Oops, beat me to it. But the song remains the same…

Win.

Christine O’Donnell is being groomed for greater things; she has clearly been taking lessons in elocution from La Palin.

Motto: It isn’t what you say, it’s how you look when you’re saying it.

The horror…the horror…

There just has to be somewhere in the NFL that can use a guy whose forward passing style looks like a moose trying to fuck a refrigerator.

Confirmation of my theory that young Master Adam really looks like the sort of guy who is listed as ‘least likely to get laid’ in high school yearbooks.

Formerly @RepPaulRyan‘s sole intern on @MittRomney‘s campaign and a @newtgingrich campaign staffer.

A parade of fail with a cast of thousands…I can’t wait for young Adam’s pearls of wisdom, since he’s shown such foresight in picking winners so far.

He looks like the guy under whose yearbook picture people things like this:

Least likely to get laid, at least by a human being. Ever.

Falling under the heading of “If you must know”…

The reference to “the happy ending” refers to, uh, the happy ending option in some establishments specializing in Oriental massage. So I’m told. And yes, in this context it’s clearly a racial reference (as if Erick would have it any other way). Taking a wild guess, it’s a option he’s familiar with, although that raises images I’d just as soon not contemplate.

If you need further details, ask your parents.

As with transvaginal ultrasounds and tax cuts über alles, so with the racist jokes and commentary – they just can’t help themselves.

Under the heading of Nobody Could Have Predicted…

Erick Son of Erick: “What?!?? It was just a joke! Those Asiatic liberals are just too sensitive!”

…the kind of sexual tension and meaningful glances you rarely see outside of a Lindsey Graham / Kelly Ayotte press conference…

A truly appalling image. What kind of sick mind….

True dat. I keep wondering when Michelle Malkin will be mistaken for one of the staff at a wingnut extravaganza.

Clearly a worthy successor to Beckham.

Now there’s a candidacy that I could totally get behind.

Somebody had to say it.

Chris:

Believe me, I’m among the first to acknowledge that there are many, many hardworking and dedicated people doing extremely valuable work at the local, state and federal levels, and I’m sorry if you think otherwise. I’m certainly not an Ayn Rand devotee, a libertarian, nor yet (god forbid) a “limited government” advocate. I regard government as a Good Thing overall and in general, although I confess to mystification as to some government priorities, particularly in the arena of regulation and law enforcement. I should have specified various of the police and security organs of government at whatever level.

I guess I’m at a loss to explain your anger, which is clear – unless you happen to be one of those people, in which case I’m sure you do a good job and I’m sorry you have taken such offense. That’s my last word.

Yeah, I know – I went on an extended and unwanted rant about things that bother me in varying degree, and it was initially because of reading about that poor bozo getting screwed to death by Wells Fargo. Nothing we talk about on this blog or 99% of other blogs is important enough to the powers that be to warrant any serious interest…although I don’t see anywhere in my comments any mention of cameras; I did talk about monitoring of electronic communications, which is a reality – harmless though it may be, it’s creepy. You’re right in that cameras in public places are part of modern life, they do serve a purpose in public safety – it’s just that the Panopticon society bit gets to me.

Clearly you’ve taken serious exception to my comments, which is fine – it’s a blog for chrissakes, if it’s not a forum for discussion then what is it? My main point – which could have been better expressed – was that the original FDL commentor, while semi-rabid, wasn’t altogether wrong. Government, supposedly our government, does screw people, frequently, and has a huge variety of tools with which to do it. In recent years it has permitted the financial industry to screw the general populace on a massive scale, and generally those who made the most from the screwing have paid the least – while ordinary citizens are pushed to the wall for relatively minor offenses. I don’t regard it as paranoid to note these things, particularly after some of the more egregious episodes of the Cheney Regime. Fine, you don’t agree with me, but I guess I don’t get the personal animus you seem to feel. I mean, meds, accusations of paranoia, etc? Did somebody piss in your Wheaties or what?

That being said, in all seriousness, no offense was intended to you or our host, and I’m sorry if any was felt. I doubt that either of us should have spent this much time on this topic, and know for certain I don’t want to spend any more. Again, no hard feelings.

And hey, if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, right?

This woman will not go away if she’s buried at a crossroads with a stake through her heart.

I’m thinking a nuke launched from orbit.

It’s the only way to be sure.

You’re right about the flood of bad news via the intertubes; a lot of things (like what happened to that poor bastard Larry Delassus) become news now when they never would have during the days of my (and your, presumably) misspent youth. It’s just that it’s so much more visible now – I mean, twenty years ago I likely never would have heard the story of Delassus and his fate, simply because it occurred in LA.

And yeah, you’re right that there’s no conspiracy, exactly, it’s right out there in the open. The more egregious provisions of the Patriot Act, NSA surveillance of me, you and the bassetts for all I know, bankers looting the fucking country and walking away, it’s not like any of this is news to anyone, or shouldn’t be news to anyone.

Things just seem…different than they used to be, in terms of what the government does to people or allows other entities to do to them.

But enough.

What can I tell you? I only say what is – as I noted, this isn’t conspiracy bullshit, this are documented facts. I’m certainly not one of those idiots who goes on about fighting the man, literally – anybody who advocates armed resistance to the U.S. government is an idiot, and that’s putting it kindly. But these things happen every day, and when something like this happens – that is, as the article title says, Wells Fargo Victim Dies In Court – well. It pisses me off, to put it mildly. Because the bank’s stance is (more or less)…

Yes, we made a mistake.
But we’re going to fuck you and take your home anyway.
Because too much time has passed since our original mistake, and…
Because we can.
And the judge is not only going to let us do it but help us.

And if that guy had physically resisted in any way, not that the poor bastard was in any condition to, he likely would have ended up dead.

So yeah, I’ve been on a slow burn about this whole area for a couple of days, because this incident is indicative and symptomatic of so many things.

Just becoming more and more aware of the difference between law and justice – it’s not a pretty sight, and it sure as shit doesn’t have anything at all to do with what we were taught in civics, American government or what have you. I tried to believe for many years that stuff like this was the exception, but it’s not. And when the Attorney General says the Justice Department doesn’t prosecute banks because it’s too much trouble*, or some such, yeah, it gives me a serious case of the ass. Sometimes cynicism wears thin, when you read about ordinary people being done to death.

*After all, what would all those attorneys do after leaving DOJ if they actually prosecuted their future employers?

Note:

And for anybody who is still under the illusion that we are still a nation of laws that prevent government injustice and that there is equal justice under the law, let me refer you to the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren:

“There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it,” the freshman senator said. “I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial.’”

The point – if it needs to made explicit – is that the government crushes ordinary citizens every day with some of the most draconic sentencing policies in the world, and does it for offenses which in some cases the average citizen may not even know he or she has committed.

Whereas if your name happens to be HSBC, well, your fine is a cost of doing business.

If people aren’t pissed off by this, um, disparity, they ought to be. It makes no difference, by the way, as to whether a Republican or Democratic administration is holding power – the disparity remains exactly the same, with possibly a minor change in degree.

Although there is a lot of flying spittle obscuring things, bloodypitchfork is essentially (and unfortunately) correct in his conclusion: if you are a big enough problem to the U.S. government, they will kill you. Equally unfortunately, the government may end up killing someone in the process of arresting them or a family member for a relatively minor crime, and in all probability there will be no consequences for the individual government agents or agencies involved. People can be and are, on occasion, killed in consequence of police agencies raiding the wrong address, and generally there are no criminal penalties for the officers and agencies involved in those cases either.

So the guy’s essential point is neither paranoid nor crazy, as any number of “unfortunate incidents and/or tragedies” demonstrate going clear back to that paragon George Washington. Hey, ask Crazy Horse. The military does practice operations designed to combat “unrest”, primarily in urban areas, on a frequent basis – I saw such exercises put on by Marines in my own city a couple of years back and it wasn’t any “black helicopter” conspiracy horseshit, it was covered in the local newspaper for chrissakes.

So yeah, he’s not altogether wrong in his conclusions; it can and does appear in many instances that the U.S. government is ready, willing and able to wage war on…U.S. citizens. And given the surveillance carried out byt that same government*, proliferation of laws under which one can be prosecuted and arrested using all available force, naturally, one might well become apprehensive about what tactics any administration might use against its political opponents. “Homeland Security” seems to me to be a cloth that can be stretched to almost infinite capacity.

*The NSA or other agencies monitor all websites carrying political discussions in any way of interest to the U.S. government, including this one – no if, ands or buts about it. Not on a constant or real time basis, although they have the capability to do that easily – they’re looking for trends and indicators, which is why you hear about operations designed to combat “unrest” – I mean, if people are starving and being thrown out of their homes and they perceive the government is not only not preventing it but is aiding and abetting it, there’s going to be unrest, no? Actually they monitor much more than that within the U.S., although I’m not (quite) prepared to believe that they monitor every electronic communication they can hoover up, inside or outside the country. For certain they monitor encrypted data; who knows what you might be hiding in there? The government must know all, to protect us all, don’t you know. If you’ve done nothing wrong, etc…

Okay, end of rant.

If they’re feeling generous, they might provide you with a one way ticket to someplace where you could be marooned on an ice floe…as long as ice floes are still available that is. Or possibly load you in a cattle truck for transportation there.

Now then…

Meanwhile Obama is death-killing Democrats in areas of America that have been gerrymandered into Rorschach-shaped enclaves of gun & Bible-totin’ Hoveround-Americans:

The only things Obama could do to improve the electoral chances of Democrats in districts like that would be to a) resign and b) commit suicide, not necessarily in that order. If Diaper Dave Vitter can keep his seat, that old saw about pols only being in trouble if caught in bed with a live man or dead woman is no longer operative.