americans as he is.

Lately, Wamp has been approaching a total meltdown.

With President Obama set to launch his health care reform program - which so far has been stymied by Republicans needlessly yelping - Wamp is on the offensive. He complained Obama's efforts are a "fast march to socialism."

Like that's supposed to scare people? Evidently, Wamp thinks socialism and communism are the same, so he thinks he can call something socialist and make people think it's communist.

What an outmoded goof.

Wamp also said health care is a privilege, not a right - and, in a hypocritical twist, said that claiming otherwise is "class warfare."

I don't know, Zach, but denying someone health care by calling it a "privilege" to be conferred based on status sounds more like class warfare to me.

Health care is a right, Zach. Not a privilege.

The interviewer asked Wamp, "If you have cancer right now, do you see it as a privilege to get some treatment?"

Wamp then offered some garbledygoop in an attempt to defend his untenable position, but just ended up looking like the incoherent fool he is.

How does this anachronistic moron keep getting elected?

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/GOP_Rep._Healthcare_not_right_0305.html)

Media waits until now to cover recession

I've noticed something very bizarre just in the past couple weeks or so. Except it's not bizarre if you're aware of the direction the media has taken in recent years. I thought I'd give you a heads-up about it so you can sort through the distortions.

It's a fact that the American economy has been in complete shambles since the Contract With America - largely because of the Contract's policies and because of the "new economy." It had been crumbling since even before then - but just not to such a pervasive degree. The economy got progressively worse through most of Bush's reign - because of his policies.

These are established facts. I don't go by what the media claims or even by the stock market. I go by the state of working-class America. The ever-widening gap between the rich and poor, and wages not keeping pace with inflation are dire economic indicators.

For a dozen years, however, the media paid hardly any attention to this chronic recession. It hyped the nonexistent economic boom of the late '90s, and even tried to convince us things were going dandily during the Bush era.

By and large, the media tried keeping up this charade even last year, when everyone finally knew the economic boom was a hoax.

Now, however, every other news story is about the stock market dive or some other economic woe.

Why did the media wait until now to extensively cover the recession?

If you don't know why, you probably haven't been reading this blog for very long: It's because there's finally a guy in the White House who the media doesn't like, so they're going to pull out all the stops to make sure he gets blamed.

It's also clear the stock market has been manipulated lately just so Obama is blamed for the recession. The success of the stock market in modern times is almost antithetical to the interests of average Americans - and a lot of that is because of intentional manipulation for political purposes.

If the market can overprice stocks for years, and engineer a crash, it creates a perception of a floundering economy - even if the economy is no worse than before.

Has the economy improved in the 6 weeks since Obama took office? Probably not at first, but that may be changing. I believe there's been a slight improvement just in the past 2 weeks or so that the media has been hyping the recession. I find it interesting that I'm making more money now than any other time since 1994, even though the recession is only now gaining coverage.

Make no mistake: The stimulus is working. I'm not being partisan (for I'm a Green, not a Democrat), but that much is clear.

Unfortunately, the media doesn't look at how we fare. It cares only about bogus numbers like the stock market, which are manipulated heavily.

Despite this new vista of hope, I won't say America is as prosperous as it was 30 years ago unless it gets back the factories it lost, and workers make wages equivalent to what they once made.

Veteran illegally denied gun permit

Bush conservatives claim to be such great patriots and such unmistakable Second Amendment champions that you'd think they'd let an Iraq War vet exercise his right to buy a gun. But this story is yet another that proves that what Bushists say doesn't always jibe with what they do.

A decorated Iraq War vet in Omaha has now been denied a permit to purchase a pistol. This despite the fact that he trained fellow Marines on firing guns, qualified as a marksman, and received a combat medal. Not only that, but he already has a rifle for target shooting, and he is still in the Marine Reserves - so why would he be denied a gun permit now?

Well, it turns out he has post-traumatic stress disorder from his war service. Because of current rules (which were supported by the Bush regime), Omaha authorities disqualified him from buying a gun.

Did the rightist bureaucrats even know what PTSD is? Probably. But they just don't give a shit.

PTSD is not a psychotic illness, and the veteran in this story has never been committed to a mental institution. Unfortunately, for 8 years, the Bush regime seemed always eager to outdo itself in stabbing veterans - especially those with PTSD - in the back.

If you think I'm just blustering because of my preexisting disapproval of the Bushes, read about an infamous individual named Sally Satel. Satel is a shrink who has authored several far-right titles. She was appointed by Bush to help run the hated TeenScreen and to encourage states to expand forced mental health treatment. Satel wrote an article in 2004 in which she absurdly claimed that PTSD is a hoax devised by veterans so they can collect more government benefits.

Satel's view isn't exactly what I call supporting the troops.

Unluckily, this was a pattern under Bush. I truly wish I could say America had a leader for 8 years who supported the country's brave fighting men and women. But when Bush was in charge, it didn't.

And frankly, the political views of the veteran in this story aren't an issue, as far as I'm concerned. It's unknown what his views are, but if he's a progressive populist, or if he thinks the Bushes are just swell, it should have no effect on whether he's allowed to buy a gun.

This story worked out in the veteran's favor: An appeals board has now approved his gun permit.

Perhaps the real lesson here is that nobody should blindly trust the mental health system - which seems hell-bent on denying everyone their rights.

(Source: http://www.military.com/news/article/vet-denied-gun-permit-over-ptsd-care.html)

Bill would censor online maps

Yet another public official seems eager to appease terrorists by cutting and running.

In California, far-right State Ass. Joel Anderson (pictured here) has a new bill that would censor Internet mapping sites. Anderson's bill would require sites like Google Earth and Virtual Earth to blur aerial and street-level photos of schools, hospitals, government buildings, and houses of worship.

His excuse is that terrorists who plotted attacks in India and Israel used mapping sites like these.

Except they didn't. That story has already been debunked.

It takes a real idiot to force the public to mortgage rights just because Bush couldn't capture a terrorist even if he had a map leading right to their hideout. Bush probably doesn't know how to read a map that's more detailed than the world map that used to be printed on soda cups at Long John Silver's.

The First Amendment protection of the free flow of information is pretty clear. Not like that's stopped the Republicans before from nibbling away at it.

Anderson reportedly appeared on Fox News Channel to defend his bill. He declared that nobody - not even law-abiding citizens - has a right or need to view the aerial photos provided by Google Earth or Virtual Earth. Nice to know some clod in the California legislature thinks he can decide what my rights and needs are.

If this bill does pass, it's not as if Google won't just lay down and take it. Google has already complied with undemocratic governments of other countries that have demanded yanking photos.

What's next? Banning computers? Banning breathing?

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ic3Izr3wpXcWAV3Ka0Dn0Wd8oS6AD96MO2300)

Too tired to blog...

(Sung to the tune of "Too Drunk To Fuck"...)

Went Roads Scholarin'
On the Peace Bike
Took about 50 pictures
Went near Wooster Pike

But now I am jaded
I gotta drop a log
I'm rolling down the stairs
Too tired to blog

Too tired to blog
Too tired to blog
Too tired to blog
I'm too tired, too tired, too tired
To blog...

Seriously, I am much, much too tired to blog today. I got back about an hour ago, and promptly fell asleep - after 9 hours of bicycling with hardly any rest stops.

And I did it all for you! Aaaww!

I did defy some minor Allowed Clouds that were placed by the Far Right, but not much. I did use a path near Mariemont that was roped off, and on the way home, I went through the forbidden zone off the end of the Trail to Nowhere again.

New CBS veep a right-wing lobbyist

Where's the outrage?

If a network hired some part-time reporter who turned out to be a registered Democrat, the right-wing brain trust would be asking for the network's head on a post.

But CBS hired a right-wing lobbyist for a position no less powerful than senior vice-president of communications. The new veep, Jeff Ballabon, is active in Bob Livingston's lobbying firm and has worked for many conservative public officials. He also raised money for Bush's presidential campaigns.

Ballabon once claimed that Democrats are evil. Later he declared, "Obama is incredibly dangerous."

In his CBS gig, Balloonbrain now oversees all media relations and public affairs for the network's news department.

Some "liberal" media, huh?

How can CBS expect to be taken seriously when it places someone so plainly partisan at the helm for public affairs? Easy. Because hardly anybody knows about it. Hardly anyone in the media has covered Ballabon's far-right links.

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-forman/cbs-news-pick-claimed-dem_b_168688.html)

Yes or no on Duncan's plan? ('Pail Poll)

Arne Duncan - in an apparent bid to compete with sweatshop economies abroad - has issued vague rumblings about adding yet more days to America's school calendar.

So far, the states have set how many days a year one is subjugated in America's broken schools. Nonetheless, any recommendation by Duncan is sure to have a grave impact.

The latest 'Pail Poll asks whether you'd favor Duncan's proposal - or if you'd only favor