Rumors, Lies, Innuendo, Fear, Uncertainty, and Despair

“Unrelenting sex drive may signal deadly rabies”
MSNBC

Charlie Sheen has rabies?

“Romney will do anything to get elected”
The Atlantic

And that makes him different from the rest of them….how?

“Car rental firm Hertz fired 26 [Muslim] employees at its Sea-Tac Airport location for failing to clock out when they take their prayer breaks….They have not applied the policy to people who take smoke breaks.”
KOMO Seattle

So, the Muslims should start smoking while they’re on their prayer mats.

Auto racing legend Al Unser Jr. was arrested and charged with DWI in Albuquerque, after investigators said his blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit and he was speeding at more than 100 mph.
KOAT Albuquerque

Maybe Al should have tipped a few before his races. He might have won more.

NM holds highest solve-rate for bank robberies in U.S.
KOB Albuquerque

No, it’s not smart cops. It’s dumb bank robbers.

About 36% of consumers will drive five miles out of their way to save three cents per gallon of gasoline.
Marketwatch

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H.L.Mencken

54 percent of voters want to throw out every member of Congress.
Christian Science Monitor

Yes, but they all think their own congressman is a good guy. Repeat after me: “My congressman is an idiot.”

Investigators have not ruled out foul play in the death of a young Arkansas man whose body was discovered in an empty bathtub next to a sleeping TV meteorologist.
Fox News

Sorry, I just think this is funny.

“My next door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs than this president.”
attributed to stealth presidential candidate Gary Johnson

Rick Perry ought to hire Johnson’s speech writers.

An expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the FAA lacks the technical expertise needed to build and manage complex air-traffic systems.
Businessweek

Which is, of course, why the FAA is in the business of building and managing a complex air-traffic system.

On Monday, to the disappointment of many who were ready to break their dusk to dawn fast, the [Indonesian] Ministry of Religious Affairs announced that Eid al-Fitr would fall on Wednesday because the moon was still too low on the horizon.
VOA News

While our politicians fritter away their time on things like taxes and the deficit, here’s a government that’s got its priorities in order.

Republicans stormed into control of the House of Representatives last fall on a promise to cut spending by $100 billion this year. But instead of reducing outlays, the Republicans managed to do what all Congresses eventually do: Spend more.
Wall Street Journal

Again, repeat after me: “My congressman is an idiot.”

This sounds like a marriage made in Hell; it is—for Congress.

If you look at the people and the agendas of the two movements (the word ‘organization’ hardly applies here) they don’t appear to agree on anything.

The Tea Party is comprised of flag-waving, largely religious, Republican refugees who favor reduced taxes, a balanced budget, repeal of Obamacare, and a pragmatic environmental policy. Opposite them, Occupy Wall Street is characterized by the children and grandchildren of 60’s hippies who protest social and economic inequality, the influence of lobbyists, corporate power over government, and the impending doom of global warming.

If the members of these two groups were honest about the root cause of their displeasure, both would finger the same culprit—Congress. Our congress is an inept, corrupt institution that, almost singlehandedly, is responsible for everything that pisses both groups off. OWS and TTP don’t have to agree on anything other than throwing our current crop of career politicians to the curb.

Our country has problems. There is no consensus as to which problems are important or how to solve them. But all of us should be able to agree that we would be fools to entrust the solutions to the pack of idiots who created the problems in the first place. Throw the bastards out!

(Memo to OWS: You’d be wise to enter in to merger discussions with TTP soon. Winter is coming and those city parks are going to get friggin’ cold. Most Tea Party supporters have central heating).

I’m not much of a political forecaster but it appears that betting against Mitt Romney is as close as one can come to a Sure Thing. Romney almost certainly will not get the Republican nomination for president and, if he does, he will lose to Obama in the general election. Why? Because Romney is a Mormon.

During the past month, five different polls have addressed the question of candidates’ religion. The results:

• In a Lawrence Research survey 20 percent said they’d never consider voting for a Mormon.
• In a Gallup poll, 22 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon.
• In a Pew survey 25 percent said they’d be less likely to support a presidential candidate if he were Mormon.
• In a Poll Position survey, 32 percent of adults said they’d never support a Mormon for president.
• In a Quinnipiac survey, 36 percent said they’d be uncomfortable with a Mormon president.

Somewhere between 20 and 36 percent of Americans hold opinions ranging from “would never consider voting for a Mormon” to “being uncomfortable with a Mormon president.” With negatives like these, the Republicans would be committing political suicide if they let Romney have the nomination. A candidate can’t win an election when roughly one-quarter of the voters are opposed to him for reasons almost totally unrelated to his fitness for office. (By comparison, only about 5% of Americans would either “definitely vote for,” or “definitely not vote for” a candidate on the basis of his race).

It’s nice to know that religious bigotry is alive and well in America.

I used to be an anti-Mormon bigot myself until I realized that events like Jesus appearing in America and the translation of the Book of Mormon by peering into a hat are no more bizarre than the virgin birth or talking serpents. Once you buy into some of this shit, why not believe it all. Who are we to say that Joseph Smith is any less of an authority on God than was Isaiah?

I still have trouble with the underwear, though.

Americans don’t like the job congress is doing (or not doing). Here’s a bit of the story from the New York Times:

A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after another political stalemate led to a shutdown of the federal government in 1995.

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

New York Times
August 4, 2011

Want to help improve congress? Throw out your congressman/senator every chance you get. Stick a note on your refrigerator that says, “My congressman is an idiot. In the next election I promise to vote for someone else, anyone else.”

Don’t ever remove the note. You’ll need to refer to it every two years.

The only way we can reform congress is by setting term limits. The only way we can set term limits is by refusing to vote for any incumbent. Ignore parties and ideologies. We need to break the corrupt congressional seniority system. Throw your bastard congressman out. I’ll throw mine out.

Since the first of the year the only relief we’ve had from stories about the federal budget and the debt ceiling have been the Casey Anthony trial and Killing bin Laden. Other than those brief respites of dubious entertainment we’ve had little but the posturing of various congressmen and senators, compounded by the endless comments of pundits and ‘experts.’

Our solons make it clear that their only concern in this matter is the same concern they’ve had for the past fifty years: re-election. The country be damned, the taxpayers be damned. Few of our lawmakers will risk honest dialogue, appropriate compromise, or reasoned rhetoric for fear that it may damage their chances for re-election.

Why do they yearn so for re-election? Money, power, prestige, privilege. Social scientists could write volumes analyzing the motives of those seeking or holding high elective office but we should be suspicious of anyone who aspires to be a “dedicated public servant.”

A few observations:

• Virtually no one reading this article would want one of these jobs. The people who run for congress are not normal. In no way do I intend that as a compliment.
• We should be suspicious of anyone who aspires to a job where he will be given broad powers to alter the lives of hundreds of millions. Do you have the hubris to think you’re wise enough to accomplish this? Your congressman does.
• Anyone who is truly wise enough to do this job is wise enough not to want it.
• While some congressmen have only limited assets when they enter office, they all leave rich. The longer they remain in office, the richer they become.
• If you’re like most voters you probably think your congressman and senators are OK. It’s the rest of them who are the problem. Your congressman is an idiot.

You may not have heard that US arch-enemy Osama bin Laden was greased on May 2, 2011 by special ops forces. It’s been in the papers. Most Americans have been too busy watching Dancing with the Stars to pay much attention to the story. I shall endeavor to fill in the gaps.

He was alive? Personally, I was surprised to hear that when the black ops boys found him bin Laden was alive, at least for a few seconds. Over the past decade he faded so much to irrelevance that I figured he was dead, either from kidney failure or terminal flatulence.

He didn’t have a chance! Within 24 hours, bleeding heart pussies from Cambridge to Berkeley were whining that the poor bastard was unarmed, unlike the 3000 people in the World Trade Center who were bristling with weaponry. People raised on Steven Spielberg movies think war is supposed to be a fair fight. The best way to fight a battle is to find your enemy asleep, kill him, spike his guns, and move on to the next target. Perhaps folks would feel better if we had shot bin Laden and then stuck an AK in his hands, after the fashion of some US police departments.

What a Dump! bin Laden had a large personal fortune, not to mention al Qaeda’s substantial take from the sale of Osama t-shirts, effigies of George Bush, and American flags pre-soaked in lighter fluid. And he winds up living in a “multi-million dollar compound” that would bring down property values in East LA. What did he do, hire Soviet contractors? Even those assholes in the Politburo knew enough to hire Finns when they needed decent housing.

“I see nussing; I know nussing.” In the best tradition of Colonel Klink, the Pakis are claiming they had no idea bin Laden was in town. Never mind that the “compound” was three times as large as anything else in the neighborhood and had 18-foot walls. The Pakis thought it was just another goat farm.

Already, the conspiracy theorists abound. At least they’ll quit harping about the Kennedy assassination. My favorite so far: There was a 2 1/2-mile tunnel between the bin Laden compound and the Pakistani military academy. bin Laden was running the tunnel twice a week to moderate a jihadist symposium.

His burial was “un-Islamic.” If we are to believe the claim that Islam is a “religion of peace” then Osama was about as un-Islamic as one can be. We can only hope that the Pope or Terry Jones was on board the USS Carl Vinson to kick the bastard overboard.

Speaking of burial at sea. In the hours immediately after announcing Osama’s demise, US “sources” were claiming that he was buried at sea because they feared they “would be unable to find a country to accept his body.” I can think of about a dozen countries that would love to build a bin Laden World theme park with the Great Man’s grave as the centerpiece. It would be the first attraction in the Arab world that was less than about 500 years old.

Since he was buried at sea, Osama may find that his eternal reward is 72 sturgeons.

At least the boys on the Carl Vinson marked the grave appropriately.

According to a story in The Los Angeles Times, the late Pope John Paul is on his way to sainthood:

“The Vatican said  [Pope] Benedict had approved findings by the church that John Paul had performed a miracle after his death, a prerequisite for beatification. A nun who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, as did the late pope, said she was healed of her affliction after praying to John Paul shortly after he died.”

Makes sense to me, as I am sure it does to you.

The Vatican does not disclose how many nuns (or others with Parkinson’s disease) prayed to John Paul and were not cured nor do they consider the possibility that the nun’s disease was misdiagnosed or in temporary remission.

I’ve always wanted to be a saint. Until I read this story, I didn’t know how easy it was.

I’d like for you to pray to me, Lloyd Williams, for a miracle (e.g., you win the Megabucks grand prize, the Cubs win the World Series, or your wife finally understands how to use a thermostat). If enough of you pray to me for enough miracles something improbable, but not impossible, is sure to happen.

Start praying right away and let me know when your miracle occurs. I promise not to forget the little people who helped me on the path to sainthood.

NHK, Japan’s public news agency, reports the death toll from last week’s earthquake and tsunami is likely to exceed 13,000; around a half-million Japanese are homeless.

Have you seen a headline similar to the one above? Not likely. Almost every story on the earthquake has a headline and opening paragraph on the possibility of a nuclear disaster. A sampling from today’s press:

Emperor Akihito’s speech underlines gravity of Japan’s nuclear crisis (Los Angeles Times)
Japan races to prevent nuclear reactor meltdown (ABC News)
Japan to spray water, acid on stricken nuke plant (Associated Press)
Panic, confusion over Japan plant evacuation (CBS News)
Devastation, confusion in Sendai amid nuclear fears (Bloomberg)
1st fire at Japan nuclear reactor not extinguished (Newsday)
Radiation risk from Japan puts prevention plans to test (USA Today)

and my personal favorite, from countless sources:

Anti-radiation pills flying off store shelves in US

This morning, I received a text message about an earthquake in Japan. I had not heard about this so I immediately went to Google News to find out what had happened. Here were Google’s headlines:

Japan trying to fix nuclear plant cooling problem
Nuclear emergency as Fukushima cooling system fails after Japan quake
Quake triggers shutdown of nuclear generators
Japanese PM declares atomic power emergency
Japan declares emergency at nuke plant; no radiation leak now
Quake-hit Japan declares nuclear power emergency

As you probably know by now, news agencies are reporting that this is one of the largest  (9.0 Richter) earthquakes in history. Hundreds are reported dead; trains have stopped operating; some airports and highways are closed; tsunamis have caused major damage along the coast of Japan; an oil refinery is on fire; a ship and a passenger train are unaccounted for; cell phone service in Tokyo is out. In other words, this is a major disaster with all of the attendant death and devastation one would expect.

But what does Google report? Nuclear disaster!

Get a grip, guys. Nuclear reactors across Japan shut down automatically, as designed, when instruments detected an earthquake. Yes, at one reactor emergency power to operate the cooling system failed so they had to switch to battery power; they have enough battery power to keep the reactor cooled until backup generators are brought on line and the reactor is shut down gracefully. End of nuclear story.

It took Google about an hour to recognize that, perhaps, the wide-spread catastrophe in Japan was more important than a nuclear reactor that performed as designed during an earthquake.

On Monday, March 14, The Wall Street Journal put the matter in perspective:

“Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe…

“If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor.”

You can read the whole article here.