Facebook: where real time isn't

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

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

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

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

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

The trouble with the previous entry could have been avoided if Facebook allowed users to edit their imported entries. But it doesn't.

I guess Facebook is also never going to fix its failure to import YouTube videos properly. When I e-mailed them about this almost 2 weeks ago, they said they were aware of the problem. But others have been complaining about it for months, and it hasn't been fixed.

This despite the fact that Facebook tried importing my YouTube favorites list even though I had that marked as private.

Facebook was more interested in rolling out a faulty update to its layout than in fixing its inability to properly import from YouTube.

I really, really despise bigotry

Seriously, I do.

Yes, I know what you're going to say: economic liberal = social conservative. Well, that's a myth, and this myth doesn't work for this blog (or most other things).

I believe that you can't judge someone based on their race, their sexual orientation, or certain other characteristics. Most of you agree with me. If I supported bigotry, I wouldn't be writing a blog like this.

But today, I almost had a close encounter of the Nazi kind.

I went to the laundromat, and while my clothes were in the dryer, 2 guys (who were maybe in their late teens or so) entered the place. They appeared to just be doing laundry, so I had no idea yet what was in store.

But then one of them strolled over to the bulletin board and promptly tacked a National Alliance flier or newsletter to it.

National Alliance is the name of what is quite frankly a neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization based in Hillsboro, West Virginia. In addition to disgracing a good set of initials, the National Alliance has praised Hitler and has been listed by opponents as a neo-Nazi group. I knew the newsletter was from the same National Alliance, because it had a Hillsboro address.

I shut my eyes and summoned the personal strength not to confront these right-wing losers who were patronizing the laundromat. Idiots like this aren't even worth it anymore.

What's amazing is that they posted the flier in full view of several other customers. And the laundromat happens to have a security camera. I'm sure these guys knew I'd disapprove, because almost everyone in Campbell County already knows I hate bigotry.

This dumb duo was still in the laundromat when I had to leave. But I'm sure someone else found their flier and tossed it squarely in the dumpster where it belongs. That's because the Geoff Davis voters who posted it were dumb enough to post it in Bellevue, instead of in certain places in the county where more people would actually believe the right-wing shit they spew.

(You could say that I underreacted, but I was surrounded by racist losers like this in high school, so I had steeled myself for their nonsense.)

Raw racists can publish all the hate-filled propaganda they choose (even though I disagree with their views). But if there's any sort of official investigation into neo-Nazi activities in this part of town, I'll be more than happy to provide authorities with a description of the 2 individuals at the laundromat.

(For this entry, I should be using the symbol from the key to describe racism, but that would've just distracted from this story.)

Due process? Not in Ohio schools!

This story proves America's judicial system is just pulling ideas out of its ass as it's going along.

Make no mistake about it: Student athletes are often mollycoddled and not held to the same stringent standards as other students. This is true from grade school through college. We all know that if an athlete breaks a school rule, they are likely to face a far milder penalty than other students who violate the same rule.

The same is true if an athlete commits a crime.

We've all seen this double standard firsthand, so let's not kid ourselves. It's like this because schools don't want to lose their players.

But is it fair for schools to punish athletes whose alleged crime took place away from school and who might be innocent?

Of course not. But an Ohio appeals court thinks...it is!

Due process took a beating yesterday in the Cincinnati-based state court, when the court ruled that public school students who participate in sports or other extracurricular activities can be punished for conduct that takes place away from school, even if they have not been proven guilty - even if the alleged offense occurs during summer break.

This ruling sprouted from a case in which a high school football player was cited for under-age drinking and possession of alcohol. The incident did not occur at school or any school-related function. In fact, it was during summer vacation.

And he was never convicted, so his guilt was never proven.

Despite this, he was required to sit out several games.

Ohio law used to allow students to appeal certain school-imposed punishments. But the legislature - which at the time was Republican-controlled - gutted this law.

The court's ruling yesterday says students have no right to an appeal - or to any due process. The jurists' so-called reasoning for robbing due process of pupils accused of off-campus offenses is that public schools are statutory boards.

Appeals Court Judge Mark Painter wrote, "School boards are statutory boards created by the Ohio General Assembly. There is no right to appeal a school board's decision absent an express statutory right to appeal."

Um??? If they're statutory boards (i.e., the government), shouldn't that mean that there is a right to appeal?

Painter also wrote that it is not the role of the court "to create a right to appeal" because "the legislature is the only body that may create such a right."

Er, nope. That right was already listed under the Constitution's due process safeguards. You don't have to create a right that already exists. Most rights listed by America's great Constitution are natural rights that all humans are endowed with - so these rights predate even the Constitution.

I guess Ohio is no longer part of the world, if a natural right like due process can be taken away. This ruling is judicial activism at its near-worst.

(Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090314/NEWS0102/903140326/-1/NEWS010703)

Posting problems continue (sigh)

I've just been informed that the problems users have had commenting here have started back up again. Of course.

So just keep trying to post until your comment gets through.

It will bring you fame and fortune as far as the eagle flies!

Glenn Beck says killers are just victims of "political correctness"

Glenn Beck is the raving maniac whose propaganda wins sponsorship from commissioners in Boone County, Kentucky.

Beck now claims spree killers are actually just poor, innocent victims who were "pushed to the wall" by "liberals" and "political correctness."

In a discussion with Bill O'Reilly, Beck said he was worried about conservatives feeling "disenfranchised." He whined that "every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness." So - according to Beck's "logic" - this makes them become dangerous mass killers.

So I guess Bush conservatives have such weak coping skills that any criticism turns them into deranged violent criminals.

In other words, Bushists are so unhinged that when people point out how out of touch they are, they go bonkers and start shooting.

That's psychology Glenn Beck-style, I guess.

(Source: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/beck_people_‘pushed_to_the_wall’_by_‘political_correctness’_launch_spree_killings.php)

Big Business gets its way again

Folks in West Virginia thought they'd scored a victory when state regulators split the state's area code instead of instituting a cumbersome, inconvenient overlay.

But when Big Business yelps, good ideas don't last very long.

Regulators had made the area code change in probably the best way they could: by splitting the existing area code and giving the new code to the area that had seen the most growth in cell phones. If an area's growth causes a split, the growing area should bear the costs of the new code. Fair is fair.

But the phone industry griped about this, because it would have cost them to change the existing numbers. So regulators reversed their initial ruling and decided to implement the overlay instead.

Nice. Instead of costing the phone company, they're costing consumers.

Because of this rubber-stamping of phone company complaints, West Virginians now have to dial 10 digits to make a local call in the same area code.

Overlays serve nobody except phone companies and other large businesses.

Evidently, phone companies are already allowed to block YouTube with no consequences. A certain phone company high-speed ISP in the Midwest has blocked YouTube all day, as a matter of fact. (As proof that YouTube is blocked by this ISP, one can access YouTube as well as ever through proxy servers.) So what more can the phone industry ask for? Does it want each of its customers to kiss its feet?

Big Business needs to shut its damn gizzard tight. If there's enough new customers for a new area code, then the phone company obviously isn't hurting for money. So it can afford to foot the bill for splitting the state.

(Source: http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/502197.html)

Ari Fleischer lies, gets smacked down

Every major policy by the Bush regime was built on a carefully woven pattern of lies. Every damn one of them.

Bush is out of office now, but his crew of nation-destroyers still won't give up their sorry falsehoods.

Like a day or two ago, when Bush's former press secretary Ari Fleischer was interviewed by Chris Matthews.

In this interview, Fleischer once again claimed Iraq had something to do with 9/11 - a view that had long since been discredited. In fact, the Bush regime knew from the start it wasn't true. I'm not even going into detail about it again here. But the Bushists claimed Iraq was behind 9/11 just so there'd be an excuse to start a war there.

In short, Fleischer and other members of Bush's regime are nothing but big liars.

Of course, the media fed this lie for years. It rarely questioned it.

Until the Matthews interview, when it finally started to come undone.

Matthews aired a tape of the interview, in which Fleischer said, "Chris, and I believe this still today, and of course you can disagree with it, but after September 11th, having been hit once, how could we take a chance Saddam might not strike again? ..."

Matthews cut away from the tape and discussed Fleischer's dishonesty.

For Saddam to have struck again, he had to have struck once. But he didn't. The regime in Iraq had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or 9/11.

Ari Fleischer got smacked down by Chris Matthews, of all people!

CHRIS MATTHEWS!!!

Matthews has usually been friendly to the right-wing brain trust (as it were), but I guess even he couldn't let Fleischer's blatant fibbing muck up the airwaves.

Maybe we should be asking ourselves why anyone was supposed to give a shit what Ari Fleischer thinks. Maybe he's becoming another Newt Gingrich or William Kristol in that he's going to keep being interviewed by every channel about every news event for years after he's past his prime.

Eight years after 9/11, Bush regime officials keep telling the same tired lies.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/12/181428/110/7/707827)

Had a dream...I was born...to find a better high school...

If you've read this blog but not my other writings, you probably don't know how legendary my battle against a certain right-wing Catholic high school I once attended is.

I started high school at that campus and went there for 3 years. And suffice it to say, it was a terrible school.

For several years around the early 2000s (when I was about 30), I had a recurring dream in which I somehow escaped this school and started attending the area's public high school instead - and everything worked out in the end.

Dreams are interesting, and I think they're meant to be interpreted. In a way, I later went on to do what I felt this dream told me to do.

In real life, the Catholic school I attended was bound to be an automatic disaster, and I don't know why anyone actually thought it wouldn't be. I never attended the public high school in my county, but I guarantee you it would have sucked too - only not as badly. Instead of getting beaten up during each class, I would have probably only gotten beaten up between each class.

I've been told in recent years that I would have encountered few problems at the public school, because I'd have enough allies to defend me. I doubt that - but I'm sure it couldn't have been as bad as the Catholic school.

I'll never know, because I was never allowed to attend the public high school in my own district. I personally got in an argument with one of the school officials about this. The apparent reason for my exclusion was that I got kicked out of the middle school for cussing out a teacher who hit me.

Despite never attending the public high school, I feel much more of a part of its community than I do of the Catholic high school I attended for 3 years.

I still struggle daily with things that happened at school almost 25 years ago. I still have flashbacks and insomnia. But I thought I'd resolved the issue of contrasting the Catholic high school versus the public high school, which was the subject of the recurring dream.

Yesterday morning, however, I had this dream again. It was my final dream before waking up - which is supposed to be the night's defining dream. The dream was satisfying at first, but later in the day it got to be frightening.

What does it mean? I think the dream is related to the rise of Facebook - but I'm certainly not joining a Facebook group whose description seems to exclude me.

Dreams are fascinating. And the reemergence of this dream is going to be resolved sooner or later.

Unemployed? Perry doesn't care

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has long been a known liar. And this story continues to prove what a fucking asshole he is.

When Louisiana's Bobby Jindal refused to accept stimulus money to pay for unemployment insurance for workers in his state, it was bad enough. But a similar tantrum by Perry makes it even more plain how mean-spirited the Republican intelligentsia (as it were) has become.

Obama's stimulus package set aside $555,000,000 for unemployed Texans. But Rick Perry has decreed that Texas can't have this money.

If you're unemployed in the Lone Star State, you won't be seeing stimulus money - all because Perry decided not to let you have it.

He doesn't even want to help his own constituents? How hateful can you get?

And why? Just so he can make a point about what a big conservative he is - just to please the Republican party faithful.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/12/national/a124857D51.DTL)

My view on View-Master

View-Master.

Who doesn't love View-Master?

Apparently, the people who make View-Master don't.

I grew up on View-Master. View-Master was a little toy that used small paper discs featuring photographs of various things. You could look through your View-Master and see 3-D images of your favorite cartoon characters, TV shows, and (perhaps best of all) national parks.

Some View-Master reels had an audio disc that was actually a tiny record. These could be played in a battery-operated viewer that featured sound.

A poorly made View-Master reel might lose the glue that held the photos on the disc. So if you collected View-Master reels, you might eventually find yourself with piles of minuscule photographic slides that could never be reattached to the reels. Overall, however, it was a high-quality toy.

View-Master though is now owned by Fisher-Price - which unfortunately has announced that it's discontinuing this classic plaything, according to Wikipedia.

However, another account says Fisher-Price will keep making reels for cartoon characters such as Shrek and Dora the Explorer. But View-Master reels for our great national parks have been discontinued - never to be seen again.

View-Master's national park reels weren't just fun. They were educational. But now they're gone.

Fisher-Price's rationale for discontinuing national park reels is that families who visit national parks now prefer to spend the trip home watching DVD's instead of looking at View-Master reels.

Really? DVD's in the car? Won't they warp?

The America we grew up with is dead. It's dumbed down, wussified, gone into thin air, down the memory hole.

This story is like the one about Crayola giving awful, sickly sweet names to its colors or the attempt by 'Sesame Street' to downplay Oscar the Grouch. I'm surprised the reason for phasing out View-Master isn't something totally idiotic, like small children being afraid of the viewer because it looks too much like a comic book villain.

View-Master is yet another entry in the long list of things being robbed from today's children (and adults).

(Source: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/40705617.html)

Plane drops debris on Queens

The "regulation for thee, not for me" cult is known for excusing every airline blunder that might possibly occur. If a commercial jet crashes in a residential neighborhood and kills people in their homes, the excuse is always, "It had to crash somewhere."

Frankly, I'm fed up with this corporate apologism, and I don't need to be subjected to it again. But I know what the excuse is going to be following this story: "It had to drop its debris somewhere."

Commercial airliners dropping red-hot plane parts in urban areas is one of America's most covered-up stories. The problem has heightened for years, and the government has shown no interest in reining in the airlines.

So it continues.

No regulation, no consequences, no nothing.

This laissez-faire policy is driven by airlines' greed.

Yesterday, it happened again - this time in Queens. An American Airlines plane that launched from LaGuardia Airport dropped hundreds of pieces of hot metal from 1,800 feet onto a major commercial district.

An FAA investigation called it an "uncontained engine failure."

When you're dealing with major corporations such as airlines, it's uncontained everything, isn't it? In today's America, personal behavior is regulated; corporations are not.

Is somebody going to end up being killed by airline debris (if it hasn't happened already) before the government reregulates the industry?

The government needs to impose heavy fines - in the billions - against airlines that expel debris.

(Source: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyplan0312,0,1570664.story)

New York Times hires yet another conservative columnist

Another day, yet another conservative talking head hired by the New York Times: Ross Douthat.

I hate to bellyache, but I have to: Douthat is 6 years younger than me, yet already he gets hired by the largest paper in America. I've been in the opinion business much longer than he has, yet he gets his diatribes printed in major papers simply because of politics.

If there was any doubt at all that the media has a right-wing bias, this should dash those doubts. All a conservative has to do to get a major writing gig is scribble down some garbledygoop, and they're hired.

They don't have to think. They don't have to use logic. They just have to say something, no matter how little sense it makes.

Every day, we see stories about the decline of newspapers. It seems like papers go out of business faster than remaining papers can report it. I don't think the rise of the Internet is the only factor. If it was, papers wouldn't be slashing their online activities too, and more papers would be continuing as online publications.

I think the media's right-wing bias is just as big of a factor. I stopped buying the print edition of the Cincinnati Post precisely because of its one-sided coverage. (This occurred even before the print paper was discontinued.)

Right-wing bias continues to plague the local media. An article appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer today hyping this Sunday's Tea Party mockery - and it failed to even mention the fact that the event was secretly bankrolled by corporate interests. Then again, this is the Enquirer, which has long supported corporate causes and opposed organized labor. The more important point is that this bias certainly isn't endearing to readers.

If the print media was the watchdog for the public that it should be, it could have certainly grown its online operations instead of withering and dying. There should be a strong market for competing online papers in every American city.

(Source: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--newyorktimes-newc0311mar11,0,2729692.story)

Coleman posts credit card numbers, blames hackers

Allow me to make this clear, Pigpen: You can't do this shit.

Now it turns out that Norm Coleman - the sore loser in Minnesota - was dumb enough to post the database featuring his campaign donors' credit card numbers online. Yes, it featured all the numbers plus the 3-digit security codes.

In public. For the whole wide world to ogle (beep).

Coleman learned of this security flaw 6 weeks ago - but dismissed it. Thus, it wasn't repaired.

And now Coleman is blaming the whole thing on hackers - even though his campaign posted the data itself.

In any event, Coleman has now had the unpleasant task of telling his contributors that they should replace their credit cards, after this fuck-up exposed their card numbers. Still, he refuses to apologize.

It also raises the question of whether Coleman violated state law when he failed to report the security breach immediately.

How Norm Coleman ever expected to be trusted as a senator is beyond me.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/12/2489/23886/304/707522)

County sponsors (ugh!) Glenn Beck show

The fact that radio and TV host Glenn Beck (pictured here) is a shitmouth thug must be what endears him to certain public officials in northern Kentucky.

Beck has used his program to threaten Michael Moore's life. Beck once said, "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out - is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus band Do [sic], and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now."

After that, of course, so-called news outlets gave Glenn Beck even more face time.

Now Boone County is actually sponsoring an airing of a Beck-hosted show.

Commissioner Cathy Flaig has organized a viewing party of Beck's show tomorrow at 5 PM at the Briarwood Banquet Center in Hebron. The show is titled 'We Surround Them' and is scheduled to air on the discredited Fox News Channel. Reportedly, 'We Surround Them' is nothing but a recycled right-wing rant taking the form of a TV special.

Nice to know Boone County has dethroned Campbell County as northern Kentucky's leader in right-wing machine politics. (Exurbs will do that.) An activist far-right government has been a constant in Boone County since the late '90s when it tried to scuttle Halloween trick-or-treating because county officials felt it was un-Christian.

Once again, they've gone much too far.

Cathy Flaig should resign immediately for her support of a scumbag like Glenn Beck who threatened to assassinate an accomplished filmmaker.

If Flaig does not resign, she should be recalled.

I won't get to protest the viewing party, because I instead plan on going to a nice family meal where I won't have to be subjected to the Boone County machine's propaganda and deception. Besides, Flaig decided to hold the party at a place that working-class folks from the city can't actually, like, get to. (Not like the event is supposed to do anything except energize wealthy right-wing exurbanites.)

When you're a public official like a county commissioner, you're supposed to represent the public. Not use your position to whip up support for fascist thugs like Glenn Beck.

(Source: http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20090312/NEWS0103/903120350)

Writer invents Wikipedia scandal to gripe about

What sort of idiot actually thinks Wikipedia has a liberal bias? A dumb one.

In the past few days, the fuckheadosphere has screamed its ugly face off about Wikipedia allegedly scrubbing any negative stories about President Obama. Naturally, Fox News dutifully picked up this story.

This couldn't possibly be the same Wikipedia where volunteer editors yanked the entry about The Online Lunchpail because of this blog's politics, could it? Why yes, it is. The Foxfux are delusional enough to believe Wikipedia has a liberal bias, even after that.

To nobody's surprise, it turns out the wingnuts' story of Obama-themed censorship is completely bogus.

The story was initially spread by Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem correspondent for far-right hate site WorldNetDaily. Klein is a major contributor to right-wing news organizations such as Fox News and the recently defunct incarnation of the far-right New York Sun.

Any story by someone from WorldNutDaily should be dismissed out of hand. That site has no credibility. At all. Fox just had to pump up this story though, didn't they?

It turns out though that someone working for Klein made the edits to the Obama entry that other Wikipedia users reverted. The edits were made under Klein's direction. Why were they reverted? Because they were designed to spread discredited conspiracy theories, like the birth certificate flap that was already debunked last year.

In other words, the Wikipedia flap is a manufactured story. Klein directed the posting of bogus information on Wikipedia - just so he'd have a reason to accuse "liberals" at Wikipedia of "censoring" it.

Aaron Klein calls himself a journalist? A real journalist would never pull this shit.

When another blog reported Klein's deception, Klein cried that he was being "defamed" - even though what the blog printed was true. Klein admitted that he oversaw the edits, but claimed it was "entirely legitimate journalistic practice." Uh, no. It's not.

I know this, because I studied mass media in college. What mass media classes did you take, Aaron?

Perhaps the bigger story is that Fox deliberately distorted the news by latching onto Klein's fraudulent story.

The FCC used to look very, very dimly upon stations distorting news. Other commenters here have pointed this out before and invited folks to read about the WLBT case. That case involved one of the most severe actions ever taken by the FCC against a station.

If the FCC was as on the ball now as it was in the '60s, there's no question Fox would be facing stiff sanctions.

My message for Aaron Klein: Obama won. Get over it.

(Source: http://valleywag.gawker.com/5167585/right+wing-writer-invents-his-own-obama-wikipedia-scandal)

Right-wing station owner loses defamation case, goes bankrupt

Several years ago, John Stokes purchased KGEZ radio in Kalispell, Montana. Stokes promptly made KGEZ a soapbox for his conservative ideology.

Not long ago, however, a jury ordered Stokes to pay $3,800,000 for defaming 2 local businessmen over the air. Now, because of this ruling, Stokes has had to declare bankruptcy.

The unhinged maniac has had quite a history with KGEZ. After buying the station, he began broadcasting local environmentalists' home addresses and encouraging listeners to pay them hostile visits. Stokes once said of environmentalists, "Finish them off and make sure they don't have babies."

He was also the subject of controversy over Nazi-themed signs he posted near neighbors' property. This followed the neighbors' refusal to sell Stokes their property (because he didn't make a good offer), and the mysterious disappearance of the neighbors' "for sale" signs. "It is well-known I have been associated with swastikas," Stokes boasted.

Stokes has long been criticized for views many locals feel to be racist and anti-Semitic. He has also demanded cutting off the limbs of anyone who can't speak English.

The FCC won't give me a broadcasting license, but they let John Stokes have one? If anyone doubted there was a deliberate effort by Bush's FCC to foster the growth of right-wing media, at the expense of opposing viewpoints, this should lay these doubts to rest.

While a defamation suit against a rare single owner like Stokes can have a small impact, what about the major right-wing corporations that each own hundreds of stations that spew the same type of nonsense and similarly defame opponents?

(Source: http://www.kxmc.com/News/342468.asp;
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/01/orca-killers.html;
http://missoulian.com/articles/2007/09/16/news/local/news04.txt;
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2008/07/08/news/news04.txt;
http://the698update.blogspot.com/2008/10/swiss-give-up-banking-clients-secrecy.html;
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/blog/2009/01/30/sticks-and-stones)

Bert, you call that planning?! ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

This is yet another of the 'Sesame Street' sketches I've been hoarding using YouTube's favorites feature...

In this skit from 1977, Bert tries to give his orange-haired infant nephew Brad a bath, but Ernie notices something is wrong...



Uh, Ernie??? The lack of bath toys isn't the biggest problem.

The far more serious issue is that I think that's a toilet, not a bathtub. Notice that it's making a flushing sound at the beginning. It looks like one of those tankless toilets schools like to buy.

"Bert! Bert! You're not gonna put the baby in a tub like that!"

"What's wrong, what is it, what is it?!"

"Uh, Bert, that giant turd I left in there last night didn't go all the way down when you flushed it!"

After Ernie clogs the porcelain receptacle with all those bath toys, Gordon and Susan must be thankful that Bert and Ernie got the basement apartment instead of the one on the top floor!

Right-wing millionaire planned dirty bomb

James G. Cummings was a right-wing trust fund millionaire from Maine who was slain by his wife in December.

Cummings was known for his opposition to Obama. Much of his vitriol was of the sort you might see on any right-wing blog these days.

But it turns out Cummings was also a Nazi sympathizer who filled out a form to join a Nazi organization and displayed a flag with a Nazi swastika. And it also turns out that Cummings tried to make a dirty bomb. He had all the ingredients - even uranium - and tried making the bomb in his kitchen sink.

He planned to set off the bomb as a protest against Obama's election.

Cummings's wife also told police that he subjected her to years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse.

This millionaire was a nuclear Timothy McVeigh - yet the media outside Maine didn't cover the story. That's because he was practically a creation of the strain of right-wing vitriol that dominates talk radio and the wingnutosphere.

For years, international terrorism has been held out as America's greatest threat. But there's one bigger threat that's been ignored: right-wing domestic terrorism.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Slain_white_supremacist_had_components_for_0309.html)

Georgia on my mind

About Georgia: It was on my mind.

This entry is another that contrasts the sense of entitlement the rightist brain trust seems to possess versus the relative humility that everyone else has.

When I read about a certain GOP politician harboring a grudge against the Democrats because he thinks Jimmy Carter kept his family from going on vacation when he was 10, I got the impression that they probably went on vacation more than once that year. I grew up in the '70s, and I know that Republicans who opposed Carter on economic issues were usually financially secure, and probably didn't have to worry about not having enough money to go on a trip.

If a working-class kid from Kentucky like me went on 2 vacations in 1978 (albeit within Kentucky and Ohio), the average Republican household could likely afford 3.

The attitude of the politician in question reminds me of the reaction of some of my classmates regarding the 8th grade class trip - which I wrote about in my book 'The Fight That Never Ends'. Indeed, I got ridiculed in high school because I'd never been to Florida.

Normally, as long as I can travel outside a radius of 50 miles or so once a year, I'm more than satisfied. And a couple weeks ago, I did so in Georgia.

This was just a one-night trip, and it was in the very closest corner of the Peachtree State. One of the purposes of this fact-finding mission was to test a new GPS a family member buyed. And trust me, I worked on this blog while I was away. This was only my third overnight trip in the history of this blog.

What facts did I find? Fact #1: it rains a lot on my trips. Fact #2: the GPS works. Fact #3: I amassed over 100 photos and videos with the Eyewitness Cam:

http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09a.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09b.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09c.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09d.html
http://www.angelfire.com/yt2/lastword/roadpics/ga09e.html

One Allowed Cloud was seen in that photo set that's just begging for defiance: the "no cruising zone" in Athens, Georgia. It's unconstitutional under the freedom of assembly, of course, but who's keeping track? (Me.)

Diaper Dave throws tantrum at airport

For most people, even very reasonable airline behavior can get them charged with air piracy and probably placed on the terror watch list for life. Airlines leave passengers stranded on the ground for hours with the restroom locked, yet heaven forbid the states regulate the airlines.

But right-wing scumbags like Sen. Dave Vitter (R-Louisiana) can throw a screeching tantrum because they miss a flight, and it's called "art."

Vitter - known for his appearance on a prostitution client list and his diaper fetish - missed his flight from Washington to New Orleans last week. After missing the flight, he opened an armed security door, set off an alarm, and chewed out an airline employee.

Diaper Dave's harangue followed the now-familiar "do-you-know-who-I-am" mold. Talk about a sense of entitlement!

Maybe his diaper was getting poopy, and he needed to use the restroom on the plane.

Congressional Republicans seem to have problems with airport behavior in the past few years. There's the Larry Craig scandal, of course, and there was John Hostettler's attempt to bring a gun on board. (John Hostettler, a vicious anti-Semite, only got elected in the first place because the so-called election was rigged.)

Anybip, employees called airline security on Vitter, but Vitter yelled back that they could call security and the local police if they wanted. Then he stomped off like a big baby.

If most people acted this way, they would have been arrested on sight. But David Vitter gets (ahem) pampered.

If the missed flight was because of some airline fuck-up, maybe it should teach Vitter a lesson about his own support for deregulating big corporations. But he'll never learn, because most stupid people don't.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/GOP_senator_flips_out_at_airline_0311.html)

Students punished for opposing test

If anyone still thinks American schools don't try to police thoughts, this story should kablammo that notion to tiny shards.

In Storm Lake, Iowa, officials at Storm Lake High School forced bilingual students to take an English test that was meant for small children who are not proficient in English. This despite the fact that many of the students forced to take the test are completely fluent in the English language.

The test asked questions like what sound a cow makes and what a chair is.

One student refused to take the test, because it was so far beneath her abilities. The test would have been a complete waste of time.

In a satisfying show of solidarity, other students walked out of class to show support for their schoolmate.

The result? These students were promptly given detention for the thoughtcrime of daring to stand in solidarity with a classmate.

And the student who refused the test? Well, she received 3 days of in-school suspension and may be punished further. Talk about schools policing thoughts!

The school's excuse is that the test was federally mandated. Then why don't we hear about this test being required in other school districts? If this is indeed some No Child Left Behind bullshit, then maybe someone should have told Bush that he didn't get to decide how communities run their schools.

And so it continues. See what I mean about thought control in our schools?

(Source: http://www.kcautv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9962851&nav=1kgl)

Chuck Norris goes completely bonkers

Twenty years ago, Chuck Norris was one of the most admired celebrities in America. So it's truly sad to see him become the babbling mess of a man he is now.

Quite frankly, I'm almost in tears to see how far Norris has declined. I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels the same way.

Lately, some of the kookier neighborhoods of the wingnutosphere have demanded that the U.S. military refuse any order President Obama gives them. This would be illegal, of course, as the President is Commander-in-Chief. But this demand underscores what a bunch of sore losers the wingnuts are.

Now it's getting beyond the point where it's no longer funny but simply sad.

Now Chuck Norris has joined this call by claiming there are thousands of right-wing cell groups willing to back him up in a revolt against the government.

In an appearance on Glenn Beck's talk-shit radio show, Norris said he might "run for President of Texas." Norris said he can do this because Texas never was part of the United States in the first place. He said Texas is actually a separate country.

Well, if Texas was never part of the United States, that means the Bushes didn't live in the U.S. when they ran for President. The Constitution says you had to have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years to be President.

I guess that means we can erase everything the Bush royal family did in the White House, huh, Chuck?

It was conservative politicians who broke the social contract in the '90s, so if anyone had cause to secede, it was the less conservative areas - to avoid being hamstrung by illegitimate America-hating "leaders" like Newt Gingrich and little Georgie.

And believe me, they were illegitimate. The electoral events of 1994 had little more legitimacy than Bush's bogus 2000 "win", and it is our duty to say so.

We were force-fed leadership we didn't like for decades, and if we dared to criticized it, we were ignored, ridiculed, fought - before most folks realized we were right. Now it's Chuck Norris's turn to have to live under leadership he doesn't like.

School lacks librarian so it can track mandatory service work

Let's get a few things clear: "Mandatory volunteerism" is an oxymoron - and it violates the spirit of what volunteering is all about.

And I think a public school having unpaid service requirements for graduation is unconstitutional. Courts haven't agreed, because constitutional law isn't exactly a high priority in America's courts these days, but that's another matter.

I haven't favored such programs, and I think these requirements go against the grain of community.

However, one school in Boulder, Colorado, sees things a bit differently from how a constitutional legal eagle should. New Vista High School is so eager to implement its new mandatory unpaid labor requirement that it's willing to sacrifice literacy for it.

The school has assigned faculty members to track whether students comply with the new rule and determine whether students' service projects meet the school's goals.

That comes at a massive cost to the school. So how does the school pay for it? By eliminating the school librarian's job. "The way we pay for it is we don't have a librarian," the principal boasted.

The school likes having its library books scattered and inaccessible, I guess.

I also get the feeling the school won't approve students' service projects unless they meet the school's ideology. America has been down this road before: One school that required "community service" for graduation prohibited students from volunteering for organizations that supported relaxing America's draconian marijuana laws. However, the school allowed pupils to volunteer for organizations that took the opposite stance.

Schools have also forced students to fulfill their "community service" requirements by working for free at for-profit businesses. This is a problem not just from the unpaid labor standpoint: It also takes jobs away from paid workers.

These requirements also take time away from students who already have a job.

It doesn't matter how progressive a city or county is: America's schools are almost always on the right wing of the spectrum. And they're probably not going to approve service projects that dissent from this order.

Of course, that doesn't stop one local activist from demanding the Boulder Valley School District make "community service" a requirement in all its schools, at every grade level.

It's a shame that in modern America, schools are considered the final arbiters of community life. With the poor quality and bad attitudes displayed by our schools, that's worse than simply unwieldy.

(Source: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/mar/09/community-service-requirement-pitched-to-boulder)

Alabama AG under investigation

Another little idiot is in the fight of his political life, and we're none too surprised.

Troy King, a Republican, is Alabama's Attorney General. King is a major purveyor of the new Rockefeller drug laws against pseudoephedrine, and he also pushed new voter ID requirements designed to suppress turnout and intimidate voters.

King got interested in politics when he was 10 because he thought it was Jimmy Carter's fault his family couldn't go on vacation. Which is bullshit, because he turned 10 in one of the few years that my family went on vacation twice.

My family didn't get to go on vacation the year I turned 10, because of Reagan's recession. So we're even, Troy. In fact, I know folks my age who probably didn't leave the Tri-State basic trading area once during the '80s, thanks to Reagan's excuse for an economy.

In 2007, it was discovered that King had accepted free tickets, food, and skybox access to an Atlanta Braves game from Alabama Power Company. The utility hadn't reported these "gifts" to ethics agencies until a newspaper asked about it. The obvious conflict is that King's job is supposed to be to represent his state's residents, many of whom are Alabama Power customers.

Oops.

A former investigator with Troy King's office later claimed King had ordered a politically motivated probe of a judge.

Now King is under a federal investigation.

It's unclear exactly what the investigation is about, but 6 former members of his staff were questioned by a grand jury last week about their connections to King allies (including one who admitted involvement in a bribery scandal).

Troy King is an attorney general who has consistently proven that he does the bidding of Big Business, not the people of his state. So it's hard for me to trust a word he says.

Of course, his apologists are crying that the probe against him is politically motivated. They really do want me to use the sore loser symbol again, don't they?

(Source: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/03/alabama_ag_reportedly_under_fe.html)

Don't leave home without it. On second thought, do.

American Express likes to tell folks not to leave home without it. But for many customers, it no longer makes much of a difference.

The credit card giant is now placing a hold on many customers' cards without warning - even customers who have had American Express cards for years and have never been late with a payment.

As you might guess, while a credit card is frozen, it's no good.

While American Express freezes customers' cards, it asks these customers to fill out an IRS form to get their tax records going back 3 years.

Corporations are asking for tax records now? Why??? Is this even legal? It sounds like a sure route to identity theft to me, since the records also include Social Security numbers. Bear in mind that these tax records are going overseas where American authorities have a harder time keeping track of what happens to them.

American Express has warned customers that if they don't allow their tax records to be released, their credit cards will be canceled for good within 5 days.

You'd think American Express would want to keep every customer it can, but I guess not. Maybe the company is going after customers who pay their bills on time because these customers aren't Making much Money for them.

(Source: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/amexholds.html)

Eric Cantor. A dumbass.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) ranked high on the list of Republican vice-presidential prospects in 2008. So nobody expects him to not sound like a total fartpipe at least some of the time.

Cantor, the House Republican Whip, is truly living down to expectations.

In a CNN interview, Cantor spouted off about President Obama's restoration of stem cell research. Cantor said, "Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job #1. Let's focus on what needs to be done."

Then what the fuck do you think all that economic stimulus stuff was about, Eric?

You know. The stimulus bill you voted against, Eric.

This is really Cantor's way of admitting that disallowing stem cell research isn't ethically supportable. So he tried changing the subject.

I want to talk about the economy too. But just not on terms that are unilaterally set by the GOP. The right-wing brain trust seems hell-bent on blaming Obama for the recession. (You can't make this stuff up, folks.)

(Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/08/obama.stem.cells)

Surprise, surprise: Meth production soars because of new laws

Just to be clear, the laws limiting Sudafed purchases aren't working in the fight against meth. We knew they weren't working, and we knew when they first passed that they wouldn't work.

Apologists for these laws have long spewed their propaganda about how failsafe their laws are, but now it's starting to come apart for them. So maybe now we can finally have a two-sided debate about these draconian laws.

Because of the new laws, the state of Indiana has just posted its second-highest number of meth labs ever - a 31% increase from the year before.

In just the first 2 months of the year, police in Tulsa have uncovered 28 meth labs - compared with 41 for all of last year. So Tulsa is on track to see a fourfold increase in meth labs, after passage of the new laws.

Officials say meth makers aren't affected by the new laws, because they evade limits on psuedophedrine-containing products by getting small quantities from various retailers, instead of just one store. Like we couldn't see from the get-go that this would happen?

So what's the answer? Well, considering the drug warriors live in a Bizarro World, their answer is...yet more laws to inconvenience innocent people. Of course.

The vicious cycle of tyranny creep continues: A problem was identified, ineffective laws were passed to "fight" it, the problem got worse, so more laws are planned.

But the idiots never learn, do they? If they did, I wouldn't be writing about this now. I for one am tired of having to expose a law that was doomed to fail from the start.

Next time you have allergies, you should protest these laws by buying small quantities of pseudoephedrine products at different stores, just so the authorities have some extra work to do going after someone who's completely innocent. They'll never know what hit them.

(Source: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090308/LOCAL/903080416;
http://www.kten.com/Global/story.asp?S=9968307)

My Daylight Wasting Time proposal

Now that Daylight Wasting Time has (unfortunately for this region) beginned anew, here's my tongue-in-cheek proposal to appease the Far Right...

Regulars of Free Republic can continue to sleep all day, except when they're reposting and commenting on RNC press releases.

Members of Congress can continue to sleep on the job.

CEO's of major banks that got bailout money can sleep while our tax dollars fund their huge salary bonuses they gave themselves.

Everyone else shall spend each night sleepless while they wait 5 years to see a doctor under America's broken health care system. You have cancer? Oh, they might call you in 4½ years.

It's about the global economy and competition, folks!

Double your laughter again! (Bubble Gum Weekend)

A couple months ago, I told you about a Doublemint commersh from 1994 in which this brand of gum caused an aging man to completely change his mood.

Unfortunately, this ad hurt someone's feelings, so YouPube pulled it. Fortunately, another copy of this commercial remains intact:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ2W1WxcWZ8

To ridicule Doublemint's apparent claim to be a good laughing gas substitute, I made a parody today of that scene. I didn't happen to have any Doublemint laying around though, so I had to use sliced cheese instead:



Next time I have my once-a-decade dentist visit, I want some Doublemint!

A bad day for Metric Man

This is your lighthearted news story for this weekend...

An expensive endeavor is drawing to a close, and Corporate America must be none too pleased.

In the '80s, Interstate 19 in Arizona began using the metric system (usually to the complete exclusion of U.S. units such as miles) to sign its distances. Even some staunch opponents of metric imperialism such as myself could excuse this, because I-19 carried much traffic from Mexico, where the metric system is official.

But now the government is ending this "experiment" and reverting I-19 back to mile-based signage.

It goes to show how costly the switch to metric was in the first place.

Perhaps the more important issue is that this indicates we may be able to breathe a sigh of relief that the U.S. won't be muscled into adopting the metric system any time soon (if ever). In this age of computers, why switch? If the gloBULL economy is what's at stake, large businesses should have the tools to do our metric conversions for us.

You may not realize how close the United States came under the elder Bush to making the metric system official and banishing the U.S. customary system. If Clinton had one positive achievement that had a far greater impact than anyone thinks, it may have been his scuttling of Bush's metric edict.

Forced metrication would have benefited very few outside of Big Business - and cost most Americans time and money.

(Source: http://www.sahuaritasun.com/articles/2009/03/06/breaking_news/00mileposts0308.txt)