Alabama's Gubernatorial Race: Who's The Better Creationist?

Will it turn out more people in Alabama believe in a superstitious, stone age creation myth than understand science?

Louisiana-Gate: Follow the Money

All four men were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which carries up to 10 years in prison. They were not charged with wiretapping.

So the yahoo that filmed himself in various ACORN offices making an ass out of himself and a some poor ladies trying to do their job. It's like going into twenty different McDonald's and filming an employee dealing with a difficult and bizarre order and picking the three you didn't get thrown out of. Yeah, one or two of those ACORN people need to find something else to do for a living because they're doing this wrong but the police were called on these people at several offices and they were simply thrown out of several more.

Who paid for James O'Keefe (that's the yahoo) to do this stuff? Who paid six people to spend several days to do this kind of thing? Who rented the vehicles, paid for the plane tickets, etc.? Who is sponsoring James O'Keefe?*

So, the little shit is now looking at ten years in prison and he should get every last minute of it. A message needs to be sent to this kind of person (you know, an asshole who's not too smart and has too much money at his disposal) that you should tread lightly with other people's privacy and the law. You can't just do anything you want in this country. That seems to be what the conservative media (and conservatives in general for that matter) believe the law is: something you should butt up against until you get a warning and then start butting somewhere else.

Bill O'Reilly (the BIGGEST ASSHOLE ON EARTH)* has taught these young dimwits to bully your way into the midst of those you consider your enemy** and attack them ruthlessly. And so the stupid decide to take it a big step further when O'Reilly's toes are well over the edge.

It's a tribute to Mary Landrieu's staff that they immediately saw these people as frauds. That woman's got one tough job, no doubt.

*Apparently It's Andrew Breitbart. Who pays him? (Media Matters has more about these people.)
**Assault journalism is nothing new but O'Reilly only uses it to harass people with whom he disagrees. Basically he's a total dick about it and therefore he's the BIGGEST ASSHOLE ON EARTH.
**I think this is a major difference between the conservatives and the rest of us: They seriously consider their political opponents to be enemies, not opponents.

Slowpoke: Vicious Circle of Stupidity

The Crash Meme Continued

The old car/airplane/train wreck meme is reappearing in the comics pages only this time the vehicles/people have generally already gone over a cliff or they have hit the ground.

Voter Fraud

You may remember last year during the election the Republicans were screaming bloody murder about voter fraud and how the Democrats were doing it everywhere. They made so much noise that there was even a special prosecutor assigned to investigate. He did manage to find a grand total of one case which was a Connecticut man that turned himself in. Is there any way we can force the GOP to pay for the wasted law enforcement resources used because of their lies? I specifically remember John McCain spouting this nonsense claiming the Democrats were engaging in the "worst voter fraud in the history of this country."

Only one voter fraud case found

By Kimball Perry • kperry@enquirer.com • January 27, 2009

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said he had allegations last fall of widespread voter fraud – allegations a special prosecutor reported Tuesday were wrong, noting the only voter fraud found was from a Connecticut man who told on himself.

“Ultimately,” Special Prosecutor Michael O’Neill wrote in a report, “the investigators discovered ‘get-out-the-vote’ practices, sponsored by community organizations, which took full advantage of this unique absentee-voting period, but no evidence these practices violated Ohio law.”

“Told ya so,” Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party as well as chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, said with glee of O’Neill’s report.

more

Update

Ah Xmas time. Between work, gift making, and holidays I feel rather like a rubber band approaching the big snap, but I somehow find myself just finishing my day's must-do list. Unfortunately that means to get everything else done I'm up late at night and have barely been able to update this blog for you as the world ends!!!

OK, maybe it's not quite that bad but the "free market" house of cards is collapsing in a hurry and most of us are not going to be able to get out of the way. In the meantime our tax dollars are now being openly shoveled into the open arms of the ultra wealthy in this bogus lie being called "The Bailout." Upper management is being paid bonuses with this money while investors and depositors are being bankrupted. That ain't right and it ain't American.

I know this sounds socialist because it kind of is: we need to strip the wealthiest Americans of their ill-gotten money and give it to the rest of us. These mind-bogglingly wealthy CEO's, hedge-fund managers, stock brokers, bank managers, hospital officers, etc. have segregated 90% of the nation's wealth by stealing it from the poor. Line them up, empty their pockets, and take possession of their houses, yachts, Ferraris, and jets and either convert them to something useful to those they've made destitute or chop them up for materials. This is not time to pretend these thieves are anything but thieves and they should be treated as the criminals they are. Burn the mansions to the ground and build ten single family houses on their ashes.

There are very wealthy people who have gotten there by providing something needed by people and in the process they've brought many other people along with them. They've provided health care for their employees, generous vacation and pensions, and generally a European standard of living. Our compromised Republican government has made sure those kind of business people don't stand a chance. The only way you can become ultra-wealthy these days is by screwing the poor and gaming the political system to ensure the ease of poor screwing.

At the top of this list I would place hospital CEO's, carefully pricing everything at the highest point the market will bear (assuring that more than half of us will be priced out) while "cutting costs" by skimping on cleanliness*, keeping pay for the people that clean up our shit and puke well below a living wage, and keeping fewer beds open than are needed in the best of times. As a result, not only is our healthcare system rated 72nd worldwide, but if we experience any kind of serious epidemic our healthcare system will be overrun before it starts. They already put patient beds in the halls of most large hospitals because the "management" has "cut costs" by "eliminating unnecessary additional capacity."

Right under the healthcare industry in the list of industries that are fucking up this country is the banking and credit industry in general. Between the subprime mortgage scams, fees, penalties, and credit card debt, the banking industry has made massive profits by fucking the poor in the ass and now that they've turned the ass into pulp they've moved around to the front and are taking our money through our taxes. We're carting wheelbarrows full of cash to the banks without any control over what they do with it, hundreds of businesses that have never been banks are suddenly calling themselves banks and are getting billions of dollars (what the FUCK is up with that?), and there is no effort whatsoever to stop it. So Barney Frank flaps his mouth but Henry Paulson has still handed out nearly a half a BILLION dollars with no strings attached. Meanwhile the poor are still subjugated to usuarous credit card interest rates (that can be raised arbitrarily or because you missed by a day a payment on something else), mindbogglingly high penalties for mistakes ($45-$60 per purchase for being overdrawn by a penny for the micro-second a computer takes to figure your end of day balance before crediting any deposits you've made, penalizing you for every single purchase made that day), and seemingly small things like ATM fees, or government fees levied in lieau of taxes on the wealhty.

I've already made a sketchy argument as to why the auto industry is its own biggest partner in fucking everything up. Add to that the education privatizers, the prison industry, and everyone else that intends to profit from that which should not be done for profit. Sometimes you just need to invest in a system to better the lives of all people. Education, clean energy, healthcare, criminal justice and law enforcement**, regulation of food and medicine, all these things are compromised when the profit motive is introduced. If that's socialism then I'm pretty sure it is proven to work better than capitalism.

I don't even know where I'm going with this rant. There is a huge injustice being perpetrated in this country and frankly I don't know how to fight it. Our government is firmly in the control of the wealthiest citizens and I'm afraid the only way to stop them is through violence. But they've got the really big guns in their pocket, don't they? Once the middle class has been completely destroyed will we rise up and stop the thievery that has been rife since the 70's? Can we reign in the military industrial, prison industrial, drug control industrial, health care industrial, private school industrial, evangelical religion industrial cabal that is buying our government officials and running the show?

*I own a house a few blocks from Louisville's massive hospital campus. From the front door I can see nine different hospitals. There is a public housing project behind my house and all day you can see exhausted people (mostly women) trudging home to their horrendous subsidized housing wearing the scrubs they will still be wearing when they return to the hospital. This is because to "save costs" the fuckwads that run the hospitals require their employees to wash their own uniforms rather than running a high quality sterilizing laundry service themselves. These people walk back to work in their scrubs, picking up germs all along their walk as well as from their crappy apartments and then they go clean up around people in critical care, with compromized immune systems or in a generally weakened state. It's little wonder that hospitals are the most likely place to receive an infection.

**At this point in time, most police departments in this country have become victim of the profit motive, persuing the arbitrary enforcement of drug laws in pursuit of federal money despit the lack of proof that it does any good. Most broad studies of the issue show that our current draconian drug law enforcement is detrimental to society not only monetarily but societally as well. Other than the politicians that are elected on bullshit "get tough" agendas, the owners of pirvate prisons, and the cops that get nice toys to bust more people with, who profits from long prison times and arbitrary arrests of minorities for the use, possession, and distribution of drugs? Prohibition doesn't work. Give people the fucking drugs and let them use them as they wish and give them treatment when they want to quit. It must be cheaper than the enforcement and imprisonment method we're using now.

Great Line(s) for Monday

Daniel Chun: The contrast between Obama and McCain could not be greater. This is like choosing between an orgasm and a punch in the throat. The fact this is a close race is a terrifying outrage...

Dennis Brings It To Tha DNC

I still think this man would make a great President. Note that his speech was buried during a weekday. Were they afraid he would mention his steadfast attempts to put Shrub and Darth Cheney in prison?

McCain/Lieberman

Boy if this doesn't say it all. Did I mention I'm betting McCain takes Lieberman for a running mate?

Typical Bush Administration Behavior

"Deregulate! Deregulate!" come the cries from the right. In their opinion regulation stifles business and the ability of business to make giant profits. Under this administration deregulation has been undertaken from the executive rather than by the legislature. By violating laws, defunding regulatory agencies, or installing toadies that will suck the cock of any business leader they should be regulating, these criminals have worked against the interests of the majority to enrich their crooked, wealthy buddies.

The Huffington Post has posted this article about this administration's corruption. Harper's Magazine printed a very disturbing piece on the Attorney firings that really churned my stomach. But what made me want to point this out was a piece on NPR this morning about the corruption at the FAA concerning Southwest Airlines aircraft inspections. Apparently it's so bad that many of the 737's that were contemporaries of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 are still flying and have not been properly inspected.

In March 2007, the airline reported to the FAA that it had not done the required fuselage inspections on 47 jets. The checks are crucial because some versions of the Boeing 737 are vulnerable to cracks just above and below the windows. In 1988, an Aloha Airlines 737 decompressed and blew out 18 feet of its roof, killing a flight attendant. Instead of grounding the 47 aircraft and inspecting them, Southwest quietly continued to fly the jets. Gawadzinski, who was aware of Southwest's alleged deception, is accused of helping the airline cover it up.

How much you wanna bet that those responsible will simply resign and move on to other shockingly overpaid positions elsewhere? At this point I wonder if there is a single regulatory agency that hasn't either been corrupted or eliminated via budget.

UPDATE: Goshes I forgot to mention the most recent This American Life which was dedicated entirely to the Bush administration's bullheaded refusal to do anything without a legal battle. Really amazing stuff. What's more amazing is our "representative government" doesn't have the balls to put these sorry bastards in prison.

The News

I remember the way the television news was back in the 70's and early 80's and I still marvel at the stupidity of the news producers. Someone in the upper echelons (one of the early graduates with a "marketing" degree, I'd venture) said, "Young kids aren't watching! They're the most important group! Let's make news vapid and sensationalistic!" First to go was international news, followed by in depth reporting on politics and judicial matters, leaving celebrities, politicians (as celebrities), disasters, and potential disasters with some "feel good" bullshit thrown in for the girls.

Surprise! Viewers began turning off the news in droves. Why? Because television news stopped showing what people that watch the news want to see. What were the programmers' responses? To hire younger anchors, show some leg, spend more time on celebrities and potential disasters (is this two lane road going to kill your family? That story coming up...), and generally show even less actual news. Little surprise that most Americans couldn't find Iraq on a map with the names of countries filled in already. Little surprise that a fool and thief like our current President could get elected despite having failed at everything he'd ever done other than underhandedly win an election for governor in a State half full of drooling morons in cowboy hats.

To some degree the gap has been filled by NPR and the internet for those of us that are still interested in learning what's going on in the world. Unfortunately we now have Fox and other cable "news" which spouts an endless stream of right wing propaganda, nearly meaningless headlines, and utter drivel with no mandate to serve the public interest. We also have the radio talkshow hosts who follow no journalistic ethics whatsoever and fill the empty brains of the ignorant fools that believe their made up bullshit and outright lies. Somehow they are allowed to pollute our public airways with this incendiary hate speech because they label their shows as "entertainment." I personally feel that every radio station that has ever broadcast Rush Limbaugh should have their license yanked and their general manager(s) jailed for violating their contract with the public. Sadly, our current administration is much more concerned with an exposed pastie* or a glimpse of a butt cheek.

Thank goodness for the BBC and the CBC for continuing to hold up an example of actual news reporting. Their reporters will actually badger politicians that dodge their questions and they stand on the ground where things are happening and tell us about what is happening as opposed to showing sanctioned clips of video with explanations from the State Department. Perhaps someday television news will take a lesson and get back to work filling us in rather than trying to titillate or scare us. I wonder if the corporate masters will ever let them.

*Isn't it remarkable that an exposed breast with star shaped pastie could bring such staggering fines and outrage? Would it even be legal to show The Benny Hill Show or Laugh In on broadcast television these days?