I get mail

I just received this gem (regarding my defiance of the much-maligned Allowed Cloud at NKU):

"' SOme people are still stuck in 1995' Yea, You."

Except I'm not one of those who still thinks the Republicans have any future.

If NKU wasn't still stuck in 1995, why did they still have a hold on my account the last time I tried to enroll there? Is it just so they can pad their enrollment numbers?

Idiots in Senate scuttle Obama foreclosure bill

In 2006, America rejoiced when the Democrats regained control of Congress. Because everybody knew they could trust the Democrats to keep their promises to help working Americans.

Except they haven't.

Today, the Senate defeated an important bill championed by President Obama that would have allowed you to fight foreclosures through the bankruptcy courts. The 51 to 45 vote against the bill involved 12 Democrats siding with the Republicans' Evil Empire and with big banks.

If all the Democrats do is vote with the Republicans, what was the point in spending all that money to regain a Senate majority?

Not like we expected that much from them anyway, after they failed to repeal the Republicans' fascist mid-decade bankruptcy law (which should be considered null and void, as it was passed by a rogue regime).

(Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MORTGAGES_BANKRUPTCY?SITE=COCAN&SECTION=TOP_STORIES&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-04-30-06-18-55)

Richest county in America blasted for housing discrimination

Goochland County, Virginia, is the wealthiest county in America. This conservative, exurban bailiwick near Richmond has the nation's highest average income, based on recent tax data. Its average income is 13 times that of hurricane-ravaged St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, the nation's poorest county.

Why is Goochland County becoming so much richer? Not only does it have some extremely opulent residents that skew the average upward. According to some locals, you're also required to be rich just to move in.

Goochland County reportedly does not allow new houses that cost less than $500,000. (Ooh, an Allowed Cloud!) Nor does it permit any new apartments. Probably the only poor people who live in the county are live-in maids, or the families of folks who lived there when it was a much poorer, more rural area. Even the latter group is being priced out of the county.

Why does the county have these restrictions? If the reports that the county has these regulations are true, it's because of official hostility to poor people. It's that simple. In all cases, when a city or county has a rule like this, that's the reason.

Under these rules (if the reports that the rules exist are correct), the poor are generally no longer allowed to live in Goochland County.

For the record, rules like this are illegal - but nobody ever does anything about it. Regulations that require a minimum home value are illegal largely because they discriminate based on economic status. Cities and counties are required to ensure that the poor may live within the community.

Goochland County isn't the only offender. Several years ago, a county near Atlanta wouldn't let Habitat for Humanity build housing, because the county had classist regulations mandating a minimum house size. And you'd be shocked at how many working-class cities all over America are run by right-wing regimes that try to drive out the very residents they're supposed to represent. It happens even in my town, as the city actively pays building owners to convert apartment buildings into single-family houses.

And it's just as illegal.

I was even priced out of my original hometown by that city's unlawful favoring of developments for the rich. The city failed to require new housing to be affordable.

Unfortunately, the federal government in the past 25 years has not been serious - at all - about pursuing complaints of classism in housing.

The classist disaster unfolding in Goochland County might be different though. The county has its defenders, to be sure. But more than one person has stated that the county does indeed have regulations specifying a minimum $500,000 house value.

And folks are furious.

Goochland County being named as the richest in America was attention that wasn't exactly helpful. Several observers have blasted the county's exclusivity - and have even threatened lawsuits over the home value rules.

Federal laws need to be strengthened and clarified regarding counties and cities that practice economic-based housing discrimination. The laws have to have teeth, and the injustice has to be remedied at all costs.

(Source: http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/GOOC11_20090410-222045/253988)

When Jump the Shark jumped the shark

TV Guide got greedy.

The old Jump the Shark website was a cultural phenomenon. It let folks submit all the moments when their favorite TV shows fell to shambles. It was an uproarious read! Jump the Shark was so lucrative that its owner sold it to TV Guide in 2006.

But the TV Guide people didn't care about what made Jump the Shark so special. The company that owned TV Guide was only interested in building its media empire.

It turns out though that TV Guide's eyes were bigger than its business sense. The operators of TV Guide mismanaged the magazine so spectacularly that recently it sold for only $1. Not just one copy - the entire magazine.

By that time, the publication had been retooled so much that it wasn't even the same TV Guide we remember. It had become a celebrity gossip rag.

Welp, earlier this year, the TV Guide geniuses did the same thing to Jump the Shark - which proves they hadn't learned a damn thing from the previous debacle. Now, if you try going to the Jump the Shark site, it redirects to TV Guide's gossip crap. There's no sign of Jump the Shark anywhere.

This shows that when TV Guide purchased Jump the Shark, all TV Guide cared about was buying the mouse clicks of folks looking for the Jump the Shark site - not about Jump the Shark itself. To add insult to injury, TV Guide began calling some of its boring National Enquirer-like gossip tidbits "shark bites" - even though they have nothing to do with Jump the Shark.

Worse, all those hilarious entries that were on the old Jump the Shark site are now gone. Gone into thin air. All the years that went into making that site a legend are wasted. All that work, wastage bastage!

Some have suggested that TV Guide's greed is even deeper than it appears. TV Guide wants you to think there's no such thing as bad TV (even though TV is worse now than ever) - because its business is based on TV. So it's been claimed that its purchase of Jump the Shark was actually intended to silence the ridicule of the hundreds of TV shows that had entries on that site.

The outrage over Jump the Shark's gutting is so intense that someone has opted to resurrect the original Jump the Shark concept on a new website - which bears the much edgier name Bone the Fish.

To quote Principal Skinner of 'The Simpsons': "And bone we will!"

I'm sure I can list quite a few examples of legendary television programs Boning the Fish. I bet you can too!

The new Bone the Fish site can be found at:

http://www.bonethefish.com

(Source: http://www.bonethefish.com/whathappenedtoJTS/JumptheShark.php)

Cincinnati still one of the most polluted cities

Burning wood.

Have you noticed the past few years that the smell of burning wood is often inescapable if you have your windows open or if you step outside?

It's not as bad though as some of the other substances that fill our air in the Cincinnati region.

A new report by the American Lung Association says 60% of Americans now live in areas with dangerous ozone or particle pollution levels - pollution that causes conditions ranging from emphysema to heart attacks.

But Cincinnatians who think the smog is so thick they can barely see the stripes on the roads now know it's not their eyesight that's going bad: Cincinnati still ranks as one of the most polluted metropolitan areas in America - though it has been surpassed by several other areas, especially in California and Texas.

It was bad enough 20 years ago that I would've spent good money to avoid the symptoms (and I wasn't rich). Then again, I now know that my ailments were caused more by the strange pathogens at my high school than by the pollutants dealt with in this study. Still, air pollution is a serious concern in this area.

Will we see improvement? Not as long as suburban sprawl continues unchecked, and no efforts are made to build cars that pollute less. You can't say I wasn't farsighted in pinpointing these problems years ago.

(Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/28/pollution-ozone-air-lifestyle-health-ozone-pollution_slide_12.html)

Go west, LeftMaps!

If you were waiting with basted breath for the wingnut intelligentsia to crap themselves again - well, they do that every day.

But my latest LeftMaps offering only adds to their chagrin.

Cincinnati and Covington are big enough to be broken down into neighborhoods along officially defined lines. That LeftMaps did, by producing a map of West Covington - the seventh in this set of bicycling maps to be completed.

The Far Right hates every damn one of these maps.

But the latest map is extra, extra stinging for the Far Right! In a spirit of elitist fervor, the city of Covington tried in 2007 to rename West Covington to Botany Hills. But nowhere does my map call it that. That's because nobody calls it that. Probably not one person.

So if you need a good biking map of West Covington or certain other local communities, point your pooper here:

http://bunkerblast.info/maps

Another questionable presidential appointment

I think there's general agreement that Obama is the best President since Carter - but appointments like this make me doubt that he's ever going to top him.

Obama has now nominated Chuck Hurley to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Hurley is currently the CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

I have to seriously question anyone who has had recent major involvement in MADD. MADD has strayed so far from its original purpose as to be unrecognizable. MADD's own founder quit the organization because it began focusing less on drunk driving than on criminalizing drinking altogether. MADD has become a prohibitionist group.

MADD even opposes the designated driver campaign, claiming it encourages people who don't drive to drink. And it has long supported the national 21 drinking age - one of the biggest failures in modern American history.

MADD demonizes anyone who dares to question the national 21 policy. When a group of college presidents suggested reexamining the federally imposed drinking age, MADD demanded that parents boycott these schools by not sending their kids there.

Because Hurley has run MADD for several years, he's largely responsible for this continuing disconnect between MADD and effective public polices.

Hurley has also been a staunch proponent of red light cameras - which have been ineffective at making our roads safer. In fact, the cameras have actually increased traffic mishaps. The cameras are used primarily as revenue generators - for local governments and for the big businesses that operate the cameras. Indeed, camera manufacturers have bankrolled much of the movement towards red light cams.

How's that for corporatism?

Don't expect major improvement in Americans' lives unless the type of hackneyed thinking displayed by the likes of Chuck Hurley is eschewed, as it should have been years ago.

Oscar plays Halo ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

A long-running household joke is the cat food commercial from around 1980 in which the pouch of cat food rips open, and a woman intones in a singsong voice, "Fresh!" Or maybe it was, "Special!"

Once again, I mention this ad, as I recall a family member replacing this intonation with, "Warthog!"

Warthogs are interesting. Not just the pig-like animal, but also the fictional battle vehicle found in the Halo series of video games. If you've ever played Halo, you've probably found a Warthog resting in the desert and have used it to aimlessly drive around in protest of falling to your death.

You know who else likes warthogs and Warthogs? Oscar the Grouch!

In this old 'Sesame Street' sketch, the ol' Osk extols the virtues of the word 'warthog':



'Warthog' doesn't have quite the same ring as 'ruin' or 'mayhem', but if it's good enough for my friend Oscar, it's good enough for me.

When Oscar plays Halo, finding a Warthog is probably the highlight of every game! For the rest of the day, he probably tells everyone, "I picked up a deadly Warthog!" Then he laughs about what a beautiful word it is!

Warthog!

Wingnuts melt down over Specter switch

Losing support often brings out the worst in the Republican Right.

They cannot handle it.

You might feel reluctant to poke fun at them - until you consider the way they acted back when they used to actually win elections. The dickheads reap what they sow.

Who's laughing now?

Losing brings out not just the Republican Right's lack of sportsmanship, but also its bigotry and irrationality.

Here's what one Republican commenter said on a right-wing blog regarding Arlen Specter's party switch:

"I say good riddance!! This guy has always been a Jew in a cowboy hat. The liberal Jew (meaning, no longer believes in God) comes through all the way yet he wears this silly all American 'face' that fakes, humility, fakes to be just a commoner, and fakes that he is a Senator because he is trying to preserve our liberty. GOOD BYE YOU TRAITOR!!!! AT LEAST BE AN ORTHODOX JEW WITH PRINCIPLES!"

Those are that commenter's words (including the part in parentheses), not mine.

Worse, they posted that under an entry that had nothing whatsoever to do with Specter. They have such a complete lack of self-control over losing political support that they can't even take enough care to see if they're posting under the right entry!

Well, folks, you've just seen the future of what was America's ruling party for most of the past 28 years. Talk about throwing this all away.

Not like this kind of irrationality is completely new for them. In 2006, the old Conservative Fool Of The Day blog noted how inane the rightist brain trust was getting when they sensed looming electoral losses. This blog referred to a right-wing Internet commenter who complained:

"What's funny is DemoRATS support and encourage Men fucking each other in the asshole.

"But heaven forbid a conservative fuck his wife with a hard dick

"DemoRATS are just little penis envy losers"

One wonders how the wingnuts manage to keep posting online. You'd think all the spittle would have shorted out their computers by now.

Bachmann is the kook who keeps on giving!

It bodes ill for the party of background noise when this is one of their "leaders."

Right-wing congresswoman Michele Bachmann was already named Conservative Fool Of The Day this morn for blaming swine flu on Obama and Carter.

Now she's just made a very similar gaffe.

In a harangue about a certain tariff law of decades ago, Bachmann said the "Hoot-Smalley Act" was the fault of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Bachmann, you idiot, it was called the Smoot-Hawley Act. And it was signed into law not by Roosevelt, but by Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's predecessor.

The Conservative Fool Of The Day is...Michele Bachmann!

If you were on the edge of your seat waiting for some right-wing brainiac to blame Obama for the swine flu outbreak, you can now hoist yourself back onto your easy chair.

And you can thank right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) for saving you from slipping off your seat and conking your head on your monitor.

Bachmann was one of the first Conservative Fool Of The Day entries on the old blog - due to her bizarre public behavior. Like Stacey Campfield, Bachmann hasn't gotten any saner in the years since.

Now, in reference to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, Bachmann said, "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

One problem with that, Michele: Carter wasn't President yet in 1976. That fell under the period of Gerald Ford, a Republican.

I'm sure the '76 flu wasn't Ford's fault either. There's a very famous photo out there of Ford getting a flu shot (with a goofy grin on his face), so at least he did his part to contain the misery. But Michele Bachmann's claim of Carter having secret retroactive infection powers is unfounded.

I find it interesting, Michele, that I almost never got sick until I was in grade school, when Reagan took office. And that I stopped getting sick right when Clinton took office. I didn't have a common cold again until the younger Bush seized power.

Isn't that an interesting coinky-dink, Michele?

Isn't it odd, Michele, that in every new article about common colds from the Reagan era into the younger Bush years, the average number of colds per year seemed to inch higher and higher?

Going to blame Obama for that too?

There's plenty of evidence proving that Republican ineptness led to an increase in colds and flu from the '80s onward. But since conservaworld is a parallel universe where up is down, war is peace, and 2 plus 2 is 5, you can always count on the likes of Michele Bachmann to keep repeating the exact opposite - as if repeating it makes it true.

One of the most underreported stories in America in recent years is the rise of common illnesses that began in the '80s. Search high and low, and you won't find one word about it. Maybe the media should spend more time investigating this, and less time probing the sex lives of political opponents.

Ignoring this phenomenon is dangerous.

News site says we "should be proud of waterboarding"

Words fail me.

When the Cincinnati Post ceased its print paper at the close of 2007, it wasn't because the area couldn't support 2 dailies. I'm convinced it's because of the type of wacky proclamations that continue to plague the Kentucky Post, which continues in Internet-only form.

Like today, it has a headline blaring, "Americans should be proud of waterboarding."

It's a link to a bizarre right-wing op-ed by think tank kook Deroy Murdock that rants against "liberals" and ignores the fact that waterboarding is an unreliable and illegal interrogation technique. The illegality of waterboarding is so established that this practice was tried as a war crime when Japanese troops used it during World War II. Even Reagan's Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff who used it.

How do we know Murdock's article strains reliability? Murdock once told Chris Matthews that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 (a belief that was debunked years ago), and he has claimed climate change is a hoax.

The Kentucky Post and Deroy Murdock are part of the Scripps Howard syndicate. Scripps Howard News Service does have some columnists who are generally accurate and fair - but when it turns right, it REALLY turns right.

Trust me: Scripps Howard was Bushist before Bushist was "cool." I remember reading the Post as a teenager and being perturbed that it was actually considered the area's "liberal" paper. Later, the Post opposed a much-needed minimum wage increase that 90% of the American public supported. Later still, the Post blamed a minimum wage increase for an unemployment spike - even though the wage increase hadn't taken effect yet. (That piece was not even labeled as an editorial.)

That's the kind of publication that would declare we "should be proud of waterboarding."

Something tells me the Kentucky Post isn't going to remain viable even as an Internet-only paper. Right-wing bias was as much of a bust for the newspaper biz as the rise of the Internet was. And this proves it.

White supremacists adopt Mall Road

Meet Mall Road in Florence, Kentucky. (Those in the know call it KY 3157.)

I almost never visit Florence Mall, so I was unaware of what was looming in plain sight on Mall Road. It turns out that over a year ago, part of the road was adopted by the National Alliance as part of Kentucky's Adopt-a-Highway program.

What is the National Alliance? Let there be no doubt about it: The National Alliance is a white supremacist, neo-Nazi organization.

It's unclear if anything can be done about the shame of the National Alliance getting its name on a sign on a major highway in Florence. The Supreme Court ruled that the morons of the Ku Klux Klan could participate in Missouri's Adopt-a-Highway program, so this case wouldn't be much different.

The Adopt-a-Highway sign on Mall Road mourns the death of National Alliance founder William Pierce - a man whose extremism never relented. Even on his deathbed, Pierce claimed that Jews controlled the media and that no honest coverage had ever been done about him.

Now that Boone County has become the epicenter of local right-wing politics, let them deal with this embarrassment. We in Campbell County were force-fed this bullshit long enough. Now it's another county's turn.

Boone County's Republican officials seem proud of being movement conservatives. The fact that they sponsored a Glenn Beck-themed event attracts extremists like the National Alliance. The GOP reaps what it sows.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/White-Pride-Group-Adopts-A-Highway-In-Florence/E_jx3dXcZUCt-6LTRfvXgw.cspx)

Senate gains Democratic member!

When I saw this headline, I thought it had to be mistaken. But here it comes....

Longtime Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has just announced that he's switched parties to become a Democrat. This will give the Democrats the magic number of 60 senators - the number they need to avoid Republican filibusters.

Specter has served in the Senate since 1981. Specter, 79, is the third-youngest senator. (Just joking about him being the third-youngest senator.)

This would be much bigger news if the 2 major parties were still that much different from each other - but still I have to report it.

Don't expect Arlen Specter to be a 'Pail populist just because he switched parties. Even so, the Republicans have become too conservative even for him. He was trailing by an astounding margin in a hypothetical GOP primary match-up against right-wing former Rep. Pat Toomey (known for his Club for Greed involvement).

Observers say that you know a party is near the end of its shelf life when it's taken over by the most extreme elements. Specter being driven out of the GOP for not being conservative enough is more evidence that the Republican era is over.

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/28/specter.party.switch)

Operation Contours: 100% complete!

It's comple-le-le-le-lete!

Remember Operation Contours? Now I've completed this project, and to my delight, it took only 3 weeks!

Operation Contours is part of my LeftMaps gig, which is really like a satellite operation of this blog. LeftMaps is a celebration of left-wing populism. It's a set of bicycling maps I've made for Cincinnati area neighborhoods.

And I'm making more! Although progress has been slow for Dayton, Kentucky, because of the town's dimensions, the neighborhood of West Covington will likely be done soon.

All of this chagrins the Far Right sorely, because they think the only vehicles that should be allowed on public roadways are their hulkers that get only 2 miles a gallon.

Incidentally, I don't know how fast progress is going to be on LeftMaps or this blog this summer. Daylight Wasting Time has cost me about 3 days of work on this blog this month - delays that are reminiscent of those that resulted from fighting the media's obsession with John Edwards's affair.

So if you want to peep LeftMaps celebrating this blog's bloggy goodness, point your pooper here:

http://bunkerblast.info/maps

Lieberman whimpers and cries

And to think I actually went to a rally to make sure this guy's veep votes got counted. Why oh why? (Because he was running against Darth Cheney.)

Now Joe Lieberman is accusing President Obama of helping America's enemies by daring to release the Bush-era torture memos. He said this act "just helps our enemies."

Uh, Joe? 2005 called. It wants its reflexive right-wing grievances back.

Actually, most of the information in these memos had already been released by the Bush regime itself. Does that mean Bush was "helping our enemies"?

I'm sure Lieberman knows this information was already released, but just doesn't care, because making political hay is more important to him.

(Source: http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/Joe_Release_of_torture_memo_helps_our_enemies_.html)

Wingnuts report stations to FCC for not covering Tea Parties more favorably

You can't make this stuff up, people.

The FCC ruled in 1969 that TV and radio stations can't intentionally distort news coverage. That's because the airwaves are a public trust, and stations have to operate in the public interest.

But distort news they do. Anyone familiar with talk radio or Fox News has seen the media's right-wing bias up close and personal.

Believe it or not, however, conservatives are now griping to the FCC because they feel the media isn't right-wing enough. They've used their net of hate blogs to amass an unspecified number of formal FCC complaints against CNN and MSNBC, as they claim these networks' coverage of the Tea Parties hasn't been favorable enough.

They seriously think the media's coverage of the Tea Parties is too unfavorable? Uh, hello??? The Cincinnati Tea Party this month didn't just receive favorable coverage. The event was sponsored outright by powerful WKRC radio.

How's that for distorting the news?

There's been almost no coverage at all of protests by opponents of the Tea Parties.

Gee, no right-wing bias there, huh? (That's sarcasm!)

Most of the people who claim the media is biased against the Tea Parties are media people themselves - which kind of discredits their own claim, doesn't it?

GOP stripped flu funds from stimulus

Yet another story from the halls of Republicans' bad decision-making.

Earlier this year, the House included pandemic preparedness funding in the stimulus bill. But the Republicans later stripped a vast majority of these funds from the bill.

This forced health authorities to put off their chance to get pandemic funding.

The effort to strip pandemic funds seems to be the work of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Usually, Collins is portrayed as a rare voice of GOP moderation, but - like the right-wing ideologues who dominate the party today - she brags on her own website of stripping the funds.

If Collins wants to look like a fool using her own site, that's her business. But when she and her right-wing colleagues pull funding from an essential health program just because they can, that affects all of us.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/26/724827/-Republicans-Stripped-Pandemic-Flu-Preparedness-From-Stimulus)

Rove's flu

Fact: pandemics happen because of poor planning and bad policy.

Another fact: I was as up in arms about other outbreaks of the past 20 years as I am about the swine flu epidemic. We were in the heart of the rightist experiment, so I'm used to it. My immune system is probably steeled in every pathogen known to exist.

The rest of America though doesn't have this immunity - a fact that makes longtime GOP thug Karl Rove look even stupider than ever.

In February, Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he heaped ridicule upon government spending for flu preparedness. Rove complained about stimulus funds being spent on "pandemic flu preparations."

Uh, Karl?

If only the money was spent on this type of stuff years ago - instead of squandered on nonsense.

I live in an area where local governments spent untold dollars prosecuting a museum for "dirty" art and tapping phones for "communist" activity - but couldn't track the flu worth a damn. Local governments had money to give to big corporations that ended up moving all their jobs out of town anyway - but it failed to make sure we had clean drinking water.

And we wonder why things fall apart when conservatives take power.

The Bush regime could spend millions of taxpayer dollars on bank bailouts and on using the Patriot Act to track every political opponent who cheats on their spouse - but it was reluctant to spare that much to protect the country from a flu pandemic. (Bush eventually requested some money for flu preparedness, but only after ignoring the threat for years.)

Karl Rove's complaint about flu spending reminds me of Bobby Jindal whining about spending money to monitor volcanoes, just before one of the biggest volcanoes in America erupted. Or congressional Republicans' claims in the '90s that the Taliban was no threat.

Another website suggests renaming this strain of swine flu to Karl's flu. I disagree, because people might think it has something to do with Karl Marx or Karl Malone. I think we should call it Rove's flu.

We also have to look at other factors that have led to Rove's flu. There's a consensus that this outbreak started at a corporate factory farm - another example of the ravages of factory farming, which have already put small farmers out of business.

There's also signs that airlines' refusal to use clean air filters and properly clean aircraft contributed. (Improper airplane cleaning is also believed to be a major contributor to the nation's bedbug epidemic. Of course, the Bush regime sat on its hands through that too, and even gave a bailout to airlines.)

If the government won't spend money on fighting real threats like pandemics and volcanoes, why does it exist? In conservaworld, the government's role is to regulate people's sex lives and censor "communist" comic books. It's never to rein in big corporations or to keep us safe from flu epidemics.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/27/rove-mocked-spending-on-flu-preparedness)

Fox analyst says losing Miss USA contestant should sue

Has America become the land where you can just sue every time you lose at any endeavor?

For those who follow conservative ideology, apparently so.

Like Bush suing to have the 2000 election awarded to him, Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin says Carrie Prejean should sue the Miss USA pageant because she lost.

Colwin (the biggest sore loser in all of this) said of Prejean, "If she really feels some tremendous stress as a result of losing ... she can articulate a viable claim for monetary compensation for psychic injury."

So Fox News says Prejean should sue because she lost and had her feelings hurt by this? This reminds me of the episode of 'The Simpsons' in which Lisa wrote a letter to President Clinton to get him to overturn the result of a music contest at a state fair that she lost.

Colwin claims Prejean was discriminated against because of her conservative political and religious views.

Bull. And shit.

This is another story full of manufactured outrage by the wingnutosphere. Carrie Prejean wasn't discriminated against. End of story. But she's not taking her defeat much more gracefully than the Fox analyst is. She said that if she had been given any other question to answer, "I know I would have won."

For what it's worth, here's a little tidbit that you can draw your own conclusions from. Prejean attends San Diego Christian College, a right-wing institution founded for the purpose of promoting creationism. One of its founders was longtime right-wing agitator Tim LaHaye, who has ties to Washington Times founder and convicted tax cheat Sun Myung Moon.

The obvious conclusion is that Prejean is yet another movement conservative wriggling her way into the national conscience with the help of the rightist noise machine. But this carries with it a lot of suspicion about what went on here.

I have to ask myself whether right-wing leaders actually encouraged Carrie Prejean to help manufacture this story by giving a conservative answer, so that the freeposphere would cry that the contest was rigged if she lost - thus making conservatives appear to be victims when they're not. I'm not absolutely certain that's what happened, but I'd bet that it was, because it has the telltale signs. And stuff like this has happened before.

The Far Right brain trust has had this racket going on for years. They agitate (even hire) right-wing students to whip up controversies at their schools so they can play the victim. So why would they not similarly stir up a contestant in a Miss USA pageant?

I'm only speculating - but this racket has enough of a history that this public speculation is fair.

As for Mercedes Colwin's lawsuit suggestion, any lawyer who files this case ought to be disbarred immediately. Courts have more important things to do than hear the complaints of everyone who loses a Miss USA pageant.

7-year-old suicide victim took psychiatric drugs

The human mind is like a computer with feelings.

BASIC programmers know of the POKE command. One misstep with a POKE, and that could be the end of your machine.

POKE commands literally change a computer's memory. Psychiatric drugs do the same to a person's brain.

In fact, psychiatric drugs are worse. Experienced programmers know what POKE commands are safe to use, and which memory cells can be reset. By contrast, the cells of a human brain cannot be reset to what they were before the drugging.

This month, a 7-year-old boy in Florida committed suicide by hanging. It turns out that only weeks before this tragedy, he had been prescribed a powerful psychiatric drug - one that had been linked by the FDA to suicide in children.

In total, he had been prescribed 4 different psychiatric drugs. Three of them (Lexapro, Zyprexa, and Symbyax) weren't even approved for children - yet they are commonly prescribed to children anyway. The other drug he took was the ADHD medication Vyvanse.

Once he had this cocktail in his system, he had no chance. None. That is, unless he stopped taking these drugs. Even then, it would have taken years to recover, and parts of his mind would have been permanently lost. But he died before he was taken off the drugs.

While the boy wasn't taking the drugs, he got good grades. Problems appeared only while the druggings were taking place.

This sad story follows the 2005 passage of a state law designed to curb the use of psychiatric drugs in foster children. This law followed the discovery that 1 in 4 foster kids in Florida were being drugged with dangerous psychotropic toxins. Many feel that the law is being ignored outright - mostly by judges who order the kids drugged, against the wishes of adults who care for them.

Will this story lead to a movement against druggings? Unfortunately, that seems doubtful. Stories like this are usually swept under the rug as quickly as they appear. I'm afraid this won't be the last story like this before people finally take notice.

(Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/community/news/margate/sfl-boy-suicide-psychiatric-drugs-bn042209,0,2251150.story)

When persons aren't persons - but corporations are

Set aside for a moment what prompted this case (as hard as this may be).

The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws. As long as a law is constitutional and doesn't violate any inalienable precepts, that is the law we must follow. The government must follow it as well.

Even if a Guantanamo Bay detainee claims the law is being violated, you have to weigh this claim according to what the law says. A detainee could be accused of a million terrorist attacks - but the government still has to follow the law. Emotion cannot be a bar against applying a law that was duly enacted.

Nor can some activist ruling. Yet it happens anyway.

An appeals court for the Washington, D.C., circuit declared on Friday that Gitmo detainees aren't actually "persons" - so they can't seek protection of a law that covers "persons."

I know we're talking about terrorist suspects in this case, but we all have to be worried because it's such a slippery slope. How much of a slippery slope? Imagine what Clyde Street (one of the steepest streets in Cincinnati) would be like if coated with Oil of Olay. That's how steep and slick this slippery slope is.

Some laws about "persons" are designed to apply specifically to those who are being detained. So if you say detainees aren't "persons", these laws are gutted.

This ruling has serious implications for concepts like habeas corpus. American citizens who aren't even accused of any crimes are unlawfully detained without fair court hearings on a daily basis. Are they not "persons"? What about their habeas corpus?

Think this doesn't happen? I spent last year engaging in roadside protests against an abusive teen confinement facility near Cincinnati. Are the kids who are held there not "persons"?

Eric Holder has been nearly as inept as the Bush regime in handling Gitmo cases. I guess he's competing with Arne Duncan and Robert Gates in the contest to see who Obama should fire first.

Maddeningly, while you might be considered not a "person" if you are detained for a crime you may be innocent of, corporations are considered "persons." Corporations are given rights that are supposed to be reserved only for living beings. In practice, corporations have more rights than people do.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Appeals_court_rules_Gitmo_detainees_are_0424.html)

Government to unleash killer wasps

Whose not-so-brilliant idea is this?

When I read about this, I knew it had to be the work of some Bush holdover who doesn't understand science. For one thing, it takes a Republican to come up with such a silly idea. For another, this is a bit like the government's plan to engineer a corn famine that surfaced right after the elder Bush left office (which was devised by a Bush crony).

Also like the corn proposal, this idea is being presented as necessary and is largely treated by the media as if it is no big deal. (Incidentally, there has been a corn shortfall, which contributed to last year's stagflation. So it was right on cue!)

Now the government plans to release killer wasps on the Mexican border. The stated purpose of the wasps is to kill weeds that shield drug smugglers and illegal immigrants sneaking into the country.

Really??? They need wasps for this???

If some poor farmer in Texas gets stung by a swarm of killer wasps released by the government, what are people going to say then?

Bush's Department of Homeland Stupidity wanted to use a herbicide to kill the weeds, but Mexican officials raised such an uproar that the Obama administration put the brakes on that potentially dangerous plan.

The same needs to be done with this proposal.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/middleblue3/story/The-Buzz-On-The-Border/o07hjbi5fkaLgpqWmZa0kA.cspx)

Government seizes land for fence

Bushists claim to be such strong champions of property rights that the naive among us would think they'd be dripping sweat from the billowy flesh inside their heads to stop unfair land grabs like this.

But what the Bush cult says doesn't always jibe with what it does. This story proves the Bush regime's kleptocracy more plainly than perhaps any other.

One of Bush's later acts was his launching of the hated border fence. Bush's Department of Homeland Suckyurity claimed this fence would halt illegal immigration from Mexico, but there was a consensus among observers that it would be ineffective. Despite the chest-pounding nationalism of the fence's supporters, much of the steel for it was made in China. And the fence - despite costing billions of dollars - was expected to last no longer than about 25 years anyway.

The fence was opposed by almost everyone in the border city of Brownsville, Texas. That's where a local woman who owned property where the fence would go fought the new structure.

Did Bush's DHS care that most people in Brownsville opposed the fence? Of course not. So it plowed ahead with the fence.

One wonders what the whole point was in dividing the country into states, counties, and cities, if the federal government can just totally ignore the locals' wishes.

As for the woman who owned the property near Brownsville, the government didn't even consult with her or other small landowners before deciding to take their land to build the unneeded fence. But Bush's DHS eventually tried offering her only $13,500 for over a quarter-acre.

If you know anyone who has a quarter-acre of land, try offering them only $13,500 for it. You'll be laughed right off their land.

The Obama administration ought to just cancel this project. I say leave it unfinished. And if the finished portion is useful for nothing else, it'll at least be a stark monument to Bush's waste and incompetence. But the new administration has had to prioritize by cleaning up other Bush messes first.

So construction of the fence trudges on. And now a Texas judge has ruled against the property owner and has given the federal government her land. It's unclear on what legal basis.

Let me reiterate: The government needs to cancel what remains of this project - now.

(Source: http://www.themonitor.com/news/fence_25543___article.html/border_land.html)

School buys prison jumpsuits to defend "conservative values"

How hypocritical is Gonzales High School, a public school in Gonzales, Texas?

I heard vague rumblings about this story last year, but only now is it moving to the frontburner (perhaps because of increasing lawsuit warnings).

To punish students who violate the school's unconstitutional uniform policy, the school has purchased an untold quantity of blue prison jumpsuits - which violators will be required to wear.

Press reports say the jumpsuits were instituted as "a way to keep the district's conservative values intact."

So now schools are arbiters of politics too? Like we didn't know that already.

This story proves school officials lie when they say the dress code is to reduce distractions. If anything would be distracting, it would be the sad spectacle of the jumpsuits. The entire purpose of the policy is to humiliate.

A couple years ago, I noticed a Catholic school in my area had a similar policy in its handbook to humiliate students, and I seriously considered reporting school officials to police for child abuse. But many local officials think children are property, not people, so it wouldn't have done any good. (This is also a main reason local authorities haven't been serious about investigating molestation cases.)

When the jumpsuit policy in Gonzales was enacted, some students threatened to violate the dress code just so they'd have to wear the jumpsuits - thus making the policy backfire on the school.

On the other hand, why would prison jumpsuits seem unsuitable for schools, considering our schools today are nothing short of prisons? A lot of schools beat you if you talk at lunch, so what's the diff?

(Source: http://www.clickorlando.com/education/17035594/detail.html)

Big cable firms write bill to outlaw competitors

Exorbitant costs for phone, Internet, and cable TV service had long plagued the city of Wilson, North Carolina.

In northern Kentucky, our public officials wouldn't have done shit to remedy it. Once about 20 years ago, local cable regulators accepted free cable instead of clamping down on bad service. The corruption was endless. (Then they claimed the free cable was so they could monitor the cable system for "dirty" movies.)

But in Wilson, city leaders acted to make a difference: They started a new municipally owned service offering Internet, phone, and cable - to compete against the high costs charged by large providers. And if you use the city-owned service, it's much cheaper and faster than using the big companies. The city didn't even have to raise taxes.

But now, corporate overlords are crying to their cronies in the North Carolina legislature to quash this competition.

Time Warner Cable and Embarq have gotten legislators to introduce bills to outlaw community-owned broadband providers. Instead of improving their service to remain competitive, they want the government to crack down on their competition.

Make no mistake about it: These bills are designed to protect cable, phone, and Internet monopolies. It's corporatism at its worst.

Strangling competition is the corporate greed merchants' idea of "free market" - one of few common phrases in the English language that defies its own meaning. The "free market" is "free" until Big Business realizes it can't compete by offering shoddy service, so it demands government intervention to prop it up. Besides, isn't it the government that awards monopolies to big corporations in the first place?

This is little different from the "regulation for thee, not for me" philosophy that guides modern conservatism.

(Source: http://consumerist.com/5224578/time-warner-cable-cannot-possibly-compete-with-the-small-city-of-wilson-nc)

Another senseless death caused by school harassment

Thirty years ago, if a bully harassed a schoolmate, there's a good chance the victim would punch their lights out. You didn't hear much about serial harassment then, because the response to the first incident often kept it from becoming serial.

Something changed along the way that discouraged fighting back. Most likely, it's because schools blame the victims. Look at a harasser cockeyed, and you can find yourself in more trouble than you ever thought possible.

Now an 11-year-old boy in DeKalb County, Georgia, has become the latest victim to commit suicide, after his school refused to act against the harassers.

How many more suicides do there have to be before schools take harassment seriously?

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/23/bullying.suicide)

Another harassing call the Nazis will deny

Since we're on the topic of utilities' incompetence, this would be a good time for this entry.

Because yesterday existed, it was another day on which a harassing phone call was received. Once again, I recorded it, so you can "enjoy" it:



Incidentally, the time on the answering machine is off by an hour, because I didn't bother to adjust it for Daylight Wasting Time until today when the power went out.

I traced this call to a number with a 513 area code, which is in the Ohio portion of the Cincinnati area.

The Far Right will deny this call ever took place, of course, as they have since 1985. And the phone company and the local police have never been interested in doing anything about it, so we must.

Power goes out (again)

Because this is a day ending in 'y', the power went out here yet again. I wasn't home when it happened, but I figure that it was around 11 AM.

What's the excuse this time, Duke Energy? There was hardly a cloud in the sky at 11 AM, let alone any storms.

Local government needs to just either take over Duke or allow someone to compete with it. Or it's part of the problem. And it's under strict orders to gag on piss.

Meanwhile, expect Duke to raise power bills yet again. Every time the power goes out, it likes to use that as an excuse to raise the rates.

The only gum you'll ever need (Bubble Gum Weekend)

I'm so pleased to find this ad that I couldn't wait any longer to post it!

I found this on YouPube earlier this week, and it's what reminded me of the missing Johnny Bench medallion that I've sent you on a sleuthing mission to find.

The Reds catcher was hired by Fifth Third Bank as its pitchman in 1973. Who can forget those '70s ads with Bench, which ended with the jingle singers singing, "The only bank you'll ever need"?

That wasn't the only product endorsement for Johnny Bench. In 1979, he appeared in a commersh for Bubble Fudge - a chocolate flavored bubble gum put out by the Bazooka people.

I can't believe there's a bubble gum that was sold in 1979 that I don't remember. But I never knew this gum or the ad existed until I found the ad a few days ago.

That may be for the better. Folks who actually remember this brand describe it as wretched. One website calls it "absolutely the worst gum in the history of gum."

But since it appears to be a defunct product, here's the hilarious commercial that features Johnny Bench and his nephew bubbling:



Actually, Bench's bubbling skills in this ad are so disastrous that the gum appears to be marketed as bubble gum for people who don't know how to bubble.

Ironically, I once wrote a parody article for a computer bulletin board system in which Johnny Bench despised bubble gum because he was afraid it would get caught in his catcher's mask. But this ad shows why he seemed to be one of few ballplayers at the time who never bubbled during games.

Cops arrest people they admit are innocent

A police commander in Chambers County, Alabama, saith:

"I would like to emphasize that although most individuals arrested as part of this investigation are believed to be involved with the manufacture of methamphetamine, not all are."

Then why were the people who aren't involved with it arrested?

Is the War on Drugs so out of control now that people are arrested even when police know they're innocent? (Yes.)

What were they arrested for? Not for meth, but for (here we go again) buying too much cold medicine.

Uh, weren't the new laws against cold and sinus medicine supposed to target meth? For several years, the official bullshit line has been that nobody would possibly buy more than one box of the stuff every 6 months unless they were using it to cook meth. That's a lie, because now it turns out that some people arrested under this law are indeed innocent of meth involvement.

Oops.

But I'd take issue with the statement quoted above. Not only is it certainly true that some of the people who were arrested had no methamphetamine involvement. It's probably also true that almost all of them had no such involvement. There were about 70 arrest warrants, and Chambers County isn't even big enough to have a market for that many meth labs. In fact, only 4 meth labs were found out of all the dozens of arrests.

This story would be almost unbelievable except that the drug war has long taken Americans down this fascist road. With the War on Drugs, everyone is considered guilty even when known to be innocent.

(Source: http://www.oanow.com/oan/news/local/article/chambers_co._drug_task_force_arrests_27_in_meth_bust/69700)

Yahoo! puts GeoCities out of its misery

A saga that's happened with more than a few free webpage hosting services over the years has now seen another repeat...repeat...repeat.

The story goes like this: The service starts out highly user-friendly with a lot of useful features, and quickly builds a durable customer base. But within a few years, the service gets taken over by some large corporation, which promptly mismanages it, forcing it to shut down.

It happened before when Xoom became the much-ridiculed NBCi. And now Yahoo! has similarly destroyed GeoCities - only this process has taken an entire agonizing decade.

Even before the takeover by Yahoo!, GeoCities was known for yanking websites on demand if someone complained about them (earning it the nickname Geostapo). But websites that weren't pulled at least remained usable.

Little by little, however, Yahoo! erased any advantage GeoCities might have had over other services. Eventually, Yahoo! added that aggravating sidebar to all GeoCities pages. One word describes that move: dumb. But few seemed to notice, because by that time, Yahoo! had already driven off most of the GeoCities customer base.

Now that Yahoo! has succeeded in reducing GeoCities to a speck of its former self, it was announced today that Yahoo! will be closing GeoCities altogether by the end of the year.

Maybe the real surprise in this story is that Yahoo! isn't going out of business along with GeoCities. Yahoo! has been much less widely heard from since it was revealed that it turned in journalists to the Chinese government, which meted out ruinous prison terms.

The demise of GeoCities also proves my point that the U.S. government never should have approved the takeover of GeoCities by Yahoo!

There's still money to be made in free website hosting - if the service is run by someone who runs it competently, unlike Yahoo! If this wasn't so, such services wouldn't have lasted as long as they have. Could we see GeoCities brung back from the grave by someone other than Yahoo!? One can hope so - as long as it's run properly.

But there's a lot of things that could still be in business but no longer are. (Isn't that right, Burger Chef?) So don't get your hopes up.

(Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/163765/so_long_geocities_we_forgot_you_still_existed.html)

Wingnuts think moon made of light-generating Muenster cheese

A 2006 right-wing meltdown was largely swept under the rug, but lately it's resurfaced to bite America on the ass.

Three years ago, Bill Nye - who hosted the Emmy-winning educational show 'Bill Nye The Science Guy' - appeared in Waco, Texas, to give a talk on topics like energy consumption and planetary exploration.

When Nye correctly stated that the moon does not generate its own light, a woman in the audience jumped up and declared, "We believe in a God!" She then stormed out of the event with her kids.

The wingnut who walked out of Bill Nye's talk actually thought the moon created its own light, instead of reflecting light from the sun!

Sadly, the woman was not alone in her skepticism of basic science. Several other folks stormed out of the audience too.

It's a good thing Nye didn't bring up that "2 plus 2 is 4" thing!

None of this would be an issue now except that the rightist intelligentsia's anti-people scientific denial has consequences. Their political leaders reflect their views. They put Bush in office, so the Bush regime reflected their disbelief in science.

For probably the first time in the country's history, the United States had an administration in which a significant number of officials actually believed the moon produced its own light!

Even with Bush out of power, this continues to affect the world's view of the United States, impede scientific progress, and cost America important scientific investments.

I'm not saying people aren't entitled to their beliefs. But when someone stubbornly thinks something that can be scientifically disproven, and this costs our country its prestige and scientific advancement, they can expect to be called on their views.

(Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-4112-Skepticism-Examiner~y2009m4d22-Just-shoot-me)

School officials may face jail for requiring uniforms

This blog has been criticized for focusing too much on its opposition to school uniforms. But since nobody else these days has the gumption to speak out, we must. Our children's future is at stake, and groupthink must be fought at a young age. Otherwise, our young people will grow up to become easily exploited and manipulated.

And that's how societies end.

The rights listed in the Bill of Rights are natural rights, and we are all expected to have the courage to make sure these rights are recognized. These rights are inalienable: They cannot even be voted away by 100% of voters.

But this science is lost on right-wing legislators in Rhode Island, who have reportedly voted to gut longstanding laws that prohibited public schools in that state from mandating uniforms.

Ravaging these laws doesn't change the fact that a series of statements by Rhode Island education officials prohibit public schools from even having dress codes unless a prohibited item poses a clear danger. These rulings declared dress codes to be generally unconstitutional.

Nonetheless, the Woonsocket school system doesn't care what these rulings say. School district officials have been on a crusade for quite some time to implement uniforms. That's all they talk about.

But now nationally known attorney Gary Peter Klahr says that if the Woonsocket school system requires uniforms, it "will be sued." He suggests that if Woonsocket has a uniform policy at all, it should contain an opt-out provision, like some other American communities have.

He says that if there's not at least an opt-out, then school board members may go to jail for violating civil rights laws.

See ya behind bars, school bored. School board members shouldn't be able to expect to violate laws in plain sight and not pay a penalty for it. Or are the laws just "damn pieces of paper" like Bush said?

(Source: http://www.valleybreeze.com/Free/MAIN-4-23-WOON-School-uniforms-headshot-Dubois)

Court rules in favor of dissidents

The days when Bush's policing of thoughts flourished with almost no limits may have drawn to a close even in Texas.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled yesterday that 2 antiwar activists should not have been arrested just for pitching tents near Bush's luxurious ranch. However, this ruling was an unnervingly close 5 to 4, which calls into question the 4 judges who would have ruled against the protesters.

The arrests came during Cindy Sheehan's mid-decade antiwar campaign and were prompted by authorities' desire to shelter Bush from his feelings being hurt.

To suppress the antiwar activists, McLennan County had passed a clearly unconstitutional ordinance banning roadside camping. But these 2 protesters were arrested not under this law but under a state law against obstructing highways. However, all witnesses agreed that they weren't obstructing the road.

The fact that they were charged under a law they clearly weren't violating conjures images of Rosco P. Coltrane hassling the Dukes, doesn't it?

(Source: http://cbs11tv.com/local/cindy.sheehan.protest.2.992183.html)

Man arrested for criticizing cops in e-mail to paper

This is so incredibly stupid that I almost had to do a double-take when I saw this.

A Louisiana man has been arrested because he dared to criticize the police chief of a nearby town in an e-mail to a newspaper. The charge? "Criminal defamation."

The statute under which he was charged actually covers some acts that wouldn't be considered defamatory by any usual definition. Most would define defamation as including only false information. This law doesn't specify that the information has to be false - so its constitutionality is highly questionable right there.

The very fact that the man was arrested for this means that if he didn't have grounds to criticize the police before, he sure does now. It's kind of like how the bad "reviews" for 'The Fight That Never Ends' proved the book was right about school bullies still dwelling on stuff when they were over 30.

This incident also smacks of the same tyranny that guided the NKU "trespassing" arrest that resulted from The Last Word disagreeing with university graybeards.

Now the police department in the Louisiana story is the target of a federal lawsuit.

(Source: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003965200)

Classism fuels tantrum against public housing

I'll never understand the infantile meanness that fuels grownup crybabies and right-wing bullies like those discussed in this story.

Cincinnati's housing authority recently acquired 8 apartments. But the Cincinnati Enquirer reports, "Families on public assistance will be moving-in, and that isn't sitting well with the neighbors." The apartments are in an otherwise rich neighborhood.

One strong argument for spreading public housing for the poor into relatively affluent areas is that it keeps public housing from being confined to just a few areas where economic improvements are blunted. The rich shouldn't receive all the amenities while the poor get none - especially because the poor are paying for it too.

But this story is less about well-to-do neighbors not sharing than about them not liking the poor at all.

One affluent Cincinnatian lamented, "So I'm paying for all these people shacking up, having all these babies, getting Section 8 and everything free. I'm damn angry."

As if the rich don't shack up and have babies too? There have been countless instances throughout history of members of royal families or entertainment celebrities having children out of wedlock. But when they do it, it's considered "art", because they have money, and public housing residents don't.

And if they're worried about the poor getting "everything free", how come economic improvements are almost never in poor areas?

If the statement by the wealthy Cincinnati resident isn't baldly classist, what is? It's an inane raving of someone who judges people because they are of a lower income group.

Unfortunately, this alarmism over having poor neighbors is harbored by some other folks in that neighborhood too. And believe me, the housing authority has heard an earful from these whiny bigots.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/Mt-Lookout-Residents-Not-Happy-With-New-Neighbor/JJyed1z36EWsewGumHu3_A.cspx)

'O sole Ernie ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

I'm glad to find this classic Ernie and Bert sketch after all these years!

I recall this skit fondly from the '70s (the greatest decade in the history of the universe). It's another hilarious scene in which Ernie wakes up Bert in the middle of the night for some dubious reason:



"It's too dark to see the clock, Bert."

"Well, for fuck's sake, Ernie, if you weren't too cheap to buy a clock with an LED digital display, you'd be able to see it!"

"It doesn't matter anyway because I can't count past 6, Bert."

The real high point of this skit is Ernie's loud singing out the window that wakes up the neighborhood. You can hear a neighbor complaining, "It sounds like Ernie again!" So obviously Ernie has done this before!

You can clearly hear an angry man yell, "It's 3:00 in the morning!" I have always assumed this to be Mr. Hooper, because it sounds like his voice.

Also, at the very beginning of this clip, you can detect a very brief fart sound, which seems to be emanating from Ernie. At the very end, there seems to be another fart, which is even quieter than the first one. Bert seems to be the source of the bunker blast at the end.

What characters Bert, Ernie, and Mr. Blooper are!

Idiot ruins woman's vacation by peeing on her

Since this is a political blog, this story wouldn't normally be noted here. It's more the stuff of recent Last Word issues.

But since it uses the magic word - 'ruin' - it's hard to find a justification not to link to this bizarre story here:

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-04-20-continental-flier-arrest_N.htm

'Pail Poll closed due to sabotage

When I posted a 'Pail Poll asking your opinion about the misnamed FairTax that Freepers think is so great, I fully expected FairTax cultists to spend the week at their computers casting multiple votes to skew the results. I didn't expect them to practically fry my computer.

Since Sunday, I've heard several complaints about irregularities in this poll. One person claims to have voted no, but the vote was counted as a yes. Others claimed similar problems or not being able to vote at all.

Sure enough, I investigated it just now with the "Change your vote" feature, and when I tried changing my vote back to no again, about 10 browser windows full of ads for Wal-Mart cards and other items began popping up.

Obviously, the FairTax thought police hacked the poll somehow so it would launch malware like this if you voted no.

So I had to shut off the 'Pail Poll. I refuse to continue with a poll that launches malware.

Despite this sabotage, you had voted 24 to 16 against the far-right FairTax. You know there were actually more no votes than that - especially here. But the total is about what I should have expected, because the FairTax cult freeps polls like this.

This episode speaks volumes about how they run elections for public office. If they can disrupt an online poll, just think what they do when they count votes in actual elections. I have to seriously question whether the Republicans have actually won half the elections they appear to have won in recent years, when you weigh for all the fraud.

There should be a full-on police investigation into the sabotage of the poll here, because clearly there was a security breach. But an official probe is about as likely as an investigation into the harassing phone calls.

Right-wing students try to stop congressman from speaking

The wingnutosphere just absolutely despises this man - and now they're trying to muzzle him.

Right-wing students at American University have signed an online petition to force the school to withdraw an invitation for Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), who is scheduled to deliver a commencement address there.

They want Frank uninvited because they accuse him of causing the financial services industry collapse.

What?

Well, that's a new one.

The petition was organized by a self-described Republican, and most of its supporters are avowed members of the school's Young Republicans chapter. However, petition backers say one supporter is a vice-president of the campus Democratic club - which makes us ask again what the difference these days is between the 2 major parties.

If this was Northern Kentucky University, I'd suspect that the only reason any Democratic student signed the petition was to ensure a nice boost in their grades next semester. I attended NKU, and I've seen firsthand that officials there make it a point to advance right-wing causes. But you'd expect other universities to at least allow the free flow of ideas.

On the other hand, I don't believe that a vice-president of the campus Democrats even signed it. I think the petition supporters are making this up, because they refuse to say which veep.

What do right-wing commenters on other blogs say about this petition? One gloated, "CONGRATS TO THE AU STUDENTS FOR FREE SPEECH AND STANDING THEIR GROUND. ... SCREW Frank. Banish him from the AU grad."

Only in conservaworld can banishing someone from a commencement because of their politics be considered free speech.

If anyone caused the banking collapse, it was those who fostered the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Among them is Phil Gramm, who gutted banking regulations as part of the fascist Contract With America. And Gramm had help from Bill Clinton, who caved to the Republican machine.

Tell me again how this is Barney Frank's fault? It isn't.

Free speech? With right-wing book burners dominating today's education system, don't count on it.

(Source: http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/AU_students_protest_Barney_speech.html)

IE8 couldn't come soon enough!

I just discovered that Internet Explorer 8 was released last month. I'm almost afraid to try it, but judging by IE7, it couldn't come quickly enough.

Good ol' IE7. I use IE7 and Firefox simultaneously, because both have a tendency to log me out of some sites I use. As long as I have both browsers, I can easily access most of my sites.

But let me tell you something about Exploder. I'd think IE7 was an improvement over IE6, but for that little problem with crashing all the time. Not like IE6 didn't crash a lot too, but at least with IE6 there was a remote chance that all your important tabs might not be closed. With IE7, forget it.

And when IE7 crashes, bring a book. Better yet, hope that you live right next door to the library. When it crashes, count on it taking a good while to close.

These crashes often lock up all your other windows too. So you find yourself frantically moving your mouse and pounding your mouse button with no results - until 30 seconds later when you get that telltale series of beeps as the cursor flies aimlessly about the screen.

Sometimes you're not even that lucky. Exploder will crash, so you'll click on one of your other windows, only to see a blank white space where your document is supposed to be. Fifteen minutes later, the hard drive is still whirring as Exploder is still in the process of closing. Anxious attempts to open Windows Task Manager or any of your other windows are unsuccessful.

So you have no choice but to press the button and do an improper restart.

Will IE8 see an improvement? One can only hope so, but any American who has lived in the past 25 years isn't used to things improving. (There's a reason that observers called it the conservative era.)

"But it's a hooooooooaaaaaaaax!"

The debate is over. Climate change is real, and is caused by human activity.

But don't tell this to the wingnutosphere. It seems like every winter lately they've pointed to declining temperatures as "proof" that global warming is a massive hoax by us big, mean, stinky libs. They've never really made it clear why they think anyone would make up climate change.

Um, ever think that maybe the temperatures dropped because it was winter, perhaps? That little factoid never seems to occur to the mental giants who dominate online discourse.

The latest story is further evidence that climate change is very real, and we're running out of time to remedy it. Yet the story has been ignored by the right-wing blogs that I monitor.

Los Angeles is now sweltering in record heat. Yesterday saw a record high of 100° F - shattering the record for that date of 96° that was set way back in 1958. San Francisco saw a record high yesterday of 93°.

Will this silence the wingnuts? Of course not. But that's for the better, because nobody believes them anymore, and they're just digging themselves into a funnier hole. And it helps keep the issue of climate change on the frontburner.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/California-broils-in-record-heat/6c4Uwg1j0EK4p4X5s-R9KQ.cspx)

Corrected details about missing Johnny Bench medallion

Now that I've sent you on a detective mission to find a long-missing Johnny Bench medallion, it might help if I gave better information. Because you're reading a progressive populist blog like this one, you must be a stickler for detail, so I thought I'd try to provide better clues.

The size of the medallion may have been overstated in my previous entry. I described it as possibly 2 to 3 inches in diameter, but now that I think about it more, it was probably slightly less than that - maybe 1.5 to 2 inches - though I could be wrong.

Also, I expressed a likelihood that the item was unique. As my previous entry states, this is not a certainty. Either way, it is an extremely rare medallion. And I'm looking for that particular medallion - not one like it.

The medallion was like a large coin or a medal. It featured the ballplayer's likeness, but (as with most coins or medals) it was not a color image. I don't remember Mr. Bench's pose on the medallion, but he is pictured above, in case you are unfamiliar with him.

I won the medallion between 1992 and 1994. It vanished between 1993 and 1997 - most likely in 1995 or 1996.

Someone once told me Johnny Bench was a Republican. I don't know if this is true, or if this was just a misguided effort to discredit the career of a baseball legend. Regardless of Mr. Bench's politics, we must find that long-lost treasure.

Don your Sherlock Hemlock hats now, folks!

I've got a Johnny Bench medallion with your name on it!

Calling all 'Pail sleuths!

This is a populist political blog, but I think those of you who have stood by me all these years need a break from politics and would like to help me solve a mystery.

I'm missing a priceless medallion that had legendary Reds catcher Johnny Bench on it. It was produced by Fifth Third Bank, which employed Mr. Bench as its pitchman. This most likely was a unique item, though I'm not certain of it.

The round medallion was made of silver or a similar metal, and it was maybe 2 or 3 inches across.

I won this Johnny Bench medallion in the mid-'90s at a contest at a party in college in which I made fart noises with my eye. I had the medallion a very short time when it became lost.

I know who lost it (not a family member), and this loss was no fault of mine whatsoever. I was completely powerless to stop the situation, and I was heartbroken at this loss. But I just didn't know how to go about getting the item back.

So now it's up to all of you out there in blogland to help me find it!

When the medallion was lost, it was as shiny as can be. It was enclosed in a small, clear, round, flat plastic case that was just the right size to fit it.

From what I understand, its whereabouts may be somewhere on or near the grounds of the old Highland Heights Elementary School in Highland Heights, Kentucky. I have no idea what that site is being used for now, but the school closed around 2007. If the medallion isn't there, then it may be somewhere around the area of Bramble Avenue or Thompson Road in Highland Heights.

My medallion would have to be worth a fortune now, especially if it's found in the pristine condition it was in when I lost it.

What's the reward if you find it? The medallion is the reward.

I appreciated this beautiful medallion very much - but I'd appreciate finding it even more.

Come hell or high water, I'm going to make sure my Johnny Bench medallion is recovered. I don't care how long it's been since it vanished. Put on your sleuthing faces and join the effort!

FCC protects stations' territory

In the U.S. and A., radio and TV stations have territory - much like the Mafia. The average viewer or listener might have a hard time following how this works, but I majored in broadcasting in college, so I've seen how the FCC protects this greed.

The TV industry has something called designated market areas. The entire nation (except barren regions of Alaska) is divided into about 200 DMA's defined by Nielsen Media Research. Like school districts, DMA's do not overlap. For instance, the Cincinnati DMA includes numerous counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Even if you can pick up out-of-town stations, you're still in only the Cincinnati DMA.

Indeed, even if you can't pick up a city's stations, you might still be in that city's DMA.

This issue is critical to cable regulation. While the FCC is supposed to enforce must-carry rules that require cable systems to feature every over-the-air station in the area, the FCC flinches when stations complain. Our local cable monopoly does not carry any out-of-town network affiliates - which has kept folks from watching shows preempted by local stations.

The cable system could pull in a satisfactory signal from affiliates from neighboring DMA's. But it doesn't, because local stations would complain about the out-of-town stations invading their territory. And the FCC would side with the local stations.

Since the Reagan era, this has been an issue not just across DMA lines but even within DMA's. The Seattle DMA is so overbound that it covers Bellingham, Washington - 90 miles from Seattle. Seattle stations had such weak reception there that Bellingham had its own CBS affiliate for years.

But the Seattle CBS affiliate cried foul, and got the Bellingham station removed from cable in much of the area - even though it was in the same DMA. "You can't watch the Bellingham station! You're in the Seattle DMA!"

Bellingham was in the Seattle DMA because DMA's are determined by not just over-the-air viewership but also cable. This means Seattle stations were able to put Bellingham in their DMA just by getting on cable there. It's circular reasoning: "Bellingham is in our DMA because we're on cable there. We're on cable there because Bellingham is in our DMA."

The most widely used geographic areas in the radio industry are the metropolitan areas promulgated by Arbitron. These definitions don't include most rural counties, and Arbitron allows a few overlaps, particularly when a suburban county is big enough for its own stations. Radio stations are just as zealous on protecting their territory as TV stations.

Observers have surmised that both Los Angeles and San Francisco lost their affiliates for a popular radio program, because a suburban station already carried the show and wouldn't allow a station in the main market to keep airing it. The program was pulled from the stations in the larger market because Arbitron defined the suburban markets as being included within the larger market.

This seems like a rare instance of a smaller station actually benefiting from such a conflict. But even a small station with a weak signal located in the larger market could not have picked up the show, because its Arbitron area included the suburban market. This would apply even if the station's signal was too weak to reach these suburbs.

Two stations could have no signal overlap at all, yet their territory is so sacred that one station is given "rights" to cable coverage or program affiliations even where you can only pick up the other station.

The FCC has done big broadcasters' bidding for years. Like the powerful broadcasters it serves, the FCC just absolutely, utterly hates it when you pull in a station from another territory. That means that in some rural counties, radio listening is technically illegal.

Bracken County, Kentucky, isn't in an Arbitron metro, but most major Cincinnati radio stations reach the county. But the FCC feels you have no "right" to listen to these stations there, even though Bracken County has no stations of its own.

I'm no fan of Cincinnati radio. But the FCC's aim is to favor interests that have even more money and clout than the outrageously wealthy Cincinnati station owners. So if some powerful right-wing whack-a-doo outfit like Don Wildmon's American Family Association wants to build yet another repeater station, it can. It can construct a repeater in Bracken County on a frequency next to a Cincinnati station, and block that station by bleeding onto its frequency.

This in turn can happen because the FCC refuses to make sure stations use transmitters that don't bleed onto other frequencies.

FCC policies favor powerful interests - regardless of whether there is a territorial dispute. Major corporations or Wildmon-style "ministries" can erect a full-power station and require a high school station or other low-power facility to go off the air to make room for it. The FCC rubber-stamps these applications. Yet at the same time, the FCC lets checkbook clergies and big corporations build translators that keep other stations from being heard in rural areas where they've had good coverage for 30 years.

In fact, this affects not just rural counties, but sizeable cities like Bloomington, Indiana. One regular of a radio forum I read sums it up well. This user said that "the FCC decided years ago that you had no right or reason to be listening to out of market stations. ... if a translator is blocking out Louisville in Bloomington..that's too bad ..."

The real issue though is that new translators by powerful corporations are blocking out Indianapolis stations in Bloomington - stations that previously covered Bloomington well.

FCC policy in recent years has been to rubber-stamp every action like this, just because it's technically allowed. Decades ago, the FCC weighed these acts to see if they served the public interest. Now station applications by powerful broadcasters are approved automatically.

The FCC needs new leadership that doesn't soothe every territorial complaint by a TV station or every unreasonable application for a radio repeater. We have a right to expect Congress to order the FCC to change its policies, but Congress isn't exactly a populist bastion, so we're going to have to take our case elsewhere.

No, Ernie. We didn't stay with you.

The once-impenetrable GOP machine is now reeling so badly that all it can do now is coast on past "glory" (as it were).

And it still can't get basic facts straight.

As the Republicans still cling to their strength in northern Kentucky suburbs, the strongest figure they could find to appear at their fundraiser was scandal-tainted former Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

And yes, he got the facts all wrong.

Referring to his 2007 reelection bid, which he lost in a landslide, Fletcher said, "Northern Kentucky stayed with me, and for that I say thanks."

Oh, Eeerrrrnieee.

This statement was completely wrong. Of the 8 counties usually counted as part of northern Kentucky, Fletcher lost 7. He won only Boone County - that suburban parallel universe.

Outer suburbs are about the only place left where the Republicans can still succeed at consolidating their power. Unfortunately, the GOP knows how to suppress votes in city areas (with their vote challengers and all), so don't write them off yet in local elections.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090420/NEWS0103/904200361)

GOP lawmaker admits assaulting wife in public

The Republican Right has been reduced to such a slobbering mess that it now seems to have few public figures remaining besides lawbreakers who sail through life in a frenzied haze.

North Dakota State Rep. Dave Weiler is a Republican who has served since 2001. He's got a crazed Bill Sali look about him. Now Weiler has admitted that he brutally assaulted his wife at a store in Bismarck, causing her to fall to the ground.

Now Weiler has been ordered to undergo domestic violence offender treatment.

Why is this clod still in the legislature? You'd think he'd be so embarrassed that he'd resign, but he trudges on in autopilot mode.

(Source: http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2009/04/17/news/update/doc49e8d93b4271e240840538.txt)

Guess what's poppin' up everywhere? Another Bubble Gum Weekend!

Bubble gum advertising became increasingly preposterous as time went on - even when the ads actually showed people bubbling.

Bubbling is a sport indulged in by billions of people of all ages all over the world. But something about people in commercials blowing bubbles seems sillier than the same activity does in real life.

This fact was lost on the agency that made a certain set of TV ads for Extra sugarless gum and its "classic bubble gum" flavor. It includes this commersh that aired in 2000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D37WcEgnPlA

That ad is in the same series as the infamous "Hey bubble gum blowers!" commersh for the same product.

It appears to be designed to appeal to folks whose lives revolve around bubbling. It shows people ranging from cowboys to kids in weddings blowing bubbles. The characters in the commercial do various stupid things, such as pick the noses of priceless statues in libraries.

Not only that, but the people in this ad actually COUNT how many bubbles they blow! Must be nice to not have more important things in life to worry about.

By the time this commersh aired, however, bubbling in public wasn't nearly as common as this ad made it appear. So it's unclear if the ad was really that effective.

A 'Pail Poll for the BTPers (and you too!)

You came through again in last week's 'Pail Poll, which asked what you'd do about NAFTA. With the votes tallied, 8 of you voted to pull the United States out of NAFTA entirely, 4 of you voted to renegotiate NAFTA, and only one of you voted to leave things alone.

Now, this week's 'Pail Poll is tailor-made for the Tea Party cult that's invaded our town squares lately. After seeing that participants in this supposed anti-tax rally favor the hated FairTax, this week's survey asks whether you'd favor it too.

The misnamed FairTax is a proposed national sales tax that seems to grow a little bit each year. Now it would stand at a confiscatory 30%, according to most sources. The UnfairTax is a regressive tax.

One blogger said of the Tea Parties, "An outsider stumbling onto the scene would have had trouble determining if this was an anti-tax rally, or a pro-Fair-Tax rally." And that's from a blogger who carried FairTax signs at one of the Tea Parties!

The UnfairTax would damage the economy worse than even Bush did - and it would give the government even more leverage over our lives than the present tax system gives it. Surely, some FairTax cultists are going to post here arguing against our points, like they often do, so be on the lookout for their propaganda.

Man arrested for disagreeing with neo-Nazis

Sounds like the National Park Service and St. Louis authorities have just made themselves fit candidates for the Golden Gag Award.

Today, the National Socialist Movement - a neo-Nazi group - conducted a rally under the Gateway Arch. I would have thought they'd be too tired for much of anything after the Tea Parties, but I guess not.

Apparently, the Gateway Arch was deeded out to the NSM to use as they saw fit. A man who heckled these inane losers was promptly tackled and arrested by police.

For what???

Disagreeing with neo-Nazis is a crime now?

Something tells me there's going to be a lawsuit against the city and the National Park Service in the very near future - as there should be.

(Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/AE4F696AA4EFA3AD8625759C0063C933?OpenDocument)

Tea Parties not this columnist's cup of tea

We're winning the battle of ideas against the Tea Parties, because we keep an eye on them and expose the facts about these moronic gatherings at just the right times.

Columnist Robert Nelson of the Omaha World-Herald actually thought the Tea Parties had something coherent to offer before he decided to attend one himself. (Omaha had one of the biggest Tea Parties on April 15.)

But that writer was in for a colossal disappointment. His column sums up what a partisan "crankfest" the Omaha event was:

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=10612305

From the description, it sounds almost identical to the Cincinnati event. The partisan ravings, the trite demagoguery, the people wearing Colonial-era hats - every Tea Party sounds the same.

But you expect that from a movement like this that's nationally coordinated by right-wing think tanks and corporations.

Food stamp call center outsourced

Next time some right-wing loudmouth complains about the poor getting too much welfare, you can now reply that it might not be necessary but for the outsourcing policies that right-wingers support.

The state of Florida farms out the administration of its food stamp program to JPMorgan Chase. Florida has paid the banking giant almost $50,000,000 over the past 3 years to run this much-needed service.

So what does JPMorgan Chase do with the money Florida taxpayers give it? It outsources its call centers for the food stamp program to India.

Food stamp recipients are furious at the fact that JPMorgan Chase doesn't keep these jobs in Florida. If these jobs remained in the Sunshine State, folks on food stamps could have easily taken these jobs. Unemployment is almost 10% in Florida, so why can't the call centers be kept there?

Worse, JPMorgan Chase has received $25,000,000,000 in federal bailout money.

With the country only now emerging from its worst economic crisis in 75 years, the government gives taxpayer money to a big bank to move jobs overseas. It doesn't get much more corporatist than that.

(Source: http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/apr/16/florida-food-stamp-jobs-india-aggravate-recipients;
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2009/04/16/a12a_call_edit_0417.html)

Another Allowed Cloud violation today!

I've violated this Allowed Cloud on such a routine basis lately that it hardly seems like the big deal that it is anymore.

Today, I accidentally biked all the way to Lunken Airport. On both the way there and the way back, what did I do? Yes, I used the restricted, "no trespassing" portion of the Trail to Nowhere.

It was my best option, considering the condition of US 52.

As a golden oldie, here's a clip I made of this stretch several months ago:



If I didn't do it, who would? The continuing privatization of America is unsustainable, so somebody had to blaze the trail that I blazed.

Of course, it would take an army of lawyers to figure out whether I was truly in the wrong. So don't dismiss my efforts out of hand. I'm on stronger legal ground than it appears.

Cincinnati station censors Osbournes show

Channel 19 strikes again!

Raycom's WXIX-TV, the Fox affiliate in Cincinnati, is known for its many questionable preemptions (which have kept even some episodes of the massively popular 'Simpsons' from being seen on WXIX at all). But this story lays bare the fact that the station's intent is to censor for content - not to make programming decisions to serve other purposes.

I'm a diehard populist, and I'm all for stations acting in the public interest. But one has to question whether that includes deciding that viewers can't watch something that pretty much the entire country can receive.

This story is a couple weeks old, so I don't know if it's been rectified. Nonetheless, WXIX was one of only a handful of Fox affiliates that refused to air the recent premiere of 'Osbournes: Reloaded', a new variety show starring Ozzy Osbourne and his family. The station's rationale was that the show used "dirty" language - even though obscenities were bleeped by the network.

Reviews of 'Osbournes: Reloaded' vary wildly. Some say the show was unwatchable anyway, but some consider the program a masterpiece. Folks in Cincinnati will never know, unless they're in just the right spot to pull in an out-of-town channel - which the TV industry absolutely hates. (Like the Mafia, stations are big on protecting their territory. Look up the concept of a DMA - designated market area.)

Channel 45 in Dayton actually aired 'Osbournes: Reloaded', despite being owned by the ultraconservative Sinclair firm. That shows you how conservative Channel 19 is.

What's ironic is that those who cheer Channel 19's "saving" us from the Osbournes are usually the same folks who are unequivocally opposed to regulations that would serve a public interest purpose, such as ownership caps.

Cincinnati has a long tradition of content-based preemptions of TV and radio programming, even as far back as the '70s. WCPO-TV was one of very few outlets to censor Cher's program because her outfits were considered too revealing. WKRC-TV refused to show a network music program because Alice Cooper appeared on it. When fans of the singer staged a protest outside the station, the station later decided to air the show - with Alice Cooper's appearance deleted. In 1987, WKRQ radio excised the George Michael song "I Want Your Sex" from most airings of 'American Top 40' (even though WKRQ later played the song as a noncurrent).

Isn't it nice to know Channel 19 is looking out for me by deciding for me what shows are too "filthy" for my young, impressionable 35-year-old mind? Nothing like a good ol' moral panic to give us the joy of seeing a station's ratings take a hit.

Now that's irony!

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090330/ENT/303300110)

Hate crime bill would protect homeless

As attacks on the homeless grew more frequent and more violent during this decade, few would disagree that the attacks are hate crimes. The attacks were often inspired by talk radio and right-wing websites.

Now the Maryland legislature has approved a bill - the first of its kind in America - to give the homeless protection under the hate crime laws. The District of Columbia is considering a similar measure.

Frankly, this bill is long overdue.

Ironically, however, the Maryland bill was introduced not by a progressive champion but by one of the legislature's most conservative members. Republican Sen. Alex Mooney introduced the bill to make a point about his dismay at the fact that other groups are protected by hate crime laws.

Looks like Mooney's attempt to make political hay worked out for the better in the end, didn't it?

Who knew that such a staunch conservative could ever be such a godsend to a progressive populist blog like this one?

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041604132.html)

Republican who lost election sues to be declared winner

The party of background noise doesn't get much funnier than this!

Another lawsuit now wafts in the long-disputed New York congressional election that was finally won by Democrat Scott Murphy. Republican Jim Tedisco is now suing to be declared the winner, even though he lost by about 200 votes.

Why is he suing? Because he must have really won, since he's a Republican, after all.

No, you didn't misread this, folks. A candidate is actually suing to be declared the winner of an election he lost.

Who does Jim Tedisco think he is? Bush?

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/17/721152/-NY-20-!!!!-Down-by-178-votes,-Tedisco-sues-to-be-declared-winner)

Look at that huge crowd!

Damn. Look at that Tea Party in Washington.

Look at the giant, colossal, huge crowd these clowns attracted:



Yes, this is the one in which these losers brang 1,000,000 teabags with the hopes of dumping them in Lafayette Park - only to discover they needed a permit, which they didn't have.

Watch that video again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they chanting, "Lower the minimum wage!"? And, "Tax work, not wealth!"? And, "Feed the rich!"?

Yep, all 8 of them are chanting! Now that's unity!

It seems however that conservatives are finally starting to grow a shame bone. Now they're claiming this video is a big hoax to make them look like the fools they are.

Oh, so if you take away the people chanting, all zero people who remain are Tea Party participants. I guess that's what they're saying.

When Ernie wasted our money on work-for-less study (a blast from the past)

Remember the bad old days?

"Values voters." Bush. Bad music. The issues of The Last Word with the gray background screen. The Extremist. The chat room war.

And Ernie "Hey Bert" Fletcher.

The Republican Governor of Kentucky was resoundingly defeated for reelection in 2007, but observers are still scratching their heads over Fletcher's rise to power.

In 2006, it was revealed that Fletcher wasted $10,000 of taxpayer money on a "study" of so-called "right-to-work" laws. The Fletcher regime paid an economist to conduct a right-wing "study" that would appear favorable to such a law.

In other words, the Fletcher administration was starting with a conclusion and working backwards from it - and using the taxpayers' money for it.

The report the state paid for was almost identical to one in Michigan 4 years earlier by the same author for a right-wing think tank.

Lawmakers questioned Fletcher's wasteful expenditure, because it was obvious Fletcher had chosen that economist because he was already known to favor work-for-less laws.

In fact, Fletcher's budget director admitted as much! "I am not surprised that the text in this report is similar to a report that he's written before because we had read his earlier report before we hired him," he said.

Organized labor representatives also criticized the report as the ideologically driven waste that it was.

Ernie Fletcher was like a Bluegrass Bush. His entire administration revolved around an ideological agenda. It was like a Six Flags of bad ideas.

But Ernie is out of office now and in disgrace.

Jobless claims drop!

Repeat after me...

Elections.

Have.

Consequences.

Eric Holder and Robert Gates aren't the best picks for Obama's Cabinet, but there's little doubt that the economic stimulus package is working.

For the first time since who knows when, the number of new jobless claims in the United States has actually dropped.

The pundits' heads are spinning, because they don't seem to grasp this election stuff.

I wonder what congressional Republicans who voted against the stimulus are going to say to their constituents. Right, Geoff Davis?

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/New-jobless-claims-fall-unexpectedly-to-610K/-Jw1zcesq0CXKWRnjKAz4Q.cspx)

South Korea may imprison blogger over views; Google caves to regime

The "democracy" in South Korea doesn't sound democratic at all.

Last year, South Korea ushered in what is probably the most right-wing government the country has seen in years.

Now, a South Korean blogger may face 18 months in prison just for criticizing the government's economic policy. He's supposed to learn the verdict on Monday after being indicted for posting articles the government claimed were inaccurate.

To give you an idea of what this is like, that's like if I was prosecuted for estimating yesterday's Cincinnati Tea Party crowd at a few hundred instead of the 7,000 that WLW absurdly claimed. (Incidentally, it was only a few hundred. Estimates by the city and the media have vastly overstated the crowd.)

The prosecution in South Korea occurred just after the country became one of the first in the world to pass a law to ban folks from the Internet if record companies accuse them of copying music.

Meanwhile, South Korea has a new law requiring people who comment on websites to use their real names and (here's a real freedom-loving phrase) national ID number. Google has caved by disabling uploads and comments on the Korean version of YouTube.

Luckily, there's a workaround: You can avoid this censorship by setting your preference setting to a country other than South Korea.

The government claims the new law is necessary to fight online harassment. No, it is not necessary. As a victim of Internet harassment myself, I know that all that's necessary is to look at the damn logs and trace the culprits. I know America is full of ISP's that are too stupid and self-righteous to take this simple step, but I guarantee that outlawing anonymous posting won't solve a thing.

At least there's no reports of Google ratting out journalists to authoritarian foreign regimes like Yahoo! did.

(Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/blogger-critica.html;
http://www.pcworld.com/article/162989/google_disables_uploads_comments_on_youtube_korea.html)

AIG fights driver blinded by roadside bomb

Insurance giant AIG was one of the first recipients of taxpayer dough in the ongoing bailout disaster. It received government money with no strings attached.

AIG is now using this bailout money to fight people who sacrificed dearly in the Iraq conflict.

The insurance firm is fighting a truck driver for KBR who lost a leg and an eye to a roadside bomb while working in Iraq. AIG has refused to pay for a plastic leg, a wheelchair, and new glasses.

This is yet another case in which greedy insurers - not doctors - are making health decisions for patients. Shouldn't this decision be up to a doctor and not an insurance company?

Meanwhile, AIG spends bailout money on huge bonuses and luxurious getaways for its execs.

It turns out that denying claims is a pattern by AIG. They've repeatedly denied claims by contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have died.

The government needs to take back every bit of bailout funds AIG got.

(Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3834569)

Spanish AG may crush probe of Bush officials

Crime really does pay, doesn't it?

In the wake of Spanish officials' proposed prosecutions of Alberto Gonzales and 5 other Bush officials for torture, Spain's Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido says he plans to quash the probe.

His excuse is that the investigation is without merit because the 6 defendants weren't physically present during the torture that they encouraged.

Huh?

So that means we should just let brutal dictators off the hook if they weren't present during the crimes that they ordered to be committed? That's like saying Saddam Hussein shouldn't have been prosecuted because he wasn't physically there during the things he was prosecuted for.

Should someone who hires a hit man to kill someone go free because they weren't there when the murder took place?

Is the Spanish Attorney General's decision fueled by politics? Is he gutting the probe because he's afraid no American administration (even a Democratic one) would let the investigation continue anyway?

If so, that shows about as much spine as the hated DLC.

(Source: http://www.examiner.com/a-1964229~Spanish_AG__No_torture_probe_of_US_officials.html)

BTPers still making us laugh

Who needs comedy clubs when you've got the Cincinnati Tea Party?

From a visual standpoint, there wasn't much new at today's laugh-a-thon that wasn't present at the March event. But I did detect one incredibly dumb sign I don't remember from last month:



This tells you all you need to know about the BTPers' weak understanding of the Constitution.

Since that sign is hard to read, it says, "This is a Christian nation." It says the United States was "founded to legislate, propagate, and secure" the Christian faith.

Then what's all this separation of church and state that the Bill of Rights keeps talking about?

A few of you might be wondering what the fuss is, but from a constitutional perspective, the other side has pretty much dashed their case by displaying their lack of understanding of the establishment clause.

Look before you leap, BTPers

Hahaha! This is hilarious!

Talk about shitty planning by the Tea Party thought guardians!

The BTPers thought that by holding a Tea Party in Lafayette Park, right across the street from the White House, they'd finally have the Tea Party to top all Tea Parties.

They collected 1,000,000 teabags from followers and planned to dump them in the park.

But it turns out they needed a permit from the National Park Service, which oversees Lafayette Park. They didn't bother to find this out until they got to the event.

So they were forced to pack up all their teabags in the cold and rain! Ha ha!

A Washington think tank gave the LOSEianne crowd permission to instead dump the teabags in its 12th floor conference room. But then it wasn't really a public protest anymore, was it?

At the same time, there was supposed to be yet another protest in Washington - this one at the Treasury Department. But that was canceled - again because the BTPers didn't bother to get the right permits first.

At least in Cincinnati, it doesn't seem to matter how poor their planning is, because the city will just give them whatever they want.

(Source: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/1-Million-Tea-Bags-but-No-Place-to-Dump.html)

City sponsors right-wing rally

The fascist Tea Party today in Cincinnati professed to be outraged at government spending. But the event got its own boost courtesy of city taxpayers.

After I arrived, I noticed the city had closed Vine Street between 5th and 6th, on the west side of Fountain Square - so protesters from the square could spill into the street if they needed to.

During the march, I discovered Vine was closed north of there all the way to 9th, and that 9th was closed all the way to City Hall. The block of Plum Street in front of City Hall was also closed.

The city deeded out 8 blocks of roadway to these morons?

When you hold a political event on Fountain Square, Fountain Square is supposed to be all you get. You're not supposed to get any roadways as a bonus. If you're going to hold a march, you're supposed to use the sidewalk like everyone else. But the city of Cincinnati just gave the supposedly public roads to the BTPers to use as they saw fit.

If it was a festival instead of a political event, there might have been a reason to close streets. But it wasn't.

The BTPers complain about welfare for poor families and stimulus money for public projects - yet they had public streets deeded out to them for much of the day! How hypocritical can you get?

At the end of the City Hall portion of the event, a voice came across a loudspeaker or microphone telling the crowd to clear the roadways. Apparently, the city finally decided time was up, and the police told the Tea Party's organizers to make their followers get out of the street.

Did they get out of the street? No. Ten minutes later, they hadn't budged.

When they finally got moving, they kept standing out in intersections holding their idiotic signs and blocking traffic.

It takes real gall to complain about others getting tax money while you receive city sponsorship for a political event.

United Airlines discriminates against "overweight" passengers

What hath deregulation wrought?

You'd think outrages like this would stop, but they just seem to fester and grow deeper - and deregulation is a major factor.

United Airlines has now decided to discriminate against passengers if they're too "overweight." If a passenger is unable to use the airline's microscopic seats, they may be removed from the flight and put on the next flight - and charged twice as much as other passengers.

If there's no room for them on the flight, shouldn't the airline think of that in advance? I'm sure the airline knows in advance, but just doesn't care. It's the same reason airlines intentionally overbook flights: greed.

United's new policy follows in the footsteps of other airlines, including Southwest, which is especially infamous for being a stickler for getting the extra charge out of customers.

I think it's time the government steps in and prohibits airlines from practicing this type of discrimination - assuming it isn't already illegal. But knowing Congress's ideology of corporatism, they'll probably instead give the airlines another bailout (like the now-forgotten bailout the industry got from Bush in the early 2000s).

(Source: http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/4206947.php?contentType=4&contentId=3833137)

The circus barely worth waiting for

I did it, I did it...

Today I went to Cincinnati to keep an eye on the Tea Party charade. When I woke up this morn, I felt like I was run over by a bus. But monitoring right-wing displays is part of my job, so the Peace Bike got to go to Fountain Square.

The racist LOSEianne crowd numbered probably a few hundred - not the thousands the media has claimed. By having hate-filled rallies like this in other cities at the same time, these mostly out-of-town agitators spread themselves kind of thin.

Naturally, almost every local news organization was there to cover these spoiled babies. Coverage of course was favorable.

The early portion of the event was duller than the ads on the TyrannoVision. Once again, you could barely hear the speakers, because they didn't know how to use the sound system. There were also counterdemonstrators, who earned thumbs-up from passing motorists.

But then came the march. The BTPers marched to City Hall, supposedly with petitions outlining their right-wing grievances. I'll post more later about the red carpet treatment the city gave to the Tea Party. But during this march, I sped past these crybabies on the Peace Bike and chanted, "Looooosers! Looooosers!" at them. (Trust me, they had it coming.)

Organized labor seems to have staged an effective counterprotest against the Tea Party. While the BTPers were outside City Hall, a dissenter on the corner (who was accompanied by people wearing union gear) really let the whiners have it! But BTPers kept charging towards the upper-middle-aged man like they were going to fight him, and they kept verbally abusing him. The man showed remarkable restraint. I would have slugged the BTPers squarely in the teeth if they said those things to me.

When this dissenting voice asked the crowd of marauding BTPers where they worked, they gave obviously fake answers. "Uh, Cincinnati Motor Company, uh..." Actually, for the most part, protests like this are the LOSEianne crowd's job. A lot of the right-wing participants in this rally were professional troublemakers who are paid to attend events like this.

All in all, today was another completely ineffective public meltdown by the fascist Right. They think waving teabags around and abusing folks outside City Hall will get people to listen, but they emerged from the event looking stupider than ever.

The circus is back in town! ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

Hey! The circus - also known as the Cincinnati Tea Party - is back in town!

If I don't go down to see the BTPers' comedy routine later today, this 'Sesame Street' clip that aired frequently in the '70s will have to do. In this classic video, a clown amazingly transforms himself into just a regular guy - using that miracle known as rolling the film backwards:



The clown is the late Dennis Allen, who also appeared on 'Laugh-In'.

Many folks who grew up with 'Sesame Street' report being terrified of that sketch. While many 'Sesame Street' segments were hilariously scary, that one never scared me.

Maybe the Cincinnati Tea Party clowns are actually just normal folks if they remove their faces. When they're not out carrying signs with misspelled words, hateful slogans, and goofy drawings of Presidents on them, they're probably relaxing in their home offices, reading this blog, and agreeing with every word.

Nah. That's ridiculous.

Gingrich may run for President in 2012

Please, Newt. Run. I'd love to see the electoral map of that!

Seriously, do you think he'd pick up ANY states for the Republicans? I guarantee you the GOP can kiss Kentucky goodbye if Gingrich is their nominee.

Newt Gingrich should be in supermax for crimes against humanity like the evil piece of shit he is - not talking about running for President.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hGxKJGpoy-DMwaefjesJAn3jSSAQD97IBOJ00)

Masters of sensitivity

In the wake of the Masters Tournament, I thought I'd provide some long-awaited commentary about the hypersensitivity of Augusta National Golf Club in hosting this prestigious golf event.

In the early 2000s, Augusta National came under fire for having an exclusively male membership. This was controversial enough that the Masters had a hard time selling ads for its CBS telecasts. But it also blew wide open some of the strange policies the club has regarding TV coverage.

These policies show how sensitive the club is about the Masters. This extreme touchiness is another fair target for ridicule.

The club expects announcers who cover the Masters to display decorum not normally associated with sports coverage (even golf).

If you watch the Masters next year, notice how many spectators there are. Except you're not allowed to call them spectators. Sportscasters who cover the tournament are supposed to call them "patrons", not spectators.

The rough of the golf course is never called the rough. It's always called the "second cut."

In 1995, CBS's Gary McCord learned the hard way what sort of behavior Augusta National Golf Club expects from Masters broadcasters. McCord remarked that the 17th green was so fast that it seemed "bikini-waxed", and he joked that "body bags" were stored behind the green for golfers who missed approach shots. Augusta National officials were so outraged at these quips that they forced CBS to remove him from covering the event.

McCord reportedly has not been allowed to cover a single Masters ever since, even though he covers almost all other golf matches for the network.

Augusta National once demanded the firing of a sportscaster who jokingly compared the crowd of spectators to a "mob."

So don't insult, ridicule, or laugh at Augusta National. It might make those poor, sensitive, easy-hurt macho supermen at the club cry.

(Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/why-coverage-of-us-masters-is-so-polite/2007/04/04/1175366249870.html)

Democrat wins New York congressional election

Remember that U.S. House election in upstate New York 2 weeks ago that was so close you could cut it with a poop sword?

This election in eastern New York featured Democrat Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco.

After all of the Tedisco campaign's maneuvers, such as its illegal calling of absentee voters so they'd know which ballots to disqualify, it's finally time to declare a winner - and this is one call that ain't in the GOP's favor.

Murphy wins. Tedisco utterly lostimated.

This call comes just as it's revealed that Tedisco stupidly challenged Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's ballot, even though Gillibrand lives in the district. The Tedisco campaign's excuse is that they somehow "know" Gillibrand was in the district that day and should not have voted absentee.

The DLC almost cost the Democrats this seat with its Hillary Clinton deal, but in the end, they've hung on - in what was supposedly a Republican district.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/14/719993/-NY-20:-Tedisco-Camp-Challenges-Sen.-Gillibrands-Ballot)

School groupthink marches on with under 10% support

Sigh.

The school system of Chicopee, Massachusetts, thinks state laws don't apply to it. Massachusetts law says public schools may not "abridge the rights of students as to personal dress and appearance." But binding instructions (as Paul Bremer would call them) never seem to be a barrier to schools' actions. (Try getting a Kentucky school to obey IDEA.)

A survey of one Chicopee high school shows that mandatory uniforms have the support of a whopping 18.1%. At another high school in that town, uniforms are supported by...9.6%. Regarding uniforms at another school in the district, a student who sits on the school board's student advisory council said, "Pretty much no one wanted them."

Naturally, the school board is ignoring these surveys and is planning to charge right ahead with uniforms anyway. This after uniforms were rejected several years ago. They can't stand being wrong, can they?

The law is against the 9.6% crowd. Public opinion is against them too. And their idea was rejected before. But they still don't get it.

Their stubbornness isn't exactly constructive, is it?

(Source: http://www.masslive.com/hampfrank/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-19/123969335233390.xml&coll=1)

City wants to blow up squirrels

See this beautiful squirrel?

You've probably seen these little mammals climbing trees and gripping acorns in their front paws.

Most people can't imagine killing a squirrel just for expediency.

But the parks department in Spokane, Washington, isn't most people.
The John A. Finch Arboretum is the home of about 100 to 150 squirrels. But now the parks bureaucrats are complaining that the small animals are damaging the grounds of the arboretum.

The city sets up a tree collection and expects squirrels not to take interest in it? By nature, squirrels climb trees. That's what they do. And there really aren't even very many squirrels at this arboretum.

So the parks department is using something called a Rodenator Pro. This machine fills squirrels' tunnels with propane and oxygen, creating an explosion that kills the animals and demolishes the tunnels.

Whoever thought of this must have been one of those kids you knew growing up who fed lit firecrackers to frogs and blew them apart. (Bush did this as a youngster.)

Despite the park department's claims, their plan couldn't possibly be humane.

If the parks department know-it-alls were interested in being humane, why not catch the squirrels and move them somewhere else? Because that would make too much sense.

In the struggle between expediency and nature, the Spokane parks department is on the wrong side.

(Source: http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_041309WAB-AP-spokane-blow-up-squirrels-JM.d0432652.html)

Pseudoephedrine law may expand

Is there even one smidgen of difference anymore between the Democrats and the Republicans?

Both parties will cite the same discredited talking points and do the bidding of the same corrupt agencies, so are they really even separate parties?

The Patriot Act's 2006 renewal included draconian nationwide limits on cold and allergy sufferers buying over-the-counter drugs. This was promoted as a cure-all for the country's meth epidemic (even though it applies to innocent drugstore customers).

It didn't solve a damn thing, of course. Methamphetamine abuse is at an all-time record.

But Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska - a diehard DLCer - pooh-poohs these facts. In an op-ed in his hometown paper, Nelson repeats statistics that were put out by Bush's drug czar that claim the number of meth labs in Nebraska has declined precipitously. But these figures were already debunked: Most labs after 2006 were not caught, because of budget constraints. One commenter cites a lab that operates in the open because police don't have the resources to close it.

What's Congress's solution? Nelson boasts that there's a new bipartisan bill in Congress to expand the failed Idiot Act policies. The Combat Meth Enhancement Act of 2009 was demanded by the Drug Enforcement Agency - which is probably the most corrupt federal agency, bar none.

The DEA whines that too many retailers haven't complied with the 2006 law. So the new bill would require stores to register all their pharmacy employees with the DEA and have their names published on the DEA's website.

And this is supposed to stop meth labs how?

The 1½-party system is in bed with the corrupt DEA, and I think it's almost time for a nationwide work stoppage to protest drug laws that do nothing except punish the innocent. For drugstore employees, it'll be past that time, if this bill passes.

(Source: http://www.mccookgazette.com/story/1530345.html)

Hate group gets MSNBC clip yanked from YouPube

The right-wing culture warriors are often merely a distraction from this blog's mantra of economic populism. But when they start censoring those who disagree with them, I have to take notice. Censorship is one of the gravest enemies of hard-working Americans.

The misnamed National Organization for Marriage is a hate group with ties to noted right-wing big shots. It appears to me as if they're not just against gay marriage: They're against gays, period.

And the organization suppresses opposing views.

The National Organization for Marriage had an unintentionally hilarious audition for some dumb commercial they put out. Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program got access to the audition tapes, and Maddow played 40 seconds of them to show how ridiculous they were.

Someone promptly posted this segment from Maddow's show to YouTube.

Almost immediately, however, the clip was hit with a DMCA takedown notice - not from MSNBC, but from the National Organization for Marriage.

Did the National Organization for Marriage even copyright its audition tapes? Some have argued that once a work is created, it's automatically copyrighted, but if that's the case, why won't Google make it easier for people to remove their own years-old Usenet posts?

Even if the audition was copyrighted, wouldn't the way it was used on Maddow's show be considered fair use? Out of 15 minutes of audition footage that exists, showing a mere 40 seconds isn't too much to be called fair use.

If it's not fair use, wouldn't the National Organization for Marriage's real complaint be with MSNBC, not the person who uploaded the segment to YouPube?

Since when is a TV commentary called a copyright violation just for criticizing an organization?

It's pretty bad when a group is so right-wing that it wants an MSNBC segment suppressed. To hear some folks talk, you'd think MSNBC was exclusively a left-wing organ. However, MSNBC's coverage during the presidential campaign was so biased to the right that (as with Fox News and ABC), this blog doesn't even use it as a source anymore.

Everyone knows that YouPube will remove a clip almost on demand. As soon as a video hurts someone's feelings, it's gone. YouTube accepts even fourth-party DMCA complaints from parties that don't own the copyright on anything in the clip and aren't even mentioned in the clip.

I think it's time to repeal the DMCA.

(Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/anti-gay-rights.html)

Gonzales and other Bush officials to be prosecuted for torture (finally)

At long last, it begins.

Prosecutors in Spain are finally seeking criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and 5 other high-ranking officials in the Bush regime for encouraging torture at Guantanamo Bay.

In addition to Gonzales, charges also loom over John Yoo, Douglas Feith, and several nobodies who were in the Bush government.

How long will it be before the pop-up media picks up this story? Will they try to sweep it under the rug like the Texas indictments against Gonzales and Cheney last fall?

I love it, I love it!

(Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-13/the-bush-six-to-be-indicted)

Votes not counted? Some say, "So what?"

After years of fighting for a seat at the table, I know that votes in public elections not being counted is not a "so what?"

Some folks seem to think it is.

Kentucky has issues with vote counting that are coming to light in suburban Louisville. People have been voting in the wrong city elections because they get the wrong ballots. The difference is large enough that it almost certainly affected the outcome of city council races in last year's election. But there's no way to fix this mistake, because it was discovered too late.

This error occurred because precinct lines don't always follow the often torturous city lines. Efforts to remedy this have been stymied because that would cost money. Many legislators and other public officials have shrugged off this matter.

How widespread in Kentucky is the problem of people voting in the wrong cities? One official pointed out the prevalence of this discrepancy: "It happens all the time." Still, I don't expect it to be remedied anytime soon.

This is a state in which confirmed instances of lost votes have repeatedly been breezily dismissed, so accurate election counts clearly aren't a high priority. Judging by some of the results in Kentucky in this decade, it shows.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090413/NEWS0103/904130353)

Tea Party racism covered up

While the wingnutosphere and the pop-up media hype the series of Tea Party meltdowns in Cincinnati and elsewhere, they fail to tell us that it's actually a Ku Klux Klan rally.

I've been accused of focusing too much on ridiculing these public temper tantrums, but because the Tea Parties embody everything that's wrong with conservatives today, it's only fair to expose them. And now it's been revealed that the events are even more vile than it appeared from across 5th Street.

During the March rally in Cincinnati - which was rife with right-wing sentiment of privilege and entitlement - there was an ugly incident that was ignored by the dinosaur press. A woman who dissented from the fascist crowd was attacked with racially charged chants by the BTPers. Other attacks on the woman were certainly classist (even more so than some of the signs I photographed).

The Cincinnati Enquirer failed to mention the bigotry by the crowd, even though it mentioned that chants were made.

The LOSEianne crew plans to march from Fountain Square to City Hall this Wednesday. This event is sponsored by WKRC radio. Despite the station's sponsorship of the rally and the Enquirer's cover-up of bigotry, participants still cry that the media is against them.

If I check up on Wednesday's event in person, I may want to bring a bedpan.

(Source: http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/content/comments/incident_at_the_cincinnait_tea_party_last_weekend;
http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/blog-548-a-rallys-mean-streak.html)

School abolishes uniforms because nobody wore them

How many times have I said that if enough people ignore a uniform policy at a public school, the school will eventually have no choice but to abolish uniforms?

At San Jose Middle School in Novato, California, officials are repealing its year-old uniform policy, because 75% of students ignore it outright. And that's not counting just those who had actually applied to opt out. Remember, that's California, where the right to opt out is found in state law.

You know what I have to say to the school?


Inexplicably, while the uniform policy was in force, the school tried to punish students who defied it - despite the state guarantee of an opt-out. Eventually though, the principal came to his senses. He said, "By focusing so much of our attention on dress code issues, we were not able to address important and critical tasks relative to academic issues, curriculum, and learning here."

Gee, ya think?

I noticed the exact same problem at a Catholic high school I attended 20 years ago. I guess sometimes it takes a while for the obvious to catch on.

If the school actually said with a straight face the uniforms were to alleviate bullying, this rationale has also been debunked. A student said, "It was supposed to help bullying, but I don't think it helped anyone at all. Nothing really changed."

This too is something I could have warned the school about decades ago. I found it interesting that when I was in school there was almost a direct correlation between the rigidity of the dress code and the increase in serial harassment - because dress code enforcement drained so much effort from maintaining a safe school.

While Novato's youth may be lucky today, don't expect other communities to come to their senses soon - unless other public school uniform policies are similarly ignored.

Cavuto builds time machine

A headline on another website blares, "Neil Cavuto of FauxNews is a Time Traveler."

This is not a reference to the right-wing commentator's outdated views on economics and other matters - although it could be. This is a reference to another of Cavuto's lies.

As Fox News Channel has been hyping the right-wing Tea Party self-parodies, Cavuto has an interesting defense for this coverage. He said, "We are going to be in the middle of these protests because at Fox, we do not pick and choose these rallies and protests. We were there for the Million Man March, even though, as I pointed out, it turned out to be well shy of a million men."

It turns out though that Pox News would have needed a time machine to do that. The Million Man March took place in 1995. Fox News Channel didn't go on the air until 1996.

We got you there, Neil!

It's not like facts have ever stood in the way of Fox's biased coverage though.

Cavuto lied again when he put the recent Tea Party mockeries in the category of "populist causes." Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these the same rallies in which a participant displayed a sign saying, "Thank the rich"? Doesn't exactly sound like a populist slogan to me.

So Neil Cavuto isn't just a time traveler. He's a planet traveler too.

(Source: http://allspinzone.com/wp/2009/04/12/neil-cavuto-of-fauxnews-is-a-time-traveler)

Bailed-out banks raise fees

Here's today's thought that's going to angry up the blood...

Banks that got federal bailout dough (paid for by your taxes) are now increasing fees on basic transactions. They've also boosted credit card rates.

Translation: The government used your money to pay banks to increase fees. What other conclusion is there? Then again, it's not like big banks needed money to do this, because usually they're permitted to raise fees just for the asking anyway.

This is like how at the beginning of the bailout scandal, the government was encouraging big banks to use bailout money to take over smaller banks.

A Strongly-Worded Letter from Congress appears imminent.

I'd like to see the states cap bank fees. Good luck with that though. When cities in California tried to limit ATM surcharges, banks went to federal court and got an activist judge to throw out these limits.

Who says Big Business doesn't rule America?

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/04/13/business/business-us-banks-probe.html)

Another suicide caused by school harassment

It's happened again.

This time, an 11-year-old boy who attended a charter school in Springfield, Massachusetts, is the victim.

The 6th grader at New Leadership Charter School committed suicide by hanging after he was repeatedly harassed by schoolmates.

The boy's mother had called the school again and again about the harassment. Naturally, the school refused to do anything about it.

The suicide occurred after the school forced the youngster to eat lunch with a harasser all week. This is further proof of the school's unchecked incompetence at dealing with the situation.

I agree with the commenter on the Massachusetts paper's website who said the only way this will stop is if we start charging harassers with crimes. However, I disagree that the charge in this case should be manslaughter. The charge should be murder.

Since it's a charter school, doesn't it have the right to reject or expel serial bullies? Charter schools are supposed to have accountability. Where's the accountability here?

Or are students' scores on standardized tests the only measure of accountability? I've mentioned before that Springfield is known nationally for its insufferable public school system that doesn't obey state regulations or federal court rulings itself. My experiences in private schools were worse than in public schools, but I never attended a charter school to see if it was just as unaccountable.

These days, you have to assume the worst about any public, private, or charter school. America's schools have proven so inept at dealing with harassment that the system has earned our contempt.

(Source: http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/mom_says_springfield_boy_11_wh.html)

Get U.S. out of NAFTA? ('Pail Poll)

'Pail our poll (snap snap)...

You came through again in last week's 'Pail Poll. You voted 11 to 7 to continue statewide bans on new nuclear power plants.

This week's 'Pail Poll asks about the continuing ravages of NAFTA. As NAFTA threatens workers' well-being and the concept of federalism, should the United States leave NAFTA? Or should it just renegotiate it? Or is everything perfectly hunky-dory as it is?

Take this exciting survey today!

Wrigley's takes on an Allowed Cloud (Bubble Gum Weekend)

When something isn't allowed, that's an Allowed Cloud.

We all experience Allowed Clouds every day. For instance, there's an Allowed Cloud against marching into the courthouse with a bucket of turpentine and smearing it on the judge's gavel.

There's an Allowed Cloud against riding a Green Machine in the left lane of Interstate 74.

By the early '90s, Wrigley's recognized the existence of Allowed Clouds and appealed to many who felt affected by them. An ad campaign was launched to sell Wrigley's spearmint gum to folks who felt frustrated by bans on smoking in enclosed public spaces.

This campaign highlighted the oral gratification associated with gum. The commercials had an ominous look that featured large black letters on a white background, much like those oversized "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirts of the '80s.

An example is this commersh from 1994:

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

Needless to say, the slogan "Pure chewing satisfaction" was instantly parodied by many who heard it. Yes, you guessed it: They said, "Pure pooing satisfaction."

Ironically, this campaign started right when public places in the United States began barring people from chewing gum. Florida airports even made it illegal for businesses on airport premises to sell gum.

Of course, the Allowed Cloud against gum was about control - since I'm sure they didn't seriously think there was an epidemic of people getting cavities from someone else's secondhand gum. This Allowed Cloud was and is fascist.

It's been said that smokers enjoy gum because bubbling mimics the inhaling and exhaling of smoking. But then again, so do a lot of things, but I don't think we'll be seeing ads for them if gum is banned.

Bloomberg rejoins only party that'll have him

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A weird one indeed.

The embattled conservative mayor is known for his combative anti-union views and his plans to ignore a voter-approved law that limited mayors to 2 terms.

Now Bloomberg confirms that he's seeking a third term, after his cronies illegally changed the term limit law without voter approval. Perhaps even more laughably, he's running as a Republican again.

Bloombug ran under the GOP banner in the last 2 elections. In 2007, however, he made a giant public spectacle of his announcement that he was an independent. But now he's returned to the disgraced Republican abyss.

This seems like the worst time for someone to switch to Republican, especially in New York City. The GOP is dwindling, and its public support is now almost limited to exurbs and the South. In some major cities, such as San Francisco, the Republicans are literally a third party now.

On the other hand, the Republicans are about the only party that really wants Michael Bloomberg. Plus, big cities like New York are ultimately little different from right-wing exurbs in that the main role of the government has become to carry out an ideological agenda to protect right-wing elites.

(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/04/11/2009-04-11_mayor_michael_bloomberg_will_run_as_republican_in_bid_for_third_term.html)

"Tea is going in the river, regardless"

Poor Tea Party idiots.

The violent Nazis who have been staging Tea Party mockeries lately (in which they've spit on news crews) are upset because they're not getting the results they hoped for. All the Tea Parties bring to them is ridicule. Poor babies.

But they never learn - because stupid people usually don't.

They're planning on holding a Tea Party farce in Lafayette, Indiana, on Wednesday - in which they plan to block a pedestrian bridge and dump an entire crate of tea bags into the Wabash River.

It turns out though that there's an Allowed Cloud against dumping that many tea bags in the mighty Wabash. That's because the river has aquatic life that could be damaged by the tea bags depleting oxygen.

A spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said, "It would technically be considered an unpermitted discharge." She said the Tea Party organizers would be fined if they put tea in the river.

So guess what? They're going to go right ahead and do it anyway!

One of the organizers cried, "Tea is going in the river, regardless. The amount of hoops you have to go through for this to happen is part of what we're protesting."

Wait a minute! I thought they were protesting taxes paying for the stimulus they hate. I guess they really don't know why they're protesting. How's that for mission creep?

Oh, the stupid. It burns.

The professional right-wing agitators who participate in these things are spreading themselves kind of thin. The Lafayette event happens on the same day the BTPers return to Cincinnati. They were so hilariously ineffective last month that I don't even know if it's worth it for me to take the time to witness their stupid rally again. I might not even bother.

They don't even know what the original Boston Tea Party of 1773 was about! That was about a tax on tea, which was a form of taxation without representation.

The crop of right-wing extremists who organize the current Tea Parties are the ones who don't give opponents representation. They ran every branch of government through most of the current decade, and did they even pay one iota of heed to the public's concerns?

If they're worried about taxation without representation, why don't they care about folks in Highland Heights who have to pay taxes to a right-wing school board that closed the school? Or about Washington, D.C., residents having to pay taxes but not getting any congressional representation?

The current Tea Party organizers are poor students of history.

(Source: http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19149640/detail.html)

Dungeons & Dragons co-inventor Dave Arneson dies

Dave Arneson, who popularized role-playing games and (together with the late Gary Gygax) helped create Dungeons & Dragons, died of cancer Tuesday at the age of 61.

Dungeons & Dragons gained popularity in the '80s, despite moral panic types who crusaded against it. (The youth confinement facility I had dealings with strictly outlawed it, because the facility was run by right-wing dominionist zealots.)

The game gained a renewed interest during the presidential campaign when a McCain aide attacked the "pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd."

But Dungeons & Dragons will always hold a special place in memories of my youth. Ever since I saw that commercial for it in which an animated monster popped out from behind a door and opened its beak like Big Bird, I've been at least somewhat familiar with the game.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Dungeons_amp_Dragons_co_creator_die_04102009.html)

Wouldn't you like to have a Close'N Play to play your favorite songs and stories?

Well, wouldn't you?

I don't know about you, but judging by what folks have said about the Close'N Play, I'm afraid my answer is not in the affirmative.

Since this is a weekend, I thought I'd take a break from serious political entries and focus again on some hilarious nostalgia!

For years, I've heard rumblings that there was a brand of record player in the '70s marketed to kids called the Lift 'n' Spin. According to legend, all you needed to do to play a record was lift the lid of the Lift 'n' Spin and the turntable would start moving.

Well, I've found a nifty old commercial from 1972 for a record player that did the exact opposite: It played records when you closed the lid. It was the Close'N Play, made by Kenner:



The original version of the Close'N Play was so small that it only fit singles, not albums. But if what people say is true, the Close'N Play had far worse problems than that.

According to owners of this brand of phonograph, the action of closing the lid scratched up valuable 45's to the point of ruinment. The needle was on the inside of the lid, so the lid must have put too much weight on it. Also, you were lucky if this player lasted even a year.

You'd expect such mediocre quality from audiovisual equipment made in later years, but goods made in the '70s could usually withstand some pretty strong g forces. Then again, one YouPube commenter said they regularly threw their Close'N Play if they didn't like the song that was playing. On the other hand, other commenters report the Close'N Play broke with no abuse whatsoever.

In college, I found what I think is the grownup version of the Close'N Play. I buyed a Panasonic stereo that seemed to give 45's a scratchy sound as it played them. On this stereo it was also nearly impossible to pick up Channel Z even in Highland Heights. So that lemon went right back to the appliance store.

Come to think of it, what was the advantage of the Close'N Play? I guess it appealed to children because its method of playing records looked neat. But closing the lid was actually no easier to do and no more efficient than pressing a button or turning a knob like many turntables let you do.

If you don't want to give record collectors a bad case of the bunks, you might want to avoid mentioning Close'N Plays or Panasonic stereos in their presence.

Bill would cap lottery winnings for poor

The mean-spirited effort to force the poor, disabled, or unemployed to take drug tests to receive aid is a coordinated nationwide movement. It's all built on a hoax, and this policy had already been ruled unconstitutional in the '90s.

I heard rumblings about a separate bill in Tennessee that was also clearly designed with classist humiliation in mind. It seemed so bizarre that suspension of disbelief almost kicked in, and I wasn't quite sure if the story wasn't just an urban legend.

This bill would cap lottery winnings for the poor at $600. It sounded like the type of useless legislation that would be introduced by right-wing State Rep. Stacey Campfield - the infamous "blogging legislator" and self-styled video game expert. Campfield is known for such a stunningly poor command of basic language skills that he began submitting all his blog entries to a network of proofreaders before posting them.

Now I've found more information about the effort. The bill was indeed introduced by Campfield, and it would strictly limit lottery winnings for anyone who gets state or federal assistance (even if they have a job).

In other words, rich people who play the lottery can still collect, while the working poor cannot.

And this is supposed to accomplish what?

Frankly, I don't think there's a pandemic of welfare recipients spending money on lottery tickets. I personally don't know anyone who simultaneously gets welfare and plays the lottery, so Campfield is actually attacking an issue that doesn't even exist! This makes it even clearer that Campfield is just trying to rub everyone's noses in their predicament and make political hay of it.

Even more shockingly, this isn't even a new idea. It turns out that New York has had an even more restrictive policy in place since the war on the poor of the '90s. In New York, your winnings are limited to $600 if you've collected any public assistance in the past 10 years.

How is this not classism at its most methodical?

How does society benefit from the humiliation embodied by such a policy being on the books? It doesn't. Worse, it encourages other class-charged policies, which are more likely to harm many more people.

Athletes allowed to miss gym

I don't think there's anyone in the country alive today who doesn't know that student athletes don't have to follow the same rigorous standards as their schoolmates. It happened in my day, and it's worse now.

Thanks to a law passed in Ohio 2 years ago, it's gotten worse still in the Buckeye State.

This new law says school districts may allow some high school athletes to opt out of gym class entirely - while everyone else has to slog through this state-mandated course. Numerous public and private schools around Cincinnati have taken advantage of the new law.

I remember phys ed consisting primarily of students being humiliated or harassed for their poor athletic skills - not exactly my idea of a serious academic endeavor. But as long as the state thinks it's so important for this torment to be mandatory, why should athletes get a free pass? (Of course, they're usually not the ones who have to worry about being humiliated anyway.)

This new policy actually favors students of higher economic groups: Kids who can afford sports camp are certainly more likely to make their school team than those who cannot.

The free passes continue - now with lawmakers' blessing.

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090410/NEWS0102/904130303/1055/NEWS)

School board weeds out "druggie" stadium name

Right-wing political correctness is out of control in one Texas school system.

The drug warriors think there's a druggie hiding under every bed, and we live in an era in which anyone who dares to challenge this notion is labeled a stoner or "dry druggie" themselves. This is evident in the Leander school district - which until now was slated to be the home of Tumbleweed Hill Stadium, a new school athletic field.

But now, Tumbleweed Hill Stadium will not be called Tumbleweed Hill Stadium.

The school board has voted to rename this facility - claiming the "weed" in its name is a marijuana reference.

The school board must be smoking something mighty powerful if they think the stadium name was a pot reference.

With that kind of drug warrior hypersensitivity, school officials better hope this stadium uses AstroTurf instead of...GRASS!

(Source: http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/04/08/0408stadium.html)

Dow sues Canada over pesticide rules

NAFTA is an even rawer deal than most folks realize.

Not only does it include obvious aspects that harm workers directly. It also attempts to gut the entire concept of federalism and dismantle government powers to regulate Big Business.

Quebec has tough regulations on pesticides, especially for residential use. As a result, the Canadian federal government is now facing a lawsuit by Dow AgroSciences (a division of Dow Chemical), which makes a common weed killer.

Dow cites the hated chapter 11 of NAFTA, and is demanding $2,000,000 in damages. Chapter 11 lets corporations sue governments over regulations affecting their products - and collect damages for it.

This part of NAFTA is long known for preventing states and provinces from taking action against irresponsible corporations. When Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting state agencies from buying from companies that did business with bad regimes, these companies sued in federal court. Naturally, the right-wing court sided with these gloBULL greed merchants and struck down the Massachusetts law.

Although conservatives claimed to be champions of states' rights, they gutted Massachusetts's right to have a selective purchasing law. What's the point in even dividing the country into states if the states can't even pass their own laws?

Sorry, conservos, but the Constitution gives Massachusetts this power. The Constitution can't be trumped by any treaty or agreement like NAFTA.

NAFTA's chapter 11 does nothing but enable the corporate totalitarian mentality to grow.

I can't speak for Canada, but I certainly think it's time for the United States to leave NAFTA.

(Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090409.wdow0409/BNStory/National/home)

Aspartame subsidy to go national?

New York Gov. David Paterson's proposed aspartame subsidy damaged dearly his public confidence - but that doesn't stop "experts" from trying to take this policy nationwide.

Aspartame, as you may know, usually appears under the name NutraSweet. It's a dangerous artificial sweetener that fills everything from diet soft drinks to sugarless bubble gum. Its dangers have largely been covered up, but the perils of aspartame are significant enough that Hawaii legislators recently passed a resolution asking the FDA to rescind approval of this product. (NutraSweet was approved because Donald Scumsfeld headed the company that made it. The company later became part of greedy biotech firm Monsanto.)

Under this proposed subsidy, regular soft drinks would face a new tax of one cent per fluid ounce - while diet soft drinks would have no new tax at all.

Taxing food is questionable and ill-advised. But taxing regular sodas but not diet sodas is outrageous. If they positively need a soda tax, what's the excuse for not taxing both regular and that diet shit?

The rationale is that the tax would fight sugar-related conditions like the "obesity pandemic." Then why no tax to fight aspartame-related conditions like cancer?

Much of this is because the aspartame industry still has a lot of clout. But let's not kid ourselves: The diet soft drinks have more of an elite appeal. Do you really think that if diet sodas had less of an upscale appeal than the regular sodas that we'd be seeing this proposed subsidy?

I for one am a little fed up with going to the store and seeing a whole shelf full of a diet product staring down at me while not a single container of the regular stuff is anywhere in sight.

Aspartame is legal. I have no more desire to outlaw it than to subsidize it. But I do believe that products with aspartame should prominently carry a skull-and-crossbones sign - the traditional symbol for poison.

(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5378SX20090408)

When the government broke the disability system

Even before Bush, the government was mighty frugal about approving Social Security disability cases. Few people (outside the Contract With America thought police) would have claimed that the government was overspending on disability benefits.

But what hath Bush brung?

Now the system is in much worse shape than before. Americans with disabilities are now often forced to wait over 4 years before being approved for aid. In the meantime, they lose their homes and everything else because they can't work and have no source of income. The average waiting time has doubled since 2000.

Just as bad, they're far less likely to be approved even after the wait than they would have been before. In fact, refusing applicants on the first try is now almost a given - forcing them to appeal their case and take 4 more years. Almost 40% still don't get approved even after that!

This backlog was intentionally engineered by the Bush regime - just because they could. Bush let the situation become so bad that - even with an infusion of funds from the new stimulus package - it's still going to take years to clear the backlog.

This methodical, mean-spirited war on the disabled is something I saw coming even before Bush's 2000 campaign. It was Bush's own party that had already begun gutting the disability system in the '90s. So it's impossible for me to excuse anyone who pleads ignorance in having voted for the evil one in 2000.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iJipinq5JSKTfN5Q_3OlWbY5B48AD979RK085)

Daily Kos hit by denial of service attack

I'm not the guy who runs Daily Kos (a Democratic blog that provides a lot of good insight about electoral politics). But if I was, I'd be making damn sure the authorities were on this case.

A few days ago, Daily Kos was getting hit by denial of service attacks that were clogging it with 200,000 requests at a time. Clearly it wasn't Conficker, because that turned out to be a bigger bust than the year 2000 bug.

Since it's obviously not our side that's behind the attacks, can somebody please tell me why there's no nationwide racketeering probe into the right-wing brain trust for attacks like this? This isn't even the first time the right-wingers have attacked a site like this. It's not even the second time.

Right-wingers targeted me by sending me the Swen virus, remember? I had to spend $1,000 on a new computer, thanks to their unchecked assholism.

There should have been criminal prosecutions of right-wing operatives 5 years ago, but the government is more interested in going after products that let people beat drug tests.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/1/715259/-dKos-getting-hit-with-DoS)

Shop owner convicted over products to beat drug tests

Kentucky has a new law - an Allowed Cloud, if you will - that I don't remember hearing about until today. This new law makes it illegal to sell products designed to let people beat a drug test. In fact, it makes it a felony.

Now a Covington shop owner has been convicted of violating this brand-new legislation.

Let's get this clear: Drug tests are not 100% accurate. Studies have shown that they will occasionally show a person to have drugs in their system when they do not.

What especially astounds me is this "let's ban everything" attitude by lawmakers - which oddly doesn't extend to reining in big corporations. They'll ban products that beat drug tests, but they won't regulate the cost of car insurance or electricity.

Needless to say, there's no restrictions whatsoever on employers using drug tests to micromanage workers' off-the-clock behavior. Of course.

In the topsy-turvy conservaworld of Kentucky lawmakers, it's "regulation for thee, not for me." Under the laws today, corporations have no restrictions, but personal behavior is tightly regimented.

This ideology is absolutely untenable. Yet it is the very essence of modern American conservatism. I'd love to see what excuses conservatives come up with for it.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090409/NEWS0107/904090369)

Teen harassed at school over religion

Schools that experience serial bullying never hesitate to deny it. (Isn't that right, Cline Middle School?) But I guess eventually the bottom had to fall out, and now a large Nevada school district has been ordered to pay the price for its incompetence.

Several years ago, a student suffered death threats, violence, and other harassment at North Valleys High School because she is Muslim. She was forced to quit school because of the harassment. A friend of hers who is not Muslim was harassed as well just for befriending her. School officials reportedly told her to "act like a good American" (in their words).

It took a federal lawsuit to make the Washoe County School District pay. The court ordered the school district to pay a total of $400,000 to the 2 students.

Of course, the school system still doesn't have to pay up in full. No school ever does. The award is actually being paid by the school district's insurer. Surely, however, the school district is going to have to pay higher rates for insurance.

(Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-08-muslim-school-bullying_N.htm;
http://www.rgj.com/article/20090408/NEWS18/90408006/0/FOOD)

Bombing conspirator complains about prison food

Grow up, you big baby.

Terry Nichols - a coconspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing - is throwing a fit over the food given to him in prison. His big complaint? He wants all the refined foods to be replaced by whole grain foods, and he's filed a lawsuit to try to get food he likes better. The suit also seeks over $2,000,000 in damages.

Waaah waaah waaah.

Nichols is being held at the supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. He's gained support from fellow prisoner and right-wing terrorist Eric Rudolph - who complained several years ago that the prison allowed him only 90 minutes of swimming per day.

At the time, it was reported that Rudolph got meals fit for royalty, with his choice of chocolate cake or lemon meringue pie for dessert. And he got soda plus his choice of milk or fruit juice to chase it down.

Most folks must eat refined foods at every meal. And we don't get pie and cake daily - or even monthly. And we damn sure don't get to swim for 90 minutes each day.

In some prisons, inmates receive all their food mixed together in a blender and baked into a nauseating food loaf. But obviously, right-wing terrorists are privileged members of the prison community.

Terry Nichols and Eric Rudolph (who are responsible for the deaths of innocent people) are living better than 95% of the American public - and at taxpayer expense.

Don't like it, Terry? Tough shit.

(Source: http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0409/609246.html)

Cops raid blogger for criticizing them

This story has bipped through the blogosphere the past few days, but it's not unprecendented in modern America.

In Phoenix, a blogger who runs a blog criticizing misconduct by city police found his home raided solely because of what he wrote. Cops promptly seized computers, assorted computer equipment, and personal files regarding a police harassment lawsuit.

The fact that the files were confiscated is proof the raid is an act of retaliation.

During the raid, the blogger's roommate was cuffed for 3 hours as cops ransacked the residence. The blogger was out of town during the episode.

The blog consisted of information provided by good cops about the bad cops on the force. This included information about an officer whose son was a child molester and was trying to get on the force himself.

As an example of the ridiculousness of the charges against the blogger, authorities accused of him of petty theft for posting photos of police name plates that looked like they were taken from the department. But in fact, the blogger made the name plates himself.

This isn't the first case like this in the United States in recent memory. I remember a case in the mid-'90s in northern Kentucky in which a man's home was raided because he kept files on local police. He was promptly taken to a psychiatric ward, with no court hearing. (This is Kentucky, after all, where involuntary commitment is like a state religion.)

Keeping files on police is not a crime. In fact, it isn't even anti-police. You might think of it as a form of countersurveillance. If you photograph a surveillance camera, does that mean you hate the camera? No. But photographing it helps keep the system honest.

Obviously, the system isn't honest if a blogger can be raided just because of his views. Much like how the harassing "reviews" of 'The Fight That Never Ends' proved the book's point that the serial bullies never got over things, this raid proves the blog's point about misconduct in the Phoenix police department.

(Source: http://carlosmiller.com/2009/04/02/phoenix-police-raid-home-of-blogger-whose-writing-is-highly-critical-of-them)

Virginia lawmakers withhold stimulus money from unemployed

This is getting to be a trite story, like a hit song that gets too many radio spins. But it must be told again. (Sigh.)

The Virginia House of Delegates has now decided it wants to join Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in the Hall of Shame of right-wing ideologues who reject stimulus funds for the unemployed.

Today, the Republican-led Virginia House (on almost a straight party line vote) opted to reject $125,000,000 in federal stimulus funds that would have provided unemployment benefits for those who need it.

You know exactly what I'm going to say: If you're unemployed in Virginia, you won't get extra benefits now, all because the right-wing pricks in the Virginia House decided not to let you have it.

If that money was for, say, pseudoephedrine logs or funding right-wing private schools, I bet legislators would have accepted the money in a heartbeat.

If I had to draw an editorial cartoon for this story, it would depict Republicans in the Virginia House overseeing an emaciated and shivering public, as lawmakers shovel the finest foodstuffs into their gaping gizzards. There's no limit to their scumbaggery, is there?

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/08/AR2009040803800.html)

Embarrassing papers should be shredded before being flushed down toilet

I had an uproarious dream last night - and like so many other strange dreams, it too may fit into a political context.

In this dream, my toilet was clogged, requiring the services of a plumber. But the plumbing crew found that the clog was deep under the street. So they had to dig a massive hole in the roadway to fix it.

While they were digging, they found some sensitive papers I had written in high school and discarded. They promptly read them aloud.

The plumbers insisted these documents had clogged the toilet. But the papers were in perfect condition and never appeared to have ever been waterlogged. So it was clear I hadn't flushed them down the toilet. I concluded that I had thrown them in the garbage intact, and that someone had fished them out of the trash and buried them under the street.

What does this dream mean?

I think it means that right-wing operatives are flushing all their secret documents down the toilet without shredding them first. I'd bet the farm on it!

They probably think this is more effective than just throwing the documents away, because they're stuck in the days when nobody ever heard of paper shredders.

Dreams do sometimes reveal actual events that might be occurring. That's because the clues to them often lurk just below our conscience. We might not put the clues together while awake, so dreams do it for us.

So there's probably some still-legible secret GOP documents adhering to the walls of sewer pipes and possibly along riverbanks as we speak. All because of the right-wing brain trust's unchecked carelessness.

I'm not saying you should slink through poop-filled sewer pipes to try to find damning documents about Republican thuggery. But - if dreams are as prophetic as many claim - I guess it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that some right-wing document will wash ashore at your favorite riverfront park.

Berlusconi calls earthquake a "weekend of camping"

Italy just had its worst earthquake in 30 years - and the quake is putting Silvio Berlusconi's incompetence and insensitivity on display just as Hurricane Katrina did for Bush and his cronies.

The Republican Right was thoroughly out of touch with the needs of Katrina survivors. When Tom DeLay saw a group of young survivors huddled together in a stadium, he actually said, "Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?"

Barbara Bush wasn't exactly in step with the situation either. With a chuckle, she said, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."

Berlusconi's reaction to the L'Aquila earthquake has stunning parallels with this thoughtlessness. The embattled billionaire Prime Minister said the 17,000 people who lost their homes should view their plight as a "weekend of camping."

Meanwhile, quake survivors in the emergency camps have had to endure heavy rain and near-freezing temperatures. And the camps don't even have enough room for all the survivors.

I guess we can expect insensitive statements from incompetent authoritarians like Berlusconi. Berlusconi's tyranny has already been indicated by his proposal to censor news agencies that criticize him. In fact, he's one of the most dangerous types of dictators - precisely because everyone thinks he runs a democratic administration. If it was Russia, American observers would be less hesitant about calling him a dictator.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/08/italy-earthquake-berlusconi)

Doctors pressured into underdiagnosing PTSD and brain injuries

Post-traumatic stress disorder isn't just a concept. PTSD has a reasonably clear definition and physiological characteristics.

Just as clear is the fact that official agencies often diagnose disorders only if it suits their aims. If a disorder means someone will suffer discrimination or be locked up, it's more likely to be diagnosed. If it means someone will be able to collect benefits, it's less likely to be diagnosed. The system is stacked.

Now a secret recording made last year shows that the Army was (and may still be) encouraging psychologists not to diagnose soldiers with PTSD - even when PTSD shows in plain sight. The Army was rejecting countless PTSD diagnoses that were issued.

Doctors were also encouraged to underdiagnose brain injuries.

The VA was going along with this backstabbing against America's brave soldiers.

Naturally, this was under Bush, whose regime intentionally mismanaged the VA and the military for political purposes. Furthermore, the Army's policy was investigated only by the Army - not by any outside investigators - so of course the Army let itself off the hook. As with other government functions this decade, there's no accountability, thanks to rampant partisanship and corruption.

This backstabbing went on throughout the Bush era. In 2005, the VA reviewed tens of thousands of PTSD claims by veterans, accusing them of faking their PTSD. One Vietnam vet was so frustrated by this review that he committed suicide.

Why underdiagnose these disorders? PTSD and brain injuries require the military to provide long-term care and disability payments. The government would have rather spent money on waging failed wars that injure yet more soldiers than on taking care of soldiers who were already wounded.

The military is letting countless veterans go untreated for PTSD. The effects of this policy will be seen for generations. And it's going to cost society more in the long run.

(Source: http://www.salon.com/news/special/coming_home/2009/04/08/tape)

'Sesame Street' explains Madoff scandal ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

I've had a hard time following the Bernie Madoff scandal, but I haven't paid much attention to it either.

Stuff like that is hard to follow. If it was a scandal about a school stealing money by falsely accusing students of destroying books, I'd have no problem following it. If it was a scandal about the Governor of South Carolina bringing live farm animals into legislative chambers to shit all over the floor, I'd have no problem following it.

But it isn't.

So I have to call in Ernie and Cookie Monster to explain it to me:



It's always amusing how Cookie Monster goes, "Aaahh!" after he devours cookies - similar to the sound we always made at the drinking fountain in school to entertain nearby classrooms.

'Sesame Street' Muppets may be unable to count past 6, but they sure do understand Ponzi schemes!

Focus on the Family narrator arrested in teen sex sting

I still can't believe anyone takes advice from Focus on the Family after James Dobson endorsed beating children and issued other truly sick writings about parenting.

Now the rank sickness that is Focus on the Family has struck again.

Juan Ovalle, 42, is a narrator for Focus on the Family. The Colorado Springs man narrates CD's and radio shows for this totalitarian organization.

But now he's been arrested on 2 felony counts related to using the Internet to lure a girl under the age of 15 for sex. The teen he tried to lure was actually an undercover investigator posing as an under-age girl.

In an attempt to pick up the decoy teen, Ovalle actually asked, "Do you like older guys?" and made explicit statements.

Another "family values" hypocrite busted.

Any adult would have to be pretty damn stupid now to try to pick up teens online, because they ought to know by now about these sting operations. But nobody ever said Focus on the Family was comprised of intellectual giants.

(Source: http://coloradoindependent.com/25840/focus-on-the-family-narrator-charged-with-luring-teenage-girl-for-sex-on-net;
http://coloradoindependent.com/25918/arrest-report-do-you-like-older-guys-focus-employee-asked-teenage-girl)

Tedisco campaign makes fraudulent calls to rig vote

A week after that congressional election in upstate New York, it still hasn't been finalized.

Which of course means Jim Tedisco is still trying to rig the vote count.

And man, does he try. Not without some success, I might add.

Disco Duck is gutting the concept of a secret ballot by having his campaign call absentee voters (a list of whom is publicly available) and ask them who they voted for. That way, he knows which ballots to challenge so he can have them tossed out.

As an added element of fraud, the Tedisco campaign is telling the voters being called that it's an exit poll - which is an outright lie.

If Tedisco is declared the winner, do you honestly expect anyone to believe the election wasn't stolen, following this shenanigan?

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/6/717194/-NY-20:-Republicans-OBLITERATING-secret-ballot;
http://www.thealbanyproject.com/diary/6214/ny20-tedisco-making-a-list-of-absentees-to-challenge)

Sarkozy the copyright-violatin' hypocrite

Right-wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy has championed tough government crackdowns against file-sharing networks. He accuses these networks of facilitating copyright violations.

A lot of musicians might take exception to that assertion. Nowadays, the only way that most recording artists can get their music distributed is on file-sharing systems, because radio seldom plays anyone who hasn't won on 'American Idol'. I guess Sarkozy likes it when musicians go out of business.

Now Sarkozy is the target of a lawsuit for his own unauthorized use of copyrighted music.

Sarkozy and his right-wing political party, the UMP, have been using MGMT's smash hit song "Kids" ("The wa is warm...") for partisan events and videos. Now the band is suing Sarkozy for using the song without permission.

The embattled French leader has offered MGMT one euro - the equivalent of about $1.33 - to make the big, mean lawsuit go away. But the band won't accept this insulting offer.

Sounds like Sarkozy is taking cues from McCain's campaign, which was known for repeatedly using songs without permission.

What astounds me is that Nicolas Sarkozy thinks everyone else is violating copyright laws by using Soulseek or Limewire, but he doesn't even obey the copyright laws himself.

(Source: http://www.nme.com/news/mgmt/43064;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7912423.stm)

Iraqi journalist's sentence reduced

After Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes onto a stage where Bush was speaking - an act that was intended as a grave insult, not to cause physical injury - he became a worldwide folk hero.

Last month - to the outrage of Iraqis - al-Zeidi was sentenced to 3 years in prison for this deed. This despite the fact that an ABC poll showed that 62% of Iraqis considered al-Zeidi a national hero.

Three years in prison just for insulting one of the most hated political leaders in the world?

Now a court has reduced this sentence to one year. This occurred after defense attorneys pointed out that the law imposes a maximum of only 2 years for publicly insulting a visiting foreign leader.

What's that again?

Why is insulting a political figure even a crime in a supposedly "free" and "democratic" Iraq?

If insulting political leaders is such a crime, the Cincinnati Tea Party crybabies would be in jail now for their sign that portrayed President Obama as the Joker.

Is this anything like how a supposedly "free" and "democratic" leader like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi wants to clamp down on journalists who report his blunders?

Al-Zeidi is actually lucky in a way, because everyone knows that if the world wasn't watching, he would have been killed by Bushist thugs.

So much for joining the "league of democracies", huh?

Senator from Wal-Mart against EFCA

Arkansas Democrats will remember this story in the next Senate primary.

And if the DLC juggernaut isn't defeated, don't be surprised if the Greens pick up quite a few votes in the general election.

Meet Sen. Blanche Lincoln - a DLCer from Arkansas. She's proving to be the senator from Wal-Mart - the most influential corporation based in her state.

Despite corporatists' claim that Big Business does not take stances on political issues, Wal-Mart has opposed the much-needed Employee Free Choice Act from the get-go. In fact, the retail giant has even intimidated workers who support this bill.

In an apparent cave-in to Wal-Mart's influence, Blanche Lincoln said yesterday at a meeting of the Little Rock Political Animals Club that she will oppose EFCA.

And this is a Democrat?

It's a sad day when more Democrats in the Senate support the Patriot Act than EFCA.

(Source: http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article.aspx?aID=113645)

Berlusconi may censor news agencies for covering gaffes

If Italy's far-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi doesn't want people to think of him as a dictator, then he should stop being a dictator.

A dictator he is. Make no mistake about it. I've been hoarding articles about Berlusconi's administration for ages, and now this story shifts his dictatorial demeanor back to the frontburner.

Berlusconi is now threatening to clamp down on news agencies and journalists who dare to report his many humiliating gaffes. He says he will take "hard measures" against reporters.

Among Berlusconi's gaffes are his yakking on his cell phone during a group photograph of NATO leaders and his shouting at President Obama during another photo shoot. This display prompted an annoyed Queen of England to say, "Why does he have to shout?"

Berlusconi's Italy doesn't exactly sound like part of the "league of democracies" the EU claims to be, does it? I can post other examples of this too, and I will.

(Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5110631/Silvio-Berlusconi-threatens-news-blackout-after-reports-of-latest-gaffes.html)

German school shooter took antidepressant

Whenever there's a shooting massacre at a school or elsewhere, it's 99% safe to say that the shooter was under the influence of psychiatric drugs.

Now it's been revealed that the school shooter in Winnenden, Germany, who left 17 dead including himself, had been taking an unspecified antidepressant. This fact is only now coming to light in America.

I know what the excuse is going to be. Detractors will say this is just an isolated incident, and that it's just a coincidence that someone taking psychiatric drugs would participate in a shooting like this.

Except this isn't an isolated incident. And most other shootings or incidents like this have also occurred under the influence of psychotropic toxins:

Omaha (2007) - Mall shooter took antidepressants and Valium.

Joleka, Finland (2007) - School shooter took antidepressants.

Cleveland (2007) - School shooter took the antidepressant Trazadone and the ADHD drug Clonidine.

Virginia Tech (2007) - University shooter took antidepressants.

Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota (2005) - School shooter took Prozac.

Greenbush, New York (2004) - School shooter took antidepressants.

El Cajon, California (2001) - School shooter took Effexor and Celexa.

Wahluke, Washington (2001) - Teenager who held class hostage with rifle took Effexor.

Williamsport, Pennsylvania (2000) - School shooter took Prozac.

Conyers, Georgia (1999) - School shooter took antidepressants.

Littleton, Colorado (1999) - At least one of the Columbine shooters took Luvox.

Notus, Idaho (1999) - School shooter took antidepressants.

Taber, Alberta (1999) - School shooter took Dexedrine.

Springfield, Oregon (1998) - School shooter took Prozac.

Why is the media continuing to live in denial that there's a link between shooting rampages and psychotropic drugs? This denial isn't doing society any good.

I think it's time for a full-on government investigation into this link.

Supreme Court upholds Mumia Abu-Jamal verdict

Let me be clear: I firmly believe Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent.

Abu-Jamal is serving time for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. I've read the facts of the case many times before, and I have no doubt that he's innocent of this crime. Detractors have raked me through acid over this belief, but I've studied the case for years.

A man named Arnold Beverly has actually admitted to killing Faulkner. But there's other evidence pointing to Abu-Jamal's innocence (which probably doesn't need to be rehashed here).

Today, however, the U.S. Supreme Court may have dashed Abu-Jamal's last hopes at ever getting out of prison. The court refused to take up his claims that prosecutors wrongly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted him. Thus, there's no way he'll ever receive a new trial.

This underscores the larger issue of how hard it is for defendants to remedy a questionable conviction - especially now that courts are so weak at making sure everyone gets a fair trial. If someone commits a serious crime, I'm all for serious punishment. But if there's any doubt at all about the guilt of someone who was convicted, we need to make sure they get tried impartially.

(Source: http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/4150446.php?contentType=4&contentId=3783975)

Backstabbin' Burr

Uh, Richard Burr? Your party is background noise now. Go away.

Burr - the Republican senator from North Carolina - is now delaying the confirmation of injured Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth for an important VA post.

Why? Just because Burr feels like it. He's mad that things haven't been going his way as much lately, so by golly, he's going to make sure the entire VA gets mired in the mismanagement that's defined the past 8 years. Just for political reasons.

Did Richard Burr ever serve in the military? Nothing in his biography says he did. So why does he think he knows more about the needs of veterans than Tammy Duckworth? Burr should be thanking Duckworth for her service.

Burr's obstructionism also continues a pattern of right-wing big shots intentionally trying to gut public services just to find an excuse to let private, for-profit companies pick up all their business. This is what led to problems in the VA under Bush. The VA had long been known for providing better medical service than for-profit providers, but the Bush regime deliberately neglected the VA - again because of politics.

Ideologues like those who compose the Republican Right today conceal a knife behind their backs with which they stab America's brave veterans. Richard Burr is disgusting.

(Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1470194.html)

EU requires Internet records to be stored for a year

Is this Europe's version of the NSA spying scandal?

It's hard to top Bush's eavesdropping, but the European Union sure as shit tries. The EU - which represents a mishmash of undemocratic, greed-driven ideas - is now starting to require all ISP's to keep records of customers' e-mails, website visits, and even phone calls for 12 months.

These items will be stored for use by government authorities.

The policy was established with no public input.

For those who think the innocent have nothing to fear, think again. How is this any different from making traditional phone companies record phone calls? How is it any different from making the postal service open up mail and keep copies of it?

Just as bad, this policy lays the foundation for a far more detailed spying program planned by British authorities. A privacy advocate said this would be "probably the world's most comprehensive surveillance system."

The EU's modus operandi seems to be to think up of moronic ideas and then spring them on the public without asking or caring what they think. Who's running the EU? Ernie Fletcher?

(Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105519/Internet-records-to-be-stored-for-a-year.html)

Ban on covering war dead lifted

At last, the Obama administration has reversed an outrageous policy that was put in place 18 years ago by the elder Bush.

During the '91 Gulf War, the senior Bush instituted a ban on news coverage of returning war dead. The ban was introduced for government propaganda purposes - namely, to keep public support for the war from eroding. Frankly, it amounted to government censorship.

By reversing this policy, families now have a choice of whether the media may cover ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base, the American entry point for military personnel who are killed abroad. If a family doesn't want the ceremony covered, then it won't be covered. But it will be their decision.

For 18 years, war casualties were politicized by the ban. Dead soldiers and their families were treated with disrespect just to save face for our political "leaders." Worse, the government misled the public for years about the intent of this policy.

Now this outrage is coming to an end.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/05/us/AP-Pentagon-War-Dead.html)

Clear Channel to ruin Arkansas station

KIYS in Jonesboro, Arkansas - renamed from KJBR in the '90s - is the legendary radio station whose sticker I found stuck on a toilet in a motel room in Kennett, Missouri, in 1996.

Even that recently, KIYS still had more variety in its music than you'd hear on almost any American commercial station today. One heard Metallica's "Until It Sleeps", Air Supply's "All Out Of Love", and George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" all on the same station.

I'm under no delusions that KIYS might have that much variety now. But at least it's still a Jonesboro station.

That, however, is about to change.

Although the station's ownership was taken over by Clear Channel, it has been operated by a local group under an LMA. Now, however, Clear Channel is ending the agreement and moving KIYS to Memphis - where the company already owns 6 stations!

Remember when this used to be a big no-no? As late as 1996, the limit was 4 per market. For decades until about 1990, it was 2 per market. Any broadcasting student has heard a zillion times that the FCC has a duty of making sure stations operate in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity." If you study broadcasting, that phrase will be drilled into your head for life.

Because the radio spectrum is limited, that means the FCC is supposed to award broadcasting licenses to different owners - guaranteeing a diversity of voices. But the FCC neglects this obligation. Every station sale to Crap Channel or some other corporation is rubber-stamped.

So is every effort by these corporations to abandon smaller markets like Jonesboro to build an impenetrable monolith in larger cities like Memphis. Having your small city mentioned once between ads at the top of the hour means nothing anymore.

Then again, radio means nothing anymore. The industry could have adapted, but instead it self-destructed.

So is there much interest in keeping KIYS in Jonesboro? There ought to be. They've had nearly the same basic format for years, so at least they're consistent there. When they move to Memphis, they'll be a new signal there, and will probably be one of these stations that just ends up switching its format once every 6 months.

Despite the poor quality of today's music, radio can still perform a valuable service by announcing local events and emergencies. It's also important to note that when Clear Channel owned most of the stations in Minot, North Dakota, it left its stations on autopilot, so listeners weren't informed when a train derailed and released poisonous chemicals.

I think maybe Arkansas legislators need to tell the FCC where they stand. Jonesboro needs its stations.

(Source: http://radioinsight.com/clear-channel-preparing-memphis-move-in)

Keep nuke plants out of Kentucky? ('Pail Poll)

As usual, you passed last week's 'Pail Poll with flying colors. When presented with evidence that the War on Drugs in its current form has failed, you voted 14 to 1 to end the drug war.

This week's 'Pail Poll asks whether you'd favor states like Kentucky continuing their bans on constructing new nuclear power plants.

After reading about the Three Mile Island cover-up, this is sure to become a major issue. Apologists for the nuke industry say nuke plants are safer than ever, but that's what they said 30 years ago too.

So if you allow new nuclear plants in your state, don't be surprised if there's another Three Mile Island.

Energy is a serious matter, but it's not worth the trouble of the most dangerous form of energy ever devised.

Carrying oversized packs of gum: an international sport! (Bubble Gum Weekend)

This feature has been legendary for not just its ridicule of American gum commercials but of foreign spots as well. But I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

I found what appears to be an '80s-era Wrigley's spearmint gum commersh from the Soviet Union.

I didn't know the Soviet Union even had commercial TV! I figured it had gum, because most places did. But I thought TV there was just a government organ that broadcast ruling party propaganda all day.

Anyway, you'll be amused by this ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCWxEQhP20k

That ad has all the trappings of an American commersh, including people riding bikes down steps.

It also uses the same theme that was reportedly used in the American ads for Wrigley's spearmint gum in the '70s - namely, people carrying around oversized packs of gum. Even the jingle is reported to be nearly the same, with the "gum gum gum" low notes. Apparently, that campaign was mocked hilariously by a sketch on 'The Electric Company'.

I wonder if Wrigley's could have been sued for false advertising, if anyone buyed a pack of gum and expected it to be the size shown in the ad.

Proof of insurance required to buy gas?

You can tell the right-wing Hawaii Senate has the insurance racket in its back pocket caressing its pelvic area.

Last month, lawmakers approved a resolution to urge the state insurance commissioner to find a way to require motorists to present proof of car insurance just to buy (ppphh!) gas.

The resolution appears to be typed on a typewriter and thus looks like an old Last Word from 1993 - except that its political stance is the precise polar opposite:

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2009/Bills/SCR101_.pdf

Let's get a few things straight here. While lawmakers complain that 1 in 5 drivers in Hawaii are uninsured, studies keep showing that a much lower percentage of cars involved in accidents are uninsured. Sounds to me like uninsured drivers are actually safer than the insured! And I would believe that.

And since the resolution cites the fact that the rate of uninsured drivers will increase because of unemployment, why aren't legislators doing anything about unemployment?

This insurance card proposal is driven by insurance company greed. Its legality is highly questionable too, as it runs roughshod over the notion of requiring probable cause.

Is this the country's future? Unless people push back, prepare for the worst. How many Americans 30 years ago would have ever thought we'd see fascist policies like Real ID?

But this may not matter much. I can seriously see the day when right-wing lawmakers require cars to carry an electronic box that lets authorities shut the car off by remote control if they find out the driver flunked high school 20 years earlier or has an outstanding cable bill.

So it looks like most folks won't even make it to the gas station to have to worry about being carded.

Holder proposes pot crackdown

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. signaled an era of long-awaited change when he vowed to abandon trite War on Drugs rhetoric and stop prosecuting medical marijuana patients in states where medical use of the herb is legal.

But in modern America, no positive changes last too long before political pressure kicks in.

The violence on the Mexican border lately is fueled entirely by the War on Drugs. So what's Holder's solution now? Why, expand the failed drug war, of course.

Holder now says he wants to find a way to lower the minimum amount of marijuana required for federal prosecution for possession.

Really?

Because we've all seen how well this type of stuff has worked before, right?

One has to ask how strong the political pressure to expand the War on Drugs has become. All the drug war has done for decades is expand, and it's never worked.

This idea is probably fueled by the corrupt drug warriors trying to hit up the government for yet more money to buy snazzier toys to play with.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/americas/04mexico.htm)

Three Mile Island carnage covered up for 30 years

Nuclear power has become sacred to our political "leaders." The McCain campaign even said nuclear energy was a green technology. Kentucky lawmakers are trying to gut rules that have prohibited nuke plants from being built in the state.

Seven years before Chernobyl, Pennsylvanians were confronted with the disaster at Three Mile Island. The official story was that the 1979 incident caused no real damage, let alone any deaths of humans or pets. Industry big shots ran slick magazine ads crying about being the biggest victims themselves because of whatever bad press the meltdown did generate.

But the official story is a Big Lie. It's taken 30 years for the truth to come out, but at long last, it's emerging. Years ago, I saw a photo of an eyeless dog whose condition was attributed to the meltdown, but other details of the damage have been mostly hushed up until now.

Radiation from the Three Mile Island accident killed pets and farm animals for miles around. There were plenty of human costs as well. Ten miles away from the meltdown, a woman's kidney practically vanished. Cancer rates soared in the surrounding valley. Babies were born with serious deformities. In addition, valuable plants were destroyed.

The cover-up is extensive. The would-be writers of a book about the Three Mile Island accident were later run off the road in their car. One of them was killed, and the manuscript for the book vanished from the car's trunk.

Through it all, however, lawmakers continue to insist nuclear power is the safest form of energy.

Energy companies are now seeking to build 26 nuclear reactors across the country - the first new applications since the Three Mile Island disaster. In Georgia, legislators actually approved a law to force utility customers (such as average households) to pay for the reactors that are about to be built in that state. In Florida and South Carolina, folks have also seen an increase in their bills to pay for new reactors.

The real costs, however, may be in the illnesses and deaths that are sure to result the next time there's a meltdown.

If you happen to find a phone book for Campbell County, Kentucky, from the '80s - before the Zimmer plant converted from nuclear to coal - it may feature a terrifying map. This map showed a nuclear cloud covering much of the county and gave detailed instructions on how to evacuate in case there was a meltdown at Zimmer.

Many locals who are my age grew up with that map, and the renewed interest in nuclear power should send a shiver up the spine of all of us.

What excuses are the nuke apologists going to come up with to defend this dangerous form of energy now?

(Source: http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/04/post-4.html)

Public schools require Bible reading over summer (a blast from the past)

Since we're on the topic of separation of religion and state, here's a story from 4 years ago about how this constitutional doctrine had already been gutted by mid-decade.

In 2005, 2 public high schools in Boca Raton, Florida, required students to read the Bible while they were on summer break. One of the schools required all 11th grade students to read 9 Bible chapters (or 11 if they were in advanced placement courses). The other school required it only for students in advanced classes.

One has to ask why all of the 11th graders at one of the schools were being given homework over the summer anyway. One also has to ask how the school expected to get away with violating the establishment clause right out in the open.

This followed a proposal by one of that area's high schools to offer a Bible class.

It's unknown how long this requirement lasted, or if these schools still require students to read the Bible over the summer. I guarantee you that if I went to a public school that required Bible reading, I'd be on the school's case immediately.

Why? To me, few things are more offensive than such unmistakable violations of the Bill of Rights. Sure, there's things in the Constitution that have to be interpreted. But I thought this issue was settled at least 50 years ago.

(Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel 5/26/05)

State tries to give money to religious university

The U.S. Constitution has what seems to be an ironclad safeguard of separation of church and state. It has tended to shield us from controversies seen in other countries. Even in Canada, for instance, religious bodies claim they have a legal right to taxpayer funding - a claim that might not get very far in the good ol' U.S. and A.

Until now.

The Kentucky Constitution is every bit as clear as the U.S. Constitution. It says tax money can't be used to subsidize religious schools.

Naturally, however, Kentuckians' tax dollars are used for religious schools anyway. The state had established a $10,000,000 appropriation for the University of the Cumberlands, a Southern Baptist institution.

Just to make things clear: The state can't legally do this. It's unconstitutional.

The appropriation was first approved by the right-wing administration of then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher. This was particularly controversial because of the university's anti-gay views. (The university also had supporters of a gay rights group arrested for trespassing even though they were on a state highway.) The state's funding of the university has been fought through the courts ever since.

Last year, a judge correctly ruled that the state can't spend money on religious schools.

Now, however, this case has gone to the Kentucky Supreme Court. I guess the university didn't learn, did it?

If the court restores the appropriation, one has to wonder what's next. Will every denomination demand that the taxpayers fund its schools? Does this mean the state can actually erect school systems based on denominational lines? Once we're obligated to fund religious schools with our tax dollars, where does it stop?

(Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-au-and-aclu-say-funds-for-religious-univ-unconstitutional)

Sick around PBS

After the Bush regime stacked the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with right-wing cronies, PBS has become as corruptible as the commercial networks.

Respected journalist T.R. Reid made a documentary for 'Frontline' called 'Sick Around America'. Observers have described this work as excellent. In this film, Reid travels around the country to interview doctors, patients, and insurance execs to shed some light on the horridity of America's broken health care system.

When PBS showed 'Sick Around America', however, the network cut out Reid's commentary and replaced it with editorializing by some insurance company hack. The insurer rant said America could get decent health care if only it would force everyone to buy insurance from for-profit companies.

Because we've all seen how well mandatory insurance has eliminated road rage, right? (That's sarcasm, people.)

Maybe PooBS didn't want to alienate its sponsors. Thirty years ago, you'd probably never see a commercial on PBS. Try watching PBS now, and you'd be shocked at the amount of what are literally ads - often insurance ads.

If Big Bird wasn't a nudist, he'd be shitting his pants right about now.

Reid was so outraged at PBS bowdlerizing his documentary that he said, "'Frontline' will never touch me again – they are done with me."

After PBS's neocon hit piece on a democratically elected political leader abroad, I think we're about done with PBS - at least until the CPB gets rid of all the Bush cronies who have an agenda.

(Source: http://counterpunch.com/mokhiber04022009.html)

Missouri wastes stimulus money

I've said it before: The stimulus is good, but you have to keep a very, very close eye on where stimulus money goes.

This money can be used for a lot of things that make life better for the public: schools, bridges, libraries, firehouses, and so on.

But the Republican-controlled Missouri Senate has different ideas. They want to spend most of the stimulus money on a database to track anyone who buys over-the-counter pseudoephedrine drugs.

The country would be better off if Missouri just rejected this stimulus money outright. Seriously. This is the type of waste the Obama administration ought to clamp down on.

Who decided to squander federal tax dollars on this nonsense? Well, the Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee is chaired by an ultraconservative bully named Gary Nodler - who may be best known for his temper tantrum in which he started an argument with a caretaker for the developmentally disabled at a movie theater.

What a disgrace.

(Source: http://www.kctv5.com/money/19068566/detail.html)

School lies about harassment that caused suicides

In 2007, a high school student in Mentor, Ohio, committed suicide because of a pattern of harassment at school. The school knew about the harassment - but chose not to do anything about it. In fact, much of the harassment took place right in front of the teachers (much like at Brossart).

Now his parents are suing. They aren't seeking monetary damages, but the suit attempts to force the school to acknowledge serial bullying and take steps to prevent it.

It turns out that this wasn't the only harassment-induced suicide in that class in 2007. That same year, 3 other students in the very same class also took their own lives as a result of school harassment.

In addition, a schoolmate of the 4 suicide victims threatened to kill himself. His father said, "What it boils down to is, the football players, cheerleaders, and kids with money have a different set of rules than everybody else."

This is the exact same very thing I've been saying for 20 years. Some kids don't have to follow the rules like everyone else. Anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass can see this.

Despite this, an official with the Mentor school system denied the school had any harassment problem at all. He said the suicides had nothing to do with harassment. But that is an out-and-out lie.

Furthermore, school officials had urged students not to cooperate with the police investigation into the suicides.

If a poor inner-city school system has an attendance rate of less than 95%, the freeposphere goes bonkers and demands the state take over the school system. And this has happened before in Ohio. But a wealthy suburban district like Mentor has far worse problems, and nobody is held accountable.

School officials and harassers in this case need to be prosecuted for murder. And the state needs to step up its oversight over the Mentor schools.

There's no bully worse than a privileged suburban bully. They've had everything handed to them their whole lives yet have no appreciation for it. And they're the corrupt politicians and corporate tyrants of tomorrow.

Once they get past their mid-teens, these Hitler Youth cannot be rehabilitated. At minimum, they shouldn't be allowed to attend regular schools, should be barred for life from employment that involves interaction with young people, and should lose their driver's license.

If the family that filed the lawsuit was seeking monetary damages, I'd have no problem awarding them everything the school is worth.

(Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3812739;
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=cincinnati&sParam=30480001.story)

DHS wasted thousands on Jerkoff book

I got so sick of hearing Michael "Skeletor" Chertoff run his stupid mouth that sometimes I wished they'd bring back TV Brick.

Now it turns out that the then-Chertoff-led Department of Homeland Suckyurity wasted almost $16,000 of the taxpayers' money publishing and distributing a 315-page book of his speeches.

Aaah! Wasted!

This despite the fact that probably all of Chertoff's speeches are available online.

When this waste was first revealed, a DHS spokesperson said the project cost less than it did. This turned out to be wafto gas.

One has to ask who the hell would actually buy a book of Jerkoff's speeches.

What an egomaniac.

(Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/01/dhs-wastes-16000-chertoff)

GOP wants new election because they lost

Hey, I thought April Fools' Day was over!

What? You mean they're serious?

Damn. Their babyishness never ends, does it?

In Alaska, Republicans want to hold a new Senate election all because their candidate, embattled longtime incumbent Ted Stevens, lost. They've demanded that the winner in that election, Democrat Mark Begich, resign his Senate seat.


You can't make up stuff like this, folks.

This follows the droppage on a technicality of a felony corruption case against Stevens. Republicans cry that a new election is needed because the case supposedly influenced the election and was carried out by a "corrupt" Justice Department.

Uh, Repubs? At the time of the election, Bush was still in the White House, so it was Bush's Justice Department. The Obama Justice Department is the one that dropped the charges after Stevens was convicted of 7 felonies. It was the Bush Justice Department that botched the case.

Naturally, Sarah Palin has joined the demand for a new election.

Aw, did the widdle crybabies lose?

I'll let the Republicans have their stupid election do-over when they finally admit that they've rigged most federal elections of the past 15 years.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5giw_d3ifmIHJza3Hv5dJ8cuOv_LAD97AHMVO0;
http://newsminer.com/news/2009/apr/02/alaska-republicans-call-begich-step-down-seek-new-)

Operation Contours: 33.33333% complete

My side job of drawing bicycling maps of Cincinnati area neighborhoods bips in a big way, like so many other things we know and love.

In conservaworld, a map is just a bunch of lines scrawled on a page or a computer screen. You can settle for that, if you choose. But where's the heart?

My maps are different in that they challenge rightist convention by appealing to the bicycle commuter - and look so pretty in the process.

Now I've launched Operation Contours - to add elevation contours to my maps. I've finished the contours for 2 of my 6 otherwise completed maps: Kenton Vale and Cincinnati's Pendleton neighborhood. This data comes to us from the unabashedly public domain topographic maps put out by the United States Geological Survey.

To see my maps, point your pooper here:

http://bunkerblast.info/maps

Suit over power company's sweetheart deals dismissed

Just because something's legal doesn't mean it isn't greedy and obnoxious.

Utility giant Duke Energy has been embattled lately for its series of rate hike demands that have followed the Blackout of '08.

And for Duke's deals that gave out millions of dollars in rebates to major Cincinnati area corporations to win support for an earlier rate increase.

These deals were outrageous and were really a payoff. And they cost Duke's other customers - namely, small businesses and families, who were forced to subsidize it.

But someone sued 'em to court for antitrust violations.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Duke's favor. Now, a federal court has done the same.

The judge cited a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that rates approved by regulatory bodies like Puke-O aren't subject to antitrust suits.

I'm being really restrained regarding the latest development. Man, do I mean restrained! The 1922 decision was probably an activist ruling itself, which the Supremes probably carved out of whole cloth.

At the same time, however, the federal judge in the recent case said PUCO can still address allegations of unlawful discounting by Duke in a separate case.

There ought to be a law that says rates approved by regulators can still be subject to antitrust claims.

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090401/BIZ01/304010066)

Go fly a kite, 'Sesame Street'! ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

'Sesame Street' is a fantasy world where kites actually work the way they're supposed to.

The only time I remember trying to fly a kite was in grade school when they had us put together kites with the White Cloud toilet paper logo on them. When the school took the student body to a nearby field to fly these kites, most of our attempts were hilariously unsuccessful, as the kites opted to rest limply on the ground.

Maybe it was because my schoolmates kept throwing rocks through each others' kites and ripping them, but I don't know.

I didn't try to fly a kite again - especially after the Kite-Eating Power Line in my neighborhood slowly devoured someone's snazzy bat kite.

On 'Sesame Street', however, life is different. It's a cheery world where nothing goes traumatically wrong, where they have 8-foot-tall talking birds, and where kites really work.

That last point is proven by this clip that I remember seeing as a child in the '70s:



The acoustic guitar music used for this clip has also been used for other shows. It reportedly was played on an episode of 'The Odd Couple' and on a children's radio show in Chicago.

Although there is nothing scary or humorous about that clip, 'Sesame Street' needs to bring it back anyway. It's certainly more educational than what usually fills the airwaves these days.

EU proposes car surveillance

If there's any doubt remaining that the European Union is an undemocratic, right-wing, authoritarian construct, this story should flush those doubts right out of your mind.

When I saw this story today, I thought it had to be some sick April Fools' Day joke. But nope. It's sadly real.

The EU is proposing a policy for new cars to carry a "communication box" to constantly transmit their whereabouts to authorities. EU leaders claim the box will help reduce highway accidents. Of course, they never explain how.

Privacy advocates are outraged - as we should all be.

The measure is backed by car makers and the telcom industry - who'll profit from it. The graft never ceases, does it?

Initially, the boxes wouldn't be mandatory in every car. But only the very naive wouldn't know that's where this is headed. Paul Kompfner, who manages the program, says he sees the EU making the boxes a requirement. In fact, there have been proposals in the United States to make similar devices obligatory.

I'd like to be able to say that mandatory boxes in cars would be illegal, but this is the EU we're talking about, where nobody seems to have any legally guaranteed rights - at least not in practice. This is the same EU that allows member countries to persecute people because of their religion, so human rights obviously aren't the priority they should be.

You can always count on the European Union to serve the corporate overlords.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/31/surveillance-transport-communication-box)

ConservaFool blog turns 4

Remember the Conservative Fool Of The Day blog?

This great project beginned on Blog-City on April 1, 2005 - April Fools' Day, to you and me. It lasted until 2007, when Blog-City announced it was becoming a pay service. (Seen any blogs on Blog-City since it went pay? Didn't think so.) It was known as ConservaFools for short.

On almost every weekday, that blog exposed not only right-wing lawbreaking and graft, but also every bigoted remark, public temper tantrum, or stupid idea a right-winger might generate. We profiled politicians, commentators, entertainment celebs, and everyday rightist clods.

One entry profiled a GOP patronage employee in Kentucky who refused to answer phones because he considered it beneath him. Another dealt with a congressman who wasted a government grant on an investigation into Goth culture. Inductees were usually limited to just one entry, but I'm pretty sure that exceptions were made for Ann Coulter and Geoff Davis.

The first person profiled on the ConservaFools blog? I'll give you a hint: His initials were G.W.B. The era in which the blog ran featured some of the most colorful right-wing meltdowns in recent memory.

I and the other participants of that now-defunct blog are proud to say that the Far Right endured heaps of much-deserved ridicule at our hands.

Long live the Conservative Fool Of The Day blog! Like it's a big ol' Kentucky highway marker!

Jindal rejects Medicaid money

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a lean, mean "soak-the-poor" machine.

First, Jindal rejected money from the stimulus package that would have aided the unemployed. With the country just now coming out of the worst economic woes in 75 years, he sure picked a hell of a time for that, didn't he?

Now he's rejecting more stimulus money - money that would have gone to Medicaid programs.

In other words, Jindal rejected money that was supposed to go to medical care for the poor and uninsured. He came up with the usual bullshit excuses.

Poor in Louisiana? Well, now you're not going to get the medical care you should get, all because Bobby Jindal decided not to let you have it.

Bobby Jindal is supposed to be working for the people of Louisiana - not for the Republican faithful who want him to show what a big conservative he is.

(Source: http://www.nola.com/elections/index.ssf/2009/03/jindal_team_rejects_another_pa.html)