By Ron on October 15, 2008
From an excellent, fair and balanced article in The Guardian about ACORN, the latest distraction from Fox “News” and their ilk:
Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can’t authenticate the registration, or it’s incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic (“fraudulent”, “incomplete”, et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you’ve heard about fraud by Acorn, it’s because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that’s been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming “Acorn is committing fraud” know all of the above but don’t bother to share those facts with the media they’ve run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it’s voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.
You’ll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That’s true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.
What you won’t hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won’t be voting this November.
When you pay people to register voters, as both major political parties do, you are going to get some fraudulent registrations. ACORN is aware of this and follows the law as required. There really is no story here, outside of these rogue canvassers turning in registrations that will never result in a vote.
Today’s fun link: Palin as President. Absolutely hysterical until you click the red phone. 
Posted in death of common sense, politics, USA news
By Ron on October 3, 2008
Posted in politics
By Ron on September 21, 2008
Take a look at just two little points of the proposed $700 billion (minimum) federal bailout of the mortgage asset mess in this country:
Sec. 8. (Review) — Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Sec. 10. (Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt) — Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.
That’s $11.3+ trillion dollars. The public debt of this country, after this proposed bailout, is now approaching $38,000 each for every single man, woman, and child in this country. But do not ask for any accountability from the federal government for how far deeper they are driving us in debt, because their decisions are not subject to review by any authority whatsoever.
They say we are in a financial crisis, and we should fear the consequences if immediate action is not taken. And we are told the government is acting in our best interest. I’m not an expert in economics, but I’m also not deaf and blind. This song sounds familiar. It’s the same way we invaded Iraq. It’s the same way we tortured “enemy combatants.” It’s the same way we greatly expanded domestic surveillance.
The public debt is now underwriting the elite class in this country. One morning recently I woke up living in the United Socialist States of America. I wish the rest of the country would wake the fuck the up and take notice.
Posted in death of common sense, USA news
By Ron on September 7, 2008
I just caught this alert on my dashboard in leatheregg.com’s WordPress dashboard — nearly 50,000 spam comments caught by Askimet. Considering there are days when I still get 4 or 5 comments going into moderation that Askimet doesn’t catch, I’m pretty happy that Askimet exists. That’s a lot of potential spam to manually trash.
Posted in blogosphere, sports
By Ron on September 6, 2008
Wow … over 3 months since I’ve posted here. I’m not sure I’ve gone that long without a post over the past 10+ years. I’ve been focusing mostly on a huge work project which launched on Labor Day, so I think the 50-60+ hour weeks are behind me, at least for the foreseeable future. But the project also involved extensive work in the most recent version of WordPress, so now when I come back to the blog and see this old version of WordPress, I want to upgrade. But will it fuck up my template? Throwing caution to winds of tropical storm Hanna (which has been dumping heavy rain here the past 8 hours), I think I’ll just upgrade and if it warps the template, I’ll deal with it when I get around to it. Hopefully it won’t muck the site up too much, because I’ve got some catching up to do and a lot to say.
Posted in blogosphere
By Ron on June 6, 2008
Marlin and I caught the latest installment of the Indiana Jones movies last weekend: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I purposely avoided any reviews before going, but after checking out the metacritic score, I’d say it’s right about on target: 55/100. I would give it a thumbs up, but just barely. It’s great to slip back into this iconic action movie character, and it’s an enjoyable ride. But there are far too many truly awful groan-inducing moments. Not only do you have to suspend disbelief, you have to suspend logic as well. For instance, a crystal skull of that size would surely weigh a good bit, yet Karen Allen is tossing the thing around like it’s a basketball. I don’t think so. All in all, the best thing I can say about this outing from Indiana Jones is that it’s much better than the Temple of Doom.
We’re going to another movie this evening, and I look outside and look at the movie listings and cannot believe it’s the first weekend in June. The high temperature today was only in the 50s! And where are the good summer blockbusters? Our choices at the local theater tonight:
- Sex and the City: Mediocre reviews (at best) and 2.5 hours long (that’s like watching 5 episodes in a row). Plus they don’t serve cosmopolitans at the megaplex … um, I think I’ll wait for PPV/DVD.
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan: Not a big Adam Sandler fan. Not a big fan of mainstream comedy, most of which is silly or stupid.
- What Happens in Vegas: When Ashton Kutcher does a porno, let me know. Otherwise, no interest.
- Kung Fu Panda: I’ve outgrown cute animal animations. Perhaps that’s not a good thing, but it’s the truth.
- The Strangers: Touted as a terrifying suspense thriller … which is code for formulaic drivel that is anything but suspenseful. The first one that screams will die, I’m sure. How’s that for suspense.
- Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull: see top paragraph.
- Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian: I didn’t see the first movie, and still I get it mixed up with The Golden Compass (which I did see). I could probably find a quick summary online of the first film, but I’ve already sat at the computer long enough today, and I’m a completist so I don’t like seeing part 2 of anything before I’ve seen part 1.
- Iron Man: Marlin’s already seen it twice.
The winner is: Iron Man. I hope that means it’s really good, because Marlin seems very happy to see it for a third time.
And a followup from yesterday: the poppy bloomed this morning! Unfortunately, the weight of the bloom was too much, and the stem snapped. I propped it up to take photos, but the big bloom is now sitting in a salad bowl in the kitchen, mystifying the cats.
Posted in movies
By Ron on June 5, 2008
A few years ago, in an effort to get a little more variety in our flower beds in front of the house, I planted some poppy from seed. The first year saw several plants take root and produce a bunch of spindly flowers that lasted about a day, it seemed. The following year, the results were fewer plants with fewer flowers, with the flowers hardier than the previous year. Last year, what was left of the poppies produced bigger plants and a couple nice size blooms. And this year, it seems the few poppy plants that have finally established themselves are going to produce at least 7 flowers, and a couple of them are going to live up to their name of giant poppies. One of them will bloom any day now, and I snapped a photo this afternoon.
Posted in photography
By Ron on June 4, 2008
The phrase I said most often last night that was directed at the television: “But you lost!” This is just like that time when the Arizona Cardinals and Detroit Lions played in the conference championship. It was historic these two long-suffering franchises were one step away from the Super Bowl. And remember the final score?! Detroit won, 54-51. Wow! It was the most points ever scored in a conference championship game. But what was really odd was when the Clintons Cardinals refused to leave the field. Even though the game was over and they had 45 points on the scoreboard to the opponents’ 48 points, they argued they were still the better team … because they were favored before the game, because they scored more touchdowns rather than field goals, because their head coach had won a Super Bowl before, blah, blah, blah. Late addition, since I almost forgot that strange part where the losing team’s quarterback felt entitled to go on to the Super Bowl as the backup quarterback for the winning team.
Posted in politics
