Last Call

As Hurricane Sandy ravages the East Coast today causing rain, wind, and snow damage from Columbus, Ohio to Augusta, Maine, keep in mind what President Romney's response to the storm would be.

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

Privatize FEMA because disaster relief is immoral unless we cut something else from the budget.  So if you live in Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, where your vote is crucial this year, you might want to keep that in mind.  At best, his plan is to leave national disasters up to states to deal with.

You're own your own under a Romney administration.  Nothing united about these states in a disaster.

Your choice, America.

Marines Prepare For Zombie Apocalypse

SAN DIEGO — Move over vampires, goblins and haunted houses, this kind of Halloween terror aims to shake up even the toughest warriors: An untold number of so-called zombies are coming to a counterterrorism summit attended by hundreds of Marines, Navy special ops, soldiers, police, firefighters and others to prepare them for their worst nightmares.

"This is a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume parry," said Brad Barker, president of Halo Corp, a security firm hosting the Oct. 31 training demonstration during the summit at a 44-acre Paradise Point Resort island on a San Diego bay. "Everything that will be simulated at this event has already happened, it just hasn't happened all at once on the same night. But the training is very real, it just happens to be the bad guys we're having a little fun with."

Hundreds of military, law enforcement and medical personnel will observe the Hollywood-style production of a zombie attack as part of their emergency response training.

In the scenario, a VIP and his personal detail are trapped in a village, surrounded by zombies when a bomb explodes. The VIP is wounded and his team must move through the town while dodging bullets and shooting back at the invading zombies. At one point, some members of the team are bit by zombies and must be taken to a field medical facility for decontamination and treatment.

"No one knows what the zombies will do in our scenario, but quite frankly no one knows what a terrorist will do," Barker said. "If a law enforcement officer sees a zombie and says, 'Freeze, get your hands in the air!' What's the zombie going to do? He's going to moan at you. If someone on PCP or some other psychotic drug is told that, the truth is he's not going to react to you."

It's a smart way to teach teams how to react when faced with the unexpected.  With the face gnawing going on recently, it couldn't hurt.  From destabilized populations to fast-spreading infections, we need to be prepared to handle anything that comes our way.

I love me a good zombie story.  Sleep well, knowing our military may be  having a bit of a joke but moving in the right direction to keep us safe from the unexpected

Waxing And Waning Stupidity

Couples may argue, but when the argue about being evicted from their home...well, that's just a different ball of wax. 

Denise Harris, a 39-year-old DeLeon Springs, poured hot wax on her boyfiend's face and hair and bit him in the jaw -- after a heated discussion about their impending eviction, reports The Daytona Beach News-Journal. 

When the boyfriend pushed her off him, she reportedly punched him in the nose, the report states.

It gets worse, but I think the worst of all is when I saw the picture I would have sworn she was a dude.  Which would explain the hot wax and punching a lot more than anything else I could come up with.

As for biting on the face... what the hell is up with this new trend?  I don't think in my entire life of reading news I could think of a dozen cases of face gnawing and now it is practically mainstream.

More suspicious news on face biting coming at 7 PM Zandar Standard Time.

Jackasses Abound

A family in Woodstock, Georgia, learned a difficult lesson about the dangers of posting an online advertisement. The Vercher family, who recently lost their home of 20 years to foreclosure, posted an ad on Craigslist on Tuesday night, informing people that a yard-sale-style giveaway would take place at their home the following day.

Well, on Wednesday morning, people turned out in droves. However, instead of just taking the free furniture that the family had placed outside, crowds ransacked the house, taking nearly everything inside. The Verchers tried to stop people from walking off with their belongings, but their pleas were ignored.

Everything is gone, including items of sentimental value.  I'm not sure how someone could claim a misunderstanding, I would think pleading for them to stop would be a red flag.  What kind of jackass could take from a family that had lost almost everything?  Apparently, an entire crowd of them exist.

School Teaches Kids How Shakedowns Work

A Mississippi town is facing a lawsuit for operating schools that handcuff and send children to prison for minor classroom infractions like violating the dress code or talking back to teachers.

Students in the town of Meridian sometimes spent days in a prison 80 miles away from their school without a probable cause hearing. They were not read their Miranda rights and sometimes spent more than 48 hours waiting for a hearing, which violates their constitutional rights.

Meridian police routinely arrested students without determining whether there is probable cause of an infraction or whether the school wants to press charges. Handcuffed, the students were sent to Rankin County youth detention center, which is about an hour and a half away by car.

Students were jailed for “dress code infractions such as wearing the wrong color socks or undershirt, or for having shirts untucked; tardies; flatulence in class; using vulgar language; yelling at teachers; and going to the bathroom or leaving the classroom without permission.”

Furthermore, all of the imprisoned schoolchildren referred to court were minorities, the lawsuit states. More specifically, the “school-to-prison pipeline” mostly affected African-American children and those with disabilities.

After being arrested, students are usually put on probation, sometimes without appropriate legal representation, the lawsuit claims. Students who are already on probation and violate more school rules could face suspension – time that would be spent at the detention center rather than at home.

Federal civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit two months after the Justice Department warned local and state officials that they had 60 days to cooperate with an eight-month investigation into the jailing procedures. The Mississippi town failed to cooperate.

The town is clearly in the wrong, and their failure to see that and to pretend to give a damn is appalling.  Kids should be learning their legal rights in school, but not through having them violated and those actions upheld by the town.

This is what happens when abuse of power goes too far.  It's also what happens when government fails to see the difference between serving the people and controlling them.  Kids are constantly learning, even when they don't realize it.  In this case, the lesson is what you see when government goes wrong.  Let us hope they eventually learn better.

This is nothing less than conditioning our young to give up their rights, to be afraid to speak up when their rights are violated.  We simply cannot allow this to happen.

Racing Around The Country

The outstanding Goldie Taylor brings it on race and this election.

“We are not as divided as our politics suggests,” Obama told us. Whites and blacks alike hitched their wagons to the hope of a new day.

An Associated Press poll released Oct. 27, tells a much different story. Rather than quell, our racial tensions have flared. According to the study, “The number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election.”

Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who co-developed the survey said, “As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time…it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago.”

Regrettably, white poll respondents attributed stereotypical terms like ”violent” and “lazy” to blacks and Hispanics.

“When we’ve seen [racial] progress, we’ve also seen backlash,” said Jelani Cobb, professor of history and director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Some believe that backlash could cost Obama the election. In fact, if John Sununu and Donald Trump are any gauges, Republicans are still banking on “white fear”— the same fear that drove Reagan democrats to the polls in 1980. The late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms used the infamous “Hands” ad during his 1990 campaign, to stoke white fears of losing employment opportunities to blacks because of affirmative action.

Unfortunately, history tells us that those campaign tactics can be successful — especially in an economic downturn when everyone is scrapping for a job.

If you want to know why this race is close, it's because race is always close.

Romney Up Against The Wall

With just over a week left, an increasingly desperate Romney has now descended into "McCain knew he lost" territory from four years ago and is now pulling out all the stops in the rapid-fire lying department here in Ohio.



Of course, the ad is a total and complete pile of lies.

1. “Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry.” No specific plan is referenced in the ad, and Romney’s campaign web site does not include a plan to “help the auto industry.” In 2008, Romney wrote a New York Times editorial titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” and he re-upped his call against the auto rescue during the Republican primaries this year.

2. “[Romney] is supported by Lee Iaccoca and the Detroit News.” Chrysler Chairman Lee Iaccoca has indeed endorsed Romney. The Detroit News, a self-described “conservative newspaper,” endorsed him last week. But in that endorsement, the paper slammed Romney’s “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.”

3. “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.” Obama did take both companies into a managed bankruptcy, the path Romney says was originally his idea. Romney, however, supported private sector financing of the bankruptcy, a plan that was “pure fantasy” at the time since no private lenders could lend to the companies in the middle of the financial crisis. Without federal intervention, the companies would have almost assuredly collapsed, costing 1.3 million jobs, according to industry estimates.

4. “[Obama] sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” This week, Romney claimed he read a news story that said Chrysler was planning to “moving all production to China.” The Bloomberg News piece he referenced, though, made it clear that Fiat, the Italian company that now owns Chrysler, was opening new factories in China to make Jeeps for Chinese consumers. No American plants will be closed, and no American jobs will be lost. The ad’s claim may not be as false as Romney’s previous statement, but it is certainly misleading.

But it doesn't matter.  He gets to lie with impunity.  And at least 45% of the state, if not 47%, will vote for him anyway.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Sandy takes aim at New Jersey as the massive super-storm is expected to cause serious damage from Ohio to Virginia to Maine.
• A Texas state judge has issued an order blocking Gov. Rick Perry's defunding of Planned Parenthood, but Perry is expected to ignore the order.
• Consumer confidence numbers for October closed at a 5-year high as Americans expect that looming economic problems will be dealt with after the election.
• The San Francisco Giants have swept the Detroit Tigers in four games to win their second World Series title in 3 years.
• The US Supreme Court today will hear arguments on reselling textbooks that could have major implications for ownership of intellectual property.