Meeting Of The Mindless

Rep. Todd Akin getting help from Sen. Rand Paul?  Oh somebody upstairs likes me.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) jumps in to the Missouri Senate race Wednesday with a statewide television ad critical of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill for her votes on foreign aid to countries that have seen violent demonstrations critical of the United States.

Paul is the latest Republican to defy party leaders and help the beleaguered Senate candidacy of Todd Akin, abandoned by the national GOP in August after telling a television interviewer that woman generally do not get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.”  Top Republicans, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ken.), asked Akin to drop out and cut national party support for his campaign.

Akin apologized but sank in the polls, surviving with a small cadre of defiant supporters, mostly Christian conservatives. McCaskill leads in most polls, but Akin’s numbers have recovered from the 20-point gap that emerged after his rape comment.

And McCaskill is still leading by most poll aggregates.  Rand Paul trying to be a national GOP hero?  Good luck with that.  That may play here in Kentucky, but you're going to find that what works here in ultra-conservative Kentucky is going to be a real problem for Todd Akin.

We'll see.

Tagg, You're It

And speaking of weird-ass kids, Mitt Romney's son Tagg had some interesting words for President Obama after Tuesday's debate, apparently.

Mitt Romney’s son Tagg said Wednesday that he wanted to punch President Barack Obama during the second presidential debate.

“I’m going to ask something I think a lot of people want to know, or at least I do. What is it like for you to hear the President of the United States call your dad a liar. How do you react to that?” Tagg was asked by radio host Bill Lumaye.

“Well — jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him,” he replied. “But you know you can’t do that because, well, first there is a lot of Secret Service between you and him but also because this is the nature of the process, they’re going to do everything they can do to make my dad into someone he is not.”

Two things, Tagg.  One, forget the Secret Service, Michelle Obama would flatten you like a pancake.  Two, your dad is very much a liar, Tagg.  He told 31 whoppers by one count on Tuesday night.

Maybe you should ask your dad what his economic plan is there, Taggster.  Nobody else in America seems to be privy to it.

Including Mitt Romney himself.

Cardboard Bicycles Coming Soon

(Reuters) - A bicycle made almost entirely of cardboard has the potential to change transportation habits from the world's most congested cities to the poorest reaches of Africa, its Israeli inventor says.

Izhar Gafni, 50, is an expert in designing automated mass-production lines. He is an amateur cycling enthusiast who for years toyed with an idea of making a bicycle from cardboard.

He told Reuters during a recent demonstration that after much trial and error, his latest prototype has now proven itself and mass production will begin in a few months.

"I was always fascinated by applying unconventional technologies to materials and I did this on several occasions. But this was the culmination of a few things that came together. I worked for four years to cancel out the corrugated cardboard's weak structural points," Gafni said.

"Making a cardboard box is easy and it can be very strong and durable, but to make a bicycle was extremely difficult and I had to find the right way to fold the cardboard in several different directions. It took a year and a half, with lots of testing and failure until I got it right," he said.

Weighing approximately fifteen pounds (compared to twenty for normal bikes) and given tires that will never puncture and are also recycled, this could be a world-changing event.  Gafni says he plans to use a business model that will allow him to pay employees and still make the bikes for free or near that.  He hopes retailers will keep the price at around $20 to encourage use and get the technology out there.  Poor countries and big cities can both benefit from this, and for those who hate to pedal the unit can be customized to work with a rechargeable motor.

How awesome is that?

HPV Vaccine Causes Little To No Change In Sexual Habits

So if girls have access to protection from death by sex, they don't go out and bump uglies with every available man.  I'll pretend to be shocked.

HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer and also has been linked with anal and oral cancers in women and men.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend HPV shots for girls and boys at age 11 or 12, before they have ever had sex. Three doses are generally recommended over six months.

Some parents have raised concerns that the shots "are a license to have sex," but the study bolsters evidence against that concern, said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City. She was not involved in the study.

First, license to have sex?  Regardless of whether they never had sex or humped every leg within miles, do they  not deserve the ability to save lives, including their own?

Science.  It works, bitches.

Mitt, Like A Boss

Mitt's latest gaffe from the past is from June, from a conference call with members of the National Federation of Independent Business, where Mr. Romney apparently suggested that America's bosses should make it clear that they would have to fire employees if President Obama was re-elected:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees. 

Considering the number of awful bosses who are doing just that, Mitt suddenly has himself a big, big problem.

The call raises the question of whether the Romney campaign is complicit in the corporate attempts to influence employees' votes that have been recently making headlines. On Sunday, In These Times broke the news that Koch Industries mailed at least 45,000 employees a voter information packet that included a flyer endorsing Romney and a letter warning, “Many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences [of a bad election result], including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.” Last week, Gawker obtained an email in which the CEO of Westgate Resorts, Florida billionaire David Siegel, informed his 7,000 employees that an Obama victory would likely lead to layoffs at his company. This week, MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes unveiled an email by ASG Software Solutions CEO Arthur Allen in which he, too, warned employees that an Obama second term would spell layoffs.

And now to hear that Romney is not only in support of these efforts, but actively telling business owners to do this, makes it pretty clear which candidate is on the side of the middle-class American worker.

It sure as hell isn't Mitt.  Spread the word.

Josh Romney Is Coming For Your Soul

Josh Romney is the most frightening man on Earth.  He's sitting next to his mother, Ann.

He is coming for your soul.

Your soul.  You, America.  YOU.

AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE HE HAS YOUR SOUL.

StupidiNews!

• FBI officials have arrested a 21 year old Bangladeshi man in connection with a plot to try to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City.
• Israeli jets have attacked the northern Gaza Strip in retaliation for Palestinian rockets hitting southern Israel.
• The Catholic Chuch is preparing for the recognition this weekend in Rome of the first Native American saint in church history.
• The world's largest re-insurance company says the disaster risk in North America has increased fivefold over the last three decades.
• Scientists say there's more than one way the moon could have broken off from the Earth after a massive collision millions of years ago.

Last Call

Podcast Vs. The Stupid episode 18 is up:  Binders Full Of Women.  Bon and I dive into the second Presidential debate in detail for the hour, and discuss how Mitt blew it again.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

As always, you can right-click and download here or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Out-Foxconned

The Apple/Foxconn story just keeps getting more odious ahead of next week's expected announcement of the iPad Mini in San Jose, and there's a whole new raft of questions the tech giant will have to face now that Foxconn has actually managed to break Chinese labor laws with underage workers.

Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics maker, has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law, in a case that raises further questions over its student intern program.

Labor rights activists in China have accused Foxconn and other big employers in China of using student interns as a cheap source of labor for production lines where it is more difficult to attract young adult workers to lower paid jobs.

Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, said it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.

"Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks," it said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This is not only a violation of China's labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions."

Sure it is.  And Foxconn gets busted again for awful labor practices.  One has to wonder how long Apple can keep the shine on its stock while opposition to Foxconn mounts.  At some point Apple's going to have to answer, and I don't think the company's going to be able to pretend they don't have a sweatshop issue for much longer.

We'll see.

There's A Flag On The Play

How far have the New Orleans Saints fallen since their historic Super Bowl win 3 years ago?  Ask fan David Mancina, who is suing the Saints organization for five million bucks.

In a class action lawsuit filed this week, first spotted by The Times-Picayune, Mancina calls for other Saints fans to join in free of charge to pursue a claim against the National Football League and league commissioner Roger Goodell for their roles in the suspension of several top players and members of the team’s management staff, including the head coach and general manager.

The NFL said earlier this year that the Saints had a “bounty” program that paid financial rewards to players who injured certain opponents. Defensive players were given $1,000 bonuses delivering a hit to an opponent that got him carted off the field and $1,500 if the injury was game-ending.

Four players were suspended along with members of management, and though Goodell reduced two of the players’ sentences, he said last week that he supports the league’s decision.

“Our investigation disclosed nearly two dozen players who either contributed to, or received money from, the pool operated by the Saints’ defense,” he told reporters on Tuesday, October 9. “The four disciplined players either were involved in specific bounties on an opposing player, contributed substantially to the bounty program, engaged in payments that violated League rules or were untruthful when the program was initially investigated.”

That didn’t quite wash for Mancina, a season ticket holder. He told ABC News affiliate WGNO in New Orleans on Tuesday that the league has a responsibility to inform people like him that it may suspend players and coaches at will.

“The NFL was not up front when I bought my tickets,” he said. “It’d be like buying tickets to go see ‘The Rolling Stones’ in February for a performance in the fall, and Mic Jagger’s not there.”

That seems like the suit will get dismissed out of hand, but something tells me it won't be the last time we'll see fans sue organizations like this, especially if behavior is bad enough to warrant suspensions like the Saints were slapped with after Bountygate in the off-season.

Who knows?  This guy's suit might actually go somewhere.

School Sweeps Sexual Assault Allegations Under The Rug

Laclede Co., Mo. -- Laclede County R-I School Board members met Monday night to talk about allegations of extreme bullying on a school bus full of Conway Junior High School boys.  A sixth grader told his parents group of boys forced him to take part in sexual acts on a bus during a field trip in May of last year.

"He got up and said, 'Mom, I gotta' tell you something.  It's really, really bad.' And he started telling me what happened," said the mother of the sixth grader allegedly bullied.

The child's mother said what she heard next was a disturbing account of three junior high school boys ganging up on her sixth grade son, exposing themselves, and performing sexual acts.

"It was so hard for him to tell, because he knew this group of boys was going to give him a terrible time at school for telling, and they have," she said,

The child's parents said it all happened in the back of a school bus headed to Branson for an end-of-the-year field trip.  They said the superintendent told them any disciplinary actions would happen the following school year.

"I would never, ever believe that a school administrator would hear something like this and not do anything," the child's mother said.

The actions qualify as both assault and sexual misconduct.  This was forced on a little boy, by his peers, and the school did nothing.  There was no follow-up.  In fact, the boy has had death threats made against him.  In his experience of the world, the bullies have the upper hand.  This isn't name calling or standard bullying behavior.  This is sexual assault.

The school replied with a thoughtless canned response saying they are dealing with it according to policy and student safety is a priority.  Apparently not, on both counts.  Unless it's policy to leave a defenseless kid without a safe haven and dismiss him when he shared very embarrassing things.

They should be ashamed.

Springfield, MO Local Pride

The longtime executive producer for Meet the Press, a NASA project manager and a Tuskegee Airman all got their starts in Springfield Public Schools.

The three, who soared to the top of their chosen career fields, will be inducted as the 2012 class of the Springfield Public Schools Hall of Fame.

The ceremony honoring Betty Cole Dukert, Charles Armstrong and Stewart Fulbright will be 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the White River Convention Center.

I won't be able to attend, but I am proud of our little area.  For such a small and isolated place, we have hatched more than our share of celebrities and recorded some key moments in history.  These are all role models that show we can be intelligent and hardworking people.  We can be driven and we can be surprising.  We are more than just Brad Pitt.

Red State, Blue State, Green State Debate

It wouldn't be a Presidential campaign season it seems without the most important duty of a third party candidate: getting arrested while trying to get into the televised debate.

In an act of civil disobedience to protest their exclusion from the presidential debates, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested outside the site of the second debate on Tuesday.

Stein and Honkala attempted to enter the debate hall at Hofstra University, but were refused entry by police because they lacked credentials.

Stein said the presidential debate was a “mockery of democracy” because it only included Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. Stein will appear on about 85 percent of state ballots this year. Another presidential candidate, Libertarian Gary Johnson, will also be on the ballot in at least 47 states. But neither third-party candidate will be included in the presidential debates.

After failing to outmaneuver a number of police officers who had created a blockade, Stein and Honkala sat down in the middle of the street. They were informed by an officer that if they did not move, then they would be arrested for blocking traffic.

Honkala responded that she didn’t want to block traffic, she just wanted to get into the debate. Stein and Honkala were then arrested without incident.

Well, that's certainly useful.

Look, I'm very sympathetic to the aims of the Green party, especially on global warming.  But pouting about not getting invited to the debate is just going through the motions, and it doesn't solve anything other than where Jill Stein spent Tuesday night.  What we need is a Congress willing to write legislation.  Green party needs to be focusing on Congress, not the White House.

That's just my take.

Debate Deblogging

As I said last night, President Obama got a pretty solid win last night, and the partisan Republican crowd scoring the debate at CNN agreed.

Forty-six percent of voters who watched Tuesday night's presidential debate said that the president won the showdown, according to a CNN/ORC International nationwide poll conducted right after Tuesday night's faceoff here at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. Thirty-nine percent questioned said Republican nominee Mitt Romney did the better job.

Obama's seven-point advantage came among a debate audience that was somewhat more Republican than the country as a whole and is within the survey's sampling error.

Pundit reaction below the jump.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 4.0 earthquake shook Maine and New England as far away as Boston Tuesday night, but no real damage was reported.
• Saudi Arabia will finally allow women lawyers to plead cases in court starting in November, according to kingdom officials.
• One of North Carolina's largest poultry producers has been hit with large fines for allowing 17-year-olds to handle electric knives.
• Citirgroup CEO Vikram Pandit, who abruptly resigned yesterday, may be leaving up to $33 million on the table in performance money this year.
• Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet around our stellar neighbor at Alpha Centauri, but the planet's temperature is far closer to super-hot Venus that Earth.