It Still Weirds me out...

...to think that I'm no longer in the minority in some of my dissenting opinions.

According to a CNN poll, most Americans don't believe the Founding Fathers would be proud of the way the country has turned out.

and now it's time for quotedown:

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.

So, American knows that shit is fucked up. However, we still happen to believe our shit don't stink:

Sixty-one percent said they were extremely proud to be Americans; another 28 percent said they were very proud. Seven percent answered "moderately," 2 percent said "only a little," and 1 percent answered "not at all."

And finally, because this is television news on the internet, we have some excessively nugacious bullshit tacked on at the end:

Forty-one percent of respondents said a candidate should always wear [a flag pin]. Another 13 percent said "frequently," 16 percent said "sometimes," 19 percent said "only occasionally," and 9 percent said "never."

I wish they would have asked those polled whether or not they thought our Founding Fathers would have given a two shits about something as insignificant, insincere and idiotic as a motherfucking flag pin.

I would have liked to have seen those numbers.

Obama Don't Drink No Haterade

Obama has responded to the truly insane idealists who don't properly understand why he must vote for the new FISA bill (as it has come to be known).

Some choice cuts, courtesy of Huffpo:

Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I'm sworn in as president -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

hmm... it's so... logical...

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions.

awww.... love for the haters....

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country.

dude... owned.

So basically, I'm gonna lay it out right now. People got their panties in a bunch over this. They overreacted, and they showed themselves to be the same kind of zealots I've watched dictate the decisions of the executive branch of my government for the last eight years.

Barack Obama, when he is President, will not work directly for any one of us. It is not his job to do what you want him to do. You want to dictate policy? Get off your ass, go to law school and start your own political career. Or just throw your vote away on some guy named Barr.

I have been watching for awhile. Hanging back, I've noticed some patterns. And one thing that has bothered me is the progressive movement shouting out that Barack Obama is a turncoat because he refuses to become their version of GWB.

Barack Obama ran in the primaries on a platform of change and unity. So far, I don't believe I've seen anything from him to tell me he's deviated from that course.

In conclusion, quit your bitching.

(Look, I'm sorry this is so aggressive. I haven't had much presence here lately, and I'm about to leave. But I am trying to incite a debate/riot. So hit it up, and I'll be back later.)

those copycatting chinese

this is what you get for trying to be the next hegemon, china. now you're gonna start inheriting all of our serious problems. first up: a real estate bubble explosion.

from the economist:

Property investors around the country are now holding their breath to see whether markets in other major cities will follow the spectacular tumble in Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, where the average per-square-metre price of new residential units dropped from over Rmb16,000 in February to Rmb11,000 at the end of May. Reports of last-minute discounts, free renovation, free cars and "cost sharing" for down payments abound, suggesting even bigger concessions to come.

...

Housing prices are also vulnerable in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Haikou on the coast, and Wuhan, Nanning, Xi'an, Lanzhou and Urumqi in the interior. All these cities experienced spectacular growth in 2007.

you know, i can't help but smile a little bit. this is what you guys get for trying to be the next america, complete with the rampant use of fossil fuels, excessive military budget, and cheap exports (remember those?).

funniest part about this? their newly empowered middle class is going to be pissed. this should be an interesting context for the beijing olympics, especially with all the other social repression issues they're going through right now.

not just our t-shirts are made in china

from the international herald-tribune (the international arm of the new york times):

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

---

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including "Semi-Starvation," "Exploitation of Wounds," and "Filthy, Infested Surroundings," and with their effects: "Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator," "Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist," and "Reduces Prisoner to 'Animal Level' Concerns."

anybody else feel that sinking feeling? yeah, that's america losing our moral high ground. fast.

link.

I used the same fucking haemostatic bandage you did and when I finished it didn't look like no God damn Maxi Pad

I was watching The News Hour last night and a detail in this report about the Pentagon's failure to get MRAPs and other supplies to our troops jumped out at me:

[Reporter]PAUL SOLMAN: Not enough tourniquets, the Baltimore Sun reported in 2005, quoting one infantry surgeon, "There is no good reason why wounded soldiers are continuing to die on the battlefield from extremity bleeding." No haemostatic bandages that chemically cauterize wounds in an instant.
[Iraq War Veteran] BILL FERGUSON: I've never seen a haemostatic bandage, not once ever. We just had the old ones. As a matter of fact, if you were, if what -- this is going to sound -- you use tampons, women's tampons. If you get shot or whatever, you stick it inside the hole, and it'll swell and like make it stop bleeding, supposedly.

Bad? It gets worse. The report cuts to another vet who has something to add:

[Iraq War Veteran] PATRICK CAMPBELL: And where do you get the tampons? You get them sent from your friends and family back home.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! The military isn't suppying our troops with tampons? They realize some of the troops are women now, right? What the fuck makes it so hard to get such basic supplies to them? Oh, wait, I'll bet I know what it is:

Notes from the Right-Wing: Same as the Old Boss

Guess who's the latest dirtbag to pander to the religious right and test the limits. Barack Obama.

From the AP:

Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for expanding President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — supported some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Not only does Obama want to continue a failed Bush administration policy, he wants to throw more money at.

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

Sounds somewhat reasonable at first glance, no? But can any charity with a religious affiliation really avoid proselytizing? The people who work in these charities are almost all ardently invested in their faith. Can you really prevent them from attempting to recruit those they're helping?

One of the major problems with Bush's support of faith-based initiatives is that a lot of federal money gets wasted on these charities' overhead costs. The churches take their rake, essentially. Additionally, it is difficult for the government to control where the money goes. Not only is it counterproductive to try to police these charities' spending, it's damned near impossible.

Obama proposes to elevate the program to a "moral center" of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.

Moral center. Great. Give my tax dollars away to preachy douchebags with high overhead costs and call it a moral center.

I'm fine with faith-based charities. I think they do great work, and it's awesome that people support them. But I don't want my government forcing me to pay into whatever agendas they might have. That should be my choice.

Defeating the HIV

Condom sales plummeted thusly.

Read the headline (hell read the whole thing), then come back and assume that whichever of these lovely quips is your favorite, that's the one I decided to go with.

a) If you listen closely you can hear a joyous outcry springing forth from the southwest U.S. - that's ASU.

b) now Joe Francis has his WHOLE life to duck charges of tax evasion and kiddy porn... and be a douchebag.

c) Do not be confused. Hepatitis still eats a bag of dicks.

d) d00d qwik tel ur mom

where do i sign?

from laist - if the people behind it get the 694,354 signatures required, there will be an initiative in this november's california state ballot to legalize marijuana via constitutional amendment.

readers, i know most of you, if not native californians, have spent a lot of time in my beautiful state. i'm sure most of you (prob. not joeverkill) will agree that it's time to legalize the shit, and tax it accordingly. among other things, this amendment:

Allows marijuana to be sold in any store that sells alcohol. Establishes local boards with expansive powers, including powers to regulate and tax marijuana. Requires marijuana tax revenues support specified programs. Exempts marijuana sales profits from income tax. Forbids most testing for marijuana used outside the workplace. Prohibits most marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco advertisements. Immunizes marijuana growers and sellers from liability.

im not sure about exempting profits from income tax...if you want to legitimize it, then why not tax it like everything else?

either way, the evidence is mounting in favor of massively scaling back the war on drugs, and this is the best way to start.

he looks like emperor palpatine for a reason

terrorism. n. the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

example:

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

---

"It's [the surge] now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."

-joe lieberman, scare-tactician, dogmatic religious zealot, and chief left-wing war hawk.

this is not fucking funny.

at&t has recently posted and quickly rescinded new marketing copy on their online billing website in honor of getting retroactive immunity for spying on americans without warrants (thanks boingboing):

Ms. Suspicious Has Nothing to Hide.

Well, she has a little to hide, but her love of Online Billing isn't one of them. She and the other Online Liberation Movement members have all made online billing work for them, whether they need simplicity, convenience, flexibility, or just peace of mind.

hilarious, right?

for those who don't get the joke, this is a play on the amendment to the foreign intelligence surveillance act, an act that sounds like it's meant to be used to spy on...you know, foreign nationals.

sadly, this has led to bush-era warrantless wiretapping of american citizens, because, you know, anybody could be a terrorist. naturally, since sorting the wheat through the chaff is difficult, they figured that the best way to spy on the right people is to spy on everybody. it got to the point where at&t had an 'orwell room' where 'a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.'

so now, despite that we know all about the orwell room and all of that, we're going to give the telecom companies a free pass, and let them go retroactively for the shit that they pulled. obama supported the compromised bill that wound up passing. the progressive left, especially the netroots, feel betrayed, but keith "it's deep but i don't think it's playable" olbermann is defending obama's position, rationalizing it thusly:

With that preamble out of the way, here goes. John [Dean, former watergate conspirator and current bush critic] said his reading of the revised FISA statute suggested it was so poorly constructed (or maybe so sublimely constructed) that it clearly did not preclude future criminal prosecution of the telecoms - it only stopped civil suits.

I have repeated his observation each night since. Maybe I didn't sell my conviction of its conclusiveness. I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns).

Thus, as I phrased it on the air tonight, obviously Obama kicked the left in the teeth by supporting the bill. But anybody who got as hot about this as I did would prefer to see a President Obama prosecuting the telecoms criminally, instead of seeing a Senator Obama engender more "soft on terror" crap by casting a token vote in favor of civil litigation that isn't going to pass since so many other Democrats caved anyway.

so, i dunno about you guys, but here's where i stand.
1) i'm not upset with obama for his centrist shift - yet.
2) the progressives are having trouble coming to grips with the fact that in a democracy, you're just gonna have to win over the people who don't think like you.
3) at&t are a bunch of assholes.

any thoughts?

what energy crisis?

you can't make this shit up:

DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

...

Water use can be a factor as well, especially in the parched areas where virtually all of the proposed plants would be built. Concentrating solar plants may require water to condense the steam used to power the turbine.

“Reclamation is another big issue,” Ms. Resseguie said. “These plants potentially have a 20- to 30-year life span. How to restore that land is a big question for us.”


meanwhile, in hypocrisyland:

Republicans want to end the 27-year ban on offshore drilling along much of the nation’s coastline, while Democrats want to force companies to speed up exploration in certain offshore areas that they already control. A version of the Democratic plan may come to a vote in the House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

well, i guess america'a answers to the problems of the 21st century is to pretend we're in the 20th still.

How McCain can win the cunt vote (#1: Stop calling it "the cunt vote")

McCain did an interview with the Las Vegas Sun last week and apparently he said something that was, well, weird:

(On why he didn't choose Gov. Jim Gibbons to chair his Nevada campaign?)
I appreciate his support. As you know, the lieutenant governor is our chairman.
(Why snub the governor?)
I didn’t mean to snub him,. I've known the lieutenant governor for 15 years and we've been good friends….I didn't intend to snub him. There are other states where the governor is not the chairman.
(Maybe it's the governor's approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?)
(Chuckling) And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago….

Okay, so admittedly the questioning took kind of a dickish turn there, and I guess McCain was trying to… what? Lighten the mood with a good wife-beating joke? I mean, I’m not offended or anything, I like dark humor as much as anyone, but my understanding is that even dark humor requires some form of humor like irony, or satire, or reversal of expectation. You can’t just come out and say, “My newborn baby has terminal cancer, ha ha. Get it?” (Satire.)

So while I’m more perplexed than offended, I can think of some concerned citizens who might be pretty pissed off about that kind of joke. Citizens like those independent, outside-the-box, and not-at-all irrational thinkers at http://www.dems4mccain.info/. (Sarcasm.) Citizens like thebword who is outraged by how the “DNC stood by, encourage [sic], and participated in sexism throughout the primary” and Hillarysmygirl08 who calls Obama “the most vile sexist man on the Planet.” (Hyperbole.) Yeah, I’m betting they’re not into spousal abuse jokes. (Comic understatement.)

I remember, several years ago, one of my housemates emerged from his room after a prolonged phone conversation and stated, “Just so none of the rest of you step on the same mine that I just did: apparently girlfriends don’t like to be called “whores,” even if you’re obviously joking.” In that spirit, I think someone needs to sit McCain down and explain to him that he should avoid the following phrases unless he wants one of the dems4mccain to drive a stiletto heel (pretense of misogyny for ironic effect) through his coccyx (alliterative succession of hard “K” sounds, plus phonetic similarity to vulgar term for the phallus).

• "I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago."
• "At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."
• "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
• "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."
• "I love Cindy so much that I actually bothered to be present for one of her three miscarriages."
• "Lynn Cheney didn’t choose to be a lesbian. She was born too fat for any man to find her attractive. I mean, when my first wife got fat… blech!"
• "I love Cindy so much that when she developed a 20-pill-a-day Vicodin habit, I knew something was wrong as soon as she told me about it more than a year after she quit."
• "Bitches ain’t shit but hos and tricks. Lick on these nuts and suck the dick. Just get the fuck out after you’re done. And I hops in my ride to make a quick run."
• "Hey, check out my hilarious new shirt:"
  

And finally...

• "We will be victorious in The War Against Terror, or TWAT. When we entered into TWAT, we encountered a putrid cesspool the likes of which mankind had never before witnessed. TWAT represents the single greatest evil confronting mankind today. And while it may seem as if more blood – horrible, horrible blood - is spilling from TWAT with each passing month, we must stay engaged in TWAT - whether we’re wanted there or not – pounding the forces of evil into submission and planting the seed of democracy, even if it take 100 excruciatingly painful years."

LOLSbian stole mah bucket

Pride parade yesterday in SanFran...