Why I'm Voting For Clinton

thepilot.com

It’s absolutely true that the recent DNC e-mail hack by Russian “state actors” revealed that Democratic National Committee staffers favored Hillary Clinton.

But, hey, Bernie Sanders and his supporters (like me) knew that going in. We knew the odds were stacked against us, just like they are any time anyone tries to change a hidebound, inherently cautious organization like the Democratic Party.

Frankly, political pessimist that I am, I’m amazed that the progressives in the Democratic Party have accomplished as much as they have, and believe me, they accomplished a lot.

They proved that you don’t have to run away from liberal values — the party platform reflects that. They proved that you can raise serious cash from small contributions, if you have a populist message that appeals to people other than millionaires and billionaires.

It is also true that ousted DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was awful as a party leader. I’ve been saying that for years. She should have been canned after the debacle of the 2014 midterms.

It’s true as well that giving Wasserman Schultz any position, even an “honorary” one with no staff, no budget, and no defined duties, sent a terrible message. The only thing Debbie Wasserman Schultz should have gotten was a coach class plane ticket back to Florida and a handshake, and I’m being generous with the handshake.

Hillary Clinton’s opponents are always looking for ammunition to use against her; she doesn’t have to back the ammo truck up to the RNC and offer to unload it for them.

But you know what? I’m voting for Clinton anyway, and so should you. Here are some reasons why.

First, the hackers who hit the DNC were almost certainly Russian. As one U.S. official told CBS News, they left “all kinds of fingerprints” on their work that were common to other hacks and attempted hacks by the Russian government. The Russians didn’t do the same to the Republicans.

Now, consider this: Do we want to elect as U.S. president the candidate whom Vladimir Putin prefers?

Tuesday, Comrade Trump even called on his new besties in the Russian intelligence services to find Hillary Clinton’s “missing” e-mails. He now claims he was joking — after denying that on Twitter for two days. Say what you like about Clinton (and I have), I don’t recall her ever inviting the Russians to commit cyber attacks on Americans, even in jest.

Then there’s the matter of the two parties’ conventions.

It may surprise you that, back in 1992, I was on the fence between voting Republican and Democrat. I thought Bush the Elder had made the right call in the first Gulf War, and I had my doubts about this Clinton guy. Two things knocked me off that fence: the Republican and Democratic conventions.

The Republican convention took the politics of resentment, suspicion, and divisiveness and cranked the volume to 11. Featured speakers included RNC Chairman Rich Bond, telling the attendees, “We are America; they are not America,” and Pat Buchanan railing about “culture war.” I quickly decided I wanted nothing to do with these people.

The Democrats, on the other hand, were uplifting, upbeat, and focused on the future. When their convention ended with a packed arena dancing to “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” I was sold.

And so it is again this year. The Republican Convention was one speaker after another delivering the message, “OMG! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEE!” and that only one man can save us — Fearless Leader Donald J. Trump.

That final speech, with Trump raging at us for 73 minutes under his own name in letters 20 feet high, proved once again that, for all the problems I might have with Hillary Clinton, this man can never be allowed to get his stubby little fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes or the Supreme Court.

As for the Democrats, they started off in such a fractious mood that Bernie Sanders supporters actually booed Bernie himself. But by the end, absolutely amazing speeches by, among others, First Lady Michelle Obama, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and of course, Sanders himself had everyone cheering (and some of us wishing Booker or Mrs. Obama were running).

Then the convention pivoted to the kind of positive message that history has showed wins elections. We’ve seen it before: “Morning in America.” “A Shining City on a Hill.” “I believe in a place called Hope.” “Yes We Can.”

Now, we have “America is already great, America is already strong” and “Let’s be stronger together, and look forward with courage and confidence.”

For all my misgivings about Hillary Clinton, that’s a vision I can get behind a lot more than I can one of a grim, dystopian America that only an angry Russian-backed authoritarian can fix — if only we’ll give him absolute power.

No thanks, Comrade Trump.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: 

Of course, the reader comments on the Pilot contained the usual parade of foam-flecked Clinton hatred, include this from the predictably brain-dead "Lenny Bo": ...I predicted last week that Dusty would fawn all over her.

I suppose that, to a drooling Brownshirt like "Lenny Bo," anything less that "AAAGH AAAAGH KILL HILLARY! KILL! KILL!" would be considered "fawning."  But that's wingnuttery for you. 

And, as always, we see that the Trumpkins don't even bother to tell us what's wrong about my assessment of their guy or what they like about him. It's all about attacking Clinton. 

Trump's Handling of Speech Mess Speaks Volumes

thepilot.com:

You know, I kind of feel bad for Melania Trump.

She seems like a nice enough lady, despite her choice of spouse, and I’m sure she only wanted to help. I’m sure she didn’t mean for a speech which was supposed to be a nice, warm ’n’ fuzzy moment in her husband’s campaign to reveal just how inept and amateurish that campaign is.

At first, Madame Trump’s speech was pretty standard stuff, and a welcome change from a night when we had already endured the ghastly spectacles of, among other things, Chachi from “Happy Days” and a third-tier soap opera star from Italy telling us what’s wrong with America, followed by Rudy Giuliani screaming at the top of his withered lungs like a lunatic on a street corner.

She noted Trump’s loyalty to his family, which must have come as a bit of a surprise to the two wives he’d divorced before her. She asserted Trump’s respect for his former rivals, like “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and the guy whose brother lied us into the Iraq War. And so on.

Then things took a strange turn. Political reporters and pundits who were watching began to realize that, hey, parts of Madame Trump’s speech sounded awfully familiar. And sure enough, a side-by-side comparison of Monday’s speech and Michelle Obama’s speech during the 2008 Democratic National Convention revealed that someone had lifted entire paragraphs from that older speech. We’re not talking about “common words and values,” as Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort lamely tried to assert. We’re talking the exact same words and phrases in the exact same order. We’re talking clear plagiarism.

Now, this may seem like a small thing, easily laughed off, and believe me, I laughed as hard as anyone. Then I started seeing the Trumpista reactions to the situation, and it set me to thinking, which is always a dangerous thing. For one thing, they couldn’t seem to settle on who had actually written the speech. Mrs. Trump claimed she’d written it herself, with “only minimal help” from the campaign. The campaign, however, released a statement saying that Melania’s “team of writers took notes on her life’s aspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”

Finally, staffer Meredith McIver came forward and fell on her sword. She said that Mrs. Trump, who’s “always liked” the First Lady (oh! the heresy!) had read her some of Mrs. Obama’s speeches, and neither Ms. McIver nor anyone in the campaign had checked the final draft against their “inspirations.”

Consider this: The Trump campaign sent the woman who would be First Lady out to make a major speech, apparently without any vetting. That speech contained passages that were clearly cribbed from not just any speech, but from a major speech given at an event that a substantial number of the reporters, commentators and other political junkies watching had already seen and would most likely remember. Then, incredibly, they couldn’t get their stories together on who’d written it.

The whole thing speaks of a level of fumbling and incompetence so great that one has to doubt if these people have enough sense to pour water out of a boot even if you printed the instructions on the heel.

But what about Hillary Clinton, you say? Wasn’t her handling of classified information “extremely careless,” in the words of FBI Director James Comey? Isn’t that worse?

First, we don’t know how Trump and his people would handle classified information, since he’s a political novice who hasn’t had to do it very much, but this level of carelessness with what should be simple stuff doesn’t bode well for his competence with complex information.

Second, “you’re just as bad as me” doesn’t make you better. Third and most important, in his later testimony, Comey admitted that even the “very small number” of Clinton’s emails he’d referenced were not properly marked “classified” in the headers as such emails are required to be by the manual controlling such things. Instead, the designation was indicated by a little letter “c” somewhere in the body of the email. Comey told Rep. Matt Cartwright it would be a “reasonable inference” for Clinton to believe that “the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified” — a detail almost universally ignored by the so-called liberal media.

The Republican party, this past Monday, spent an entire evening trying to frighten us into voting for Donald Trump’s Daddy State policies by yelling at us that the world is a terrifyingly dark place, full of monsters — then proceeded during the course of the night’s keynote speech to show us they’re too incompetent to handle a softball political convention speech. It doesn’t inspire confidence.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Health Itself

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

This past week, in addition to once again trying to repeal health care reform, the Republicans who have recently come to power took aim against a new, even more pervasive foe: health itself.

It started when President Obama, speaking to Savannah Guthrie on “The Today Show,” threw down the gauntlet when asked about vaccination in light of the recent measles outbreak in the U.S.

“The science is pretty indisputable,” the president said. “We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not. …You should get your kids vaccinated.”

Well, the right wing wasn’t going to take that lying down, you betcha. Following the one ironclad principle of the right (“If’n one o’ them Obammy’s is fer it, we’s agin it”), Republican presidential hopefuls took to the airwaves to let us know that liberty includes the freedom to let your kids become tiny little germ weapons.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who, as you remember, tried to lock up a nurse for being in the same country as ebola, suddenly decided that inoculation against measles, a far more contagious disease, should be “optional.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made his bid for the coveted Michele Bachmann Professorship of Unsourced Pseudoscientific Claptrap by telling talk show host Laura Ingraham, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

Heard from who? Jenny McCarthy? Well, hey, who are a bunch of dumb old scientists to argue with a Playboy Playmate and the former host of MTV’s “Singled Out”?

Not to be outdone, our own Junior Sen. Tom Tillis decried the undue regulatory burden of requiring restaurant employees to wash their hands after using the toilet.

“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy,” Tillis said, “ as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restrooms.’ The market will take care of that.”

Of course, in the unregulated dream world where Sen. Tillis would have us all live, there’d be no one to ensure that the sign is visible, legible, or even in English. But, as the song goes, “Freedom’s just another word for wondering why the waiter’s hands smell funny.”

Later, as usual, both Christie and Paul had to, as they say, “walk back” their statements. The “walkback” is what wingnuts and the people who try to pander to them often find themselves doing when they realize that the codswallop they’ve been spoon-feeding to the rubes, goobers and haters on right-wing talk radio, and Faux News has actually been overheard by the non-insane, and they have to do some damage control before the editorial cartoonists start drawing them with tinfoil hats.

Christie’s office released a statement: “The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection, and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” Rand Paul went even further and had himself photographed getting a booster vaccine for hepatitis A. Guess he figured that for him, the “profound mental disorders” train had already left the station, with him on it.

As for Senator Tillis, as of this writing, he’s still holding the line against the tyranny of mandatory hand-washing. This caused a Republican friend of mine to comment, “I would not shake hands with that man.”

Here’s the thing: Vaccines don’t cause “profound mental disorders.” The one study that showed a link between measles vaccine and autism was conclusively debunked a few years ago when it was revealed that not only did Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor conducting it, misrepresent and change the results of his research, he did so after taking thousands of pounds from lawyers hoping to capitalize on his dodgy “research” in lawsuits.

Wakefield was later stripped of his medical license, and the journal in which the study was published retracted the article.

Yet to this day, you will find people telling you with complete and misplaced confidence that children suffering from autism are “vaccine-injured.” To keep spreading this lie when measles is trying make a comeback is dangerous. For politicians to spread it for political gain is inexcusable.

As for the value of washing your hands after using the restroom: Ask your mom. If you’d rather believe Thom Tillis than your own mama, I don’t know what to tell you.

Marketing: Joe Quinn Is Doing It Wrong

So this guy's called my office a couple of times, identifying himself as "Joe Quinn" and claiming to be a potential DWI client. When Lynn asks him if he'd like to make an appointment, he gets rude to her and says he'll only talk to me (mistake #1, as Lynn is also my wife).

The area code on the message looks a little odd, so I check and see it's a NYC number. Then Lynn Googles it and finds out that not only is the guy trying to sell space on his crappy "legal referral website", there are multiple other testimonials from people talking about how he's been rude to other attorneys' staffs and lied about being a potential client. 

Marketing: Joe Quinn is doing it wrong.

Barack Obama: Time Traveler

Latest Newspaper Column- The Pilot Newspaper:

Listen: Barack Obama has come unstuck in time.

Recently, the polling outfit Public Policy Polling did a survey of self-identified Republicans in Louisiana. They were asked whether they called themselves liberal or conservative (not surprisingly, 88 percent said they were either “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative”) and who they supported for the 2016 GOP nomination (also not surprisingly for this early stage, answers were all over the map and inconclusive).

But one question resulted in a truly jaw-dropping answer. When asked, “Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?”

Trick question, right? After all, at the time of the hurricane in 2005, The President Who Must Not Be Named was chief executive. The commander in chief. The Big Kahuna. And, let us not forget, he was the guy who appointed the infamously inept Michael “Brownie” Brown as director of FEMA and told him, “You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie,” as people died. Barack Obama was only an up-and-coming but still junior senator from Illinois.

And yet, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans said it was Obama who was responsible for the botched response. Another 44 percent said they weren’t sure.

I guess this should probably come as no great surprise. This is, after all, the party that blamed President Obama for the Great Recession, even though the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (the people who keep an eye on such things) pegged the beginning of the recession at December 2007. And lest we forget, John McCain Who Was a POW ran ads blaming Obama for high gas prices during the 2008 campaign.

By the way, did you know that Obama is also to blame for all current racism in America? Yes, the latest Republican trope seems to be that because Barack Obama commented on the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case by observing (accurately) that a lot of young black men have been viewed with suspicion and fear by white people for years, and that that’s actually happened to him, we are now “divided along racial lines,” and it’s all his fault.

Because, as we all know, racism never existed before the Leader of the Free World “stuck his nose” (as they put it) into the issue. Apparently, the right has barely learned to tolerate the president being black; having him mention that he’s had experiences common to black men in America is grounds for yet another explosion of white self-pity and butthurt.

And, of course, it’s an article of faith in the land of Wingnuttia that Barack Obama was personally involved in the IRS “targeting” of conservative groups (even though all the evidence now shows that both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized). It’s also an article of faith that he personally issued a “stand down” order calling off a rescue attempt in Benghazi and therefore caused the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

When I say “faith,” by the way, I’m using the word in the sense of “nutty things they believe and will defend even unto death even in the face of all evidence to the contrary.”

But this idea that, apparently, Barack Obama can travel back in time to screw things up is a new mutation of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

What will the GOP try to blame next on Time Traveling Barack Obama (hereinafter referred to as TTBO)? Will Darrell Issa claim to have discovered TTBO’s voice screaming “Kill Whitey” on the newly released Watergate tapes?

Will we hear Glenn Beck blubbering that TTBO knew ahead of time that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing because he wanted to promote a liberal racial agenda by getting America into a war that would eventually result in the desegregation of the U.S. military?

Will Michele Bachmann announce the finding of a secret scroll that implicates TTBO in the assassination of Julius Caesar because he wanted the African empire of Carthage to win the Punic Wars? (I know, Carthage was defeated nearly 50 years before Julius was born, but this is Michele Bachmann we’re talking about here.)

What? You think any of this is too crazy for even the Republicans to say? Friends, in a world where a full 73 percent of the GOPers in the Pelican State either think Barack Obama was in charge of the response to hurricane Katrina or are willing to believe that he was, there is no such thing as too crazy.

No More Clown Questions, Bro (UPDATED)

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One of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories is R.A. Lafferty's "Slow Tuesday Night." The basic premise of the story is that humanity has removed a mental block that slowed down action and decision-making, and people now live at a freakishly accelerated clip.

"Transportation and manufacturing had then become practically instantaneous," Lafferty writes. "Things that had once taken months and years now took only minutes and hours. A person could have one or several pretty intricate careers within an eight-hour period." One character makes and loses four fortunes in the course of the night, "not the little fortunes that ordinary men acquire, but titanic things."

The story's a clever satire on how life seems to keep moving faster - and it was written in 1965. One wonders what Lafferty would make of the speed of life now. We haven't quite gotten to the insane pace of his fictional world yet, but sometimes things happen that make it seem like it's not that far off.

The most recent example is the rise and fall of the catch phrase "That's a clown question, bro," which apparently was coined, had its vogue, and was declared dead in the course of a week. And I seem to have missed the whole thing.

It seems there's a young player for baseball's Washington Nationals named Bryce Harper. Harper, after hitting a game-winning home run against the Toronto Blue Jays, was being interviewed in the locker room. A Canadian reporter stepped forward and asked, "Bryce, you know, in Canada you're of legal drinking age. A celebratory Canadian beer would seem to make sense after a hit like that. Favorite beer?"

Now, as noted above, Bryce is a young fellow. Nineteen, to be exact. And he's a Mormon to boot, so drinking beer, Canadian or otherwise, is not likely to be on his agenda. The team's PR man tried to step in, but Harper fielded the question (so to speak) with an aplomb far beyond his years. Giving the reporter a disgusted look, he delivered the smackdown: "I'm not going to answer that. That's a clown question, bro."



Of such humble beginnings, it seems, are Internet memes born. Within a day, "clown question, bro" became the top "trending topic" on Twitter. T-shirts appeared for sale with the catch phrase on them. A beer company in Denver - called, appropriately enough, the Denver Beer Company - announced that it was bringing out a Canadian-style lager called "Clown Question, Bro."
It's too bad, I guess, that Harper didn't have the presence of mind to immediately contact an intellectual property lawyer and have his phrase trademarked. Or perhaps not. *

Because a week later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was being quizzed by a reporter regarding President Obama's announcement that the administration would not be trying to deport the children of illegal immigrants who were of good moral character and didn't pose a threat to national security. The reporter asked if Reid intended to bring the defunct DREAM Act back to the Senate (where it had been strangled in its crib by Republican filibusters) to "put people on the record." Reid paused for a long while, then smiled and told the reporter, "That's a clown question, bro."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
At that point, blogger Dan Amira of New York Magazine declared the phrase dead after only seven days, "the victim of a brutal and obviously premeditated attack" by Reid - who was, Amira said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, under investigation for "meme-slaughter."

I guess if an old politician like Reid is saying something, it can't possibly be cool anymore. Kind of a shame, actually. "Clown question, bro" is the perfect dismissal for those questions that are just too stupid or slanted to be answered any other way. Like the now-standard "Isn't this (insert absolutely anything the president does or says from now till November) just being done for political gain?"

Maybe if Sarah Palin had answered Katie Couric's "What newspapers do you read?" with "That's a clown question, bro," she would have seemed less dimwitted. At least until the next question.

But who knows? Maybe the reports of its death are premature. Maybe the phrase will go on and have a long and happy life in our culture. I hope so. And I hope I can keep up with the next thing to come along.

*UPDATE: It seems I spoke too soon. 

The Birthers Are Back!

 Latest Newspaper Column: There's no link because the Pilot has, once again, forgotten to put my column up on the web site. But I'm getting crazy people e-mailing me about it (we'll have more on that soon), so I know it ran.

If you thought the ridiculous movement known as "birtherism," which holds that Barack Obama has not sufficiently proven his U.S. citizenship, was dead, then think again.

A person of normal intelligence might think that the whole kerfluffle had been put to rest by the long-demanded release of the President's  "long form" birth certificate, a document which I'll wager 99% of Americans never knew existed before the birthers asserted that that was the only proof they'd accept (except as it turns out, that didn't make them happy either). But if  you think that, you've forgotten one of the basic tenets of the right wing: if something fails miserably, then it's just because we didn't do it enough. If the economy tanked despite eight years of tax cuts under The President That Must Not Be Named, then the solution is clearly more tax cuts. If poorly regulated investment houses lost billions of their clients' money and/or failed to disclose risks to their clients, then clearly what we need is less regulation. And so on.

And so, apparently on the theory that that  birtherism failed because they just weren't crazy enough, it returns, this time in the presence of no less an august personage than The Honorable Ken Bennett,  Secretary of State of Arizona, a state which is apparently trying to supplant Florida as the nuttiest one in the Union. (I heard Dave Barry is thinking of relocating there because of the wealth of material). Mr. Bennett recently called up a deputy attorney general in Hawaii and requested "verification" of the President's birth record. After a few days (and, one imagines, a fair amount of eye-rolling), Deputy AG Jill Nagamine e-mailed Bennett back, apologizing for taking so long while pointedly noting that she had "been tied up with some legislative deadlines that take precedence." She then provided Bennett with the sort of links any half-bright person with access to Google could find, links to official websites that covered the whole issue. In short, Deputy Attorney General Nagamine told Bennett: "look, pal, I got a lot of stuff on my plate here, we've been over this a hundred times, look it up yourself." But politely.

Unable, apparently, to take a hint, Bennett e-mailed back, again requesting verification of the President's American birth. He did not, it should be noted, ask for a similar verification of the birth records of Millard Mitt Romney. Maybe Mitt had already given him one in person, since Bennett is the co-chair of Romney's campaign in Arizona. I'm sure that's  just a coincidence, right?

Nagamine's e-mailed response was a classic: she turned the tables and demanded verification that Bennett  was eligible to make the request. She also asked a slew of other questions, such as what list he was updating and  if he was asking any other candidate this information. He would also, of course, need to send verification of all of that.

Bennett sent back references to various Arizona statutes, which he claimed gave him the right.  Nagamine, displaying the sort of mulishness that would make a birther proud, said "nope, not good enough." (Politely). None of those cites, she said,  "establish the authority of the Secretary of State." But, she said, Hawaii  "stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it."

 Later that day, Bennett went on AM talk radio and suggested that, if Hawaii didn't do as he asked, President Obama may not appear on the Arizona ballot this year. Meanwhile, just to add in an extra dollop of lunacy, Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio  dispatched a deputy from his "threat unit" to Hawaii's Department of Health on the taxpayer's dime. Arpaio refused to identify the "threat" or to explain exactly why a division of the state government of Hawaii should do anything for a county Sheriff's deputy from another state except show him the door. Politely,  of course.

Finally, Bennett gave up and  pronounced himself satisfied that the President was, indeed, born in the USA and would appear on the ballot. That is, until the next opportunity arises for the right wing lunatic fringe to drag that poor dead horse out of the barn and flog him again. Because in the land of Wingnuttia,  if a dead horse won't run, it's because you didn't beat him hard enough. 

Letters, Oh I Get Letters

Today in The Pilot:

Dusty Rhoades’ petulant column attacking Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney (June 19) displays a prepubescent proclivity (for name-calling), when rational, cogent analysis would be the most powerful way to pose one’s argument.

Indeed, character assassination is the last refuge of a mind sadly bereft of ideas.

Dixie Chapman

Pinehurst

I always love the people who write in, excoriating a satirical column for not being serious enough.

Hey, Dixie, I do cogent analysis and argument, but for a hell of a lot more money that The Pilot pays me. For these prices, snark and mockery are what you get.

In conclusion, let us remember the immortal words of Sgt. Hulka:

Something Tells Me "Criminal Mastermind" Is Not The Career Path For You

Man Rapes Girlfriend, Streams It Live on the Internet:

JUNE 3--An Arizona man allegedly used a webcam to broadcast his sexual assault of an unconscious woman live on the Internet, according to police. Johnathan Hock, 20, was arrested Monday and charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, and unlawful surreptitious photo. According to the below probable cause affidavit sworn by a Phoenix Police Department detective, Hock attacked his 20-year-old girlfriend--who had passed out after a night of drinking--in her own bedroom in late-February. As first reported by the East Valley Tribune, Hock allegedly used a laptop connected to the Internet to stream the 30-minute assault, which was broadcast live via the Stickam.com web site. Hock posted frequently to Stickam.com and "is very popular on this site and is well known for his sex related behaviors," witnesses told police.

Arizona investigators learned of the video from a Louisiana woman who had viewed it online. The witness said that while Hock assaulted the woman (whom he had been dating for two weeks), he was "laughing and making comments...about how the victim would never know what was happening to her because she was 'passed out.'"

Yeah, cunning plan there, Jon.

This raises so many questions. Like how this deranged fuckwit wound up with a girlfriend in the first place. Or how someone can learn how to operate a computer, much less figure out how to stream his criminal activities to the Internet, all while being too stupid to figure out that someone was going to see it and report it. I guess it's just as well he is so stupid...it made it easier to catch the little perv.

It's Time For Harry Reid to Step Down

He's spent most of his career as leader of the Senate Democrats knuckling under to the Republicans. Now, it appears that he's gone senile as well, as shown by this excerpt from his press conference in which he demanded that Guantanamo Detainees Not Be Moved to U.S. Prisons:

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …

REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

WTF? "You can't put them in prison unless you release them"?

No one's talking about letting them loose, you old fool. We've already got dozens of terror suspects and convicted terrorists, as well as other extremely dangerous criminals, in American prisons.

It makes no logical sense to say, as Reid does, that Gitmo has made us less safe and needs to be closed, and then to turn around and say "we can't move detainees even to maximum security US prisons". Where the hell does he think we're going to send them, the fucking Death Star?

Enough is enough. Reid needs to go. It's bad enough that the Republicans are fearmongering and lying through their teeth about this, but when the Democratic Majority Leader starts parroting the RNC party line as if he's ripping and reading off Rush Limbaugh's fax machine, it's time for him to go. Replace him with somebody who remembers that the Democrats won the goddamn election.

Illiteracy Is a Terrible Thing

From the letters colum of The Pilot:

It appears Dusty Rhoades must have been "in an absolute frenzy of pants-wetting fear" himself when he wrote his usual finger-pointing baloney for Feb. 1. How else can he explain why he uses the same lame expression twice in the first four paragraphs?

Before he writes his column and before the paper prints it, maybe you could look for some facts:

Ali al-Shihri was released from Gitmo in 2007. The FBI suspects he helped plan last year's deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital.

Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi was released from Gitmo, and he turned around and blew up a police station in Iraq in a suicide mission.

These are just two of over 30 former Gitmo inmates who have resumed their terrorist activities.

The Gitmo inmates' complaints of cold meals, hard plastic soccer balls and paperback Qurans fall on mostly deaf ears.

Except for pansies like the ACLU, the media and whiners like Rhoades seem determined to put these terrorists back out on the street, no matter who they may kill next.

Curtis Richie

Whispering Pines

See, now if Curtis had actually been able to, you know, READ THE COLUMN, he might have recognized that the whole point was that terror suspects being moved to U.S. Prisons would NOT be "back out on the street". But since Curtis apparently has the reading comprehension of a scallop, the whole thing just goes past him.

And since Curtis also apparently can't remember who was President when, it doesn't seem to occur to him that the people he complains about being released to wreak more havoc were released by......the Bush Administration. Which sort of undercuts the whole argument that detainees should be kept or released purely at the whim of the Executive.

But you know, I'm glad Curtis keeps trying to read the column, even though he's apparently too dumb to understand it. I hope he can find the remedial reading help he apparently so desperately needs.