Month: March 2010

Which Breast Was It?

There comes a time, now and again, where I must cast aside my principle of not posting gossip…..there comes a time when I see a report that just begs me to comment……and I finally could not stand it anymore…..

This from the “Fair and Balanced” Network:

A Kentucky woman was charged with assault after she allegedly squirted breast milk into the face of a deputy.

Toni Tramel, 31, was arrested Thursday for public intoxication in Owensboro, WYMT-TV reported, but it is what she did next which has attracted headlines.

As Tramel changed into an inmate uniform, she squirted a stream of breast milk into the face of the female deputy watching over her.

A press release from the Daviess County, Kentucky, Detention Center, said that after the deputy decontaminated herself from the “bio-hazard”, Tramel was charged with third degree assault.

While the public drunkenness was merely a misdemeanor offense, the assault is a felony charge and a US$10,000 bond was set.

Reports of the case have sparked debates about whether using breast milk as a weapon should constitute a felony assault case, with many readers likening it to an accused person spitting on an officer.

All I can ask is….was it the right or the left?  I am sorry I was so caught up in the moment that I am left speechless….

But if you liked that one…..then you will cream your pants over this one……we have all seen those guys shaving while driving to work, but there is even more to that concept…..

A two-car crash on a Florida highway was caused by a 37-year-old woman who was shaving her bikini area while in the driver’s seat, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Her ex-husband was steering from the passenger seat.

Megan Mariah Barnes and her ex-husband Charles Judy were driving southbound Tuesday morning when they slammed into the back of a pick-up driven by David Schoff after he slowed to take a turn, CBS station WFOR-TV reports.

Barnes said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be “ready for the visit,” trooper Gary Dunick explained.

It is really hard to make this sh*t up….but why?  People are just stupid enough to keep us all busy…..I have been told that a person needs to be well-groomed….the this is taking it a bit to far……

Have you read enough…think again….YES!  There is more!

Titty Cheese!

Daniel Angerer is used to getting attention for the food served at his restaurant, Klee Brasserie — but the New York chef is making more headlines than ever over a new dish that has its source in his fiancee’s brassiere.

In Angerer’s case, that mother is his longtime fiancee, Lori Mason, who was producing more milk than she knew what to do with while nursing their now 10-week-old daughter, Arabella.

“Mommy’s Milk Cheese” is exactly what it sounds like: cheese made from the breast milk of a nursing mother.

Okay, I just have to say something……..!

When I tried to make my own cheese all the recipes called of at least a gallon or more of milk…..Now, just how much milk does she produce and how damn big are those boobs?

PETA once suggested that Ben & Jerry should use breast milk to make their ice cream….so this story should have the PETA lunatics jerking off in the corner…..

What Utter Bullsh*t!

Daily Agitator

Normally, I do not post on the gay thing because I believe that it is a personal choice that is made by consenting people and in that it is NONE of my business and definitely NONE of the government’s business….but from time to time there are stories that need to be exposed for the ludicrous crap that it is……

This one comes from the state that I live in…Mississippi…a cultural wasteland to begin with….but all kidding aside….a state that is still living,  for the most part,  in the 1950’s……

The AP is reporting:

A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.

The district’s decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students’ rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen’s free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

Same-sex prom dates and cross-dressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Southside Baptist Church Pastor Bobby Crenshaw said he’s seen the South portrayed as “backwards” on Web sites discussing the issue, “but a lot more people here have biblically based values.”

Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It’s near Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.

Interesting?  Being gay in Mississippi is a damnable sin, at least in the minds, the little minds, of the people in control.  the reality is that the kids could care less about another’s sexual orientation….it is the old farts that control the schools and local government that are dictating their values to the kids……homosexuality is NOT as big a deal to 15 year olds as it is for 50 year olds that are still living in the past…..

Maybe a suggestion for those in control….”try minding you own business and let others lived their own lives without your interference”…..just a suggestion….I am sure it will fall on deaf ears….especially in the state of Mississippi…

Back To Nature

NO this is NOT a promotional piece for nudism……

We have seen story after story of how the recent economic crisis has effected people, banks, cities, etc.  The states are ALL fighting to find ways to survive this crisis….and the promises of “green jobs” is a daily injection into the news……but with all that rhetoric how do citiies survive?  Declining tax base, tax revenue and population has made it virtually impossible to run a city efficiently….

If you remember your history, then you will recall from the beginning of this country, it was an agrarian society that was the lead and then the industrial revolution came about and the US moved to more manufacturing and the agriculture began to suffer….so that today most farmland is owned by corporations.

Detroit has been struggling to keeps its head above the water line….loss of population, loss of industrial base and super high unemployment, about 16% officially, but unofficially it is probably closer to 20%.  But Detroit may have an idea to try and resurrect the city…..I found this article while surfing on simplysustainable.com:

With so much cheap land now available in the city, and countless numbers of abandoned industrial sites too far gone to resurrect, a wealthy investor named John Hantz of Hantz Financial Services thinks now is the right time to get Detroit back on its feet by taking it back to its roots; literally. Hantz has already contributed $30 million of his own money to get Hantz Farms underway; the world’s largest urban farming project.

The idea is not a new one. Talk of repurposing much of Detroit back to agriculture has been talked about for decades; only now has the idea had real backing and the economic environment to make it a reality. From Hantz Farms; press release:

“Detroit could be the nation’s leading example of urban farming and become a destination for fresh, local and natural foods and become a major part of the green movement,” said Hantz, a Detroit resident. “Hantz Farms will transform this area into a viable, beautiful and sustainable area that will serve the community, increase the tax base, create jobs and greatly improve the quality of life in an area that has experienced a severe decline in population.”

Phase 1 plans utilize more than 70 acres of underutilized vacant lands and abandoned properties on Detroit’s lower east side.

Hantz Farms plans to grow natural, local, fresh and safe fruits and vegetables to help meet Michigan’s increasing demand for locally grown produce. In addition to food and trees, Hantz Farms will harvest wind energy and utilize geothermal heat and biomass fuel from recycling compost.

I think this is a good idea, however I do not like the fact that it is just another corporate farm to compete with the “real” farmers that remain…..on the other side, I say if it will produce food and work and help save the city, then why not give it a try?



The Educational Obama

Daily Agitator

Our children are the future of the US…that is the song being sung by everyone in Washington……and that education is the key to the return of America’s industrial greatness……if all that is true then why is it so low on the agenda?

States and cities are having a bitch of a time coming up with the cash for many needed programs….and education is the most needed and the most overlooked and abused by the very politicians that tell us that education is the number one priority…..schools are closing by the hundreds, programs are being slashed, teachers being fired and the list goes on and on…..

The NY Times is reporting on the new way of looking at education:

The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state.

Under the proposed standards for English, for example, fifth graders would be expected to explain the differences between drama and prose, and to identify elements of drama like characters, dialogue and stage directions. Seventh graders would study, among other math concepts, proportional relationships, operations with rational numbers and solutions for linear equations.

The Obama administration quickly endorsed the effort. Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards. Under current law, there is no penalty for states that choose not to participate.

All this sounds just ducky…..but I see a few problems….one, who gets to approve the textbooks?  That answer could very well influence everything….second, is this a move to make it easier for students to pass tests?  If it is, then are the children learning or just retaining info until they take the test?

As long as we are talking about it….math and science are excellent choices to focus on…..but there should also be a mandatory introduction to consumer economies and a mandatory Civics class……we want our children to have an education then make it a complete education…….just passing tests as a judge of a student is pure political bullsh*t!  If the student does not retain what is taught then what good was all the money spent?……that would be training the student NOT TEACHING!

It sucks when lobbyists can get influence for their clients and education must wait to see what is left over……crumbs from the budgetary table……IT IS DISGRACEFUL!

Is Education Under Attack?

The news is just horrible!  Education is taking it in the…….ear.  Students are graduating as idiots,  teachers are being attacked on all sides, and the money is drying up, both nationally and locally.

Recently I read a report of a town in Oklahoma where 16% of the seniors could NOT name the first president of the US……another report when asking a honor student to name the 49th and 50th state….and the answer was Hawaii and Puerto Rico…..and in ALL states the budgets for schools is stretched thin, to the point of one state looking at the possibility of a 4 day school week……

Speaking before an audience of business executives at the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Obama hailed the decision to fire the entire teaching and support staff at Central Falls High after they rejected demands to work extra hours without pay.

He defended such measures as critical to implementing the national strategy of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deal with 5,000 of the nation’s “lowest performing” schools, overwhelmingly located in the most impoverished areas of the country. In order to qualify for federal funding, school districts have the option of closing a school outright, handing it over to a charter school or school management company, imposing a longer school day and other attacks on teachers, or firing the staff and rehiring only half back.

This anti-education agenda is being expanded by Obama. His administration is dedicated to carrying through the long sought program of the Republican right to gut the public schools and make decent education a privilege of the wealthy, rather than a right of all.

In order to pay for the Wall Street bailout, the administration is presiding over massive cuts in public school systems across the country, along with reductions in other vitally needed social services.

It is precisely the egalitarian aspect of public education that has long been the target of the most right-wing political forces, including free market economist Milton Friedman, who denounced the public schools as a “socialist enterprise” run by the teachers’ unions. Their repeated efforts to introduce a class-based education system, however, were rebuffed time and again by the population, which Friedman denounced for its “collectivist outlook.”

Education, one of the so-called “give a ways”, is one that the country cannot afford to destroy or underfund….the country needs an educated population….business needs it, science needs it and most of all POLITICS definitely needs it.

The “Al Qaeda 7”

For more than a week there has been a back and forth between the lunatics like Liz Cheney and the rest of the country….she got lots of play when her organization “Keep America Safe” put out an ad that calls those people that have defended suspected terrorists as the “Al Qaeda 7″…..shall we continue?

From thinkprogress.org:  Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol’s Keep America Safe organization released a web ad on Monday targeting yet-to-be named Justice Department lawyers who had worked on Guantanamo detainee issues as the “al Qaeda 7.” “Whose values do they share?” asked the ad over an image of seven silhouettes juxtaposed with images of Arabic men. When Politico’s Ben Smith first reported on the attack ad, he noted that it “questions the loyalties of Justice Department lawyers.”

The Lady Liz and her cohorts have forgotten their history….which is NOT unusual for the lunatic Right to do so if it helps their agenda……the history I am talking about is back in 1770…….in case your history is a little cloudy,,,,that was when the British opened up on colonialists it was called, “the Boston Massacre”.

March 5, 1770, a confrontation between an angry merchant and a lone sentry posted in front of the Customs House devolved into an angry mob hurling chunks of ice, coal, and stones against a group of quickly assembled reinforcements. One of the soldiers fell after someone threw a wooden club at him. Then from one in the crowd: “Fire!” That’s when the shooting began. Five Boston citizens were killed.
The British soldiers were put on trial. It was with great difficulty that a defense team was assembled. John Adams, a respected attorney from nearby Braintree, agreed to lead the defense. Adams knew he was risking his reputation, but firmly believed in the principle that every man deserves a fair trial.

This is what America is ALL about…..a fair trial for accused terrorists and the Brits from 1770 could be labeled terrorists.  If these Americans are trying to say that these lawyers were acting in an un-American fashion, then they are basically spitting on the Constitution and the very soul of the United States of America.

The Environmental Obama

In the beginning there was an election and the people spoke…they wanted change……

During the election in ’08 Obama wanted to be known as the education president and the environmental president and so far the environmental thing is not going so well….The Congressional Repubs are and will continue to fight the Dems and the President at every turn and will make the cap and trade thing the corner stone of the opposition.

One of this country, as well as the rest of the world, biggest problems is air pollution…..it has been blamed for everything from asthma to lung cancer to global warming or climate change, whichever you choose to use, and the whole cap and trade thing is an attempt to make corporations more environmentally responsible….the President has weighed in and the Dems are trying to make the environment more clean….

Are they?

In a piece written by Hiram Lee for wsws.org:

Up to 130 million tons of coal ash, the waste product created during coal combustion, are produced each year in the US, with approximately 40 percent of it going for use in other products such as asphalt or concrete. Sixty percent of the ash is stored in landfills or ash “ponds” throughout the country.

Exposure to coal ash through contaminated water supplies presents a significant health risk. The waste product contains toxic contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, lead and barium, which can lead to cancer, birth defects or disorders of the nervous system. There are currently no uniform, federal standards in place governing the building or maintenance of coal ash containment facilities.

In addition to treating coal ash as toxic waste in its proposal, the EPA has also named three industries—chemical manufacturing; petroleum and coal products manufacturing; and the electric power generation, transmission, and distribution industry—that could potentially face financial responsibility requirements under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. Should CERCLA be amended to include these industries, it would force the companies involved to be financially responsible for the cleanup of any environmental contamination they may have caused.

The role of the Obama administration has been to prevent the EPA proposal from moving forward, acting on behalf of the coal and energy companies. Should the proposal be allowed to go through, it will only be after the administration has worked with the energy conglomerates to revise it in such as way as to arrange the most favorable financial conditions possible for the companies.

It seems that the Obama Admin is using the same tactic it used with the banks…..allow nothing to interfere with corporate profit…and that includes the environment….it will virtually impossible to be the environmental president when working hard against any reasonable attempts to curb air pollution….I am looking forward to see how they, Obama Admin, try and spin this situation…..that is assuming that it will get some press…..

UPDATE:  What happened to “green” technologies?  You remember those?  Wind…..solar….do-dah….but his, Pres. Obama, big deal is a guaranteed loan from a nuke plant….and in the same breath….they announce the closing of Yucca Mtn which is where spent fuel would be stored…..just asking!

Oh, The Hypocrisy!

Health Reform—the song that will NOT end!  Kinda like putting “ina-da-gada-da-vida” on the turntable and go out to get laid……

I have said this for many many posts…..the GOP is full of hypocrites with NO alternatives….I know that is a bit harsh….but the major players just keep making my case for me…..they cannot help themselves…..

I will give people the reason I say this over and over and over…….

The great “Maverick” John McCain is come out of the closet against health reform of any kind, but if you go back to the 2008 campaign and his ideas on health care then you will see that it sounds similar to the Senate bill that we have now….but he cannot find any spot to compromise…..HYPOCRITE!

Now we move to Mitt Romney who has derided “Obamacare” as the lunatic Right is calling it and which by the way Mitt has jumped on that band wagon, but if you listen to the reports then the health reform bill is modeled on the Massachusetts, which was supported and passed by Mitt during his days as the governor….and oh BTW, the Mass plan covers abortions…….but there is NOTHING that he can find to support…..HYPOCRITE!

Now to my fav GOP person Sarah Palin……by now we all know what she thinks of the health reform bill…socialism, death panels, etc, etc…….she derides the health bill at every turn, trying to strengthen her position in the polls…she says that Obama’s plan will ruin American medicine…..but wait there is a bit more….the Huffington Post has found an interesting post by Sam Stein:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s single-payer system.

The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada’s health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and ‘death-panel’-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska.

One thing to add……HYPOCRITE!

And finally, we have another of my favs…..the Rush-ster, on his recent radio show he said that if the health reform bill passed, that it would be disastrous for the country and that he would move to Costa Rica (a paraphrase)……thinking…….if I am not mistaken, Costa Rica has universal health care run by the government…..HYPOCRITE!

They make way too easy for me……and for that I thank them……

Playing Games With People’s Lives

Daily Agitator

I have pointed out many times the silly little pathetic games that politicians are playing with people’s lives and livelihood……..health reform is one of those games and we can talk and talk with NO common ground…..either you think Americans need adequate health care or they do not….it is that simple but the lawyers in Washington, those people we call our representatives, care not…the only thing that is important to them is the GAME…….

There is other place these pathetic little toads are playing this game….one of the newest is with unemployment benefits….in an article written by Patrick martin:

Inaction by the US Senate last week will result in the cutoff of extended unemployment benefits and COBRA health care coverage to more than one million workers. The cutoff, which began to take effect Sunday night, demonstrates the unbridgeable social gulf between the working class and the denizens of Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans.

The bill to extend unemployment benefits and COBRA coverage was blocked by Republican Senator Jim Bunning, an arch-reactionary from Kentucky who took advantage of a Senate rule requiring unanimous consent to bring the legislation to a vote before the weekend.

Bunning, who is not running for reelection, was contemptuous of the suffering that he was helping inflict on more than one million workers, including an estimated 60,000 from his home state. He demanded that Senate Democrats agree to pay for the extended benefits without creating new debt, and declared that his actions were intended “to send a message to the American people.”

The Democratic leadership calculated that by allowing Bunning to block the extension they would be able to put the Republican minority in a bad light. Reid, Durbin and Vice President Joseph Biden issued hypocritical statements denouncing Bunning, but there was no move to invoke cloture.

Instead, the Democrats said they would bring the bill up again next week. Responding to the political embarrassment, Republican Whip Jon Kyl said Sunday that while he supported Bunning in principle, the Republicans would vote to approve a 30-day extension for the unemployment program while further negotiations were conducted on a bipartisan bill to extend the program for an entire year.

As I have said….a pathetic pack of arrogant, self-indulgent pr*cks…..they are playing with you LIFE….do you NOT understand that?

I know I should stop asking this question….when will the American people wise up to these false prophets (in case you wanted a biblical reference)?   BTW, that is NOT a rhetorical question!

The Creeping Cancer Known As Inequality

As we speak, the divide between rich and poor is widening. mainly because the middle class is disappearing into the clutches of poverty…..

New studies reveal that the social divide between rich and poor in the US has grown much starker in the current economic crisis, and that even before it hit the country was the most unequal of the advanced economies, with great wealth and extreme poverty having become virtually hereditary conditions.

President Barack Obama has done nothing to reverse decades of wage stagnation, mounting poverty, and attacks on the social welfare system. On the contrary, following George W. Bush, he has seized on the crisis to redistribute wealth to a tiny financial elite through the ongoing bailout of the finance industry.

This demonstrates a fundamental political reality: no reform that benefits the broad masses can come from a government and two-party system so openly in the clutches of Wall Street. The financial aristocracy’s grip over all the levers of state power must be broken.

The sharp polarization that reveals itself in fabulous wealth for a handful, on the one hand, and unemployment, wage cuts, homelessness and hunger for broad layers of working people on the other, marks an intensification of longer-term trends.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “While many middle-income families have lost jobs, homes, and retirement savings during the latest recession, their economic woes date back much further.” In the 30 years before 2008—the onset of the current crisis—nearly 35 percent of total income growth in the US was cornered by the top one-tenth of 1 percent of income earners. The bottom 90 percent shared only 15.9 percent of income growth in the same period.

The vast polarization of wealth in the US will only intensify. According to the Obama administration’s rosy economic estimates, unemployment will not return to its pre-crash levels before the end of the decade. More realistic observers, however, acknowledge that mass unemployment will be a fixture of US life, and higher-paying jobs destroyed in the recession will never return. Combined with declining home values, skyrocketing health care and higher education costs, chronically high unemployment will result in steadily rising poverty.

Obama defends these obscene pay packages. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth,” he said of the eight-figure rewards for the same financial executives whose firms have benefited from trillions in taxpayer support. “That is part of the free-market system.”

In fact “most of the American people” not only begrudge these ill-gotten gains. They wonder why they have yet to see news footage of bankers and traders arrested and hauled from their plush offices. Now working class anger is becoming increasingly trained on the political system, which, as a year’s experience with the Obama administration has taught, does the bidding of Wall Street regardless of which party controls the White House and Congress.

I would like to thank Tom Eley of wsws.org for excerpts in this piece….

All the news is that the middle clkass is taking it in the butt…..while the wealthy (which is normal) get all the benefits and the bailouts…….as a reader of my blog, Terrant of My Corner To Vent (go to blogroll to get there) has observed that the US is starting to look a lot like Latin America where the middle class is small or non-existent……of course this means nothing to you if you are one of the wealthy……but the middle class needs to find someone, anyone that will watch their backs for them….Washington is NO help at all….