Our Word For Today

Our word for today is “OFFENDED” as in the Republicans appearing to be in some kind of race to see who can be the most “offended” by the fact that a black guy lives in the White House.

I know, I know.  Big surprise, huh?  The very notion that the various junkies and pimps and whores that make up our entire body politic would say whatever it takes no matter how outlandish, to accomplish their agenda, even resorting to distortions, half truths and outright lies as the situation appeared to require is big news to most of us.  NOT!!!  but when they start being offended, it’s time to simply sit back and watch them make fools of themselves again and again.

Jim Hightower had a bit today on Karl Rove being “offended” by the Chrysler/Clint Eastwood Superbowl half time ad in which long time Republican Eastwood appeared to be defending the president’s decision to bail out the American automobile industry and save thousands of jobs at the same time it was bailing out the too flipping big to fail banks that were deliberately eliminating even more thousands of jobs in the name of increased profits and dividends for a bunch of sick %$##s who don’t do a goddamned thing but push piles of other people’s money around all day.

Karl Rove, the supreme sleaze-meister of negative political advertising, complained about a recent television ad: “I was frankly offended by it.”

Wow – that’s like a skunk saying some other critter stinks! What could possibly make an ad so offensive that Karl would gag? Hope, that’s what. The sweet flower of optimism nauseates Karl.

The ad was Chrysler’s Super Bowl spot. Aired during halftime of the game, it featured Clint Eastwood in a darkened factory, saying, “It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting,” he said, but revival is coming from the the American people’s can-do spirit: “Detroit’s showing us it can be done.” Our country can’t be knocked out with one punch, Eastwood declared. “We get right back up again. Yeah. It’s halftime, America. And our second half is about to begin.

What we have here is a case of old Turdblossom being pissed off because the bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors were successful.  In other words, they did what they were supposed to do, Keep those companies and those factories alive until they could get back on their feet and start turning a profit again and in the process, keeping thousands of Americans gainfully employed and off the welfare and unemployment roles.  In Rove’s twisted little cesspool of a mind, this somehow makes President Obama look good at the expense of elitist pricks like Mitt Romney who would have enjoyed firing entire factories full of American workers.  This aspect hasn’t been helped by those on the “other side” who are quick to give the president 100% of the credit for the success of the automotive bailouts and who enjoy rubbing the Republicans’ faces in it every chance they get.

Truth of the matter is, as Jim explains:

I hate to interrupt Rove’s nasty tantrum with a dose of reality, but the auto bailout was initiated not by Obama, but by George W. Bush – for whom Rove worked! And, in an embarrassing happenstance, on the very day that Karl was fulminating on Fox, Bush himself was expressing pride in helping save the industry, pointedly saying: “I’d do it again.”

Now nobody hates giving George Bush credit for anything good that came out of the bailout debacle more than I do.  I am firmly in the camp of those that believe that GW Bush was the wors flipping president in the history of the republic.  I know that Mr. Obama deserves credit for standing against those that would have denied bailout funds to the auto companies during his term but the simple truth is that the bailouts for the auto companies were engineered on W’s watch.

I suspect that the decision to save the American auto industry by the Bush administration was not a unanimous one and that Turdblossom found himself on the losing side of the argument and was possibly even overruled by his boss and that his negligee has been in a tight little wad ever since.  I also suspect that Mr. Rove is fully aware that it was his own former boss who bailed out the auto companies in one of the few actual success stories to come out of the current depression recession so far.

I also suspect that Rove wouldn’t get much mileage from bashing the bailouts if he didn’t wrap it in a coating of “hate the black dude” before presenting it to the FOX Tea Party Channel for general dissemination and that criticizing anything a Republican has ever done is still strictly off limits, especially as far as Fox News is concerned.  Therefore, Turdblossom finds himself with a choice between keeping his damned mouth shut for a change and bashing a highly popular commercial featuring a long time fellow Republican touting what is technically a Republican accomplishment and we all know old Karl ain’t capable of keeping his mouth shut, right?

Rove is the one with a crass partisan agenda. He’s now amassing a $100 million war chest to carpetbomb Obama with negative TV ads, so he’s “offended” by any positive message about America’s future. Karl Rove is the sickness in today’s politics.

To which I can only add, “Frankly Mr. Rove, I find YOU offensive.”.

 

Really GOP? The Girl Scouts???

Good grief!  Take a few days off to tie up some medical loose ends and what do I see when I get back?  The idiot wing of the GOP attacking… of all things… the girl scouts?  Come ON people… how stupid do these moronic attacks against common sense  have to be before even the dumbest and most ignorant among you realize your flipping buttons are being pushed by political whores who’ll kiss your ass in public to get your meager little votes and then laugh their own asses off at you in private for being gullible enough to fall for anything they stick in front of you?

And why… of all the organizations they could have picked for this spectacular display of ignorance… did they pick the Girl Scouts?  Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that the Girl Scouts of America actually promotes “abortion, paganism and homosexual lifestyles” as part of its official agenda?  Or… MORE likely…  is the organization simply being trashed for not openly denouncing these positions loudly enough to suit the screechers among the ranks of ignorant southern males doing 99% of the screeching?   Or… MOST likely… is this just another carefully manipulated facet of the attack on women in general that has always been  an important plank in the radical Republican platform but because this four year election cycle… that started the very day we elected a black man to the White House… has already gone on long enough to exhaust the supply of the merely ridiculous thereby requiring the GOP to start flinging the sublimely so?

The kind of ignorance that allows one to come to the conclusion the the GSA is somehow a threat to the “American” way of life is not the kind of ignorance that can be blamed on a lack of information.  Ignorant rednecks have exactly the same access to information and educational materials the rest of us have.  Nor can it be traced to some form of disability, either physical or mental that would prevent these people from assimilating and processing this information in the same manner the rest of us do.

While recent studies have shown that a majority of the members of the more radically right sectors of the GOP and the Conservative movement in general may have lower levels of intelligence (as measured by traditional methods) and even some small differences in physical brain structure than their counterparts on the left, the differences… while they might affect the rapidity with which one is able to grasp the significance of the facts and figures being presented… would not seem to indicate a total inability to to do so at all.

So one is left with the conclusion that the ignorance so proudly displayed during days since the majority imposed a black president on the residents Neoconfederate States of America… the old Dixiecrat states… is the result of a wanton refusal of the right to acknowledge any and all considerations that do not actively and wholeheartedly support the existing preconceived agenda of the white male Christian power structure in this country.

Which simply means that any organization that promotes equality for women… no matter how innocuous or apolitical it might be… is  a target.  Not even necessarily because it might in some manner promote actual opposition to that WMCPS agenda but because it fails to fall in line and actually PROMOTE it and I’m guessing that the Girl Scout kerfuffle isn’t going to be the last example of manufactured self righteous indignation coming from the right over the next eight months.

I’m just surprised James O’Keefe hasn’t been busted (so far) wearing a green dress and a beret, attempting to infiltrate neighborhood Brownie meetings in the DC area.  I guess Breitbart has been having an off week or something.

 

And Not A Uterus Among Them

If there was ever any doubt that Corporate America was waging a war against women in this country, a piece by Jessica Reed @ The Guardian Abortion rights: what’s wrong with these pictures?

As usual, I find myself highly pissed off that I have to go to foreign press to find illustrations of what should be obvious even to the feeble minded… provided they are given the information with which to formulate a conclusion… which in this country, they are not.  Far too many of our own “journalists”, including many female ones (Liz Trotta being the latest example) are too damned busy selling out not only their country but their gender for big bucks by parroting the “a (poor) woman’s place is to serve her lord and master” routine to tell the inconvenient truths about what this latest campaign to inject religious dogma into our governmental process without paying the taxes that are the price everyone else pays to participate.

Remember, we’re no longer just talking about abortion anymore.  We’re talking about a woman’s basic right to choose even not to become pregnant should she so choose under ANY circumstances.  If the morons in these pictures get their way, even contraception is going to become illegal, leaving a woman with abstinence as her only recourse and there is not a doubt in my mind that abstinence would be made illegal next and after that?  Hell, I don’t know anymore.  Maybe being strapped to the roof of the car during family vacation trips?

The first one shows nine US legislators standing behind George W Bush in 2003 as he signs the partial-birth abortion ban. The law, as signed by the president, prohibited a specific form of late-term abortion occurring between 15 to 26 weeks. Note that, as NPR’s health correspondent Julie Rovner explains, the term “partial birth” is not a medical term, but a politicised one – coined by the National Right to Life Committee .

I’m sure you’ve already picked up on what’s missing from that little gathering.  It IS a bit obvious after all.

But just in case it escaped you or “one picture does not a meme make”, here’s a bit more recent one.

The second photograph was taken on Thursday during a US Congress hearing on birth control. The house committee on oversight and government reform was tasked to assemble a panel of “experts” to debate access to birth control. Those experts – acting as representatives of their faiths – argued against requiring insurers to cover birth control for employees of religiously affiliated organisations, as it would violate their religious freedom. They also contended that methods of contraception including morning-after pills and IUDs were “abortifacients”: they prevent sperm from reaching, or fertilising, an egg during sexual intercourse. The photograph shows, from left to right: Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Rev William E Lori; president of the Lutheran church (Missouri Synod) Rev Matthew C Harrison; Graves professor of moral philosophy at Union University, C Ben Mitchell; associate rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik; and chair of the ethics department at Southwestern Baptist theological seminary, Craig Mitchell.

These two pictures, taken eight years apart, are typical of any pictures that might have been taken during that time of any gathering met to discuss the same or similar subjects.  For those White Southern Christian Males that still haven’t gotten it, I’m going to give you one more chance.

Gaze once again at picture #1 which shows us who makes all these laws governing the inside of the uterus and what can and can not go on there.  Then look one more time at the panel of “experts” that your government has most recently convened to provide insight on the rights of a woman to choose for herself what goes on inside her own body so that those laws could get made.

Now, tell me Bubba… do you see a single female face anywhere in either of those two pictures?  In other words, in those two pictures of at least 15 people who have had a major impact on what can and can’t, does and doesn’t go on inside the human uterus,  the entire 15 of them couldn’t scrape together a poor facsimile of a uterus between them.

And while there are only two pictures included here, as I said above, this is no aberration.  This is typical of any group that our government gets or has gotten together over the course of the last decade to decide how the “lesser elements” of “our” society should be allowed to live their lives.  That this one involves an actual invasion of the human body itself shows the lengths to which our pandering political prostitutes are willing to go to give big business… and religion is just likely to be the biggest business out there when all is said and done… what they want.

And to think these religions… these ginormous business concerns… get to wield this kind of power and have all this say in the lives of the rest of us without ever having to cough up a dime of the taxes which are the costs the rest of us bear for having our tiny little voices in our so called representative republic.  When people who don’t pay anything for the maintenance of government are allowed to control that government and use it to run roughshod over the rights of the people that do… then it’s pretty safe to say that at least 98% of us no longer have a government.

 

Health Care Reform? If You Say So.

There’s been a lot of back and forth over the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 which while it is considered “landmark” legislation by many for others, like yours truly, it has been more of a landmine than a landmark.  The division is of course, between those who now at least have health insurance and those of us who found our own access to care being steadily eroded during the run up to it’s passage.

What a lot of people were either failing to see or refusing to acknowledge during the seemingly endless discussions prior to the passage of the AHCA is that it was never a bill intended to actually improve health care, or even access to adequate health care for more people… in it’s final form, it’s purpose turned out to be to provide access to private health INSURANCE for more people and if you don’t see the difference there, I’m definitely wasting my time.

When universal single payer or any form of “MediCare for all” were taken off the table before the discussion even started, those of of us already in the system knew we were about to be thoroughly screwed.  When cuts in services began to show up quietly, almost surreptitiously, at the same time the politicians were busy assuring us that they weren’t going to happen, we knew we were already being screwed.  When the states were allowed to gut Medicaid programs to balance budget shortfalls caused by their own stupidity and shortsightedness and without ever once asking their versions of the Yacht Party to pay their fair share of taxes, we knew that the screwing was going to take a while and we might as well resign ourselves to it, because the one thing that was readily apparent… or that should have been readily apparent… is that there weren’t too many people, either in DC or the state houses… that were willing to stand up on their hind legs and fight for grandma and grandpa.

One of the things I’ve always tried to point out since I started my little blogging effort is that it’s one thing to read about the depredations of the 1% as regards certain demographic groups such as the elderly, the disabled and the poor.  Every day some prominent Progressive economist or sociologist is up in arms about somebody doing X to the elderly while another is ranting against people doing Y to the disabled and of course everybody is terribly concerned about the plight of the poor and lately the middle class now that so many of them are becoming poor.

But for a huge number of bloggers and pundits… or blundits as I like to say sometimes, for no reason whatever… it’s nothing but numbers.  It remains a total abstract and many of them remain incapable of imagining what it’s really like to plan your entire month’s grocery shopping around what might go best with Ramen noodles tonight.  And the exact same thing applies to decent health care as many of our most prominent “experts”  cannot fathom the massive variations between the levels of care available as you work your way down the economic food chain whether you have private insurance or not.  The tendency is to lump us all together in one bag in a kind of weird alternate universe where a decrease in quality is more than justified by an increase in quantity.

The main thing the AHCA really did when you break it right down to it’s bare components, was to provide a captive clientele for the private insurance industry up to and including the providing of subsidies and “incentives” for those who couldn’t afford their own insurance.  It totally failed to account for the fact that 99% of the problems that befall Americans in being able to access adequate health care are results of actions or inaction by exactly that same private insurance industry.

One thing that has to be abundantly clear to anyone with half a brain is that as long as the level of care you receive is predicated in any way upon the amount of money you can afford to pay for it, we will never have equal access to health care in this country and many… probably most…  of us are never going to have a basic level of care that insures good health for ourselves and out families.  We will continue to have a health care INDUSTRY and decent health care and a profitable health care INDUSTRY are two entirely different, in fact mutually annihilating elements.

As one of those who has had to seek his own medical care in the almost 100% privatized “public health” system for a a while now, my little story is probably typical of those in my little category which I would describe as definitely poor but still managing to stay alive. Let me try to give you a little more personal glimpse of the life of a Medicare/MedicAid victim patient, these days.  I promise, I’ll try to keep it short.

For roughly the last four and a half years I had been seen by a physician for a private company that contracts with our county health department and which… for now at least… shall be nameless.  As you can probably guess, the result of the privatization of the state/county health care system in California has produced exactly the same result as it has in every other facet of government services to which privatization has been applied to any significant degree.  Think Walter Reed or the VA on a Podunk scale and you can start to see the picture.

In addition to all those things you may have read about in those more significant stories, things you might expect in any place where your life or death mean no more than a credit or debit on the bottom line, patients are veritably whipped through the examining rooms on an assembly line the speed of which would put General Motors to shame.  Doctors and other providers are obviously on a quota system wherein X number of patients have to be seen in a given time period.  My daughter got to witness several instances of me following him down the hall trying to get questions answered and having him go into another exam room and shut the door in my face.

The doctor that was originally supposed to replace him as my primary provider was actually fired for spending enough time with his patients to try to get an idea of what was actually ailing them.  I was actually told this when I tried to make a followup appointment with him.

I used to be required to see a cardiovascular specialist every six months but then those referrals virtually stopped.  During my almost four years with this clinic, I went to one stress echo test early on and never received another referral.  Even my labs went down drastically and a typical visit to this guy became almost a ritual… 45 minutes to an hour in the waiting room, 10-15 minute wait in the exam room (which included weight and vitals being recorded), maybe 3-5 minutes with the doc during which he listened to my breathing and then it was out the door.  His usual replies to any questions I managed to get in ran along the lines of “Well, you DO have asthma, you know.”, or, “You DO have CHF, you know.”.

At the time of my heart attack last Tuesday I had… as a result of getting a new primary provider… just been seen by a cardiologist for the first time in about four years and was in fact, on his surgery table undergoing an angiogram when the attack occurred.  Luckily , another surgeon who specializes in vessel repair was in the hospital and between the two of them, they kept me going long enough to effect an emergency repair of the vessels on the right side and get me stabilized and I go back in about 6 weeks, after I’ve recovered from the attack, to have the left side done.

The main thing I took away from the experience was that my heart was allowed to reach the point that 6 vessels were virtually clogged… that I displayed all of the classic signs and symptoms of major arterial blockage… and that extraordinary measures had to be taken in order to keep me from croaking right there on the operating table… and the man who had been my primary physician for several years either never had a freaking clue or was too busy meeting his quota, to worry about it.

Yes blundits, the numbers are shocking, the facts and figures are shocking and the very idea that people are out here actually dying because to keep them alive detracts from someone’s balance sheet is shocking.  Keep hammering the suckers with everything you’ve got but also  try to realize that in spite of all the hoopla and even the good things that it did accomplish (and there were some), the AHCA didn’t really fix a damned thing in regard to health care itself for the masses and now is no time to become complacent because the prez passed a piece of “landmark” legislation that nobody else had been able to pass.  All it was… or should have been… was just the first shot in a war that is nowhere near over (I hope).

What it did do was effect some quid pro quos and shift some of the various financial burdens around some so as to get more people in the hip pockets of the insurance companies but until everyone in this country enjoys exactly the same level of basic health care services regardless of how much they contribute to whose stock portfolio, the fat lady ain’t done her solo yet and declaring the mission accomplished when it’s only just beginning does nothing but make us all look like Bush announcing he’d just won the flipping Iraq war and was going to Disneyland.

 

Why I Bitch

Got a tweet tonight that has me rethinking my entire approach to this whole social networking thing and since it’s totally impossible to explain an outlook when you’re limited to 140 characters, I thought I’d take a shot at explaining situation a  little more extensively here.

What happened was that I was informed that at times I come off as being divisive.  Now I have no problem with that and yeah, I suppose I do exactly that ofttimes but it’s definitely not my reason for blogging nor is it any kind of basis for my Facebook and Twitter accounts.  I suspect that I come from an entirely different kind of background from most of my Twitter friends and I know damned well that I come from another generation and therefore from  a whole other era in American history.

I’m not as articulate as a lot of bloggers and I’m not adept at pussyfooting around any subject.  If I don’t like something then my sole intent in talking about it, be it in a tweet or a blog post is to say I don’t like it and if it’s something that I consider egregious enough I’ll include my opinion of the person that brought it about in my little discourse.

My main goal is to try present a picture that a lot of comfortable middle class folks never get to see on their big screen TV machines in between their sports spectaculars and their blockbuster movie extravaganzas and their obligatory annual vacation treks to as many of the parks and attractions as they can cram into their lifestyle driven existence .

It’s a picture that most of them don’t want to see and that makes it doubly hard because you’re made to feel like you’re intruding on their little comfort zones when you try to point out just how many people, a whole lot worse off than they are,  have to bust their asses so that they can HAVE those little zones of middle class complacency.

I know these things because for most of my adult life I WAS one of those comfortable middle class types with my modest little row house in a bedroom community and my getting to travel all over the State of California doing good deeds for folks and being hailed as a pillar of my community which I figured wasn’t bad for a guy that grew up dirt poor and whose family were dust bowl Okies blown off an original homestead in Oklahoma and making the final trek to California in Late 1945 (after Dad’s service in WWII) with Mom, Dad, me and whatever could be carried in (and on) a 1939 Plymouth sedan.

I’ve lived my entire life within 50 miles of where we first landed when we came to California.  Tulare County is one of the most productive farming counties in the entire United States consistently ranking among the top three in diversity and production.  It’s also the third poorest of California’s 58 counties in terms of median income, has an unemployment rate of over 16%  (unemployment here rose almost a percentage point at the same time it was dropping nationwide.

And of course now, I’m considered poor again, living on an $867 a month Social Security check, spending my days confined to a wheelchair hooked at various times during a day to three different kinds of machines designed to keep the breath flowing in and out, having spent the past four years waiting to be referred to a cardiovascular specialist for needed heart surgery (that I’m finally getting day after tomorrow).

Now my point in all this is not to bore you folks with my decidedly dull life story or impress anyone with my stoicism in the face of adversity.    I’m one hell of a lot better off than a lot of folks in my age group in that  I have a little subsidized apartment, money to put food on my table and I’m widowed and have nobody to look out for but me.  I actually consider myself lucky compared to a lot of the people around me.

No, my point is that yes, my view of what is and isn’t wrong with America today is skewed by a totally different set of conditions and life experiences than is that of someone who has spent their entire lives in one of those little zones I spoke about earlier.  I know damned well that we’re in a class war and that… unlike Warren Buffett…, my class is the one that’s losing.  I know for a fact that I’m not only worse off today than I was ten years ago, five years ago or even six months ago, I have a pretty clear idea of WHY that is so and of who is causing it to be so.

I’m neither a liberal nor a conservative and don’t suffer politicians of any stripe gladly, but if I have to make a choice, it’s going to be in favor of the ones that I feel will do me and my country the least amount of damage during the time they hold my fate in their hands.  I firmly believe that people who make a living by making, growing, hauling, servicing and selling a product or a service are by far superior to those who make more than they could ever need simply by moving piles of money… usually other people’s money… around and I suppose I’ll continue to say so at every opportunity.

Although I consider myself an inveterate capitalist  I totally agree with those that consider Wall Street and the version of capitalism for the masses/socialism for the few and the elite a cancer that is gnawing the vitals from  the country on a daily basis.

If I’m not as articulate as you might think I ought to be, maybe a little biased toward snark and sarcasm… hey, what can I say?  I’m not about to apologize for that.   I have no delusions that anything I write on my little 3-4 hit per day blog here is going to be read by anyone who might find themselves the subject of one of my little rants but that doesn’t alter the fact that the rant itself provides a form of catharsis even if just the relief felt at having vented.  We all need a safety valve of some kind… this is just about the only one I have left available to me.

If you got this far, thanks for bearing with me.  If you didn’t, then I have no flipping idea who I’m talking to.

 

Paranoid Much?

File in the “This Would Be Funny If…” folder as examples of those stories that would have us laughing our asses off if they weren’t taking place on the North American continent in a couple of the supposedly most developed countries in the world.  Guess we can blame it all on the Mexicans, like we do everything else, eh?

The first story comes from Canada and the sad part of it is that I used to think of Canada as a really cool place… kind of a saner and nicer United States without the blithering and blathering of uneducated, ill informed rednecks, but obviously, right wing induced and wholly manufactured paranoia now grips our northern neighbors to much the same degree as it does us.

Sourced from The Daily Mail Online:

A Moroccan-born Canadian businessman says he became a terror suspect because of a text message he sent to sales staffers saying he was going to ‘blow away’ the competition.According to a religious association, Saad Allami, who is Muslim, sent the message last month and was detained for more than a day while police searched his Quebec home.

He filed a lawsuit against the Quebec provincial police force and seeks $100,000 in damages.

Mr Allami claims he was simply trying to give his co-workers a pep talk before an upcoming New York City trade show.

Meanwhile, here in the southern half of the State of Paranoia…

At Superbowl XLVI, hot dog vendors are also serving up a helping of ‘intel’ about potential terrorist attacks.The Transportation Security Administration has trained 8,000 parking lot attendants, shuttle bus drivers volunteers — and yes, hot dog vendors — to spot suspicious activity at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis under its ‘First Observer’ program.

This is just the latest attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to recruit millions of informants across the country, who officials say can help spot potential terrorist activity.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the the hog dog informants and others are key to her ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign, that encourages Americans to be vigilant about potential terrorist threats.

But others, like talk radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, say many of the things trainees are taught to look out for in the ‘First Observer’ program are mundane activities that many normal people do on a regular basis.

These include: Wearing a hooded sweatshirt, using a video camera, driving a van and using recording software on cell phones.

And finally we have this bit wherein we learn exactly what we can expect from Ms. Napolitano’s efforts to set us all to spying on each other in a fashion reminiscent of the most repressive era of the old Soviet Union… provided the Terrorists have a Twitter account and are stupid enough to tweet their intentions before embarking on their nefarious activities:

Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’

After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

Leigh was also quizzed about another tweet which quoted hit US comedy Family Guy which read: ‘3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!

Online privacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Centre requested information on the DHS’s scans, which it says the agency announced in February last year.

The group claims that a request under the Freedom of Information Act to access the documentation has gone unanswered.

Federal agents even searched his suitcase looking for spades and shovels, claiming Emily was planning to act as Leigh’s ‘look out’ while he raided Marilyn’s tomb.

Bar manager Leigh, from Coventry, and Emily, 24, from Birmingham, were then quizzed for five hours at LAX before they were handcuffed and put into a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.

They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells before being driven back to the airport where they were put on a plane home via Paris

The Department of Homeland Security was recently criticised over false accounts it set up on Twitter.
These are then used to scan networks for ‘sensitive’ words and then for tracking the people who use them.

The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:

Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan

Actually I think “Santorum” was on the original list also but removed when the DHS determined that the definition found on Google was indeed a prank. I have no way of knowing for certain of course, but I’m pretty sure that virtually all of those words are used regularly by thousands of people on Twitter so… what’s next?  Will we see the Trojan condom company finally brought to justice for inflicting those horrendous “blow your hair back” commercials on an unsuspecting populace?  One can only hope.

 

How To Make Money Being A Douche

What exactly is it with these Republican governors?  Not only do we have a greater number of corrupt and venal politicians sitting in state houses than at any other time in history but the corruption and venality appear to have been distilled to a putrid essence also unequaled in any previous era.  It’s as if they were all cloned from a single strand of DNA and then sent to some institution of higher learning for the ethically challenged where every last vestige of any morality they might have had is beaten out of them by Koch Brother turdminions.

This week’s case in point is Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, she of the wagging finger and proud possessor of a personality that can only be likened to… well, let’s just say her book, “Scorpions for breakfast” is aptly named… and who would do anything to sell copies of her Dick and Jane primer for bigots, from all but physically assaulting the President of the United States in public and then lying her wrinkled ass off about it to using campaign funds to buy the damned book herself.  (She apparently didn’t qualify for the  Republican’s “You buy my books, I’ll buy yours” program in which books get snapped up in the thousands by corporate donors or the Republican party itself in order to inflate sales so she’s having to buy them herself.)

Nick R. Martin @ TPM: Brewer Pledged Cash For Immigration Fight, Instead Spent It Buying Copies Of Her Own Book

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) launched a special fundraising political action committee in October, pledging to use the money to fight illegal immigration and take on other issues she believes in. But based on financial disclosures filed this week, she has so far used it to do little more than buy copies of her own book.

The governor had raised only about $22,000 for Jan PAC by the end of 2011 and spent nearly a quarter of the cash buying books from Amazon and paying a bill at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in Orlando, Fla. The rest of the money is still in the bank.

Brewer spent $3,423 on books and shipping from the online retailer, according to the financial reports. On her fundraising website, she offers a signed copy of her book “Scorpions for Breakfast” to every donor who gives $100 or more.

So she’s using campaign donations to buy her own book which she then gives away to people making… campaign donations?  I suppose there’s some thread of logic in there somewhere but I’m just not getting it.  People… who if they really gave a damn about her book… could simply wait a few weeks and buy it from the bargain bin for less than five bucks are actually paying this harpie $100 so they can get it “free” with her name scrawled on it?

In early December she also spent $624 for a night at the swank Waldorf Astoria in Orlando, which her financial disclosures repeatedly misspell as “Orlanda.” Another $513 went to airfare on Southwest Airlines.
…
The financial disclosures represent a time before Brewer’s now famous encounter with President Obama on an airport runway in Phoenix last week. Sales of “Scorpions for Breakfast” spiked on Amazon after the event and the governor used her renewed notoriety to encourage people to donate to Jan PAC.

So all you have to do to fund your PAC and sell books to Republicans is to put the uppity black dude in his place by getting all up in his face in public?  Who would have thought it was that simple?  I think I’ll take tomorrow off and write a book and woe be unto the prez if he comes around my neck of the California woods.  Of course I’m gonna be smarter than Jan Brewer.  I’m gonna stick TWO fingers in his face.  Only figures on a book by finger basis that the more fingers, the more books sold.

In a related story, reports say that Brewer is now hard at work on her next major literary triumph, “How To Raise Big Bucks By Totally Disrespecting The President” and rich republicans are reported to be once again lining up to buy yet another $5 book for $100.

Doesn’t take much to entertain these folks, does it?