On my way to and from work I pass by a dump called the Grizzly Rose. It advertises itself as a "honky tonk" featuring nationally known musical acts. In the past they've featured such luminaries as Bret Michaels and Dokken.
So on the way into work this morning I looked at marquis and noticed that Charlie Daniels is playing there on Friday. Hadn't though of that shithead in a very long time, and the revulsion welled up with frightening rapidity.
Yep, it's the same guy who got all bent out of shape over suggestions that his song declaring "This ain't no rag, it's a flag, and we don't wear it on our heads" might be a little racist.
But my favorite Daniels moments came in 2002 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit first decided Newdow v. U.S. Congress. Those were heady times for atheist legal activism. In that case a pro se litigant did what everyone considered impossible, namely convincing a panel of federal appellate court that both the 1954 federal legislation adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and a public school district's Pledge recitation policy were unconstitutional. The court of appeals later scaled back its holding to cover only the school district policy, and SCOTUS eventually threw out the scaled-back ruling on standing grounds, but hey, it was an impressive accomplishment just the same.
In the immediate aftermath of the decision, Fox News Channel repeatedly had Daniels appear on camera and rant about how the 9th Circuit's ruling was an anti-constitutional abomination and requiring school children to acknowledge the existence of the Judeo-Christian God was A-OK because that's what the founding fathers had in mind, and blah blah blah.
I'd forgotten that Charlie Daniels existed. I was deeply disappointed to discover today that he's not only still alive but still touring. Probably still writing racist ditties as well ("This ain't no nig, it's a jig, and we don't wear it on our gargantuan lips").
So thank you, Grizzly Rose. Thank the everloving shit right the fuck on out of you.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
So I guess it wasn't a coincidence that Gallagher was the inspiration for the comedian in this series of sketches from Acceptable TV (starring Dan Harmon, creator of Community as McGillicutty):
Fuck you Jamie P. Olson, an employee of Wyoming Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
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The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
-- Official Bunny Hero
Here's one from my old stompin' grounds. Back on September 30 some angry 52-year-old white man got all "riled up" about the Mooslims after watching Fox News.
So what did he do? Why, he did what anyone else would do under the same or similar circumstances. He drank 45 beers, jumped in his vehicle and drove from his home in St. Joseph, Indiana to the Islamic Center of Toledo in Northwest Ohio, which until not too terribly long ago was the largest mosque in North America. Brandishing a firearm, he did a room-to-room search for people. Finding none, he dumped gasoline on a prayer rug and lit that shit up. The fire resulted in building-wide damage, mostly from smoke and water.
The asshole pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. According to the above-linked articles, he'll be spending 20 years in federal prison.
The sentence qualifies this story for the Two Minutes Love thread, but it gets posted here instead because of (1) what an abominable shithead the defendant is, and (2) the identity of the judge.
I knew Jack Zouhary when he was an insurance defense lawyer in Toledo. He was on the other side of a couple of my cases, and was maddening to deal with. According to a judge I spoke with, Jack was responsible for what was at the time the biggest plaintiff's verdict in Lucas County history. It was a railroad crossing car-train collision, and Zouhary was counsel for the railroad. The judge in question presided over the trial. According to him, the plaintiffs' case wasn't all that great; the liability verdict and lofty damages award was primarily a function of the jury's hatred for ol' Jack.
I'd forgotten that Zouhary was a federal judge (Shrub appointee, naturally). That fact would have remained cheerfully forgotten but for the fact that some shitnozzle from Indiana decided to burn down a mosque in Ohio and landed in Zouhary's court for his trouble.
So yeah. Thanks for the reminder, fuckface.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
This one comes from the movies. Not a specific movie, but those commercials before the trailers. Coke has this new one where Santa Claus is picking up snow globes and sloshing them around and this somehow gets certain people to certain places so that the Christmas Spirit and Good Times can happen and everyone can be happy and get what they want. Except this one dude is at his office and Santa starts sliding him around town and he ends up at his son's school play or something. So, he's all in his office chair and slides down the center aisle and stops by the front row. He sees his son and gives him this wink and a smile like "Hey, Son, here I am like I wanted to be," when he didn't do nothing to get himself there. I'm all "You arrogant piece of excrement! If not for the intrusion of the Great and Powerful Claus you'd still be up to your elbows in spreadsheets and vending machine wrappers! YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT!" And then I remember that it's just a stupid Christmas Coke commercial playing before a stupid movie and should I really get worked up over it? And then I'm mad because a stupid commercial is making me reflect about something and that somebody thought it was such a good idea to put on film anyway.
I just read that a mother in Italy was sent a bill by a private cleaning company that was charged with removing her 15-year old son's blood from the road where he died in a scooter accident.
It's bad when cops make a mistake and raid the wrong house. But they're human and humans make simple mistakes all the time. Heck, it may not even be their fault that they arrive at the wrong house. And when they arrive at the wrong house, for whatever reason (or even the right house, keep reading), they shoot the home owner's dog(s). That's upsetting and it makes a lot of people angry and it happens a lot. But you know what is insult to injury should this terrible chain of events occur?
Fisher just wants the police to take "responsibility for their actions."
* Watser? wants politicians to take responsibility for their actions. * Watser? wants bankers to take responsibility for their actions * Watser? wants the NRA to take responsibility for their actions
Rising numbers of vulnerable jobseekers are being tricked into losing benefits amid growing pressure to meet welfare targets, a Jobcentre Plus adviser has told the Guardian.
A whistleblower said staff at his jobcentre were given targets of three people a week to refer for sanctions, where benefits are removed for up to six months. He said it was part of a "culture change" since last summer that had led to competition between advisers, teams and regional offices.
"Suddenly you're not helping somebody into sustainable employment, which is what you're employed to do," he said. "You're looking for ways to trick your customers into 'not looking for work'. You come up with many ways. I've seen dyslexic customers given written job searches, and when they don't produce them – what a surprise – they're sanctioned. The only target that anyone seems to care about is stopping people's money.
It's OK, though, guys. Steven Seagal has "put hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours" into his weapons training. He totally knows what he is doing. He is eminently qualified to train groups of armed child molesters and other violent criminals to patrol public schools.
Hospital puts "No African American nurses" note on file to appease racist shit-head parents. Allegedly. I know I think or say this at least once a day, but seriously WTF Flint?
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Due to some spectacularly sloppy and incompetent datamining, our landline is on some list of old people (they list the number as belonging to my dad, who would be almost 90 if he were alive). Because of this, we are pretty much a honeypot for elder fraud. It used to be just every now and again, we'd win some fake lottery or get calls and junk mail about our timeshares or fake bills or whatever, but recently, it's picked up to the point that we get calls almost every day, usually for home security or credit card consolidation scams.
Turns out that the scammers have added a new layer of fraud to their existing schemes to scam old people, by hooking up with providers of Caller ID data to charge phone companies for lookup fees every time they make a call.
The entire idea of For-Profit Private Prisons is worthy of its own 2 minutes of hate. Especially with the completely generic Owelianish name of GEO Group.
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