Lawn Chair Quarterback: "Brrrrring! Channel 9!"

Tim reminisces about a memorable jingle once used by a local TV station...

7 more weird dreams!

I have lots of strange dreams - the most common theme of which is escaping the poopy clutches of the catastrophic Bishop Brossart High School. But I've amassed several dreams over the past 14 months that are truly bizarre....

• While I was camping out at Big Bend during last year's fact-finding mission, I had a dream about an episode of Leave It To Beaver in which Ward and the Beav were playing the board game Sorry! along with Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show. Every time something didn't go his way, Ward yelled out, "Goddammit!" Aunt Bee eventually tired of this behavior and left. Then Ward gave Beaver a lecture about the Federal Reserve and "sound money."

• In another dream, rapper Humpty Hump hired me to guard a disk drive.

• In yet another dream, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez visited Cincinnati and paid for a chauffeur to drive me all over Boone County.

• I also had a dream in which singer John Mayer stabbed somebody on Fountain Square during a rally and then tearfully confessed to it.

• I had a dream in which I was a teenager again and started a pirate radio station that illegally rebroadcast college football and basketball games. In this dream, my dad punished me by requiring me to write a letter of apology to all the stations that were duly authorized to carry these sporting events. The letter was to be read over the air at each station. However, this did not apply to New York stations, as they were assumed to be profitable enough.

• In another dream that placed me back in my teenage years, an insurance company sent a letter to my parents accusing me of accidentally burning down an abandoned limestone mine in Highland Heights. The letter was hand-delivered by a Highland Heights police officer who was on the force years ago.

• In the latest weird dream, some towering fratboy type walked past a map of Campbell County on display in a public building and sliced it with a box cutter. He almost decapitated me by not putting the box cutter away fast enough as he walked past.

These dreams will puzzle psychologists for centuries to come.

More right-wing brainwashing in Kentucky schools

The more things change, the more the Kentucky school system stays the same.

Since today is a day ending in y, Kentucky schools are indoctrinating students in right-wing dogma. This time, it's happening at South Laurel High School, a public school in Laurel County.

A teacher at this school wrote on a classroom board, "You can't be a democrat & go to heaven." Since I'm a registered Green and not a Democrat, I guess that means there's still a chance for my salvation.

A student tried challenging the instructor's scrawlings and ended up being harassed for it. In response to this harassment, the student's mother said in frustration, "You don't send them to school to have someone else's opinion shoved down their throat and demand they agree with it." Actually, in Kentucky, you do: Kentucky schools have endorsed a far-right agenda for decades. No dissent is tolerated. (You should have heard what they said about Dukakis.)

As Kentuckians, we have several options in dealing with the Tea Party zombies:

1) Sit on our asses and complain.
2) Move to Illinois.
3) Fight back!

(Source: http://kysdc.com/2881398/kentucky-teacher-you-cant-be-a-democrat-and-go-to-heaven)

Abortion rate up under Bush, down under Obama

The media elite likes to accuse everybody else of promoting abortion, but this story should silence these claims. The more important point though is that this story shows that nobody should be more furious at the Republican brain trust than abortion opponents.

Statistics for 2009 - the first year of the Obama era - have just been released by the CDC. According to these numbers, America's abortion rate dropped 5% in 2009. This is the steepest drop in a decade, and it follows years of increases under Bush.

Isn't one of the Republicans' main themes their pledge to stop abortion? There's little doubt that people have voted GOP over the years based solely on this promise. Since it's clear the Republicans don't deliver on this promise, what now?

There was a video on YouTube a while back about how Mississippi votes Republican despite being the poorest state. In this clip, an impoverished man talks about how he's going to keep voting Republican because he thinks maybe it'll work someday. The same principle applies to this story: If you want abortion to be less prevalent, voting for the discredited GOP hasn't accomplished a damn thing. So why keep voting for them?

Lawn Chair Quarterback: "It's Always Better When It's Basted!"

Tim regales you with a funny story about an R-rated saying...

Sore loser boycott of Electoral College fails hilariously

The Tea Party has not just the coping skills of a 6-month-old, but also the weak literacy skills that go along with it.

Because President Obama was handily reelected over the Tea Party's Mitt Romney, the teabumblers are in meltdown mode. In addition to trying to get states to secede from the U.S. in protest (even states Obama won), they're trying to boycott the Electoral College.

They said the Twelfth Amendment requires the Electoral College to have a quorum of two-thirds of its members before they can vote. So they've been urging Romney's electors to simply not show up. That way, there's no quorum, so no President can be chosen.

But now somebody has pointed out to them a fatal flaw in this scheme. The Twelfth Amendment's two-thirds quorum rule doesn't apply to the Electoral College. It applies to Congress in case no candidate gets an electoral majority.

Does the Tea Party not know how to fucking read? It's very clear that the quorum rule covers Congress, not the Electoral College. It's completely unambiguous.

Tune in next time when the Tea Party claims Congress can veto an Occupy general assembly with a simple majority of state delegations.

TeenScreen closes down!

TeenScreen was a totalitarian vestige of the "do as you're told" Bush era.

This aggressive, unscientific "mental health screening" program was activated in most U.S. states and several foreign countries under the auspices of Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health - which itself aimed to increase Big Pharma's profits. The program was quickly discredited, yet it continued with almost no limits.

Among other things, TeenScreen interrogators asked intrusive, personal questions of children as young as 9, and kids were wrongly profiled and drugged based on their answers. Children were lured into this trap with promises of pizza parties and other gifts. A goal of TeenScreen was to screen every young person before they were out of high school.

Now the failed TeenScreen has been suddenly discontinued.

Good. Let it fade like everything else the Tea Party supports.

(Source: http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/886/9)

Right-wing lawyer arrested on child sex charges

The misnamed Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) is an anti-American hate group that constantly files frivolous lawsuits crying about how rotten everything is for the 1%.

This group of legal terrorists was founded by Religious Right leaders including Donald Wildmon, D. James Kennedy, and James Dobson. The ADF is a haven for sick minds.

Lisa Biron is an attorney with the ADF in Manchester, New Hampshire. She's received official honors from the ADF for giving the group over 450 hours of pro bono work. She has also served on the board of directors of a religious school.

Now Biron, 43, has just been arrested by the FBI on federal charges of child pornography and sexual exploitation of children. Biron is accused of going on Craigslist and offering up a girl under the age of 18 for sex with adult men. Authorities say Biron transported the girl to Canada to engage in illicit sexual activity.

Biron also allegedly issued a text message containing a death threat against the person who turned her in to the police.

So when is Congress going to bring down the hammer against the Alliance Defending Freedom? They need to pass laws to crack down on the ADF's frivolous suits - as well as everything else they do.

(Source: http://www.wmur.com/news/nh-news/Female-Manchester-lawyer-facing-federal-child-porn-charges/-/9857858/17449816/-/cteek8z/-;
http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/2790496-95/biron-charges-lawyer-manchester)

Gun shop won't sell to Obama supporters

In conservaworld, it really is "Second Amendment for me, not for thee."

The right-wing brain trust (such as it is) has spent the past 4 years bellyaching that President Obama is taking their guns away - even though Obama has had a better record on the right to bear arms than any other President in decades. Now they've once again let the mask slip, as they've announced their intent to keep Obama's supporters from exercising this right.

Southwest Shooting Authority - a gun shop in Pinetop, Arizona - has produced a newspaper ad announcing that they won't sell to Obama backers. "If you voted for Barack Obama your business is not welcome at Southwest Shooting Authority," the ad scolds. "You have proven that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm."

As if the Tea Party is a model of responsibility and levelheadedness?

The right-wing Establishment's view that the Second Amendment should protect only them isn't new, and it proves just how power-hungry they are. Back in 1993 or 1994, when I was in college, I got in an argument with some ultraconservative hack about this very matter. According to him, nobody who wasn't to the right of Jim Bunning was responsible enough to own even a pair of scissors. Meanwhile, a local conservative politician was out roaming the streets with a pistol pointed in the air because he mistakenly thought some kids had vandalized his campaign signs.

It's over, conservos. Done. Finished. The only thing that's kept the conservative movement going is corporate money, and I believe this is their swan song.

(Source: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/arizona-gun-store-no-obama-voters-allowed)

Homeless man jailed for recharging phone

Police in Sarasota, Florida, haven't learned shit from the Occupy campaign.

On Sunday, a homeless man was arrested there because he dared to use a public electrical outlet in a public park to recharge his cell phone. He was jailed overnight because he couldn't make bail.

Cops accused him of "theft of city utilities." Bzt! Wrong answer! The city can't install a public outlet and then say people are stealing if they try to use it. This underscores the point that the law is being selectively enforced. Would they have arrested attendees of a Tea Party rally for using the outlet to plug in a microphone? Somehow I doubt it. Indeedity-doodledy, the city erects public outlets all over town for people to charge electric cars for free. The city can't very well claim energy is free only if you have a car.

The city of Sarasota is lean and mean regarding the homeless community. In 2006, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless ranked Sarasota as the nation's meanest city towards the homeless.

But there's a happy ending to this story. On Monday, the judge threw out the charges against the man because the police had no case.

I'm waiting for the Fox News worshipers to clutter the Sarasota paper's comment section with trite complaints against the homeless and "Obamaphones."

(Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121112/ARTICLE/121119888/2416/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg)

Lawn Chair Quarterback: "In The Toilet"

Tim celebrates Plop Day and World Toilet Day by regaling you with a funny saying...

Dickhead levies "Obamacare surcharge", tells customers to reduce tips

Here's a guy who needs to be put out of business pronto.

Meet John Metz, a restaurant owner from West Palm Beach, Florida. Metz owns dozens of Denny's, Hurricane Grill & Wings, and Dairy Queen locations.

To protest the 2010 health care law, Metz is now adding a 5% "Obamacare surcharge" to customers' bills. And he's telling customers that they should offset it by reducing the tips that they pay to servers. Metz's reasoning for that is that the server "is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare."

Of course the server is supposed to benefit from Obamacare. That's how health care reform is supposed to work, John. It's not meant only for wealthy business owners who do all the hiring. It's meant for their workers too.

What kind of a boss encourages undertipping employees? If you're angry about the big, scary Obama being reelected, don't take it out on your workers.

Metz is also encouraging other restaurant owners to levy a similar surcharge.

Greed and being a sore loser are a bad combination.

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/john-metz-hurricane-grill-wings-dennys_n_2122412.html)

Dan Lungren loses

What a hilariously satisfying loss this is!

It took a week to count the votes, but now it's in. Longtime fascist congressman Dan Lungren of California is yet another key voice of Republican extremism to be defeated. This is the clod who - when he was California Attorney General - tried throwing people in prison for selling an anti-DARE t-shirt.

But now he's gone and in disgrace.

GOP releases redistricting map

Poor Republican Party. They've spent the past several millennia bragging about how they're gonna win control of the Kentucky House, and once again, they've fallen well short.

Kentucky lawmakers were supposed to redraw state legislative districts this year, but Republicans in the Kentucky Senate made such a jumble of the process that the courts threw out the new maps. They were still legally required to do it this year - but didn't.

For months before the election, some guy on the Internets was talking about the prospect of the GOP winning the Kentucky House. I kept explaining to him how this was impossible in this year's election, but he kept on talking about it.

Finally he had the nerve to ask what the new map would look like once the Republicans took the House. So I posted this map to show what it would look like...



That silenced him for a while.

If the GOP takes control of the House now, it won't be at the ballot box. It will be because they used force like they did in 1999 when they took the Kentucky Senate via party switches. If they don't take the House that way, the question for 2014 isn't whether they'll gain the House, because that's going to be nearly impossible. The question is going to be whether they lose the Senate.

The teabaggin' trio

Three states.

There are 3 states where noted Tea Party devotee Mitt Romney won every single county.

Two of them - Oklahoma and Utah - might not be a surprise. The other could have never been predicted just a few years ago. Can you guess what it is? Not Kentucky.

The third state in this teabaggin' trio is - of all places - West Virginia. This is particularly suspicious because Obama won numerous counties there last time - one by 11%. The results this year are prima facie evidence Republicans committed election fraud - but that's hardly news, because there's probably not a single state where they haven't been doing so for decades.

Fifty-state strategy begins now, folks. If you live in one of those 3 states - or in any city or county that votes the same way - show the Tea Party the door. Not only are these Grey Poupon right-wingers gumming up your state, but also the rest of the country. We can't let them expand their map again.

Welfare for bullies

Since the right-wing thought police insists on dredging up zombies like Steve Stockman and Roy Moore, I'm gonna do them one better by bringing up an even older calamity they've never allowed to be honestly discussed in any mainstream venue. They've led a cover-up for almost 30 years of one of the worst campaigns of school harassment ever recorded, and while I've covered it extensively, the painstream media has flatly refused to hold the culprits accountable.

Here's an aspect of this crusade that's truly baffled me. While the perps talk smack about everybody else being lazy, is there any evidence that a single one of them has ever sullied their hands with actual work? They do come from privileged backgrounds, but is there any evidence of their parents ever doing any work to get where they were? How did they afford their mansions and fleets - I'm talking fleets - of cars?

I know they didn't work, because - once they were old enough to work - I used to encounter them almost all hours of the day at sites that were obviously not their workplaces. When they did have jobs, it couldn't have been for very long, because what employer would tolerate them using office phones to make harassing calls 24/7?

If they did have a job for long, it was actually a form of welfare from their employer - since they clearly didn't perform any labor. I do know some of them got some very high-paying positions because of their clout. But they didn't work.

For many of these wealthy criminals, I've never found proof that they've even nominally held a job. So it's safe to say they're probably secretly being given free money by local government because they have friends in high places. It's welfare for rich felons, if you will.

Because their families' clout let them coast through school, they never learned shit. So what jobs are they even qualified to do? For them, it's been easier to loaf on our dime than to work their asses off all through school like I did. I have dyslexia, and I've never been rich like them, so think how much harder I had to toil just to get passing grades. I don't think they'll ever turn over a new leaf, so they're never going to feel the shame of living lives of sloth.

Maybe this is why - even now - there are still millions who vote to continue this unsustainable swindle. They thrash about as they retreat further into the hinterlands, but they're still out there, running on empty. Our side is bold and full of new ideas to promote economic justice and civil liberties. Their side has...Steve Stockman and Roy Moore.

The Far Right doesn't want their campaign of school harassment discussed on level terms, because they have no defense.

Lawn Chair Quarterback: "Mitt Romney Lost!"

Indeed he did...

The return of Roy Moore

As with Steve Stockman, here's another far-right Southern political figure who I remember from the days of 2400 baud Internet and who I mistakenly thought had gone away once that awful era ended.

Roy Moore was best known as the Alabama judge who disobeyed court rulings regarding the display of the Ten Commandments. You can say what you want about whether the Ten Commandments should be displayed in courtrooms. The real issue here is Moore's refusal to follow lawful rulings.

Moore's streak of ultraconservative opinions in which he supported legislating personal morality earned him a cadre of followers who praised his war against "permissiveness." Now that's "limited government"! But his refusal to follow a legal ruling is what led him to be removed as Alabama Chief Justice.

After he was out of office, Moore was still heard from occasionally - like when he said Muslims should be barred from serving in Congress. He went on to speak at Tea Party rallies - because the Tea Party just loves a "limited government" guy like Roy Moore. But I thought he was gone from elected office for good.

Now guess what? Guess who was elected Alabama Chief Justice again on Tuesday? It was with only 52%, but it still represents an astonishing exception to most of America's rejection of the Tea Party.

Roy Moore. He's back and as idiotic as ever!

GOP rioting continues

Aw, the Republicans are upset. What ever shall we do?

Because the GOPstapo's fee-fees are hurt by losing the election, they're continuing with their rioting. At Hampden-Sydney College - an all-male private school in Virginia - a mob of about 40 Republicans started a riot because they didn't like how the election turned out. They screamed racial slurs and threw bottles outside the Minority Student Union's building.

What a sad spectacle.

(Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/nov/08/2/racial-slurs-shouted-bottles-thrown-hampden-sydney-ar-2347122)

The tragedy of gerrymandering

"Tragedy...When the feeling's gone and you can't go on..."

For the entire election cycle, the spoiled brats who control the white supremacist Republican Party gloated that they were going to make gains in the Senate this year and maybe even retake it. That didn't happen. Indeedity-doodledy, the Democrats made a stunning net gain in the Senate.

But the Republicans should have lost the House - and didn't. The Democrats did make a net gain - but not enough.

It turns out that even though the Republicans won most House seats, the Democrats had more support. Nationwide, the Democrats got over a half-million more votes for the House than the Republicans did.

Why is there such a gaping disconnect between voters' wishes and the House's partisan makeup? Gerrymandering. You don't see this in the Senate, because Senate seats don't have gerrymandering. But House seats do.

And who gerrymandered all those House districts? I did. Just joking! What party has long had control of most of the state legislatures, who are entrusted with redistricting? Ponder, ponder.

Fact is, the Republicans would have lost control of the House but for gerrymandering. Would have happened in 2002, in fact, if they hadn't rigged the 2000 census. That brings to mind another instance of Democratic caving: In states where the Democrats held the legislature, why did they even abide by a census that was itself blatantly jimmied by the GOP? If I was in charge of redistricting then, I would have used the previous census and dared the thuggish Bush regime to try to stop me.

What's remarkable is that many of the redistricted maps vomited by the GOP are illegal, but they got away with it anyway. In the '90s, the Supreme Court threw out redistrictings that were far less grotesque than what the Republicans produce today.

To protect democracy, courts must be given greater power over redistricting. As many legislators are incapable of doing anything except gnashing their teeth in a cage, they've proven time and time again they're too irresponsible to be allowed to have as much power as they do.

California city rejects aspartame bailout

On Tuesday, voters in Richmond, California, were confronted with a referendumb that would have imposed a tax on soft drinks - but would have absurdly exempted those that contained poisonous artificial sweeteners.

Some folks seemed to ignore the fact that this measure featured the fatal sting of an aspartame bailout. They were gonna vote for it, dammit, and the hell with anyone like us who was worried about letting toxic chemicals off the hook.

Well, the measure lost. A smashing 67% of the city's voters voted against this bailout.

If the referendum hadn't exempted diet sodas, I probably never would have discussed it here. And it may well have passed.

But nooooo! It had to be their way or the highway, didn't it?

In election postmortem, time to show Tea Party the door

Since the Tea Party has declared war against America, it's time for you to take a side. Sorry, peeps, but it's true. The Evil Empire is already starting violent riots because the election didn't go their way, and we can't be caught off-guard.

Many of you live in places that utterly missed yesterday's rejection of Tea Party fascism. And it's time for you to get off your bunker and show the Tea Party the door. I began doing that years before the Tea Party even was the Tea Party.

If you don't deal with your rubbish, it's up to the rest of America to do it for you. Why? Because it's still holding back the whole country.

Frankly, our own area still hasn't done enough to evict the Tea Party. So, if you live in a more forward-thinking area, I'd like to invite you to help me out a little. We're in need of some outside aid. That's why America is a nation - not just a collection of scattered fiefdoms.

The Tea Party is not American. Inaction is submission, and if you don't fight back, you're making a choice to side with the enemy.

After yesterday's election, the Evil Empire is writhing and heaving in agony. But they're not vanquished yet. WE CAN PUT THEIR WHOLE AGENDA AWAY! I've seen what Occupy has accomplished so far, and since the Tea Party already has very little public support, defeating the Tea Party for good should be a slam-dunk compared to most of Occupy's past achievements.

The Tea Party sees the world through a haze. They have their own specialty media where they mostly just repeat discredited talking points to each other. They've opted to remove themselves from mainstream society even as they try to control it. They complain about others getting "free stuff" from the taxpayers - even while they demand handouts themselves. They cry that the rich pay too much taxes - even though America's government is funded more by the poor than that of almost any other country in the world.

Get 'er done, folks. This isn't just a matter of a political disagreement. The fact is, millions of Americans can't live safely with the Tea Party threatening their economic integrity or their life.

Corporate personhood fail and the Occupy effect

What a waste.

What an unmitigated, unprecedented waste!

After the Citizens United ruling of 2010 declared corporations are people, President Obama's reelection prospects were written off by many as a casualty. One could have expected the Republicans to dominate American politics until unicorns could fly.

Think how much money Republicans spent in this cycle to install Mitt Romney as dictator for life.

But there's been an equally strong force to mitigate this trend just over the past year. It's called Occupy. Occupy does not endorse candidates, but make no mistake: The Occupy coalition affected this election deeply.

By the summer of 2011, the press corpse wanted to talk about nothing but austerity - which is shorthand for making the 99% pay for the mistakes of the 1%. But after Occupy appeared, nobody wanted to hear that shit anymore.

Romney personified the failures of the 1%. Did Americans still want to elect a skipper of corporate excess after Occupy exposed the yawning wealth gap?

Whether Occupy wants to take credit or not, the Occupy effect was good for shaving perhaps a couple of percentage points off of Romney's national vote total. It may have been just enough to cost him the election. If anybody doubts this, I've already noticed that Republican vote totals have faltered in places with the strongest Occupy organization. (Occupy activities generally don't gravitate towards the cornfields and deserts.)

As a result, the seemingly bottomless Republican money machine saw its own efforts go to waste. They must have spent billions - only to come up short.

The most costly campaign in history yielded nothing. Poor things, those Republicans.

It's happening: GOP starting riots over election results

There's a clear chasm between protesting and starting violent riots, and the Republican Party has now crossed it.

In Oxford, Mississippi, right-wing activists are starting riots on the campus of the University of Mississippi to protest the outcome of the presidential election. Mobs of Republican voters are burning Obama campaign signs and yelling racial slurs.

With that, a major political party edges closer to its collapse.

(Source: http://oxford.wmctv.com/news/news/87363-riots-brew-ole-miss-campus)

GOP loses Minnesota legislature

The Republicans can get away with quite a bit in the right-wing führerbunkers in some states, but Minnesotans have had enough.

Yesterday, the GOP lost control of both houses of the Minnesota legislature - another stunner to be reckoned with.

It's called democracy. Live with it, conservos.

Obama gets only 3% in Texas county

Who's ever heard of a major presidential candidate getting only 3% of the vote in a county?

Well, it happened yesterday in King County, Texas - when President Obama received a whopping 3%, compared to Mitt Romney's 96%.

Obama won a mere 5 votes in that rural county 90 miles east of Lubbock.

Honestly, did Brossart take over that county?

Voters in 2 states legalize marijuana

The fuckheadedly named War on Drugs is finally starting to crack.

Voters in Colorado and Washington have just approved measures to legalize marijuana - not for medicine, but for recreation. A similar measure in Oregon lost because it was under-funded, but 2 states are finally making progress.

Suck it, Facebook!

GOP fails to win Kentucky House

I shouldn't even have to report on this, but since the Republicans have considered capturing the Kentucky House to be their Holy Grail for as long as I can remember, I must.

All year, the GOP has been gloating about this was gonna be the year when this shoe drops. But nope. They didn't even come close. In fact, at least one Republican incumbent lost.

It's only gonna get worse for the Republicans, because the state legislative districts haven't even been redrawn yet. That's not to mention the fact that the GOP is collapsing anyway.

Disaster in 6th District

How in the Wide, Wide World Of Sports did this happen - especially considering Obama won a county in the 6th District that he lost last time?

In a shocker, Rep. Ben Chandler (D-Kentucky) has just been narrowly defeated by his Republican opponent, serial liar Garland Barr IV.

Of course, Chandler won the counties with Lexington and Frankfort - losing only because of small counties.

On the other hand, maybe it would have helped Chandler if he voted more like a Democrat should.

DesJarlais survives

How in the world did this loser get reelected?

The scandal-tainted Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tennessee) managed to hang on for another term - much to the embarrassment of Congress and the nation.

See what I mean when I say the House has too much power?