The criminal enterprise that is News Corpse

Hot on the heels of the scandal where Rupert Murdoch's papers wiretapped the Royal Family (bad show, wot -- those limeys seem to like their inbred snooty royals, go figure), now it appears that Sir Rupe's criminal enterprises have extended to circulation fraud -- basically defrauding advertisers. Senior executives in New York, including Murdoch's right-hand man, Les Hinton, were alerted to the problems last year by an internal whistleblower and apparently chose to take no action. The whistleblower was then made redundant.

In short: News Corpse committed a crime -- fraud -- against its advertisers by claiming it had one circulation, when it actually had a (much smaller) one. Looking for Sir Rupe to go to jail in 3... 2.... 1... *NEVER*. Because it's always a "few bad apples" who do these criminal things, right?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

So the Koch brothers are criminals?

Color me unsurprised.

If you or I sold something to Iran, we'd be spending 25 to life in Club Fed. But to people like the Koch brothers, the law is for the little people, not for them.

Especially annoying is the fact that they bribe their way into contracts with governments and large corporations worldwide. This is illegal for two reasons: 1) it's unfair to small businesses, and 2) it's completely antithetical to the operation of markets. It's unfair to small businesses because small businesses don't have the resources for big bribes and thus get shut out of contracts they could otherwise fulfil. It's antithetical to the operation of markets because functioning markets depend upon buyers choosing the best solution, not the one paying the biggest bribe to the contracting officer. Remember, the whole purpose of markets is to match buyers and sellers according to best match (i.e., best deal for buyers, best performing sellings). When you short circuit that with bribes, you don't have markets -- you have crony capitalism, basically fascism with another name.

But of course to the Koch brothers, free markets, like laws, are for the little people. Oh sure they talk the talk. But talk is cheap. What counts is actions, and what the actions of the Koch brothers show is that they have as much disdain for properly operating markets matching supply and demand as they have for the law.

-- Badtux the Criminality Penguin

Because brown / Muslim people drive taxies

Now, there's some folks who wonder why Idaho State Sen. John McGee (R)didn't just call a taxi when he was four sheets to the wind. I mean, calling a taxi is a lot easier than walking out into the parking lot, peering around into cars looking for one that has keys in it, finding a Ford Excursion with a 20 foot travel trailer hooked to it, and taking it for a joyride and crashing it, followed by subsequent arrest for DUI and grand theft auto (and trailer!).

But look, you're thinking like a liberal Democrat. Everybody knows that taxi drivers are mostly immigrants. BROWN immigrants. Often MUSLIM immigrants. The horror, oh the horror! And you would subject Mr. McGee to that horror?! For shame, shame!

Oh yeah, remember the chant: IOKIYR. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Latest headline from The Onion

John Ashcroft joins Xe (A.K.A. "Blackwater") as Ethics chief. He will be in charge of "ethics and professionalism."

Wait, that's not a headline from The Onion, that's a headline from Wired News. Err... ah... I pity the writers at The Onion, I really do. How can they top reality when things like this happen?

-- Badtux the Comedy Penguin

"Everything's fucked up, and no one goes to jail."

A depressing story about how the banksters are ripping us off -- and have paid off the government regulators who could send them to jail so that they can do it with impunity.

Sigh. WASF.

-- Badtux the Sorely-waddling Penguin

What he said

About Wisconsin and the behavior of the Republicans, who are trying to make state workers pay for the fiscal misdeeds of their Republican majority: This is like the defendant who murdered his parents and asked for leniency because he’s an orphan.

Heh. Do note, however, that CNN's reporters had to play a game of "bury the lede" to get this fact into print, burying the actual details so far down the story that their ideological minders ("editors") would not notice them and order them struck. Similarly anybody else who is merely skimming through stories will see only the headlines that support the official ideological position, not the actual details that contradict the official ideology.

So it goes in Soviet America, citizen. Our censorship here is not as onerous as it was in Soviet Russia, often facts contradicting official ideology can make it into print, albeit buried deep within stories, but censorship is censorship, even if the ideological minders are employed by multi-billion-dollar media corporations rather than by the government. All hail our great and mighty nation, and our invincible armies and our technological magnificence! What, you disagree, citizen? Treason! Report to the nearest streetcorner for processing as a homeless bum, comrade!

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin

He was a crook

That is the most important thing to remember about Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday: He was every bit as vicious, venal, twisted, and crooked as Richard Nixon. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Reagan was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. He ran one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history -- over 138 Reagan Administration officials convicted or indicted, and his whole political career was based upon racism and the BIg Lie theory. Reagan was Limbaugh with a smile, a racist thug who would lie about his own mother's milk if that's what was necessary to attain his goals. Whether he was jibbering in 1962 about how Medicare would destroy democracy in America and turn the U.S. into a socialist hellhole of crumbling grey concrete tenements, empty store shelves, and tyranny and then later lying about it on national TV when confronted by Jimmy Carter, or blatantly pandering to racists by kicking off his Presidential campaign in a KKK strong hold and inventing fictional racial stereotypes to get racists to vote for him, Ronald Reagan was a liar of the first degree, a man who never let the truth stand in the way of getting where he wanted to be -- which was to be President of the United States. And once President, he then doubled taxes on the working class via his massive hike in the payroll tax (paid by workers) and his shifting of responsibilities once handled by the federal government to the states (which required the states to hike taxes drastically -- especially sales taxes which fall more harshly upon the poor, which went from 1% in my state to 8% by the end of the Reagan Administration) while slashing taxes for the rich, and set into play the economic dynamics of the next thirty years, where the rich got richer and the rest of us got the shaft, all the while pretending to be a "man of the people" -- while doing his best to discredit the only organization We The People can use to defend ourselves against predators -- that is, government, which, Reagan implied, was an alien imposition upon America rather than the way that We The People chose to provide ourselves with services that aren't economical or possible otherwise.

Ronald Reagan took Richard Nixon's maxim of "if the President does it, it can't be illegal" and used it to run a regime whose corruption in retrospect is astounding -- and he got away with it. He was not only a crook, but a smart crook, one who knew how to keep his own hands clean while his subordinates did his dirty work. And he set the tone for the next thirty years, by showing people like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk that they could blatantly lie and never be called on it by the media.

That, then, is Ronald Reagan and his toxic legacy. He is a man who did the most to create the environment of the past 30 years that has hollowed out the American economy and caused America's military might to become such a hollowed-out relic of its former self that a bunch of medieval asswipes with 1950's-era weapons beat it in Iraq and are beating it in Afghanistan. His anti-government anti-tax anarchist rhetoric resonated with the large number of Americans who want the benefits of living in a civilized nation but don't want to pay for it, his racist rhetoric and lies set the stage for people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to pollute our national discourse with hatred and lies, and we are all the poorer for it.

= Badtux the History Penguin

My own relationship with Ronald Reagan at the time was one of extreme distrust. I didn't "buy" his awe-shucks gee whiz schtick. Unfortunately these were the days prior to the Internet, and there simply was not the resources then to turn my suspicion that the man was a fraud into proof. In today's Internet era Reagan's many lies would have made his candidacy a mockery, he had too much history by the time he was elected in 1980 to survive Internet-level deep scrutiny. Unfortunately while the Internet has proven a boon for preventing experienced liars and crooks like Reagan from being elected, the result has been blank slates like George W. Bush and Barack Obama being elected, where you haven't the foggiest notion what they're going to do after election,

Blatantly inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Richard Nixon. Too bad I'm not half the writer that Doc was...

A modest proposal

Arizona wants to secede? Fine. All they need to do is reimburse us for (a) the amount of money spent buying Arizona from Mexico (adjusted for inflation, that's around $500 billion dollars), and (b) the amount of infrastructure in Arizona built with federal dollars (probably around $10 *TRILLION* dollars, including the various Federally-funded water projects that make Arizona habitable by more than a few cowboys huddled around isolated springs and wells). Then I'll be *happy* to see them secede.

What's that you say? They want to just steal our shit without paying for it? Fuck them, then. Fuck them good and hard up every orifice. 'Cause we paid for that shit, yo. These free-lunch-desirin' welfare whores can just bend over and take it good and hard if they expect to get away with taking our hard-earned property without paying for it, 'cause we got a word for that out here in the straight world: THEFT. And it's a crime, yo.

-- Badtux the "Repubs sure like stealin', don't they?" Penguin

Not mutually exclusive

“You heard of the Citizens’ Councils?” Mississippi governor Haley Barbour said in an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard. “Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.”

For those of you who are wondering, the Citizens' Councils were generally an offshoot of the whites-only Chamber of Commerce (blacks weren't allowed, they had their own Black Chamber of Commerce) that were formed in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education to resist school integration. They generally controlled the (whites-only) government via their purse strings too. They are the goons who put the Little Rock police department outside of Little Rock High to stop black students from attending and when that failed, set up the lynch mobs at Little Rock High and Mississippi State that required the U.S. military to escort black students onto campus, as well as the goons who later set up the all-white "Christian" private schools so that their children wouldn't have to attend school with "those" people (people who, like, weren't like them -- i.e., inbred racist bigots).

In short, Mr. Barbour, yes, they were like the KKK, in that they organized state and private violence against black people -- *AND* an organization of (white) town leaders. The two aren't mutually exclusive, y'know. I should know. I was there. You were too. Except I despise bigots while you, Mr. Barbour, apparently think they're heros. Go figure

-- Badtux the Southern Penguin

House approves tax hikes for poor

Tax hike for poor, tax cut for rich, passes House 277-144. It now goes to Obama's office for final signing. Which will happen. Of course.

The average worker in the bottom quintile will see his taxes raised by around $300 thanks to the elimination of the "Making Work Pay" tax credit. The average person in the top 1% will see his taxes cut by over $130,000.

So in essence Congress, crying crocodile tears all the way about how they "had" to pass this thing because that mean, mean Obama "gave them no choice", just voted to transfer yet *more* wealth from workers to grifters. Because that's what our elites are -- grifters. They don't create wealth, they simply profit from the wealth created by their workers, the people who actually create the "stuff" they sell or provide the services they sell. All they do is sit there at the top of the money pyramid rubbing their hands together and gloating about how much better they are than those folks who actually get their hands dirty assembling cars, flying planes (which is a minimum wage job for the regional airlines now), and so forth... the people without whom they'd have *nothing*, because they make nothing, create nothing, do nothing except take the wealth that other people create and accumulate it for themselves.

-- Badtux the Worker Penguin

Saving? How?

So here's my puzzlement. The Republicans want us all to save for our retirement, rather than pay Social Security taxes. They claim that if we save for our retirement, we'll come out ahead.

Now, my question is: What kind of crack are these motherfuckers smoking?

See, here's the thing. I can put my money into a passbook savings account for at 0.8% interest -- at a time when producer prices are rising much faster, meaning that my money is actually losing value. Or I can put it into the gambling exchange oops stock market and earn an average of -1.8% over the past nine years since the stock market crash of 2001. Fuck, I'd be better off putting it under my mattress than doing that. Or... what?

The basic problem, savings-wise, is that us ordinary peons don't have access to the rigged markets that the wealthy use in order to transfer wealth from peons to, well, them. We can't buy foreclosed properties for cash to use as income properties the way the rich do because, well, we're not rich. We effectively have no real savings mechanism other than banks, and banks, well, they aren't exactly the most reliable or renumerative of mechanisms.

So why not use the government as our bank? Republicans are fond of saying that Social Security is a transfer program. I give up some of my current spending so that a retired person can spend. Yep, a transfer program. But: SAVINGS IS A TRANSFER PROGRAM TOO. If all retirement funding is via bank savings, I pay my funds into the bank, the bank then moves that money to retirees, and we're in exactly the same situation -- all that's happened is that a bank, rather than a government agency, moved the money. But yet it still moves.

So from an economic point of view, there is no (zero) difference between "saving" for retirment using a bank, and "saving" for a retirement via a government agency. Well, other than that using a bank or IRA or other such instruments gives the grifters who run our country more opportunities to steal our money, of course, as they did when they invested trillions of our dough in those bogus AAA-rated mortgage-backed securites that they *knew* were bogus because the price of housing had risen far beyond traditional rent-income ratios...

And that's the bottom line: Republican attacks upon Social Security are basically them trying to steal more of our money. Just what you'd expect from a political party that has become more corrupt than Democrats in their wildest dreams ever managed. (As an aside, how much do you bet that this asshole who put a No Negros Allowed sign in his business's window is a Republican?).

-- Badtux the "They're crooks" Penguin

Another reason to boycott Arizona

Arizona's tightwad legislature just murdered 98 people. In cold blood. Without a trial, without due process, even offering any real excuses for why they have to die. Because, y'know, it's better that 98 people die, than that Arizona's public have to pay $1 apiece more in taxes to fund those organ transplants for people who mostly need public help because, err, they lost their insurance because they got too sick to work and don't happen to have a couple hundred thousand dollars hangin' around... something that could happen to any of us, BTW, in case you haven't been living in a cave.

What is the price of a human life? In Arizona, apparently, it's $1.

-- Badtux the Dollar Penguin

Even the punditry is noticing...

... that wealth distribution in the United States is looking disturbingly like a third-world banana republic rather than a democracy.

My response: Congratulations, America. You elected the evil sonofabitches to office who did this to you. Hope you're happy with your Republican kool-aid, because the cyanide it's taking down your throat is a bitch -- 30 years of Republican domination of American politics has produced stagnant incomes for regular Americans, while the merely rich became the really, really rich. And every single one of these bastards was voted into office by you, America -- not installed by some evil dictator or some shit, you voted for these assholes.

I have some more facts and figures that Kristof did not mention in his article, but I'll go over those later...

-- Badtux the Right (as in, correct) Penguin

Mexification Complete

U.S. now has wealth distribution typical of 3rd world banana republics. The Reagan Revolution is complete -- the wealth of America has now been transferred from the middle class to the top 1%, who now make 24% of the income -- and own 34% of the wealth. Meanwhile, the top 5% of Americans own more of America than the entire bottom 95% of Americans combined -- roughly 60% of America's wealth.

Congratulations, Republicans, for your successful Mexification of America. You took a country that had a thriving middle class and turned it into a nation where the vast majority of the middle class is groveling on their knees for trickle-down that looks an awful lot like the view from the bottom of a urinal. And you bastards in the former middle class.... SIIIIIiiiigh. You are too fucking stupid to even notice it, instead whining "thank you sir please give me more!" and voting for the same evil-ass politicians who butt-fucked you in the first place...

As for the Democrats -- I just got a letter from good ole' Barry Obama dated August 8 stating that the upcoming election is going to be critical to the future of America and please donate and please vote. I got that motherfucking letter *TODAY*, folks -- err, a week AFTER the election. Stupid-ass Democrats are fucking useless, the most inept buncha clowns to ever stumble drunk out of a clown car.

Siiiiigh.... we are so fucked, yo. So I guess I'll leave ya with a joke: Q: How is American beer like fucking in a canoe?

.
.
.
.
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A: It's fucking close to water.

That is all.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Famous apologies in history

Tim Profitt -- the former Rand Paul volunteer who stomped on the head of a MoveOn activist -- told told local CBS station WKYT that he wants an apology from the woman he stomped. Because she hurt his back with her face as he was stomping on it, apparently (?!).

And in other news, Bill Clinton demands an apology from Monica Lewinsky for enticing him into having sex with her, and the Nazi Party demands an apology from the Jewish race for calling them racists, and Roman Polanski demands an apology from Samantha Gailey for his rape of her when she was 13 years old, and... Err. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

A woman's place

Remember, for Republicans a woman's place is not as a political activist. It's either barefoot and pregnant, or on the ground with a man's foot grinding her face into the ground. At least, that appears to be what wee Rand Paul's supporters believe...

I recently heard a Republican say, "I'm through talking." Yessiree, through talking indeed. It's all about ACTION, achtung! Brown shirts optional.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

World Nut Daily wants to use YOUR taxpayer money

Yes, that's right, if you're a taxpayer whose tax money supports a state university, World Nut Daily's Joseph Farah wants to use *YOUR* money to solicit funds for political purposes. In today's outrage, World Nut Daily criticizes Grambling University (Ruston, LA) for reminding people that both state and federal law prohibits using taxpayer-funded state facilities (their email system, in particular) for campaign fundraising purposes. My tax money bought that computer (note -- I am a taxpayer in Louisiana), but Joseph Farah wants to use *my* taxpayer-funded computer system for his partisan purposes soliciting funds for various Teabagger and birther-related political solicitations.

This isn't an issue of free speech -- Grambling students and employees are free to send campaign solicitations on their own time from their own Internet mail provider, you can get a Gmail account for free for cryin' out loud. This is an issue of Mr. Farah wanting a free ride on public facilities. In short, this is a case of Mr. Joseph Farah being a WELFARE WHORE, wanting government money (or an email system bought with government money) for free for his own purposes.

Note: I continue my policy of not linking to wnd.com . If you want to see the nuttiness in Mr. Farah's own batshit-crazy words, you'll need to manually type in the URL and go to it, sorry.

-- Badtux the Tax-paying Penguin

The Anniversary

Nine years ago today, a diabolical plot to destroy America was hatched. The goal was terrorism against America in order to scare America into invading Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires", with the goal of bankrupting America, which was the greatest threat to their dreams of power. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, managing to get the United States involved in not one, but two land wars in Asia, overthrowing the only secular dictator in the Middle East in favor of a religious ideologue just like them (okay, he's a Shia Muslim but close enough), and resulting in the death or permanent disability of over 100,000 Americans.

And oh yeah, the previous day some amateur named Osama bin Laden had managed a minor act of terrorism that killed a couple thousand Americans, but his lack of importance in all these events is exemplified by the fact that he's Osama bin Forgotten, still at large somewhere issuing statements that are utterly ignored by everybody. No, the real terrorists struck the day after, when they convinced Americans that America was a nation of cowards whose proper role was to be subjects cowering in fear to be protected by the kind hands of Big Brother, rather than citizens of a free nation with all the risks that freedom involves -- and who then used this act of terrorism against America to get things like the Patriot Act, warrantless spying, Gitmo, etc. passed, making a mockery of the values that America once proclaimed to uphold, as well as running up trillions in debts to pay for these wars in hopes of bankrupting the nation before it could reign in the oligarchs who want to impose oligarchical rule, hopes that almost came true. Not to mention the million-plus Iraqis and Afghans who have been killed since the U.S. went to war in their respective nations, a bloodbath that Osama bin Laden could not have imagined when he managed to kill a few thousand Americans.

Compared to George W. Bush and his gang of neocons and the Christian Taliban supporters they hauled along in their wake, Osama bin Forgotten was an amateur, whose minor act of terrorism was trivial. On this day let us remember the day nine years ago when the neocon terrorist gang struck at America and nearly destroyed our nation, and never forget. Although, sadly, most Americans seem to have already forgotten. Siiiiiiiigh!

-- Badtux the History Penguin

Ideological fail crashes State of Virginia computer networks

The State of Virginia experienced a massive multi-day outage of almost all state computer systems due to contractor incompetence. Northrop-Grumman, the contractor, not only overcharged the State by approximately $2 billion for the IT infrastructure that failed, but did not even include system backups in the system design.

The reality is that the State of Virginia could have saved approximately $2 billion by simply hiring their own IT workers to design and implement the new network. Despite the ideological nonsense about how the free market can always do everything better than government, government employees are cheaper than contractors approximately 99.999999999% of the time -- they're willing to work for less than people with their experience and education would get in private business due to the better job security and benefits of government employment, and because they're eating their own dog food (i.e., their own paycheck is paid by the same IT system that they're designing), they have every incentive to get it right. It's the same reason why, when I was a government employee for a school district, my own curriculum materials that I designed myself for my own classroom were better than the materials developed by government contractors -- I had every incentive to get it right, because I was going to actually be using these materials. I wasn't doing it for a paycheck, I was doing it because I needed these materials and I needed them to be right.

So why didn't the State of Virginia simply hire the employees needed to implement and maintain the new network? Ideology. Simply ideology. Ideology says government is always more expensive than the free market -- despite the fact that in 99%+ of cases, contracting out a government-run function results in spending MORE money. Ideology, rather than pragmatic reality, drove this decision. That, and copious bribes from Northrop-Grumman to various Virginia politicians, of course. Oops, I forgot, they're not called "bribes", they're called "campaign contributions". My bad!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

J.D. Hayworth, corrupt white-wing tool

Turns out that ole' J.D. made a pitch for a free government money scam operation. John McCain may have made a cranky pandering fool of himself with his race against Barack Obama, but McCain at least has only tried to scam votes, not money, out of his public.

-- Badtux the "Where does the GOP find these crooks?!" Penguin