- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:14 PM

 
Pointless Speculation. The news and newstalk shows on TV and radio are filled with pointless chatter today about the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow. At 9pm, MSNBC's Verdict with Dan Abrams began above an announcement that Pennsylvania's polls open in 10 hours. But despite the imminence of the actual vote, Abrams and company had to flap their lips about something that might not happen, the failure of Barack Obama to "close the deal" with voters in big states with lots of electoral votes. Nothing these self-important pundits say today on that topic could not wait until Obama had actually been defeated, whereas if he is NOT defeated, but wins outrite or comes so close that he might just as well have won, all commentary about the implications of Obama's failure would be rendered irrelevant.
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What exactly is the point of speculating about something that hasn't happened, so you have no hard data whatsoever to talk about, when whatever is going to happen will happen tomorrow, such that if you merely wait one day you will have all the data in the world?
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I know that commentators love to prove that they are so smart that they know what will and will not happen. Oooooh, I can see into the FUTURE! Wooooooh, scary! Except that they are all pretty much saying the same thing, that public-opinion polls indicate that Billary will win in Pennsylvania. If some were to put themselves out on a limb and say, "The polls are all wrong. Barack is going to win, and win big", that would be a statement worth fixing your reputation on. But when all that all of these people are saying is that Obama can't seem to win the big states, the analysis as to WHY he can't do so will be stronger AFTER the Pennsylvania primary than before.
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Let's be clear: What might happen is not news, because it might NOT happen. News is what has actually happened.
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You can't wait one day? What is wrong with you people? Shut the f*k up and wait one f*g day! (Oops. That should be "Shut the fasterisk up and wait one fasterisking day!")
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:43 PM

 
"Economic Stimulus" Fraud. There's a new scam making the rounds of the Internet now, an attempt to steal from people's bank accounts by using the "economic stimulus" rebates Americans are to receive as bait to get people to reveal their banking information to thieves.
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An email arrives from a forged email address ending in "@irs.gov", with an IRS logo at the top and a message in this form:

Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy.

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please click on the link and fill out the form and submit before April 18th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be processed as soon as possible.

Submitting your form on April 18th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

To access Economic Stimulus Refund, please click here.

© Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.

If you overlook a few oddities, like "President Bush Program" rather than "President Bush's program", "to access Economic" rather than "to access your Economic", and "Refund" rather than "Rebate", you might be tempted to speed the process. But if you hover your cursor over the clickable link, you will see that it does not take you to an IRS website at all. The one I got showed this path: "http://thesalthouse.com/webalizer-old/.secure/.refund.php". To investigate how this fraud then unfolds, in order to tell you, I clicked on that link, but it produced a 404 "Page Not Found" message because someone presumably discovered the fraud and shut that particular page down. But there will be others opened. And others, and others, until and unless we get draconian-tuf with Internet crime.
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As is the case with all crimes for profit, extremely severe punishment is the cure for this social problem: a year in prison for each person such a criminal even attempts to defraud, and if the total number of years is more than 100, DEATH, since no one can be expected to live more than 100 years in prison after being sentenced in adulthood. DEATH would end this and the majority of other scams overnite. And perhaps nothing BUT death will do so, because when people do a cost-benefit analysis, they factor in the likelihood of being caught and tried, and right now that seems to weigh heavily in their favor. But if the other side of the calculation is that if indeed they are caught, they will be KILLED, "likelihood" that they will escape punishment is not the same as "certainty", and if there is a one in 10,000 chance they will indeed be arrested, tried, and then KILLED, by far most people will look for another way to make a living.
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Almost no one gladly dies to make a living.
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So kill them all, every last one of these Internet thieves and hackers who target hundreds or even thousands or tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, and the Internet will be safe. You won't need to pay out your hard-earned money for a firewall nor for updates to an antivirus program. Government will control Internet crime as it controls other crime. And the world will have a rich supply of organs and tissues harvested from Internet criminals chopped up for parts for decent people. Win-win.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:44 PM

 
Hypocrisy on Healthcare. John McCain is opposed to universal healthcare at government expense. Think about this.
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John McCain was born into a MILITARY family, which he readily concedes. What you are not to think of is that HIS healthcare and that of his entire family was provided and paid for by the United States military: the Government.
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He attended Annapolis, a high-quality MILITARY academy (university), at Government expense. In that institutional setting, all his medical needs were met and paid for by the Government, from general revenues.
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He then went into the MILITARY himself, where all his medical needs were met at PUBLIC expense.
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In 1981, he left the military. The very next year, he ran for Congress. He was elected to the House in 1982, taking office in January 1983. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and has been there ever since, where he has been covered by an extremely generous Federal healthcare plan — again, at public expense.
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What this all means is that for essentially his ENTIRE LIFE, John McCain's medical care has been paid for by the GOVERNMENT, out of general revenues. How on Earth does he dare to say that the rest of us should not have medical care paid for by the Government out of general revenues? The nerve of the basterisk! Hypocrisy is his middle name: John Hypocrisy McCain.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:20 PM

 
Dumping Couric, then Clinton. Rumor has it that Katie Couric, the woman CBS stupidly put in as anchor on its evening newscast, is on the way out, possibly in a trade with CNN for Anderson Cooper. It turns out that the American public did not want to see a female anchor on the nightly news, not even a pretty and likable woman like Perky Katie. But this same public is going to elect a woman President, whom we would have to see on the news every damned nite for the next four years. Bullshasterisk.
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When is this country going to stop playing games with the truth? We don't want a woman anchor on the evening news and don't want a woman President. Period. You don't like that? Move to another country. There are 192 others you can go to. You really don't have to live here.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,035 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:03 PM

 
Another 'Lifelong Hunter'? Mitt Romney 'shot himself in the foot' in pretending to have been a "lifelong hunter", when in reality he had only rarely (if ever) hunted. Today Hillary Clinton, Woman Without Honor, pretended to be a fierce defender of the supposed 'right to bear arms' of hunters and other people who are not members of a state militia, in trying to beat up on Barack Obama for his having mentioned the prevalence of Guns And God in bitter small towns. She posed for the cameras and told a deliteful tale of being taught to hunt — that is, shoot and kill wild animals — by her sainted father, a stupid man who apparently contributed to his dauter's gender confusion and dykiness. I hope he's still alive so somebody might 'accidentally' shoot him with one of those guns Hillary pretends she doesn't want regulated. But I so despise Hillary Clinton that I won't look for her exact quote or her family history or anything else about her. She is NOBODY without Bill Clinton, and cannot possibly be elected President, so who the hell cares what she says about anything?
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As it happens, after the 22nd Amendment forced the Clintons out of the White House (thank goodness), Billary moved from Arkansas to New York State, a jurisdiction that has strict GUN CONTROL laws. Now s/he poses as a defender of the unfettered 'right' to own guns. What a piece of sh*t s/he is. (Oh, in case the language is unclear, by "s/he" — which I pronounce sh-he, two syllables — refers to "Billary", not "Hillary". Hillary is apparently a biological woman, so "she" would be the pronoun appropriate for her alone. In that her campaign is really of the Clintons together, who would both be returned to the White House (in plain violation of the 22nd Amendment), "Billary" is far more appropriate to refer to the political candidate, and "Billary" takes "s/he". And in case you are offended by the transparency of the term "sh*t", perhaps I should write it "shasteriskt".)
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As for Barack Obama's plain words about bitter people in small towns devastated by national policies that have shipped millions of jobs overseas and continue to shut down American businesses right and left, he was precisely right. So of course he will be punished. It is forbidden to speak truth in politics in the United States in 2008. Forbidden. You speak the truth, you lose. So we get nothing but liars in our highest offices, people with no honor who will say anything to get elected — and then promptly renege on every single 'promise' they made on the campaign trail that doesn't fit with their private, often hidden, agenda. Billary, of course, doesn't have an agenda except one item: get elected. That is the be-all and end-all of the Clintons. They want to be President because they want to be President. That is all. If that's good enuf for you, feel free to vote for "Hillary". But don't be surprised if she breaks every promise that induced you to vote for her.
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Saturday Night Live last nite mentioned the death of Charlton Heston, so let me place here, late, a paragraph I drafted when I heard that story, but did not have time to finalize.

Cold, Dead Hand — At Last. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Charlton Heston is dead. The bad news is that he died a natural death. He was not executed for his crimes in promoting gun violence. Still, even the bad news is sort of good news: he died of (or is it merely "with"?) Alzheimer's, so was officially out of his mind. Fitting.

I also drafted this next paragraph that day, April 6th:

Albany, Come Save Us! New York City's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, may not get his way on "congestion pricing", the criminal attempt to steal the people's roads and turn them over to the rich, because Albany lawmakers have to approve the plan, and many are opposed. Bloomberg has blatantly and cynically misrepresented the theft of the people's roads as a gift to public transit, claiming in effect that no, it's not that the roads will be stolen from the poor and middle class but that the rich will be forced to give over some of their excess cash to pay for improvements in public transportation — which would be a good thing, since far more people would have to use public transportation because they wouldn't be able to drive on the roads they already paid for! I hope Albany tells Bloomberg to go f*k himself. (Or, fasteriskk himself.)

The next day, New York State's Legislature vetoed the plan. Good for them.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:29 PM

 
Media Discover Race and Gender. I have said here, all along, that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can be elected President of the United States, because the United States is not Wonderland but a country with strong racial and gender attitudes in every region. I repeat that now. The media awoke to that reality only in mid-March, however, finally admitting that Democrats may have a real problem in November because the Clinton campaign had begun to 'play the race card', and some Obama supporters have publicly implied that a woman cannot be elected President. Ya think?
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But media pundits continue to chat empty-headedly about the Democrats' current candidates as having a real chance to defeat McCain. Let's be plain. The reality is that neither Obama nor Clinton is electable. Period.
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On January 31st of this year, when John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race, I lamented, "Another Republican President. Great", and said that that President was likely to be McCain. Today, AOL hilited an Associated Press report that a new poll shows that McCain has wiped out the lead of both Democrats, and the general election now appears to be essentially a tossup. A reader poll within the AOL feature shows that 53% of readers think McCain will win, 30% think Obama will win, and 17% think Billary will win.
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I have said that people lie to pollsters if they would not want the pollster to know what they actually think, because they feel it is less than respectable. We are all acutely aware that it is politically incorrect to say that you would not vote for a woman nor a black man, so some people pretend they would have no problem voting in the politically-correct fashion even tho they in fact do have a huge problem with voting any such way.
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One means that pollsters use to try to get to the truth is by asking two questions: first, how would you (the interviewee) vote, and second, how do you think others would vote? The second question is more indicative of the true feelings of the person interviewed. In a CBS poll reported March 19th, 62% of respondents said that the U.S. is ready for a black President, and 59% said the Nation is ready for a woman President, BUT 33% say that "people they know" would not vote for a black candidate and 45% said "people they know" would not vote for a woman.
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Plainly, then, if the Democratic candidate is black or female but the Republican is a white male, the black or female candidate doesn't stand a chance, because people who would vote on the basis of issues alone would split narrowly, but those to whom race or gender matters would produce a landslide for the white man.
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More Bigotries (or Strong Preferences). A Gallup poll in February 2007 showed that 11% of respondents (admitted they) would not vote for a woman, 24% of respondents (admitted they) would not vote for a Mormon, but only 5% said they wouldn't vote for a black person and 4% for a Catholic, even tho we've never had a black President and of our 43 Presidents, only one was Catholic. People are such miserable, disgusting liars.
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Still, some forms of bigotry are open because they are socially approved. 43% admit they would not vote for a homosexual, and 53% say they wouldn't vote for an atheist. Actually, I suspect that more people would in fact vote for either of those types of people, because in the case of a socially-approved bigotry, fear of what the pollster might think of them works to exaggerate the bias rather than minimize it, the opposite dynamic as works with a socially-disapproved bigotry.
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Wouldn't it be nice if this country really were as liberal as commentators are pretending it is? It would be adorable, almost as adorable as if we elected a kitten President. But that's not going to happen either. A rhinoceros, maybe, but not a kitten.
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I find it ludicrous that when the very term "liberal" is for all practical purposes a "dirty word" that even many liberals avoid, in favor of terms like "progressive" instead, we are nonetheless supposed to be so liberal as to elect a black or female President. What nonsense.
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American elections are popularity contests, little more than class-president elections in junior high. Lost in the endless chatter about the "horse race" are the issues, because, at end, they don't actually count for much. Just as high-school student-government candidates run on things they cannot possibly deliver, like better cafeteria meals, candidates for major political office run on things they don't really believe they can achieve either. The voters know that. They vote for personalities or, more often, familiar names or faces. Fame is a substitute for substance, personality a substitute for character.
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A poll discussed today on some cable news show said that many women (27%, as I recall; I can't find the story on the Internet yet) think worse of Hillary Clinton today than when she first announced her candidacy. That's because before she entered the race for President, she was known only as the wife of Bill Clinton and a former First Lady. But as they came to know her, women realized they don't like her. To know Hillary is to hate her, and 52% of people (male and female combined into one figure) have already said they would under no circumstances vote for the bitch. So why is anyone, in media or out, taking — or pretending to take — her candidacy seriously?
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Starting on October 27, 2007, at latest, and repeatedly thereafter, I have suggested that this country would not elect Mitt Romney (because he's a Mormon), nor Rudolph Giuliani (because he's a pro-gay, pro-abortion Catholic from New York City), nor any black man, nor any woman. I stand by that, and both Romney and Giuliani were knocked out of contention despite all the pretense from pundits that they both had a real chance of winning the Republican nomination.
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Why are media pundits such liars?
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And when are we going to talk about issues in depth?
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John McCain has been a staple of many talk shows, including Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for years. He is the perfect Republican candidate, a Teflon Man. He actually was shown on television recently saying that if people lose their houses to foreclosure, it is because they made stupid choices and it is not for the Government to bail them out. Let them take a second job or cut back on other expenses — or, presumably, sell the house and move into an apartment (or trailer) they can actually afford. And he got away with it! There was no huge crush of condemnation on every side. Still, his handlers apparently got the message that he can't go around saying things like that, because today McCain feigned concern for people facing foreclosure, in order to foreclose the possibility that his extreme hard-heartedness would turn people off despite his jovial persona.
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We have had far more coverage of the "horse race" this election cycle than any other I can recall, but almost no coverage of issues. How are we to solve the Nation's problems when we're not even talking about them? Does anyone outside the professional political class (officeholders, political reporters, pundits, and the like) know the difference between the Clinton healthcare plan and the Obama healthcare plan? I don't. How are we going to reverse decades — 22 years and counting — of the Republicans' Plutocratic Revolution, in which fewer and fewer people control more and more of the Nation's wealth, if we keep electing Republicans who WANT the United States reduced to the Northernmost Nation of Latin America, not in the sense of speaking Spanish but in the sense of having a society of grotesque socioeconomic and political inequality, in which the top 5% — or 2% — control 98% of the Nation's wealth and power?
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The Democrats are still not talking about personal debt and usury. The only debt they talk about at all is foreclosure, but that relates to only a small portion of the population, whereas credit-card debt at appallingly high interest rates affects the great preponderance of the Nation's population. The Democrats say not one word about a national usury law nor undoing the Republicans' bankruptcy "reform" that made bankruptcy almost entirely unavailable to ordinary people. No, to talk about the hard realities that most people suffer would make sense, and might actually win Congress for Democrats even as Democrats go down in flames in the race for the White House.
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McCain, as I have said before, is out of his mind, but unless he makes an astoundingly insane decision, like choosing Condoleezza Rice for Vice President, his election is a foregone conclusion. His vicious, contemptuous remark about people losing their homes did not produce a tsunami of public revulsion, so he could apparently get away with another gaffe of comparably monumental stupidity because he is a genial old man, Ronald Reagan Redux.
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Real Democrats, real progressives/Liberals — yes, I said it, the forbidden word "Liberal" — need to accept that John McCain is President Presumptive, and focus on creating a veto-proof majority for Liberals in both Houses of Congress, because McCain promises to be a vicious, plutocratic beast, just like Bush2, who will wield his veto to protect the wealthiest at the expense of the poor and middle class every time, and keep the United States in Permanent War against all Islam for the sake of Israel — unless Congress can stop him and ram thru its own program over his many, many vetos. But all the attention and all the money is being poured into a hopeless contest for the White House that Democrats cannot possibly win unless they reject both Obama and Clinton and go with a compromise candidate, specifically John Edwards, NOT Al Gore. It's as tho Congress means nothing, and Democrats feel that if they lose the White House, they might just as well lose Congress too. The only problem is that if the Democrats lose the White House and Congress, or even win Congress but by less than a veto-proof majority, the people of the United States, and of the world, lose, and lose big.
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If the Democrats continue to push two unelectable candidates, the race for the White House is over. What matters now can best be summed up in three words: veto-proof Congress. Or perhaps these three words: Congress, Congress, CONGRESS!
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(I would ordinarily show here the current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, for Israel, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", but that website was not working when I started to write today's post. Its placeholder was titled, "This page has been hooked up". What does that mean? Had Zionists hacked in, and shut it down? The site has now repaired some of the damage, but the U.S. and U.K. casualty totals appear to be reversed. Near as I can tell, U.S. deaths are now 4,032)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:09 AM

 
(I have no time to phoneticize this, much tho I'd like to.)

Willful Misrepresentation. ABC News, and others, have completely and deliberately misstated the case in claiming that 'the schools are failing' because huge numbers of kids drop out. Huh? How can the schools teach kids who don't attend? The fault in dropping out is NOT in the schools but in the kids, the families, and last, if at all elsewhere than on the individual students and their parent(s), society at large, not the schools. Even 'good', suburban schools with all-white student bodies have dropout rates of around 20%! No one can get thru to these kids, and even schools that have entirely restructured themselves, as one school hilited in an ABC report this evening did, STILL have dropout rates of 1 in 5!
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Stop blaming the schools. You can have the best school in the world, but if kids don't GO to it, it won't do a damned thing for them. As a society, we had to forbid parents from pulling their kids out of school before age 16. Perhaps we have to simply forbid kids to drop out before graduating. Give them no option but to finish school, and they will finish school. Oh, we could give them an alternative: the military, in time of Permanent War.
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Crushing Big Oil. Oil company executives testified before Congress today, defending their obscene profits. I could lower prices charged the public in one day. All we need do is grab every one of those criminal executives responsible for price-gouging, take them directly from the hearing room to a whipping post, strip them to the waist, and flog them 100 lashes each, one exec at a time so that those not yet flogged become more and more panicked as their turn approaches. Forbid them medical attention, but put them into a jail cell for several days so when they heal, they will have a permanent souvenir of their experience in the form of scars that will tell the world, for the rest of their lives, that they were enemies of humanity, and humanity struck 'back'. (Cosmetic surgery to remove such scars would be illegal, punishable by FLOGGING of the surgeon, or amputation of the offending hand.) And tell TV cameras that every executive of every price-gouging oil company, from chairman to senior vice president, will in turn be flogged if they do not stop gouging the public. Thru TV cameras we could as well warn that any shareholder (the executives of any corporate shareholder, the individual shareholder him- or herself) that insists on price-gouging will as well be seized and flogged. End of problem.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:56 PM