Sarah: Shut Your Pie Hole

The Twit Who Tweets

Savannah, GA. When the thin-skinned diva isn't quitting her elected responsibilities, 'aw-shuckin' her blue collar roots, (my grandfather was a commercial fisherman for 40 years--purse seiner, not gill-netter; the step-father a pulp and paper mill worker--yet we all somehow managed to pronounce our final "g's"--note to Todd: I'm part Yup'ik, too) she's dragging her family before reality TV cameras only to complain about a lack of privacy, coyly showing up to upstage others at political events, and very quick to quip and criticize.  What she seems incapable of doing, however, is offering up any solution(s) to the problem(s) or issue(s) about which she bloviates.

Burning down the boathouse is the easy one, Sarah. Destruction comes with the strike of match. Constructive stick-with-it leadership is an elusive trait and a measure of true leadership so clearly beyond your grasp. Until such time you have some productive solutions beyond bromides posted to social networks, do America the blessed favor of keeping your gaping pie hole shut.

LGBT to Dems at Midterm: Fuggedaboutit

Fed Up With Being Taken for Granted

Savannah, GA. Do you hear us, Democrats? Your feckless, spineless approach to employment security, DADT--even marriage--has earned you the apathy you so justly deserve from gay and lesbian voters at these midterm elections. Our 'enthusiasm deficit' is the fruit of your lack of progress on the issues near and dear to us. You have no one to blame but yourselves. The timidity from most, and indifference from the rest, is the driving force behind our collective dispassion towards all things Democrat. Your dilly-dally/shilly-shally with your elected majorities in Congress has been a waste of time and has squandered the goodwill and Hope of 2008. Your palpable lack of courage has let all of the air out of the room.

And don't fool yourselves; make no mistake: we'll vote--just not for you.

Sue, Shirley, Sue

Bust Breitbart's Balls

Savannah, GA. As a fellow Georgian, I am so very proud of how Ms. Sherrod has handled this grotesque, right-wing, oddly Soviet-esque smear and defamation campaign against her. Shirley hasn't backed down and gone whimperingly into the night. She's fought back (and many, many citizens hope she continues to fight on in the courts) against the blatantly false aspersions claimed in an edited video (worthy of a Kremlin Wall doctored photograph), promulgated by the creature called Breitbart. I'm no attorney, but it would certainly appear to this civilian that the injuries and wrongs Ms. Sherrod has suffered at the hands of the mucosal Breitbart (and the unnamed 'source' who purportedly performed the sly and duplicitous video editing) are actionable conduct. Court action would also reveal Breibart's mysterious 'source'--standard procedure when Journalists(*cough*) splash about in the wading pool of fraud.

Shirley also had a few choice words for the NAACP which unceremoniously dropped any support of her once the video became the story-of-the-day for media-outlet-but-not-real-news-organization, FOX. The NAACP has since flip-flopped, issued an apology and moved on. A little learnin' is a good thing.

If anybody needs a lesson on properly handling racial accusations it's this White House. The Right says, "jump" and the Obama Administration says, "in which pair of shoes?" How many more times will this White House make the same mistake assuming their political adversaries are honorable and interested in trustworthy discourse?

Free Market Hogwash

Conservative Hypocrisy

Savannah, GA. Conservatives--lately teapublicans--love to trumpet the benefits of a free market sans Marxist (gasp!) Socialist (horrors!) governmental intervention.

We won't even address the bizarro-world/Cloud Cuckooland and altered reality of the so-called libertarians--those blinkered fools who especially like to post comments on the government R&D'd internet, or who won't admit that capitalism always resorts to government in the end: gotta have government laws to protect those free market business contracts and government courts to enforce the free market contract laws, and police to remove squatters from your free market land and water--those rights to something you didn't make, couldn't create (the water, the land) but were awarded nonetheless through an exchange by the (yet, again) government--but that's grist for another column, another day.

A truly free market would scare the panties off of these breathless conservatives. Shall we discuss farm subsidies? Or BP's (hell, every oil company's) liability limitations in the Gulf of Mexico? Conservatives are all over the free market like out-of-town Baptists in a whorehouse at convention time. Yet these 'all for one; all for me' Free Marketeers do love themselves a little squeeze of big, ole, bad, guv'ment when it comes to socializing risk and privatizing profit. They'll switch and pitch for the other team if it means some actual public money--all the while inveighing against socialist handouts. They'll quote their Ayn Rand and get all moist at the mention of the "invisible hand."

In an actual Free Market, the hailstorm that flattens your crop before harvest would ruin the farm. One bad year, one major disaster, and you lose the enterprise. That's the nature of the REAL Free Market at work. I have yet to hear one of these Teapublicans advocating anything close to true laissez faire capitalism. Like the little boy who, when told masturbating would make him go blind, opined, "Can I just do it until I need glasses?" These so-called conservatives want just enough socialism to keep themselves in the green. Little boys, indeed.

Greed does strange things to an otherwise orderly mind.

Soviet Arizona: Present Your Papers!

image courtesy of Village Voice

No Profiling. Not here. Not nohow.

Savannah, GA. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law an Orwellian measure compelling police to determine the legal immigration status of any individual they encounter. In typical Red-Fascist fashion, this--to quote the President here--"misguided" law of the land "threatens to undermine basic notions of fairness." But let's not be coy about this, Mr. President. This kind of reactionary law not only encourages wanton racial profiling--as if that fact alone were't bad enough--this measure places a tremendous amount of raw, arbitrary, power into the hands of the State. In reality, this law will force all citizens to keep such information handy as to determine they're legal to move about in AZ country. "Let me see your papers. All Hail Arizona."

Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.

Sue The Bastards

Savannah, GA. In the name of equal protection under the law, read this "issues & cases" item from the NCLR website:

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O'Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O'Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

Thanks to SLOG

It's All About the Math

The Cruel, Cruel, Heartless, World

Humorless

Savannah, GA. Aw. Inside the Reality Distortion Field that is Sarah Palin's singular universe, Seth MacFarlane has hurt her feelings. Fox's sunday night episode of "Family Guy" included a scene where Chris Griffin (voiced by Seth Green) dates a fellow student with Down Syndrome, named Ellen (voiced by Andrea Fay Friedman), who has a line, My dad’s an accountant and my mom is the former governor of Alaska.

Silence is never a virtue when it comes to the former Gov., so Professional Victim Sarah (voiced by Sarah Palin) dashed down the hall of her new employer--which had aired the episode--onto the set and into the welcoming arms of the testosterone-challenged O'Reilly in order to unload. This world is full of cruel, cold-hearted people who would do such a thing, said Palin.

Based on some of her own political and religious beliefs, Palin is no stranger to 'cruel and cold-hearted' territory. But that's another story.

What Sarah didn't know is that the actor referenced above, Ms. Friedman, is not only accomplished voice talent, but a person with Down Syndrome. (Andrea also works at a law firm between acting gigs, and has done so for the past 20 years.) Moreover, she is an individual with a great sense of humor.

I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line "I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska" was very funny. I think the word is "sarcasm." In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

How's that pouty, hurty, thing workin' out for ya, Palin?