Sex for cigarettes exchange

I'm not making this up. Two florida women agreed to barter their bodies for a pack of smokes with a man they'd met on a telephone chat line. But the sex basically sucked so they falsely accused their beau of rape!!!???? WTF???!!

Two Tennessee women who accused a man of rape have admitted to cops that they had consensually agreed to sex with him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. One woman told investigators that the duo filed a phony police report because they "didn't enjoy the sex," according to cops.

The police report did not say whether they smoked the unspecified brand prior or post coitus.

Britain questions Blair on Iraq war (again)

Was the Iraq war justified? Most intelligent people would say no.
Was Saddam Hussein responsible, or linked in any way, the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Most honest people would say no.
Did the Troika Aznar, Bush and Blair, supported in a minor role by Berlusconi, fabricate facts to plunge humanity into one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history? Most intelligent people would say absolutely.
So why are the culprits of this fiasco still around, fêted, treated as elder statesmen, respected and even listened to? The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind.
As we speak, Tony Blair is facing tough questions in yet another Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The purpose? Nothing. Nada. Rien. Because nothing comes out of these media events. It gives investigators something to investigate, commission panelist a reason to put on pompous panels, reporters something to write about, and bloggers something to blog about. End of day, poppycock.
British newspapers are talking about Blair's vigorous response. They say he stands by his decision, however wrong the facts may have proven. Last I checked, stuborness was a sign of stupidity, not a trait to respect and worthy of emulation. By day's end, Tony Blair will return home to his London luxury loft. He'll enjoy a fine glass of Bordeaux (what else???) with his greasy roast beef. He'll glow with pride at having faced the tough questions and held his ground. What a monstrosity. He'll be beaming.
Iraq, however, will remain plunged into a long journey of human suffering: the dead will remain dead, their families will keep grieving, the demoralizing climate of fear and uncertainty will remain the new reality, courtesy of Mr. Blair and company.

A man who wasn't there

One year ago, I got my cameras, drove for hours in the snow and took some amazing footage of Barack Obama's inauguration. It was a cold day, but the excitement, the optimism, the general feeling that we were witnessing history, that He was our Man, kept us warm and energized. I remember the cold the metal of my cameras, burning to the touch. Great pictures!
That was a year ago. Last night, I heard the man who became president deliver the State of the Union speech.
He looked tired. His presence was not as towering as a year ago. He lacked the force of conviction. His words were empty. They were just words delivered from a teleprompter (which I've heard he even used at an elementary school). His speech dragged with a sense of hollowness.
He wasn't the Barack Obama who inspired the youth of a nation with his audacity of hope. His words rang empty. He seemed detached. Parroting. Reading. Without conviction. Hollow. Without power. Hollow. Empty lies. Very hollow.
He wasn't young, dynamic or energetic. He was produced, manipulated and hypocritical. The man who accepted the Peace Prize while escalating a war. The man who claimed to fight the banks while surrounding himself by bankers. The one who spoke against bickering in Washington, asking for a different tone and manner, while cuddling with Rahm Emanuel and other operators. He wasn't there. It brought to mind the poem Antigonish, by Hughes Mearns

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

Listening to Obama's state of the union

Introduction: Same old crap.

Begins with our economy. "We hated the bank bail-out". Yet he put the same people in his cabinet.
"We've recovered most of the money." Yeah, but the bankers got richer, while the people lost everything!
"We cut taxes!!!" Who cares if you cut taxes when people have no jobs, no homes.
Talking about all the jobs he's created??? WTF.
The way he sounds about the recovery act, one would think everyone's getting jobs. What???
"Start in small businesses to create jobs." As far as I know, it's virtually impossible for any of these businesses to negotiate the bureaucracy to get a loan
Going to Tampa tomorrow to a high speed train factory. For when 20 years down the line?
Clean energy. I heard that several times this last year
People are out of work. Seven million jobs have been lost in 2 years. Does he know? Does he care?
He's totally out of touch and I'm bored now. Same oratory delivered to a nation of skeptics. We've lost our innocence.
Blah blah blah

Exploiting tragedy for ratings

Good to know I'm not the only one disgusted with the way the US media is exploiting suffering in Haiti for their own ratings. Sticking cameras into people's faces, going into their homes, asking them intrusive questions is abusive to say the least. BAGNews Notes publisher Michael Shaw takes Anderson Cooper (could be anyone else) to task, asking him to

Please stop.

Please immediately:

-- Stop using the camera to rob people of their dignity when it's the only thing they have left.

-- Stop infantilizing the Haitian people.

-- Stop the pity party.

-- Stop the exploitation of despair to promote your own brand -- especially with those horrible patronizing split-screens.

-- Stop playing savior.

In other words, show some respect little man.

Is stealing from the dead worse than from a child?

The Pennsylvania legal system may soon provide an answer to that question, a variation of the chicken or the egg dilemma. Only that this one is rooted in the arrest of a couple charged with stealing a credit card from a friend who died on their couch on December 4. The couple reportedly admitted to getting the card out of the dead person's purse and going on a $1000 spending spree. At fault, in my humble opinion, was the deceased. It's really poor manners to die at someone else's house.

John Edwards mans up two years later

Former presidential candidate, John Edwards finally admitted he's the father of Frances Quinn Hunter, born February 27 2007 and the reason behind his early departure from the political landscape. It was two years too late -- whatever happened to taking responsibility for his actions. For her sake, I hope that she never knows her dad denied her for almost two years. It doesn't matter: she's got her dad and with all the grief on this world, it's a big reason to celebrate. Happy birthday Quinn!

White man on a white horse

He's come to save the nation, that's how Scott Brown is being sold. His January 19 victory in Massachussetts stunned the Obama administration and energized the opposition. I've no doubt he'll give the democrats a run for their money. He's white, handsome, telegenic and quite a good orator. Obama is in lots of trouble.

Obama gets whooped got what was due him

The rise and fall of Barack Obama will be the subject, I'm sure, of extensive discussions by experts and pundits, journalists and professors, bloggers and authors, barbershop customers, foreskin-forwarders, glory-hole cruisers, water cooler habitués, elevator riders, subway gropers, sex-addicts, incarcerated athletes, recovering gamblers, crack-showing plumbers, dry-humping adolescents, prepuced-presenters, hymen-collecting deflowerers, sodomized skanks, rejected lovers, promiscuous prima donnas, nail-fungus sufferers, PHd candidates and more for years to come.
Fitting into the None of the Above category (as I'm little more than a bottom-heavy dummy-rascal) to me the real issue there is hubris. President Obama took himself far too seriously and forgot why he was hired in the same place. His Chicago handlers never quite understood the people's anger. Tuesday's Massachusetts results were a clear rejection of the way he pussyfooted around the bankers who screwed up the economy in the first place (he hired the people who broke the system to fix it and rewarded everyone with Billions of taxpayer dollars). They were also a rejection the way he caved in to the pharmaceutical and other powerful lobbies who, among others, got the administration to pull back from the public option. I don't doubt there's a bit of Afghanistan in there too, receiving the Nobel Prize while escalating the war. (I find the idea of Killing for Peace somewhat similar to that of calling Ted Bundy a feminist.)
And there are those who feel highly offended by his arrogant discourse, perched up in his ivory tower talking down to us. Patronizing. Dismissive. He forgot where he came from, who brought him there and how seriously the people wanted change. President Obama you sold out and got what you deserved. Unfortunately, we've all lost.

Fasting for Haiti ayunemos por Haiti jeûnons pour Haiti

I'm still having a hard time grasping the true dimensions of the Haiti tragedy. The numbers. The destruction. And then the faces. The terrible, heart-breaking pain. Of people living on the streets. Begging for water. Concerned about their relatives, surrounded by the stench of thousands upon thousands of decaying corpses. And the aftershocks. Plus being in the midst of a media circus. Hordes of journalists from all over the world leveraging the misery to build their careers. Each picture is stronger than the previous one. Also more exploitative. Because they become the objects of some sick voyeuristic ritual, the more they suffer, the better the picture, the better the picture, the more "we" help them. At the charities fighting for money to send. Enfin. Anyway, my small grain of salt in this ocean of misery has been to fast. I fast from dusk to dawn and the money I would have spent on feeding myself I've sent to a Haitian relief agency. Any agency. Funny thing about fasting is how slowly the day goes.

Penile length and unemployment

Looks like having the world's longest penis does not qualify you for a job. The Huffington Post reports that Brooklyn native Jonah Falcon, reputedly proud owner of a 13.5 penis (as measured by the Rolling Stone), is unemployed and living with his mom. Mr. Falcon refuses to go into the adult entertainment industry. Tempted to say, "what a dick!"

Does the media really get fooled?

Elite media outlets, like the New York Times and cousins, pick up stories from Pentagon sources and publish them without bothering to check facts. So goes a story by Dan Froomkin in the neimanwatchdog. Mr Froomkin is refering to assertions that most Guantanamo detainees rejoin the Jihad, while the facts definitely lead in the opposite direction. Is that news???? The Fourth Estate were as guilty of the Iraq fiasco as the Bush administration: from the non existing Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to the weapons of mass destruction. The extent of their coverup is still to be documented: at the time the Bush administration officials were saying the invasion was not certain, top reporters from every news outlet were lining up to train with the trooops. Embedded reporter came into the lexicon. Why does that surprise Mr Froomkin? Dog bites man is not news. The news is "Man bites dog"

People are fed up

The New York Times reports this morning that Wall Street is preparing to celebrate "Bonus Season" big time. As in billions of dollars. The very same people who created the Great Recession will be rewarded with trillions of dollars while over 10 percent of the labor force is unemployed, people are losing their homes and health insurance, soup kitchens are filling up and a decent job seems a thing of the past.
Not even one year into his presidency, Obama's ratings seem to be in a free fall.

The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn't a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.

This is due, in my humble opinion, to two factors. The "independent" Tea Party masses, nothing less than the seeds of a native fascist movement, egged on by Fox News, Russ Limbaugh, Drudge, Ron Beck and others. The Wing Nuts. But also by a growing number of disaffected former Obama supporters, including this blogger, that sought change and now feel bamboozled. Because the changes have been cosmetic at best. Obama spoke of peace and is giving us a renewed war in Afghanistan. He spoke on behalf of the unemployed, for jobs, for health care for all, and nothing has happened. The only ones benefiting from his administration seem to be military contractors, who'll be reaping the benefits of the Afghanistan buildup, pharmaceutical and insurance companies who imposed their will and derailed the health care overhaul. And the bankers. Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose. We're living under the Bushama administration.

Immigration murders cover up

Brutal treatment of detainees leading to their deaths, followed by a fully orchestrated attempt to conceal the truth, including false statements and tampering with evidence, that's the gist of a January 9 investigative piece by Nina Bernstein from The New York Times.

...the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

Given that many of those officials remain in their jobs, this blistering indictment that prompts the question, will anything be done about it?

Walk to Washington for immigration reform

Risking the danger of arrest and deportation, 4 Miami Dade College students started January 1 a 1500 mile walk from Miami to the nation's capital protesting the Obama administration's lack of resolve in the much-needed immigration overhaul. They are using their personal cases to highlight the much broader issue of immigration reform and what to do with the millions of people here who lack papers.
The four students, who were raised in the US by undocumented parents, say their status prevents them from continuing their education and getting jobs. Their courage has earned them coverage in major newspapers, including a January 7 editorial in The New York Times.

The protesters include Carlos Roa, 22, who was 2 years old when his parents brought him here from Venezuela, and Felipe Matos, 23, sent from Brazil by his mother when he was 14. They say they support proposals in overhaul bills that would open a path to citizenship for students who came to this country illegally when they were young.

Mr. Matos, a former student government president at Miami Dade, said he had been accepted by Duke University but had not been able to attend because his lack of legal status prevented him from getting financial aid. Trained as a teacher, he has not been able to take a job without a valid Social Security number.

They will march 16 miles a day, stopping at churches and immigration centers. They plan to arrive in Washington D.C. in May.