Thursday, March 17, 2011

Our Wacky World—3/17/2011

Here it is, your St. Patrick's Day dose of clap, er, I mean crap...

"The project also reveals that the most common person on this planet is:"
  • Right handed
  • Has an annual income under $12,000
  • Owns a cellphone, but doesn't have a bank account
CNN

"Imagine, if you will, that you live in a state where a governor wields extraordinary power over its residents. Imagine, if you will, that your governor has the legal authority to appoint an “Emergency Manager” to oversee the local government in the town where you reside. Imagine that the monetary compensation for the Emergency Manager of your community has no cap. Imagine that your Emergency Manager declares that there’s a financial emergency in your town and then takes over control of it. Imagine that the Emergency Manager can break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and can also fire duly elected public officials who serve your community. Imagine, if you will, that the Emergency Manager empowered by your governor to run your town has the right to dissolve your school district and to disincorporate your town. AND imagine that you and your fellow residents have no say about what is going on! Just imagine how you might feel if you lived in a state where that kind of thing was going on. Well, the people who live in Michigan may not have to imagine much longer."
Turley's Blog

"Monroe County Sheriff’s Detectives...actually posed as a federal defense attorney in an attempt to get incriminating information out of suspect John Edward Dawson, who was in jail on a host of charges, including theft and drug distribution. ... they also talked Dawson into refusing to cooperate with his public defender and to plead guilty to the charges against him. They communicated with Dawson via a jailhouse informant."
The Agitator

"Kensley Hawkins, 60, has saved $11,000 by working in a Joliet prison since the 1980s, making about $75 a month. The state says he owes them for the cost of his stay."
Chicago Tribune

"Last fall, the voters approved a referendum that placed restrictions on the countless puppy mills in the state to ensure humane and healthy conditions were enforced by state regulators. Of course, the tea party lobbied against the passage of the referendum and since the Republicans gained a majority in the State Senate, a new bill was passed in the Missouri Senate to over ride the will of the people in the fall referendum and remove the safeguards that were approved directly by the voters!"
Turley's Blog

"A musician with a punk haircut died from swine flu after medics assumed he was a drug addict and ignored his pleas for help, his distraught mother claims. Peter Williamson, who sported a mohican and facial piercings, was turned away from a hospital and health centre, as well as by an ambulance crew. One nurse sent him home saying: 'Do you realise we do have sick people in this hospital?'"
Mailonline

"An estranged son of anti-gay Kansas pastor Fred Phelps said Wednesday that the spiritual leader of Westboro Baptist Church hit his wife and beat his children with a mattock handle until they bled."
CNN


Here's a 2003 Skeptic magazine article about Sonya Fitzpatrick, Animal Planet's pet "psychic":
"Willie was a diseased Golden Retriever. His owner had arranged to have him euthanatized by a veterinarian. Sonya had a vision — which the owner confirmed — that Willie used to scratch behind his ears. Really? A dog scratching behind his ears?"
eSkeptic

It always struck me as odd that this psychic, er, "animal communicator" had to ask the animal's owner what its name was. A dog doesn't know its name?

"Why would someone create a replica of Blackie, complete with every single nick and scratch, including the wear pattern from Mr. Clapton’s belt buckle and the burn mark from his cigarettes? And why is that replica expected to fetch at least $20,000 at Wednesday’s auction, and probably much more?"
NYT

And it sounds like the auction was a success.

"More people have been arrested for marijuana possession under Mayor Bloomberg than under Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Guiliani combined," said report co- author Dr. Harry Levine, a sociology professor at City University of New York and a national expert on marijuana arrests. "These arrests are wildly expensive, do not improve public safety, and create permanent criminal records which seriously damage the life chances of the young people targeted and jailed."
Drug Policy

"The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confiscated a potent drug commonly used in lethal injections from a state correctional facility cache."
CNN

"Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Washington have spent the past two years combing through the myriad computer systems in late-model cars, looking for security flaws and developing ways to misuse them. In a new paper, they say they've identified a handful of ways a hacker could break into a car, including attacks over the car's Bluetooth and cellular network systems, or through malicious software in the diagnostic tools used in automotive repair shops."
TechWorld

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Sarah Palin victimhood redux

It turns out that Tea Party siren Sarah Palin's decision to cast herself as a victim in the wake of the ballistic Tucson event didn't go over well with certain key players on the Right:
Ailes was not pleased with her decision, which turned out to be a political debacle for Palin, especially her use of the historically loaded term "blood libel" to describe the actions of the media. “The Tucson thing was horrible,” said a person familiar with Ailes’s thinking. "Before she responded, she was making herself look like a victim. She was winning. She went out and did the blood libel thing, and Roger is thinking, 'Why did you call me for advice?'”
NYmag


And now the conservative intelligentsia has dubbed her the "Alaskan Al Sharpton":
"Palin’s flamboyant rhetoric always has thrilled supporters, but lately it is coming at a new cost: a backlash, not from liberals but from some of the country’s most influential conservative commentators and intellectuals."
Politico


And she's dropping in the polls. How's it going, "Al"?

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

America gets its hate on for Japan

Japan got the shit kicked out of it recently. And a terminally-ignorant all-American crapfest has ensued.

Click to enlarge

Let's look on the bright side:
"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that."
Vanity Fair

Kudlow always was a dickhead shill for everything that sucks ass about the American corporate establishment but this is a new low even for him.


A nice Xtian girl thanks "god" for bitch-slapping Japan (the original YooToob post has been taken down for "copyright violation").

"Cappie Pondexter's words show the endurance of long-held bigoted and prejudiced attitudes toward the Japanese, even from young Americans in today's society whose only knowledge of the Second World War comes from history books and popular culture"
ESPN

"Tragedy just struck, tens of thousands of people may be dead, a nuclear disaster is looming, so- [sic] what do you do? Well, for a few unlucky people, you put your foot in your mouth and chew until you reach your knee."
LezGetReal

At least you'd expect Gilbert Gottfried to say something outrageous.


Have you seen this graphic? It's a fake.

Click to enlarge

Finally, here's some sober perspective on the nuclear situation...
"While this situation is serious, let me be very clear: we are not facing a nuclear explosion, nor are we facing the release of a huge, deadly radioactive cloud (more on both of these below). The fear-mongering and misinformation on the web and in the news is rampant, and the last thing we need is people panicking because of it! The news is bad enough without exaggeration of it."

Bad Astronomy

"In fact, though the quake was far beyond design limits, all the reactors went into automatic shutdown perfectly: triumph number one. Control rods slammed into the cores, absorbing the neutrons spitting from the fuel rods and pinching off the uranium-fission chain reactions powering the plant."
The Register


The point being it could be a lot worse. In Japan, I mean.

Remember Pearl Harbor!