Big Brother is Alive and Well in Hickman, Nebraska

This story might seem trivial compared to all the global and national events happening right now. But it’s a sick commentary on the way people treat each other; and how a power-crazed corrupt city government can bully its own citizens. It also shows that you don’t have to live in a big city to be surrounded by a bunch of sleazy self-absorbed assholes.

The small town of Hickman, Nebraska has suddenly started enforcing a 20-year-old law prohibiting all livestock within the “city” limits. (The town’s population is just over a thousand people.) But even twenty years ago when this law was passed, Harley Scott, now 76, owned a 12-year-old horse which he kept on his own property. His horse, named Peter Rabbit, is now 32 years old. And the Hickman city council is insisting that the horse has to go NOW.

After a local outcry, the city council took another vote on whether to amend this law, perhaps making an exemption for horses, or even just grandfathering in Harley Scott’s horse, since his horse predates the city’s no-livestock rule.

No dice. The city council voted to keep the no-livestock ordinance as is — no changes or exceptions. 76-year-old Harley Scott has to get rid of his 32-year-old horse immediately. Next.

As small as Hickman is, it’s starting to turn into a suburb of Lincoln, NE. Apparently some of the new Hickman residents are appalled that there's an icky smelly animal out there grazing in a pasture. What were these douchebags expecting when they moved out from the city to a small town?

A local development group is apparently putting pressure on the city council to hurry up and run that damn horse out of town so they can bring in hordes of yuppies and become another faceless suburb ASAP.

Please sign this petition, which asks Mayor Jim Hrouda and city council of Hickman, NE not to make a 76-year-old man get rid of his horse. This same website also includes a brief rundown of the situation, and it lists several city phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

It also lists the phone number of the Hickman Area Economic Development Association (HAEDA), the group that’s been instigating this whole tragedy: 402-792-2212.

Here are some more links to this travesty. For a small town that nobody ever heard of, Hickman, NE is becoming pretty famous. Or infamous.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

What Obama Is Up Against

I was channel surfing the other night and ended up at Larry King Live, which I never watch. He was interviewing conservatives and Hillary Worshippers (is there a difference?) to get their opinions on the Democratic convention. He claimed that during the Republican convention he’ll be interviewing Democrats to get their reactions.

One of his guests was Dennis “Born To Irritate” Prager. Talk about a one trick pony. For some wingtards every sentence is a noun, a verb and 9/11 (Giuliani). For others it’s a noun, a verb and POW (McMansion). Every sentence uttered by Dennis Prager contained either “In the America that I grew up in…” or “America is the greatest country in the world!!!”

The trouble with being a one trick pony is — when somebody yanks that single trick away from you, what have you got?

Obama, Biden and all of their strategists and spokespeople have a foolproof counterattack, if they’ll only use it. As soon as one of these rightwing talking points gets spewed out, immediately bring the conversation back to the subject at hand. Again and again, as many times as it takes.

“Yes I'm aware that Songbird McSame was once a prisoner of war. What's that got to do with ___________________?”

“Yes, America IS the greatest country in the world. Now the question — again! — was: what's your solution to ____________________________?”

If these rightwing soundbots are forced to discuss the subject at hand and ONLY the subject at hand, they’ll be like a turtle without a shell; like a gunman who just ran out of bullets.

Now, take those Hillary Devotees (please!). Yes, Billary have publicly stated that they're behind Obama and all that. As the late (oh that’s right, he isn't dead, just his political career) Phil Gram once said, Bill Clinton can come out on three sides of a 2-sided issue. No matter what they say publicly, it’s hard to believe Billary isn't secretly hoping McCain will get elected, fuck everything up beyond belief, and then Hillary will win by a landslide in 2012.

During the 2000 election I thought the most annoying people in the world were those undecided voters who got turned into national celebrities. There they were, surrounded by TV cameras: “Gee, I just can't decide who to vote for. I like Bush because he’ll be good for the economy and national security. And I like Gore because we need to protect the environment. Ooohhh, I just don’t know who I waaaant.”

But now there's somebody even more irritating. Larry King was interviewing one of Hillary’s Ice Queens. She was more anal retentive than Adrian Monk and icier than Phyllis Schlafly and Hillary put together. She was going on and on about how Obama has to win her vote. Something like “he's asked me out to dinner but I haven’t agreed to go home with yet.” That wasn’t her exact wording but that seemed like the general drift.

Between Hillary’s devoted worshippers and the rightwing talking pointers, Obama has his work cut out for him.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Ted Stevens: Dick Cheney’s Achilles Heel?

America’s slipperiest criminal has been untouchable for almost eight years. He can bribe the Supreme Court into ruling that he doesn’t have to reveal any information about those secret energy meetings. And look at the results of those meetings. How’d that work out for us?

He thinks torturing prisoners is even more American than apple pie and motherhood. Will he still think so after he becomes a prisoner?

And he has more undisclosed locations than any ten underworld figures.

But now one of his stooges might start singing.

The upcoming trial of Ted Stevens will show that Cheney was up to his eyeballs (or whatever androids see with) in Stevens’ oil pipeline scandal. All kinds of information ought to be uncovered.

Like most criminals, Stevens might roll over and start naming names. Ted Stevens and Dick Cheney (and a few of the other misfits) spending their doddering years in prison — one can dream anyway.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Obama Finally Has a Pit Bull

Joe Biden might be able to save Obama from turning into the 2008 version of Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama seems determined to stay on the “high road” while he gets continually shat on by the Republican Hate Machine. How’d that work out for his three predecessors?

Biden has some of the criteria that Obama lacks. He has experience (several decades in the Senate) and an extensive knowledge of foreign policy. He's Catholic and comes from a working class background.

But most importantly, he's quick-witted, blunt and goes for the jugular when necessary. The next Republican sleazewipe who takes a shot at Obama is gonna be picking his teeth up off the sidewalk with his broken fingers (figuratively of course).

Biden has already gotten in a few one-liners about the, uh, togetherness of Bush and McCain during the past eight years. He pointed out that McCain has voted with Bush about 90% of the time. He even recycled some of McCain’s own quotes, where McCain said he was “totally in agreement and support of President Bush” on “the most important issues of our day.”

He also got off a line about McCain’s seven houses. He was talking about sitting at the kitchen table, going over the bills, and said: “That's not a worry John McCain has… He will have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.”

Over the years he's made a lot of shoot-from-the-hip comebacks that are easily comparable to Lloyd Bentsen’s famous jab at Dan Quayle: “…Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”

During the next few months there should be numerous debates and press conferences where Biden leaves McCain and his VP nominee with that Dan Quayle deer-caught-in-the-headlights facial expression.

President Bush: “Taiwan is Part of China!”

George W. Bush interrupted his vacation in Crawford for a photo op in Orlando, FL at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. He told them: “The breakaway province of Taiwan is part of China! The United States of America will continue to support Mainland China.”

Oh wait — Georgia, not China. Doh! OK, let’s see now…the Chinese had better keep their grubby mitts off their breakaway region of Taiwan, or else! And the United States will help the Georgian government do whatever they need to do — whatever it takes! — to strangle South Ossetia and Abkhazia into submission. Fuck ‘em where they breathe! OK, I get it now.

Pat Buchanan brings up a scary thought. Yes, that Pat Buchanan, the racist xenophobe who wants to turn the clock back to the 1800s. When he's right, he's right. A broken clock is still right twice a day.

If Georgia had already been a member of NATO — as the Bush Administration was pushing for — when this civil war started, guess where the United States would be fighting right now, as we speak. Georgia’s NATO membership would have forced us to send American soldiers to Georgia, so they could fight against Russian soldiers.

Oh boy, war with Russia!!! No, that’s not an earthquake you feel. It's the simultaneous orgasm of every rightwing mouthbreathing chickenhawk in the country.

Pat Buchanan says:

“If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war… had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.”

Somebody, somewhere please put the brakes on that psycho in the White House.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Big Bad Russia versus Sweet Little Dainty Georgia

The way America’s “media” has covered this issue, you'd think Ward and June Cleaver were getting pistolwhipped and gangraped by the Crips and Bloods. I'm not pushing any conspiracy theories, but the White House and their legions of secretaries (formerly known as “the media”) seem to have some sort of agenda here.

With just a basic knowledge of this region’s history, it becomes crystal clear why the Russians did what they did. I'm not saying it’s right, but…if you're at all interested in this powder keg and how it might affect the rest of us, check out these two articles. (Here and here.)

Like the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus region has ethnic feuds and grudges that go back centuries. There aren't any guardian angels here. Russians, Georgians, Chechens, Ossetians — they're all ruthless if there's any sort of conflict, and they all carry grudges for eternity.

There is NOTHING black and white, David and Goliath or good-guys-and-bad-guys about any of this. Actually, the closest thing to a David and Goliath analogy would be Goliath (Georgia) hitting David (South Ossetia) with a slingshot.

Yes, Georgia is smaller than Russia; they have about 4½ million people. But their army has received lots of training and equipment from Israel and the U.S. Tskhinval, the capital city of South Ossetia, was practically leveled by Georgian troops. About two thousand Tskhinval residents — mostly civilians — were killed during Georgia’s invasion.

Mark Ames says:

“But you don't hear about this story from the Western media. Indeed, you hear little if anything about the Ossetians, who seem to hardly exist in the West’s eyes, even though their grievance is the root cause of this war.”

Another way the media is slanting this issue is by their choice of photos. You can't open a newspaper without seeing pictures of Georgian women shrieking and wailing in the streets as Russian tanks roll by. Seen any pictures of grieving South Ossetians?

In terms of the larger picture, Ames says:

“At the root of this conflict is a clash of two twentieth-century guiding principles in international relations. Georgia, backed by the West, is claiming its right as a sovereign nation to control the territory within its borders, a guiding principle since World War II. The Ossetians are claiming their right to self-determination, a guiding principle since World War I.”

OK, got a simple solution? Who are the good guys and the bad guys? If you called in the United States Cavalry, who would you want them to rescue?

cross-posted at Bring It On!

FDA, You're Doing a Heckuva Job

It shouldn’t be surprising any more when this kind of shit happens. We found out three years ago that FEMA is just a useless empty shell. And the Environmental Protection Agency now exists for the sole purpose of protecting corporations from those #$%&!# environmentalists.

And now we find out the true purpose of the Food and Drug Administration: coddling the pharmaceutical industry and promising them there won't be any mean old competition for their products.

Wyeth Pharmaceutical instructed their prostitutes at the FDA to ban the use of Estriol. Estriol is chemically identical to human estrogen. The FDA even admitted (while they were banning it) that it has no side effects. Wyeth wants the “free market” to be safe for their own similar product. Unlike Estriol, Wyeth’s product is derived from animal hormones. And unlike Estriol, Wyeth’s product has some serious health risks, including blood clots and cancer.

Like the old saying goes, what's good for Wyeth is good for America.

I got this information from the Libertarian organization, Downsize DC. Here's the link.

Doesn’t this make you feel all warm and fuzzy, knowing that the FDA is watching out for you? At this rate we’ll probably find out the Homeland Security Department is protecting Osama bin Laden.

When the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was approved three years ago — just barely, and only after several hours of threats and arm-twisting from Tom DeLay ("who???") — there were all kinds of rumors going around. The pharmaceutical industry was going to start banning (through their government stooges) most vitamin and herbal supplements so they wouldn’t have any competition. This would be done gradually of course. The peons might get a little restless if Vitamin C and Goldenseal disappeared off the shelves overnight. So we’ll just do it slooowly.

This action by the FDA gives a lot more credibility to those rumors.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Russian Invasion of Georgia, and What It Means

We've had a few days now to think about this horrifying event and what it all means.

It’s still shocking. Russia has invaded Georgia. What can you say? A sovereign nation has been attacked by another country. Is there no rule of law any more? The world has descended into chaos.

And Russia has a history of thumbing its nose at the World Court, the United Nations and other international organizations. Their leaders don’t seem to care about international law or what the world thinks of them.

And the scary part is, Russia’s leaders look almost moderate compared to some of the up-and-coming wannabes in that country. One particular basket case wants to stay in Georgia for a hundred years.

When Russia’s former leader stepped down recently, everyone was afraid (with good reason) that the new person would be awfully, uh, close to his ex-boss.

I sure hope these goons don’t have any further conquests planned after they get through with Georgia.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

When The Gestapo Breaks Down Your Door and Shoots Your Dog

This is what happens when you combine America’s trillion-dollar War on Drugs with police departments and SWAT teams full of single-digit-IQ trigger-happy goons.

The mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD — Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic — unwittingly got caught up in a local drug scheme. It worked like this:

Two drug dealers were smuggling and distributing 400 pounds of marijuana. They divided the pot into a bunch of smaller packages and then delivered each one of those packages to an unsuspecting recipient. One of the dealers was a FedEx driver (or else he was just posing as one; I couldn’t tell from the article). The FedEx driver would leave a package of pot out in front of somebody’s house, and shortly afterward his partner would drive up and grab the package.

One of these pre-arranged addresses was the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife and mother-in-law. Unfortunately the mayor arrived home from work right after the package had been delivered and before the second half of the drug team was able to swoop in and pick it up. The mayor saw the package, saw that it was addressed to his wife, and he brought it inside.

As soon as the mayor had brought the package inside, a SWAT team stormed in on his house. His mother-in-law was out in the yard, saw a bunch of armed goons running toward the house, and screamed. The SWAT drones assumed that the mother-in-law was a lookout, and her screams were a warning to those badass dope dealers inside that the heat was approaching — quick, destroy the evidence!

So the SWATfucks broke down the door, shot and killed the family’s two Labrador Retrievers and hog-tied the mayor and his mother-in-law.

Calvo said the stormtroopers apparently killed his two dogs “for sport.” One of the dogs was running away when it was gunned down. He said, “Our dogs were our children. They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in.”

For over a week, Prince George’s County Police Chief Melvin “Child Porn Gets Me” High was insisting that Calvo must have been involved with the drug dealers.

Finally, on August 8th (the Gestapo raid took place on July 29th) the chief phoned the mayor and his wife and told them they were no longer suspects. But he refused to apologize for the raid or the killing of his dogs, insisting that the SWAT goons were acting within the law.

A Maryland state senator said that raids like this are common; this one only made the news because the victim was the mayor. The FBI has opened a civil rights investigation into this case.

NOTE: The linked article is an updated version of the original, but a lot of the earlier information is missing.

Here is a Google News link to the incident.

And here is a Washington Post article, including some colorful comments at the end of the article.

I don’t know whether the information is true or not, but one of the commenters gives the address, phone number and e-mail address of the police chief:

“Chief of Police, Melvin C. High (soon to be very, very retired)
7600 Barlowe Road, Landover, MD 20785
301-333-4000, e-mail: Police Customer Service@co.pg.md.us
I suggest e-mailing the nazi directly.”

Anyway, that was one of the comments. I’m just passing it on; not making any suggestions or anything. No crank phone calls now.

I can’t seem to find the offending stormtroopers’ names in any of these articles. Funny — at the most absurd inappropriate times, there really IS a right to privacy.

This being America, millions of households are armed to the teeth. It’s too bad the Calvo household isn’t one of them. As the NRA keeps reminding us, there would be a lot fewer home invasions (and that’s exactly what this was) if the invaders were neutralized on the spot.

While the FBI “looks into” this horrifying incident and the pisspoor excuse for a police “chief” keeps making public non-statements, it’s never too late for some good old-fashioned frontier justice. Whether the SWATfucks’ names have been published or not, somebody has to know who they are. It would be just a shame if one of them tripped and fell and hit his teeth on a fire hydrant.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Human Rights Violations in China

President Bush has rightly condemned China’s despicable record on human rights. It’s just unconscionable that such a brutal dictatorship is allowed to host the 2008 Olympics, but at least they’ve been duly reprimanded by the Leader of the Free World.

And the Chinese government is indeed a ruthless, totally unaccountable dictatorship. You’re not going to believe this, but they often imprison people for long periods, without even charging them with a crime.

Prison conditions in China are unimaginably brutal — inhuman! Prisons are way overcrowded, and prisoners are often abused by guards and other prisoners. Sometimes the government uses torture to extract information or a confession.

If you believe in a right to privacy, forget China. Their government has a massive spying apparatus that George Orwell never would’ve imagined. Nobody in China is free from the watchful eye of Big Brother.

In a few extreme cases, the Chinese government has held prisoners for a long time with no trial, and then, after finding them NOT guilty of the charges, has still REFUSED to release them from prison! How is something like this even possible? What a sick sick country! Can’t the United Nations do something about this?

China’s brutal attitudes and customs are nothing new. Throughout their history the Chinese have expanded their territory by conquering and brutalizing neighboring tribes and countries.

China holds at least one other disgraceful world record: They have a larger percentage of their population behind bars than any other country in the world. Oh wait, I was thinking of somebody else.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

If Your IQ is Lower Than Your Shoe Size — Sign This Petition

Every time you think there couldn’t possibly be a cheaper, more useless stunt, some mouthbreathing rightwad will come up with one. And then when you think “come on, nobody’s dumb enough to believe this,” thousands of knuckledraggers come slithering out to prove you wrong.

Are you ready for this? Some douchebag has started an online petition to call Congress back from their 5-week summer recess so that Exxon's prostitutes can force a vote on offshore drilling. Riiight, that’s gonna happen.

Never mind that the above-mentioned hookers have just defeated a bill that would require oil companies to drill on some of the 68 million acres that they’re already leasing. They also defeated a bill that would have extended tax credits for renewable energy development; these tax credits will now expire at the end of this year.

Another bill that just got defeated (yes, by the same Republican skanks again) would have made the trading process more open and transparent, so regulators could see if speculators were driving up oil prices. If speculators are doing nothing shady or illegal, then they shouldn’t have had anything to fear from this bill.

And Bush-hugging McCain thinks it’s hilarious to even mention checking your tire pressure and getting regular tune-ups for better gas mileage. Never mind that doing those two simple things will improve your gas mileage and save you money right NOW, not ten years from now.

Nope. If your family tree has no branches, and you find yourself getting lost in a one-room apartment, then YOU think drilling for oil in environmentally-protected areas is the ONLY way to bring down gas prices. And Simple John McPander and his fellow wingtards have just the gimmick for you.

This online petition drive was started by a rightwing Political Action Committee, Cantor For Congress. As in Eric Cantor, who seems most likely to be McSame’s vice presidential nominee. Talk about birds of a feather…

As of this writing, this retarded petition has over sixteen thousand signatures, and it just started two days ago. I didn’t know that many neckdroolers could operate a computer.

Some of those signatures are probably bogus. If you type any nonsensical word into the first and last name fields, and a fake e-mail address, you get a “Thank You For Signing” message. Er, ahem, not that I would have any first-hand knowledge of this, or anything…

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Tom Coburn (R-Okla) Hates America and Loves Child Pornography

He also hates our troops, especially those whiny ones who complain about being paralyzed. And thirty-nine of Coburn’s fellow Senate Republicans agree with him.

A total of thirty-six bills have been blocked by Coburn. One of his stated reasons is “excessive spending.” Hey, I know how we can fix that.

But more recently he’s been blocking every Senate bill that doesn’t deal with oil exploration. He wants to blackmail the Senate into voting on whether to allow offshore drilling. Democrats have refused to bring this topic to a vote.

Newsflash for Coburn: the majority party (and right now that’s the Democrats) controls the congressional agenda. Get over it Douchebag.

Before the Senate’s summer recess, Harry Reid lumped together all 36 of the bills blocked by Coburn, and tried to get them passed as the Advancing America’s Priorities Act. That was when Coburn and his 39 Stooges stood together to block the bill. Democrats needed 60 votes to pass the bill; they got 52.

In addition to helping paralyzed veterans, some of the other blocked bills included funding for Homeland Security and to fight child pornography.

So, the question is: why is the “media” silent about this? And why aren’t Democratic strategists (in case there actually are any) capitalizing on this and shouting about it from the rooftops?

When a Democrat is against offshore drilling, the Republicans scream in unison that gas would go down to $2 a gallon TOMORROW if it weren't for those Democrats and treehuggers standing in the way. And these screams and soundbites are dutifully recited by thousands of Republican secretaries in the “media.”

But when Republicans defeat a bill that would require oil companies to start drilling on the 68 million acres where they already hold leases, the media is dead silent and the Democrats just grumble among themselves. And how many people even KNEW that the oil companies were already leasing 68 million acres where they aren’t drilling? Another big Fuck You Very Much to our lapdog “media.”

And why don’t congressional Democrats seem to know any of these obscure legislative maneuvers that Republicans are always pulling out of thin air? As much as I hated the late unlamented Jesse Helms — and don’t forget, the entire country celebrated with fireworks on the day he died — he seemed to know every obscure bylaw and parliamentary maneuver that ever existed. And he wielded them like a scalpel. He kept Bill Clinton in a straitjacket with his constant maneuvers — even during Clinton’s first two years when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Why don’t Democrats use any of these procedures? And they seem to be unable or unwilling to capitalize on Republican votes that would infuriate most Americans — if the public only knew about them.

Obama and his campaign staff need to articulate these issues and communicate them to the voters. If they can’t or won’t, we’re all gonna be stuck with Dumbya’s Significant Other in the White House next January.

cross-posted at Bring It On!

Attention Wal-Mart Employees: Vote Republican Or Else!

Memo from Management to All Employees:

Your home, your family and your livelihood are riding on the election this November. If George W. Bush doesn’t get elected to a third term (through his Significant Other), everything we’ve worked for will be lost.

If Barack Saddam Hussein Osama gets into the White House, he will force you to join one of those communist Labor Unions!

Of course it’s tempting. The Devil is always using Temptation to seduce the innocent and unwary. And what could be more tempting than higher wages, medical benefits for your loved ones, and a pension? But it’s a trap! Be strong!

We pay you rock bottom wages and treat you like shit Because We Care. By paying you shitty wages and not providing any medical benefits, we’re enabling you to keep your job. We're all you've got, Loser! And just what the hell is wrong with the emergency room anyway, you Fuckin’ Whiner? It’s good enough for your co-workers. Get used to it!

If you lowlifes are allowed to form a union, we’ll be forced to pay you a livable wage and provide medical benefits. And weeee doooooon’t waaaaaant tooooo!!!!! Instead, we’ll just have to eliminate millions of jobs, including yours. This will allow us to continue serving your community and to provide a better workplace for our associates.

So remember: if that union-coddling flagburner gets elected — You’re Fired!

Remember, our Associates are Wal-Mart's most valuable asset. We're all family here.

All right, quit staring at this page and get back to work you no-good sack of pus.

Thank you.

The Management

John McCain Involved in Collision!

It was just a matter of time.

cross-posted at Bring It On!