Hope is the denial of reality
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2500Alvin Greene has been on the phone all day. That's to be expected for the guy who just won South Carolina's Democratic Senate primary and is facing incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November. But everyone calling Greene has just been trying to find out who the heck he is — and one thing reporters learned Tuesday is that a criminal complaint was sworn out against him last year for allegedly showing obscene photos to a South Carolina college student and suggesting they go to her dorm room.
Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign — no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.![]()
Hope is the denial of reality
Geert Wilders (hard-right anti islam politician) became third in the elections here. The Telegraph headline on the internet: 'Wilders could be in the cabinet within a week'. While ignoring the fact that a new cabinet will probably take (at least) a month to form, especially with these results... It's highly unlikely that he will be part of the cabinet with the views he is not willing to negotiate on, since all other large parties disagree with those.
Excellent journalism![]()
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/sc...25climate.html...A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier...
Hope is the denial of reality
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Well, those 'neo- fascists' (which is a far stretch) would have to drop some of the points they promised they would never drop during the election, so they'd at least have to lie to their voters. Good start to do that within a weekIt is possible, but highly unlikely that he will be a part of the new cabinet. Add the fact that they have few experienced politicians who would make good ministers... I'd say one like we had from 94-02 is much more likely, bridging left and right into a coalition. Worked pretty well back then, too, if you ask me.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Everybody lies
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Our (almost ex-) prime minister, with a beer in his hand.. And that while there are a LOT more alcohol than drug addicts in the Netherlands![]()
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I saw two pigeons doin' the do, so I threw a pebble at them. They stared at me for a couple a seconds, they continued doing it. They had a lovely birdgasm though!
New reports that our national cemetery (Arlington) has fucked up several gravestones and burials of fallen veterans.
Americans are Exceptional. Yessiree, we aim for highest quality, and bestest principles.
Go go USA #1![]()
Any American care to enlighten me about this Alvin Greene guy from SC who won the primary?I just saw him on teevee and he acted and sounded, uhm, mentally retarded.
WTF?
edit---a quick search just makes a bigger WTF. He's unemployed and has a felony porn charge pending. No one seems to know where he got the 10k filing fee, and no one can really recall him 'campaigning'. ??
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He won because his name appeared first on the ballot, and everyone just checked the first box. Fortunate for him, but really it's his opponents fault for not achieving good enough name recognition. Maybe the party itself can take some flak for not having randomized ballots.
Reading the closing arguments from the Prop 8 case:
That is the weirdest thing I have ever read, and I have absolutely no idea what it means.Cooper replied that same-sex couples are incapable of "irresponsible procreation," which he said marriage laws are designed to discourage.
Also, screw you sfgate for messing with copy/paste functionality by inserting a link into the text I quoted. That's some seriously exploitable security vulnerability there.
I think he means that marriage laws are created partially to prevent people from having children out of wedlock. Since gays can't have children, them getting married won't reduce the number of illegitimate births. A truly wonderful argument.![]()
Hope is the denial of reality
She clearly is"She struts about as if she rules the roost - she really thinks she's top of the pecking order in our household."
My contribution: I was stopped today, at one of the city's newly-constructed roundabouts, next to one of those obscenely large lifted and supercharged trucks (w/ the big tires). Both vehicles' windows were down, so I got to hear the driver say to his passenger: "I think these new-fangled roundabouts are some kind of creeping European socialism."
You really have to love Northern California
I just read this and thought WTF! Of course, The Kid's cat is always in a harness when he is outside, but that's more to keep him from being poisoned. (Yes, there are assholes in BFE that do that!) But, I worked for a lady who had a cat that loved to be walked on her leash. I suppose it is because both those cats were trained that way from kittenhood, but still...BARRE, Vt. (AP) - A clause in a city law that requires cats to be on leashes has sparked a hissing match among fans of free-roaming felines.
A City Council meeting with cats on the agenda drew an unusually large crowd of about 30 people Tuesday night, including one woman who brought three large signs, one of which said, "Arrest criminals, not cats. Can Barre afford a jail for cats?"
City officials cited complaints from some residents about a roaming cat that turned a neighbor's garden into a litter box.
Barre resident Sue Higby called a leash law for cats "a bad idea ... unless you want to have the police department chasing cats around for a million dollars an hour."
Cities around the country and at least one state have enacted or considered cat restraint laws. In 1949, the Illinois Legislature passed "An Act to provide Protection to Insectivorous Birds by Restraining Cats."
It was vetoed by then-Gov. Adlai Stevenson, who wrote, "To escort a cat abroad on a leash is against the nature of the cat," according to the New Jersey-based Cat Fanciers' Association.
The agency says jurisdictions with cat leash laws or similar restrictions include Akron, Ohio; Aurora, Colo.; Montgomery County, Md.; Palm Beach County, Fla.; and New Orleans.
In Barre, the feline firestorm started last week when city officials began reviewing animal control ordinances with an eye to updating them. Mayor Thomas Lauzon said then that a draft rewrite would have the effect of banning cats from roaming.
Reviews were mixed among residents lined up Tuesday at the Simply Creamies ice cream stand near City Hall.
"Have you ever tried walking around with a cat on a leash? It sounds kind of crazy," said Cheyenne Roberts, co-owner of the Pit Stop Diner in Barre.
Thad Cochran of nearby Plainfield had this rejoinder: "If dogs have to have a leash, why not cats?
Lauzon said Tuesday that no one on the council intended to require that cats be restrained. But on second look at the law, he realized that both the existing ordinance, adopted in 1973, and the proposed rewrite ban roaming cats; the law had just never been enforced.
"No owner or keeper of an animal shall allow his, theirs or its animal to run at large," the key language says. Cat owners hoping to get around the law by a whisker appeared to be out of luck. Animal is defined by the city as "every living being, not human or plant."
When the daily newspaper serving Barre, The Times Argus, ran a story about the cat restrictions last week, the caterwauling began.
Cats "are quite neat when it comes to personal scatological matters," said a letter to the editor bearing the signature Morticai Flint, who turns out to be a tiger cat owned by Paul and Alison Flint. "Generally, we provide valuable services to urban areas notably in the realm of vermin control."
Paul Flint attended the Council meeting, carrying a toy kitten in a cat carrier and explaining, "Morticai wouldn't get into the cage."
Some say the solution to cats wandering into trouble is keeping them indoors.
"Scientists estimate that free-roaming cats kill hundreds of millions of birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians each year," the Virginia-based American Bird Conservancy, which runs a "Cats Indoors!" campaign, says on its website. "Cat predation is an added stress to wildlife populations already struggling to survive habitat loss, pollution, pesticides, and other human impacts."
Lauzon said the city may end up with a compromise ordinance requiring cats to wear collars with tags identifying their owners and showing their rabies shots were up-to-date. Owners would only be fined if their roaming cats were determined to be a nuisance.
The issue is expected to be settled later this summer.
I don't have a problem with authority....I just don't like being told what to do!Remember, the toes you step on today may be attached to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow!RIP Fluffy! 01-07-09 I'm so sorry Fluffster! People who don't like cats were probably mice in an earlier life! My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely!The nice part about living in a small town: When you don't know what you're doing, someone else always does!
Atari bullshit refugee!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/...stuck_in_egyptCAIRO – A Virginia man said Wednesday he has been stuck in limbo in Egypt for the last six weeks, living in a cheap hotel and surviving on fast food after his name was placed on a U.S. no-fly list because of a trip to Yemen. Yahya Wehelie, a 26-year-old Muslim who was born in Fairfax, Virginia to Somali parents, said he spent 18 months studying in Yemen and left in early May. The U.S. has been scrutinizing citizens who study in Yemen more closely since the man who tried to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas was linked to an al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen.
Wehelie was returning to the U.S. with his brother Yusuf via Egypt on May 5 when Egyptian authorities stopped him from boarding his flight to New York. They told him the FBI wanted to speak with him.
He said he was then told by FBI agents in Egypt that his name was on a no-fly list because of people he met in Yemen and he could not board a U.S. airline or enter American airspace. His passport was canceled and a new one issued only for travel to the United States, which expires on Sept. 12. He does not have Somali citizenship.
Wehelie said his brother Yusuf was allowed to return home, but only after he was detained for three days by Egyptian police on suspicion of carrying weapon. He said his brother was shackled to a jail wall and interrogated by a man who claimed to work for the CIA. He was then dumped in the street outside the prison when he feigned illness.
Wehelie said he had no dealings with a terrorist organization while in Yemen and does not see himself as a particularly observant Muslim. He said he was studying information technology at the Lebanese International University in the capital San'a and only visited a mosque a handful of times. He said he had also studied a little Arabic.
"It's amazing how the U.S. government can do something like this," he told The Associated Press from his ramshackle hotel in downtown Cairo.
"I'm cool with all their fighting terrorism and all that, I'm cool with that. I like that, more power to them," he said in American-accented English, wearing baggy basketball shorts and a long white T-shirt.
"My home is America and I don't know why I can't go back there," he said, adding that he even suggested to the FBI to "put me ... in an airplane with a bunch of U.S. marshals or whatever, in handcuffs. Just get me back home."...![]()
Hope is the denial of reality
McDonald's threatened with lawsuit for putting toys in Happy Meals
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/mc...0982614&page=1
My favorite line:
Hey Dumbfuck, kids don't have money. Their parents do. They also should be able to tell kiddo no, or cook them a goddamn homemade meal once in awhile."Dangling a toy in front of a kid to try to get them into your restaurant is unfair and deceptive, because it's targeted at kids who are what? Four years old? Six years old? Who don't even understand the concept of advertising," Michael Jacobson, executive director of CSPI, said in an interview with ABC News' Yunji de Nies.
Take the fun out everything, because in the future you're gonna die. Hey guess what? We all are gonna die someday.
I always saw the toys as a "eat this, or this toy goes the kid sitting at the table behind you" kind of incentive.