Bring It On!

Playing Cards With Politics

It’s no secret America has an old and troublesome history with its various forms of discrimination. With each slight, real or imagined, the nation sinks deeper into a relationship hell like a warring couple fighting a bloody battle on their inevitable way to divorce court. It seems with every national breath, we drink deeply from the well of intolerance and distrust until someone plays the (fill in the blank) card.

Virginia governor Tim Kaine is on tap to become the Democratic National Committee chair. A former missionary, he’s deeply interested in expanding faith-based initiatives like the ones Bush touted and then ignored. It’s only a matter of time until atheists (disclosure alert - I am one) and separation of church and state advocates (I’m one of these too) will leap to the barricades to quash any such nonsense.

Do they have a valid beef? Of course. Does that beef absolutely preclude all faith-based initiatives as unlawful meddling in governmental affairs or discrimination? Maybe, maybe not.

The religious look at atheists’ reaction as discrimination and petty complaining against their right to worship. Atheists would say any religious activity under governmental auspices deprives them of their right to practice no religion. In essence, each is charging the other with religious discrimination. However, there’s another view.

The country is strapped for cash and programs to help the needy are in short supply. If an organization were willing and able to provide services, even most atheists would agree it was a good thing. But when it’s a religious organization, things change. Atheists worry about the slippery slope that starts with an act of compassion and ends with prostylizing under Uncle Sam. For their part, the religious argue that isn’t their intention with no real way to prove one argument or the other.

Both sides can throw up numerous examples of people gaming the system in their self-interest. If nothing else, the last eight years has taught us that distrust like that is what bogs down some possible solutions to our myriad problems.

Or what about the strange case of Obama’s appointed Senate replacement, Roland Burris?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 2008 elections, Civil Rights, Political, Politics, Reid, Religion, Senate | 1 Comment »

Nostradumbass Announces 2009 Predictions

At this time of the year you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone’s list. Worst things, best things, funniest, saddest, stupidest, breakthroughs, failures – yada, yada, yada. So because I’m a copycat if nothing else, here’s my list. Predictions for 2009:

• Barack Obama’s honeymoon period will be among the shortest in recent memory. By April, his starting poll numbers will drop by 18%.
• Within the first month of his administration, Obama will ask the Justice Department not to investigate or prosecute former Bush administration officials. However, he will stop short of an absolute pardon, leaving the door open to prosecution in the future.
• The economic collapse will get much worse before it gets better. Many additional large companies will collapse - and will not be bailed out because there is no money - several states will go bankrupt, and the global economy will go into a deep depression. Things will not improve in 2009.
• Lindsey Lohan will turn straight.
• Elizabeth Hasslebeck and Michelle Malkin will come out as a lesbian couple and form a conservative coalition called Dykes Against Democrats.
• ”Not Jenna” Bush will get married to a scion of an elite, liberal, east coast nouveau riche family and cut off relations with her family because of political differences.
• US troops, already over-extended by on-going combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, will deploy to Somalia in an effort to root out havens for terrorists and pirates that prey on shipping. At least one US warship will sustain heavy damage.
• As 2007 and 2008 presented several major Republican scandals, 2009 will be a year of democratic scandals.
• The open Minnesota senate seat will not be filled until December when Al Franken will be declared the winner.
• The advantage of Franken’s democratic seat is offset by Joe Liebermann officially announcing he has become a Republican.
• Liebermann will begin exploratory trips to Iowa and New Hampshire for a 2012 presidential bid, but will abandon the bid in December because governors in both states swears out restraining orders against him.
• While responding to a Keith Olbermann nomination for Worst Person in the World, Bill O’Reilly will have a stroke on air that leaves him mute. After learning of the event, Olbermann will nominate him again for Worst Person in the World for not tipping the EMTs that responded to the 911 call.
• Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter will join with Candace Gingrich to form a gay rights advocacy organization comprised of GLBT relatives of high-ranking politicians. They will overturn California’s Prop 8 in a battle that goes all the way to the SCOUTUS.
• Plans for a Bush presidential library will be canceled when a deal to raise funding through proceeds from his memoirs fails when no publisher can be convinced to sign a deal for the book.
• Enroute to a speaking engagement Germany will arrest Dick Cheney for war crimes. He will be convicted because he refuses to defend himself on the grounds that he is a freestanding Republic that isn’t a signer of the Geneva Accords. The Saudi royal family agrees to take him as part of an extradition agreement.
• Early in the year, it will be revealed that most of the Bush family’s wealth was lost in the Bernard Madoff scam. The family will be forced to sell off the Kennebunkport compound and the new Bush house in Houston.
• As a result of the loss, George W. Bush will sign a promotional deal with Frito Lay to promote a new line of “Presidential Pretzels”. The deal will be canceled before any ads air because focus group testing reveals that almost no one will buy them. Hush Puppy Shoes will score with a presidential ad campaign when they debut a line of casual comfort shoes with a picture of Bush on the sole.
• Sarah Palin will be committed to a mental institution.
• Federal legislation will be introduced to cap excessive CEO pay. Unfortunately, the unintended result is that many of the CEOs get a raise anyway by claiming the average $16 billion offered by failing companies is actually an “Attaboy Award” given by the companies to employees who best demonstrate the companies’ corporate behaviors and values.
• India will begin to sub-outsource their US outsourcing deals to Somalia to take advantage of the highly skilled labor pool and low expenses. Riots in Bangalore protest the practice.
• The Obama Administration will find the entire contents of Ft. Knox have been sent by a low-level Bush Administration holdover to a woman in Somalia named Mrs. Natty Bumpo that he met on the Internet.

I’m just a regular Nostradumbass, ain’t I?

Cross posted at: The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

Posted in Bush, George W. Bush, Political, Politics, humor | 8 Comments »

George H.W. Bush: Shut the Fuck Up!

Everybody, all together now — put your index fingers together in the form of a cross, direct all of your energy toward ex-president Bush 41, and scream (silently) “NOOOOO!!!!”

Earlier today, Bush 41 spoke the Unspeakable. The Unthinkable! Blasphemy!

In an interview, he said he’d like to see Jeb Bush become president. “My special needs child already had his turn to play president, and now I want my normal son, using the term loosely, heh heh, to have a turn. It‘s such a fun game, I want my whole twisted sickwipe family to play I’d like to see him run. I’d like to see him be president someday.”

OK, you know the drill. Index fingers together — “NOOOOOO!!!!”

Sure it’s unfair that the entire Bush Crime Family’s image has been tarnished by George Johnny Walker Bush. Life is unfair. Hey, David Berkowitz has a younger brother, Biff, who would like to come and work for your company. Aw, come on now, you’re not gonna pre-judge him because of his sickfuck brother, are you?

Supposedly, if you go to Georgia and your last name is Sherman, you’ll get the cold shoulder from everybody just because of your name. I’ve never known if that’s true or just an urban legend. But the fact remains, certain last names are mud. And rightly so.

For years, bloggers and columnists have been guessing what would happen to the Bush Crime Family. Maybe Dumbya would be tried for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Or the whole family might flee to their huge compound in Paraguay, where they could become South America’s problem. Sort of an international version of the bus therapy that cities use for homeless people.

But having another Bush offspring shitting all over the White House?

NOOOOO!!!!

Posted in Bush | 9 Comments »

Ann Culter Fangs out for Michelle Obama

Originally Posted at Papamoka Straight Talk

Posted in 2008 elections, Ann Coulter, Election News, IDIOT, Obama, Politics | 15 Comments »

International Olympic Committee Gets Burned

A moment of schadenfreude. One of the victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is the International Olympic Committee. They could lose up to $5 million. Greed meets greed.

Now, I like the Olympics as much as the next person. The anal retentive schmucks that run the International Olympic Committee — not so much.

For years the International Olympic Committee has been suing, or threatening to sue, anybody — anywhere — who uses the name Olympic. I live near Washington’s Olympic Mountains. Olympic National Park is here; the capital of Washington is Olympia; and the area north and west of Olympic National Park is called the Olympic Peninsula. So far nobody’s forcing Washington to rename the mountain range, the capital city, the park or the peninsula. But you never know.

It stands to reason that a lot of local businesses here have used the name Olympic. Most of them are too small for the International Olympic Committee to bother with, but again you never know. It’s a Sword of Damocles that could fall any second, or it might never fall.

A local winery — Olympic Cellars — has been threatened by the International Olympic Committee. This winery has had the nerve to be successful and start selling some of their wine outside of Western Washington, and the winery is a popular tourist attraction. Goliath the International Olympic Committee was not amused.

For the moment there’s a sort of uneasy truce between Olympic Cellars and the International Olympic Committee. As long as Olympic Cellars stays small and confines most of its sales to the immediate area, nobody gets hurt. OK, no problem. After all, the purpose of going into business for yourself is to stay small and be unsuccessful, right?

Here is a link to some of the other trademark infringement lawsuits that the International Olympic Committee has filed or threatened to file.

Maybe if these assholes hadn’t been so obsessed with squishing every business and organization that uses the name Olympic, they would’ve paid more attention to their investments and not gotten swindled. They’re sort of like that oblivious driver who’s going 45 in the left lane while blabbing on the phone, changing the CD, eating, texting — and then veers off the road and into a ditch.

This post was brought to you by Olympic Blogging™.

Posted in Economics, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

Duke Energy says ash ponds are safe…yeah right! Preliminary testing shows that isn’t the case.

Does anyone think they will admit what a toxic mess the Harriman spill is or how unsafe the huge ponds are?

Not only no but Hell No.

The first samples of drinking water downstream of the spill have been analyzed. You can read it here. Let me share some of the results below:

Arsenic- 35 to 300 times higher than drinking water criteria. 3 to 10 times higher than max TN aquatic life criteria.

Barium- 2 to 4 times higher than drinking water criteria.

Cadmium- 0.25 to 3 times higheer than drinking water criteria. 4 to 7 times higher than max TN aquatic life criteria.

Chromium- 3.5 times higher than max drinking water criteria.

Copper- 7 tp 70 times higher than the max TN aquatic life criteria.

Mercury- 5 to 8 times higher than max drinking water limit. 7 to 12 times higher than the max TN aquatic life criteria.

Samples collected by Donna Lisenby. Analyzed by Shea Tuberty and Carol Babyak, both PhD’s at Appalachian State University.

Now, how safe is that sludge and the fly ash? yeah, I thought so…it isn’t. Hat tip to TVA Coal is Killing Tennessee for the link to the testing results. From a press release on the results:

“High levels of toxic heavy metals are present in samples taken from the Kingston Fossil Plant ash spill in Harriman, TN, independent testing shows.”

“Concentrations of eight toxic chemicals range from twice to 300 times higher than drinking water limits, according to scientists with Appalachian State University who conducted the tests.”

Video is from the site as well, showing the sampling of the river.

Tags:Tennessee Valley Authority, Coal Ash Sludge Ponds, Harriman Sludge Pond, Emory River contaminated

Crossposted from Sirens Chronicles.

Posted in Environment, Exploiting, Politics | No Comments »

Good News For The War On Drugs

Hey, more people to fight, propped up by whom and what?

“This government has lost the capacity to govern because a shadow government has taken over,” said Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister. He quit that job in 2004, he said, because the state had been taken over by drug traffickers. “The narco-mafia state is now completely consolidated,” he said.

Nice. I thought George Bush’s war in Afghanistan was working? Well, add that on to the heap of problems crafted by George and his posse of crack terrorist fighting, freedom spreading cronies.

Blog on Friends, blog on all.

Posted in Politics | No Comments »

Alberto Gonzales: Victim of the War of Error?

It would seem life on the mean streets of the post-Bush era is tough for ex-AGs – particularly political gadfly and ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzo loyally protected his boss with the world’s worst imitation of an amnesiac and George repaid his efforts by kicking him to the curb when his sorry-assed performance splashed mud on the Presidential Tony Lamas.

A case of no honor among the gracelessly inept I suppose.

Al the Ambulance Chaser
The job market for disgraced top cops with questionable legal skills isn’t what it used to be and poor Gonzo now finds himself unemployed – reduced to giving speeches and doing the routine arbitration and mediation work of your typical ambulance chaser. But even in his moment of despair and humiliation, Gonzo shows off his true-Bush colors by professing shock and awe at his fall from grace.

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he asked the Wall Street Journal. “For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with,” Gonzales said. “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

This from a man who tracked down his predecessor in a hospital bed to sign off on extended wiretapping authority and prompting a standoff with the FBI and John Ashcroft’s wife. He’s also the man who painted himself in the corner over possible meddling with US attorneys – a charge that’s still under investigation. And, it was under his tenure that habeas corpus was suspended for internees and that the question of torture became a nagging boil on the arse of the US.

But other than that, a fine job indeed.

Victim of the War of Error
Gonzo doesn’t seem to understand why law firms are “skittish” about hiring him and so martyrific that he sees himself as “one of the many casualties of the war on terror” – a point that many families of dead or wounded soldiers might find hard to swallow.

I suppose that breathing the rarified air of the power elite does that to a person. Like a pampered Hollywood starlet, it’s easy to lose your moral compass when you shit your pants and are given a Presidential Attaboy for your “service” to the country.

It would behoove Gonzo to look just tad deeper for answers.

If your defense against charges of political meddling waffle between knowing nothing about how your own shop made decisions to just repeating “I dunno” like a crazed Zen master, law firms will be skittish. If you make decisions that skirt - or perhaps break - the bounds of Constitutionality, law firms will be skittish. If you support “reforms” allowing “enhanced interrogation methods” that are swept away and replaced with opinions – from your own team - that torture is “abhorrent”, firms will be skittish. And finally, if a well-known shit heel like George Bush – dark prince to some of the most loathsome crapweasels around – finds it necessary to run from you like you’re an Iraqi shoe salesman, you won’t even get an audition as comic relief on Boston Legal.

Yeah, it’s a puzzler, ain’t it?

Cross posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

Posted in FOIA, George W. Bush, Legal News, Political, Politics, Right Wing Nut, conservative | 3 Comments »

It’s The End Of The Year, As We Know It…

Click on, REM - “It’s the end of the world as we know it…but I feel fine.” Sure my stocks are underwater in most cases, but so is every one (except for those elites who got bailed out). Sure, George Bush has made a mess out of just about everything he has touched, but at least we have some hope in Obama. Turns out it takes an economic downturn to help us re-learn what’s really important.

Without George Bush, I’m quite certain, there would be no room for Barak Obama to win the election. Indeed, Chris Rock is right in that category. Certainly, the economic engine has been consumerism for a great long while, but from the “Me” generation spawned by Reagan to the wacky notion that the only sacrifice we would need to make to get through Nine Eleven would be to go out and shop, we have learned that it’s not what we buy, but what we make that is more important. Worth and value are determined not by how cheaply you can get junk from China, but what you make of what you have right in front of your nose.

In the end, what’s really important in life doesn’t cost money. It’s friends, family and the biggest ROI - hugs for and from small children. Being together, no matter what, and helping each other through these troubled times will be the measure of who we are, not the situation we’re in caused by inept leadership. Certainly, as MKL Jr. used to stipulate, it’s not what we do when things are good that are the measure of who we are, it’s what we do when the chips are down that are the hallmark of our humanity.

Toward that end, here’s an interesting project to become involved and a part of the solution rather than contributing to problem. This is something I say a great deal, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Begin constructing a ladder to get yourself out.”

Adios 2008, and a Happy New Year to you all. Aught Nine has to be much better than aught eight as we are certainly scrapping the bottom of that hole as of late.

Blog on friends, blog on all.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Ellie Nesler: 1952 — 2008

“Who?” I don’t know how much fame or publicity Ellie Nesler got outside of California. If you ever saw A Time To Kill — she did in real life what Samuel L. Jackson did in that movie.

In April 1993, Ellie Nesler shot and killed Daniel Driver in a California courtroom. Driver was on trial for molesting Ellie Nesler’s 7-year-old son, and three other boys, at a Christian camp.

During the trial it was revealed that several years earlier, Daniel Driver had pleaded guilty to numerous charges of child molestation. But he was given probation after the judge was bombarded with letters from members of Driver’s church, all vouching for his “character.”

Ellie Nesler made certain that Daniel Driver would never strike again.

Ellie Nesler wasn’t a saint. She had a prior criminal record, she was high on meth when she shot Daniel Driver, and after she served time for manslaughter for killing Driver, she was jailed again on meth charges (technically, possession of 10,000 pseudoephedrine tablets). But she did what practically anybody, regardless of political views or personality type, would do in that situation — or at least would fantasize about doing.

Rightly or wrongly, the vigilante is a powerful archetype. Dirty Harry, Charles Bronson in Death Wish, Sally Field in An Eye For An Eye, Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs — Ellie Nesler was the real-life version of these movie heroes.

She died of cancer last Friday.

R.I.P.

Posted in Miscellaneous | 6 Comments »