A conversation worth dying for

Crappy as the GE brand is for digital cameras, I do love mine. It let me zoom in on the driver of the purplish silver car that just got an earful of fully loaded cement truck horn for trying to turn right on red into the path of certain death. Yes, she was talking on a phone. No, she didn’t immediately turn right after that. She paused for two full moments before continuing on her way, considerably shaken but still talking on her fucking phone.

The laws about this need to be very specific. Talking on the phone whether handheld or headset needs to be made 100% illegal, and if you’re pulled over for it, your phone should be taken away from you, never ever to be returned.

I’ll go even further. All cell phones should be registered, and if the traffic cops take yours away you shouldn’t be able to get another one for a designated period of time, however long legislators think it would take to firmly get the point across. Fines don’t stop everyone, but fear of losing your cell phone privileges might put a dent in this radically stupid trend.

The car driver came very close to death.She was a couple of feet into the intersection before she stopped. Worse, the poor schlub in the turn lane opposite the cement truck driver could also have been killed had the truck driver’s reflexes caused him to jerk the wheel, a natural reaction to sudden input like a car pulling out in front of you when when no power on earth could stop your mega-ton vehicle in less than a quarter of a block.

How heavy is a fully loaded cement truck? 33 tons. That’s 66,000 lbs. of which 40,ooo lbs. is the cement itself. An empty cement truck weighs 13 tons but it has considerably better stopping time. When fully loaded trucks go by (and they do all day long) my monitor shakes. My monitor is sitting on a hard rubber desktop which is part of a very sturdy former USMC metal desk which rests evenly on a carpeted floor on the third floor of a very soundly built building about 90 feet away from the intersection. Truly, I’m surprised the driver didn’t feel the truck coming but again, my point is that cell phones are incredibly distracting.

Stop talking while you’re driving. Even on an empty stretch of road you’re putting yourself at incredible risk. Not to mention being an all-round selfish douche who is endangering others.

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So far as I know, the woman Rep. John Campbell says is his mother did give birth to him. Otoh, it could have been the STD-ridden Mattress Mary who camps over by the docks who sold one of her “love” babies to the woman who then raised him as John Campbell. I mean, it’s not like Rep. Campbell has proven otherwise.

Still, I’m keeping an open mind about this and am inclined to think John Campbell’s mother is his mother.

His father I’m not quite as sure about.

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By now many House Dems are thinking nasty thoughts about Jeff Flake’s parentage but the Arizona gadfly is right. Defense earmarks have got to go. They were evil when the Republicans were in charge, and now that we’re running things I’m even more offended by their existence.

Jack Murtha is corrupt. He was corrupt when he gladdened all of us with his opposition to Bush-Cheney’s war in Iraq, and he’s corrupt now.

Murtha has got to go.

And no, I don’t feel even slightly hypocritical. When every vote counts in an effort to stop the wholesale immolation of the U.S. Treasury, you deal with the devils. But when you’re in charge, a higher standard applies.

Money spent on defense is money not spent on our communities, and the same dollars stretch much further at home than they do in foreign hell holes.

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Also from David Waldman, the interesting observation that Mike Enzi isn’t part of the Gang of Six for negotiating purposes. He’s there as the right’s “political officer” to make sure Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snow don’t deviate from the party line.

Wikipedia has more on political officers for readers unfamiliar with the term.

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Thanks to a forwarded email from Bonedog, I now know that the Wurlitzer is spamming out the euthanasia lie. Most egregiously they pin part of their authentication on it not being addressed by Snopes.com.

How cold is that? Make up a lie and then quick spam it before Snopes calls you out on it. They’re deliberately taking advantage of the fact that Snopes can’t hear about a lie until it’s in circulation, and since they just made it up they can safely say it’s not at Snopes so it must be true.

Well Snopes has now read their email. As of last Friday they have this bullshit flagged as FALSE. But take this as the gold standard of spam verification: if someone’s argument includes a line about there not being anything about whatever at Snopes, chances are excellent that there should be something posted because someone is pounding sand up your ass.

As one of the right’s favorite politicians, Winston Churchill, once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

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Kos has polling data that shows most Birthers are Republican Southerners.

Since only 6% of Midwestern Republicans buy into this B.S., I guess that makes my Mom pretty special. I know our last phone conversation was. Now she’s all about blacks and their special privileges. No one has the right to mouth off to a cop, not in your own home or on your own porch. Not ever.

Sick shit from a woman whose mind has been poisoned by Fox News. If the doctors ever tell me I’ve got six weeks to live, it’ll be hard not to strap on some dynamite and paying those lying bastards a call.

I cannot believe the 1st Amendment allows TV networks to manufacture lies. Laws are being broken, and their broadcast licenses should be revoked before they take the next step towards becoming a Dixie-fried version of Radio Rwanda.

I haven’t given up on Mom. She was also all about blaming the entire economy on Obama so I sent her the Washington Times’ coverage* of the $5 billion in bonuses handed out last fall on Bush’s watch, and then pleaded with her to accept the fact that BOTH political parties are in the bag for Wall Street, and that anyone who points at one side only is lying. But the sad truth is that short of Sean Hannity getting caught in bed with Henry Louis Gates, she’s never going to filter their lies and will live out her days in a state of delusion.

How do you not hate the people who lie to your mother?

* Pretty much a straight wire story most notable for not mentioning Bush, Republicans or anyone but Democrats. Mike Elk has more on proposals to regulate CEO pay.

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Interesting. The Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp now cites the Great Orange Satan’s polls.

Not all Republicans are flaming assholes. Some are still conservatives, and sickened by what’s happened to their once proud party.

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Scott Horton on Mohammed Jawad.

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Private, no public — no, private wait wait I mean public, er private!

Whatever’s most convenient, I guess.

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Iran.

It’s really sad the wingnuts refuse to read Juan Cole. Cole is objective, and not at all shy when it comes to pointing out who the real bastards are.

But he was 100% right about Iraq, and the wingnuts will never forgive him for that.

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Bought and paid for blue dog whores.

Maha has more.

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Naperville is Illinois’ butthole.

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More proof that mainstream Christian denominations are run by buttholes.

Ray McGovern blames Emperor Constantine, and I think he’s 100% correct.

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Ezra Klein, right, except when he’s wrong.

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Republicans have been reduced to calling the truth “pretentious.”

Meanwhile, fellow Texan slimebag Kay Bailey Perrysafag Hutchison has now fallen back on the lie that the site automatically generated those key words based on the search engine popularity of “rick perry gay.”

If that is in fact true, where’s the meta code for all those people searching for “kay bailey hutchison lying bitch”?

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Until just now I didn’t think it would ever be possible to ascertain with any certainty the identify of the two stupidest people in Florida.

Baker looks like the usual wingnut goon, but Plakon has that “I jerk off to the racier parts of the Bible” look about him. After which I’m sure he’s ashamed and considers punishing himself but then that passes and he goes about his business until the next King David moment arises.

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There will be more music tonight as I just got a CARE package from Alaska. Alas, not more rain, but instead two jars of fresh Alaska sockeye salmon. The second jar was smoked. Yum. Farm-raised can’t touch this stuff. I took a nibble out of each jar and each bite contained an entire farm-raised salmon’s worth of flavor except better.

Thanks so much dude, I’ll try to make tonight’s set as Zappa-esque as possible, or at the very least I’ll make it music to read Mick by.

(If you want to watch the new Coen Bros trailer about life in St. Louis Park, you should probably turn the music off entirely or it may muffle the thumps.)

• Birthers
• buttholes
• corruption
• driving while yakking
• lies about healthcare
• political officers
• salmon