Unlucky Number 14

Or so I hope.

For the fourteenth time, Charles "Tex" Watson is trying to get out on parole.  For those who don't remember, Watson was the "handsome cowboy" of the Manson family.  He is the earliest example I can think of when it comes to a mass murderer having mass female fans.  For those too young to really know the story of Charles Manson, Tex was their Michael Kelso.

Every time this comes around, family members come to remind us that their loved ones are gone, taken in a way that was horrifying and painful, at the whim of a group of killers.  I still wouldn't buy it, but some criminals have gotten free by using the peer pressure method, and that is what they are trying to claim here.  He was tricked, some would say.  He was a young guy and now he's an old man, this is all because he listened to a tricky psycho decades ago and was suckered in.

You know who isn't old?  Sharon Tate.  Or Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.  If you watch later documentaries, there could be as many as a dozen "family members" who decided to leave and were killed instead.  They were rumored to be buried around the desert, sometimes as a warning and sometimes to prevent them from speaking with outsiders.  Old Tex wasn't tricked into killing just once, but multiple times, and in grisly ways that required dedication.  This wasn't a panic shot or overly enthusiastic purse snatching.  This is brutal murder.  A pregnant woman begged for her baby's life that night.  Another woman fought so hard that even with a cord tied around her neck she held off the intruders until blood loss from a bayonet made her too weak to stand.  These people fought hard and met  merciless death.  And this man was part of that from beginning to end.

Watson's attorney, Cheryl Montgomery, did not return repeated telephone messages.
Watson married and divorced in prison and has four children from conjugal visits, but his family did not respond to a request for comment that was left through the website that promotes Watson's prison ministry, http://www.aboundinglove.org.

You know who doesn't get conjugal visits? The LaBiancas, who died knowing their spouse was also doomed. Sharon Tate died protecting her baby, she doesn't get to see them grow up. She was eight months pregnant when they killed her. They took special steps to kill her child, and made sure she knew it before they took her life.

He doesn't deserve prison, but it'll have to do. I don't believe he has a chance in hell, but I'm still grossed out and slightly worried because when you toss the dice you run the risk of the wrong outcome.

Missing The Point Epic Fail Style

CHICAGO  -- Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis apologized to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Monday after a video of Lewis saying Duncan had a lisp was made public.

Lewis, who is also the vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, made the comments during a Northwest Teachers for Social Justice event in Seattle on Oct. 1. Video from the event was posted on YouTube by the conservative Education Action Group late last week.

"Now, you know [Duncan] went to private school 'cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed," Lewis said in the video.

So much for social justice, right? Who is so dense as to open a speech at a themed event by making fun of an adult for their lisp? Can anyone that clueless possibly have anything to offer? It's clear that she tried to be cool and came off as an ass, bringing the wrath of others who covered the event.

Conservative columnist and EAG CEO Kyle Olson slammed Lewis in a blog post about the Seattle speech.

"I thought we taught children not to mock or make fun of others. Apparently the teachers are exempt from such lessons," Olson wrote. "This is the best the Chicago school employees have to offer?"

In this instance, I agree.  This was supposed to be about education, social justice, and being better than the crowd.  Karen Lewis failed on all counts.

It's About Time Someone Stepped In (Privacy On The Web)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released the first draft of a new web standard aimed at improving online privacy. The W3C’s new Standard for Online Privacy is a set of tools that will ultimately enable your browser to stop sites from tracking your every move on the web.

The first draft of the new privacy standard revolves around the “Do Not Track” (DNT) HTTP header originally introduced by Mozilla as a part of Firefox 4. The DNT header — a bit of code sent every time your browser talks to a web server — can be used to tell websites you don’t want to be tracked. The goal is to give you an easy way to opt out of often invasive tracking practices like behavioral advertising.

Behavior advertising refers to the increasingly common practice of tracking your online behavior and using it to tailor ads to your habits. Advertisers use cookies to follow you around the web, tracking which sites you visit, what you buy and even, in the case of mobile browsers, where you go.

Participation can be circumvented by advertisement companies, but peer pressure should encourage sites to use only "approved" advertisements in the future. The FCC has failed to set any guidelines or rankings for privacy and enforcement is nil right now. This is an important first step in the right direction, now it's up to us to explain to businesses that we demand privacy and the ability to control when and how we are tracked.

Super Committee Super Collider, Part 2

The Super Committee's deficit reduction plans seem to have hit a bit of a snag in the "additional revenue" department.

It’s hard to see how the Super Committee can possibly reach a consensus by this time next week after Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling’s appearance on CNBC Tuesday night. The short version is that he left the ball in Democrats court, and hinted that if the committee fails, Congress will spend the next year or so trying to change the terms of an automatic penalty to make sure that hundreds of billions of cuts to defense programs never take effect.

Hensarling claimed that if the committee recommended even a dollar of new net tax revenue — the kind of revenue Dems are demanding — it would constitute a step in the wrong direction. He said a GOP plan put forward by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — one which Republicans claim would raise revenues by nearly $300 billion over 10 years, but would also make the Bush tax cuts permanent — is as far as Republicans are willing to go on revenues. But that’s an offer Democrats flatly rejected as unserious. And unless one of the parties breaks cleanly with its publicly stated position, the committee will either fall well short of reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years as required by law, or will fail altogether.

The Super Committee was never going to reach a deal, and the cuts were never going to happen.  As long as Republicans can filibuster in the Senate and/or control the House (and right now they can do both) nothing substantive will get done legislatively.  Ever.  It's designed to fail, because the GOP assures it will.  That nine percent approval rating doesn't matter because 85%-90% of Congress will get re-elected even in a "wave election" year like 2008 and again in 2010.  It's the same thing.

It's depressing, but true.

Meanwhile, Jeb Hensarling is running around saying that the Democrats have to give him 100% of what he wants, and then he'll maybe decide what he and the GOP can deign to give back.  But as usual, their starting position is complete victory or else.

Same as it ever was.

Moving Forward At Your Own Perry-il, Part 11

With his campaign in shambles, Rick Perry returned to Iowa and went for broke with the full Tea Party rewrite of the Constitution, knowing that there's no point now in pretending he's a moderate in any way.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on Tuesday announced a proposal to alter the federal government that ranks among the most radical plans offered by any major Republican presidential candidate this year — and one that legal analysts say will almost surely never happen: making Congress operate part-time with half pay and ending lifetime tenure for federal judges.

“I don’t believe that Washington needs a new coat of paint — I think the whole place needs to be overhauled,” Mr. Perry said, speaking to applause from more than 100 people on the floor of the Schebler manufacturing plant here. “I’m a true believer that we need to uproot, tear down and rebuild Washington, D.C., and our federal institutions.”

Mr. Perry, who is trying to reboot a campaign that is lagging in the polls, proposed cutting the pay of Congress in half (or by three-fourths, under one proposal he sketched out) and halving both its budget and the time members spend in Washington.

“We have a lot of well-intentioned members of Congress, but they have become creatures of Washington,” Mr. Perry said. “They get paid more than three times the average American family, and they have doubled their own budgets in the last decade.”

Mr. Perry also vowed to “reform” the federal judiciary. “Too many federal judges rule with impunity from the bench,” he said, “and those who legislate from the bench should not be entitled to lifetime abuse of their judicial authority.” He proposed 18-year terms, staggered every two years, for new Supreme Court justices, and suggested similar limits on federal appellate and district court judges.

Shorter Perry:  If I am elected as Rock in 2012, I promise to nerf Paper, and to nerf Scissors too for good measure.

It's telling that Perry's basically relying on the lunatic fringe to power what's left of his campaign at this point, promising to end the Departments of Everything on top of all this stuff, putting tens of thousands out of work, cutting off government services to pretty much everyone, and all while not having a chance in hell of actually enacting his plan.  But it doesn't matter, he's just reduced to being as crazy as he can possibly be right now in order to try to win back the increasingly insane GOP base.

They deserve each other, frankly.  But of course, all of us deserve better than them.

A Friend In Need

On a serious note this morning, Rumproaster Strange Appar8tus is in really, really bad shape in the hospital and Kevin and the Rumpies are putting out a call for help.  I owe the Rumpies a hell of a lot, they were one of the first blogs to notice ZVTS and reach out to us.  If you can help them out, do so:

We have a sad and urgent message about our dear friend and Rumproast blogger StrangeAppar8us: for the past ten days, he has been hospitalized and fighting for his life.  He is stabilized now to some degree, but is on a long, difficult road about which nothing is certain but that it will include disability. We wish we could tell you, our wonderful readers and friends, more, but we are committed to honoring Strange’s privacy, which is also the wish of his family. The day after he was hospitalized, I flew to Pennsylvania, accompanied by his friend and Rumproast founder Kevin K. and his lovely wife. Marindenver is here with him now as well.

What the Rumpies really need is someone to take care of Strange's cats.  If you can help, head over to Rumproast.

We're pulling for you, SA.

StupidiNews!

• Duke's Mike Krzyzewski now holds the record for most wins as an NCAA basketball coach as the Blue Devils took down Michigan State, 74-69 for win #903.
• Occupy Wall Street protesters returned to Zuccotti Park after being evicted and having that order backed up by a state Supreme Court judge.
• Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky's interview with Bob Costas may amount to a public confession of indecent exposure under Pennsylvania law.
• Massive flooding near Bangkok may not recede for months according to Thai officials, delaying efforts to restart factory production for several Asian companies.
• Mozilla is addressing concerns of memory leaks in its Firefox browser with an initiative called Memshrink.

Last Call

Looks like The Odious Patrick McHenry is getting a challenger he should worry about for NC-10 next year:  Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy.

“Washington is broken, and people are tired of watching the bickering and political posturing while businesses and families are struggling,” said Terry Bellamy. “As mayor, I’m expected to get results and we should expect no less from our Representatives. It’s time to send some people to Congress who can get the job done, and put North Carolina and the country back to work.”

A lifelong resident of Asheville, Bellamy is married to Lamont Bellamy and the mother of two children, Seth and Imani and her nephew, Keithan. She is the first African-­‐American and the youngest person elected mayor of the city. In 2009, she handily won re-­election to a second four-­‐year term.

Bellamy said jobs would continue to be her top priority. Most of the counties in the district have double-­‐digit unemployment and have been hard hit by trade policies that sent manufacturing jobs overseas.

“We need to refocus our priorities and stop outsourcing our jobs,” said Bellamy. “Instead of looking at companies’ bottom lines, we need to look at families’ bottom lines. We need to make serious investments in education that give our people the skills to create a workforce that attracts new industries and keeps those that are already here.”

I'm going to say this: an African-American woman Democratic challenger in NC-10 means this is going to be about as nasty a race as it can possibly get from McHenry.  It's going to be nothing short of brutal, but Terry Bellamy knows this.  More power to her.

I'd love to see my hometown Teabagger go down in flames.  Here's hoping.

Fire Walker Chronicles

The effort to oust Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker is officially underway.

Taking the next step in a battle that's been in the works since February, organizers planned a midnight kickoff to efforts to gather more than a half million recall petitions against GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

"There are some midnight collection events around the state. People are ready to go and want to start as soon as possible. There's a lot of excitement about it," said Meagan Mahaffey, executive director of United Wisconsin.

United Wisconsin, which is helping lead the recall efforts against Walker, planned a midnight electronic filing and a paper filing later Tuesday morning with state elections officials, Mahaffey said. Separate recall efforts against GOP senators also will be launched Tuesday. Meanwhile, Walker hit back with an ad campaign starting with Monday night's Green Bay Packers game.

The recall attempt against Walker formally begins a fight that has been looming since the governor introduced a bill in February to repeal most collective bargaining for most public employees. If successful, it would be only the third recall election for a governor to be held in the nation's history.

The group is hoping to get 600k signatures for Walker's recall, and they need them by January 14th, 60 days away.  If you've got friends up in Cheeseland, now's the time to point them towards the recall effort.  It's going to be a long haul, but as Ohio's Issue 2 proved a week ago, it can be done.

Time to send this Koch-head packing.

National Basket Case Association

The NBA's labor deal collapsed into a singularity of blame and recrimination yesterday, and America really has much larger problems to worry about right now as the entire season may be at risk.  Maybe I'm cold and petty, but this seems to me like a totally pointless exercise in futility.

The NBA Players Association on Monday rejected the owners’ latest offer and have launched the process to disband their union, throwing the entire 2011-2012 pro basketball season into jeopardy.


Players had the option to accept the offer, which proposed a shortened 72-game schedule beginning December 15 to end a months-long lockout, or take it to a vote and turn it down altogether.

“This is the best decision for the players,” union president Derek Fisher said Monday.

“A lot of individual players have a lot of things personally at stake in terms of their careers.

“And right now they feel it’s important … that we not only try to get a deal done for today but for the body of NBA players that will come into this league over the next decade and beyond.”

NBA commissioner David Stern had previously warned if the current offer is rejected, the owners would come back with an even harsher one.

“It looks like the 2011-12 season is really in jeopardy,” Stern told ESPN. “It’s just a big charade. To do it now, the union is ratcheting up I guess to see if they can scare the NBA owners or something. That’s not happening.”

But in order for the NBA to have a 72-game season, Stern admitted the two sides would likely have to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement within the next week.

The players gave up several billion dollars in salary.  The owners wanted the players to give up even more, so boom goes the labor dispute.  I find myself unconcerned, maybe it's because there's no NBA team in Cincy, and after the Hornets left Charlotte where I grew up and were replaced with the Bobcats (which to my knowledge have never won a playoff game) I turned to college b-ball instead.

I hope this does get resolved as there's a lot of folks who depend on the NBA for tourism dollars in league cities like Cleveland and Indianapolis.  Certainly they don't need to be made to suffer as the millionaire players fight the billionaire owners.

We'll see.

Lesson Learned: Kat Von D Gets A Taste

Kat Von D was famously the rebound girl for Jesse James after his messy, infidelity-plagued 2010 divorce from Sandra Bullock. The L.A. Ink star and tattoo artist, 29, and the motorcycle mogul, 43, called it quits for good in September after a nixed engagement and a brief reconciliation.

Von D admits in her post that she thought James was vilified and unfairly depicted in the media.

"There was a time when I was confident and excited at proving the world wrong, because I believed so deeply in people's ability to change for the better," she writes.

"Although this was not a primary purpose in the relationship, I did feel like it would be a positive thing for those who judged Jesse solely based on what they read in tabloids, to see that change is always possible -- even in the people who seem hopeless," she admits.

And she knows what all her fans and detractors are thinking. "I deserve a big fat 'I told you so,' from everyone, and wish I didn't have to say, 'You all were more right than you'll ever know' but you were," she concedes. "Not to worry, I've gladly paid the consequences for every mistake I've ever made, but learned so much from each of them."

Though generalities such as "once a cheater, always a cheater" aren't fair (I know some reformed players) it is fair to be wary of someone with that history.  I thought my mother didn't get it when she taught me those lessons, it turns out I was a little slow getting a handle on people.  People can change.  But they have to want to change, first.  And when it turns out to be harder than they imagined, they have to want to change more than they want to let it go and return to their old habits.  This guy is a jerk and a serial cheater.  He'll get what is coming to him, but how many women will he dredge through misery first? 

The reaction to his cheating on KVD isn't nearly as dramatic as when he cheated on Sandra Bullock.  It's clearly apples and oranges, Bullock was a trusting spouse who took a chance, Kat Von D was an idiot who tried to show the world she was better than that.  He failed, and so did she.

What a bunch of jackasses.

Used Car For Sale, Half Million In Coke Thrown In For Free

The used Chrysler minivan came fully loaded, with power steering, foldaway seats, tinted windows -- and half a million dollars' worth of cocaine.

San Jose psychologist Charles Preston had no clue there was a cellophane-wrapped stash of "snow" hidden inside the frame when he bought the pristine-condition, 2008 van last year from Thrifty Car Sales in Santa Clara. True, the windows wouldn't roll down all the way. But he had no reason to suspect it was because the door panels were crammed with kilos of coke.

He found out 15 months later when he went to a mechanic to get his brakes checked, and immediately turned the contraband over to police. Now, he's terrified a drug cartel still may be gunning for it.

"They told me, 'You're so lucky, you'd be in jail for the rest of your life if you got searched in a traffic stop and they found this.' "

But they also told him something chilling: Take the van back in to the repair shop to check for tracking devices because somebody is probably looking for it. Then get rid of it.

Despite the No Country For Old Men feel this story has to it, it really is a miracle that he wasn't stopped and put in prison for life. The fact that the van is used to aid a charity adds a bit of irony to it. But thinking that somewhere, a really pissed off coke lord is looking for his stash... that is the stuff of nightmares.

Thank goodness it worked out well for this man. Now if you don't mind, my seat doesn't slide all the way back, I have to go check something out.

The Demo-kvetch Party

Wouldn't be a news cycle without a "Congressional Dems are worried about X for 2012" story, concern X in this case being the Supreme Court's promised legal review of the PPACA.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried that the Supreme Court will rule against President Obama’s healthcare reform law.

Over the last couple weeks, congressional Democrats have told The Hill that the law faces danger in the hands of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times editorial page recently labeled the most conservative high court since the 1950s.

While the lawmakers are not second-guessing the administration’s legal strategy, some are clearly bracing for defeat.

“Of course I’m concerned,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The justices “decide for insurance companies, they decide for oil companies, they decide for the wealthy too often.”

The pessimism is fueled in part by the John Roberts court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case on corporate spending in elections, which Brown has called the “worst” in his memory.

I expect a little better from Ohio's Sen. Sherrod Brown, setting the table for blaming SCOTUS should the law be struck down.  I don't think it will be.  President Obama asked for this, because the question needed to be settled now.  It's a good law, and it's constitutional.  Proving that can only bolster the case for his re-election.

There is an argument about what a SCOTUS ruling would mean to the election, Steve M. covers this in more detail.  I happen to think that a ruling in favor of the President wouldn't hurt him, as the people who are going to vote against him because of "death panels in my breakfast cereal" were going to do so anyhow.

There is the notion however that more than one justice should recuse themselves from the case, the left argues Scalia and Thomas have a conflict because of openly dealing with the litigants, the right demands Kagan recuse herself because of her role as Solicitor General before joining the court.

I still think the law will pass muster, personally.

Cain Unable, Part 9

We come not to praise Godfather Pizza Caesar, but to bury his campaign under its own cheese, unremarked, unlamented, in a shallow grave in Milwaukee.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, in the midst of a Midwestern campaign swing, stumbled badly Monday when attempting to answer a question about whether he agreed or disagreed with President Barack Obama's approach to handling the Libyan crisis.

Meeting with Journal Sentinel reporters and editors before fundraising appearances in Milwaukee and Green Bay, Cain was discussing foreign policy in general when he was asked specifically about Obama's handling of Libya.

Cain paused for some time, then wanted to clarify that Obama had supported the uprising. Clearly struggling to articulate a response, Cain paused again, saying, "Got all of this stuff twirling around in my head."

Finally, Cain said: "I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is. And I'm sure that our intelligence people had some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition . . . might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no I did not agree with (Moammar) Gadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. . . . I would have supported many of the things that they did to help stop that."

The MJS's dryly clinical post-mortem notes on the death of Cain's campaign really don't do justice to the amount of fail accumulated by Cain here.  How truly bad was Cain's disastrous response to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board?  Judge for yourself.




There's no way out of this one, folks. If the sexual assault allegations weren't enough to finish him for the GOP chuckleheads in denial, this "performance art" in the theater of the absurd here is finito for the Pizza Man.

This pizza is burnt, if not charred.  Time to throw it out and pick the next flavor of the month, huh guys?

StupidiNews!

• The NYPD, outfitted in full riot gear, led an early morning raid to evict all of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park, rousting hundreds and arresting 14.
• Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky admitted to "showering" with children as young as ten, but insists he never did anything more.
• The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the 26-state case against the Affordable Care Act, hearing a record 5.5 hours of oral arguments in March with a decision in late June.
• The San Francisco Fed now says that the odds of the US falling into a second recession in 2012 are now over 50% on news of the European debt crisis.
• Researchers have discovered cleaner shrimp are under such biological pressure to form pairs to mate that they will kill other adult shrimp in their territory.