Whoops!!

We are forced to print a correction. It's never our fault, of course. (That's because we don't do anything original that has any connection to the world of actuality. Everything here not linked to something is our own half-baked opinion, unsupported by anything except mental illness or brain fever.) The error we made was linking to a Rosa Brooks column in Sam Zell's excuse for environmental depredation yesterday. There was a mistake in it, whether due to the Times, Ms. Brooks, the Center for Responsive Politics or, most likely, Rosa's assistant/aide/flunky, who doubtless gets none of the credit, little of the money, but all of the blame in cases like this. And we quote:

For the record April 12, 2008 Presidential race: Rosa Brooks' Thursday column cited Center for Responsive Politics statistics on military donations to the candidates for the first two months of 2008. The figures were for contributions from January 2007 through February 2008.

Obits

Like many people of advancing age, we check the obituaries first thing every morning, not for the usual reason of seeing whom to cross off the Xmas card (usually a depiction of an enraged naked man urinating on an Xmas tree, with the greeting "Life is short/Times are hard/Here's your fucking Christmas card!") list, but in hope that every one of you fucking stupid awful primates, w/ your ape games of dominance & submission & other bullshit social interaction, have finally died, leaving this poor planet in peace. In other words, fuck off & die, monkey scum!

Annals of Veterans Affairs

Of course you've heard right wing assholes screeching about Vietnam vets (baby-killing scum, that is) being spat upon when they returned to what they fondly referred to as "The World." Not a shred of fact to it, of course. But guess who's metaphorically spitting on the latest crop of vets. (Odd that we keep having vets, who keep getting screwed, isn't it? Almost as if the United States were a militaristic nation, that bullies the rest of the world. Well, small defenseless nations like Panama & Grenada, or paper tigers like Iraq, anyway. How 'bout gettin' the Chicoms outta Tibet? That seems at least as important as Ku-wait-a-minute, no oil in Tibet. Never mind.) Presumed Republican presidential nominee John Sidney McSame is among those shitting all over the veterans. We guess that the "Post 9/11 Veterans Act" is one of those "earmarks" to which Sen. Sidney McSame claims to be so opposed. Or some kind of gov't. giveaway that strikes at the very heart of "freedom" & "liberty." According to Gen. Wesley Clark & a guy who actually served (or got served) in Iraq,

McCain has said he hasn't had time to read the bill and isn't sure if he could support it. It's hard to believe that neither he nor anyone on his staff has had time to read such an important bill, which has been around since before he started running for president.

Oh, we don't find it so hard to believe. Per Wes & his co-author, Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org, all the other Vietnam vets in the Senate support the bill, as well as former SecNav John Warner.

[Jason] Bensley, who served in southern Iraq, Mosul and Diyala province, is in debt, trying to pay for college. "I wouldn't have the faintest idea why a member of Congress wouldn't want to support the GI Bill," he says. "Sen. McCain should know how hard it is for veterans to transition back into civilian life."

Well, no, Jason. By the time Sen. "Bomb-bomb" was going to "transition," he'd married a millionaire beer heiress & served as the U. S. Navy's liaison to the U. S. Senate. Makes the "transition" one hell of a lot easier, doesn't it? Not to mention being the son & grand-son of the first father-son combo to make four-star admiral in the USN. The Senator could have gone straight into full-time briberydefense contracting. Maybe Mr. Bensley should show some initiative & find a millionaire beer heiress for himself, instead of waiting for the gov't. to give him a hand-out. Lazy douchebag. The absolute tops in cynicism (take it from us, we are right up there on the cynicism scale) seems to be the Bush White House.

The White House has voiced concern on the bill, arguing that if returning troops are offered a good education, they will choose college over extending their service. This is as offensive as it is absurd. First, it is morally reprehensible to fix the system so that civilian life is unappealing to service members, in an attempt to force them to re-up. Education assistance is not a handout, it is a sacred promise that we have made for generations in return for service. Second, falling military recruitment numbers are just as serious as retention problems. To send the message that this nation will not help you make the most of your life will dissuade a large number of our best and brightest from choosing military service over other career options.

Frankly, we don't support the fucking troops. People so stupid that they volunteer to defend a nation that won't provide them w/ adequate educations or decent jobs, leaving them only the option of military service or starving pretty much deserve to be part of thinning the herd, if you know what we mean. And of course if these stupid people didn't enlist, warmongering assholes wouldn't have a military w/ which to bully the rest of the world. So fuck 'em, as we said. Also on the military front, we heard on the radio last night that in an ABC News report asking Americans in Iraq who their presidential choice was, almost all those shown (unscientific, of course) were for the sane Senators, Clinton or Obama. (Granted, that's pretty second-hand, and we can't find the story on the ABC News website. Maybe it's been censored already.) And in Rosa Brooks cage-liner column today, we see that Republican predominance in the ranks is not what it used to be.

The same trend has been true among military personnel, for decades a solidly Republican constituency. In 2004, 60% of active-duty military personnel who responded to a survey sent to Military Times subscribers identified themselves as Republicans. By 2007, that had dropped below 50%. (Military personnel tend to take screw-ups in Iraq pretty personally.)

Maybe those people aren't as stupid as we implied above. Obviously not, as they are making that college money by stealing gear from Uncle Sam.

Times Tuesday: Turkey-Twofer

A day late & quite a bit short, we wouldn't have bothered except the title seemed too good to waste (although the chance of the Times having two op-ed turkeys on any given Tues. is pretty high). Anyhoo, Tues. is, of course, Jonah Goldberg day at the cage-liner. This week? Some crap about genocide, in an apparent effort to prove his Liberal Fascism thesis, to get in a few jabs at "modernism" & the Enlightment, or just to get rid of a few hundred words that fell off his keyboard. First, he's concerned about a resolution passed by the lower house of the Russian parliament. (We guess he doesn't think any of his audience would know the word Duma.)

The United Nations defines the crime as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Intentionally left out of this definition are "modern" political labels for people: the poor, religious people, the middle class, etc.

Other than the obvious problem w/ the above (The difference between "religious groups" & "religious people" would be?) it seems the word

"genocide" was coined by a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, who was responding to Winston Churchill's 1941 lament that "we are in the presence of a crime without a name"

has more to do w/, well, genocide, rather than plainly simple mass murder. We've had a phrase for that for a while. The whole point of genocide is that a specific group that cannot change its identification is being targeted merely because it is that group, which has often been stigmatized or scapegoated in order to establish boogey-men w/ whom to scare a populace or nation.

Under the more narrow definition that was approved, it's genocide to try to wipe out Roma (formerly known as Gypsies), but it's not necessarily genocide to liquidate, say, people without permanent addresses. You can't slaughter "Catholics," but you can wipe out "religious people" and dodge the genocide charge.

Personally, we're opposed to wiping out "people w/o permanent addresses," but all in favor of letting Catholics or plain "religious people" have it. They're all stupid & shouldn't be allowed to waste oxygen. Then he goes on to this:

[A] moral hierarchy of evil, which in effect renders mass murder a second-tier crime if it is done in the name of social progress, modernization or other Enlightenment ideals. This can lead to a dangerous way of thinking in which people who are perceived to be standing in the way of progress -- middle-class farmers opposed to collectivization, aristocrats, reactionaries -- can be more forgivably slaughtered than ethnic groups because they're allegedly part of the problem, not the solution. After all, you've got to break some eggs to make an omelet.

Speaking of dangerous ways of thinking, this moronic bastard can't think past the "Enlightenment" as anything besides an excuse for mass murder. And we should certainly point out that there are few people claiming that

In general, the Soviets and the Red Chinese elude the genocide charge -- and hence the status of ultimate villains -- despite having murdered scores of millions of people in the 20th century, in large part because their victims stood in the way of progress.

Just who in any legitimate discourse has been claiming this, Mr. Goldberg? We guess that "shock & awe" wasn't mass murder because it was directed against people who happened to live near Saddam Hussein, rather than the Iraqi people. Last & least:

Of course, the climate of anti-Semitism made the Holocaust possible, but so did Enlightenment bias, which holds that almost anything can be justified in the name of progress.

This really must be the stupidest thing he's ever written on which Just Another Blog™ has had the misfortune to waste three mins. of reading time. He gets his knickers in a knot over a resolution passed by the Duma (which, like Russia itself, is hardly the pinnacle of Enlightenment values) & then gets a blanket condemnation of the Enlightenment out of it. Perhaps a return to such pre-Enlightenment values as the Inquisition would please Mr. Goldberg. He's really the definition of a self-hating Jooo, isn't he? Qualifiers noted in Jonah's work: "somewhat," "implicitly," "in effect." As if that wasn't enough of an insult to those of us w/ two brain cells to rub together, directly underneath Goldberg's pathetic tripe in both the dead-tree & online versions of the Times was a wonderment from Max Boot, the well known chickenhawk/warmonger. (Is that redundant? Does "hawk" pretty much = "warmonger?" Whatever.) Brace yourselves, here it comes. Max paints a rosy picture, but realizing that one can't fool all of the people all of the time, he does mention a few buts (even italicizes the buts).

The security forces are growing in size (from fewer than 500,000 in 2006 to more than 600,000 today) and competence (although a few deserted in Basra, most do not run away from a fight), but they still need U.S. support, especially for higher-level functions such as command and control, air cover, logistics and intelligence collection.

Note well the "higher-level functions." Guess the "security forces" are cannon-fodder to be "supported"/directed by U. S. "support." And they don't all run away now. According to Max, withdrawal

would be not only a terrible stain on our honor (we might be indirectly responsible for genocide) but a significant strategic setback because it could destabilize the entire region. Victory -- defined as a democratic state that does not oppress its own people, provide a haven for terrorists, proliferate weapons of mass destruction or threaten its neighbors -- remains eminently achievable if we listen to the best advice of Petraeus and Crocker and resist the urge to pull our troops out too fast. If we ignore their warnings and head for the exits, we are assured of the worst military defeat in U.S. history and a major victory for Shiite and Sunni extremists who will continue to attack us in the future.

Ah yes, "honor." Nothing more honorable than attacking an essentially defenseless nation that never attacked us, but had a big-mouthed asshole in charge, who used implied threats of WMDs in a vain hope of not being attacked & holding onto power. (Bush or Hussein? You decide.) And there's that genocide word again. At least we got a definition of "victory" out of Max. Most of his long-distance baby-killing buddies can't even come up w/ one. Frankly, this country deserved to be defeated in this mess, but once again we must make clear that "we" won the war handily, but, for various reasons (incompetence & ignorance being the top two) the occupation hasn't been going too well. We can certainly bet that Iraq is much less likely to threaten its neighbor Iran now (oh wait, he means Israel, we wanted Hussein to threaten Iran during the '80s & '90s). The likelihood of any colonial construction of two principal ethnicities & one religious schism not threatening its "own" people is pretty low. The terrorists are already there. Look at Palestine & how they feel about Israel. Every Iraqi killed, wounded, raped or humiliated by American forces is going to feel the same way about us. As well as the Iraqis who endangered themselves & their families by helping Americans, who are forced to stay there because we won't let them emigrate here. As far as those WMDs, stop crying "wolf," chickenhawk.

Sports Updates:

Pissing Dodger Blue The former Brooklyn Bums, now known as the Los Angeles Dodgers (50 yrs. & we still haven't forgotten) had their asses handed to them last night in Arizona by the Snakes' pitcher, Doug Davis, who was two days away from surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid gland. You can't get much fucking lamer than that, can you?

Davis had no such issues despite facing what Torre, himself a cancer survivor, called "a more important game coming up." Davis gave up two runs and six hits in six innings and also had a big day at the plate, collecting two hits and driving in a run. Torre, who underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1999, said he felt an affinity for Davis. He recalled his fears upon hearing his own diagnosis, saying, "The only connection with cancer is death in your mind when you hear it."

Our best wishes do go out to Mr. Davis. John Wayne licked the "Big C," you can too, Doug!! Bleeding Cardinal Red Also, in case the sexist "mainstream" media wasn't all over it (17th item on the L. A. Times.com sports page) our could-have-been alma mater, Stanford, was whipped by Tennessee in the NCAA Bitchball champeenship.

Madman McSame

Smell good in there, Sidney?Besides his sucking up to delusional types like Pastors Hagee & Parsley, John Sidney McBush may have some other troubles soon, as we learn how he treats his trophy wife, Cindy, whose beer inheritance financed Johnny-boy's political career.

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

And some hot poop on Hagee:

Hagee holds many other radical beliefs. In a 2006 address to CUFI, Hagee declared: The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West…a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

Speaking to the 2007 AIPAC conference, Hagee compared supporters of a two-state solution in the Middle East to Nazis. Hagee also echoed right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu, telling the audience that “Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.”

Is it a great stretch of the imagination to connect this w/ the alleged evangelical/fundamentalist infiltration of the U. S. Air Force? When we have generals who have declared that their allegiance is to "God, family & country," in that order, it would seem that anything is possible. Slim Pickens, any one? (We forget the name of his character in Dr. Strangelove.)

P. S.: This item should have appeared yesterday, but the devil-box was cut off, & we didn't manage to get to a different secret location to publish it. But it's timeless, therefore a classic, & we were able to add the bits about Hagee to it.

Unsolicited Plug

Regular readers may have noticed that this web log is no fan of corporate entities, though filled w/ sympathy, empathy & a bit of schadenfreudal pity for all those cursed to slave for stockholders (or small business owners, the gubmint, or anyone else) who do not have the freedom (as we do) of urban camping & hanging out w/ mental patients &/or in libraries & chain bookstores.

But we'd like to give a shout-out to the staff at Starbucks #05738, located @ the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. & Pontius in West Los Angeles, just a blk. W. of Sepulveda Blvd. As Your Editor staggers in there each early a. m. that he has the scratch to shell out $1.95 for a large (or "venti") coffee, hair greasy, breath possibly funky (we ain't gwine brush our teeth in a public restroom before the coffee) dragging several bags w/ us, the staff are always cheerful & respectful, even realizing there won't be any tipping involved, remember that we want a large coffee (Sometimes it awaits us!) & gave us a free croissant yesterday when their stupid point of sale computer system rang it up as $0.00.

And, they leave the cabinet in the men's room unlocked, resulting in all the toilet paper rolls an urbane urban camper could want. Thanks, guys & gals! Keep up the good work!!

Record Remains Unbroken

34 yrs. since hammerin' Hank Aaron (namesake of M. C. "Parachute Pants" Hammer) broke the Babe's homer record of 714. Saw it ourself on a 12-inch diagonal B&W tee vee. Hank went on to set the record at 755. Exactly a yr. before, Pablo ("Ain't no asshole") Picasso had died @ 91. And a mere 95 yrs. ago, the forces of repression allowed the 17th Amendment to be ratified, providing direct popular election of the U. S. Senate, rather than appointment by state legislatures. Oh, sweet democracy!!

More Mind-Altering Substances

Just Another Blog™ European correspondent Sophia forwards a YouTube™ item. We'll assume that the chaps (or "Tommies") involved at least knew what was going on, unlike we Yanks who dosed our troops w/o their knowledge. We are amused by the sod climbing the tree to "feed the birds." And we hope none of the weapons were loaded, especially the rocket launcher. P. S.: Do the decadent Euros have nought to do but look for funny stuff on YouTube™ all the live-long day? Nice work if one can get it.

Drink Up!

Below: Used to drink this stuff before we got tired of the whole drinking thing & were put on an anti-depressant that precluded boozing anyway.Today marks the 75th anniv. of alcohol sales returning to legality in the U. S. of A., post-Volstead Act. Some whoop-de-do prevented anything but beer from being sold until the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. We were going to make note of this anyway (heard about it in Budweiser™ adverts during ball games on the radio) but the L. A. Times ran an op-ed piece as well, w/ more detail. Except the Times thinks 1933 to 2008 is 70 yrs. Morons.

UPDATE (7 April 2008 @ 1938): We advised the Times of their computational error, & they have corrected the subhead.

UPDATE II (9 April 2008 @ 1250): Here's the first draft, which we wrote on 5 April & then forgot (a peek at our behind-the-scenes machinery):

Elbow-Bending Time

Seventy-five yrs. ago today, the prohibition of alcoholbeer was over as the bars reopened & boozesuds began flowing legally & openly again. Fortunately, this little experiment in imposing the morality of frigid old biddies on the rest of the nation had no long lasting effect, other than giving organized crime, La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia, etc., all the power they ever needed to corrupt already corruptible gov't. agents & agencies.

Seems like a fair exchange; peoples' lives are ruined, boozing, now having the cachet of being "forbidden," is made more popular than previously, & another source of income for criminals, politicians & Joe Kennedy is created. A perfect example of the "free" market & gov't. working hand-in-hand for the good of gov't. & those w/ the funds to start a bootlegging business.

Know Your Rights (Haw Haw Haw, Suckers!!)

Those of you who don't jump from library to library in an effort to keep one step ahead of the forces of repression are probably already paying the forces of repression for the privileges of reading crap like this & downloading certain films from certain states of the former Soviet Union.

The Associated Press reviewed the "Acceptable Use Policies" and "Terms of Service" of the nation's 10 largest ISPs — in all, 117 pages of contracts that leave few rights for subscribers.

It is not pretty. You have no rights, though you may get a refund.

Spooky Visual Aid

Direct from the pages of the regional wrapper of fish:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968. Within hours, Life magazine photographer Steve Schapiro was on that balcony and through the door of King's room.

"The physical body of Martin Luther King Jr.," writes Schapiro in a new book of his photographs, "Schapiro's Heroes," "was forever gone, leaving a few small material remains behind: a wrinkled shirt, a book, a Soul Force magazine, an old Styrofoam coffee cup. The half-drunk coffee cup gave me a moment of pause. He had left his room planning to return."

The TV was on. When King's face appeared on a newscast, Schapiro took this photograph -- history preserved. Now the two motel rooms that housed the King party, along with parts of the rest of the Lorraine Motel, have been turned into the National Civil Rights Museum. In 2006, Schapiro went back to the scene. "The wall on which the television had been mounted was ... gone, replaced with a sheet of thick clear plastic," he said. "Visitors could peer into King's room, but no one will ever get to see that eerie image that is forever imbedded in my mind."

Sorry, we've no available, digitized picture of our bald pate.

Really, It Is All About Us, But Let's Pretend Otherwise for a Few Moments

So you won't think that we think it's all about the staff here (previous item) we'll lead you to Mighty Sorry No Body Cares dot com, where we discover that Martin Luther King's

life, like those of other historical figures -- Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt -- has been simplified, scholars say, his anger blurred, his militancy rarely discussed, his disappointments and harsh critiques of government's failures glossed over.

Also in that story: info on the Memphis sanitation workers strike, & Dr. King's last hours. There were reasons that transvestite whack-job J. Edgar Hoover thought Dr. K. (not fucking war-criminal Kissinger!!) was a commie. Why, King might even have thought that there were better methods than the economic fascism that's been practiced in this country since the original Euro-genocide was committed. (We're guessing that a few Origino-Americans may have committed some genocide against other Origino-Americans before whitey showed up, but at least capitalism wasn't involved.)

King's conclusion? "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." He didn't say this in the mainstream but to his black colleagues.

Imagine, a pissed-off guy whose anger is swept under the rug until he's murdered. Only in America, right? (And that brings it back to us, us, us!!)

Bald as a Something

Today is the 40th anniversary of the editor here shaving his head, in reaction to being forced by fascist parental units to get a hair cut (things were different 40 yrs. ago). The next day, many of the drooling idiots where we attended school thought we had done it as some sort of reaction to Martin Luther King, Jr. having been assassinated. No connection. And no further threats of haircut imposition when we were still under the alleged control of the parents after that. (Got rid of dandruff too.) In today's modern world, of course, every gangster, police officer & member of the military sports the "displaced person who was just dusted for lice & had all his body hair shaved" look, again confirming the age-old "the more things change, etc." axiom. So our mane remains.

Junior F(1)ascists Club

Oh, wait a minute, here's something stupid & tawdry. Max Mosley, son of Oswald Mosley, has had his fun recorded.

A British tabloid, The News of the World, reported Sunday that the 67-year-old Mosley participated in sex acts with five prostitutes in a scenario that is believed to involve Nazi role-playing.

Max is the president of FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) .

A video posted Sunday on the News of the World's Web site showed a man identified as Mosley arriving at an apartment and taking part in sex acts with women, one in a prisoner's uniform, while speaking German. The video can no longer be found on the paper's Web site. Mosley is the son of British Union of Fascists party founder Oswald Mosley, a former British politician who served in Parliament for both the Labour and Conservative parties. Oswald Mosley died in 1980.

Found Object

Left on the desktop by a previous user @ the Santa Monica Public Library.

Nada, Rien du Tout

The editorial board here at Just Another Blog™ has absolutely nothing to add to anything today. You're all on your own.

Annals of Secrecy

Below: A patch for "Minotaur," a still classified program of Lockheed's Skunk Works.How to dig up poop on the black budget ops the Bush admin seems to love so much...

Skulls. Black cats. A naked woman riding a killer whale. Grim reapers. Snakes. Swords. Occult symbols. A wizard with a staff that shoots lightning bolts. Moons. Stars. A dragon holding the Earth in its claws.

No, this is not the fantasy world of a 12-year-old boy.

It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or “black,” budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.

Uh, are we sure this isn't the fantasy world of a 12-yr.-old boy? Granted, one w/ many of our tax dollars w/ which to play. And in our best 12-yr.-old. boy vein, there are some interesting patches to be viewed.

Tuesday, Trash Day

Again comes Jonah w/ this subtitle to the online version of his L. A. Times column of today:

Evolution of religious bigotry The cowardice and intolerance of slapping a Darwin fish on your car bumper.

Dead tree edition:

Christian Baiting

First there's blather about the Dutch movie stating the Quran is pretty vicious & violent. At least as bad as the Old & New Testaments, yes, possibly even worse. But Doughbob doesn't even bother to condemn the dirty Moooooslims, he whines momentarily that

European and U.N. leaders are going through the usual motions of theatrical hand-wringing, heaping all of their anger on Wilders for sowing "hatred."

Then comes what's really on his tiny mind, Jeezis fish & those "Darwin" stickers:

In America, the easiest place to find this ancient symbol is on the back of cars. Recently, however, it seems as if Jesus fish have become outnumbered by Darwin fish. No doubt you've seen these too. The fish symbol is "updated" with little feet coming off the bottom, and "IXOYE" or "Jesus" is replaced with either "Darwin" or "Evolve." I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there's the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers. The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing random motorists that "hate is not a family value." But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

First of all, you stupid fuck, what "cherished symbol" of black people or women is there to "mock?" (You want to make up some bumper stickers that say "Martin Luther Coon?" And of course no woman has ever been mocked by a conservative. Is the "Iron My Shirt!" bumper sticker order ready yet?) Secondly, do you not understand (of course you do, you can't really be as fucking dense as you pretend to be) the difference between something that one is born (a breeding group or a sex) & something that one chooses to be (a Catholic, a Moooooslim, a libertarian, a flat-earther, a UFO-believer, whatever).

It's not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, but they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor inclined to use violence.

Actually, they're just sick & tired of seeing that stupid Jeezis fish on the cars of morons, so they came up w/ an answer to it. Try unbunching your panties for a few seconds, J. G., it's just a bumper sticker. And in a nation that identifies itself to pollsters as somewhere around 85% Xtian, what exactly is the point of the Jeeezis fish anyway? It's not like the stupid story you tell of the Turkish guy you met in Istanbul, who thought he had to sneak you (a goober of Jewish extraction but not much faith) the "fish sign." And let's think again about statements like "neither fanatical or inclined to use violence." Kansas Board of Education? Eric Rudolph? Some of your little "harmless" Xtian pals are just as ready to impose their religious law over everybody in this country as any Mooooslims are in other nations. And don't think that any Jooooos would get a break, either.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

Just as gay rights advocates condemn, for example, the executions in Iran of people for homosexual activity, but don't make as big a fuss about it as they do about various issues here in the U. S., an alleged democracy where the rights promised to all can, once in a while, actually be extended to all, so there is little point in aiming our brave contempt for obscurantist superstition of the Moooooslim ilk against any one in a country where five-time-a-day foot washers number some two per cent of the population, & are much more likely to be scared of crazed Xtians & /or Jooooos (Remember when Sikhs were killed after 11 September, 2001 merely because they wear turbans, Jonah?) than we are of them. As soon as we see as many crescent moons w/ stars as we see Calvins pissing on somebody on the rear windows of moron-mobiles, we'll find something w/ which to get back at the towelheads. In the meantime, Jonah, who started it? Whose holier-than-thou activities began this entire fish war? Huh?

Annals of Insurance Scams

Well, it's all a scam really, innit? In the case in question, it appears that private insurance cos. are gumming up the Social Security disability works for their own potential profit. Having spent much of the day dealing w/ a governmental bureaucracy, we're doing no further original work on this, but handing it to the NYT & Slate (who brought it to our attention). At least some people pull their weight around here! Slate sez:

The New York Times leads with a lawsuit that claims insurance companies are costing the Social Security system millions of dollars every year by forcing people who file disability claims with them to also apply for money from the federal program even if it's clear that they'll be denied. These insurers often force claimants to appeal the denial, thus costing more money and delaying benefits for people who really need the government program.

And adds:

Insurers who pay out long-term disability insurance want claimants to try to get Social Security benefits because it would cut down on the amount of money the private company would have to pay out every month. The problem is that the government program defines disability much more stringently than private companies and usually doesn't pay out money unless the person can't do any job at all. But everyone still has the right to apply for Social Security benefits and each case must be investigated, which is why even the ones that are obvious denials cost time and money for an already-strapped system. These costs are then multiplied when insurers force claimants to appeal a denial again and again.

We thought we had mentioned this item, covering the underfunding aspect of the backlog, when it first came to our attention, but perhaps it was in private correspondence, as we couldn't find anything in Just Another Bum™ concerning it. Today's story reveals another cause, corporate greed & malfeasance. What would Megan "Free market solutions are groovy, the gov't. always screws things up!" McArdle type about this, one must wonder. A huge backlog, caused in part by fascist corporations, & partly by gov't. underfunding, directly affecting us, the editorial we here at Just Another Bum™. Whom do we murder first?