The Walk of Shame: Taxes

As commercials announce to Joe Punchclock that the Taxman commeth we are greeted with a plethora of news items detailing the failure of President Obama's cabinet nominees to pay their fair share. Many of the editorials are already decrying the "new politics of responsibility" being just like the old politics of . . . well what do you call it when the President says it's OK to torture people? Evil? Its understandable why commentators on the political right have attempted to focus on the immediate failures of the Obama administration in what appears to be a rapid return to politics as usual. I would be inclined to resist except Obama's picks for high level political positions seems less like looking to experience and more like rearranging the deck chairs on the S.S. Democratic party. Which, if I recall correctly, is exactly how the first G.W. Bush administration began.

Cleveland Ohio: Terrible American City or the Worst American City?

A dead body was discovered in the Cleveland impound lot on Monday. This was two days after the car was impounded. A little background; there was an ice storm last Friday night in the area causing a large multi-car accident. One of the cars towed away from the scene contained the person who was not discovered. The question I have not heard any local media raise is whether the person was already dead at the time the car was towed. And if not, whether it was the negligence of the police in leaving him in the car for two days that caused his death

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.

The Walk Of Shame: Paulson

It looks like Paulson's greatest career attribute is the ability to beg. Perhaps that is how he got installed as the ineffectual treasury secretary. He got down on one knee to beg Nancy Pelosi to support the $700,000,000,000.00 BBBBBBBBBBillion Bailout, and on Monday he begged the banks not to horde the cash he is handing them. He is doing this while expressly stating that there are no strings attached. Paulson said,

At a time when events naturally make even the most daring investors more risk-averse, the needs of our economy require that our financial institutions not take this new capital to hoard it, but to deploy it.

The free market has been dead since FDR, but the Bush administration has found a way to revive the same trickle down economics that got us into this recession, distract everyone by saying you are resorting to socialism. The awful truth behind that scary buzz word is that they are socializing the financial industry's losses in order to insulate their profits from market forces.

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Apparently the House seat for Florida's 16th congressional district is like Spanish fly. It must be the holding of this office. Why else would the man that ran against Mark Foley then become embroiled in his own sex scandal?For those of you who don't remember, Mark Foley lost his reelection bid when it was revealed that he had traded explicitly sexual text messages with male teenaged congressional pages. Now Tim Mahoney, who campaigned on a platform of returning morality to the capitol has been exposed as having hired and then fired his mistress to his staff.

You could say that this is ironic. I am more cynical. I am inclined to believe that most people who run for national office have a pathological need to be loved that causes them to engage in self destructive behavior when they are given power. But I am no psychologist.

The Walk of Shame: Palin

This is a pretty detailed article on the whole affair. The bottom line is that the legislative investigation found that Sarah Palin violated the public trust in her office as Governor when she allegedly pressured for the firing of a State Trooper that had been married to her sister. In these cynical times it is hard for me to explain how serious a violation of the public trust is other than to say that even lawyers are required to be more ethical than this.

Once again this raises the question of how well Palin was vetted before she was picked as the VP nominee. Her ability wink and to segue into memorized talking points during the VP debate does not reassure me that she is more intelligent than the Couric interviews have shown her to be. Now there is this report detailing how she wasted no time in becoming corrupt after being elected as Governor of Alaska. Its probably a testament to her Orwellian campaigning that she was originally billed as a reformer.

The most telling part of this story is the reaction of the Republican party and the Republican presidential campaign. When the eye of justice was turned on them they immidiately and vigorously began attacking the integrity and nature of the investigation. What they were doing was analogous to if one was a murder suspect, arguing that the police did not have the authority to look for the murder weapon.

It makes me wonder if any other Alaska Republicans will be found guilty of corruption in the final weeks before the election.

The Walk of Shame; Only 115 Shopping Days Left

Today is Labor Day, the Sunday night of all summer. Its still warm out but kids are back in school and the leaves will soon start to turn. That doesn't stop main street from thinking about the big sales figures it draws in for the Christmas season. Especially given the struggling U.S. economy. All summer long they groan in board rooms about slagging sales and strain their little MBA minds to come up with something original and every year the answer is to try to make the holiday season as long as possible.



This is all shit you have heard before. I am just here to vent my rage at seeing Halloween advertisements and sales on fucking Labor Day. All year long I wonder to my self why I have an irrational hatred for corporations despite being "libertarian" and then this shit happens and my rage boils up and I don't have a memory problem any more.

Look at that shit! Discount Halloween candy? That shit won't make it till the end of the month even if you don't eat it. But who fucking cares about that, you are giving it to other peoples kids. Why should you bother to have candy that isn't filled with moth larva after sitting in your kitchen for two months?

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A conservative, pro-life congressional candidate, knocked up his girlfriend, said he didnt want the baby and then paid for her abortion. I can has hypocracy?

The Walk of Shame: Bush Looses Again

The Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration today. The high Court held that despite what the President and the Neo-Cons say, everyone has natural human rights. A foreign citizen has the same human rights that you and I have under the United States' legal system. A person cannot be drprived of those rights by having a certain lable applied to them such as, terrorist, or enemy combatant. Perhaps the Court realized that such things need to be proven beyond simple conjecture. The court also held that people cannot be imprisoned by the United States for an indeterminate period of time, and that anyone imprisoned must be charged with a crime. You know, basic things that are at the foundation of this country and our system of justice.

The Supreme Court came down on the side of freedom and justice today and has once again renewed my faith in our system of government.

The Walk Of Shame: Gubinatorial Spending

The governors mansion in Texas was burned down, probably due to arson. This morning the Governor declared he would rebuild his mansion regardless of the cost to the people of Texas. It is interisting to me that a government official would vow to spare no expense in rebuilding his own mansion when there is a mortgage crisis going on now and millions of people are finding themselves homeless.

Free the West Memphis Three: The Walk of Shame

This article describes the opening of the new trial. It is still hard for me to believe that someone could be convicted of murder in America based on the kind of music they listen to and the clothes they wear.

The Walk of Shame: Fight the Power

When the Chinese government was putting on a carefully orchistrated dog and pony show to the western media to try and convince us that all is well in Tibet, some brave monks busted in and began pleading with the assembled members of the press, not to believe the crap being fed to them. Aparently this was not so carefully orchistrated after all. The shame is on the Chinese for trying such an old trick.

I want to contrast this to Bjork, who recently ended a concert of hers in China with a call to free Tibet. This was entirely selfish. Her chanting to the audience will have no effect on whether Tibet will gain any sembelance of independence. There was not some person in that audience that will rise up and liberate the downtroden because of a subversive message whispered at the end of a concert. All Bjork did was mark everyone in the audience as a suspect. She got to leave China but now her fans may have to endure scrutiny as suspicious persons because of her self-indulgent outburst.

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That was quick.

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Jack Thompson is a lawyer in Florida who spends his time acting as an attention whore screaming about the gaming or pornography industries interchangably. Its easy to hate him, but I am compelled to feel sorry for someone who is obviously an extreme result of the psychological pathology of our society. Where we childishly glorify violence and adress sex with a bizarre characture, Thompson lashes out at attempts to profit from this communal tendancy. This man is a symptom of our collective social mental illness. Fortunately for the legal profession, he faces sanctions for his outlandish behavior.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/lawyer_threatened_with_sanctions_after_putting_images_of_kangaroos_swastika/#When:08:10:00Z

The FBI abused its power under the Patriot Act? I'm schocked, schocked! Well maybe not that schocked.

Lastly, for anyone who is somehow so unaware that they may be compared to a cave dwelling hermit and in keeping with our mockery of hypocratical politicians; Elliot Spitzer.

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Bwa ha ha ha!

The worst part about this is the community that thinks these forced marriages are a great idea.

Money! Corrupting religion? Inconceveable!

Alleged police misconduct. To put it lightly.

Exxon.

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The old media continues to refer to this story in the terms most favorible to the Bush administration. I (and some former intellegence experts) want to point out some misconceptions that seem to be floating around. First, FISA already gives the president authority to listen to the phone conversations of any terrorism suspect. Its a legal, judge approved warrant, and the backlog is a myth. Second, if the warrentless wiretapping provision expires tomorrow, the wiretapps that are already in place under that law, get to stay in place for up to a year.

If President Bush already has everything he says he needs to protect us then what is in this bill he isn't talking about, and why would he want it passed? At the very least what Bush, the cowards in the Senate, and the business community want is a policy statement that it OK for a company to break the law and violate the rights of innocent American citizens as long as someone in the government asks. I may have misunderstood but I thought the reason Fred Thompson wanted Nixon impeached was because Nixon thought the President was above the law.

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The Germans have a word for when one enjoys the shame of others. Can't think of what that word is though. Anyway here is another story about an evangilitical gay hater who is gay.

Also, don't just do an image search for "gay." Unless you want to see lots of bald men with cock in their mouths.

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There has been a conserted effort by some to claim Barrac Obama is a muslum and that he took his oath of office on the Koran. The people who would vote for him are not likely to be affected by this, and the people who would are likely to vote for an extremist like Hucakabee. Obama denies this stating he is a Christian. While denying this he also states that Americans are too smart to be taken in by this kind of statement. I logically derive from this statement that those who would be taken in by these claims are stupid. I like any statement that points out the stupidity of conservative extremist radical Christians.

If you want to persecute a politician for supporting Islam and terrorism, looky here. Basicly, a Republican congressman accepted stolen government money from an Islamic charity that funneled money past the UN embargo on Iraq into the accounts of a terrorist.

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As much of a dickhead as Bill Maher is occasionally, he sums up this year's biggest douchbags that should be filled with shame and remorse but are even more worthy of hate because they aren't asshamed.



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http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/2007/12/in-support-of-i.html?cid=939948141