Romnesia

Barack Obama is having fun with a new term: Romnesia. Now I don’t know who coined the term, some say it was David Korn on “Mother Jones” although Korn doesn’t think so. Even so, like Big Bird and 47%, the thing seems to be resonating with voters.

 

And Mitt Romney is perfectly correct that Obama is playing “Word Games.” Substance should rule over style and one-liners in any election. However, I am willing to admit that many voters don’t see it that way, especially those that are still (astoundingly) undecided. These are the low-informed electorate that we have all come to know and hate. They wait until they hear something that resonates and then vote with their gut feelings. So while Romney is substantively right on this issue, he is wrong on the value of a glib remark at this point in the campaign.

So to me, it sounds like Romney is grousing that his campaign cannot come up with a glib remark that doesn’t make him look like a copycat. It sounds like he is already composing his concession speech.

Now, for those who have not been paying attention, here is a compendium of the President’s “Romnesia Rag:”

"If you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia."

“If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let employers deny contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.”

“If you say you will protect a women's right to choose but you stand up in a primary debate and say you'd be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, then you have definitely got Romnesia.”

“If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, here is the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. We can fix you up. We've got a cure. We can make you well."

Republicans Vindicated: There IS Voter Fraud

So I have been howling at the moon about how Republicans are drumming up false news that there is rampant voter fraud out there and that we have to  be super vigilant and require a Photo ID in order to cast a ballot in our elections. Howling at the moon because as it has now become apparent to me, voter fraud is actually rampant in this country.
 

Rampant.

Take for example the case of Bruce Fleming Bruce is running for County Commissioner for Fort Bend County’s 1^st Precinct. Flemming, it has recently been revealed, has voted in the past three elections in not only Fort Bend County, where he lives, but also in Pennsylvania, where he owns a home.

And in 2008 Fleming voted in the Republican Primary in Texas, and the Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania

Voting twice in the same election is a Class 3 Felony.

Then there is political consultant Collin Small who was recently arrested in Virginia for throwing 8 voter registration forms into a trash dumpster. Small was collecting voter registrations in contract work for the RNC. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has just thrown Small under a bus. Obviously it is OK with Priebus to commit voter fraud by throwing Democratic voter registration forms into the trash, just don’t get caught.

Then we find that a company called Strategic Allied Consulting, working in Florida for the Romney campaign registering voters has been investigated for allegedly registering dead people to vote.

And in St. Augustine Beach Florida, its former mayor is bringing charges that a Republican voter has filed to vote in his county, but doesn’t actually live there, and is using the address of a Florida resident to vote in Florida, when he actually lives in Maryland.

Holy Crow. These Republicans were right all along. Voter fraud is rampant.

Republican voter fraud.

No wonder they were so certain that we had voter fraud in this country.

Not Ready for Prime Time

“Actually Mitt is his middle name….I wish I could use my middle name.”

 

This is one of the self-deprecating jokes that President Barack Hussein Obama ripped forth tonight at the Al Smith dinner in New York City. My president knows how to deliver a line, and how to be classy. His opponent, Mitt Romney, knows neither.

Mitt Romney, at his funniest, could not be more whiney. Barack Obama, at his worst, could not be more funny. This is how we must take measure of these two men: by how much do they take themselves seriously, and what can you do to further your own cause at a charity fundraiser.

Mitt Romney chose the low road, and sniped. Clearly, he had no idea how to deliver a joke in this political season. Even George II had a better idea on how to deliver a line. Romney’s funniest line of the night, that he was the evening’s designated driver, was ill-delivered because one got the distinct impression that he was being serious.

Mitt Romney is not ready for prime time. That became very clear to me tonight. He cannot make light of himself because he is so wrapped up in himself. Mitt Romney is truly “The Simpsons’” Mr. Burns.

I still cannot believe that there are people out there seriously considering voting for this non-clown. This man is so humorless, so fake, so false.

Oh wait, that’s right, Mitt Romney is grist for the mill of the GOP. He is a poster child for God’s Own Party. The point they all seem to be missing is that, to me anyway, God has a very incisive sense of humor. He would awe us all in His one-liners. Mitt, in pretending to follow suit, hasn’t a clue. Mitt can’t.

Not ready. Mitt is not ready, nor will he ever be ready.

Binder-palooza

Romney's "Binders full of women" comment last night sure does evoke some mental images, doesn't it? My only thought last night was in wondering about the time frame and did Romney really deal with binders?

Couldn't he have converted the binders to a quick and easy reference system like a "Rolodex" file? So 80's.

Here is a sampling of what people with more time on their hands than I have created over the past 20 hours.

Looking for a Bellwether? Wall Street Rings True.

You know, the oft repeated Reaganism, the one that won him the 1980 election, “are you better off now than you were four years ago,” has not really served the Romneyites very well. They have tried it out, but the only thing the question has done this year is to remind people of how they are indeed much better off than they were in the depths of the Great Recession of 2008-09.
 

Think about it. People were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands per month. The stock market halved its value. Home sales plummeted along with home prices. Bank loans were rare as hen’s teeth.

Yes, we are all better off than we were 4 years ago, even if Republicans are unable or unwilling to admit it.

And this is another piece of good news for the Obama campaign, that and this new study by Robert Prechter and Deepak Goel of the Socionomics Institute, a research think tank, Wayne Parker of Emory University and Matthew Lampert of the University of Cambridge. Their study, entitled “Social Mood, Stock Market Performance and U.S. Presidential Elections” states the obvious, that those who preside over Wall Street booms, like the present one that has the Dow Jones average pushing the envelope ever outward these days, get re-elected. The converse is also true: those in office during downturns in the stock market get sent home.

Ask Bill Clinton.

Ask Calvin Coolidge.

In truth, the study covers every presidential contest since 1792 and the results are consistent. I really like this quote:

"'The best single predictor of presidential re-election results that we found was the percentage change in the stock market during the three years that preceded Election Day,' said Emory University’s Goel, adding that the jobless rate 'had no predictive value in any of our tests.'"

But really this study is such old news. Everyone knows that you don’t question a winning streak, and you don’t bet against a good thing, because nothing succeeds but success.

And yes, the champagne is on ice. Barack Obama is going to rock the town hall tonight.

El Mittster

Oh my.

 

Did you see Rosie Perez' video on Mitt Romney's assertion that he would have a much better chance to win his race if he were a Mexican. Noted Latina actress Rosie Perez is one chica desgraciata at how the Mittster was very flippant in his remarks to a well-heeled audience as they sat and laughed at his wistful remarks, knowing full well that they were meant to be disingenuous.

 

Rosie Perez basically called El Mittster out onto the carpet and, in her unique PR accent, made it known that he, very probably, lost the election because of this remark.

 

And if Hispanics have the righteous idignation that Perez does, and flock to the polls, I think she may have had uttered some prophetic words.

 

El Mittster quiere ser un Mexicano.

 

A Moment of Science, Please

Felix Baumgartner won his place in history for being the fastest man alive.

 

Literally.

 

Before this we had Joe Kittinger, a retired Air Force test pilot and dare devil who went into freefall from an altitude of 102,000 feet (31,090 meters) above MSL. Kittinger attained a subsonic maximum velocity of 614 miles per hour (275 meters per second).

 

Felix Baumgartner, aka "Fearless Felix" has just today jumped from a height of 128,000 feet (39,014 meters) and broke the sound barrier having attained Mach 1.2, that is, 833.9 miles per hour or 373 meters per second.

 

Doing this was only possible because Baumgartner dropped from a higher altitude where the air is thinner and so his terminal velocity, the velocity that occurs when the upward force of air resistance balances the downward acceleration due to gravity, causing a falling object to fall at a constant velocity, occurred at a higher altitude than Kittinger's did.

 

You Tube is awash with video.

 

What to do with this? Yes it is a teaching moment, but how to I spin this into the political message of today? Well not today maybe. Maybe after Tuesday I can report that Mitt Romney's numbers are falling faster than Baumgartner.

On One Picture

The state of American politics, I think, has not improved in 150 years and to prove my point I submit, without further comment the following photograph taken at a Romney/Ryan rally this past week.

One picture = One times ten to the fourth words.

Bob-Bob-Bob Bob-Bobbin Ryan

If you saw the Vice Presidential debate last week you may have noticed what I noticed because a commenter on the previous posting agreed that Paul Ryan’s TV presence suffered from excessive head bobbing.

So much so, that the commenter Googled it to see if anyone else noticed and found my blog posting.

On the posting I wondered whether anyone would post a montage to You Tube for our viewing pleasure but alas, as of this afternoon there is no video.

Well all of that has got to stop. I put my miniscule video talents to work and extracted some of the more notable head oscillations and compressed them into this brief video.

And put it to  appropriate music by the Beach Boys.

Hee hee.

In the Spin Room: Joltin’ Joe Hits It Out of the Park

So did you see it? I took people to a quick dinner tonight so I could get home and watch my Vice President, Joe “Joltin’ Joe” Biden in a major smackdown over Paul “Bobbin’ Boy” Ryan.

Joe Biden made Paul Ryan look small, but Paul Ryan made himself look even smaller. Ryan continued the Republican meme of, in Joe’s own word, utter malarkey, but this time this was not allowed to be said unchallenged. And I suspect Ryan expected this. I quite often found myself pitying Ryan. I suspect Ryan is not comfortable with shape shifting as much as his running mate is and as a result he looked absolutely stricken sometimes in his refutations – uttering things that he himself knew were untrue.

It came to a head in one of his classic refutations when Ryan exhibited an unnatural case of head bobbing. If I didn’t know better, and I do, Ryan exhibited such rapid head oscillations that one would wonder if he didn’t have a case of Touretts Syndrome. At one time I was seriously concerned that he would emerge from the debate with a serious case of whiplash.

I wonder if someone will capture all of Ryan’s head bobbing and compile them in a You Tube video.

But seriously, Joe Biden was the statesman tonight, and Paul Ryan was the naïf. Joe Biden had the facts, Paul Ryan had the campaign slogans. And this in the end was the risk. Romney could have selected a more mature running mate with a larger world view, but instead he chose the nerdy kid with serious head issues from backwater Wisconsin.

No doubt Joe Biden has restored the respect of some flagging Independent voters tonight. And in so doing, has restored the confidence of Democrats who know we can win this thing.

Because we are that good and that right.

And they just aren’t.

Florida Governor in a Rolodex Ruckus

Sometimes I cannot believe some of the news items I come across. Surely this one or that one comes from The Onion, a website dedicated to Faux News.

But I guess not this time.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, in his quest to get information out to his constituents on a very seriously infected drug that is giving people often fatal cases of meningitis, consulted his rolodex for the “hotline” that has been set up in his state.

An 866 number.

Instead of the public information hotline callers to Scott’s phone number got a phone sex “hotline” of a whole other kind of thing.

Callers interested in finding about the potentially fatal drug were instead treated to “Hello boys, thank you for calling me on my anniversary.”

What is it about these southern Republican governors? First we hear news of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford disappearing for days “walking the Appalachian trail” with a Brazilian hottie, and now we find Rick Scott sharing his favorite phone sex “hot” lines with his constituents.

Apparently the elected officials in God’s Own Party are having trouble with a few of His commandments.

Mitt Romney the Master Debater

Mitt Romney is such a good debater, a master debater I might add, that he can even debate himself on the burning issues of the day and sound utterly convinced in his convictions, which as you will see when you watch this embedded video from Daily KOS, has been variable in times past.

Variable as in polar.

Sort of makes John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it” comment pale in comparison, doesn’t it?

Register and Then Vote

Important dates to remember.

 

October 9th 2012 (that's tomorrow): Last day to register to vote for the November Election. If you are a Republican in Texas though, you don't have to register to vote because in Texas you are automatically registered to vote if you vote for the GOP (God's Own Party).

 

October 21st 2012: First day of early voting, or if you are a Republican you have already voted because you cast your 12 absentee ballots. In Fort Bend County, check the schedule here for times and places. Note that Sunday voting is not doable at many locations so if you want to vote with your fellow parishoners after church you may be just flat out of luck.

 

November 2nd 2012: Last day of early voting.

 

November 6th 2012: Election Day. Or if you are a Republican, it's November 7th.

 

Now here's the difference between my voting dates and those that are spread by Republican operatives to confuse low-informed Democratic voters. My voting dates, or rather the voting dates for Republicans are meant to be fun and in jest. In Republican information and flyers they are being deadly serious.

Big Bird Cartoon Riot

If Mitt Romney could take back one campaign remark which one would he pick? A lot of people would say he'd prefer not to have had the very candid 47% remark committed to video. I am thinking however, that Romney's Big Bird remark is sure to win the take-it-back contest hands down. Never have I seen so many political cartoons put together so fast by so many. Some are pretty darn clever. What I have for your viewing pleasure below is a small sampling of the cartoons that have come out on that one subject. I've even seen some of them shared on Zuckerman's website.

Just Say No to Kesha

A local Houston TV station had a news item yesterday about a local congressional race. It seems that the Democratic nominee is running against a Republican incumbent and she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in H-E-double hockey sticks of winning.

 

Gee. No kidding.

Here in Red Texas this news item is about as interesting and unique as a dog bites man story.

Oh but wait, there’s more, the Democrat in this case is Kesha Rogers and she wants to impeach Obama for all of his high crimes and misdemeanors.

Like being a puppet of Elizabeth II.

Like ending the space shuttle program.

We here in the Fighting 22^nd as Texas Congressional District 22 is lovingly referred to by some have experienced The Kesha before. She was the nominee in 2010 also and got trounced. In that election I wrote a blog post about how to vote a straight Democratic ticket and then go back and deselect Kesha Rogers. So I was mildly amused to read in the KHOU piece that “Democratic activists considered launching a campaign telling people to vote against her, but they worried confused voters might cast ballots against other Democratic candidates with similar names.”

The article went on to say that the current plan is to encourage straight ticket voting.

One way that one could look at that strategy is that no one expects any Democrats to win any of their races so go ahead and vote straight Democratic because sending Kesha Rogers to congress is never going to happen.

So despite my blog’s  moniker I refuse to give in to this kind of pessimism. Every time I go in to vote I go to cast my ballot for the winner and then go watch the returns on MSNBC, fully expecting my candidates to win. That this happens only rarely doesn’t change things. If I thought my candidates would probably lose I probably would just give up and not vote.

And so again I am casting my NO on Kesha vote by deselecting her from my straight Democratic vote. Heck, this year I might go ahead and vote for the Green Party candidate.

Where are the Jobs? Oh, HERE They Are

A sharp 0.3% drop in the unemployment rate breathes new life in a presidential campaign that tripped over its own feet a couple of nights ago with an absentee presidential debater and a milquetoast debate moderator.

 

The September unemployment report reveals that the jobless rate fell to 7.8%, which is under 8% for the first time since the Bush-Inspired Great Recession of 2008.

Eight percent has been used as a mile marker since the Obama stimulus package was passed.

This is good news for America and good news for business that has doubted a full recovery that will bring customers back to the markets. And that is why, I guess, Mitt Romney is dismissing the whole thing as being much worse than it appears. It is bad for his campaign that has touted Romney’s business acumen with the notion that only Romney knows how to change the unemployment numbers.

Obama, the community organizer, couldn’t have a clue on how to create jobs. That’s what business leaders do.

And in a sense, Romney is correct. In a sense. As the CEO of Bain Capital Mitt Romney is responsible for amazing changes in employment numbers as corporation after corporation that his company took over either went belly up and sold off for scrap or went overseas. Both of which changed the unemployment numbers.

Upward.

Mitt Romney says that the unemployment numbers are down because an increasing number of people are simply not looking for work anymore. That’s an amazing way to self-promote and at the same time deflate the news – the good news of lower jobless rates is actually really, really bad news.

But who knows. Maybe Romney is right. He is, after all an expert in unemployment.

The Mittster Prevaricates Like it's 1999

I guess the main reason I am disgusted at the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney last night is not because the Barack Obama that I know failed to show up, although that did disgust me as well. The main reason I am disgusted is because the nominate winner of the debate did so not only because his opponent failed to show up but also because he lied, lied and lied some more.

 

You don’t get to win a debate by lying.

But that is exactly what happened last night. Mitt Romney lied.

He lied (again) about the $716 billion that Obamacare cut from Medicare. There have been no cuts in services, none at all. The cut is the one that we got from healthcare professionals who were anticipating the huge windfalls of getting an additional 25 million insured Americans.

He lied about his healthcare plan containing pre-existing conditions, a huge Obamacare seller. Not true according to his own advisor. His plan covers people with pre-existing conditions who have pre-existing healthcare insurance.

His denial that his tax cuts will add $5 trillion to the national debt if he does not raise taxes on the middle class falls on deaf ears here. A non-partisan think tank cannot find where he makes up the difference, no one really believes he will make up the difference, his math is not fuzzy, his math is a lie.

And finally his claim that half of the green energy companies that the Obama Administration gave stimulus money to went bankrupt is another casualty of fuzzy math. Either that or half of 36 is now 3.

Mitt Romney is a lying sack of poop and 47% of us know it.  

 

Finally A Poll Where Romney is Winning

Here in Red Texas I get to watch as other states elect Barack Obama to his second term. Nate Silver’s 538 dot com keeps upping the certainty that my president, Barack Hussein Obama, will regain the Oval Office for a second term, and upping the electoral vote count simultaneously.

 

But not here in Texas.

Here in Texas I am embedded within a hotbed of people who thirst for the leadership of a guy whose business decisions resulted in the export of hundreds of thousands of good American jobs to India the Philippines and China. Here in Texas we are surrounded by people who clamor for the “voluntary deportation” of the very people who build and maintain our homes, mow our lawns and process our meat food products. Here in Texas we hunger for a leader who will end Medicare and Social Security as we know it and blow up the national debt with yet another tax cut for the rich.

Yeah, right.

But nevertheless, here in Red Texas Mitt Romney is leading in the polls over Barack Obama by a margin that is larger than the margin that John McCain and Sarah Palin got in 2008.

It’s here at the Chron.

Know what I think? I think there are a massive number of Texans who are settling for a guy they cannot be excited about, only because he is the white guy. A white guy for the White House is all about your Texas voter. God forbid they ever vote based on their own self interest.

And yes, I will be glued to the television unit tomorrow night ready and waiting for Mitt Romney to attempt a 10 large bet with Barack Obama over one issue or another. I only hope that Barack has the sense to take him up on it, whatever it is. Since leaving the private sector, Mitt’s betting instincts have really and truly gone further south than the Southern Cross.

 

Vote Ellison

I just got a friend request from the Michael Ellison campaign on Zuckerberg’s website. Naturally I accepted because I consider myself a friend of Michael Ellison, FB or not.

 

I find it fortuitous that I received the friend request today because for a couple of days now I have been working on a little video that I hope many Republicans in Fort Bend County take a look at when they decide on whom to vote for in the County Sheriff’s race.

In Fort Bend County we are given a choice between Republican Troy Nehls and Democrat Michael Ellison. I hate it that the county sheriff’s race has to be a partisan one, hoping to reserve my vote for the best man in law enforcement, rather than the one who kowtows to a particular political persuasion.

I believe that law enforcement should transcend politics, a position that does not appear to be shared by a lot of Republicans here in Fort Bend County, to no ones’ surprise.

I also believe that of the two, Michael Ellison, a bona fide hero (ask the tellers at the New Territory Randall’s Wells Fargo office), is the better man to enforce the law in a fair and square manner. I also believe that Fort Bend County would not be best served in having twin brothers occupy two law enforcement political offices as will happen should Michael Ellison be defeated by Troy Nehls.

Because should that happen, a County Constable position, and the County Sheriff’s position will be filled by the Nehls twins, Troy and Trever. Trever Nehls is a shoe-in as County Constable, Troy has one final hurdle to clear in November. But in the aftermath, should voters in Fort Bend County choose the other Nehls brother, we will be faced with an oligarchy. Family rule. The checks and balances that were meant to be in placed by having separate and distinct county law enforcement offices will vanish.

And apparently a political operative in Fort Bend County, a Republican operative mind you, agrees with that notion.

Don’t believe me? See below. This is an edit of a longer video put on YouTube last spring at the end of the early vote in the Republican Primary. Karen Pearson, a political consultant of some local repute, openly opposed a cabal that would result if Troy Nehls wins along with his brother. Hear her words. This is what she said, swear to Jesus.

Whoa, Where’s the Benefit?

So I was viewing this morning’s politics talking head shows as is my usual Sunday morning routine, and watching the Romney apologists spell out, for the umpteenth time what it is that Romney truly plans in his tax cut plan should he become president.

 

And they were pooh-poohing the claims by the non-partisan Fact-Check.org think tank, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, that in order to make up for the tax cuts for the very rich in this country, Romney would have to raise the taxes on the middle class.

He would have no other way to pay for the tax cut, they say.

Baloney said the pundits. Mitt Romney has all of this already handled in other tweaks to his tax plan where the rich will have fewer deductions by eliminating some, and lowering others.

It should all come out the same in the wash these people said.

But it was like this was the first time I was hearing this clearly. Whoa, I said to myself, what is the net benefit then? If the goal is to decrease the tax burden on the rich so that they would hire more people and expand the economy – which is The Plan – where is the net tax savings? Where do the rich get to have more money? If Romney makes the tax cuts for the rich deficit neutral by paying for it with reductions in other areas, doesn’t that mean that there is a zero sum change for the rich?

Where’s the benefit in that?

My guess is that there is a zero sum change for the rich, but a huge change for the middle class. The eliminations of deductions for the rich will also go for the middle class, however the middle class will not have tax rate reductions to offset them.

It was like scales fell from my eyes. Mitt Romney and his spinners are all telling the truth in plain view. Why would anyone vote for Mitt Romney for a zero sum change in their taxes? It makes no sense and now I see why the whole thing is being argued.

Hey presto, it’s a shell game. Now you see it now you don’t. The middle class has fallen for that game for decades. For centuries.

Congressman Batman Gets Ugly

Adam West (well, not the guy who played Batman in the 60’s series) is getting a little down and dirty in his campaign to fight off a young whippersnapper who dares to challenge his re-election. The Florida congressman, redistricted into a Democrat-friendly district, has opted to run in a newly drawn district that will be more friendly to his extreme TEA Party antics. And he is apparently in trouble.

 

So much trouble that he has opened a disturbing can of worms that can only blow up in his face – and that mixed metaphor is truly yucky when you think about it.

Adam West has a new ad that shows where his political opponent was the night he was considering a deployment to the battlefield back when he was an officer in the US military. While he was there on his base contemplating a year in harm’s way, his opponent, Patrick Murphy, who was 19 years old at the time and still doing young foolish things, was busy getting a mug shot of himself taken for being drunk and disorderly at a South Beach nightclub.

Saying…what? Saying that Alan West has the moral high ground in going to war while his opponent was going to the slammer all those years ago?

Opening up the can of worms, and it is a big can of worms, about the story that led to the end of West’s military career.

That is, who has the higher moral ground, a drunk 19 year old or a mid-rank soldier in Iraq who took out his pistol and fired it next to the ear of a prisoner in an effort to extract information? Who has the advantage of an upstanding moral character, a 19-year old inebriate, or a middle aged middle ranked soldier guilty of torture on the battlefield?

And the real beauty of this is that Adam West himself broached the conversation. He brought it up. Now let him try and finish it while still standing up.

Wake the F**k Up

OK, I found a clean version of Samuel L. Jackson’s Wake the F**k Up video, a video that reads like a children’s book, but delivers a punch for the lazy, the lax and the listless. The voters who have not yet checked in that there is a critical election in just 39 days.

 

This video has other versions out there that are not bleeped, and I’ve heard them, and have found myself rolling on the floor. No one says F**k like Samuel L. Jackson. But I run a PG site and I needed to find a version much like the one I just saw on TV.

So here it is.

Hee hee.

Must Be a Slow News Day

Well all I can say is that it must be a slow news day at the Austin American-Statesman if they have to resort to printing a story about, of all things, Republicans stealing Obama campaign signs off the front lawns of their neighbors.

 

From the Austin American-Statesman:

 

"Doug McLean, who owned the sign, said he had lent it to his neighbor, from whose yard officials say Koble took the sign. McLean said signs had been taken out of the yard four times over the last couple of weeks, so he and his neighbor decided to stake out the property."

 

"McLean, 41, said he has video and audio showing Koble, who was walking down the street with another person and a dog, taking the sign. McLean said they confronted Koble, who McLean claims admitted he’d stolen the signs before."

 

I mean, really? This is news? It is news that a Republican will try to suppress the ability of a neighbor from making a political statement that opposes his own? My god, what's next? A headline story about the fact that a bright yellow ball came up from the horizon this morning?

 

Stealing political signage is not only commonplace here in Crazyred Fort Bend County it is expected local behavior. I do believe that if Republicans all of a sudden exhibited a respect for the sanctity of a neighbor's opposing political opinions, let alone the sanctity of his lawn, it will be a sign of the iminence of Apocalypse.

Occupy Pepper Spray

Remember just a year ago when the “Occupy Movement” was going strong and the law enforcement officials in various jurisdictions found a new hobby? Pepper spraying innocent civilians exercising their constitutional rights – and also a little bit of civil disobedience?

Remember the New Yorker women who were pepper sprayed while they were being held in a barricade?

Remember the UC students who were all sitting in a line with linked arms as a campus police officer methodically sprayed them all with gobs and gobs of pepper spray?

Those images still come to mind even a year later.

And now we are starting to see the legal fallout of wanton disregard for the health and safety of these people.

To the tune of a cool million.

250 large go to the lawyers to divvy up, and the rest go to the protesters who were pepper sprayed in this incident that we all remember well.

But guess who pays in the end? Ironically it will be the taxpayers that foot this bill. Not the Regents who oversaw and approved, not the Chancellor who ordered in the police, not the police themselves who were the true rioters in this incident.

The taxpayers of the State of California.

The 99%.