best. news. story. ever.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-celebrity-burglaries27-2009oct27,0,4883183.story?track=rss

by the numbers

President Obama regularly appears in front of crowds of 10,000 to 20,000 who gather to hear him speak. During his campaign last October, 2008, he appeared before crowds of 75,00 and 100,000 people at rallies in Kansas City and St. Louis.

On October 26, 2009, George W. Bush spoke at a motivational rally in Ft. Worth, the conjoined twin city to his current hometown of Dallas--in the the "home" state in which he remains most popular. He was governor of Texas before he went to Washington as a two-term president. The post-event excitement in the press is that he spoke in front of a crowd of 15,000 people.

I'm surprised there were that many...

that's one way of looking at it

The new meme being floated by the "real media," as exemplified by Newsweek, is that President Obama is basically all cackle and no egg, since he still hasn't fixed the economy, delivered health care for all, stopped Bill Kristol's multiple wars around the globe, and made America into something resembling the Land of Oz or Willy Wonka's factory like he apparently promised to do.

After all, he's had nearly ten months in office, and in less than that time George W. Bush had already permitted the biggest terrorist attack in history and was launching plans to invade countries that had nothing to do with it.

Fucking slacker. I guess we all should have voted for McCain.

stay classy, Frank

It's always illuminating when they let the mask slip:

obscenity

So it seems that every gallon of gasoline that the US military is using in Afghanistan costs four hundred dollars. That means that the enlisted man at the motor pool who has the job of filling up the military Hummers before they go on patrol squirts his annual salary into a fuel tank in about two minutes.

Or, enough money to provide full health care coverage for four Americans for one year.

Per tank.


This country has been wasting hard-earned resources on waging war continuously around the globe for sixty years now with no justifiable reason. It is time to stop this massive transfer of wealth once and for all.

cracker crumb

A judge in Louisiana has refused to marry an interracial couple:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/10/interracial_couple_denied_marriage_license_in_la.php?ref=fpblg



The judge explained that "I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."




Yeah.

They could become the President of the United States of America or something.

Land of the Lost

Why does the discussion on health care reform keep turning back to a financial discussion instead of a discussion about the "right thing" for everyone? It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that what makes America so very different from other countries is the priority that money takes over all else. Personal wealth trumps everything. It does so much, that if you try to tell an American they will make a few dollars less a year for the need for another's life to be saved, they won't give it up--they just don't care what happens to anyone else if a dime is coming out of theri pocket. Most Americans are so blinded by fulfilling their need for personal wealth that they can't see that they're actually just passing the wealth through their own hands to a corporate power who will take control and pat them on the head and make them think they are in control. Just like they've been made to believe they are safer because we're fighting Al Qaeda "over there" instead of "here".

I think, as a society, we've largely lost the concept of humanity and human dignity and really caring about others. Putting the health care reform argument in terms of whether or not people are dying makes little or no impression with so many people who've been so indoctrinated. Conversely, putting it in terms of what it means to their individual bottom lines is the whole game for them. Add to that, telling them that a few years down the road it will impact them financially because of uncontrolled costs is almost meaningless because most of them don't ever drive past the hood ornament on their car right. It's all about immediate gratification (which is why we are a society dependent on our credit cards, but that's another story entirely).

I remember when my former employer ordered mandatory furloughs for management level employees (during the tech downturn in 2000). My manager went to Trinidad to visit his parents, and extended family for 2 weeks. His children were in school so his wife stayed here in America with them.

Upon his return, he said the hardest thing he ever did in his life was come back. He said if his family had gone with him he might not have ever returned. He realized that his friends and family back home were not wealthy and did not have lots of "stuff" but they went to work in the morning, had time for lunch away from work, and went home in the evening and sat on the porch with their children and enjoyed life. They didn't have diabetes and high blood pressure and heart conditions because they didn't have the stress, pressure, diet and general living conditions that we do here.

I took a trip to the UK earlier this month, and it reinforced this observation for me. I realized that what my British spouse has been saying all along (about the morality of not having health care available to everyone being inhuman and unfathomable) is something that people in other countries are expressing as they hear about the "discussion" here. I made a habit of bringing up the subject wherever I went and the Brits were unanimously and utterly astonished when I told them what the situation is here and how the "discussion" is going. Not one person I spoke to there could fathom not having health care available to all--and having it entirely financed by the government. That includes wealthy, poor, retired, young and hold -- hard working, doctors, lawyers, artists, tailors and teachers, housewives, shopkeepers, publicans--professionals and laborers.

America has many advantages over many countries in the world--that's why most of us choose to stay, and why some of us chose to come here in spite of our birth and citizenship elsewhere. What we lack as a country, however, is becoming more and more apparent. We really are a nation of cowboys and gunslingers. It saddens me to see that with the tremendous resources (human and natural) and freedoms we have that we are so stunted by the selfish adolescent attitude.

In America we no longer believe in the concepts that our forefathers so carefully crafted into our constitution. We've become a frontier society again and the big landowners own the sheriff and the posse, and have become the judge, jury and executioner. America is no longer the land of opportunity and freedom and the people who keep shouting it is the loudest are simply the pawns and mouthpieces of those who rule. It makes sense. We've been conditioned. We know that money is power so we'll stop at nothing to get it.

Sadly, most of us are just pawns in the great scheme of things and in spite of all of our clawing and scraping, we just keep channeling the money to those who don't need more. But we continue to claw and scrape--right over the backs of others.

must be a slow news day

The top three "news" stories on MSNBC's afternoon lineup:

1. Anna Nicole Smith's baby daddy testifies in court
2. Photographs of kidnap/rape victim Jaycee Dugard
3. Jon Gosselin ordered to give his wife $180,000



There are only two possibilities. Either our contemporary "free press" thinks Americans are shallow, vapid idiots.

Or, they know we are.

boom!

The explosion you just heard was the heads of wingnuts around the United States exploding as they awakened to the news that President Obama just won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

early Halloween scare

Tell me this first few words of a sentence doesn't terrify you:

"When I do a heart transplant..."



...when you find out it was said by Bill "Catkiller" Frist on "Morning Joe."

five

Happy birthday to us!

news?

"Nicole Richie was being taken to a Los Angeles hospital on Monday after she was rear-ended by paparazzi, police confirm to PEOPLE."


Yeah, like it's the first time that's ever happened to her.

wasted space

Fifty-two years ago today, the world changed when the USSR put a 185-pound chunk of metal into orbit around the Earth. A mere eleven and a half years later, men would walk on the Moon. After five more trips to the Moon, we have been confined to low Earth orbit for the last thirty-seven years.

So much for progress. The sooner this world learns that space is the only chance this species has of surviving, the better the odds that we might just do that.

lying sack of shit