Showing posts with label Hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hypocrisy. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

SUBSTITUTE FROM A GROUP HOME

A couple weeks ago at a South Bend, Ind., middle school, students acted like they were fighting -- for at least seven minutes, because that's the length of a student-shot video that was posted for a short time on YouTube.

According to the South Bend Tribune, there's a good reason the teacher let the students roughhouse in class:
[T]he substitute lives in a local home for people with chronic mental illness. The residents have bedrooms, eat meals together and enter the community daily on their own. She moved into a home like this in 1999.

She says she was diagnosed with paranoia. At age 60, she also touts a master’s degree. She has experience teaching in the classroom ...
The sub never told the district about her mental illness, though she worked in South Bend schools for more than a decade. The district never asked. It fired the substitute after the YouTube video surfaced.

The student who shot the video -- most likely on a cell phone -- is suspended; the school principal wants him expelled. Cell phones are prohibited in middle school.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

ONLY THE SHOUTING REMAINS

A little less than a month before the presidential election and the result is already becoming clear -- Barack Obama is going to win. The latest polls show him hovering at or above the 50-percent mark, ahead of John McCain by a half-dozen points and winning the perception game. Many McCain supporters expect Obama to triumph, even though the feeling is acid to their intestines. Lost faith, abandoned hope.

Only a cataclysm -- the proverbial dead girl or live boy -- can keep Obama from winning on Nov. 4. He'll be nicked and bloodied plenty before the votes are cast, but McCain cannot stop him. Neither can Sarah Palin, no matter how loud her bark. Devoid of discussion about their plans for our future, the GOP ticket has been reduced to incessant yapping about the badness of their opponents. They are Bob Dole without the humor, Walter Mondale without the eloquence. All they can do is smile and bray and pretend the hurricane hammering the screen door is only a drizzle.

Pretending -- or, as they like to call it, creating a new reality, a master trick of this century's Republican Party. As one of President Bush's senior advisers said in 2002:
"[W]e create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
People attached to that "senior adviser" (read: Karl Rove) are now in John McCain's campaign posse; their greasy thumbprints are all over the place, instantly recognizable to the naked political eye.

They're rolling out the dogeared book of dirty tricks and pulling out their favorite reality changers. The biggest crowd-pleaser, naturally, involves demonizing The Media. Rolling Stone publishes a solid on McCain's unflattering past, but most conservatives won't bother to read it -- they're convinced the mainstream media is out to get their guy and his purty sidekick, dadgummit, so you can't believe anything The Media says.

This, of course, is a reliable hypocrisy from the camp that loves to hate. In their twist on twisted reality, The New York Times is a vile snakepit of liberal Obamabot liars, except when they write about Obama's connections to '60s radical William Ayers. That's when the Times is gospel money.

(One of our favorite conservative alternate-reality pranks is the "you won't see this in the mainstream media" snipe hunt. About once a month somebody will send an e-mail with a story or pictures about a heartwarming, positive story, datelined Iraq, with the header: You Won't See THIS In The Mainstream Media. The story, without fail, was written by The Associated Press and published across the country.)

The neo-reals have also uncorked the "some say" genie, a cousin to "fair and balanced." The latter claims "both sides" need to be heard, even if one side insists science is valid and the other clings to supernatural magic. Thank God the people who spew this line weren't reporting in 1945; they would have asked the Nazis for their side of the Holocaust -- you know, just to be fair and balanced.

Their "some say" attacks are clumsy but effective. "Some say Barack Obama is a Muslim." "Some say Obama is a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda." "Some say Obama is actually Osama bin Laden's second cousin, once removed." It might be bilge water, sure, but some say it's true, so why not have that debate? We don't expect McCain to go that far in his Tuesday debate with Obama, but anything is possible when a certifiably insane man runs for president. There could even be knives, though we suspect the debate commission will probably run both candidates through metal detectors before they take the stage.

McCain has no choice but to throw the long, noxious pass -- think of it as a Hail Mary stinkbomb. If it lands just right it will cover Obama in muck so deep and vile that every other Chicago politician will seem spotless by comparison. And even that might not be enough to stop Obama.

This is John McCain, distilled. Half a lifetime spent gladhanding and grinning, plotting and attaining, now reduced to one last gambit that probably won't work. Purgatory can be peculiar, especially in an unreal reality.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

CLEAN FOR US, DIRTY FOR THEM

We first told you about CleanFlicks in July 2006, when a judge ruled the company could not scrub sex, language and violence from movies without the permission of the films' creators and owners.

Now CleanFlicks is back in the news, in a delightfully hypocritical way. As Christianity Today reports:
The co-founder of CleanFlicks, a video editing service once used by many Christians, has been arrested in Utah for allegedly paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Daniel Thompson, who ran CleanFlicks till the courts shut it down in 2006, had more recently operated Flix Club, a family-friendly edited-movie video business in Orem, Utah. He was arrested last Thursday on two charges of forcible sexual abuse and two charges of forcible sexual activity with a 14-year-old. Thompson is out on bail.

Thompson’s business partner at Flix Club, Isaac Lifferth, was also arrested on similar charges.

Thompson reportedly told police that Flix Club, which carried videos in which objectionable content had been edited out, was only a front, and that he and Lifferth were also involved in making and distributing porn movies.

Flix Club was forced to close last year after a federal court ruled that movie-editing businesses violated U.S. copyright law when they "sanitized" films by removing nudity, sex, profanity, and other objectionable content.

According to police reports, Thompson and Lifferth allegedly paid two 14-year-old girls $20 each to perform oral sex, and Lifferth allegedly had intercourse with a 16-year-old girl multiple times, including in the offices at Flix Club.
What happened at Flix Club did not stay at Flix Club.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

CRAZY FROM THE BEAT

The noise. The infernal, incessant noise -- nothing 5/4 cool like John Bonham doing "Four Sticks," but a pounding that stutters like the kit in a Britney Spears track. "Toxic," maybe. Or maybe it's from Madonna's "Ray of Light." Either or. There's nothing in it that tears away the pretense and tears down the gut. Nothing but hollow pounding and it's coming from the Democrats, the only party capable of slipping and falling face-first in its own waste, drowning in its own shit.

Give them a cinch and they insist on making it close. They will blame a nailbiter in November on the nefarious tactics of their political opponent. Don't believe it. The Democrats of 2008 are perfectly poised to bitch and moan their way out of an electoral landslide.

The pentapolis of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich is now down to a trio, but really a duo, because Edwards may be coming to Springfield, Mo., but his heart and soul will be somewhere else that day, hiding from the realities of a decomposing campaign. No one thinks he can win. The goal now is deciding the owner of the backside that will feel the sliding intrusion of Edwards' shiv. Hillary? Barack? Too early to decide, and both targets are too tempting. Like the blade when it pierces, revenge should be sharp and cold and unexpected.

Neither Obama nor Clinton will notice the knife's plunge -- they might see Edwards flash a shark-like grin, or maybe hear a honey-tongued epithet; everything sounds so much sweeter when it's doused in a Carolinian twang -- but they won't see it because they'll be too busy with the bloody knuckles and concussions sustained in their own disgusting fist fight.

Edwards might get away with a manslaughter rap, you know. Justified homicide isn't an unreasonable outcome, except Clinton knows too many dangerous people and Obama is a made man in Chicago politics. Edwards will have to do some time -- but it will be in moderate accommodations, nothing too punishing or demoralizing. In due time he will be rehabilitated.

The fates are muddier for Clinton and Obama. The Pentapolis of the Old Testament is remembered only for the two classy signposts of Sodom and Gomorrah, where hospitality was definitely not served in heaping helpings, and look what happened. Salt and bitter. Harsh and mean.

A mean streak runs through both the Clinton and Obama camps. Obamaniacs can't stand the nuclear weapon that the Clintonistas possess -- the BOAB known as Bill, with the power to dissuade enemies both foreign and domestic. He's an ex-president, dammit, and it's a pretty small club these days, what with Reagan and Ford kicking the bucket and a confused Carter wandering off the property with increasing rapidity. No wonder Bill and George the First have such curious common ground.

Eleanor Roosevelt once observed that campaign spouses should "always be on time and do as little talking as humanly possible." But she never knew Bill. It is not humanly possible for him to stop scheming, and it's not always a bad trait -- Eleanor's husband dug bold, persistent experimentation, and in his best moments, Bill Clinton is capable of brilliance.

But the worst moments bring out brutality, and the verbal pummeling for which Bill is famous. He's in full rasp these days against the forces of evil who won't let go and bend to his reality that Hillary will win the nomination of her party. Bill's party. Even if it takes calling out the Tiananmen tanks and lobbing the Bill bomb.

Ridiculous waste of firepower -- but we've learned to expect no less from Clintonistas. Once the first bullet is fired -- sometimes by others, often by them -- they shellac the land with everything in the arsenal. It's quite the bang to watch, if you're properly dosed, but exhaustion inevitably sets in until you feel slimy behind heavy lids. Doesn't take away from the gutter arousal of witnessing an ass kicking, but there's always blood to wash off, and unless you're careful the stain sets.

"Machine politics!" cry the Obamaniacs, correct but clueless. Their leader, no innocent, knows all about machines. He has a fine and powerful one, and uses it to gull his supporters into believing that Bill Clinton has no business talking up his wife and talking down her opponent. He deludes them with the idea that a Hillary win means an actual Clinton dynasty. He tries to convince them, through his Barack bots, that Hillary would have Republicans in an uproar -- but that Barack could bring them around and unite the country.

Obama's machine spreads these rotten memes like nasty oil spurts from a broken engine block. The worst one warns that his followers won't support the Democratic candidate for president if it isn't Him.

Their ilk pulled this in 2000 when they said they wanted change, and Al Gore was no different than George Bush, only back then the machines were run by Bill Bradley and Ralph Nader. Gore was the establishment, the conventional. The starry-eyed who turned their noses up at him got their change from Bush.

There's still time for Dems to stop their idiocy. Still time for the Cult of Barack to snap out of its infatuation -- and for Clinton to mend fences, kiss ass, muzzle her husband. She does that, she wins.

Once she's in the White House as jefe, Hillary won't leave Bill much, if any, time for policy wonking -- her Oval Office, Bubba, not yours. He'll have even less room to roam. The Secret Service and all its potential for fatal mischief will belong to her, and no one thinks she won't use it, especially if she suspects Bill is sniffing around on some sultry summer night. Poor sumbitch. He'll never know what hit him.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

OH, THE HUMANITY

Gore everywhere, and not the Al kind. The political landscape of January 2008 is saturated with blood and brains. Tiny bits of skull stud the mess like pieces of broken tile, the sort of bad art deco done by people who watch too much HGTV.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt held a news conference on Wednesday and actually laughed and smiled. The first time it happened the heads of a few reporters and opinion writers immediately exploded (the shooters survived intact because they have seen and heard everything; nothing a politician says or does can surprise a photog). A mult box was liberally splashed with blood, and from that point forward everyone's recording was marred by a low hum.

No one among the sane bought Blunt's excuses for not seeking a second term. This was largely because Blunt never lived up to his surname. Had he said something like -- Polls showed I was losing to a guy named Nixon, and Christ, if that isn't bad, I don't know what is. I'm packing it in, boys and girls, getting out while the getting's good. See you suckers in Hell. -- well, heads still would have exploded, but at least there would be a reason for the sanguinary scene. We would get the last W in our filthy mitts to go with the Who, What, When and Where. We would know truth. We would know the Why.

For now we know nothing that's real. There is only a suspicion that Matt Blunt has been replaced with some sort of malfunctioning robot, an incredible fake that looks and talks like him, but has a touch too much good humor. We will know for sure it's a cyborg if it starts bedding down in the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City, or maybe picks up a phone and talks with Roy Blunt.

---

Mitt Romney has his own exploding head problem, only it's not his noggin in danger of becoming blood pudding. It's the other guys running against him. They hate his guts.

According to a New York Times report, Romney has become "the most disliked" candidate, the black-hole equivalent to Miss Congeniality:
“The glee the other candidates go after Romney with is really unique,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on (John) McCain’s presidential campaign bid in 2000 but is not affiliated with any campaign now. ...

Mr. Schnur used a schoolyard analogy to compare Mr. Romney, the ever-proper Harvard Law School and Business School graduate, to Mr. McCain, the gregarious rebel who racked up demerits and friends at the Naval Academy.

“John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,” Mr. Schnur said.
Bam! More heads shatter and spray. These belong to the conservatives who despise McCain for his campaign-finance loving ways (not to mention his soft stance on immigration -- he doesn't want to strangle illegals with his bare hands, unless they're from Vietnam). They think McCain is nuts, and even though we happen to agree, it's difficult to hate the guy for it. When those eyes get to dancing in McCain's misshapen head you can catch a glimpse of the hell-with-it devil infesting his brain, and damned if it isn't endearing in a goofy gramps sort of way.

Hardline conservatives don't feel that warm mojo. Screw McInsane, I won't vote for him and the party can suck it. Same goes for Huckabee. No less than The Godfather says McCain and Huckabee are destroyers:
I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party, it's going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren't going to vote. You watch.
Thus Rush throws his considerable weight behind Romney, by default. Tepid but tolerable. The country-club Republicans say Mitt's good enough on abortion, on gays, on all the social issues, because he's a damned fine businessman and a good-looking fella and that doesn't mean we're gay, we just appreciate a mighty fine looking man, someone with a chiseled chin and silver at the temples and five handsome sons, none of them looking too hairy, and did we mention we're not gay?

---

Over at Free Republic the gore is ankle-deep, Dexter deep. Conservative darling Duncan Hunter has endorsed the much-maligned Huckabee, and Freepers are freaking. They hate Huckabee because he reminds the Freepers too much of Bill Clinton -- a formidable pol who wears the mask of the optimist. Besides, his last name makes them think of hillbillies.

The discussion about Hunter's endorsement makes Scanners look like Gumby -- the Claymation version, not Eddie Murphy, dammit. It's all confusion and bad blood on the slippery floor, and it's only January. The chance of more mayhem is great.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

ROMNEY EMPLOYS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

So it seems, according to this Boston Globe story. Here's the lede:
Standing on stage at a Republican debate on the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, Mitt Romney repeatedly lashed out at rival Rudy Giuliani for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City.

Yet, the very next morning, on Thursday, at least two illegal immigrants stepped out of a hulking maroon pickup truck in the driveway of Romney's Belmont house, then proceeded to spend several hours raking leaves, clearing debris from Romney's tennis court, and loading the refuse back on to the truck.

In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Despite a Globe story in Dec. 2006 that highlighted Romney's use of illegal immigrants to tend to his lawn, Romney continued to employ the same landscaping company – until today. The landscaping company, in turn, continued to employ illegal immigrants.

Two of the workers confirmed in separate interviews with Globe reporters last week that they were in the country without documents. One said he had paid $7,000 to a smuggler to escort him across the desert into Arizona; the other said he had come to the country with a student visa that was now expired. Both were seen on the lawn by either Globe reporters or photographers over the last two months.
Just doing the jobs that Americans won't do.

Monday, November 05, 2007

HIT ON MITT

Willard Romney, better known as Mitt, looks and sounds like the perfect presidential candidate -- great jaw, comforting voice, attractive spouse, loving kids.

Too perfect. That's the rub and the death knell for Romney. He has no rough edges. No one can identify with that.

Harper's has the definitive piece on why Romney's campaign is ultimately doomed. It's all in the Romney 2008 internal PowerPoint plan:
The problems holding him back were all identified in the campaign’s PowerPoint presentation: the Massachusetts background, the image of slickness, the fears about his religion, and, above all, mistrust of his ideological transformation. Romney and his handlers portray him as having undergone a political conversion, but they can’t point to any convincing catalyst. ...

The “electorate is not where it needs to be for us to succeed,” his campaign PowerPoint had concluded; hence, the strategy has been to move Romney where he needs to be to succeed.
And we thought Bill Clinton was slick.

Monday, August 27, 2007

SENATOR COPS PLEA IN MEN'S ROOM CASE

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, after being busted in the men's room of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Cops say he was trolling for sex.

Roll Call reports:
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.
Last year, Craig denied a blog report that claimed he's gay. Monday, Craig's web site offers this lukewarm defense:
"At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct.

"I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously."
Craig has been a senator since 1991.

Who cares if he's gay? No one should. But Craig supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, and voted against a bill that would have included sexual orientation in the federal definition of hate crimes.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

HEY, SAILOR

In 2004, Jason Knight was a petty officer, third class, in the U.S. Navy. He got married. But that only confirmed what he'd long suspected: He was gay.

Knight told his superiors. He was discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The military took his $13,000 sign-on bonus.

Where is Jason Knight now?

Just finishing a one-year tour in Kuwait with Naval Customs Battalion Bravo. The Navy called him up for short-term active-duty recall. He's now a second-class petty officer.

Stars & Stripes reports:
"He's better than the average Sailor at his job," said Bill Driver, the leading petty officer of Knight's 15-person customs crew in Kuwait. "It's not at all a strange situation. As open as he is now, it was under wraps for quite a while. It wasn't an issue at work."

Another Sailor with the detail, Petty Officer 1st Class Tisha Hanson, works in admin and has had to process discharges for homosexual Sailors before.

"I've obviously never heard of something like this happening before," she said of Knight's return to active duty. "But it doesn't bother me. The Navy tends to keep people who don't want to be here, but Jason does."

In Knight's case, he was given an honorable discharge when booted from the Navy on April 4, 2005. Though it's not widely known, a clause in the military's policy on discharging gays allows commanders discretion on what form of discharge to give a gay servicemember.
"Don't ask, don't tell." Don't bother.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

GIVING PROPS TO A MAJOR ROD

Last week's Conservative Political Action Conference is mostly remembered for Ann Coulter going off the deep end. Lost in the outrage is the story of Matt Sanchez, a Marine Corps reservist who says he was called a "baby killer" while attending school at Columbia University.

For standing up to such criticism, Sanchez was awarded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at last week's CPAC. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin fawned over Sanchez. Here he is with Sean Hannity. And with Ann Coulter.

Sanchez used to have an alias -- Rod Majors. He did gay porn. Here's a link that will lead you to some pics of Sanchez/Majors that are not safe for work, kids, prudes or the weak of heart.

On his blog, Sanchez says he'll have a response sometime on Wednesday. This ought to be good.