WWII vet’s neck breaking defended: 84-year-olds ‘can kill’ cops, too
A 84-year-old veteran is recovering from surgery to repair damaged vertebrae after an Orlando police officer reportedly flipped him onto his face and broke his neck.
On Saturday, "Police say Daniel J. Daley, 84, of Orlando was transported to Florida Hospital Orlando after he 'struck' an officer and the officer subdued him outside the Ivanhoe Grocery at 1820 North Orange Avenue about 11 p.m," reports the Orlando Sentinel.
Real tough guy, aintcha, copper? We know you're a badass with 84-year-olds, I hope we get the chance to see you up against some 24-year-old Marine just back from Afghanistan, asshole.
I'm confused about where the new tea Party stands on sexual issues. On one hand Tea Party backed Republican candidate for Governor of New York, Carl Paladino, sent a pornographic email with a video of a woman having sex with a horse. On the other hand Tea Party backed Republican candidate for Senator of Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, has taken the opposite position. She believes that masturbation is adultery and she is against stem cell research because "American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals".
So on one hand Carl is distributing porn so that his friends can masturbate to women having sex with horses, which also raises the question of what his position is on cross breeding between humans and animals. On the other hand Christine believes masturbation is wrong especially when a horse is trying to crossbreed with a human woman. So as a voter I don't understand what the Tea Party is for or against.
The teabaggers don't know what they're for or against either. For themselves and against reality, which includes everybody else, I guess.
Just as an aside, I served in the Marine Corps with a guy who had worked on a stud farm and jacked off horses for a living, although his actual job description was a little more highfalutin' than that, something like "reproductive harvesting". Much more efficient to send just the semen all over the world than the whole horse. He did it with a rubber donut on a handle in one hand and a bottle in the other. He said they liked it and were glad to see him when he showed up to work. I think he was from Upstate New York. I wonder what ever happened to him? Maybe he's a political consultant now...
William Rivers Pitt in the wake of the Value Voters Summit this past weekend. A 'recommended read':
This past weekend, an event called the Values Voters Summit was held in Washington DC. It's a kind of big-tent showcase for the fundamentalist far-right base of the Republican Party, sponsored by such leading conservative lights as the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, and Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Some of the featured speakers included Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Insane), Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, the wildly fertile Duggar family, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, anti-masturbation candidate and occasional dabbler in witchcraft Christine O'Donnell, Phyllis Schlafly, Mitt Romney, and of course, Sarah Palin.
You can imagine the sort of demented gibberish that came from the podium over the weekend, and frankly, most of it was too mind-numbing to repeat in any detail. Newt Gingrich did his little song and dance about how Islam is coming to eat your children. Christine O'Donnell reprised the nonsense about "death panels." One fellow, a senior aide to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), argued that all pornography is by nature homosexual, and therefore watching any form of pornography will make the viewer instantly gay. Gay people in general, a woman's right to choose and all things Obama took it in the chops, with plenty of birth certificate speculation to go around.
So, yeah, it was pretty standard stuff, given the roster of speakers who made the scene. But at one point during the event, new ground was broken in truly astonishing fashion. One becomes accustomed to cruel, insensitive, hate-filled rhetoric from the kind of people who dwell in this particular region of politics, but when Mike Huckabee took the stage, a whole new standard was set.
When Republicans attack health care reform, Democrats like to counter by accusing Republicans of wanting to repeal a law that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. According to Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, that's exactly right. People with pre-existing conditions, he explains, are like houses that have already burned down.
"It sounds so good, and it's such a warm message to say we're not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, "I'd like to buy some insurance for my house." He'd say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I'd like to insure it today." And he'll say, "I'm sorry, but we can't insure it after it's already burned." Well, no pre-existing conditions."
Mr. Pitt gives some facts and figures on how about one-third of Americans have pre-existing conditions and are thus not suffered to live in Huckabee's Amerikkka.
All of them, every single one of them, are like a house that has already burned down, according to Mike Huckabee and the sick bastards who cheered his comments. All of them, every single one of them, are not worthy of health insurance because they had the misfortune of getting sick before they got insurance. All of them, every single one of them, therefore, are not worthy of health care in any real form, unless, of course, they are wealthy and able to afford the staggering cost of ill health in America.
If this kind of talk isn't enough to convince Republicans that the fringe of their party is to be avoided at all costs, then nothing in the world will. There have to be at least a few unwell Republicans in the country, right? There have to be some Republicans with heart trouble, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's or MS, right? If so, those people had better start digging that grave for themselves, especially if they are stupid enough to support Mike Huckabee or anyone else who agrees with him.
Be polite to these people if that's your nature. It is not in mine, especially after the display this past weekend. These people are the sick ones, the ones with pre-existing conditions, and they should be barred from holding public office by the voters because of it. They are all sick bastards, and I have no interest in being nice about it. Do you know anyone with heart trouble, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, MS, or some other illness like these? Maybe Alzheimer's? If so, you shouldn't be nice, either. Someday, it may be you on the wrong end of such a diagnosis, and if people like Huckabee and his ilk have their way, dig a grave and lie down in it. You're a burned-down house, and your country has no use for you.
SAN JOSE, CA (Sept 21, 2010) — Academy Award-winning filmmaker and best-selling author, Michael Moore, has been named the recipient of the Steinbeck Award by the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. Moore will formally receive the "In the Souls of the People" award on Thursday, October 14, at 7pm.
The Steinbeck award is given to writers and artists whose work captures the spirit of Steinbeck's empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes.
“Courage is 75% of art,” states Thomas Steinbeck, noted author and the son of John Steinbeck. “Michael Moore is a courageous man and a great selection for the John Steinbeck Award. My father would have loved him; my father was the Michael Moore of his time.”
Noted as the “who’s who of disturbers,” previous recipients include Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Miller, John Sayles, Jackson Browne, Garrison Keillor, Joan Baez, and Sean Penn.
Steinbeck is a folk hero for his work, particularly so to those of us Californios with a sense of our state's history. An award in his name is a high honor.
Following up on Fixer's post just below, this might help esplain. As near as I can tell, this historical documentary is required viewing in Texas. They're still smarting from this and the jackrabbits are still there. Since the Texans were the "muslims" in this incident, they know that the difference between a "Crusader" and an "invader" depends on which side you're on, thus the entirely rational (in Texas) fear of the "pro-muslim" bias of textbooks:
Episode is entitled, I swear to God, "Crusader vs. the State of Texas". 1st of 15 chapters in Crusade 1. For at least a few of the other 14, start here. Good luck.
The wackos on the Texas School Board must have been feeling ignored, for they have come up with a new version of crazy: They are going to fight the imaginary pro-Muslim bias of textbooks.
When you die for your country, the grave marker doesn't identify you as gay or straight. Your blood is as red as the guy next to you with the wife and three kids. You deserve to be treated equally. That's all.
Look here. The GOP, once a relatively sane and stable political platform, with solid -- if wildly uptight -- principles, now wallowing in the shallow end of the moral and intellectual pool for its basic survival.
The Republican Party is now, by its own design, wholly dependent upon extremist nutcases like Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al, for meaning and purpose. The Democrats may be many things -- mushy, whiny, infuriatingly unable to articulate a cohesive message -- but at least they aren't beholden to the mental detritus of the culture, people with more barely hidden psychoemotional disorders than shoes.
People like, well, cutesy little Republican Christine O'Donnell, who just won an election in Delaware. The amazing thing about O'Donnell? She's markedly more ridiculous than Sarah "Queen of Duh" Palin, by at least a factor of three, a nutball wrapped in an anti-masturbation kookpocket with the brainpower of a rusty pink electric razor.
Tea Party Lament: Knowing That I'm Confused About Why I'm Mad Just Makes Me Madder!
I’m mad at everything and everybody, but especially at career politicians. Not to mention career pediatricians. From now on, one of my kids gets sick, I’m taking them to see some incensed old coot straight off the street carrying a misspelled sign. Experience is way overrated. Why can’t US Senator be an entry- level position?
I’m mad about paying taxes. Because I don’t like paying taxes. I’m tired of my hard earned money wasted on silly things like roads and air traffic controllers and paramedics and pipeline inspectors. And flossing. I hate that too. Who needs teeth? Members of the lamestream media elite, that’s who. So they can lie through them. Those guys I’m mad at because they keep running stories about me being mad.
And on and on...
There's a difference between angry and mad. Durst is using the correct word for the teabaggers.
Here’s a simple reality: the U.S. is an imperial power in decline -- and not just the sort of decline which is going to affect your children or grandchildren someday. We’re talking about massive unemployment that’s going nowhere and an economy which shows no sign of ever returning good jobs to this country on a significant scale, even if “good times” do come back sooner or later. We’re talking about an aging, fraying infrastructure -- with its collapsing bridges and exploding gas pipelines -- that a little cosmetic surgery isn’t going to help.
And whatever the underlying historical trends, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and company accelerated this process immeasurably. You can thank their two mad wars, their all-planet-all-the-time Global War on Terror, their dumping of almost unlimited taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon and war planning for the distant future, and their scheme to privatize the military and mind-meld it with a small group of crony capitalist privateers, not to speak of ramping up an already impressively over-muscled national security state into a national state of fear, while leaving the financial community to turn the country into a giant, mortgaged Ponzi scheme. It was the equivalent of driving a car in need of a major tune-up directly off the nearest cliff -- and the rest, including the economic meltdown of 2008, is, as they say, history, which we’re all now experiencing in real time. Then, thank the Obama administration for not having the nerve to reverse course while it might still have mattered.
So here’s the good news: it’s actually going to feel better to be just another nation, one more country, even if a large and powerful one, on this overcrowded planet, rather than the nation. It’s going to feel better to only arm ourselves to defend our actual borders, rather than constantly fighting distant wars or skirmishes and endlessly preparing for more of the same. It’s going to feel better not to be engaged in an arms race of one or playing the role of the globe’s major arms dealer. It’s going to feel better to focus on American problems, maybe experiment a little at home, and offer the world some real models for a difficult future, instead of talking incessantly about what a model we are while we bomb and torture and assassinate abroad with impunity.
So take some pleasure in this: our troops are coming home and you’re going to see it happen. And in the not so very distant future it won’t be our job to “police” the world or be the “global sheriff.” And won’t that be a relief? We can form actual coalitions of equals to do things worth doing globally and never have to organize another “coalition of the billing,” twisting arms and bribing others to do our military bidding.
Since by the time we get anywhere near such a world, our leaders will have run this country into the ground, it’s hard to offer the traditional three cheers for such a future. But how about at least one-and-a-half prospective cheers for the possible return of perspective to our American world, for a significant lessening, even if not the decisive ending, of an American imperial role and of the massive military “footprint” that goes with it.
It’s going to happen. Put your money on it.
And thank you, George W. Bush (though I never thought I’d say that), you’ve given an old guy a shot at seeing the fruits of American decline myself. I’m looking forward.
I have nothing to add to that other than I've never before thought of dead, withered flower petals as being part of a rosy outlook.
Yes, I know witchcraft and satanicanism have nothing to do with one another, but I love the word 'Repubwiccan'. Hell, that's the way Elmer Fudd's been saying it for years.
Richard Cohen in WaPo on how [fill in your own misnomer for the dark arts here] esplains Repug behavior.
O'Donnell is where the GOP has been heading for some time. The party's leaders have steadfastly refused to take a stand against any idiocy, even suggesting they agree that Obama might not be a Christian. Their intellectuals have supported and advanced the know-nothingness of Sarah Palin. Nothing to them is beyond the pale. This party is not fit to govern. It would support the Joker but not Batman, who hangs too much with Robin.
So now it has a candidate in Delaware who truly is a career politician. She seems to have no means of support except campaign funds. She supposedly lives in her headquarters, although this is somewhat in dispute. Whatever the case, she has no job and no views worth a moment's consideration. (She even appalls Karl Rove.) She's not likely to win, but the way things are going this year, she just might. People are angry. People are mad. The night is dark.
Tintin takes a look at the Right's support of Christine "The Crazy" O'Donnell:
Robert Stacy McCain leads off the pack with a straightforward approach of someone who is so unattractive that the thought of having sex with himself elicits only a wave of self-loathing and a limp wiener. He, of course, heartily endorses the idea that masturbation is wrong and accuses that lesbo-Maddow of having an unhealthy obsession with the practice:
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These clowns know they got themselves a certified loony and they're trying to polish that turd up before Election Day. Electing George Bush 10 years ago opened the floodgates for every idiot with the lust for 'public service'. You'd think they woulda learned from the Chimp himself and put people in who sound the least bit articulate and don't have "Space For Rent" signs hanging behind their eyes.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) must be feeling the need to show what a staunch, hard-ass Republican he is. Abandoning his usual pretense of being a moderate, he's advocating that the US goverment must prepare for war against Iran, and not just a few air attacks, but to cause regime change. Maybe he's been drinking with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a little too much...
You know, I got more respect for the tebaggers than I do for Graham. At least, at the ground level, the average teabagger believes what he's yelling about (he might be completely misinformed and in complete denial, but he still believes it). Graham is just a pandering fuck.
I've been spending the morning so far extracting photos and videos from three cameras. We discussed partying a little in 'comments' on this post, and I thought I'd share the tone of Saturday's all-day-and-into-the-evening bash with this short vid.
The driving force (and Force Of Nature!) behind Mrs. G's High School class's seemingly non-stop reunions is Hurricane Edie. More on her later. Her daughter (r) and her niece erected this mini-margaritaville in the early afternoon and served up regular and pomegranate (for the anti-oxidant value, no doubt...heh) margaritas. Let's just say things got a little more interesting thereafter! (Big shit-eatin' grin smiley face.)
When you shoot casual videos, you never know what's going to be on them. I have several, and I haven't watched them all yet. If they all caught priceless stuff like this, one thing's for sure: I'm never going to be invited to one of Mrs. G's class parties again.
On the vid you can hear the strolling musicians that were the afternoon entertainment of the fiesta-themed do. More on them later too.
Cathy eschews the Margaritas and goes for the Gold! Arroyo Grande Class Of '63 "We're Turning 65!" party, 9-18-10
Update:
The reunion committee got these guys on pretty short notice after they found out what a 7 or more piece Mariachi costs (a lot!). They squeezed us in on their way to another gig where they would no doubt stroll amongst diners and threaten to play unless the diners paid 'em off. Then they had to sneak the uniforms back into the hospital... They were extremely good-natured gents, and I have nicknamed them "Tres Bozos".
I panned over to try and catch Diane and Maxine line dancing, but they had quit. Margaritas needed freshening up, no doubt.
Mariachi trio "Tres Amigos" of Santa Maria play a traditional song at the Arroyo Grande HS Class Of '63 "We're Turning 65!" party on 9-18-10.
I'll put some more up Below The Fold in the next day or so. I got things to do. Lordy, do I...
Dabbling in Witchcraft in early middle-age is no big deal if you're a Republican (and frankly, the bizarre thing about that is, it is not all that bizarre at all -- especially compared to the rest of the Christine O'Donnell resume), but being a Community Organizer in your twenties is incredibly dangerous socialism if you're a Democrat.
Gord and I have been saying this for more than 6 years. The pace of deployments, the rush to expand the military by taking anybody who could spell their own name, and the lack of a real mission or leadership would only serve to break our army. Seems the Army realizes it too:
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The increase in drug abuse and bad behavior came at the same time that the Army enlisted thousands of recruits who in previous years would have been ruled ineligible because of drug or other criminal convictions. According to the report, nearly 20 percent of the soldiers who've enlisted in the Army since 2004 — perhaps as many as 10,000 — would "not have been eligible for entry into the Army before."
"I think we've got to understand that the force we have today is different from the force we had 10 years ago," said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, who oversaw the study and is heading up the Army's response to it. "We've got kids that are going to have some behavioral health issues. The real hard part for us is to determine, 'OK, I am willing to help this kid with behavioral health issues, but how long can I help him? How long can I do that and make sure I have a force capable of doing whatever the nation asks it to do?' "
In the second place, in the second paragraph, really. You're really going to tell starving children to go blow because you're mad about your taxes. That's a thing you're going to do. The starving children, natch, having all kinds of influence in Congress, given how everybody's falling all over themselves to help THEM. Those are the people who can do exactly dick about your tax sitch, so I'm sure your brave moral stand will SO TOTALLY get noticed by our decision makers. Shit, stop giving money to politicians if you don't like how they behave, but Toys for Tots did nothing to you to deserve your contempt, and you're doing plenty to earn mine.
I know there are idiots in every bunch and it seems we have our share. The article starts with the line:
I wish that this were something out of the Onion, I really do.
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Seems we have another nutjob (aside from the one running for governor) looking to 'represent' us:
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That might sound bad, sure, but are we sure they're not exaggerating?
They're not. In fact, if the character of Russell's essay is representative, they're understating the situation. It lauds efforts of "scientists" like Arthur Jensen and others who have spent years trying to "prove" that whites are genetically more intelligent than black people. It describes an "optimal society" by quoting T. S. Eliot: "reasons of race and culture combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." It was so bad that it was republished with pride on the website of no less than David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
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I knew we had a bedbug problem in NYC but compared to all the crazy cockroaches who are coming out of the woodwork, the bedbugs are less intrusive. They just wanna find something to eat. The nutjobs want to tell you what you can do there and what you can't.
Like Fixer, I'm a) burnt down to my socks, and b) so out of touch with what's going on that if today is the first day of the post-apocalyptic world I'll just think the bombed-out sections of the road could use a little work.
We're heading for home today. I'll be glad to get there. The old farts partied me into the ground and I need the rest.
