Zippidy Doo Da

I'm not stupid, I'm from Texas!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Halloween


Recently, the plethora of revealing costumes for women this time of year, and in such twisted and kinky themes - for all ages, prompted someone to suggest that the kid's keep the 31st for themselves, and the adults make a new holiday called "Slut Day."

In the meantime, there's lots to be afraid of. I'm not only talking about stagflation, the plummeting dollar, resistant staff infections, global warming, lead poison, but a million little things around us that should keep us indoors and voting republican.

Hell, New Jersey even banned gumball machines as potential terrorist threats to the public, "they worry the colorful round treats could be poisoned by an enterprising terrorist who sees them as bait for unsuspecting targets -- young kids. www.nj.com

Things are scary alright. Dennis Kucinich is merely affirming UFO's are around AND THEY SAY he's crazy. But we live in a world where these super-natural subjects are legitimate areas of study. For instance, The Texas Big Foot (see Bogey Creek Monster) is more or less an accepted fact. Don't forget the Texas Big Foot Confence 11/10/07 up in east Texas someplace spooky,
www.texasbigfoot.com.

By the way, Elvis' ghost will appear tonight in a certain designated graveyard www.24hourchurchofelvis.com

Remember, the scariest stuff is like this:

S.A. diabetes deaths high

Don Finley
Express-News

San Antonio's diabetes death rate was the second-highest of the 54 largest U.S. cities, according to a new report that measured the health of big cities in several categories and found it worse than for the country as a whole.

www.mysa.com

So please, lighten up on the candy.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Tell It To the Judge

We stopped for gas in Seabrook. A black Lincoln with State Judge plates pulled up to the next pump. I asked, and the gentleman told me that he was State Judge Jerome Jones, on the bench in Galveston for thirty years.

I introduced myself and told him that as I don’t often speak to State Judges, I wanted to take the opportunity to tell him that I was appalled at the actions of Justice Sharon Keller and Attorney General Greg Abbott before the execution of Michael Richard this month. He asked me to elaborate on which case I was talking about, and then he warmed to the subject, without commenting directly on any of the personalities.

He admitted growing ambivalent on the issue, but said that every time he’s about to decide against, “some heinous case comes up with a guy cutting a baby out of a woman’s womb or something, and I say hell, (screw) ‘em.”

He complained about the cost of keeping a prisoner on death row for “fifteen years or more.” I replied that as long as we strive for due process, it’s cheaper to keep somebody in prison for life than it is to execute them.

I think a lot of people, like Judge Jones, are no longer convinced that capital punishment is right, or necessary. This is one more issue where the citizens are way out ahead of their elected officials. So what’s stopping us?

Can't Wait for the Movie Version

Story in today's Chronicle about some fecal specimen stealing batteries and shooting a policeman. If he'd lived, his best hope would be life in Huntsville, but notice how he checked out, surprised we don't see more of this:

"HPD: Shooting suspect found dead, may have tripped

By MIKE GLENN

"A man accused of shooting an off-duty Houston police officer was found dead Sunday in a thick grove of woods near the westside apartment complex where the officer was wounded, authorities said.

"The gunman, identified by police as Eric Titov, 22, apparently shot himself in the head following a violent confrontation about midnight with HPD officer Victor Hill at the Reserve by the Lake Apartments, 18600 South Park View, police said.

"It was unclear Sunday whether Titov committed suicide or shot himself accidentally.

"Looks like his shorts fell down to his thighs; he may have actually tripped," HPD homicide Capt. Steve Jett said. "And, trying to catch himself with his hands, wound up pulling the trigger as he was falling."

-Officer Hill deserves our thanks for stopping this vermin, and our prayers for his speedy recovery.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat:

Richard lawyer says Texas AG's office pushed for execution

© 2007 The Associated Press

“HOUSTON — An attorney for the only man put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court announced plans to review the constitutionality of lethal injection said staff at the Texas Attorney General's Office pushed for the execution.

“Michael Richard, 49, was executed Sept. 25 hours after justices decided take up a challenge from two condemned inmates in Kentucky over the same lethal injection procedures used by Texas. Richard's death also followed a refusal by Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, to keep the office open past 5 p.m. so his attorneys could file an appeal.

“David Dow, one of Richard's attorneys, said a lawyer on his staff informed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office about the failed attempt with the criminal appeals court about 6 p.m. But an assistant attorney general from Abbott's office told lawyers they had six minutes to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for Richard.

"They were being quite aggressively confrontational," Dow said.”

-So it appears that Justice Sharon Keller wasn’t alone in expediting the execution of Richard. That tool Greg Abbott had a hand in it too. Of course, maybe they were just acting in the name of some higher authority, perhaps Bob Perry, or Dr. James Leininger.

And we are responsible, too. The Republican Party Platform calls for capital punishment to be “swift and unencumbered,” and we’ve given them a lock on statewide offices for over ten years now. It’s time we paid attention to what they’ve been doing in our name. Make sure your voter registration is current; Harris County has scrubbed 100,000 names from the rolls since 2004. It’s time these pious plunderers had their asses handed to them.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Question:



Is TV news a useful information source or just a slut for ratings?
To find out, watch WXYZ News at 10:00.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Blog Test

This is just a test to see if I can manually make a link in a text para graph.

I have been lurking at
  • Pink Lady
  • and
  • Greg's Opinion
  • a lot lately, and recommend a daily visit.

    Let's see if this works....

    Tuesday, October 23, 2007

    You Know You're a Texan If..(Vol.V) - Food

    1. No 3 Dinner: beef enchilada, cheese enchilada (with onions) tamale, chalupa compuesta, crispy taco, chili con queso, guacamole salad, rice beans, corn tortillas, sopapillas with honey, flan, iced tea or Carta Blanca Beer

    2. Bar-B-Que Plate: sliced beef, ribs, chicken, sausage, potato salad, pinto beans, sauce, jalapenos, dill pickles, onion slices, sliced white bread, pecan pie, Big Red Soda or Lone Star Beer

    3. Red Beans and Rice: kielbasa, corn bread, iced tea or Bud

    4. This Is It: turkey wings, white rice, collard greens, candied yams, hot rolls, peach cobbler, iced tea

    5. Back Again: ox tails, mashed potatoes (brown gravy) field peas, garden salad, sliced white bread, iced tea

    6. The Captains Platter: gulf shrimp (boiled and fried) fried oysters, fried catfish, french fries, coleslaw, hush puppies, iced tea or Bud

    7. The Wagon Wheel: chick fried steak, mashed potatoes (cream gravy) sweet corn, pinto beans, hot rolls, apple pie, iced tea or Shiner Bock Beer

    8. Wurst Fest: bratwurst, wiener schnitzel, sour kraut (purple and white) pan potatoes, mustard, wheat rolls, BEER

    9. State Fair: corn dogs, funnel cakes, fried ice cream, roasted peanuts, nachos, sausage on a stick, frito pies, beer, Coke, Dr. Pepper

    10. whatever mom's cooking

    Monday, October 22, 2007

    Clueless





    From: The working poor must stretch paychecks to the breaking point

    By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
    Associated Press


    "While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.

    "From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.

    "It seems like to us, customers are running out of food products, paper towels sooner in the month," said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman at Family Dollar.

    "Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said the imbalance in spending before and after payday in July was the biggest it has ever seen, though the drop-off wasn't as steep in August.

    "And 7-Eleven says its grocery sales have jumped 12-13 percent over the past year, compared with only slight increases for non-necessities like gloves and toys.

    "Shoppers can't afford to load up at the supermarket and are going to the most convenient places to buy emergency food items like milk and eggs."

    -More evidence of republican inequality in prosperity, or R.I.P.

    Indian Official Dies After Monkey Attack


    AP 10/21/07

    NEW DELHI: A senior government official died Sunday after falling from a balcony during an attack by wild monkeys at his home in the Indian capital, media reported.

    New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by the gang of Rhesus macaques, but quickly succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall, the Press Trust of India news agency and The Times of India reported.

    Many government buildings, temples and residential neighborhoods in New Delhi are overrun by Rhesus macaques which scare passers-by and occasionally bite or snatch food from unsuspecting visitors.

    Last year, the Delhi High Court reprimanded city authorities for failing to stop the animals from terrifying residents and asked them to find a permanent solution to the monkey menace.

    Thursday, October 18, 2007

    Court Review Slows Executions to Lowest Level in Years


    From Mark Sherman, Associated Press

    “Fewer than 50 executions will take place this year, even if several states pushing ahead with lethal injections defeat legal efforts to stop them. The last time executions numbered fewer than 50 was in 1996, when there were 45.”

    “The last person executed in this country was Michael Richard, 49, who died by lethal injection in Texas the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky. A Texas state judge refused that day to accept an appeal from Richard's lawyers, saying it had arrived after office hours.”

    -So, our Justice Keller made the national wire. The Chronicle printed two letters today on the subject. Fundamentalist Grady Henley says “God bless Keller. We need more judges like her.” And Emerson Willis of La Porte wishes Judge Keller would run for higher office, and bemoans convicted killers “lying around death row, watching television for 10 to 20 years or even longer.”

    Die-hard sentiment notwithstanding, I see the tide finally turning on capital punishment. Some day, even Texas will stop executing people. The legislature and the Governor finally approved a life sentence without parole in 2005, probably spurred by the Supreme’s ban on executing juveniles; but still a step forward, flawed though it may be.

    The Innocence Project of Texas has already exonerated 13 men from Dallas County alone. Most of them have spent 20 or more years in prison for crimes they conclusively did not commit. Someday we’re bound to realize that a fallible justice system paired with an irrevocable punishment is a prescription for compounding tragedy.

    I leave the last word to Sister Helen Prejean, from her
    article “Would Jesus pull the switch?”

    “People are scared of crime, and they've been manipulated by politicians who push this button for all it's worth. For politicians, the death penalty is a convenient symbol and an easy way to prove how tough they are on criminals and crime. It allows them to avoid tackling the complex issue of how to get to the roots of crime in our communities.”

    “When people support executions, it is not out of malice or ill will or hardness of heart or meanness of spirit. It is, quite simply, that they don't know the truth of what is going on.”

    ”And that is not by accident. The secrecy surrounding executions makes it possible for executions to continue. I am convinced that if executions were made public, the torture and violence would be unmasked and we would be shamed into abolishing executions.”

    Monday, October 15, 2007

    When Judges Kill


    Look out for this lady. If you don't make to the courthouse by 5:00, she'll kill you. Yep:

    Presiding Judge Sharon Keller closed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals offices at the regular time Sept. 25, preventing attorneys for inmate Michael Richard from filing an appeal seeking to halt Richard's execution hours after the U.S. Supreme Court said it would consider a Kentucky case questioning the constitionality of lethal injection.

    Richard was executed that night after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant him a reprieve.

    The Austin American-Statesman reported Tuesday that Keller made the decision to close without consulting any of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' eight other judges or later informing them about the decision — including Johnson, who was assigned to handle any late motions in Richard's case.

    "And I was angry," she said. "If I'm in charge of the execution, I ought to have known about those things, and I ought to have been asked whether I was willing to stay late and accept those filings."

    Johnson said her first reaction was "utter dismay."

    She's like the rich ladies I see plowing through traffic in their Canyoneros on cell phones. I am afraid they will grind my pedestrian bones under their wheels, and drive away innocently to the next vapid event.

    Once again we are reminded of the banality of evil. Please sign the petition to have this taint removed from the seat of justice:

    http://myspace.com/judgesharonkiller

    www.sharonkiller.com

    Saturday, October 13, 2007

    Police: Attacker bites off man’s ear

    Associated Press

    UNIONDALE, N.Y. — A crazed attacker broke into a Long Island man's home, beat him with a karaoke machine and bit off his ear, police said.

    Doctors were unable to reattach the ear of the victim, but his injuries were not considered life threatening, said Nassau County police Officer Mary Verna.

    The 64-year-old Uniondale resident attempted to defend himself with a vacuum cleaner hose.

    The 27-year-old attacker punched and kicked him in the head and face before grabbing the karaoke machine and using it as a weapon, police said. He did not flee the scene of the violence Thursday but instead crouched in the hallway until police arrived.

    "This guy just randomly picked this house," said police Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

    Luis Hidalgo, also of Uniondale, pleaded not guilty to charges of burglary and assault. He was being held at the Nassau County jail on bail of $250,000 cash or $500,000 bond, prosecutors said. The number for his home was unlisted.

    Thursday, October 11, 2007

    Last November liquid daddy wrote about Project Argus, a pentagon program that set off atomic weapons in the Van Allen Belt, creating an artificial Aurora and distrupting the earth’s magnetic field. (see Science as Truth, Nov. 28th,’06 ) I had never heard of this before and I was astounded to hear the origins of the electromagnetic pulse weapons we have today. If you recall, some at the pentagon wanted to use these EMP weapons when we invaded Iraq, but cooler heads decided that we were more dependant on computer and communication systems than Saddam was and thus more vulnerable to these devices.

    The other day I heard a story on NPR, Gas Drilling Plan Near Nuclear Site Raises Worries, about Project Plowshare, a Atomic Energy Commission “nukes for peace” program that set off 30 underground nuclear tests in the continental United States between 1962 and 1973. Some of these experimental blasts were supposed to make it easier to extract natural gas deposits. They spent $82 million on this project before discovering that nobody wanted to buy radioactive natural gas. Go figure.

    Back in those days, Phillip Morris was hiring science to dispute the Surgeon Generals reports, and the chemical industry was hounding Rachael Carson to her grave for questioning the safety of using neurotoxins on insects. Now we have Exxon Mobil spending millions disputing climate science, and schools that forego evolution and instead teach about a talking snake in the garden. The earth is getting flat again.

    With history like this, it’s no wonder that people believe conspiracy theories. Seems we’ve tried everything else, maybe we should give the truth a chance. What kills me is that I had never heard some of these stories. I was just a kid, but I was a student, and I read the papers.

    Today I remembered something I read in Mad Magazine at the time, a bit of doggerel from Frank Jacobs with a picture of a brass-hatted general with a donut-shaped globe:

    “they have a plan to blow a hole
    right through the earth,
    from pole to pole.
    it’s the army’s answer
    to birth control”

    And I thought it was just a joke!

    Drunken Slut Jenna Bush

    Below is a question from Donald Pence, San Francisco about Jenna Bush service in Iraq.


    If the war in Iraq is so noble, why aren't you and your sister serving our country there?

    Jenna Bush: I understand that point, but there are many ways to serve our country, and I think my skills are better suited for teaching and representing the U.S. in Latin America through unicef. I respect the men and women of our country who are over there fighting. It is an unbelievably selfless thing to do. But if people really thought about it, they would know it's not even a practical question.



    Monday, October 08, 2007

    Chupacabra Report

    News that gets my goat:

    The Chron has run a two-parter on the electricity deregulation that then-governor George W. Bush signed into law in 1999. Electric utilities have raised their rates 56% in seven years since then. Who do they think they are, health insurance companies?

    Speaking of which, the NYT reports that tens of thousands of medicare clients have been victim of deceptive sales tactics and improperly denied claims by UnitedHealth, Humana, WellPoint, and eight smaller companies that administer the prescription drug program.
    Medicare has fined these companies $770,000 in the past six months, a drop in the bucket for an industry that spends over $100 million a year just on campaign contributions and lobbying expenses.

    Meanwhile The Peoples Pharmacy column offers advice to seniors who have hit the prescription drug expense “donut hole” and are wondering how they can afford their medications for the rest of the year.

    AP reports that Massachusetts has a record number of families in homeless shelters. Most states don’t keep statistics on the homeless, much like how the US treats civilian casualties in Iraq: no news is good news.

    The NYT reports that the overwhelmed Consumer Product Safety Commission is unable to recall even the dangerous and defective products that they know about before they injure and kill American consumers.

    And over in “Get Fuzzy” comics, Bucky Katt talks of “killing the planet faster than a Chinese toy factory.”

    Man oh Manischewitz!

    Sunday, October 07, 2007

    The First Missile Gap

    --The news has been full of stories marking the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. I think that seen in the light of todays “peaceful” space programs, some may miss the point of it all. An article from Matthew Brzezinski gave me a look at the cold war roots of space exploration, and the law of unintended consequences. Here’s some:

    “All this is just some of the fallout from Sputnik, the tiny Soviet satellite that Korolev and his team launched 50 years ago on Oct. 4, 1957, igniting a national panic in the United States, the effects of which still reverberate. The little aluminum sphere was not the source of fear but rather the huge rocket that it rode atop, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The 183-ton projectile gave the former Soviet Union an unrivaled capability to destroy any city on Earth within minutes of its launch. For the first time in U.S. history, the American heartland was vulnerable to attack by a foreign government.

    For Korolev's Kremlin masters, Sputnik was never about space exploration or cosmic milestones. It was a bold display of military might meant to match — and top — Washington's own frequent exhibitions of firepower. "We simply switch the warhead," boasted Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, in case anyone missed the point.

    The irony of the Sputnik crisis, of the terrifying realization that the Soviet Union suddenly possessed an advanced new weapons system far more lethal than anything in the U.S. arsenal, was that the debacle was largely of Washington's own making — a perfect example of how a nation's best-intentioned policies can sometimes backfire.

    The roots of the crisis went back to 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower swept into the White House on a platform of securing the country against communist threats. Under the stewardship of John Foster Dulles, his hawkish secretary of state, Eisenhower devised a new defense doctrine to counter the spreading "Red menace," which recently had claimed Eastern Europe and was infecting Asia. The U.S., according to Ike's doctrine, no longer would get bogged down in "minor" wars like in Korea. Instead, it would prepare for "total war," an all-out nuclear holocaust designed, in Dulles' own words, "to create sufficient fear in the enemy to deter aggression."

    To keep the Soviets sufficiently frightened and in check, the Air Force's Strategic Air Command, or SAC, began a systematic and sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation. Every day, U.S. planes took off from bases around the world and penetrated Soviet airspace, probing for weaknesses in Russian radar defenses. Huge exercises with ominous names like Operation Power House scrambled hundreds of nuclear-laden long-range bombers that charged across the Atlantic, headed for Moscow. At the last minute, they would turn around, but in some war games, squadrons of B-47 Stratojets would take off from Greenland, cross the North Pole and fly deep into Siberia in attack formation — in broad daylight. "With any luck, we could have started World War III," the SAC commander, Gen. Curtis LeMay, famously declared.

    The Russians were not amused. Had the Soviets tried the same stunt, Khrushchev indignantly responded, "it would have meant war."”

    -So the modern threat of ICBM launched nuclear warheads came about because Ike had Curtis LeMay’s SAC bombers playing chicken in Russian airspace.

    It’s not that simple, of course. Nothing is when you’re talking about the end of the world, but doesn’t it make you think twice when considering the things our government does in the name of our safety?

    The Bush administration is proud of themselves for reaching agreement with the North Koreans over their nuclear weapons, notwithstanding that it’s the same agreement that they threw out when they came into office six years ago.

    They seek to build new atomic weapons, and to extend the arms race into space with their missile defense systems, having withdrawn from the ABM treaty in 2002.

    Nothing this administration has done gives me confidence that they’ve considered the consequences of what they propose. When they turn from obstruction to action, I’m conditioned to assume that they’re currying favor with some influence group or else lining the pockets of some cronies.

    I say we vote these bums out, before they sink the lot of us.

    Thursday, October 04, 2007

    The Garden of Earthly Delights


    I think the creeping corruption and ineffectualness of Texas state agencies, post consolidation, is nearing critical mass lately. One can see about anywhere one cares to look.

    I spoke with a young mother today who baby is deaf, retarded, and struggling for breath with congenital hypothyroidism, the most easily preventable cause of mental retardation there is, because the department of health waited ten days to test her blood samples - the critical time period for reversing the effects of illness. Medical beaurocracys layered in red tape (Medicaid rules) cost this infant a normal life.

    Bexar County is auditing CPS from top to bottom because children die of abuse and neglect while in their jurisdiction, but finds resources to harass and victimize single moms with disabled children and home school families. (mysa.com)

    In further news from Bexar County, we have 5 x's the national rate for Hepatitis B in newborns, and staggeringly high numbers of liver cancer in population.

    Autism in children runs 1/96 now. TEA requires autism programs in every school. This is not enforced, and autism programs are practically non-existent.

    Try and get adult mental health care if you are uninsured. Texas doesn't fund it. They leave that task to the county jails - where untreated mental illness winds up sooner or later anyway.

    I don't see where any of these problems are getting any better by a voting population that doesn't give a shit about other people, but the cost in the future will be dear.