Mourning In America

He's killing off Americans, and he shrugs off responsibility.  He is so incompetent, he is unable to fathom that his ideas are killing real people.  "What have you got to lose?"

Cold, Dead Hand - You Decide, Funny Or Die?

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey     

I had to post this video from Funny or Die.  A lot of you may have already seen it, or heard about it.  But the reaction from Fox News is even more hysterical than the video itself!  (Courtesy of Crooks and Liars)



Greg Gutfeld:

“He is the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth. And I hope his career is dead, and he ends up sleeping in a car the way his life began. This video only made me want to go out and only buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire and going after rural America and a dead man. Let’s talk about Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston was one of the first actors to be behind the civil rights movement and march. What did this jackass Jim Carrey do? He was behind the anti-vaccine panic. There are what, 165,000 people that died from measles last year, according to the World Health Organization.”

“Jim Carrey has killed more people than all the rifles combined,” Gutfeld continued. “He is a dirty, stinking coward. He is a moral coward. He did a video attacking rural America. But he wouldn’t do video about gangs, which kills way more people with handguns — he wouldn’t do that because he is worried about his career. Such a pathetic, sad, little freak. He is a jiberring mess. He is a modern bigot, he is a modern bigot. He is a bottomless pit of insecurity and the desire for acceptance is why he is doing this, because he knows in his heart he is a fraud.”

They doth protest too much, ya think?

Benghazi And The Faux Outrage

I am so fucking tired of the Republican party's beating the Benghazi horse to death.  This is a non story, and every time it starts to die, the Republicans beat it back to life.

Get over it.  Get a life.

This is not bigger than Watergate.  If you think that, you are stupid.  And if you are stupid, your are a Republican.  Anyone with an ounce of smarts, a decent education, and a thirst for truth knows Watergate trumps Benghazi. 

Why Are Republicans So Racist?

What is it with today's Republicans and the right wing blow tards and their utter disdain for President Obama?  I don't get it one bit, except, of course, for the mass racism.  And that, my friends, saddens me.

I am up to my neck in anger over the constant drumbeat from this group of people that consistently try to portray this President as un-American and wanting to hand over this country to some boogie man representing a leftist, socialist, liberal leader of a foreign nation.  And equally stupid is their claim that Obama is in bed with the "terrorists," whatever that means.

You have to be extremely stupid to believe that a sitting president of the United States is actually working to decimate this country!  And yet, that is the propaganda that forms the basis of the Republican party's belief system.  It is the constant topic on Fox News.  Currently it is Obama's alleged plan to take all the guns away.  That is so stupid on so many levels it seriously makes me want to smash my television when I hear reporters go off on this subject.  As if!  What is wrong with these people?  Do they not know that the majority of Americans do not believe them?  The Republicans LOST AT THE LAST ELECTION and they need to get over it.  And NO, they did not take the House as the mantra goes on Fox News.  They simply kept the majority, but lost in their mumbo jumbo is the FACT that they lost numbers in the House, despite still maintaining the majority.  All of this crap about a left wing take over of the country would be a laughing matter if those Fox viewers weren't so overwhelmingly stupid as to believe what Fox is feeding them. 

And just who is leading this attack of the stupid?  Well, it can't very well be the stupid people that are following this line of thinking.  It has to be started at the top and then fed to the bottom.  It is astounding to me that those good ole white boys in power, both in government positions as well as corporate positions, are the leaders of this racist ideology.  These people are so full of hate for the man of color at the top that they are willing to fracture this country solely because they still harbor, and cling to, their outdated belief that people of color are physiologically inferior to their white asses.

The statistics that show the number of Republicans that believe Obama was not born in the United States is astonishing.  I did not know that stupidity was contagious.  Equally disappointing are the number of Republicans that continue to espouse the belief that Obama is Muslim. 

The left attacked Bush during is eight years, mostly on the grounds that he was stupid, and his stupidity led him to be governed by seriously bad guys, which led to the two unfunded wars in the Middle East, and the give away of our national treasury funds to corporate big wigs.  As bad as that was, the mantra never was that Bush was un-American.  He was bad for America.  But no one suggested that Bush was in bed with the terrorists or that he was trying to hand over the country to other oligarchs.

It is embarrassing that racism is so prevalent in the country that it comes out in full bore by the Republican party and their stronghold in outright lies about Obama.  Lies that are easily negated by the truth, but only to those that are not racist.  And these racists are so full of hate for people of color that they are willing to crash this country just so they could say "that n...r ruined this great country."

Rock on Obama.  I may not agree with all of your centrist ideas and actions, but you are the President of the United States, and I am a citizen of this country, and as such, I will support you as my President, color of your skin being irrelevant to the fact that you made it to the top office and are worthy of that job.

The Union Made Me Do It - The Story Of Hostess (NOT)

The "unions" were responsible!

That is the story the Republicans are telling, and they are sticking with it, the truth be damned.

And if you get your daily news updates from the "fair and balanced" Fox News, you will not know the truth of why Hostess is firing the 18,000+ workforce and closing shop.

This is the second time Hostess has looked to bankruptcy protection from creditors.  The first time around, the workers (unionized) agreed to concessions by a reduction in pay, as well as a reduction in the work force.  But, the problem really lay in the fact that "hedge fund managers" had gotten involved with the company, and Hostess was basically "Bained" by vulture capitalists. 

What prompted the unionized employees to tell Hostess to go fuck themselves this time around was that while the company was trying to gut pensions and pay for the workers, the top four Hostess executives had given themselves pay raises of up to 80%!

So, for now, it will be the vulture capitalists (like a Bain Capital, and let us remember how much we learned during the presidential race, about how they work) who will be the only beneficiaries of a sell off of the assets of the company, as they fire the 18,000+ workforce.

Think about that the next time you watch Fox News and listen to them prattle on about how the employees of Hostess were "hosed" by the union, and realize why Fox News watchers are more stupid than the average person who does not watch news at all.

To read all there is to know on this, CNNMoney has a rather lengthy screed, well worth a read, especially if you traditionally get your scoops from Fox News.

UPDATE:  11/17/12 Courtesy Sacramento Bee

In a desperate attempt to break the solidarity and resolve of striking BCTGM members across the country, Hostess Brands is falsely claiming that its decision to close three of its bakeries -- St. Louis, Cincinnati and Seattle -- is the result of the nationwide strike against the company by BCTGM members.

[snip]

Over the past eight years since the first Hostess bankruptcy, BCTGM members have watched as money from previous concessions that was supposed to go towards capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment, was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants.

BCTGM members are well aware that as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.

Over the past 15 months, Hostess workers have seen the company unilaterally end contractually-obligated payments to their pension plan.  Despite saving more than $160 million with this action, the company continues to fall deeper and deeper into debt.  A mountain of debt and gross mismanagement by a string of failed CEO's with no true experience in the wholesale baking business have left this company unable to compete or survive.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/13/4983174/hostess-continues-pattern-of-misinformation.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/13/4983174/hostess-continues-pattern-of-misinformation.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

More Stupid Republican Talking Points About Rape - Now It's Just Like Having A Baby Out Of Wedlock

To continue with the theme of this post I made earlier, here's another Republican idiot, comparing "rape" to getting pregnant "out of wedlock." Can someone just line these guys up and snip their testicles off? Another post courtesy of Think Progress.

MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

SCOLFORO: Similar how?

SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?

SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

GOP, The Party Of 70 Year Old Impotent White Men

Listen and learn. Do you REALLY want this? There is a war on women. There really is a method to the madness of the impotent old white men taking over the GOP. Yes to Viagra, no to birth control. H/T to GP over at AMERICAblog.

Romney Calls People "Small Minded" Who Want To See His Tax Returns

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday insisted that he had paid more than 13 percent of his income in taxes over the last 10 years, and accused the people who want to see his returns of being "small minded."

Well, I don't agree that people asking to see the presidential nominee's tax returns are small minded. But, someone that thinks it's ok to strap his fucking dog to the roof of his car, in a cage, and go on vacation -- that's pretty small minded, if you ask me. Actually, he's really an idiot!

Hey, Jack Gilchrist, Show Us YOUR Tax Returns!!

Interesting post up over at Think Progress. It seems that after President Obama made his now infamous speech about business and the distorted version of the speech has been used by the right wing nut jobs, including the nuttiest of them all, Mittens, it appears that the latest video ad created by the Mittens campaign is, as usual, full of shit.



Except, the truth is:

And, as it turns out, Jack Gilchrist is no different. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports today that Gilchrist benefited from millions of dollars of government loans and contracts to get his business on its feet:

In 1999, Gilchrist Metal received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority “to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment,” according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report at the time…

Last year, Gilchrist Metal also received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008, according to a government web site that tracks spending.

Gilchrist wisely took advantage of these funds, which help small businesses like his survive in their early years. He also took a U.S. Small Business Administration loan in the late 1980s totaling “somewhere south of” $500,000, plus matching funds from the federally-funded New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center.

In a lesson on basic government spending that Romney himself could learn from, Gilchrist succinctly explained: “I’m not going to turn a blind eye because the money came from the government. As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting some of my tax money back. I’m not stupid, I’m not going to say ‘no.’ Shame on me if I didn’t use what’s available.”

"...getting some of my tax money back ..." Huh? From the above, it looks like you GOT TAXPAYER dollars before you got TAXED. And, by the way, how about showing US YOUR TAX RETURNS? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a no go.

How stupid do you think we are? Well, obviously there are quite a lot of stupid people in this country. This piece of shit makes this absurd video ad for Mittens and he knows the entire time he's lying through his teeth. And, obviously, he doesn't give a shit. He thinks he represents the repressed small business owners, which really are a myth in the stupid Republicans (and some Democrats) lying minds because, you know, keeping all the money for themselves IS THE POINT.

I almost want Mittens to become president just so the stupid people can really bring down this country and the even stupider (but poorer) people can finally take out all their machine guns and other cache of weapons and finally start America's second revolutionary war (not considering the Civil War a "revolution" as it was just a bunch of ignorant individuals intent on preventing those, you know, dark skinned people they plucked off the land in Africa and forced to come to this country to be their slaves, from having any rights whatsoever).

Good-bye America

I am ambivalent about politics of late. Somewhere between 2005, when I had started up my blog, and was very passionate about the slow take-over of our democracy by the “right wingers,” and today, where seven years of outright lying, a lackadaisical news media, and a misdirected and ill-informed public, I’ve given up. Literally. With the promises made by a presidential candidate in 2008, who won (in my mind) with overwhelming support, and the follow-up of consistent failure to keep those campaign promises, coupled with a very real embrace by said president of certain ideologies that are antiethcal to the very nature of our democracy (i.e., renditions, killing American citizens abroad without warrants, trials, and the like, deporting more people out of this country than Bush ever did, failure to properly and timely embrace the GLBT issues that he ran on, etc., and not to mention the very same reliance on the banking industry that his opponents also embrace) have molded me into a non-believer in today’s version of our democracy.

This is a fully corrupt nation, with zero regard for the 99% of those that make up this country, work hard, and have tried to believe in the greatness of America. Instead, we have countries disparaging America based on the hypocrisy of its ideology vs. the practice. We prop up dictators, deal with our enemies, and wage wars on innocent people and nations. We are trillions in debt and yet not a single legislator on any level of government is taking up the mantle and running with the torch for the American people.

I had a guy tell me yesterday at my local watering hole that it is the corporations like GE, the oil companies, and others, that “pay the majority of taxes” in this country. I literally almost fell off my bar stool. I told him he really must stop watching Fox news, stop reading the Wall Street Journal, and for goodness sake, turn off talk radio. You will not get the truth from such areas, and that is why you, my friend, are ill informed.

It is hard to stand for truth and justice when there are so many politicians that have jumped on the bandwagon of corrupt methods of gaining and maintaining their free ride in government. “Can I please have some more” is the cry of the populace with the answer from the politicians being “hell fucking no” even as they cash their social security checks, get their federally funded (or state mandated) insurance coverage that is denied to anyone not in politics, and tell the average worker to go fuck themselves. Hell, the thought that the 1% think it’s okay (for example, Scranton, PA) to cut police and firefighter’s pay to minimum wage ($7.25), even after a court ordered the mayor NOT to do that, is just to mind boggling for me. The 1% are clearly not aware that to live in today’s America, minimum wage just does not cut it. And to believe that the majority of Americans want to suck off the teat of the government (the only people the suck off the teat of government ARE the politicians) is preposterous. A decent wage, the ability to put a roof over you and your family’s head, and raise your children with a decent education, has now gone the way of a “dream” and is actually, according to many politicians, no longer a “right” for Americans. The only “rights” that these politicians believe in is their right to pillage and destroy the America I grew up in, and turn our government into a corporate owned subsidiary. One person, one vote? Got rid of that. Power to the people? Got rid of that. A decent working wage? Got rid of that. Home ownership for the average American? Got rid of that. Where a corporate executive can work one day, retire, and take home $44 million in severance, bonuses, etc. (think Duke Energy’s CEO Bill Johnson), while there are millions and millions of people (including many Iraq war veterans) who are literally homeless, on the streets, with no real income in sight, as well as the rampant starvation of our children, I get sick to my stomach. And to top it off, a great deal of this rhetoric is pumped up by the false assertion that these politicians and their supporters are merely following Christian (read “bible”) themes, which totally distort the reality of what “Jesus” actually preached (according to some relevant history that seems to be methodically erased from the propaganda of what current Christianity means to this country).

Many of our elected officials are boneheads and seriously stupid. Deranged and empowered by corporate fueled laws and rights that come hand-in-hand with corporate money, it is time for me to check out. The power of the people, or the lack of it at this point, will be demonstrable in the 2012 elections, when it becomes obvious that millions of people will be disenfranchised as voters, where gerrymandering has resulted in lopsided and illegal power grabs, and where many more millions like me will simply fail to show up to cast our worthless vote.

Good-bye America. I will dream of your resurgence in the future. I only hope I live long enough to see the second Revolution and the fight to regain the rights that constitutionally belong to the American people.

Be Careful In Arizona, You Could Be Pregnant Before Having Sex

Well, Arizona keeps ramping up the crazy. Now, you could actually be considered "pregnant" in Arizona, by law, two weeks before you even conceive! Yup, you read that right. By setting back the gestational period that is the countdown of when you actually are pregnant, to the date you last had your "period" as the beginning of a pregnancy, according to Arizona, you are fucking pregnant! Oh, I long ago stopped banging my head on my keyboard. The permanent indents to my forehead are a testament to the insanity I've read about and dealt with for the past ten years.

Arizona’s HB 2036 takes Nebraska’s 20-week abortion ban one step further by starting the clock on pregnancies at the woman’s last last menstrual period, which could be two weeks before fertilization.

Watching The Dems Squirm Over Hillary Rosen's Comments About Ann Romney, Oh My!

UPDATE: 4/15/12: Since the piece below has been rocking the boat for both sides, and with the Dems joining the Rethugs by saying Hillary Rosen was out of bounds by making such a statement about Ann Romney, I bring you the following from Think Progress. As always, for every side of the mouth Mittens says something, there is always an equally opposite statement coming out of the other side of his mouth!

Romney and allies cried that Democrats had declared “war on moms” after a Democratic strategist said Romney’s wife hadn’t worked a day in her life. Romney’s camp said this meant Democrats don’t value stay at home moms and motherhood, while they believe that women who stay home are doing real work.

But for every Romney action, there is an equal and opposite Romney reaction, and this morning, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes dug up a video of Romney from just January in which the Republican presidential candidate said he wanted to require women who receive welfare to work outside the home, even if their children are very young. He told a New Hampshire audience:

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.”

===============================
This caught my eye this morning. I have mostly stayed silent with respect to the Republican circus that has been the nominating process for the next candidate for president (all of them are ignorant pieces of shit, as far as I am concerned). I don't particularly care who wins the election this year. I will still sit it out and not vote. I am not a fan of Obama, and quite frankly, I could give two shits if the stupid people take over. To me, that just means we crash and burn a lot faster, and we all know that we can't rebuild until we break. This current trend of plugging the holes with our fingers (or putting our fingers in our ears) is not stopping the bleeding of this country, or the world, so I, for one, am on the side that takes us down as fast as possible.

With that in mind, I do have to come to the defense of Hilary Rosen, who has both the Democrats and Republicans all trying to get their underwear out of their asses.

President Obama’s top political advisers moved rapidly late Wednesday night to distance the president from a Democratic strategist and adviser to the Democratic National Committee who said Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, had “never worked a day in her life.”

[snip]

And then, in a commentary on The Huffington Post, Ms. Rosen wrote a long defense of her comments, accusing critics of “faux anger” aimed at scoring political points.

“I don’t need lectures from the R.N.C. on supporting women and fighting to increase opportunities for women; I’ve been doing it my whole career,” Ms. Rosen wrote. “If they want to attack me and distract the public’s attention away from their nominee’s woeful record, it just demonstrates how much they just don’t get it.”

She added: “I have no judgements about women who work outside the home vs. women who work in the home raising a family. I admire women who can stay home and raise their kids full time. I even envy them sometimes. It is a wonderful luxury to have the choice. But let’s stipulate that it is NOT a choice that most women have in America today.”

Amen to that. I raised my daughter and worked. My daughter is a single mother who had been raising her son while attending college, but on welfare, food stamps, and pell grants, plus some scholarships (no help from the father, that's for sure). In my time, and in today's culture, women being able to stay at home and NOT work is an anomaly, not the norm. Well, unless you are the .01% like the Romney family, who can afford multiple cars, homes, boats, horses, and probably a lot of nannies. The rest of us 99% in America have to get by, raising a family with both parents working ... and in today's economy, with probably both parents on unemployment because the Romney's of this country "like firing people." I don't care if Mrs. Romney raised five kids or ten kids ... she did so with the kind of money monthly most of us will never see in a lifetime.

UPDATE: 4/13/12: I knew I knew the name "Hillary Rosen" but could not place where I knew it from. And although I concur with the comments and the intent of the comments she made, I realize now (thanks to an post over at AMERICAblog) that this is the same Hillary Rosen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the group responsible for pushing the lawsuits against individual file sharers, the one who brought down the original Napster, and helped create the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of which even I have had experience with by Blogger taking down a post of mine claiming it was in violation of the DMCA. I hate this woman! I am sure in by archives I have a lot of posts really badmouthing her.

NRA's New Concealed Gun Hoodie

I haven't blogged at all about the Trayvon Martin killing. There are so many senseless murders of people of color that go on daily, that not all of them rise to the level of media prominence that this particular murder has.

But the "hoodie" aspect of this is just bullshit. First off, disgraced, stupid, ignorant and basically a very bad reporter, Geraldo Rivera's comments about the "hoodie" being "responsible" for Trayvon's death just proves my theory about the stupid people.

But I finally had to weigh in on the NRA's adopting a "hoodie with a gun pouch" as shown above.

“We want concealed carry to fit around your lifestyle — not the other way around. That’s why we developed the NRAstore exclusive Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt."

I am beginning to seriously think about buying a gun, but no bullets, just so I can confuse the shit out of many people. The "open carry" laws just piss me off enough that if I could pull it off, I'd plop my gun at my local bar just for the sheer shock value. I'll probably get killed, but hey, what a way to go, eh?

Breitbart Dead At 43

I know one is not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I only have this to say: Good riddance. And at 43, it looks like God had just about enough of his nastiness and it was, as they say, his time to GO.

UPDATE 3/2/12:

For those that have tried to assail me for speaking ill of Mr. Breitbart, I bring you the following:



And some famous quotes by Mr. Breitbart, even as to Ted Kennedy after he died (courtesy of Take My Country Back):

Two weeks following Ted Kennedy’s death:

“Rest in Chappaquiddick”

“he was a f@#$er. a big ass motherf@#$er. this aint a 24-hour zone, baby. he was a bad, bad dude. & if mary jo were your kin youd be dancin’.”

“Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement.”

On Shirley Sherrod’s “racism”:

“I think the video speaks for itself…The way she’s talking about white people…is conveying a present tense racism in my opinion”

Other random acts of “journalistic” eloquence:

“This Idea Of Taking Off Ethnic Profiling Or Profiling Of Any Way Is Taking Common Sense Out Of The Equation”

On Janeane Garofalo: “Hollywood’s Sympathy F***”

“If You Want To Talk About Looks And Appeal,” The View ”Was Crafted … To Make Sure That Men Won’t Watch”

Code Pink: “[I]t’s no longer fun to watch them and they’re not even good looking anymore. It used to be that they were like, kinda slutty lefties…they’re getting long in the tooth.”

“Go After The Teachers”

ACORN “Helped…Set Up An Underage Sex Slave Operation”

So, Is A Tent An Outfit? Can Police Disrobe You If You Are Wearing A Tent?

This may not rank among the most despicable conduct of police against the Occupy movement, but still ... cutting off the woman's clothes because she was wearing an improvised "tent?" Where in the stupid people's mind is that really a reasonable act?

Alabama And Georgia - Dumbest States

Both states, with agriculture dependent upon the immigrant population, naturally pass laws that result in the mass exodus of the immigrant population such that farmers and others are suffering, crops are rotting, the meme of the Republicans that if you get rid of the immigrants, regular Americans will do the work in the fields, have found this to be UNTRUE!

So much untrue that these states are now looking to PRISONERS to work for almost free to try and save the agricultural losses that are being incurred in both of these states. Yeah, right. Stupid idiots.

ThinkProgress has been reporting on the catastrophic economic consequences of Alabama’s harshest-in-the-nation immigration law. Undocumented workers are the backbone of Alabama’s agriculture industry, and their exodus has already created a labor shortage in the state. Farmers say crops are rotting in the field and they are in danger of losing their farms by next season.

GOP politicians have crowed that driving immigrants out of the state will reduce unemployment by letting native citizens fill those jobs. But they’ve quickly discovered that Americans are simply unwilling to do the back-breaking labor of harvesting crops.

To stave off the disastrous collapse of state agriculture, Alabama officials are seriously considering replacing immigrant workers with prison laborers who they could perhaps pay even less than immigrants. Earlier this year, the head of Alabama’s agriculture department floated this idea. Now, the department is actively promoting it to the state’s farmers:

Alabama agriculture officials are considering whether prisoners can fill a labor shortage the agency blames on the new state law against illegal immigration.

The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries is meeting with south Alabama farmers and businesses in Mobile on Tuesday. Deputy commissioner Brett Hall says the agenda includes a presentation on whether work-release inmates could help fill jobs once held by immigrants.

Georgia implemented a similar scheme to deal with its post-immigration-law exodus, but the program had mixed results, with many inmates walking off the job early. In fact, some in Georgia were amazed Alabama did not learn from their mistakes before implementing an immigration law that jeopardized agricultural and construction industries. “It was like, ‘Good Lord, you people can’t be helped. Have you all not been paying attention?’” said Bryan Tolar, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.

No, they have not been paying attention. They are the stupid people!

H/T to Think Progress.

Because It Is Funnier Than Shit - Mike Tyson As Herman Cain!

Herman Cain Sings 'Imagine There's No Pizza' from Mike Tyson

More On AG Settlement With Banks

I first posted on this subject here on August 22, 2011. Here's a little tidbit from Matt Taibbi's blog about this, with a very interesting point.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent a letter to state and federal regulators explaining that she pulled out because the proposed settlement amount for banks guilty of bad securitization practices leading up to the mortgage crisis – said to be in the $20 billion range – was too small.

[snip]

I’m convinced that the deal will eventually go through, however, after some further concessions are made. Certainly the absence of both New York (whose Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gamely started this mess by refusing to sign on or abandon his own investigation into corrupt securitization practices) and California will make it difficult for the banks to do any kind of a deal. But there is such an awesome amount of political will to get this deal done in Washington that it almost has to happen before the presidential election season really gets going.

If it does get done, expect a great deal of public debate over whether or not the size of the settlement was sufficient. Did the banks pay enough? Should they have paid ten billion more? Twenty? Even I engaged in a little bit of that some weeks ago.

But if and when that debate takes place, it will actually obscure the real issue, because this settlement is not about getting money from the banks. The deal being contemplated is actually the opposite: a giant bailout.

In fact, any federal foreclosure settlement along the lines of what’s been proposed will amount to a last round of post-2008-crisis bailouts. I talked to one foreclosure activist over the weekend who put it this way: “[The AG settlement] will be a bigger bailout than TARP.”

Another bailout. More giveaways to the 1%. Nothing fair to the 99%. And media keeps asking what is the point of OWS? Open your eyes, stupid people!

Dumb And Dumber Use Internet Explorer

UPDATE: 8/3/11 It appears this "story" may have been an elaborate hoax.

Inherent in my nature is a refusal to jump onto bandwagons, whether it be sports or technology, or other stuff.

I used to get very upset years and years ago when I was a regular on a hockey chat board, at being called a Los Angeles Kings bandwagon fan. First off, the Kings never won anything so how I could be termed a bandwagoner was lost on me. Secondly, I actually had season tickets, six of them when at the Forum, and three in the lower bowl when at Staples. And usually, the "person" calling me names was someone who never owned season tickets, never had any intention of owning season tickets, went to one or two games a year, and failed to follow other hockey teams in the league! They were the "stupid" people, to me.

When it comes to technology, I am always the person who upgrades last. It took me years to get off Netscape and accept Internet Explorer. However, one of the few things I did do was change to Firefox. My reluctance to switch to IE in the first place is the fact that I distrust Microsoft a great deal - to the point that I turn off all automatic updates, and my computer at home still uses XP (forget Vista and Windows 7).

Now a report has come in that has found out "stupid" people tend to use IE !!!!! Just like stupid people watch FOX.

Here comes the flame war. According to a new report, dumb people are more likely to use Internet Explorer than smart people. It's a finding so apparently defamatory that the company responsible for the statement is allegedly being threatened with a lawsuit by inflamed Internet Explorer aficionados.

[snip]

Across the board, the average IQ scores presented for users of Internet Explorer versions 6 through 9 were all lower than the IQ scores recorded for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Camino, and Opera users. Humorously enough, those using Internet Explorer with the Chrome frame built-in actually ranked third in IQ scores among this browser list. Opera users reported the highest average IQ score – hovering around the 120 to 130 range, which is a bit higher than the WAIS test's population mean of 100 (and standard deviation of 15).

I have always hated IE, but I am also not a fan of anything Google (I do not like the fact that Blogger was taken over by Google).

Republican Leaders In Wisconsin Running Scared

H/T to Crooks and Liars.

It looks like Wisconsin Republicans are getting a bit nervous about the possibility they may lose their Senate majority via recalls this year. After a Democrat won a long-held solid Republican seat in a special election last week and ended the Republican supermajority, their legislative calendar has been ramped up.

Yahoo! News:

Republicans, in a rapid sequence of votes over the next eight weeks, plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and undo an early release for prisoners.

Lawmakers may also act again on Walker's controversial plan stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. An earlier version, which led to massive protest demonstrations at the Capitol, has been left in limbo by legal challenges.

"Everything's been accelerated," said Republican Rep. Gary Tauchen, who is working on the photo ID bill. "We've got a lot of big bills we're trying to get done."

And they accused Democrats of being radical? Sounds like it might be time for another trip for some Wisconsin senators out of state.

The recall efforts have been surprisingly successful thus far in Wisconsin. Since many other states that have newly minted, er, elected Republican governors, we can expect this same thing to occur, as recall efforts pick up in those states as well.