Category Archives: self

Ron Paul has won five significant straw polls in 2011:

Value Voters
CPAC
RLC
California GOP
New Hampshire GOP

And speaking of polls and other flavors of the month: I like chocolate, but not with Federal Reserve notes sprinkled on it.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — Several weeks ago a mass protest began in New York City with the intent to Occupy Wall Street. The group wants to remove influence of corporations from elections. On October 6, Occupy groups from across the nation began to “occupy” certain parts of their city.

Much like the “T(axed) E(nough) A(lready)” groups that formed in 2009, the Occupy groups are only seeing part of the problem. The “TEA parties” were only complaining about certain forms of taxation – the attendees and speakers were largely in favor of the “Fair Tax” and military intervention. I did attend one “TEA Party” and tried speaking to people about abolishing the IRS and Federal Reserve and was mostly ignored or put off, even by the “Fair Taxers” – who don’t seem to mind the spending so much as the form of taxation.

I attended parts of the first two days of Occupy San Antonio – not as an activist, but rather as an independent journalist. As such, and being in street clothes without a press badge, I was able to get candid interviews with protesters. Of the handful of attendees, most were just “there”; the vibe was that of people hanging out, not of a political protest. However, when asked why they were protesting they would give a lively answer about removing corporate interest from political campaigns, and to give the people a voice. When further questioned on the fact that corporations and dollars don’t vote, one protester said, “yes, but they buy lobbyists and influence members of Congress.” This will continue to happen, as long as the government is involved in the economy.

I asked one of the protesters, “who are you planning on petitioning or delivering your demands?” He didn’t know and said the group would vote on that.

Additionally, no one had a plan to call for every incumbent to be voted out of office, they just want corporate money out of politics, but they still want the government to be involved in the economy by adding more regulations to businesses. Most of the protesters seemed unaware that the big corporations are the ones lobbying for the regulations that are in place – the big businesses want to establish barriers to smaller competitors.

Another “demand” of the Occupy groups is the elimination of the Federal Reserve – something I’ve supported for years. However, there was no consensus on what they wanted to replace it with. Some want the Treasury to issue paper currency, other want to establish 49 more Central Banks at the State level – similar to what North Dakota has already done (except the Bank of North Dakota isn’t allowed to print currency) – and a few want a system of barter and voluntary currency.

All in all, the occupy protest in San Antonio seems very weak, without a firm plan and with several small factions each attempting to “take over” the protest to meet their objectives. The groups claim they will “occupy” their city until their demands are met. However, I believe the protests will fall apart no later than Thanksgiving.

The first time watching this, I didn’t even realize it was based off a 2009 speech that has been remixed and rehashed by artists until the narration began to transform into Paul’s voice at very end. Seriously, it’s been that long since I heard it that it seemed fresh and new. I know, I’m a dolt:

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Clocking in at over three minutes it might seem a bit unwieldy to slip it into the commercial slots between reruns of Seinfeld or Friends, but then again why raise all these millions across the various Paul PACs and committees if we can’t think outside the box and actually politically inform people?

Unfortunately it seems more Paul supporters are interested in taking umbrage over the title of RevolutionPAC’s post title — Tea Party to Obama: Stop policing the world! — than with the substance of the video. I’d like to gently remind them that though the Original Tea Party (OTP, as the kids might coin it) was brilliantly capitalized under Ron Paul, it was claimed as a banner for libertarians long before 2007.

All over facebook and the rest of the internets comes this very upset gentleman who is capable of balancing his checkbook and expresses his wishes for Obama to simply shut up and do the same:

The video has been watched at least 1.3 million times since August (and reposts are abundant).

Balance that, B.

@Felonius_munk [twitter]
Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS [YouTube]

Ben Bernanke,

It has come to my attention that you will be compiling a list of people that post derogatory/negative comments about the Federal Reserve. I’d like to ask the following questions:

• What keywords are you looking for?
• What do you intend to do with the information you receive?
• Why do you wish to revoke the first amendment rights of people you disagree with?
• Will you send federal agents to the houses of these people to “convince them” to not oppose the policies of the Fed?
• Will you arrest people that oppose you and your policies? If so, under what authority?
• Will you open your books and allow an audit?
• Will you stop inflating the currency?
• Do you and your associates intend to inflate the currency to the point that it becomes worthless and must be replaced by a regional or world-wide currency?
• In your opinion, how is it moral/ethical to have a monetary system based on forced compliance?

I know you’re upset that people don’t like you. But stifling dissent will not help your image.

Before ending, I’d like to add that while some people are opposed to the Federal Reserve because it is a private – as opposed to government owned — central bank; my objection is to the fact that the you operate under a system of forced compliance with a government granted monopoly on the issuance of currency. Not to mention the fact that you print a currency that is not backed by any thing of value.

Your strong-arm tactics and threats to silence critics do not scare me. I will continue to speak out against the Federal Reserve and will continue encouraging people to use commodity-backed currencies (such as gold, silver and copper) and barter.

I doubt you or anyone on your behalf will respond to this letter, however if you do, your reply will be made public.

In Peace, Freedom, Love and Liberty,
Darryl W. Perry

CIA operative gets away with double murder in Pakistan after US pays $2.34 million “blood money” to families (presumably so when they don’t get justice their jihad will be well funded or something, LOLIDUNNO).

CIA operative comes home to suburbia Highlands Ranch, Colorado and goes berserk at Einstein Bagel Bros. over a parking spot on a Saturday morning, arrested for assault.

CIA operative gets sent back to Pakistan to serve jail sentence and taxpayers get a refund.

A fine waste of taxpayer dollars:

The “reporting” in question claims that a group of visiting schoolkids was taken hostage by a dozen members of Congress.

“…[So] far none of [the FBI snipers] has been able to get a clear shot at any senators or representatives,” according to a fake quote from a special agent.

It’s called satire. Investigation closed, dumbasses.

By “investigating the reporting” that just means some guy (or, ooh ooh, a blue ribbon committee) gets paid to sit around drinking coffee and munching on donuts while reading The Onion (presumably to ensure that no politically embarrassing lines are being crossed). Bring in a writer for questioning, maybe ask them what kind of music they listen to, what movies are they fans of, before throwing them on a watch list so the higher ups know you’re doing serious cop stuff. It’s the perfect hipster police job.

NBC-DC reports that “No one is currently answering the phone at a number provided by a public information officer with the Capitol Police.” I’m sure the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed individual who came up with this investigation at Capitol Police HQ will love to answer the press’ questions on why the Onion is being investigated for making funnies as this ridiculously true story makes its way to other satire writers.

This is local man, reporting live from a stack of servers on the Internet.

I typically don’t give Nancy Grace the media attention she so famously wants, but I will weigh in since I live in a house where Dancing With The Stars (or as we not so generously refer to it: Dancing With The Tards) is religiously watched. Because of this, I of course get the dirt on any massive faux pas from the show before the regular media wake up to fresh scandal.

If you were watching tonight, you may remember the rehearsal scenes where Grace pouted by the window, or pouted in the arms of her dance partner Tristan MacManus, or pouted when you know… things started to look more like actual work and less like sitting around on a TV set bitching about some crazy mom murdering their daughter.

But what you may not remember — if you were so cornered like me into watching this travesty of Nancy Grace “dancing” (it resembled something more like a lot of bouncing around, wildly kicking her feet up, yet lacking of any semblance of rhythm) — was the rather unceremonious cutaway to the audience before the end, presumably to give some reaction shots. Funny enough though, to portions of the audience that were not applauding. Woops, ABC cares.

That swift cutaway was because of an eye-scarring wardrobe malfunction that partially exposed Grace’s nipple.

UPDATE WED SEP 28: It’s come to my attention that Nancy Grace is actually denying this took place, in no less than an Eric Cartmanesque feat of mental gymnastics.

She’s somehow contending that what everyone saw was a pastie or “jiggling”. Well color me blind, but unless it was a pastie designed to look exactly like a nipple, then Nancy Grace is a big fat brown-nippled liar.

UPDATE THU SEP 29: The lady doth protest too much. Grace has tweeted a picture of Breast Petals, we checked out the alleged product and compared it to the high-definition video Hammer of Truth obtained of DTWS (oh lord, help mine eyes). Our analysis stands, this was real nip… and we’re also now keen on her new-found attempt at milking NippleGate for all the attention it will garner her. She’s even slyly claiming that those obvious hair extensions are also hers (in the most clever legal sense, of course).

Tom Bergeron probably takes the cake for best response, telling Wetpaint Entertainment, “It would be ungentlemanly of me to say anything different than what Nancy believes happened. How’s that for an answer, huh? It kind of gives you the answer with a little bit of a dodge, but not really.”

Classy truth, “what Nancy believes.” Go ahead and just let that sink in. [h/T TWoP forums]

Our advice to Grace: stop with all the lying, we are now done dry-heaving for the third day in a row and we’d like you to stop conniving us into verifying that: “yes indeed, it’s a nipple.” Thanks so much. /UPDATES

NSFW pic, after the jump. You can’t unsee this, you’ve been warned: see more…

With the representatives of the Palestinian territory pressuring the United Nations for full recognition, questions have been raised about the future of Israel. Some argue that U.N. recognition of a Palestinian State will cause the demise of Israel. However, 127 U.N. members already recognize the State of Palestine as an independent nation.

Few people are even asking, or answering, why a nation must be represented at the U.N. Switzerland, best known for its neutrality, was not a full member of the U.N. until September 10, 2002. I seriously doubt anyone questioned the independence of Switzerland before the nation became full member of the U.N.

In 1998, Christian Hillgruber, of the European Journal of International Law, wrote , “Recognition of a new state is an act that confers a status; as a result of recognition, the recognized entity acquires the legal status of a state under International law. In this sense, a (new) state is not born, but chosen as a subject of international law. Only when the new state has been recognized does it become a subject of international law, and this initially only with respect to the existing states recognizing it. On admission as a member of the United Nations, the new state then becomes part of the globally organized community of states by way of co-optation. After the decision has been taken to admit a state to the United Nations, its statehood cannot be called into question with the effect of contesting the validity of mutual rights and obligations arising from co-membership.” [PDF]

I wonder if certain powerful people are worried that recognition of the State of Palestine would lead to the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. Maybe more nations will recognize the independence of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somaliland, South Ossetia, Transnistria, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and/or Western Sahara. Maybe certain people (i.e. government representatives) fear recognizing the right of self-determination; that is the right of “determination by the people of a territorial unit of their own future political status.” Though there are no established guidelines regarding how a group of people exercise their right of self-determination. During the 1860′s several States attempted to leave the United States of America, several counties in these States took secession one step further and seceded from their seceding State. It was this act of self-determination that allowed West Virginia to become a State, it also led to several “Free State’s” throughout the Confederacy.

The United States of America was founded on the principles of self-determination. Not only has the U.S. government violated the self-determination rights of the Native Americans, but also the people of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico and many other people who have become dependent on the U.S. government, but it now violates the right of self-determination of people over whom it has no recognized authority (i.e. Palestine).

As part of a media tour — Ron Suskind is making the rounds on TV shows to sell his new book Confidence Men. His interview with Tavis Smiley last night has me intrigued:

Well, Geithner and I went through it letter and verse, and I just would tell readers if they want to see Tim Geithner’s real response, the response that’s full, complete, in paragraph-long quotes, it is in the book, two pages.

I think if you read that, at the end of the day it’s hard to come to a conclusion other than Tim Geithner gamed the president on arguably one of the most important decisions of his presidency, which was his desire to really look at the taking down of the big banks, Citibank, other big banks, when he felt a kind of Rooseveltian urge to step up.

Hard to do. He was really studying hard in January, February, in March of 2009. This was decisiveness by Obama, and the fact is it didn’t happen. A month later he thought plans were being drawn up about how to dissolve Citibank by Treasury. Only Treasury can do it, after all, and he found out they weren’t. He got quite agitated.

He said to Christie Romer, she said, “There is no plan, Mr. President.” He said, “There better be.” Well, I talked to the president about it; I talked to Tim about it. Everybody involved, everyone in that meeting that day when he raised his voice. I don’t think there’s any dispute about it. There’s certainly no dispute that I’ve seen about what happened.

The question is what does the president do then? Did he take Tim to the woodshed in April of 2009? I asked them both. They said there was discussions; there was a lot of rolling discussions. I think one of the issues is how does this president rise to this moment and have a White House around him that now carries forward his more seasoned and deeper experience to express his will, to express his qualities? That’s still a battle, I think.

It’s no wonder the White House is in full spin mode trying to deflect Suskind’s revelations. They’ve rebuked with the best headline grabber in a long time: The Suskind Book Game: ‘Too Big to Fact Check?’

My dear White House public relations wing, it’s only 800 pages or so — seriously, it’s not that hard to read a book and mark down what you think are errors without sounding like complete twats about it. One factual error writeup wins out at Politico, “Sperling played tennis at Minnesota. Though, to be fair, both universities start with an ‘M’ and are only about 800 miles apart.” My suggestion is to read it with a nice glass of wine, and learned to cut out the whine. Just a thought.

I’ll give credit to Tavis Smiley for asking a really important question, “Everybody wants to get a conversation with the president. But when these books come out and I find out that the president and his people cooperated, I’m like, ‘Duh, why don’t you guys shut up, stop talking to these writers.’”

Easy Tavis, you might be asking the right questions, then you’ll be curbed in the media game. In case you’re wondering, a cool Suskind responded to that inquiry by deflecting, “you’re going to have to ask the president and his staff about that.”

Watch the complete interview here: see more…

On September 22, a Thursday, from 9PM to 11PM EST all most of the GOP presidential candidates who declared their candidacies were invited to a forum in Florida to air their grievances about Obama and the economy under the pretense of debate. Here are my LIVEBLOGGED REACTIONS (reverse chronology):

Shit like this at 3:15AM You know you done wrong Google/FoxNews:

11:44PM Ron Paul Flix busts out the highlight reel in record time. All six questions.

11:25PM via Judy Morris, the question countdown:

One of my FB friends timed the speaking. Tonight: The opportunity FOX allowed each candidate to speak:

Romney – 16
Perry – 11
Bachmann – 9
Huntsman – 9
Santorum – 9
Gingrich – 7
Cain – 7
Paul – 6
Johnson – 5

Even with Google splashing their logo on things, the debates are still an uneven match. Here’s your pudding!

11:15PM Best loaded poll of the night… we’re done… post-analysis from Fox is derping too hard now.

10:54PM Great question from Youtube: Darrel Owens asks them to pick their running mate pair-ups (AS A GAME)… here we go: BIG FINALE!!!!

Johnson picks Paul
Santorum picks Gingrich
Gingrich says FuckoffIhateyourquestionlolz crowd laughs
Paul says Inappropriatetooearlyrespectfullydecline crowd cheers
Perry picks CainGingrichFrankenmorph
Romney steals Gingrich’s FuckoffIhateyourquestionlolz
Bachmann gives Longwindednonanswer
Cain picks Romney then Gingrich
Huntsman picks Cain

10:42PM Ron Paul gets woops and applause. Blames the Fed, everyone on stage repeating what he already said what he’s been saying for years.

Gingrich gets surprise cheers, somehow people have forgotten what a skeezy guy he is. Santorum talks fast and squanders his time. Polite cheers.

Johnson makes joke about his neighbor’s dogs shitting making more shovel-ready jobs than Obama… LOOOOOOOOL

see more…

I guess r/trees is fostering the idealistic grassroots fires and has started a people’s petition on the White House website to force Obama’s administration to respond (again) to the louder and louder calls for marijuana legalization. So far the number of signatures collected in the course of a single afternoon is well over the 5,000 threshold required to be considered a legitimate petition. Our current estimate of signature rate is 100/min and climbing. Eh, whatever, it’s making the rounds.

I agree: Legalize in our lifetime, dammit! It’s not stopping anyone, anyways. And the icing on the cake is how culturally blasé we are about recreational drug use that doesn’t interfere with one’s work ethic.

We have multiple gold medals and several presidencies (albeit hypocritical) in our partaking purview, so suck it… policia.

For the record, no I don’t trust some government flunky not to dick with the numbers on this, but do it for the lulz anyways.

Update: The Hill is reporting that this petition was the first to cross the threshold and is dominating the rankings page by a 2-to-1 margin. Even worse is four of the top six petitions are directly addressed at marijuana prohibition:

Wow, that’s an awful lot of pot smoke being blown in Obama’s face by We The People.

Update 19:41EST: whitehouse.gov/petitions is intermittently throwing 404 errors (ha, we expected this, which is why we took screenshots). Stay tuned to server meltdown drama.

Update 9/23 4:09EST Kerplah!

[Popular Petitions - The White House]
[Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol. - The White House]
[Alright r/trees, it's time to be heard. We the People online petition from whitehouse.gov is active! - reddit.com]

…if you like the new facebook.

[Barack Obama joins Open Government Partnership for group photo] – MSNBC.com
[Where To Complain To Facebook About The Changes] – AllFacebook.com

When one hears the term wiretapping, normally one thinks of secretly recording phone calls of others; some may have thoughts of Watergate. However, under some crafty interpretations of the legal definition of wiretapping, several people have found themselves as suspects of this offense for filming their encounters with public officials. Most people familiar with the Free State Project are aware that Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller (aka Ademo Freeman) were recently acquitted of the felony wiretapping charges in Massachusetts. Some people may even be aware that the 1st Circuit Court ruled that filming public officials while on duty is a “basic and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”

While the 1st Circuit Court ruling only applies to the States that are part of that Court’s jurisdiction, it was cited by a judge in Illinois as a “pervasive authority” for ruling on similar cases.

Specifically the case of an Illinois man, Michael Allison, who was recently convicted of five counts of felony eavesdropping and sentenced to 75 years in prison. The Illinois law makes it a felony to record a conversation without consent of ALL parties involved, regardless of the circumstances. Allison’s troubles began when he recorded his encounters with police who were seizing cars from his front yard. Allison then attempted to record his court appearance and was arrested for supposedly violating the Judge’s privacy.

There is good news for Mr. Allison — another Judge (David Frankland) dismissed the charges against Michael Allison and ruled, “A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusion into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right to privacy in their public duties… Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather information.”

Additionally, the ACLU is challenging the Illinois law in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the court expected to issue a decision in the next month. And a Chicago jury recently acquitted a woman for secretly recording a conversation with police regarding a sexual harassment complaint she was attempting to file against the department.

It seems police officers have no issues if they are filmed during parades or doing something good, such as getting a kitten out of a tree; it’s only when the officer is being “less than cordial” that it becomes an issue. Why should someone film a police encounter? Doing so, and presenting the film as evidence during his trial, helped Dave Ridley win an acquittal after being charged with trespassing — at a public event in New Hampshire.

It’s good to see courts, and juries, recognizing the fact that filming cops is not a crime. I encourage everyone to carry a camera (or two) just in case the need arises to film an encounter with a “public servant.” You may be able to hold them accountable, and possibly protect yourself from jail.

The tone in Washington may not get much play any more as a stump speech soundbite, so it appears Mitt Romney’s people are working diligently to lower the tone in website error messages instead — whenever a link breaks.

Well one did: it seems a PDF of the vaunted economic plan has disappeared, and I was greeted instead with a demonic-eyed donkey kicking in the the air (I assume angrily) and yelling at me in uppercase at how wrong things have gone. A subsequent search for all pdf files on the site did not turn it up either.

Based on a generous impression of this system’s error message, broken links on a republican candidate’s website can now somehow be pinned on democrats. Go figure:

Incidentally we have automated bots that check for broken links on the site in order to strike broken links and better curate our archives. Our bot was not amused at the divisive message from Mitt Romney’s website.

For many years, and especially in the past 10 years, many so called “Christians” have been supporting the military actions of the United States government. Some do so because of belief that “those guys over there (wherever there happens to be) want to kill us.” And often ask the flawed question, “would you rather fight them over here or over there?” to justify their support for sending troops around the world to kill “the enemy.”

Sadly, many of these “Christians” believe it is somehow not “murder” if people are killed during “war.” They conveniently forget parts of the Bible such as:

“Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood shall be shed by man. For He made man in the image of God.”^{Genesis 9:6}

“You shall not murder.”^{Exodus 20:13}

“And do not kill the innocent and the righteous; for I will not justify the wicked.”^{Exodus 23:7}

Many of these “Christians” also forget the words of the Messiah who said:

“Blessed are the peacemakers! For they shall be called sons of God.”^{(Matthew 5:9)}

“…And one of them, a lawyer, questioned Him, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And Yeshua said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments all the Law and the Prophets hang.”^{(Mathew 22:35-40)}

“I give a new commandment to you, that you should love one another; according as I loved you, you should also love one another. By this all shall know that you are My disciples, if you have love among one another.”^{(John 13:34-35)}

Somehow the people supporting preemptive wars of aggression will also justify in their mind that the people being killed are the enemy and “deserve” to die, again forgetting the words of the Messiah:

“but I say to you, Love your enemies; bless those cursing you, do well to those hating you; and pray for those abusing and persecuting you.”^{(Matthew 5:44)}

Judaism and Christianity are not the only faiths that have teachings against murder. Jain scripture says:

“The essence of right conduct is not to injure anyone; one should know only this, that non-injury is religion.” ^{(Naladiyar 14-15)}

The Qur’an says, “Do not kill any soul, which God has made forbidden, except in just cause.” ^{(Sura 17.33)}

And “He who kills a soul unless it be (in legal punishment) for murder or for causing disorder and corruption on the earth will be as if he had killed all humankind.”^{(Sura 5.32)}

The Scripture for Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism additionally have teachings against war and murder.

If nearly every religious scripture has teachings opposing unjust war and murder, then why do so many religious people tolerate and support unjust wars?

Last year’s ridiculous 9/11 death and destruction celebration with religious people inciting hatred seems to have really been tamped down this year, so I’ll defer from telling people to go burn another copy of the PATRIOT Act (still a good idea, all things considered).

Instead I’m going to repost something I made for a previous amoral anniversary of the infamous date, an image that still resonates. I’ve updated it slightly from the original:

I would eulogize for the dead (and still dying) in the name of a War on Tactics, but we all can see their memories being politicized on this date more than any mass murder victims should ever be. And the fact that we also see terror tactics being embraced by a radically authoritarian power structure pretty much makes their deaths another of history’s vanities in the backdrop of mass war. “Cynical” doesn’t begin to describe how far down the rabbit hole we’ve slid in ten years.

Say hi to an automatic-rifle toting, militarized policeman today, if you dare venture outside.

I guess forgetting is better than acknowledging you let Prick Perry touch you inappropriately.

These pictures are probably famous now, which is a fucking shame because pictures are more open to interpretation — “oh look, Perry is so strong and could kick Ron Paul’s ass, herp derp fisticuffs, yay.” This is really how it’s meant to be played out, Rick Perry is a dick, not a retard to the political game.

Yes, let’s put another macho Texan act in the White House, rack up some more wars and enemies. That shit is going swimmingly.

Haha those suckers will believe anything, won’t they? Not:

Update: Just noticed that Ron Paul’s jacket and tie matches the HoT site colors. Fucking ace.

Additional notes (copy-paste from facebook): I’m officially done watching any more presidential debates hosted by corporate media outlets.

FOX/CNN/MSNBC have finally proven they don’t want to be taken seriously in our democratic process and their bias towards creating superfluous political drama is now beyond nauseating.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert cracking their jokes as moderators would be more honest than most anything we’ve seen so far this cycle. Pathetic.

A surreal design tribute to the Ron Paul campaign website in one of the strangest subbreddits (actual screenshot):

Whatever is going on here, it’s working. Where you’re going, you don’t need LSD.

“New GM” won’t cover recalls of pre-bankruptcy GM, so up yours, Chevy Impala owners:

General Motors Co (GM.N) is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over a suspension problem on more than 400,000 Chevrolet Impalas from the 2007 and 2008 model years, saying it should not be responsible for repairs because the flaw predated its bankruptcy.

…The current company, called “New GM,” said it did not assume responsibility under the reorganization to fix the Impala problem, but only to make repairs “subject to conditions and limitations” in express written warranties.

Translation: this is a novel cost cutting measure by a short-term, myopic management that doesn’t care about customer loyalty. Thanks for the honesty, fuckers.

Guess what? Since the government has a pimp hand in the car business still, they’ll likely urge the courts to back down and shovel more corporate socialist manure under the rug. Watch for a team of “New GM” lobbyists and PR lackeys to mount a campaign to fight this tooth and nail in the coming weeks. Meanwhile the layoffs and consolidations will continue unabated. “New GM” is a cruel joke against designers and the working man never stood a chance.

Karen De Coster over at Lew Rockwell writes, “for those folks who insisted on the “Buy American” paradigm, I do not feel their pain for buying junk from a financially insolvent bank masquerading as an auto manufacturer.” Nor should we, they made their own bed.

Here’s a question: how many more government billions will it take to build another crappy hybrid once they wake up and realize their precious Volt has already failed the market test?

An updated knee-slapper for a not-so-updated president:

A lobbyist on his way home from work in Washington, DC, came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, “Wow, this seems worse than usual.”

He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, “Officer, what’s the hold-up?”

The officer replied, “The president is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about pulling troops out of the Middle East, why we’re in Libya, and that people say he’s simply Bush’s third term when it comes to the majority of domestic policies. So we’re taking up a collection for him.”

The lobbyist enquired, “Oh, how much have you got so far?”

The officer replied, “About four gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning.”

Hammer of Truth offeeshul sources tell us that USPS deliveries of Ron Paul mailers raising awareness for an August 20th, birthday moneybomb are being inexplicably delayed until August 30th and beyond. Several North Carolina and Wisconsin supporters report signs that there’s a postal snafu of potentially epic failure proportions unfolding, with the extreme delays nullifying the effort.

Now we love a good Scooby Doo mystery so here’s two questions the Ron Paul supporters out there can help us answer:

1. Have you experienced a August 20th Ron Paul Moneybomb mailer delay? Yes or no.
2. Does this mean my (utilities/mortgage/bills/income/drugs from Canada) are a possible no show for pissing off the ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓? (fill in the blank)

In return: a link for free Ron Paul stickers. Bribery, it works every time.

Incidentally and not surprisingly, the campaign raised another healthy $1.82 million, and even weathered a sizable cyber attack along the way that was enough of a nuisance to keep the campaign’s twitter feed from boasting any updated reports throughout the day. Requests for comments from the Ron Paul campaign were not returned at the time of this report.

I don’t know about you guys on theories as to why there was a giant gap in postal service (ten days or more), but I do know that you can’t coat postcards in anthrax; So chalk that one off the list. And for all we know someone in the Paul campaign could have simply forgotten to take the bag to the Post Office, shit happens.

Share your mail issues or other craftily coordinated oddities and help us get to the bottom of the Mystery of the Missing Mailbags!

Update: This is a confirmed problem, with reddit’s r/Libertarian community also reporting that they are experiencing the same delay. The investigation continues…

A new paper released by a joint study between the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, the Medical College of Virginia Campus and the Virginia Commonwealth University has confirmed that the THC in cannabis is without a doubt stimulating healthy cells within the body to seek out and fuck up cancerous ones.

The title of the research paper is indeed a mouthful: Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol-Induced Apoptosis in Jurkat Leukemia T Cells Is Regulated by Translocation of Bad to Mitochondria. Apparently they get paid to be good scientists at universities, but are terrible at communicating this stuff very well to broad audiences.

Hidden within the nearly incomprehensible language of the finding is this image which helps dumbshits like me laymen grasp the results without having to look up the definition of every third word. U0126 is a selective inhibitor that seems to benefit greatly from being paired with THC to tag team the cancer cells.

The key probably requires a PhD behind your name to fully understand, but the results were reproduced by three independent experiments. I’m not so sure what a Jurkat cell is all about, but killing them is apparently a good idea and THC is very good at it. Good luck understanding this:

Effects of THC on mitochondrial localization of Bad in THC-stimulated cells. A. Jurkat cells were treated with either 15 μmol/L LY294002 (LY) or 2 μmol/L H-89 in medium containing 10% FBS in the absence or presence of 10 μmol/L THC for a total 12 hours, after which the percentage of apoptotic cells were determined as described in Fig. 1A. Columns, mean of three separate experiments done in triplicate; bars, SD. *, P < 0.05, significantly less than values obtained for the treated cells with THC + LY294002. B. Cells were cultured with either 15 μmol/L LY294002 or 25 μmol/L U0126 in medium containing 10% FBS in the absence or presence of 10 μmol/L THC for a total 12 hours, after which Western analysis was used to monitor expression of phospho-Akt (Thr308), phospho-Akt (Ser473), and Akt. Akt served as a loading control. C. Cells were cultured as described in B, after which precleared cell lysates were incubated overnight with mouse monoclonal anti-Bad IgG conjugated to protein A-agarose beads. Immunoprecipitates were subsequently subjected to Western analysis to monitor the phosphorylation status of phospho-Bad (Ser112), phospho-Bad (Ser136), and phospho-Bad (Ser155). All sites were analyzed on a single blot. Cos cells were used as a positive control. Representative experiment. Two additional studies yielded equivalent results. D. Quantitative changes in Bad phosphorylation were determined by densitometric analysis of immunoblots. Columns, mean of three independent experiments done in triplicate; bars, SD. E. Jurkat cells treated as described in B, after which cells were adhered to slides by cytospin and subjected to double staining with anti-Bad antibodies and Cy2-labeled secondary antibodies (green) followed by a mitochondrion-specific dye (MitoTracker Deep Red 633) and then analyzed by confocal microscopy. Similar results were obtained in three independent experiments.

Apoptosis is the programmed death of cancer cells, which was highly increased under twelve-hour THC conditions in the test.

So there you have it “plant-derived cannabinoids, including Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), induce apoptosis in leukemic cells, although the precise mechanism remains unclear.” Scientists have conclusively discovered a truth: Marijuana literally kills cancer cells.

I don’t always recommend twelve-hour smoke sessions, but if you have cancer: shoot the 420 rainbow.