Let's all celebrate and have a good time!

I hate to gloat, but it's just now sinking in how great the closure of the Pathway Family Center cult is!

Sorry, but I lied. I love to gloat, as long as PFC's closure is what I'm gloating about! Pathwaste has earned every bit of ridicule it gets.

If you run a cult that allows innocent young people to be abused for years on end, you pay the consequences.

Even the Cincinnati media isn't completely ignoring the story this time:



How should you react when an abusive program that's operated with almost no limits for nearly 30 years just suddenly closes right before your eyes? It's almost numbing.

But believe me: There's another teen confinement cult locally on deck still to be closed. And it's going down just like PFC did.

What? 2 positive stories about Congress in one day?

This has to be a first, huh?

Today, House leaders promised a vote soon not just on health care reform but on an honest-to-goodness single payer health care system - which is perhaps the best reform that could be made.

Lawmakers who support single payer were utterly floored that leaders even allowed them a vote.

Will single payer pass? If the Democrats want to prove they're not still dominated by the DLC, this is their chance.

(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/07/single-payer-gets-a-vote.html)

Programmies whimper and cry

I guess Pathway Family Center has decided to go out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Someone on another website posted what is reported to be an e-mail from PFC staffers confirming the program's long-awaited closure. Apparently it was written before July 17. It reads in part:

"It has been said that change is inevitable. It is with great sadness that we need to announce that Pathway Family Center is closing its doors. We have worked hard to serve families and teens and to offer the best service possible but the economic climate has forced us to make this difficult decision."

Blaming the economy again???

Nope, it was the negative publicity. Not Jimmy Carter or whoever PFC feels like blaming today.

The e-mail's last paragraph reads:

"Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. The final open meeting with [sic] be held on Friday, July 17th at the Indianapolis center."

Bye, Pathwaste. And good riddance.

But don't think by any means that our work is completely done. There are other bad programs out there (though PFC was one of the largest in this region). I will do my best to expose the abuse inherent in the failed model that pervades "the industry" - until "the industry" is out of business altogether.

PFC collapsed Tuesday. It's gone.

Well, folks, it's finally over for Pathway Family Center.

It's gone. No more. Finished. Kaput. History.

They just said it on (brrrrring) Channel 9!

And it was all happening Tuesday just as I was writing about the fact that this gulag had been evicted from its Indianapolis location. PFC lost its last building and its revenue stream generated by new recruits, and now this cult realizes its time is up - so they've had no choice but to call it quits.

One still wonders what happened to the hundreds of thousands of dollars PFC raised in northwestern Indiana, where it shut its facility almost as quickly as it opened.

PFC likes to blame the bad economy for all of its closures - which have occurred only in the past 10 months. But when was the last time America had a good economy? Make no mistake: Pathway Family Center was done in by negative publicity. The facts came out about PFC, so nobody wanted to patronize it any longer. Simple.

I'm proud to say I was a part of the roadside rallies against PFC, but I don't deserve all the credit. Others had been protesting the center for years before. As protests were stepped up over the past 2 years, these rallies contributed to the closure of a program that had been in existence since around the time Reagan took office (if you count PFC-related programs like Kids Helping Kids).

Best of all, it appears as if anyone who was recently confined at PFC is home now - at long last. And that's where they'll stay - as long as PFC doesn't try to place them in a different program. Luckily, many of the kids trapped at PFC knew there were folks on the outside working to close the program. If only kids in every program knew they had such support.

Also, it's important to never take our eye off the ball. We'll have to keep one eye on the situation to make sure PFC doesn't come back in any form. Kind of like the Republicans' political prospects.

If abusive programs become much more widespread than they have been, it's a certain route to any society's collapse.

Pathwaste's closure is indeed a pivotal event for America's youth. PFC is R.I.P.

Congress finally listens

It looks like Congress has finally donned its listening nose.

Today, the House voted 237 to 185 to limit pay for Wall Street executives - after numerous banks that got bailout money wasted these handouts on bonuses for execs.

This legislation is actually a more progressive plan than even the Obama administration has been advocating.

The vote immediately followed the discovery by New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that banks awarded almost 5,000 bonuses of at least $1,000,000 even while they accepted bailout dough.

(Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BAILOUT_BONUSES?SITE=JRC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)

Shrinks cry foul over ruined Rorschach

Everything about the Rorschach test screams junk science.

Yes, I'm talking about those inkblots that psychiatrists always show to patients. The test generates bogus conclusions about patients based on their responses to each symmetrical blot. (I plan on going into more detail about this in my next book.)

I'm absolutely floored to discover this test is still being used in 2009.

But now folks in the psychiatric industry are furious because someone on Wikipedia posted the most common answers to each of the 10 inkblots.

The complaint isn't on copyright grounds. The copyrights on the blots have expired in both the United States and Switzerland - the country where the test's creator hailed from.

Their real complaint is that they think posting the answers spoils the test - like blabbing the answers to a high school exam.

"The only winners seem to be those for whom this issue has become personal, and who see this as a game in which victory means having their way," whined one self-styled professional. "Just don't pretend you are doing anything other than harming scientific research."

They think the Rorschach test is science?

The tone of that remark sounds like that of a shrink who was mad because a patient had caught on to their bullshit.

What's amazing is that any professional still cares enough about the Rorschach test to not want its answers revealed. This test was outdated in my generation, and it's downright antiquated now.

(Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/5936066/Wikipedia-engulfed-in-row-over-Rorschach-tests.html)

Right-wing lobbyist forges letters to congressman

Last month, when the American Clean Energy and Security Act was being considered by the House, Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Virginia) received at least 6 letters that appeared to be from organizations in his district opposing the bill.

But now it turns out that all of these letters are hoaxes. They were not-so-clever forgeries that tried to make it appear that these groups were against the proposed legislation.

These letters appeared to be from the local NAACP chapter and from a Hispanic organization called Creciendo Juntos. They even used the groups' logos.

But the letters were phony. In fact, the NAACP says that it supported the very bill that the letter opposed.

It turns out that at least one of the letters came from someone employed by Bonner & Associates, a conservative Washington lobbying firm with a history of opposing climate change legislation and prescription drug bills. This lobbying firm has been employed by major corporations like Pfizer.

The other letters were faxed from a D.C.-area company, but this firm said that at least 60 employees have fax machine access.

If we can find out which Bonner & Associates lobbyist was also employed by the other firm, we've got our culprit.

You do realize that the fact that one of the letters was sent through the mail constitutes mail fraud, don't you? And you do realize that the rest were wire fraud, right? I hope whoever is behind this hoax is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

(Source: http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/local_govtpolitics/article/letters_sent_to_perriello_called_fakes._area_advocates_names_forged_by_d.c./43439)

Health "reform", GOP style

When conservatives start talking "reform", look out.

We've all seen what their welfare "reform" has done. If we let the Republican right do to health care "reform" what they've done to America's working poor, we might as well just all pack it in.

Now the Republicans are offering an "alternative" health care "reform" plan. "Alternative" of course is another oft-abused buzzword. It's like how they call year-round school an "alternative" calendar. It's like calling Warm 98 an alternative rock station.

The main feature of the GOP plan? It would deregulate insurance companies almost entirely. It would also gut state laws that regulate insurers. Insurance giants would be allowed to operate with no oversight whatsoever.

To them, that's "reform."

Brings a whole new meaning to "states' rights for me, not for thee." Republican extremists like Rick Perry keep trying to pull their states out of Democratic health reforms - yet they support foisting Republican "reforms" on states that don't want them.

The GOP plan doesn't have much chance of passing now - but keep this entry handy as a reminder of what passes for "reform" in their minds, lest it appear that they may ever regain power.

A neat idea to fund health reform!

Early this month, a surtax on the very rich was proposed to help pay for health care reform.

This proposal is fair. But with the DLC/GOP two-headed hydra gumming things up as usual, you can't count on it ever becoming a reality.

So now a new proposal is being bandied about. This one would slap a hefty tax on cosmetic surgery, to pay for reforms.

I'm not talking about surgery for people disfigured by injury or illness. These surgeries are generally not considered cosmetic. I'm talking about facelifts for the 90-year-old socialite who tries to look 20 again.

Procedures that are unnecessary and strictly cosmetic should be taxed. When I buy a snack, it's taxed. When you buy a book, it's taxed. And where does this money go? None of this seems to go to health care. Shouldn't luxuries be taxed in order to pay for a valuable program?

This plan is so simple that I should have proposed it first. It's the type of thing I would have publicly advocated 15 years ago - but I've spent later years being force-fed endless diatribes about how rough the rich have it, so I figured I better not bring it up.

Meanwhile, I'm still seeing tirades from trust fund babies complaining that public health systems like that in Britain won't cover cosmetic dentistry for them.

ThinkTV replaced by StinkTV

Time Warner has a monopoly on cable TV in most of the Ohio side of the Cincinnati metropolitan region.

WPTO (Channel 14) is a local PBS affiliate - ThinkTV, it calls itself. WPTO is in the Cincinnati market, so cable companies in Cincinnati are required by federal regulations to carry it. WPTO also has signal limitations that prevent it from being seen over-the-air in much of the market.

So the "must carry" regulation is of clear benefit to Channel 14 and its viewers. There's also no argument that Time Warner must, must, MUST carry WPTO - by law.

So what does Time Warner do? It drops WPTO, of course.

When you see what Time Warner replaces it with, you're going to want to drive the point of a drawing compass through your eye: They're replacing it with (drum roll, please) Home Shopping Network.

(Vomit.)

Many viewers say Channel 14 is one of few channels that's even worth watching anymore. Almost everything else is garbage.

Replacing a station full of educational shows with yet another home shopping channel is a disgrace. Time Warner gets its monopoly from government officials. Since they awarded Time Warner with this monopoly, they need to prohibit it from removing ThinkTV.

(Source: http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/seen_and_overheard/entries/2009/07/30/time_warner_drops_think_tv_rep.html)

Hospital exposes patients to fatal brain disease

Someone needs to relate this story to the Virginia Foxxes and Richard Shelbys who insist the American health care system is perfect.

A hospital in Wisconsin may have carelessly exposed 53 patients to a rare but fatal brain disease by using contaminated surgical instruments.

The illness - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - is incurable and always deadly. One variant of it is of course the feared mad cow disease.

Did the hospital use the same instruments on 53 patients in a row without sterilizing them? I thought sterilization was one of the most basic steps of modern medicine. If sterilization is ineffective for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, why did it keep using these instruments at all?

Until now, there have reportedly been only 2 instances in the entire history of the world (and none since before 1976) of a person being infected with this illness with contaminated surgical instruments.

Smooth move, American health care system.

(Source: http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10780003)

Homeland Security behind racist messages

Now that the Department of Homeland Suckyurity has been caught making racist Internet posts, is this an outrage? Certainly.

A surprise? Hardly.

After the Wayne County Star in upstate New York reported that border officials had detained several immigrants, the newspaper found its website vandalized by heaps and heaps of inflammatory posts in its public comment section. Many of these posts were downright racist. Others made personal attacks against the journalist who reported the story.

The paper traced several of these posts to IP addresses that just happened to belong to Homeland Suckyurity. Then the paper discovered other incendiary DHS posts dating back at least as far as last year.

If it was just 3 posts within a few minutes of each other about the same topic, this would at minimum be a case of a DHS employee abusing computers at work.

But the posts date back at least to last year, came from several different DHS computers, and appeared following several different articles. So it's obvious that this was an official government effort.

None of this is surprising. Bush put countless right-wing patronage employees on the federal payroll. And this is what they do. They use their positions for propaganda projects like this.

When you see a comment section of a newspaper website freeped with right-wing diatribes, don't discount the possibility that it's an organized project by a government agency to manipulate public opinion.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/nyregion/25immig.html)

Media moguls boast of "free" Internet's end

Media execs got together at a conference in Pasadena last week. Neckties flowed, and caviar was probably chomped.

The point of this shinding for the elite? It was to talk about how the Internets (sic) isn't the free medium that they think that we think it is.

One media head honcho said of the ol' 'Net, "It is not free, and is not going to be." They bragged that anyone who uses the Internet is soon going to have to pay for every website they use.

Well, guess what? We're already paying for it. What do you think we pay $20 to $50 a month for? Cosmetic surgery? I should think not.

These wealthy media companies used to have to pay for radio and TV licenses and pay to fight for space on the TV dial. Now, because of the Internet, they don't have to spend nearly as much to distribute their content. Yet they expect us to pay more?

If the Walt Disney Company or News Corp. can't find a better business model, then it's not going to work out for them in the long run. Free content will continue to rule - and most of it will be better than the corporate "news" the big media companies offer.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZeenjkAYFIE)

Stimulus creates thousands of jobs; media silent

Nobody other than Phil Gramm would argue that the chronic recession had to be reined in.

And the stimulus package finally made some inroads in this long-awaited task.

A congressional report has found that, by the end of June, almost 50,000 American jobs had been created or saved by infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus plan.

That's little comfort to Americans who remain out of work because of the previous 28 years of economic disaster - but there's no doubt that the stimulus has had some positive impact.

I'm not saying this out of partisanship. (I'm a Green, not a Democrat.) I'm saying it because it's the truth.

Although Reuters covered this story, very few media outlets picked it up. In most of the pop-up media, the recession was hardly mentioned until January 20 of this year.

Brings a whole new meaning to the dinosaur media's "up is down" mindset, doesn't it?

(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE56Q4TS20090727)

Bumped flights a scam

One of the most unrecognized scams by Corporate America today is airlines deliberately overbooking flights and bumping passengers.

If you prefer land travel, intercity bus lines do it too - by intentionally overbooking routes.

These are outright frauds - but authorities don't see it as criminal, even though it's one of the fastest growing corporate scams in America.

It's pretty simple really: Airlines sell tickets to more people than the flight has room for. Unless quite a few customers miss their flight to begin with, passengers are inevitably bumped from the flight.

Talk about unchecked greed. Airlines sell too many tickets just to Make Money. And it hurts the consumer.

Shockingly, airlines aren't even legally required to offer a full refund. If a family wedding is the only reason you're flying somewhere, and getting bumped makes you miss the wedding, the airline isn't even required to refund one penny.

Can you believe that? America is a society that puts 16-year-old kids in lockup for disagreeing with their school principal, but airlines endure almost no regulation at all - even when they commit outright fraud.

If you're a victim of a bumped flight, raise hell. If you don't get a full refund, raise more hell. It is your moral right. If necessary, sue the airline.

Furthermore, this overbooking scam should be outlawed. And if the federal government doesn't act, the states should.

Mayor: stand up and be counted

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin may be one of the most controversial political figures in the land. But it's hard to argue against him this time.

The mayor is urging residents temporarily displaced by Hurricane Katrina to claim their New Orleans addresses in the looming 2010 census.

The wingnutosphere is throwing a fit about this campaign right now. But guess what? By law, Nagin is right.

The census is supposed to count your official place of residence. If residents are only temporarily displaced, New Orleans is still their official home.

If somebody is displaced by a disaster and has to stay in a hotel, does that mean they have to claim the hotel as their residence? If a person is hospitalized for an illness, does that mean they have to claim the hospital as their residence?

This is an important issue, because the census determines federal funding - and apportionment of congressional seats and electoral votes.

And that's why the rightist brain trust is bent out of shape over Nagin's proposal. Nagin's plan would keep residents counted in New Orleans instead of counting them in places like Lafayette - which was one of the largest cities (except suburbs of other cities) to go Republican in the presidential election.

Active efforts were made in 1990 and 2000 to undercount Democratic areas - or skip them entirely. (Some communities had a census population of zero, despite the fact that people lived there.) In 2010, every effort has to be made to see that such miscounts are not repeated.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124805246069464101.html)

'Sesame Street' fights Allowed Clouds ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

No "shoeless persons."

No commercial photography.

No bubbling (at least in Singapore).

No sweaters that are not gray or hunter green.

And the word is NO!!!

That was a song from 'Sesame Street' that seemed to take on the growing proliferation of Allowed Clouds. The song had sort of a Cyndi Lauper-like feel, and the sketch was designed to look like a music video.

I was too old for the ol' Ses in 1990 when this catchy song reportedly debuted, but America was already becoming one big Allowed Cloud even then.

The song is performed by 'Sesame Street' legends Maria and Gina, and the clip has numerous appearances by many Muppet members of the 'Sesame Street' kick-ass crew. Even Bert and Ernie find out how inescapable Allowed Clouds are, while other lovable Muppets disobey the very rules being sung about:



Ironically, this clip had been yanked from YouPube before because that version included the Nickelodeon logo, which caused feewinghurt. So that must have been a big no-no in and of itself.

All together now:

No stinkin'
No cussin'
No thinkin'
No nothin'...

Apartment management firm sues tenant for criticizing it

As right-wingers yelp mammothly about individuals filing too many suits against corporations, there's actually a pandemic of the exact opposite.

In Chicago, an apartment management company is suing a former tenant for $50,000 because she dared to criticize it using her Twitter account.

We call this a SLAPP suit - one designed to censor criticism.

One may notice that the management firm's name is followed with the initials LLC - which stands for limited liability company. Though not legally a full-fledged corporation, it is a semicorporate entity - not an individual. Indeed, the very concept of an LLC was created in an attempt to give rights to what would otherwise be corporations.

Thus, the management firm is not a person. A corporate or semicorporate entity cannot suffer feewinghurt.

The long and short of it is, the company has no case.

Once in the '90s, one corporation (in the form of a newspaper) criticized another, was sued for "defamation", and lost. Both companies were right-wing, so the general feeling was that neither deserved to win. However, in hindsight, I know that the company that sued had no case.

If we keep allowing SLAPP suits by faceless companies, the effect on the free flow of ideas will be disastrous. Corporations and similar constructs simply are not supposed to be accorded the same rights as individuals. It's time we get that clear.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/Chicago-apartment-group-claims-defamation-by-Tweet/mwuOz6q_Sk2q97zvD2dJRA.cspx)

Kentucky GOP hallucinates

With the other side in campaign mode 100% of the time, it's a wonder they have time to flood websites with paranoid talking points and organize Tea Parties complaining about how the rich have it so rough.

As the Republicans appear likely to lose not only a Kentucky Senate seat but also one of the state's U.S. Senate seats, the GOP hallucinations are starting to set in.

More accurately, these hallucinations are not starting, but continuing. Remember when Mitch McConnell sent me a reply to a letter I never sent him?

In my home county - Campbell County - Republican chairman Jeff Kidwell thinks Republicans will benefit in the next election cycle because President Obama's approval numbers "are now in the negative."

As if Bush's aren't?

Besides that, Obama actually has positive approval numbers in Kentucky and nationwide. Where the hell is Kidwell getting his so-called information from?

Obama's disapproval is more from the left than the right. And those on the left ain't voting Republican.

The GOP is just downright delusional. They get their "news" from right-wing blogs and hate sites, where they reinforce each other's ideas - instead of branching out to see how folks really view the world.

One thing is for sure: If the next 3 years are like the past 6 months, Obama's won another term. The real issue is whether this will keep up, or whether Obama will move to the far right like Clinton did in the '96 campaign.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090728/NEWS0106/907290358/Scramble+on+for+Bunning+s+seat)

New Jersey GOP runs on "robbing of the suburbs"

America's suburbs usually mean high incomes - and a healthy return on federal tax dollars.

Wealthy exurbs rake in more federal government money than they pay in taxes - while poor central cities bring in less. Call it the spoils of the conservative machine that ruled the country for 28 years.

But don't tell that to Republicans in New Jersey - as out of step as they are.

The Garden State is now the site of a hotly contested election for governor. And the Republicans seem to be as illogical as ever - until you realize that their suburban strategy actually pays off better than you'd think, because of deliberately suppressed voter turnout in the cities.

One columnist suggests the New Jersey GOP is running on "the robbing of the suburbs."

What "robbing of the suburbs"?

As rich suburbs get a better return on their tax dollars than the cities, it's the cities that are being robbed. Like the Tea Party meltdowns, the Republicans' meme appeals to persecuted privilege - a sense of entitlement sported by the monied exurban Establishment.

It's more effective than the Tea Parties though, because its public face is channeled through seasoned political figures - and because of suppressed turnout in poor areas.

Nationwide, the cities have been robbed to pay for corrupt GOP machines in the suburbs. The Democrats and the Greens should be talking about the robbing of the cities, because they can actually prove that it's real.

In the off-chance that the GOP can pull it off in New Jersey this year, when the party is nearly dead in other Northern urban regions, I can say one thing with 100% certainty: The margin of victory will be accounted for entirely by rich exurbs. Entirely. Take away that, and they lose.

But that has been the story of almost all major Republican electoral successes in my lifetime. Without the suburbs, they would have barely been a major party.

Dentist accused of dropping tools down man's throat

This is yet another case illustrating the mind-boggling decline of America's profit-driven health system.

A Florida dentist is accused in a lawsuit of dropping tools down an elderly man's throat - on 2 separate occasions.

The complaint says the dentist dropped an implant screwdriver down the patient's throat in 2006 - and dropped a small wrench in 2007. According to the complaint, the man had to have several medical procedures to remove the tools. He never recovered, and he died in 2007.

Later, Florida fined the dentist $17,000 for negligence.

It really is now or never with health care reform.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/Dentist-sued-for-allegedly-dropping-tools-down/qcijsF7YCEG_jSPKDGtKSg.cspx)

Nnnnn! It's a great feeling!

Nnnnn! It's a great feeling!

That's what everybody's saying now that one of the most dangerous confinement cults in the Midwest appears to be almost out of business at long last. Not to mention the hilarious results of the past 2 election cycles.

This expression came from an old commercial for Pearl Drops tooth polish.

Yeah, that one. You know, the one in which an actress runs her tongue along her front teeth. This ad was seen by Americans of all ages, day and night - on over-the-air TV, no less.

Tsk, tsk.

For those who think I'm making this up, the commersh has finally surfaced on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OK36A89tk

That ad is reportedly from 1975, but I could have sworn it was from a couple years later, because I was only 2 in 1975. It aired constantly. You couldn't watch a commercial TV station without seeing it.

And so, my mind was corrupted by TV at an early age. (Don't tell the moral panic types, because they'll try to ban TV! Wait, they practically have.)

We're gonna slip it to 'em short and sweet...on 82nd Street

The folks who run the Pathway Family Center cult aren't quite as bright as they think.

They became so desperate for business that they spent money on a billboard on busy 82nd Street in Indianapolis. But this expense may have hastened the cult's demise.

Did they really think people would see the billboard and not do research about whether PFC lived up to the hype?

Here's a video showing this billb:



Hey PFC, you should thank us for giving you free advertising! Except Pathwaste is going to be out of business soon anyway. This is no more of a free ad than embedding a commercial for a brand of bubble gum that was discontinued in 1974.

PFC evicted!

I can't yet truly claim that PFC is R.I.P., but this latest development shows it has to be mighty close.

I told you recently that the Pathway Family Center confinement cult faced an eviction complaint regarding its failure to pay the rent at its Indianapolis branch - the last of 4 Pathwaste locations to remain.

PFC owed the industrial park over $1,000,000.

Evictions are usually rubber-stamped. Courts seem to like property owners much more than they like tenants. But I figured there was a chance PFC might be allowed to stay, because of its own clout. This is the same PFC that won a lucrative contract with the state of Indiana to lock up teens, after all.

But PFC settled this complaint just before the hearing was scheduled - and it was evicted this past Friday.

There's a video out there of Pathway's building on eviction day. But it wasn't Pathway's building anymore. They never owned it, and they had just been evicted. So no laws were broken in the filming of this clip:



Notice that the parking lot is nearly empty, and the building is vacated. Just before this, people were seen carrying boxes and other goodies out of the building.

Why am I reluctant to say Pathwaste is out of business? Its building may be gone, but the cult may still be operating out of host homes. I can't imagine that will last for very long though, because the cult had been losing business.

If the programmies start a new incarnation of PFC under a different name, believe me, we will catch them. Pathway Family Center was really just a newer name for an older program.

In the long run, they will fail.

Eek! A nude on a wine label!

Aren't there more important things to worry about than this?

America's health care system is broken, wages have stagnated for 28 years, and our education system is a memory. But Alabama officials are worried about a wine label because it shows (gasp!) a painting of a side view of a nude nymph astride a bicycle.

This vintage painting is from 1895, and this brand of wine has generated no complaints about its label in the 49 other states, the District of Columbia, or the 20 or so other countries where this wine is sold.

But Alabama authorities have decided to ban this wine because of its label.

This piece of artwork has been around for over a century and displayed worldwide. It's even seen on shirts sold by the winemaker. But only Alabama in 2009 has banned a product for being associated with this image!

So they think people in Alabama never take their clothes off?

To Alabama's alcohol officials, I say this: Grow up! Quit worrying about a painting that was acceptable even 114 years ago, and start worrying about things that actually affect people.

(Source: http://blog.al.com/live/2009/07/wine_too_fullbodied_for_bama_s.html)

Conservatives sue because university allowed free speech...and lose!

The University of California, Santa Cruz, has a policy of equal access for military recruiters.

And - from this story - it also appears that UC Santa Cruz is a little more friendly to free speech than some of America's other institutions of higher book-learnin'.

So, when antiwar students peacefully protested the recruiters' efforts to lure schoolmates into fighting in Bush's war, the activists were largely tolerated by the school. An effort was made to silence them, but I recall this suppression being carried out primarily by the Pentagon rather than school administrators.

What's the university's reward for being relatively tolerant of dissent?

Why, it becomes the subject of a lawsuit, of course.

Got that? When right-wing school systems suppress free speech, the victims are told they have no case. But when a school actually allows free speech, it gets sued pell-mell to court.

In this case, it's unclear if the university was actually named as a defendant. Rather, the federal government was sued because it failed to pull the university's funding for allowing the protests.

You can't make this shit up, people.

The suit was filed by Young America's Foundation, which calls itself the "principal outreach arm of the conservative movement." YAF said that by allowing the protests, UC Santa Cruz was denying equal access by military recruiters.

And this, according to YAF, violates the hated Solomon Amendment that passed in the mid-'90s.

The Solomon Amendment was an attempt by right-wing members of Congress to control the politics of universities - and punish those that didn't toe the party line. If a university didn't want the military recruiting students to fight in a war, it would lose federal funding. The Bush regime later expanded this policy.

But that point is moot, as UC Santa Cruz did not bar the recruiters. YAF's argument is that by allowing recruiters and antiwar students the same access, it's chasing the recruiters away.

But now the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington has laughed that argument clean out of the courtroom.

I don't even need to tell you that YAF's lawsuit was about stifling the antiwar activists' free speech. Nothing more. If you pay even minimal attention to the news, you know that.

Hey YAF, why don't you sue a university like NKU that has shown time and time again that it's hell-bent on suppressing free speech?

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/27/BAJL18VT3D.DTL&tsp=1)

Bunning retires!

Damn. I was looking fiveward to seeing this clod lose the election.

Right-wing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) has just announced that he won't be seeking a third Senate term in 2010.

I guess he finally realized he was going to lose - thanks to his own extremism, erratic behavior and statements, and scandal involving his nonprofit.

Despite Bunning's retirement, I'd suspect Republicans are still probably going to lose that Senate seat.

Now if we can just get rid of Mitch the Glitch.

Teen pregnancy and disease soar under Bush abstinence policy

The name Bush was almost synonymous with pushing an ideological agenda.

Instead of focusing on issues like the economy and health care, this often meant fighting the timeworn culture wars to build a facade of phony populism.

Central to this whirlwind of pseudoscientific deception was Bush's dominionist-driven education policy that decreed that the only sex ed to be taught in America's public schools would be abstinence-only.

Now America is seeing the results of this failed policy - which are ignored by the American media but reported in detail by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The CDC reports that the rate of teenage pregnancy soared under the federally decreed abstinence-only policy. Gonorrhea - which had been declining - saw a vast increase as well. The rate of AIDS in adolescent males nearly doubled. Syphilis is skyrocketing too.

Of course, apologists for abstinence-only education insist that this means there wasn't enough emphasis on their failed pseudoscience.

Only in BushWorld is expanding a failed policy passed off as some great innovation.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/20/bush-teen-pregnancy-cdc-report)

Disabled teenager beaten at charter school

What's the excuse for this? There is none:



That's a recent CNN clip showing an autistic teenager being abused mercilessly by staff members at a charter school in the Orlando area.

The boy was restrained for up to 10 minutes at a time - a procedure that had already proven fatal for other young people.

The teenager's parents plan to sue. And they should.

This clip speaks for itself. So I don't care to hear from school apologists who defend everything schools do.

AT&T blocks anime site

America's Toilets & Testes already violated the Fourth Amendment when it conspired with the Bush regime in the illegal wiretap scandal. Now it proves it has no respect for the First Amendment either.

A few days ago, AT&T began blocking Internet subscribers' access to 4chan.

4chan is largely an anime site, but it has other content too - much of which is considered juvenile and tasteless. However, 4chan does not allow illegal material such as child porn.

The only reasonable conclusion is that AT&T blocks 4chan solely because they don't like the site. AT&T does not block hate sites like Free Republic that encourage illegal acts. So clearly, AT&T can't credibly claim it's blocking 4chan because of illegal activity (especially because 4chan disallows illegal content).

AT&T also has no credibility if it claims it's blocking 4chan because of a denial-of-service attack - because other sites have such attacks all the time, yet they are not blocked.

AT&T's blockage of 4chan is illegal, under the FCC's 'Net neutrality regulations. But it's to be expected: When the government gave legal immunity to AT&T for its spying, AT&T knew it could violate any laws it pleased.

Internet providers blocking sites in the U.S. isn't new, but it's generally been more small-scale and sporadic until now. It turns out though that AT&T has been illegally blocking an entire port for ages.

This is reminiscent of a short-lived policy by a European Union-backed censorship group that barred Internet users in Britain from editing any Wikipedia page. AT&T's policy of blocking 4chan is probably just as significant.

Apparently, AT&T later lifted its total block of 4chan - but it reportedly still blocks 4chan's picture section.

Should we be surprised that AT&T is the company that starts America's large-scale website blockage war? No. This is the same AT&T that signed me up for phone services I didn't order and tried charging me for them. It's also the same AT&T that gives more to Republican candidates than almost any other corporation.

AT&T controls about 15% of America's Internet provider biz. Most customers can't switch to a different provider, because AT&T now has a monopoly in many of these places - which was given to them by local governments.

The FCC needs to come down hard on AT&T.

(Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/27/att_censorship_block;
http://stormen.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/att-blocks-4chan)

Antipsychotics found to cause Parkinson's

Here comes today's story about psychiatric drugs that's sure to be covered up as quickly as it appears.

Certain prescription drugs are now known to cause Parkinson's disease-like symptoms or even full-blown Parkinson's. The biggest culprits are 2 antipsychotics: haloperidol (Haldol) and perphenazine (Trilafon). Some antidepressants are guilty as well - particularly ones that inhibit dopamine.

What?! Trilafon has major side effects?! Imagine that!

It's also known that Trilafon is one of the most widely overprescribed drugs. If some kid gets in trouble at school, Trilafon is often one of the first things prescribed to them. Although it's an antipsychotic, one doesn't have to be psychotic to be drugged with this poison.

Now it's been found that people who take Trilafon or Haldol have experienced Parkinson's-like symptoms with stunning frequency. Some have even developed Parkinson's - as the drug unearths the condition from its latent state.

If it's full-on Parkinson's, it doesn't go away when you stop taking the drug. There is no cure. You will suffer from it for the rest of your life.

I hope there's a class action lawsuit over this. Unfortunately, I don't expect the media to stay on the case - because it never does, when psychiatric drugs are involved.

(Source: http://www.kivitv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10707421)

GOP vilifies domestic violence victim

In an August 25 special election for the Kentucky Senate, the Republicans have launched an attack so sleazy that it's blowing up squarely in their faces.

What's even more stinging for the GOP is that it's backfired so badly that this seat is about to flip to the Democrats because of it.

Dr. Jack Ditty, a Republican dermatologist, is facing Democratic State Rep. Robin Webb in this important election. The Republicans have made this a campaign not about the issues, but about Webb's personal life.

In the early '90s, Webb was a victim of domestic violence and was advised by her doctor to put her law practice on hold because of post-traumatic stress disorder. She and her children also had other health problems at the time. When Webb recovered, the Kentucky Bar Association voted 13 to 0 to reinstate her practice.

The GOP thinks it's fair to assail someone for being the victim of domestic violence and related medical conditions. But the only thing these attacks have accomplished is to make the Republicans appear anachronistic and out of step - which they are. Voters admire Robin Webb once the real story is told.

PTSD is very real. And let me tell you, it is one of the hardest conditions to recover from. If someone makes a significant recovery from PTSD, then surely they're strong enough to serve in public office.

One of the largest groups of Americans to suffer from PTSD is our brave war veterans. If an Iraq War vet who had PTSD was running for office, would the GOP attack them? Probably.

That's because the Republicans have no issues to run on. So they resort to sleazy personal attacks. But this time it's backfiring - at a time when the GOP can least afford it.

(Source: http://kykurmudgeon.bloginky.com/2009/07/26/senate-maneuvering-end-game-redistricting)

Congresswoman: "There are no Americans who don't have health care"

Seriously, some idiot really said that.

And believe it or not, she's a member of Congress! (Then again, knowing the morons who've peopled Congress the past 15 years, who's surprised?)

At a press conference held by right-wing members of Congress on Friday, fascist Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) said the greed-driven American health care system is fine and dandy, and scoffed at any attempt to reform it.

Almost 50,000,000 Americans lack any health insurance at all. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost half of American households skipped necessary health care in the previous year because of the price. The Urban Institute estimated in 2006 that there were 22,000 American adults dead just in one year because they couldn't afford health care.

But facts are lost in the crazy world of Virginia Foxx.

At this press conference, the Church Lady look-alike declared, "There are no Americans who don't have health care. Everybody in this country has access to health care."

This isn't a misprint. She actually said that.

Of course, Bush said nearly the same thing in 2007 - to much ridicule.

Then again, the Bushists are the same people who think climate change and the recession aren't real.

At least Virginia Foxx didn't say America's health care crisis is "really a hoax" - huh, Virginia?

(Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/24/foxx-americans-health-care)

Bubble gum fights bird shit (Bubble Gum Weekend)

Because the mere existence of bubble gum is funny, this must be yet another Bubble Gum Weekend!

A brand new ad campaign in India reveals that bubble gum is the perfect antidote to bird shit.

In this commersh for Big Babol - a gum brand widely seen around the world - a youngster is frustrated by his shirts being repeatedly ruined by bird droppings.

So he bubbles.

He pops in a slab of gum, blows a giant bubble, and floats into the air. As he looms above the bird's nest in midair, he makes fake shit out of toothpaste and plops it squarely onto the hapless avian's noggin:



As I have never seen Big Babol in the U.S., I can maintain my integrity by embedding the ad here (much to the chagrin of those who are reading this on Facebook, as Facebook still won't fix its inability to properly embed videos).

So the next time you see bird crap, whip out the bubble gum, and your troubles are over!

Texas guv throws fit over health reform

Nobody has ever said right-wing Texas Gov. Rick Perry would qualify for Mensa International.

This is the man who denied the people of his state $555,000,000 in unemployment funds from the federal stimulus program. If Perry had half as much brain power as he thinks he does, he never would have thought this was such a grand idea.

But he didn't learn - because most stupid people don't.

Now he's citing "states' rights" to deny Texans the benefits of the Obama administration's health care reform plans.

In other words, if you live in Texas, you'd have to suffer the same broken health care system as before - all because Rick Perry won't let health reform apply in your state.

That's not how "states' rights" is supposed to work, Rick, you idiot.

Where was Perry to scream about "states' rights" when Bush kept using "preemption" to illegally overrule the states' environmental regulations and product liability laws?

(Source: http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1504240.html)

Crist's office praises Nazi movie

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is portrayed by the media gatekeepers as a get-things-done moderate. Many people think he's the "good guy" of the GOP.

But regardless of what his intentions may be, he sure ain't too bright.

For starts, Crist praises prominent Floridians who have founded dangerous cults.

Now his office has heaped adulation upon a movie backed by the Nazis.

The film - the 1940 German production of 'Jud Suss', which was made under the supervision of Joseph Goebbels and is full of anti-Semitic propaganda - had been sent to Crist by a high-ranking official of a white supremacist organization.

Crist's office promptly sent back a letter praising the movie and thanking its sender. The letter said the governor couldn't wait to share the movie with the people of Florida. This letter was signed with a machine-generated Crist signature.

The governor later called this incident "an inexcusable mistake by staff in my office."

In other words, Crist hires staffers who turn out to be Nazi apologists. Taking cues from Newt Gingrich, huh, Charlie?

Or was the rest of the letter machine-written too?

Or is Charlie Crist actually just a robot himself?

The Republicans are so deep in right-wing fringe ideology that they might as well just disband and start over from scratch.

(Source: http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=251048)

Service employees' wages still frozen at $2.13

It was 1991.

Helmet hair was in fashion. The band Poison sold millions of albums - most of which were probably on vinyl. 'The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air' and 'Dallas' dominated TV airwaves.

Yes, 1991. It was also the last time the minimum wage for service employees who receive tips went up.

It isn't widely reported, but the minimum wage for waiters and many others has now been frozen at $2.13 an hour for 18 years. These workers are not included in the minimum wage increase that just took effect - and haven't been included since 1991.

Nationwide, only 7 states guarantee these workers the same wages as everyone else.

And these are some of the hardest jobs. So if anyone should be making tons of money, it's service workers.

Meanwhile, bank executives who run their businesses into the ground use taxpayer dollars to award themselves bonuses worth millions.

(Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE56N48E20090724)

Now it's a crime to criticize an arrest?

Really?

Now you can't even criticize an arrest without risking a lawsuit?

After the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on a ridiculous disorderly conduct charge, President Obama said that authorities "acted stupidly" by arresting him in his own home. The charge was later dropped because of its sheer silliness.

Obama's statement sent the wingnutosphere into another kook-a-loon meltdown. All it took was those 2 words - "acted stupidly."

Others have also pointed out how silly it is to charge someone with disorderly conduct for what they do in their home. This law was never meant to apply to what people do in private. It's supposed to apply to what people do in public - not at home.

Now the officer who arrested Gates is threatening to sue Gates just for criticizing the arrest! This despite the fact that Gates wasn't even the only person who criticized it.

If you genuinely believe that an arrest is wrong, you have every right to say so.

This lawsuit is like suing me for reporting on the Devou Park incident at the Bush rally in 2000.

West Point allowed to suppress free speech

This story proves one thing: It doesn't take even a rudimentary civics education to serve on a federal jury.

Back in 2004 - at the height of Bush's fascism - a group of 8 antiwar activists attended the Army-Navy basketball game at West Point. When they got to the game and sat in the stands, they removed their jackets, which revealed t-shirts that spelled out, "U.S. OUT OF IRAQ."

Shortly thereafter, they were ejected from the facility by military police. Later, the garrison commander banned them from even appearing at West Point for 5 years.

All because of a difference of opinion. If their shirts favored the war, they would not have been thrown out. You know it, and I know it.

The 8 antiwar protesters sued West Point plumb to court for violating their free speech rights.

During the trial, West Point's facilities manager was caught contradicting an earlier deposition he made about the incident.

This should have dashed West Point's case altogether. But nope. These days, the less you know about the Constitution, the more likely it is you'll be allowed to serve on a jury. If you ever get called in for jury duty, you may notice that the attorney for one side will try to exclude prospective jurors who seem knowledgeable about even basic constitutional law.

Even the judge thought it was strange that the facilities manager's memory suddenly improved during the trial.

The judge even reminded the jury that there was no regulation prohibiting protests at the facility at that point in 2004. (A regulation was enacted only later.)

Naturally, the jury ruled against the protesters, and said West Point did not violate their free speech - even though it did.

The taxpayers are paying for West Point to suppress free speech because they disagree with it?

(Source: http://www.lohud.com/article/2009907150333;
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLLkowXiOVW2HEWjiLjp1DjC6TIQD99JPVA01)

Town manager fired for marrying porn star

The town of Fort Myers Beach, Florida, must have nothing more important to worry about than policing city employees' private lives.

The town council has voted 5 to 0 to fire the town manager "without cause" after discovering that he had married a porn star.

At least the town council was honest when they said the firing was "without cause." They acknowledged that the town manager had broken no laws or city rules - so the firing really is "without cause", isn't it?

If there isn't a lawsuit against the city, I'll just bip.

Florida claims to be a "right-to-work" state, but we all know that this phrase has nothing to do with the actual right to not lose your job over nothing. "Right-to-work" laws are about union-busting, not about keeping people from being wrongly fired. In effect, these laws make it easier to fire most workers for no good reason.

If there is a lawsuit, I'd love to see what idiotic defense the city can conjure in a weak attempt to justify the firing.

This story sounds straight out of the pages of the Taliban.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmy6BlHWhEwDz8dphG7fe_h-z9KwD99JR8600)

Bloomberg's brain idles

Embattled New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the latest chapter in the Republican saga of "do as I say, not as I do."

In an effort to appear as America's environmental leader, the mayor backed an ordinance to keep motorists from idling for more than 3 minutes and polluting the air. After dealing with air pollution myself, I don't doubt the need for such a law.

One big problem though: Bloomberg thinks he shouldn't have to obey the ordinance like everyone else.

The mayor gets an entire fleet of city-owned SUV's at taxpayer expense. These hulking vehicles guzzle gas like it's going out of style. Although the SUV's are equipped to run partly on ethanol, they don't, because ethanol is so scarce in New York City.

Worse, he lets the SUV's idle - often for more than an hour. Some of these instances were during ego-boosting photo ops.

And Bloomberg calls himself America's green mayor? What a hypocrite.

Often, all the SUV's do is trail Bloomberg when he takes the subway. He made a show of using the subway to prove what a peopley guy he is - but being trailed by the SUV's defeats the entire message of this stunt.

How come the mayor's SUV's don't have to follow the law? Because they're considered emergency vehicles. I guess photo ops are a big emergency when you're about to lose the election.

(Source: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/mayor_restricts_idling_but_his.html)

Wal-Mart settles suit

In the state of Washington, a class action lawsuit said Wal-Mart regularly forced employees to skip meal breaks and put in extra hours without pay. Workers were even locked inside the store after they had clocked out, and forced to do additional work.

Now, 8 years after the suit was filed, Wal-Mart has finally agreed to pay $35,000,000 to about 88,000 employees.

But that works out to about (drum roll, please) $398 per person.

You get less than $400 for being a victim of false imprisonment and serious labor law violations? I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but something tells me this penalty is barely even big enough to make an impression on Wal-Mart.

The fact that I haven't purchased a damn thing at Wal-Mart in about 12 years has deprived the retail giant of a hell of a lot more than $400.

If I was a Wal-Mart employee who was locked inside the store, I'd ram a shopping cart through the glass door to escape.

(Source: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kplu/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1533406/KPLU.Local.News/Walmart.Settles.Class.Action.Suit)

Tea Party activist sends racist picture

The American conservative movement might have recovered if it actually had ideas.

But nope.

All it has left is sore loser tantrums and racist fail.

Dr. David McKalip (pictured here) is a right-wing activist involved in the oft-ridiculed Tea Party movement. The Florida neurosurgeon also serves on the American Medical Association's House of Delegates.

As a hard-charging voice of rightist extremism, McKalip founded a group he calls Doctors for Patient Freedom, which opposes health care reform. He joined right-wing congressmen for a forum to warn against fixing the broken medical system. He even wrote an op-ed for the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times attacking medical reform.

Everyone knows the current Tea Party movement is rife with racist harangues and imagery. But McKalip isn't some ordinary BTPer. His prominence makes his racism even more telling of what helps guide the Tea Parties.

On Sunday, McKalip forwarded a picture that portrayed President Obama as a stereotyped African witch doctor to a Tea Party listserv on Google that he's a member of. To accompany the picture, McKalip wrote, "Funny stuff!"

But nobody is laughing - except the Tea Party sore losers, since they're the only ones who think it's humorous.

And the right-wing brain trust wonders why they're losing support? If they actually had coherent ideas, they wouldn't see the need to keep sending out nonsense like this.

What makes this meltdown even worse is that they're using this imagery to attack health care reform, at a time when it's too important to be reduced to such a level.

I can't wait to see the results of the next election.

(Source: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/conservative_activist_forwards_racist_pic_showing.php?ref=fpa)

Fresh!

Stale!

Wilbur!

Warthog!

You thought I was making up all that "Fresh!" business, didn't you?

Well, YouTube has proven you wrong yet again! And it's not even the weekend!

Yes, I'm talking about the old Tender Vittles cat food commersh. The one that was frequently parodied with that "Wilbur!" stuff.

Granted, this version was reportedly from 1984, which was later than the versions I would have been most interested in. But the "Fresh!" theme was still present:



I embedded that ad here because Tender Vittles was finally discontinued in the U.S. and A. in 2007.

Now is everybody going to stop insisting I made the whole thing up?

Dog from Taco Bell ad dies

I'm sad to report the death of Gidget, a dog who appeared in an infamous series of late '90s commercials for Taco Bell.

Gidget died yesterday from a stroke. She was 15 years old.

In that controversial ad campaign of a decade ago, Gidget would appear under a male voiceover declaring, "Yo quiero Taco Bell."

A stand-in dog occasionally filled in for Gidget, who had replaced an earlier dog.

(Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/07/taco-bells-chihuahua-gidget-goes-to-doggy-heaven-at-age-15.html)

Wal-Mart destroys ancient burial grounds

Oxford, Alabama, is the site of ancient Native American burial grounds that date back at least 1,000 years. This site is still considered sacred, and a town study has found tribal artifacts in the soil there.

But it's not sacred to Wal-Mart or to its apologists who dominate local government. Few things to them are sacred except Making Money.

So Wal-Mart and the city of Oxford have already begun tearing apart the burial grounds to provide fill dirt to build a new Sam's Club. Trial advocates and preservationists are outraged.

It's being torn down for fill dirt, of all things!

City officials also want to level the hill to use as an elevated site for a fancy motel or restaurant. Mayor Leon Smith said the burial site was nothing but "just a pile of rocks."

The Scam's Flub project has also drawn the support of raw racists and others who apparently expect the descendants of the people buried there to have to buy back the burial grounds.

Sounds to me like they're already paying for it - as the city is using tax dollars to help raze the site.

A historic site is being destroyed just so there'll be another union-busting Sam's Club to buy foreign-made goods.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/513/story/868789.html)

Precinct-by-precinct results trickling in

It takes 8 months to get election results broken down by precinct in Kentucky?

At least we've finally got some counties in, and they're as interesting as one might expect.

Mind you, it's long been an aberration for a precinct in northern Kentucky to go Democratic in a presidential election. So it would be easier to list the places Obama won than the ones McCain won.

I'll try to do that for Campbell County. From the results I've seen, Obama won precincts in Newport, Bellevue, Dayton, Southgate, and Highland Heights. Newport and Dayton weren't even close. It looks like Obama may have won (!) the portion of Campbell County within I-275, though it's impossible to tell for sure.

As for southern Campbell County, let me just say, it's southern Campbell County. That's all you need to know. If you look at the results for Grants Lick or Sun Valley, you wonder how this blog is even in the same county. One has to ask whether Colorado City, Arizona, didn't relocate there.

Despite that, Campbell County seems to now be less Republican than Boone County, where McCain won 59 of its 60 precincts.

When you get beyond the exurbs into more rural counties, things do pick a bit for the Democrats (despite the GOP base becoming more rural): I noticed Obama won 2 of Robertson County's 5 precincts.

At least now I know not to move this blog to Grants Lick or Sun Valley.

Dr. Ernie ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

During my health scare yesterday, I almost expected to end up being treated by Dr. Ernie, considering the current state of American health care.

One day, Bert came down with a bad cold. Not a good cold - like one that makes you miss school - but a bad cold. His ol' buddy Ernie, however, remains oblivious to this factoid.

In the resultant Bert and Ernie sketch from 1974 or earlier (which aired for years), Ernie hears that someone on the ol' Ses has a cold, and he tries to figure out who:



This was filmed back in the days when, if you got sick, you rested - or saw a doctor. Most of our society wasn't like my first high school was later, where they screamed at you to come to school even if you had a fever of 105° F and were vomiting buckets.

The '70s-era cold treatment of strict rest must have worked, because people got sick a hell of a lot less back then.

But I wouldn't want to be treated by Dr. Ernie, who wouldn't recognize a cold if it jumped up and sneezed on his big, purple nose - thereby risking the spread of this misery. Bert even coughs right in Ernie's face, and Ernie just stands there like an idiot.

Maybe if people took advice from this skit and stayed in bed instead of going to school and work when they get sick, the health care system wouldn't be as overloaded now.

You can learn a lot from a Muppet who can't count higher than 6.

City celebration canceled because of union support

Corporate America is guilty not only of exploiting workers but of policing thoughts as well - and getting its friends in government to carry out its dirty work.

Folks in Findlay, Ohio, were looking fiveward to an upcoming citywide celebration featuring a parade and other festivities. Though the event was backed by a local chapter of the United Steelworkers, it was not a union event.

But now the city has canceled the event because of its support by the union.

"Basically, Findlay's a nonunion, Republican area and mostly what we had were Democratic speakers and union people," Republican mayor Pete Sehnert said. "It's not what I had in mind."

Oh, so if Big Business had put together this event and invited nothing but Republican speakers, the city wouldn't have ordered it stopped? (Although a Democratic public official was scheduled to speak, so were business representatives who happened to be Republican.)

One of the big sore spots for Big Business was that the parade was supposed to feature American-made classic cars and motorcycles. Business leaders viewed this as an assault on their policy of outsourcing and exploiting cheap labor abroad (at the expense of American workers).

A bigger sore spot was the union's apparent support for the much-needed Employee Free Choice Act, which would help workers organize more easily.

Sehnert wants to hold the celebration next year - but he says unions won't be invited to help organize it. "Next year, I'd like to have as many businesses as possible," he scowled.

This story boils down to censorship. City officials and global greed merchants aren't any better than that preacher in Louisiana who forced rock concerts to be canceled just because he didn't like rock music. The greed sector is hell-bent on suppressing any thought that helps workers advance.

(Source: http://www.thecourier.com/Issues/2009/Jul/21/ar_news_072109_story1.asp?d=072109_story1,2009,Jul,21&c=n)

Postal Service may close urban branches

The right-wing war on the cities continues.

The U.S. Postal Service wants to close 4 post office branches in northern Kentucky. These branches are in (drum roll, please) Newport, Bellevue, Dayton, and Ludlow.

Not a single branch is closing in wealthy suburbs. Just the more working-class cities. Of course.

These appear to be small branches, but they all do good business.

This might not even be happening, if Bush's cronies didn't still occupy high positions at the Postal Service, where they skim off the revenues the Postal Service brings in - even while the pay for most postal workers stays stagnant. Under legislation passed by the Republican-led Congress of the Bush years, the price of a stamp goes up automatically each year - just for post offices to be closed.

This after the Postal Service already removed most public mailboxes that were anywhere near where people actually live.

If a post office in Bellevue, Dayton, Newport, or Ludlow closes, the mayor of the city that loses its post office should stage an occupation of the post office until it reopens.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090721/NEWS0103/307210020/Four+post+offices+may+close)

Well, how's that Delta/Northwest merger working out?

How's the latest example of merger mania working out, dare I ask?

Guess what? It isn't.

What??? After all those other corporate mergers worked out so great??? Wait, they didn't.

After the governments of the United States and the European Union rubber-stamped Delta's takeover of Northwest Airlines, Delta has now added a surcharge for paying checked baggage fees at the airport (as opposed to online).

This isn't even the first new fee I've heard of from Delta since the merger. Once a merger in any industry takes place, you usually find that your pants don't fall down as much - because your wallet is thinner.

Then again, maybe the latest surcharge is better than the airlines crying about how broke they are and getting the taxpayers to bail them out again. It's been about 6 whole years since they've pulled that scam, so you know they're due for another handout.

We need to reintroduce airline regulation. If the federal government doesn't, the states should.

Meanwhile, Delta still has the worst percentage of delayed flights. (One recent flight stayed on the ground in New York for 5 hours.)

(Source: http://www.ajc.com/business/delta-adds-96809.html;
http://www.kypost.com/news/national/story/DOT-says-more-flights-were-on-time-in-May/rzoT63QhPE-2LgDihuWrTw.cspx)

I faint, so this blog ain't?

I haven't updated this blog yet today because I had a medical scare today.

I had a fainting and vomiting spell and had to go to the hospital. The doctors don't know what's wrong, and I still feel weak.

This is the biggest health scare I can remember having, so I don't know how long it'll take to recover, or if I'll be able to do as much.

I intend on continuing this blog and work on my next book, of course. Depending on what underlying health problem may have caused today's episode, things may get back to normal pretty quickly.

Of course, normal doesn't truly mean normal anymore, after the crises of recent years.

Colorado City cult cashes in

What does 28 years of conservative rule in D.C. mean for cults like Colorado City, Arizona?

It's been a windfall - a gravy train, if you will.

Colorado City, Arizona, and the neighboring village of Hildale, Utah, compose a right-wing polygamous cult based on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - which long ago broke away from the larger Mormon church. This small community has also produced some of the highest percentages for Republican political candidates, even at the presidential level.

The cult rests on the state line so it can escape to the other state each time one state turns up the heat. And the cult is far wealthier than official figures would reveal: It resembles not a poor shantytown but a financially secure exurb.

Each year, the tiny Colorado City school system - which has actually become an extension of the cult - gets $4,000,000 of federal tax dough. This sum is far more per student than most districts receive. The minuscule town has also gotten $1,900,000 from HUD just for projects like resurfacing streets.

The federal government even built a $2,800,000 airport for Colorado City that receives almost no traffic from anyone outside the community.

Residents of Colorado City receive 8 times as much in federal government services as they pay in taxes.

At the same time, however, the cult's leaders assail poor people elsewhere who collect any type of government benefits. And they usually vote as a bloc for the Republicans, who have built almost their entire recent platform on such phony populism.

Can you say hypocrites? Sure. Sure you can.

The cult's excuse for their own actions is that they are "bleeding the beast" - the "beast" being the very federal government that keeps them afloat.

Like the Ave Maria cult in Florida, Colorado City is a glorified Branch Davidians - thriving at your expense.

Chevron refuses to pay fine for ruining rainforest

A court in Ecuador is preparing to slap a hefty $27,000,000,000 fine against oil giant Chevron following widespread damage to a rainforest - damage that went on for decades.

This wreckage - which destroyed the livelihoods of countless residents - was carried out by Texaco, which Chevron later took over.

But Chevron is refusing to pay the fine.

I guess in Chevron's world, laws are just "damn pieces of paper" (as Bush would say), huh?

Chevron says it's refusing because the President of Ecuador publicly backed the plaintiffs.

That's like saying Zacarias Moussaoui should be freed if the President of the United States expresses opposition to Al-Qaeda.

Ironically, it was Chevron who wanted the case tried in Ecuador to begin with, because the company thought it could take advantage of Ecuador's court system.

Be careful what you wish for, Chevron.

If Chevron refuses to pay the fine, the government of the United States should seize $27,000,000,000 of Chevron's assets and turn it over to the court in Ecuador that imposed this ruling.

(Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chevron-may-lose-27-billion-lawsuit-expects-to-pay-nothing-2009-7)

Immunization gets immunity

Americans are going to be paying for Bush's scuzzbaggery for decades.

First, his incompetence helped cause the swine flu outbreak. And now - if a vaccine is ever developed - the maker of this vaccine will be immune to lawsuits arising from side effects, because of a law Bush signed.

This 2006 law - passed by a Nazi Congress and signed by Bush - gives legal immunity to flu vaccine makers. This follows the policy instituted under Reagan that still shields makers of childhood vaccines from suits.

The states need to step up to the plate and strengthen their laws to make sure anyone who suffers serious side effects from swine flu vaccines gets the compensation they are entitled to.

Louisville gets FM hate talk station

As if Louisville doesn't have enough right-wing talk on AM (with no liberal counterweight), now it has a right-wing FM talker to boot.

WLRS has adopted a new talk format, filled entirely by syndicated hosts. These include right-wing loudmouths like Glenn Beck, Michael Sewage, and Laura Ingraham.

Right-wing hate talk proliferates in Louisville despite the fact that the Republican presidential ticket lost Jefferson County by 12%. (No GOP presidential candidate has won the county since 1988.) A similar pattern of hard-right radio can be seen in other cities where the GOP has been rejected by the public (including Cincinnati).

WLRS was a legendary set of calls before the early '90s, when bad programming decisions reduced its influence. It was decimated further when the WLRS call letters were moved from 102.3 to the weaker 105.1 facility.

After the latest dumb move, don't expect WLRS to recover any time soon.

This is radio, after all.

(Source: http://radioinsight.com/105.1-wlrs-louisville-flips-from-rock-to-newstalk)

Utility's error ends in family's death

DTE Energy is the utility monopoly in Detroit. DTE is known for particularly greedy practices, especially regarding reporting customers' data to credit bureaus (to compile your credit score which you have to pay to access).

Last week, DTE cut off the power to a family's house. This forced them to use a gas generator, which filled their home with gas. A man and 3 children died.

Now it turns out that DTE wasn't even supposed to shut off their power. By DTE's own admission, the company had received notice of the family's bankruptcy weeks ago - which was supposed to prevent the electric from being shut off. (The man had declared bankruptcy after losing his job.) But this notice had the wrong address, and DTE didn't bother to verify the address on the notice, as it was supposed to.

By the time DTE realized its mistake, it was too late.

This is particularly inexcusable, because the electric bill was always sent to the right address.

(I blackballed the Detroit News as a source for this blog last year, but I'm making an exception for this story, because I can't find it covered anywhere else.)

(Source: http://www.detnews.com/article/20090718/METRO01/907180366/Address-glitch-led-to-shutoff-at-family-s-home)

He's a-comin', he's a-comin'! (Bubble Gum Weekend)

Yeah, I bet he is.

I may have already featured this Hubba Bubba ad from 1979 that starred the Gum Fighter. But this commersh's need is underscored by the recent downward spiral of bubble gum advertising.

A few days ago, I saw Hubba Bubba being sold at a gas station food mart. Instead of any sign of the Gum Fighter, the pack featured a blue creature that looked just like Cookie Monster except it had only one eye. (No, I didn't buy any.)

This critter hardly compares to the Gum Fighter, who loomed large in the commercials of old:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE1re4uNpN0

Few bubble gum advertising icons were as effective or as memorable as the Gum Fighter, and that commersh is one of the examples that shows why. (You can tell that was one of the ol' Fighter's first ads, because his sideburns were bigger like those of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.)

On the other hand, the Wild West town in that ad must have been the only place in the world where the lives of all its citizens revolved around contests to see who could blow the biggest bubbles without getting the gum stuck to their face.

This ad also showcases the Gum Fighter's practice of blowing the germs off the wad of gum after the bubble bursts.

Bubbling. A rarity today, but a national pastime 30 years ago.

Ohio outlaws school paddling (finally!)

The idea of abolishing corporal punishment in Ohio's public schools keeps coming up, but it never quite passes - until now.

Yesterday, Gov. Ted Strickland signed a new budget bill into law that includes a ban on paddling in public schools. This makes Ohio one of about 30 states to prohibit this outdated practice.

Meanwhile, Indiana seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Earlier this year, right-wing Gov. Mitch Daniels supported a bill to make it illegal to sue a school employee over discipline. In his State of the State tirade, Disaster Daniels scolded, "It is time Indiana said to its children: sit down and hush up."

I know what a few of you might be saying about Ohio's paddling ban. "What about serial bullies?" you inquire. Trust me, they're not the ones getting swats to begin with. In fact, no other form of discipline is ever tried with them either. If we expel serial bullies as we should, corporal punishment might not ever be an issue.

I find it interesting that schools that use corporal punishment usually experience more bullying and other student violence.

There should be a nationwide ban on paddling in schools. The welfare and rights of our young people should be a top national priority.

(Source: http://www.huliq.com/1/83718/ohio-ends-corporal-punishment-schools)

Stimulus law restores summer jobs program

The federally funded summer jobs program of the '80s and '90s was a worthwhile expenditure. It helped pay for jobs for teens and young adults - and it was a lifesaver for many. (And who could forget those catchy radio ads?)

Many Americans today are grateful they had this program in their youth. Who knows where they'd be without it? We should all thank our lucky stars we had it.

Naturally, the Nazis in Congress a decade ago abolished this program (and others that were similar). And trust me, I don't exaggerate when I say Congress in the late '90s was full of Nazis. (Remember the flap involving Newt Gingrich's pick for House historian?)

Abolishing the summer jobs program was not an act of fiscal restraint. It was an act of malice.

Meanwhile, Congress in that era was giving bailouts to the prison-industrial complex and right-wing talk radio.

But now, President Obama's stimulus program that passed this year is effectively restoring much of what the rogue Congress of the '90s stole. This stimulus package has provided funding to hire 125,000 teenagers and young adults for summer jobs this year. Some state and local governments have opted to chip in.

This program helps young people who might otherwise be at a disadvantage to join the labor market and enjoy some of the same opportunities others already have.

Meanwhile, what has the prison boom that began in the '90s accomplished? All the prison boom has done is waste taxpayer dollars and foster a vicious cycle of despair.

Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite dies

Walter Cronkite, who was best known for anchoring CBS's evening news from 1962 to 1981, died today at the age of 92.

For years - through the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Iran hostage crisis - Cronkite was considered one of the most trusted and respected people in America.

Contrast Walter Cronkite versus what has become of TV news lately. It's not even a comparison.

(Source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/walter-cronkite-iconic-anchorman-dies)

It's "we the corporations" in Iraq

The Bush-installed government in Iraq has learned quite a bit from the dictatorship that put it in power.

The Bush regime seems to have imparted the Iraqi government with what corporatism is all about.

Workers' groups in Iraq want to block an illegal oil deal with BP and China's CNPC. But government officials are threatening workers and labor unions with retaliation if they go on strike.

Asim Jihad of Iraq's Oil Ministry said, "The government will protect the companies."

"The government will protect the companies"??? Gee, I wonder what regime they learned that from. (Cough.) Bush. (Cough.)

It's never about protecting the people, is it? It's always gotta be about protecting the corporations.

(Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINLG20279420090717)

No Usenet for you!

I got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news: AT&T is no longer providing Usenet access to Internet customers.

The good news: AT&T is no longer providing Usenet access to Internet customers.

Usenet is one of the main features of the Internet - although in recent years it has fallen into ruin, thanks to Nazi bullies, child molesters, government censorship, rogue cancels of posts by users who have the "wrong" opinions, impersonation of users, and spam. Despite this, Usenet - which is public in every sense of the word - does have some potential and still has quite a few users.

When AT&T says it's no longer offering Usenet, I assume that this means through what used to be its wretched Worldnet ISP (which dropped the Worldnet name several years ago). AT&T's launch of Worldnet was enabled by the fascist Telecommunications Act of 1996, which encouraged dominance of all media by large corporations.

Worldnet may have been the worst thing ever to happen to Usenet or the Internet in general. Its users abused Usenet, posted reams of mindless crap under the names of people they disagreed with, and set up phony websites impersonating dissenters. Worldnet refused to yank the accounts of customers who were responsible for these abuses.

Usenet abuse by AT&T patrons was enabled by a cartel of arrogant, loud Usenet admins who refused to cut off Worldnet's access and cheered abuse by its customers. Yet they tried cutting off any ISP that didn't play by their rules - and any user who tried doing anything about the harassment from Worldnet.

As a result, few tears are being shed over AT&T discontinuing Usenet access. If this had happened years ago, the public would have been spared much online harassment.

This should also put an end to the recent spam posts by AT&T about the loss of its Usenet service that have been crossposted to almost every newsgroup in existence. These posts purport to be posted only on AT&T's servers so customers of other ISP's don't see them. But this is a lie. Users of every ISP have found all their newsgroups flooded with these posts.

On the other hand, AT&T is practicing false advertising by dropping Usenet. AT&T advertises full Internet access. Full Internet access means it must include Usenet.

Indeed, AT&T's notice about its new policy grins, "Customers wishing to access Usenet newsgroups may do so by finding a third-party provider, who will charge a subscription fee." But why??? You're already paying for Usenet when you pay for AT&T's services.

Of course, this means that a disproportionate number of Usenet abusers will be fleeced. You're probably thinking that it couldn't happen to anyone more deserving - but this fleecing is a theft by corporate big shots padding the company's bottom line. Much like abusive teen confinement programs scamming major insurance corporations, this proves there's some truth to the adage that there's no honor among thieves.

Right-wing newspaper returns!

Last month, I told you that the Bulletin newspaper of Philadelphia ceased publication because this daily broadsheet had so few readers. That incarnation of the Bulletin had begun in 2004, and it was known as a right-wing voice.

But now this voice of far-right extremism is returning next month!

This time, however, it'll be a vastly reduced operation. The Bullshitin will appear in print only weekly. Its daily updates will be on the Internet only. Only paid subscribers to the print edition will be allowed to access the online articles.

I can already tell this is probably going to be an iron blimp. How many subscribers do you think the Bulletin will possibly get?

We all love the marketplace of ideas. But it has to be said that the recent version of the Bulletin was like the Washington Times or the recent incarnation of the New York Sun in that its brand of coverage was smug and classless. It contributed very little - if anything - to journalism.

The Times/Sun/Bulletin modus operandi is to come up with knee-jerk conclusions that are at odds with the facts and with the interests of the American public, and work backwards from that. This reportage is loud, arrogant, and refuses to even accept that a dissenting view exists. It's like a print version of right-wing talk radio. (It was the Sun that ran an unsigned editorial demanding that anyone who opposed the Iraq War be tried for treason.)

All 3 of these papers have had circulation numbers well below other papers in the same city. It's doubtful the Bulletin will have any better numbers in its relaunched form.

Boo-hooing over boos

The right-wing slow burn over the election results festers months later, and has long passed the point of absurdity.

Now The World According To The Wingnutosphere has a new meme, and it's just as idiotic as all the rest.

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held in St. Louis on Tuesday, and President Obama was there to throw the ceremonial first pitch.

The crowd cheered as the new Commander-in-Chief strolled onto the field. Everybody remembered what a buffoon Bush was, and they were so glad that the long, insufferable Bush fog of 8 years had finally lifted.

But the wingnutosphere has its own spin, and by golly, it's sticking to it.

At first, the right-wing brain trust claimed Obama was actually booed, and that the cheers were really a recording of cheers from a different event, piped in over the public address system to drown out the boos.

When this claim was met with skepticism, they offered an even sillier theory. They claimed Fox "edited out" all the boos from the broadcast.

Well, if they did, they would have had at most 7 seconds to splice the sound file together. That's because the event was broadcast live - or nearly live, assuming there was the usual 7-second delay.

Wingnuts' utter inability to grasp that you can't "edit" live telecasts reminds me of the episode of 'The Simpsons' in which Homer asked if cartoons were aired live. The response: "Very few cartoons are broadcast live. It's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists."

But keep an eye on the freeposphere. They're background noise now, but we always have to stay alert so they don't strike from behind.

Photos of yesterday's protest!

Cue Kool & the Gang's "Celebration."

With 3 PFC branches down and only one to go, yesterday's event in front of Indiana's state capitol was as much of a party as it was a protest. It's hard to contain our glee over the fact that PFC is only one-fourth the size it was 9 months ago.

But we still had work to do, and that meant holding signs and handing out flyers. Was this protest effective? You bet your bizcream!

Now a series of photos from the event has been posted online. So peep, weep, and oggle-beep:

http://www.heal-online.org/ky0709.htm

Eviction looms for PFC

As if life couldn't possibly get worse for the Pathway Family Center cult - which is down to just its Indianapolis branch - it has.

PFC is now the target of a court complaint by the industrial park that owns the property, because PFC hasn't paid its rent in months. The complaint seeks eviction.

If I went that long without paying my rent, I guarantee I'd have found an eviction notice on my door months ago. But PFC still keeps at it in the industrial park where it hasn't paid the rent.

Official documents about the case can be found here:

http://www.isaccorp.org/pathwayfamilycenter.asp

Indy protest a success!

To success! Blub...blub...

Our protest at the Indiana Statehouse against Pathway Family Center today was surely one of the greatest successes since we began protesting this chain of abusive facilities. The rain stopped right at the precise moment it needed to, and our rally drew 10 people.

Ten doesn't sound like a lot, but you may remember that some of our Cincinnati protests drew only 3 peeps. Despite having only 3 participants, those events did not go well for PFC.

And I'm sure this one didn't either.

As we stood on the south stoop of the state capitol, we handed out hundreds of flyers to folks going about their daily business. So now more people in Indianapolis are apprised of the situation, even if they missed the TV news investigation of PFC.

Surprisingly, there was only one apparent sighting of the programmies: A white SUV drove past, and a passenger photographed us. Photographing us has been the modus operandi of the PFC cult for at least a year, and they seem to favor white SUV's.

It's not like we have anything to hide, so who cares if they photograph us anyway?

The public's tastes may constantly change, but one thing is for sure: Things aren't getting any better for Pathway.

Open thread

Who'd have ever thunk I'd get to do a fact-finding mish in the middle of the week during July???

But since it's for my protest against PFC, it's entirely justifiable!

This is an open thread. Gab about anything! (Well, almost anything.)

See ya tomorrow!

Bill would gut return of local radio

As the most portable medium - radio - reaches the verge of collapse, only localism can save it.

That's why some broadcasting regulators and radio people have wisely urged the restoration of localism guidelines that were dashed in the '90s. Under these reforms, stations would be bound to serve their communities instead of rebroadcasting identical national feeds that have no items of local interest.

After the disaster that unfolded in Minot, North Dakota, several years back, this is an important issue.

But along comes the Republican brain trust in Congress, which cries, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!"

Right-wing Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon) and right-wing Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) have introduced legislation to bar any funding to enforce these new rules (if the new rules are passed at all). It would also bar funding to enforce the Fairness Doctrine - but they call the new localism rules a "stealth Fairness Doctrine" and "censorship."

Localism is a "stealth Fairness Doctrine"??? How???

The Fairness Doctrine has to do with coverage of issues, whether national or local. Localism has to do with restoring local features. Localism and the Fairness Doctrine are separate matters.

Perhaps the real censorship is performed by the big nationwide broadcasting companies that issue lists of songs that their stations can't play - as Clear Channel did after 9/11. Censorship is talk stations giving airtime to only one side - as they do now.

That right-wingers would introduce a bill to gut the new proposed regulations is practically an admission that radio is currently dominated by the Right.

As for the loss of local content, I think that if stations want to keep rebroadcasting national programs all day, they should be relicensed as translators instead of full-power stations - and lose the privileges that full-power licenses have.

Soldier insists Obama isn't really President

I can't believe that an American soldier would be such a poor sport about the election not going his way.

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook is set to deploy to Afghanistan, but he's refusing to do it. Why? Because he insists that Obama wasn't really born in America and therefore isn't really President.

It doesn't matter how many times you post a copy of the birth announcement from the Hawaii paper from 1961. The wingnuts keep clinging to their discredited rumor about Obama's allegedly "foreign" birth.

If Cook is such a sore loser that he doesn't want to serve under President Obama, then hey, I'd probably just discharge him - dishonorably, I might add. As someone on DU pointed out, does the U.S. and A. really need someone as dumb as Cook gumming up its military?

(Source: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/breaking_news/story/776335.html)

Protest PFC this Wednesday!

The big mean man who writes this big mean blog is going on another big mean out-of-town trip this week.

But it's for another big mean protest, so it's all well and good!

This time we're protesting against Pathway Family Center, which ran the Kids Helping Kids cult in Cincinnati we helped get shut down last year. They still have one lone facility - in Indianapolis - and now we've set our sights on that!

This protest isn't at PFC, however. This event will be on the south steps of the Indiana Statehouse (which is the state capitol building) in Indianapolis. The building is at 200 West Washington Street downtown, but since we'll be on the south steps, I'm not sure yet how that'll work out.

We plan on having this protest rain or shine, so don't expect us to be scared off by the weather.

The protest shall take place this Wednesday, July 15, from 11 AM to 3 PM!

I'm going to leave late tomorrow, so I'll be gone overnight again. (Fact-finding mission #58!) I should be home Wednesday after the rally, and I'll fill you in on what happens in case you can't be there!

GOP candidate beleaguered by his own idiocy

The Republican Party in New Jersey is on the brink of total collapse.

Their candidate for a state assembly district is a nobody named Lee Lucas. Not long ago, he was involved in a neighbor dispute in which he used a racial slur - and then tried defending his own outburst.

It also turns out that Lucas has sent letters to newspapers claiming welfare recipients are "inferior." Recently, he said in a media interview that his platform is to limit the "propagation" of welfare recipients. He said that "these people are inferior and we need to get rid of them."

About 70 years ago, a certain German politician expressed similar sentiment.

The GOP's future is the rest of the world's past.

(Source: http://www.politickernj.com/matt-friedman/31192/republicans-see-viable-half-ticket-ld-3)

Pseudophedrine laws draw ACLU attention

Why did it take this long???

This story isn't about the failed laws requiring you to sign a log to buy Sudafed. Rather, it's about efforts of states and cities to make it a prescription drug - even though federal law defines it as over-the-counter.

Oregon led the charge in this failed trend, and other states inevitably tried to mimic it. When Missouri failed to pass a bill to make pseudoephedrine a prescription drug, the town of Washington (near St. Louis) passed such an ordinance.

But the eastern Missouri chapter of the ACLU says the city may be sued unless it repeals this new law. That's because this ordinance runs afoul of federal laws that say pseudoephedrine is over-the-counter - and because a similar policy could start affecting other drugs as well.

Despite this, Missouri officials are allowing these rogue municipal ordinances to stay. Dean Linneman, who oversees the Missouri Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, said of the town's ordinance, "As long as it's more restrictive than state and federal laws, and they're able to pass it, the city has the authority to do this."

"As long as it's more restrictive"??? What if it's less restrictive? Talk about "self-rule for me, not for thee."

I guess "preemption" is only allowed when it benefits the drug warriors, huh?

(Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/AE8CA0D287827892862575F2000387EC?OpenDocument)

White supremacist elected to lead Young Republicans

Meet Audra Shay, the new national leader of the Young Republicans.

As the GOP is a dying party, the Young Republicans aren't so young. Shay is older than I am, and I'm considered Methuselah by Green Party standards.

The Young Republicans aren't so tolerant either. Shay was chosen as the group's leader even after a recent racist episode on her Facebook page.

After some other Republican posted a racist comment, Shay replied, "You tell em Eric! lol."

When someone makes a racist comment online or in person, my natural response is to cringe and drip sweat. If I say anything at all, it's certainly not in praise of the person making the remark. The Republican Right though must be different. They not only view racist comments as acceptable, but actually agree with them outright.

Someone criticized Shay for praising the racist remark, saying, "I'm usually outnumbered about 500-to-1 on Audra's threads so go ahead, lemme have it, I deserve it." In other words, this commenter knew the Young Republicans were racist and that they would defend Shay.

It turned out that Audra Shay had a history of racially charged or just plain hateful comments online.

I'm sure this helped her get elected as the Young Republicans' leader. The GOP today has so little to go on that the only way they can win is to set themselves up for trouble and paint themselves as victims of the big, mean "libs."

The Republicans have become scared of new ideas, and they don't even realize just how far removed from reality they've become.

(Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-11/young-gop-chooses-hate/?cid=bsa:mostpopular3)

Right-wing charter school opens in Idaho

It appears that being a charter school means not having to hide the fact that you use taxpayer dollars to advance a political agenda.

In effect, charter schools are private schools that are taxpayer-funded like public schools. Charter schools aren't all right-wing, but they've certainly created a new opening for public funding of right-wing doctrine.

Last month I told you about a charter school in Oakland that explicitly advances conservative causes - and is run by a clod who uses racial epithets to refer to students. Despite California's budget crisis that has led Republicans to try to close state parks and end assistance to the poor, this so-called school continues to receive taxpayer money.

Now a similar experiment on the minds of our children is starting in Nampa, Idaho.

A charter school titled Nampa Classical Academy is opening this fall. Founder Isaac Moffett admits, "We're not a liberal school. ... We are a conservative school."

Then you can do without public money, Isaac. Don't compel Idaho taxpayers to fund your political delusions.

Nampa Classical Academy will also teach the Bible, which raises the issue of separation of church and state. One has to wonder though whether they'll teach what's actually in the Bible, instead of distorting it.

The school's curriculum will be based on Hillsdale Academy, a prep school in Michigan run by Hillsdale College, which even the National Review calls a "citadel of conservatism."

Nampa Classical is also based on Logos School in Moscow, Idaho. One of the founders of Logos School has been involved with the neo-Confederate movement (hence the racism icon from the key), has advocated the forced exile of gays, and supports execution as a punishment for adultery.

With the opening of Nampa Classical Academy, Idaho taxpayers are being forced to pay dearly for this type of "education." At least Nampa Classical doesn't try to hide its ideology - a party line that has already reduced America to a mockery of its former self.

It's a shame that in today's America, there are few options for families who do not wish their children to be brainwashed with right-wing propaganda.

(Source: http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/classical-class/Content?oid=1098884)

DeMint's buddies suppress media

Jim Dimwit's friends who carried out the right-wing coup in Honduras (which was bankrolled by the Bush regime) are at it again.

Now they're suppressing Honduran radio stations that don't toe the coup's party line.

One broadcaster found his station raided and sabotaged. "They grabbed me and put me face-down and put 6 rifles on me, with a foot on my back holding me down," he said.

Another report says that any Honduran who refers to the coup as a coup is arrested.

And this new dictatorship (which overthrew a democratically elected President) is being praised by right-wing U.S. lawmakers like Jim DeMint. It's like having Jesse Helms back, isn't it?

Obama's plane sabotaged?

I just came across an unnerving story from the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-plane11-2009jul11,0,6369778.story

My usual policy is not to use the L.A. Times as a source, because of Andrew Malcolm's hackery. In fact, this story should prompt further investigation by the Times - but it hasn't.

Last July, during the presidential campaign, a plane carrying then-Sen. Obama and dozens of others from Chicago to Charlotte had to make an emergency landing in St. Louis. The plane had developed an inflated evacuation slide within the tail cone just after takeoff.

This problem is so rare that the NTSB can cite only 2 other instances of it in the entire history of American aviation. The NTSB is not expected to determine exactly what caused it to happen on Obama's flight until later this summer.

Suspiciously, the flight crew did not hear the slide inflate after takeoff - which suggests something was wrong even before the plane took off. A service check only weeks before also showed no such problems.

I am 100% convinced this was sabotage. Not a shadow of a doubt in my mind.

Only the very naive would think the Far Right wouldn't impair Obama's plane. We've seen this thuggery in action before. There's no real doubt that Paul Wellstone's plane was sabotaged. The same is true of a plane flown by Michael Connell, a consultant who was set to testify in a case regarding GOP vote fraud in Ohio in the 2004 "election" (and who had been previously threatened by GOP operatives). I strongly suspect that other well-known people were also victims of such tampering, going back at least a dozen years.

Wellstone, Connell, and Obama. The first 2 men were killed by aircraft sabotage. Obama would have been an even more prominent target than the other 2 men.

Why is the media trying to pass off the incident on Obama's plane as just an accident? The media needs to dig a little deeper and try to find out exactly who was responsible and what official role they had in politics.

Am I surprised by this story? Not in the least bit. I've spent over 15 years investigating political operations, and few things surprise me anymore.

Put the heat on the media to make sure they don't let this story go - like they have with so many others.

Kid buys gum (Bubble Gum Weekend)

I'm relieved to finally find this old ad.

For our Bubble Gum Weekend feature to stay afloat, at least one new gum commercial must appear online each week - which means gum ads had to have been produced at the rate of at least one per week. And the ads must be noteworthy in some way.

Just when I thought I'd have to go into reruns, I finally found this Bubble Yum ad from 1982 that I do recall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSI046ckbtQ

Although nobody bubbled in this commersh, it is notable nonetheless.

The little twerp in the ad seems to be addicted to gum. It looks like he already has 15 packs of the damn stuff in his mouth, and he buys more!

He has no parental supervision at all. He just roams the neighborhood buying up all the gum.

But I wonder how effective this ad was without bubbling. The commersh really didn't extol any remarkable traits of Bubble Yum. This was the '80s, when gum was the national religion, but every brand needed a gimmick to make it stand out. This commercial seems to have nothing of that sort.

Gum is cool.

Digital disaster

The iron balloon of digital TV is sinking fast, and there's an interesting new article in the Cincinnati Enquirer (of all places) about this unqualified disaster:

http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090710/ENT/307100070

If so many viewers in the Cincinnati market lose most or all of their TV reception, think what it's like in, say, rural Colorado. Indeed, viewers even within the Cincinnati metropolitan area have reported losing all TV reception.

I predicted this very problem years ago, simply because it's inherent in digital broadcasting. And now this problem is real. How nice of Bush to delay the digital transition until the exact moment that the next guy would be blamed for it.

I hate to rain on the digital parade, but I can foresee only one solution: bringing back analog TV.

I can hear the sighs right now, but what's the alternative? If you have a better idea, talk to me, folks!

Big Tiburon is watching you

Tiburon, California, is a posh Republican suburb of San Francisco that is now the site of a Big Brother controversy.

Town officials plan to place cameras on the only roads leading into town - to take photos of the license plate of every car that enters.

This unprecedented program is touted as a deterrent to burglars, but privacy advocates are profoundly angered by it - as they should be. Indeed, it won't even work at preventing break-ins.

The cameras are about snootiness and limiting access to the town. Nothing more.

And get this: Despite Tiburon's affluence, it won't even spend its own money on these cameras. Instead it's using grant funds - and asking a neighboring town as well as the surrounding county to pay for the rest.

If it's true that those who have nothing to hide shouldn't have to worry, my response is this: Since I've got nothing to hide, why does the government think it has any business watching me?

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/10/MNT6189U0U.DTL)

Sheriff won't cooperate with probe

Egotistical Phoenix area sheriff Joe Arpaio is at it yet again!

Maricopa County's top lawman is known for his tent cities where he feeds jail inmates spoiled lunchmeat and makes them watch Newt Gingrich speeches. Now Arpaio's office is under a federal investigation because of its pattern of racial profiling (hence the racism icon from this blog's key).

When public officials are having their offices investigated, you'd think they'd cooperate unless they had something to hide. Naturally, the Republican sheriff is refusing to cooperate. He cries that the whole probe is politically motivated.

So not only is Arpaio an egotist. He's a malcontent as well.

Arpaio's office is being represented by attorney Robert Driscoll - who was deputy assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft. Ironically, he was in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Talk about a revolving door of GOP incompetence!

(Source: http://www.yourwestvalley.com/articles/arpaio-6951-cooperating-feds.html)

Wealthy suburbs won't pay for flood project

Bellevue, Kentucky! Home of this fine blog!

Bellevue, a working-class town, features the mouth of Covert Run Creek. Hard-working residents of Covert Run Pike have been increasingly plagued by floods that have ruined their homes and even washed away their cars.

The floodwaters are also dirty and pose health risks. Nearby streams have some of the highest fecal coliform counts in the area.

This has been a more frequent occurrence not just because of the heavy rains we've had lately, but also because of development upstream that causes erosion and other issues.

Upstream development usually consists of subdivisions for the very rich. Almost all local cities and counties rubber-stamp development like this. Development seems to be approved regardless of how it will affect residents downstream.

In this case, the affluent suburb of Fort Thomas is the site of most of the development in question. Not all of this development is in Fort Thomas, but a disproportionate amount of it is.

After many broken promises, Bellevue is finally planning to build new storm pipes to put the kibosh on these floods - at a cost of $1,000,000. Who pays for it? Not Fort Thomas or any other wealthy communities. Bellevue taxpayers are paying for a good portion of it. The state highway department and the sanitation district are paying even more.

One has to ask why the richer areas are never held responsible for their share.

Another factor in the increase in flooding is the construction of Interstate 471, which created issues at the bottom of Covert Run Creek. Fact is, I-471 was designed primarily to link more affluent areas with Cincinnati. Those areas aren't paying anything to clean up the Covert Run floods either.

There's even a website about the Bellevue flooding:

http://www.bellevuefloods.com

I'm a left-wing populist who is certainly adamant that the wealthiest communities should pay their share.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090708/NEWS0103/907090341)

BTPers try disrupting MoveOn rally

The recent Tea Party movement is as plagued by mission creep as Bush's illegal Iraq War was.

This corporate-funded movement's purported goal at first was to protest stimulus spending. But now their mission has crept into protesting against health care reform as well - and trying to deprive the free speech rights of anyone who dares to disagree.

Yesterday, MoveOn held rallies in front of senators' offices to support fixing America's broken health care system. The media almost completely ignored these events - until the BTPers showed up to shout them down.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the LOSEianne crew tried doing just that. The right-wing counterprotest was organized by the misnamed NC Freedom. NC Fascism's website features links to Tea Party vitriol, so it's obvious they're connected to the Tea Partiers.

Media outlets claimed MoveOn was outnumbered by the Tea Party terrorists in Raleigh, but this seems iffy. Even if this is accurate, NC Fascism seemed to generate hardly any interest at all in other cities - even in a state that is more Republican than the national average. The BTPers only had enough followers to amass any real numbers in one city. Which is why they move from town to town.

NC Fascism's own website brags that its only purpose was to "surround" MoveOn - which certainly sounds like a threat of violence to me. It's not even clear if they were successful at that. If they were that successful, the media would be boasting of it in its usual bandwagon appeals.

What's perhaps most baffling is that the BTPers think they can convince people that the health care system shouldn't be reformed.

(Source: http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/cops_split_up_hagan_protest)

Another superbug in America's hospitals

Clostridium difficile - or C. diff - is a bacterial infection that was largely unknown by the general public 8 years ago. But now it runs rampant in America's health care facilities.

Kentucky has the worst rate of C. diff infection in the country. Nationwide, over 400 hospital patients now die every day of C. diff. Countless others must have their colon or other organs removed.

Lisa McGiffert of the Consumers Union says C. diff "has increased exponentially in recent years."

Silly me. I thought the health care system was supposed to cure, not kill. Indeed, most people who get C. diff pick it up in health care facilities.

C. diff joins MRSA in the league of deadly superbugs spread in American hospitals.

Most states don't require hospitals to report C. diff to health agencies. That's because health care corporations have fought efforts to make this a requirement.

Health care reform can't come quickly enough.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20090710/NEWS0103/307100027/Bacteria+spread+hits+KY+hospitals)

AIG execs getting millions more!

There are days when it's hardly even worth logging on to your news websites unless you have a very sturdy stomach. From this story, this is shaping up to be one of those days.

Insurance giant AIG - which received one of the biggest corporate bailouts in this ongoing fleecing of the American taxpayers - is now preparing to pay its top executives millions more in bonuses. This is in addition to the millions that these execs already received 4 months ago - which was also on the taxpayers' dime.

AIG is urging the government to give its approval to these bonuses, because it thinks that will protect the company from public criticism.

Wrong, AIG. All that will do is just expose the government to the same criticism. There will still be plenty of outrage left for AIG.

If it's true that the government now owns 80% of AIG, doesn't that also mean the government can say the execs can't get bonuses on our dime? Of course it does.

Since the government has such a large stake in AIG, it needs to tell AIG that it's either no bonuses or no AIG.

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070902702.html)

Tinkering with Des Moines

A good day of Roads Scholaring has just had a damper put on it by this story about the fascist right being on the march in Des Moines, Iowa.

At 2 middle schools in Des Moines, the Far Right is now requiring uniforms to be worn by students. These are public schools, no less.

Given other districts' torrid records, Des Moines seems like a Johnny-come-lately to this scourge. Maybe Des Moines held out this long because folks remember what happened there in the late '60s.

Yes, the Des Moines school system was the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court's Tinker v. Des Moines ruling - which helped guarantee the right to free expression in the form of attire worn in public schools.

Make no mistake though: School officials have really stepped in it this time. The district (like all other American public schools) is bound by Tinker v. Des Moines. And parents are outraged by the new uniform policy. One said, "It seemed a bit out of the blue with no parental say whatsoever."

And I can't wait to see the school district get sued plumb to court again.

Better yet, just ignore the stupid uniform policy. A public school can't do shit about it.

(Source: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090709/NEWS02/907090363)

Ensign used campaign funds to pay off mistress

Now it's clear that what John Ensign did is far worse than anything Bill Clinton or John Edwards did - even though Ensign was one of the shrillest critics of Edwards and Clinton.

That's because it turns out that Ensign, the Republican senator from Nevada, used campaign money to pay off his mistress - to the tune of $25,000. That's in addition to $96,000 that Ensign received from his parents.

Gee, I'm sure Ensign's campaign donors gave him that $25,000 so he could pay off mistresses.

As for the $96,000, this shows once again that all the Republicans need to do to make things all better is go crying to Mommy and Daddy.

Grow up, John, you big baby.

Surtax on rich proposed

Finally, some sense emerges from Washington.

A new surtax on the very wealthy is now the leading option among House Democrats to fund much-needed health care reforms. This new tax would be imposed on folks with an annual income of at least $200,000 (or higher for couples).

This should have been the #1 option all along. Lawmakers considered everything from increasing the Medicare tax to a subsidy for aspartame before this surtax on the rich was even given any thought.

This the kind of change we have a right to expect from the Democrats. No more handouts to the wealthy and Big Business.

Will this surtax pass? Don't get your hopes up too high. The DLC still looms large in party back rooms.

The government should pass this surtax - and take back all the free bailout money banks got.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlMpJGn28kqCcgU-aGcYE_ZHW-ywD99AJ0A81)

Drugstore group supports enhanced pseudoephedrine law

Much has been written here about the pseudoephedrine law that was written into the Patriot Act renewal. This law is one of the biggest failures in modern American legislative history.

So what's Congress's answer? Instead of repealing this law like they should, they instead introduce a bipartisan bill to make it stiffer - by forcing stores that sell pseudophedrine allergy drugs to register with the corrupt DEA and be certified to enforce the existing law.

All for an insane War on Drugs that has never been effective.

You'd think no drugstore in its right mind would support this - yet the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, which represents major pharmacy chains, does. It's a "war" on "drugs", you see.

Big Business and Big Government are kind of like a two-headed hydra. They'll cooperate with each other unflinchingly. The major drugstores probably support this bill because it may force the shutdown of small, independent pharmacies that might not be able to be certified or don't have as much clout.

The Far Right is reaching out its invisible hands to touch you.

(Source: http://supermarketnews.com/news/nacds_meth_0708)

Hat gets ru! ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

It's uproarious when things gets ruined on TV.

Like on 'Seinfeld' when Poppie peed on the couch. Or on 'The Dukes Of Hazzard' when Flash chewed up a playing card. All that stuff got ru!

Utterly, completely, totally ruined!

Stuff even gets ru on 'Sesame Street'! Like in this sketch that aired in the '70s, in which a hat gets ru:



The prankster's name was Harvey Kneeslapper. This character was performed by Frank Oz, but he was discontinued because his voice was very hard on Oz's throat.

The blue Muppet whose hat is ruined though must be a total wimp. Most people would pummel ol' Harv if he crushed their hat like that. But the mustachioed blue Muppet just decided to take the abuse and run away.

Maybe he was an alumnus of my first high school, where they teach people not to fight back.

Galbraith to run for governor

Gatewood Galbraith is a Kentucky political legend.

He has run for governor 4 times before - 3 of those times in the Democratic primary. Now he's announced his fifth bid - this time as an independent on the 2011 ballot, with Dea Riley as his running mate.

Galbraith, 62, has always run on a populist platform that draws a wide coalition of supporters. The media though has tried to downplay him, simply because they don't like his stances.

Galbraith said he's running for governor again "to combat Kentucky's electile dysfunction."

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to be at a loss for fielding any candidate at all.

(Source: http://bluegrasspolitics.bloginky.com/2009/07/07/galbraith-runs-again-for-governor-dea-riley-is-his-running-mate)

0% chance of GOP comeback in '10

I think this is the first time since I became old enough to follow politics that I've put forth such hilarious odds like this for any election.

If it seems obvious who's going to win, I always place the odds for the underdog at 1% at worst.

But not this time. The Republicans are out of luck.

The 2010 congressional elections are still 16 months away, and since the GOP is already in campaign mode, I guess it's not too early to say what their odds are.

I can say with confidence the Republicans have a 0% chance of retaking control of either the Senate or the House.

It won't happen. It just won't.

Moreover, I think the chance that they will even make a net gain of any seats in either house is closer to 0% than it is to 1%.

I would have given them a 1% chance of retaking Congress in 1994. The fact that they did is why it was 1% and not 0%. But this time, they are completely, utterly up Bunk Gas Creek. Nobody outside the wingnutosphere is even taking the national party seriously anymore.

I'm very rarely optimistic, but the GOP has so little appeal outside its narrow base that it's no longer even a national party. In 2008, the Republicans placed behind the Greens in at least one congressional election. And I can tell you which party is growing, and which one isn't.

More corporate "rights" in the 9th Circus

This story is from a few weeks ago, but we had to put it aside for awhile to hone our response to the 9th Circuit's ongoing corporatism.

This recent case concerned the 1999 shooting rampage by white supremacist Buford Furrow. I believe Buford Furrow is responsible for what Buford Furrow did. It's my belief that this shooting was the fault of Buford Furrow, not his gun. And I am generally opposed to tighter gun control.

Nonetheless, corporations - including gun manufacturers - have no blanket "right" to be shielded from all lawsuits. On the contrary, plaintiffs generally have a right to sue corporations. It doesn't mean they have a right to win, if they can't prove their case, but they surely have a right to file the suit.

Victims of Furrow's rampage sued Glock, Inc. But now the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has gutted that suit, citing a 2005 law to shield gun makers from almost all suits.

For one thing, that law didn't pass until 2005, and the massacre had occurred back in 1999. So the court is actually giving gun makers retroactive immunity.

Even if it wasn't being applied retroactively, there's still no legal basis for automatically shielding gun manufacturers.

What's next? Are other companies going to be shielded from product liability suits?

Now there's no way to know for sure whether the plaintiffs had a case, because the court won't even let their case go to trial at all. And that's not fair to the plaintiffs.

The larger story here may be that the 9th Circuit almost always sides with corporations - and against individuals. Not unlike when it gutted the ruling against Exxon for the Valdez spill.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/12/BA0O17IHVV.DTL)

War criminal whimpers and cries

"Lynndie England Still Haunted by Abu Ghraib Scandal," blares a headline at the fascist Fox News.

Tough shit, Lynndie.

If a soldier commits a serious crime against another person in the course of war, you know what that makes them? A war criminal. And Lynndie England was convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war.

Over the years, she's tried offering many excuses for her behavior. She has said she was ordered by commanding officers to abuse the prisoners, but that defense won't wash - because soldiers are not allowed to follow orders to abuse POW's. She has also blamed the media for the entire scandal.

Of course, she was only sentenced to 3 years in prison despite being convicted on numerous counts. And she only had to serve a little more than a year.

Now she's released a self-promotional book designed to repair her shattered image, because nobody in her hometown wants to be around her. The name of this volume? 'Tortured'!

Uh, Lynndie? Grow up! You only did a year in prison for something you should have done many, many years for.

Lynndie England doesn't even think she did anything wrong in the Abu Ghraib scandal. So she obviously didn't learn a damn thing from prison.

Leave it to Faux News to actually try to give credibility to a war criminal's book tour. This is the channel that destroyed the careers of anyone who dared to oppose the war, so it would be only fair if Lynndie England loses money on her book.

Ludicrous Lurita

Meet Lurita Doan, 51. She ran the U.S. General Services Administration for 2 years under dictator Bush.

As expected from a Bush appointee, Doan's time in this post was rocked by controversy and waste - leading to her resignation. She even used her post to help Republican cronies.

Now Doan has been hired as the conservative commentator for 5 - count 'em, 5 - Washington, D.C., area radio stations. The stations have not hired a parallel liberal commentator. Doan is their only opinion writer.

The stations in question are the WFED AM/AM simulcast pair and the WTOP FM/FM/FM trimulcast. In each of these simulcasts, the coverage area of the main station appears to completely subsume that of the smaller stations - so the programming is needlessly repeated on multiple stations.

All 5 stations are owned by Bonneville - which runs explicitly conservative stations in other markets. This in turn raises serious IRS issues, as Bonneville is owned by a religious body.

Doan's commentaries are almost exclusively devoted to assailing the fact that Obama won the election.

Diplomatic criticism of Presidents is patriotic. Perhaps nobody has criticized some of Obama's absurd Cabinet appointments more than good ol' moi. But Doan's commentaries are of the rightist sore loser strain.

Lurita Doan must be upset that a Mitt Romney or a Tommy Thompson isn't basking in the White House right now. All the other side has these days is sore loser fail. The Republican Right is operating entirely on a temper tantrum fueled by their election loss.

This was also true in 1993-94. The difference now is that nobody cares what they think anymore.

The real point of this story is that it doesn't matter how much of an incompetent idiot a Bush appointee is. Once they're out of government, the media always has a spot for them. This enables the cycle to repeat again, as their babblings bring conservatives back into government.

There's not a chance in hell though that this will work in next year's midterm elections. People are too shrewd to allow that now. Still it underscores just how right-wing the media is.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/7/750888/-Liberal-Media-Hires-Yet-Another-Loyal-Bushie)

Freepers act more funny (more Freeper Madness)

I think right-wing hate site Free Republic is on the decline when this is the best they can do.

Regarding the blogger who was threatened with a lawsuit by Sarah Palin, a Free Republic regular said this:

"Was once a time when idiots like this got their mouths shut behind the woodshed."

Which means what?

The Freeper Funhouse Fantasyland goes something like this: They think a blogger who dares to challenge Palin should be dragged from their home, taken behind a woodshed, and have their mouth stapled closed. Thus stopping them from blogging.

According to the Freepers, this happened back in their day and they liked it fine that way. You see, in their world, Freepers ruled, and everyone else obeyed. And - according to them - it was like that throughout all of history until the big, mean libs invented dissent.

Or something like that.

Failin' Palin threatens to sue blogger

Sarah Palin the thin-skinned bully is at it again.

Now she's threatening to explore "legal options" against an Alaska blogger as well as regular media organizations that discuss her resignation.

The blogger's reaction? "Sarah Palin, if you have a problem with me, then sue me."

If I get a summons postmarked Wasilla, that's going to be my reaction too. That's assuming I answer it at all.

This kind of reminds me of the time Pat Robertson sued some congressman who reported how Robertson used his father's influence to be spared combat duty in the Korean War.

If anyone should be sued for defamation, it's Sarah Palin. She falsely accused the President of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." This was an out-and-out lie, yet Palin got away with it.

(Source: http://newsminer.com/news/2009/jul/05/liberal-blogger-says-palin-wont-silence-her)

Banks can take your Social Security!

Betcha didn't know this!

If you collect Social Security or government disability benefits, your bank can just take these benefits from you. They can do this if someone says you owe them a debt (even if the debt is unproven).

There are federal rules designed to prevent this scam. But the rules have a loophole big enough to drive a blimp through.

This loophole has also let creditors go through banks to seize stimulus checks and even veterans' benefits.

How does this loophole work? Welp, federal law says creditors can't take benefits like those mentioned here. But it doesn't say how money that is directly deposited is protected - a gap that creditors exploit.

You might be able to avoid this rip-off by not having your check directly deposited. But that can be a hassle.

Creditors have gone through banks to seize benefits from folks over unpaid medical bills and other debts. Bank of America - which squandered bailout money on bonuses for its execs - froze the account of a disabled couple over a debt they allegedly incurred 15 years earlier.

Worse, banks charge their own fees on customers who have their accounts frozen by creditors! So customers remain perpetually in debt. One family wasn't even aware their account was frozen, so their account became overdrawn, and they ended up incurring fees of $8 for each day that the account had a negative balance.

Members of Congress are urging the Treasury Department to close the loophole and end this high-handed pillaging. But more must be done. Folks who have already been scammed must be repaid their money that was taken - and more.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124361324245066727.html)

FDA says hospital broke blood rules

Another day, another harrowing horror story about the sorry state of the American health care system.

About a month ago, the FDA charged that Elkhart General Hospital in Elkhart, Indiana, broke federal rules on blood donations. According to the FDA, the hospital accepted blood from a donor who had tested positive for hepatitis C antibodies - and gave this blood to 2 patients.

Health care accounts for one-sixth of the American economy, and this is the type of system that results?

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/wcposhared/story/Hospital-Accused-Of-Violating-Blood-Rules/R1txH-y9yUuMVpxDW6aZPA.cspx)

Fatal plate reader chase covered up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The spy state is the scam that keeps on taking.

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

Pounds protect against disease

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

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

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

It's all coming together now.

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

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

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

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

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

Failin' Palin under federal investigation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

East German nostalgia grows

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

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

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

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

This followed Germany's total ban on paintball.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new Tim

The new Tim isn't like the old Tim.

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

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

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

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

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

Big insurance may be watching you in Ohio

Grab your BB guns, folks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A perfect example is this 1986 commersh:

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

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

They look completely plumb stupid.

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

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

Gum. The energy source of the new millennium.

Wall Street Journal goes bonkers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IE8 = garbage

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

The latest version of Exploder is complete, utter garbage.

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

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

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

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

Does anyone know when IE9 comes out?

DeMint's pals shoot out protesters' tires

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

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

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

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

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

DeMint supports overthrow of democratic government

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Failin' Palin to resign!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three down, one to go!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A toast to success! Blub...blub!

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

Judge ignores jury's conviction of MySpace fraudster

Another judge for the impeachment block.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

American laws don't apply to foreign goods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Birmingham has 2 Limbaugh affiliates

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virginia election: Republican versus Republican

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crime pays for county officials

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who says the culture of corruption is just our imagination?

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

BTPers go on strike!

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

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

And that makes them act even funnier.

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

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

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

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

Because this is all just shit and mirrors.

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

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

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

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

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

Duke to increase gas rates

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

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

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

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

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

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

TV coverage of Monday's protest!

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

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



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

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

Court lets gas company drill in state park

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

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

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

I guess it thinks it can.

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

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

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

Chalk up another tally for judicial activism.

WOWO woes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Hooper memories ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Just joking!