The Walk of Shame: A Shameful Roundup

Saving the best for last.

First, a new study shows that half of all American doctors prescribe a placebo to their patients, and most of them that do, do not inform the patient that the medication will not do anything for their condition. The study goes on to say that doctors usually use pain medication, vitamins, or stress medications rather than the sugar pill one usually associates with placebo.

This throws into question medical ethics and the doctrine of informed consent. It would be possible to meet the standard of informed consent and still get the beneficial effects of a placebo. It also raises questions of further wasting money in the already inefficient American medical system.

This strikes me as similar to the use of tazers since in both cases a professional with a fiduciary duty to the people is using a device as a shortcut around dealing with the psychological difficulty's of the individual they are faced with at the time. It's lazy. It's laziness that has harmful consequences.


Second, the McCain campaign volunteer who claimed to have been attacked and beaten by a black man who carved a "B" into her face to signify Barrac Obama, admitted to lying about the attack. Apparently the woman is mentally unstable and probably did it to herself.


Lastly, we have the Maryland police spying scandal. The state police went to public meetings of politically left protest organizations and entered the names of participants in a database of persons suspected for involvement in terrorism. So essentially what we have is a law enforcement body labeling as terrorists, U.S. citizens who are exercising their constitutionally guaranteed first amendment rights without any evidence that any crime had or would be committed.

The ACLU were the ones credited with this story seeing the light of day because of an information request. This week the state started sending out letters to people who's names are on the list. There are varying accounts of what the letters say or what their purpose is. Questions need to be answered like; why were these people targeted, was it because they were politically liberal, why not investigate groups like the KKK which is already listed as a terrorist group, what prompted this spying, will the victims be able to see what is in their file, what criteria are used to determine someone is a terrorist, how does someone get their name off the list, is it possible to remove someones name?

This again gives an answer the question, "if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to fear?" These people were not doing anything wrong. One officers reports even showed that these people were not planning on doing anything wrong. Yet they were labeled as terrorists. At this point we still do not know why. Again, most people don't concern themselves with the draconian methods of dealing with suspected terrorists since 9/11. Except we have been repeatedly shown that one does not need to do anything wrong to be labeled a terrorist and be subjected to torture. But then again, this woman seems to think that protesters, or anyone that is vocal about their political opinions deserves to be given the third degree.

Do Not Take the Red Pill!

What do Wisconsin and Ohio have in common? Emerald Ash Borer? The homes of the primary writers of the illustrious Fringe Element blog?

All of the above, but most recently, they are both the sites of dirty tricks by the McCain campaign.

In Wisconsin , the McCain campaign conduct a massive mailing to encourage absentee voting, presumably so that voters who would otherwise be unable to do so, such as the elderly and veterans, would vote for their candidate. However, all of the applications that were mailed also included the wrong addresses for the appropriate county clerk's office or addresses for the wrong county clerk's office. Both of which would render the application completely invalid as the applicant would be filing in the wrong district, and would possibly lose their right to vote in the election on November 4th.

In Ohio , the campaign similarly distributed potentially fraudulent ballots. In this case, the campaign distributed ballots that were invalid as they contained one too many boxes. This "Are you a qualified voter?" box, if left unchecked would invalidate the application, and again, disqualify the voter for the November 4th election.

The statement that the campaign made a mistake because of faulty lists is an egregious insult to voters everywhere. With direct mailing costs so high, and campaign funds so limited, these types of mistake would have been too costly to allow. So, let's evaluate the two choices of fraud and mistake. If this were a deliberate campaign of fraud, and two instances of similar fraud begin to remove the necessary layer of reasonable doubt, the question becomes whether individual state investigations are called for, or if the federal government should become involved. With the Justice Department having become a tool for Republican electoral tricks through partisan hiring practices, especially in the Civil Rights Division, and miscellaneous shenanigans, this seems very unlikely to happen, even if it were called for, and with states' budgets, particularly Wisconsin's and Ohio's in a state of distress from the ongoing economic crisis, any relief from that quarter seems equally unlikely. However, if this had been a case of a mistake made in the processing of the direct mailing, then the McCain campaign is incompetent on multiple levels. Any random sampling would have revealed the problems of the mailing list, and brought into question whether the effort was needed at all. In the case of Ohio, this is a much more sinister form of incompetence. Someone in their staff took the extra time to design another box that probably doesn't appear on other absentee ballot applications, and their supervisor, who is assumedly similarly inexperienced in Ohio elections, approved it. If these campaign managers are allowed to stay in their office after wasting money on such a large scale, the plot will thick and further peel away the thin, fatty layer of reasonable doubt. Stay tuned.

Cleveland Ohio; Terrible American City, Or The Worst American CIty?

The Cuyahoga county Board of Elections is debating what to do about people who voted in the primary. They think that many Republicans "crossed over" and voted for a Democratic candidate in the primary election without swearing a "loyalty oath" to the party. You see, the Democrats believe that these Republicans may have done so with the intention of throwing the election by voting for the candidate they believed could not win against McCain. That claim has a lot to do with what people knew and when they knew it. Hillary may have won in Ohio but it only became apparent recently that she has no legitimate chance of winning the Democratic nomination. They have decided not to issue subpoenas.

To me, this seems like sour grapes. The Democrats in power locally are upset that the candidate they favor was not selected by the voters. I don't see what they hope to accomplish by this. Even if they do take some of these people to trial, it wont change the election.

The real issue here is freedom, specifically Freedom of Speech. Fortunately the Secretary of State understands this. The questions I don't hear anyone asking assume there are only two party's. Fuck that noise.

Section 3513.19 of the Ohio Revised Code demands that each voter be affiliated with one political party and vote only in that party's primary election. One's affiliation is determined by examining what party the voter voted for in the prior two years. Silly me, I thought these were supposed to be secret elections to prevent persecution by zealous political party members from hunting down and disenfranchising opponents. Section 3513.05 has been interpreted by Bouse v. Cickelli 97 Ohio App. 43 (1954) as meaning that a voter is automatically affiliated with a political party by voting in that party's primary election until that voter takes some affirmative act to change that status. The real kicker is that if you are subpoenaed by the election gestapo, under section 3513.19 (B), you must swear an oath to the effect that you wish to be affiliated with and support the principles of the political party whose primary ballot you wish to vote on.

What if you are independent and don't ever want to be affiliated with any party? What if the previous statement is true and you genuinely want to vote for the candidate in the primary that you feel would be the best president? In Ohio, apparently they are like McCain in that they value party loyalty over principle and freedom.

Here is the bottom line, failing to make this required oath or making it and then if it is somehow found to be false by the freedom haters that enforce this law, is a felony and carries with it a huge fine. In most states, felons cannot vote or own weapons, making this a really good way to disenfranchise voters. You just look at the records, pick out some cross over voters from the other party and stamp them as felons, thereby ensuring the purity of your party and the inability of any other party from getting votes in the future. This also discourages people from switching party's. However, not showing up to your hearing to make this insane oath is a misdemeanor. See sections 3599.36-.37

You can take the following as my affirmative act and public deceleration. I hereby refuse any affiliation with any political party that I do not expressly request. I further reject the principles of any political party that would accept my forced or assumed allegance.

Wire Fraud

It just so happens I was working in fraud prevention when this happened. The thing they were doing in the sale of their dick steroids, is something I have observed many companies doing. I will not mention any names because I don't want to get sued. Basically what happens is once they get your financial information for any reason they start charging you for all kinds of crap you never intended to purchase and sending you regular shipments of things you didnt even know they made, or they charge you and never ship the worthless garbage they say you bought.

The company tries to define what they are doing as a monthly subscription or something like that. In the case of enzyte all you have to do is buy one of their other supplements and they start filling out orders you never asked for sending you a months supply of whatever crap you ordered every month and sending you a "sample" of every product in their catalog. One of the main ways they trick you into giving them your credit card information is by offering a free sample that you only have to pay shipping for, then they insist on payment of the shipping cost with a credit card.

This way of behaving once a corporation has your credit card number is not unusual or restricted to companies that sell things that don't really work. Perhaps you have a legitimate subscription service for a monthly entertainment service like movies, internet, cable, or satellite. Any of these companies are likely to continue charging you for services you are not recieving long after you have cancelled your account. Some even stop billing you, wait a few months, then reactivate automated billing without resuming services or informing you. In hard economic times some large and seemingly reputible companies have used this method of raising revenue to enhance their bottom line. Again, mentioning no names, but if you do some research you can find out about some prior federal lawsuits of this nature.

Then once they have your information they are free to charge you for whatever they want and you are unlikely to recover any of that money. When you contact your bank, or usually when they contact you, you will initially talk to an overworked phone jocky who will try to explain the situation to you and try to figure out with you which transactions on your account you did not consent to. Next, you will be transferred to the person who's job it is to say "No." The bank calls them something that leads you to believe its their job to get your money back but reallythey are there to tell you why this fraud is your fault and what obscure federal regulation allows them to deny your claim. Every claim of a fraudulent charge that is maid is filed as an insurance claim by the bank to their insurance company, who also has people whos job is to deny claims. The bottom line they will give you is something like, "you gave them your financial information, so now they can sell you whatever they want."

Sure the product descriptions are intentionally deceptive, and the clause about recurring charges until the end of time are in fine print, and sure all of that might be illegal, but what are you gonna do? Sue?

The '08 Election Trail: Dispatch the Bloodhounds

Thanks to Russian TV, here is a Mike Gravel sighting.



For those of you watching at home, there is a second recall in progress, of sorts, in New Hampshire. Despite strange bureaucratic maneuverings on the part of the Secretary of State, votes are being recounted and some strange discrepencies in the voting process and chain of custody are being addressed. Black Box Voting has more. Then, Bill Maher's round table about election fraud with Tony Snow, amongst others. Finally, a ghost of the 2004 election comes back to rattle chains and remind us all why voting in general is, ultimately, fairly useless.