deadissue.com

During Katrina: During the storm and for several days afterwards, several thousand men, women, and children as young as ten — many of them being held in pre-trial detention on minor offenses — were effectively abandoned as floodwaters rose and the power went out, plunging the cells into darkness. As deputies fled their posts, prisoners were left standing up to their chests in sewage-contaminated floodwaters, without food, drinking water, or ventilation. (200801_ISS_KatrinaHumanRights)

Present Day: Galveston Sheriff leaves inmates, deputies, in hurricane’s path – Galveston Island residents were told to flee Hurricane Ike or face “certain death,” but the Sheriff has inexplicably decided not to evacuate 1,000 prisoners from the county jail, even though serious flooding has already begun. (Grits For Breakfast)

If I was John Stewart or Stephen Colbert I would vote for Palin/McCain. The jokes practicaly write themselves.

Olberman should also consider voting for them as his worst persons in the world series would be taken care of for the next four years as well.

I haven’t seen it yet but I hear McCain has an ad out with scary wolves running around. In 2004 Bush also used wolves to scare people. Why are conservatives scared of wolves?
THis question is not completely rhetorical. At one point a local conservative yacker here in Denver suggested that Denver needed to do something about coyotes that can be found in the city. I don’t think their are any reports of coyotes attacking humans ever and I would be surprised if their are more than a handful of wolf attacks in the last hundred years. So why do conservatives hate these animals so much? My guess is that unlike the domestic dog these wild K9’s are not dependant on humans and have instead been able to live relatively free lives. For some reason the idea that an animal that sort of looks like it should depend on us does not need us not only seems to annoy certain people it seems to scare them as well.
Just a thought, when you hear conservatives talk about freedom and self-reliance it seems to only count as long as they have the final say on how much freedom you really have. Too much independance seems to scare them.

From 1966:

Maybe John McCain and Sarah Palin have more in common than we knew, they both like to abuse the power of their positions.

Sarah Palin for whatever reason seams very popular with republican base, in fact she seems much more popular than John McCain. How long before McCain starts trying to remind people he is running for president and Palin is just along for the ride. Or when do people start asking McCain if he agrees with his running mate regarding abortion or which books to ban. Of course to answer that, Palin would have to say where she stands on the issues and right now she is not talking to the press.
At some point McCain will have to state what his positions are and at that time he will either lose Palin’s base or lose every moderate.
Another posibility is that Palin supporters vote for McCain hoping he dies and their girl becomes president and starts the world towards the end of days they all dream of. One thing is for sure if McCain wins he better hire a food taster.

After watching some of the Republican convention and following the rise and fall of the conservative movement I cannot help but feel they have turned cynism into a political movement. Somehow conservatives have managed to take anyone with ideals and define them as naive. The mocking tone taken by Palin and Guiliani towards community organizing pretty much sums up the entire movement, anyone who tries to make things better for the working class is naive and perhaps stupid.

We all know the only way to help anyone is to make the rich richer so that they can hire the rest of us to wash their cars and clean their planes. The fact that this attitude is self serving is lost on the people like Guiliani and Palin they really believe that no one cares about anyone but the affluent and in their world they are right. They don’t talk to anyone unless that person can give them money or some other benefit. The idea of doing something good for another person doesn’t even make sense to them unless their is something in it for them.

The entire Republican convention was about trying to convince enough people to stay cynical and give John McCain a lifetime achievement award, the idea being it doesn’t matter who is president anyway. This election will show whether or not most the country is bitter and decides to screw over the US and the rest of the world by voting for McCain or moves in a different and more optamistic direction.

Did McCain just do his acceptance speech in front of a green screen, and I thought McCain didn’t have a sense of humor.

This is a roast performance for the ages…Sal the Stockbroker, now working on the Stern show…the horse sound is something he’ll regret for the rest of his life…Get SIRIUS!

The National Enquirer is looking into the sex life of governor Palin.

Well here you go…the Palin thread got me thinking about it again, and the reality of what those nimrods actually did to themselves is becoming apparent.

The Palin family is a trainwreck. Her 17 year-old daughter is pregnant, her sister is in the midst of a nasty divorce and Palin may have used her influence against her ex-brother-in-law and before the election is over who knows what else we will find out about the Palin family and their problems.

Yet, social conservatives like Palin are telling the rest of us how to live our lives. Now they are trying to make it legal for health care providers to refuse tp provide birth control to anyone they feel like. This way we can have more teeage mothers. I don’t know if social conservatives know they are misreable and wan to drag the rest of us down with them or if they are just stupid, but it is important to point out the failing of the conservative lifestyle whenever possible, as they are trying to force it on the rest of us any chance they get.

Palin’s 17 year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant. Palin is becoming a case study in everything that is wrong with social conservatives.

Talking points memo has quite a bit on Palin and an ongoing investigation into abuse of power.  She is starting to sound like an older version of Monica Goodling.

McCain picks the governor of Alasks, Sarah Palin as his running mate.   She is a 44 year-old mother of five, including an infant daughter with Downs syndrome, she is going to be very hard to attack and she will probably get a lot of the soccer mom vote.

As much as this pains me to say, McCain or more likely Karl Rove made a very good pick.

 

Obamas’ acceptance speech tonight was pretty amazing, does anyone think McCain can match Obama in terms of promise for the future.  McCain at best can promise more of the same, he does not have any fresh ideas.  The best McCain can do is promise to do the same things as Bush only he will do them better. 

My guess is that a majority of people will not vote for a man who plans to continue the Bush legacy, the problem for McCain is that a large number of Republicans wont vote for a man who admits that Bush and his conservative pals were a complete failure, as many conservatives still think that Bush was a good president.   His only flaw was that he didn’t reduce taxes enough or that he didn’t cut enough government programs, or that he didn’t gut enough regulatory agencies.  The things they don’t like about Bush are the the things that kept the US from completely imploding.  Such is the conservative movement, conservatism has been a complete failure but they will always have an excuse for why conservatism failed, and it wont be conservatism failed because conservatism is a failure. 

McCain is now the leader of a failed political movement, so how does he win an election when by any objective measure everything his movement stands for has been a complete failure?  He trys to bring liberalism down to the level of conservatism.  McCain will have to claim that none of Obamas’ policies will  work, because we already know hat conservative policies don’t work but maybe he can convince enough people that nothing can fix the problems of America or make the lives of most citizens better.  So why not vote for the POW since either way it is going to suck.  That is the conservative campaign and the conservative world view.  Hopefully Americans will choose a candidate who will strive to make things better, not one who tells Americans to stop whining. 

I live in Denver and I had hoped to have a few interesting convention insights. Instead about all I have seen are large numbers of police officers almost everywhere and private security guards in most stores. I bought a new phone yesterday and the Verizon store had two guards brought in because of the convention. According to the guard at the store every Verizon location in Colorado has security gaurds for the convention. Someone is making a lot of money off of everyones fears.

Or “no way, no how, no McCain”.  Hillary’s speech was really good.  I might take back most of the bad things I said about her during the primary.

My dad is a grumpy old guy who was at best luke-warm towards Obama.  Now my dad is almost giddy at the idea of voting for Obama/Biden in 08.

Grumpy boomers seem to need one of their own on the ticket.

 

The new Republican strategy is to drill, drill and drill some more.  This is supposed to help the economy national security and probably health care.  My question, is their any oil producing country that is nice to live in?  This is not completely rhetorical, as far as I know most if not all countries that produce oil as their primary export are autocratic places that have very bad standards of living and our known for human rights abuses.  Does the US really want to join Saudi Arabia and Iran as oil producing powers.

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This is a concept with tons of potential…hoping to see more of these in the future!

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Conservatives say some dumb ass shit.  Like “who cares about tire pressure”  Most of us who drive check our tires occasionally and even change our oil.  Not conservatives, they drive a car until it gets a flat or needs maintainence and then put it up on blocks in their front yard, where it becomes a home for rodents. 

Conservatives are no better on most issues than they are on auto maintainence and Obama seems willing to call them out on it.  Much like when Hillary and McCain said it was foolish to talk with our enemys, Obama had the courage to tell them they were wrong.   Diplomacy works just like car maintainence, and it is about time someone is willing to tell the conservatives what the rest of us already know.

This guy’s case should be known by everyone in the country. Alabama is fucked up! He’s been proven innocent, released after 30+ years in prison, yet the state refuses to compensate him for getting it wrong. He escaped multiple times, so now the state is citing this as the reason why they’re not complying w/ a federal court order to make him whole.

(link) When Pardue was 16, his father killed his mother in Alabama. A year later he stole a car to impress a girlfriend. Pardue’s joyride happened on the night of a local serial killing. When he was arrested for the car theft, he was interrogated by Bill Travis, a detective known for his penchant to beat a correct answer out of suspects. A detective from a nearby county assisted in the interrogation. It lasted 72 hours. Pardue wasn’t allowed to call his grandmother and two attorneys were turned away. Finally, Travis told Pardue that if he confessed to the murders then he would probably be given a cell near his father so he could avenge his mother. Pardue’s trial lasted 2 hours. No fingerprints, blood-stained clothes or witnesses were ever produced. Several lawmen involved in the case eventually proved to be criminals themselves:

– Detective Travis, fired for brutality several months later;
– Detective Bobby Stewart, convicted for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana a few years later;
– Willis Holloway, Mobile County prosecutor, eventually incarcerated for extortion and bribery;
– James Hendrix, Baldwin County prosecutor, also served time for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana.

Pardue escaped three times during his 27 years in prison.