Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Supposed “Partisan Zealot” Prosecutes More From His Own Party!

GOP Ignores Lessons of Democrats’ Past Mistakes
…The Washington Post’s Jeffrey Smith reported last year that “Earle, an elected Democrat who oversees the state’s Public Integrity Unit, previously prosecuted four elected Republicans and 12 Democrats for corruption or election law violations.”

Earle is hardly the “unabashed partisan zealot” Tom DeLay might like you to believe, eh? His reputation itself tells the story: Earle prosecutes violations where he finds them without regard for political affiliation.

This is going to be REALLY interesting.

The reason was simple: It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

Like I said.

Neener, Neener, Neener!

DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe
DeLay has denounced the investigation as politically motivated, noting that the Travis County district attorney, Ronnie Earle, is a Democrat.

And he’s probably right. The investigation probably IS politically motivated. BUT if the charges against him are true, it doesn’t matter to me what motivated the investigation. He’s either guilty or he’s innocent. That’s what really matters and, frankly, from everything I’ve heard about DeLay’s tangled dealings with state and national PACs, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s proven DeLay has broken the law. (Just consider the huge paychecks his wife and daughter have received from the PACs.)

At any rate, Tom DeLay gives every indication of being a first-rate asshole, so… it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. (Except maybe George W. Bush himself.)

Being Poor Doesn’t Mean You’ve Got to Eat Garbage

Poor Have Difficulty Eating Healthy Foods
“Energy-dense foods rich in starch, sugar or fat are the cheapest option for the consumer,” said Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. “As long as the healthier lean meats, fish and fresh produce are more expensive, obesity will continue to be a problem for the working poor.”

Well, NO. As long as people believe they’ve got to include meat in their diets, healthy eating will be a problem for the poor. It’s an education problem, really — not an affordability problem. What people like Adam Drewnowski should be doing is educating consumers about vegetarian foods.

Earlier in this salon.com wire story, a poor woman comments “we’d all like to feed our children a nice healthy chicken breast and asparagus” but that it’s less expensive to feed them macaroni and cheese. This is a perfect example of a person who needs to learn about vegetarian diets. She could buy a can of fat-free refried beans, some whole wheat tortillas, and some fresh veggies and easily put together burritos that her children would probably LOVE eating. They taste good AND they’re healthy AND they’re inexpensive.

Eating vegetarian is healthier and cheaper than feeding your kids Kraft macaroni and cheese or Burger King crap.

Angry and Depressed

Salon.com Life | I’m filled with rage
I don’t know what to do with my rage. I can’t hold it inside me like this, but every time it seems to dissipate, and I’ve forgotten, as I have the luxury of doing, what a sorry, sad, unjust and, yes, despicable state of affairs we’ve galloped merrily into, something dramatically and heart-wrenchingly demands that my rage be acknowledged. And frankly — it’s necessary to be reminded of these things.

And here I thought I was the only one.

This, by the way, is from a letter to Cary Tennis — salon.com’s advice columnist extraordinare.

I’m not kidding around when I tell you that I’ve been seriously considering no longer reading the news in the morning. Every day it’s one or two or ten more reasons to feel depressed and anxious about the direction our country is taking. This morning, for example:

• The Bush administration is cutting the protected environment for the endangered snowy plover back by 40%. This is only the latest in a long series of environmental protection cuts.
• Former FEMA director Mike “Brownie” Brown is being kept on at full pay to help the agency investigate why it failed so miserably during the Hurrican Katrina crisis.

Cary advises the letter-writer to get involved in some protests — and to seek psychiatric help if his violent fantasies become too much to resist. Good advice, I suppose. Like the letter-writer, though, I find myself frustrated by the ineffectiveness of protest. People just don’t seem to get it no matter how simply you lay it out for them. All protesting does, for me at least, is further inflame my anger and despair.

Here’s just how bad it’s become. Mark and I have agreed that we both feel perversely relieved that at least we’ll probably be DEAD by the time all the environmental and political damage wrought by the Bush administration comes to fruition. We’ve agreed that we’re glad we don’t have any children who will have to live in a world where there aren’t any more snowy plovers.

I should probably just quit reading the news.

———

[Update 10:00 am]

I just got this in my Daily Ray of Hope email from the Sierra Club:

Where there is vision, the people prosper and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our communities recover. The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait, we have every thing we need – save perhaps political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.

– Former Vice President Al Gore earlier this month at the Sierra Summit

And I Always Thought of Myself as More of a Libertarian…

Political Quiz – Democratic Loyalty Quiz
Your score is 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard Democratic loyalist. You are appalled by the way Republicans are turning America into a theocratic, corpo-fascist police state, and you’d gladly walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit to elect a Democratic president. In your view, there is no higher form of patriotism than defending America against the Republican Party and every intolerant, puritanical, imperialistic, greed-mongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which it stands.

Maybe they just didn’t ask the right questions. Regardless, it’s all true. Except maybe the part about walking through a furnace.

It’s Not Unpatriotic to Oppose an Unjust War

Praise, Anger at Pro-War Rally in D.C.
“No matter what your ideals are, our sons and daughters are fighting for our freedom,” said Marilyn Faatz, who drove from New Jersey to attend the rally.

Marilyn Faatz is probably a perfectly nice person if you were to meet her face to face — and I’m guessing she wouldn’t strike most of us as being especially stupid. Like many people (particularly those with family members serving in Iraq), though, she’s been telling herself a BIG LIE. The BIG LIE is that the Iraq war is just and necessary and, consequently, that supporting it is equivalent to ‘supporting the troups.’

Here’s the truth — and it’s really indisputable at this point: Sadam Hussein was never a real threat to the United States. There never were any ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ The war in Iraq really has nothing at all to do with protecting our freedom. Nothing at all. Do you want to know what it’s about? Most of you reading this already know, of course.

It’s about OIL.

That’s it. It’s about maintaining the US’s access to cheap oil.

People in the US thought they were paying these terribly high prices for gas when the prices recently went up after Hurricane Katrina. Folks, the truth is that even at $4 a gallon, we’d still be paying significantly less for gasoline than most of the rest of the world pays. Just ask pretty much anyone living in Europe and they’ll be happy to confirm that for you.

But anyway — back to Marilyn and folks like her who have the terribly mistaken notion that opposing an unjust war is somehow unpatriotic:

Marilyn, as citizens of a free society it is our duty to oppose injustice whenever we see it — ESPECIALLY when it’s coming from our own country. I understand that you may feel a very deep need to believe your son or daughter is fighting for something nobler than OIL. That’s all it is, though, Marilyn. Oil. The very thought of it probably makes you feel scared and angry. That’s understandable, too. Here’s what I want you to do with that anger. Turn it around and point it towards the people who are responsible. It’s the Bush administration, Marilyn. George W. Bush and his cronies are using your son or daughter’s genuine desire to do good as a tool to buy cheap oil.

I hope that pisses you off as much as it does me.

Battling Zombies Online! Life is Good.

Urban Dead – A Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse
The city is dying. Some months on from the first reported outbreak, military quarantine units have closed Malton’s borders, and are moving in to eliminate the looters, to forcibly evacuate those civilians who still refuse to leave their homes.

The city is dying, and the urban dead are filling its streets.

Here’s a fun activity for a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Fool that I am, I just entered an un-barricaded church with no Action Points left and have discovered that it is inhabited by a zombie.

I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning and find myself a member of the undead horde.

Bummer. Oh well… Existence as a zombie has its rewards, I suppose.

Fairfax to Unfairly Target “Adults Only” Businesses

Times Community Newspapers – Fairfax – 09/22/2005 – City to regulate sexually-oriented businesses
A city staff report stated that the experiences of several jurisdictions in Virginia and across the nation have demonstrated that sexually-oriented businesses can create a negative impact on adjacent business and residential communities and generate community concerns for the health, safety and welfare of persons associated with or exposed to these businesses.

Yeah, and the presence of a “Re-Elect George W. Bush” Campaign Headquarters next door would have created a negative impact on any business I might have owned, too. I doubt I would have had much success getting the city council to “regulate” that, though.

As for the “health, safety and welfare” of people exposed to these businesses — what the fuck are they even talking about?? There are a whole bunch of unspoken presumptions in that and I’m not at all persuaded that ANY of them are valid. Are porn shop customers more likely to have diseases or to be dangerous perverts of some kind? I think that’s unlikely. Much more likely is that the people who buy stuff at these businesses are simply people who don’t have internet connections at home. I mean — let’s be real here, people. Lots of completely normal people look at porn online. Just because a person buys their porn at a shop instead of on the internet or through cable TV pay-per-view doesn’t make the guy (or gal) any more of a degenerate. So… I strongly suspect this “healthy, safety and welfare” stuff is bullshit.

Sexually-oriented businesses, which are referred to as “adult uses” in the ordinance, are required to obtain a permit from the chief of police, in addition to any other required business license.

To obtain a permit, the applicant must provide, among other things, names and addresses of references, a criminal records check, photographs and fingerprints, and information on whether they have held a similar permit or been denied a similar permit in other jurisdictions.

And what the hell is that all about? The people who run these adult businesses are being treated like criminals when, in fact, they are engaging in a Constitutionally protected activity. See, now that’s completely unfair. I suppose I can see the validity of some zoning restrictions for adult businesses. They probably shouldn’t be next door to schools or daycare businesses. I might even be able to agree to not putting them next door to churches. (Though I doubt most porn shop owners would want to be next door to a church anyway.) Requiring them to get a permit from the police, though — complete with fingerprints! That’s just wrong.

The ordinance also provides strict standards for the operation of adult use businesses to ensure the safety of employees, patrons and the public and minimize the opportunity for crimes that may occur in and around adult use businesses.

Again, there’s a presumption of guilt. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The city of Fairfax should be treating these businesses just like they’d treat any other business. They have inspectors to check out the safety of restaurants and barber shops and such, don’t they? Likewise, they should have inspectors who periodically check up on these porn shops to be sure they’re not doing anything illegal like selling obscene materials or letting people have sex in the store. There’s no reason why entrepeneurs should have to jump through a bunch of extra legal hoops just to be in business in Fairfax.

I think I’m going to contact the ACLU of Virginia. It really seems like this new regulation in Fairfax should be legally challenged.

HumanityCritic Prevails Again

In a freestyle rap battle I’d love to see, our hero HumanityCritic wipes the floor with George Bush’s lame ass. Here HumanityCritic describes the crowd’s reaction to Bush’s performance:

Daily Views, Pop Culture, Rants, and News / Freestyle battle: HumanityCritic vs. Bush: Live at the Superdome!
The crowd, mostly people affected by his utter incompetence, are booing him and giving him the finger. The only ones clapping are Barbara Bush and George Sr, both wearing matching “Oh Shit, I see black people” T-shirts.

Your Mother is Pissed Off

Texas Coast Braces For Rita
“If Katrina did anything, it woke people up to the power of Mother Nature,” said Anthony Griffin, 51, who spent Wednesday boarding up his Galveston law office before heading to his brother’s home in Fort Worth. “When Katrina hit this country, it was in a city that everyone knew and those folks looking at the TV camera looked like folks we knew.”

I’m not one of those people who believe God literally chooses to punish one group of people for their transgressions but, you’ve got to hand it to the crazy jihadists, they’re definitely onto something when they claim these big hurricane’s are the Almighty’s way of punishing the US for its sins.

For decades, the US has been ignoring warnings about the dangers of global warming — among the least of which are stronger and more frequent tropical storms. The Bush administration has blatantly thumbed its nose at members of the international community who’ve been pleading with us to be part of the solution. Bush’s reply has been, in essence, ‘If China’s not going to do it, then we’re not going to do it.’

This kind of childishness will, literally, be the death of us all.

Besides more (and more dangerous) tropical storms, global warming is directly responsible for the loss of habitat required by hundreds (thousands?) of different species from giant polar bears to tiny organisms that live deep in the ocean. Humans are far more dependent upon the earth’s great diversity of life than most of us will ever realize.

What will it take for the people of this country to DEMAND that we change our ways? How many cities destroyed? How many species wiped out?

Maybe these hurricanes really are the hand of God, reaching down from heaven to give the United States a good swift slap across the face.