Tuesday, January 22, 2008

When Your Children Just Can't Get Jobs On Their Own...

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-01222008-1475063.html

Nepotism is alive and well in the NJ Republican Party. Too bad actual experience and knowledge is far less important than rewarding the children of well connected Republican politicians. The county will no doubt suffer while she learns how to do her job. Don't hold your breath waiting for the absolute outrage from the comments sections of this paper or the Courier Post, that's only for the perceived infractions committed by Democrats.

When the Truth Just Isn't On Your Side...

http://www.nbc10.com/news/15083420/detail.html

This is disgusting. There should be laws against mailing shit like this. Just goes to show which side has the facts and which side needs to resort to bloody theatrics.

Republican Dirty Tricks...

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-01202008-1474326.html

And yet the idiots with no idea what they're talking about (and the Republicans who know but want to hurt Corzine) will keep calling this a horrible injustice. If the past Republican Governors had raised tolls when they should have, instead of just increasing spending and borrowing the difference, we wouldn't be in this situation right now.

Somehow, if Forester had won I'd imagine all the Republicans who are currently beside themselves with indignation would be just tickled pink at his bold revenue plan. Make no mistake, the outrage is largely a function of the Republican controlled state media trying to get a Republican Governor next election.

Surprising and Not So Surprising...

This is surprising...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/22/heath.ledger.dead/index.html

This, not so surprising...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/22/thompson.out/index.html

This Explains Alot...

http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2008/01/10/john_vincent_coulter?voted=1


What a horrible, detestable man.

Actually, this explains a lot. She's spent her entire life watching this man behave like a colossal asshole and she determined this was the way to be. She's not really a horrible, soulless harpy, she's just been trying for her whole life to make this man happy.

As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54 years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.

Nothing like belittling your wife to make the funny.

John Vincent Coulter was of the old school,

That's a nice way of saying he was a violent bigot.

Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.

Like when you go to school and you notice your friends don't have bruises all over their bodies, that's a real growing experience.

So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father was an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the image of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur they would meet.

Everybody loves a laugh after a long, hard day of killing small rodents for sport and cracking the skulls of hippies trying to get a living wage.

He just was good.

I don't think that word means what Ann thinks it means.

Father just said, "I don't care. If it's a life, it's a life." I'm still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.

Evidently the life of the girl doesn't fit into the equation.

He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement.

As opposed to those wonderful anti-union businessmen who were paragons of virtue. Nothing says moral crusader like hiring former cops to shoot striking workers.

But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I've ever known.

As long as that working man didn't expect to be paid enough to feed his family. Evidently wanting benefits makes one a non-genuine working man.

He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.

At least John Edwards never cracked someone's head open with a baseball bat for wanting dental benefits for his children.

the last book of mine he was able to read.

I'm sure that made dying a lot easier for him. I'd want to die after reading her books too.

In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which culminated in the largest union decertification ever -- at that time and perhaps still.

Remember people, this is the kind of thing conservatives consider heroic.

There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired into the homes of the mine employees who returned to work.

I'm sure the strike breakers never used violence. Why, I bet they were perfectly reasonable as they crashed through the lines every day busting heads.

Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.

Fuck eggs, throw bricks next time.

By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved.

That'll tend to happen when workers are threatened with death by former FBI agents with guns.

For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as a "happy ending."

I'm sure Ann knows all about happy endings.

To Mother's lifelong consternation -- until he had dementia and she could get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses

Bet she wanted to smother him with something else...

Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan.

At least she's mature enough to accept that her father's in Hell.

Go Italy...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7188860.stm

Good for them. The papacy has always been actively hostile to science and this pope is even worse than his predecessor.

Fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II officially conceded that in fact the Earth was not stationary.

It's pathetic that they only did this 15 years ago. I hate to break it to them, but the rest of the world came to this conclusion centuries ago.

Now if only we could get the rest of the world to shun him.