Tag: pocket

Piers Morgan addresses our gutless fake president

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This is the end of his article:

❝ These mass shootings have to stop, and the best way to start the process is to stop those committing them from being able to buy their tools of their terror.

So it’s time you grew a pair President Trump, stand up to the NRA and do what REALLY needs to be done.

❝ As you said today, you banned bump fire stock after the Las Vegas massacre.

Now you must go much further.

That means a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and the introduction of mandatory background checks on all gun purchases.

❝ Do it now, or stand condemned as a coward.

And here’s the link to the beginning.

Ralph Reed hopes a Romney victory will bring him the power his corrupt ways cost him under Bush

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Reed – 2nd from left – the only creep in the front row who skipped prison

Ralph Reed is clearly relishing his revival.

Just six years ago, the man who turned the Christian Coalition into such a powerful political force that he was called “God’s right-hand man” was all but written off, tarnished by his ties to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, then trounced in his campaign to become Georgia’s lieutenant governor.

But after several years in political purgatory, Mr. Reed has found his way back.

Courtesy of the Party-formerly-known-as-Republican.

Three years ago, Mr. Reed formed the Faith and Freedom Coalition and began assembling what he calls the largest-ever database of reliably conservative religious voters. In the coming weeks, he says, each of those 17.1 million registered voters in 15 key states will receive three phone calls and at least three pieces of mail. Seven million of them will get e-mail and text messages. Two million will be visited by one of more than 5,000 volunteers. Over 25 million voter guides will be distributed in 117,000 churches…

The rank-and-file of white conservative Christianity are treated as little obedient puppets – like a target for a corporate marketing maven out to sell his quota of laundry detergent.

With…a database with the addresses and, in many cases, e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers of the more than 17 million faith-centric registered voters — not just evangelical Protestants but also Mass-attending Catholics. The group is also reaching out to nearly two million more people who have never registered to vote…

In addition to its presidential election turnout campaign, the group plans to focus on two state ballot measures: a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Minnesota and an effort to recall an Iowa Supreme Court justice who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the state…

The group plans to pair its social message with a broader economic one. The president’s health care overhaul will be depicted as both big government spending and an assault on religious liberty; the law mandates that employees of organizations affiliated with religions, like hospitals, universities and charities, be able to obtain free contraception through their health care plans.

Romney and his claque haven’t any problem accepting the publicly reactionary portion of Reed’s religious ideology. It matches their private conversation perfectly. They just get a little testy when pushed to admit how backwards their goals really are.

Reed fits the plastic-fantastic shiny veneer adopted by hustlers – whether religion-based or political. He’s working his way back up towards the position of power he was aiming for under the crusader’s shield of George W. Bush. Let’s hope he fails as badly, once again.

Texas bureaucrats sit on federal funds for Hurricane victims

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Roof still leaking after 3 years

Homeowners affected by the hurricane and dissatisfied with rebuilding efforts filled a Houston City Council meeting last month on the storm’s anniversary.

But the damage was done three years ago, in September 2008, when Hurricane Ike devastated a wide stretch of Texas with 110 m.p.h. winds, killing dozens of people and causing more than $12 billion in damage in what is considered to be the costliest storm in state history.

The storm was the first insult, delivered suddenly by nature. The second, greater insult…is all man-made, delivered over these many months by a state bureaucracy that has paid out roughly 10 percent of the $3.1 billion in federal aid that it has received…

The $3.1 billion allocated for Texas in three rounds by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development was intended to repair and reconstruct single-family homes for poor and moderate-income families, among other projects. Chambers County, where Anahuac is the county seat, and other jurisdictions agreed to rebuild or repair 3,537 hurricane-damaged homes using the first round of money. Of those, only 712 have been completed, with an additional 766 under construction.

State officials originally expected to have the $3.1 billion spent by 2013, but they have now pushed that date to December 2015…

State officials repeatedly changed the rules and guidelines that cities and counties had to follow after the local agencies had already processed applications, forcing residents to redo their applications and the cities and counties to reprocess them…

In addition, those federal officials expressed concerns about the two state agencies that had overseen the program — the Department of Housing and Community Affairs and the Department of Rural Affairs. In a June report, federal officials found that the state housing agency had not developed written procedures for processing the applications it received from local jurisdictions. The report also found that the rural affairs agency had spent more money on administrative expenses than on actual work projects, spending 98 percent of its administrative money from the first round — $12.3 million — but only 17 percent of the money designated for projects.

RTFA. Between incompetent state officialdom, corrupt local and county government, bigots and footdraggers at every level, ordinary working people – especially those who are non-white – have received about 10% of the aid dedicated to that purpose by the federal government, ultimately American taxpayers.

Helluva job, Rick Perry.

How’s that Republican mantra about states rights doing folks in Texas?

Republicans say cut tsunami warnings instead of oil subsidies!

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Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Buried deep inside the GOP House of Representatives plan to trim the 2011 budget is a line item that will take $454 million away from the agency running the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Yes, that’s the same Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, one of two operated by a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that alerted the nation to a potentially deadly wave headed toward Hawaii and the California coast following the devastating earthquake off northern Japan last week.

House Republicans, who have been looking for ways to shave $61.5 billion from the 2011 federal budget, stress that they don’t want to specifically cut either of the warning centers — a network of ocean buoys and deep-water sensors that alert scientists to changes in ground movement and tide levels and could indicate a tsunami is on the way. They just think the parent agency has some fat to trim. The Republicans are also going after federal funding for climate change research and other environmental projects in their proposed cuts…

“Everyone knows that the government needs to cut spending, but this tsunami serves as an tragic reminder that Representative Dan Lungren and House Republicans made the wrong budget choices that can have real consequences for California families,” said Jesse Ferguson of the DCCC. “Instead of cutting taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil companies, Representative Dan Lundgren voted to slash the weather service that gives us critical early warnings in times of danger, like this one…”

“Nowhere have we indicated that we’re directing NOAA not to emphasize the services it provides for the safety, health and welfare of Americans,” said Eric Cantor. “I’m told that this point was raised by some employees at NOAA, who made it known that they didn’t believe the cuts were needed. Again, we all have to do more with less here…”

How much less is Cantor making do with in his lifestyle? Total staff salary for his office since his first year in office has gone from $621,655 to $1,145,591 for 2010. An 84% increase in 9 years.

“The mission of the National Weather Service is to save lives and save property. But the funding to do that has already been reduced. Cutting the funding even more is going to potentially lead to loss of life,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. “I’m not trying to shock people, it’s just the truth.”

Sobien points to a need to invest in early warning technology that, for instance, can help increase the notice of impending tornados or spend money to revamp an overwhelmed web site that provides early weather alerts or put more weather satellites in the sky.

Republicans and their teabagger flunkies would rather direct increased profits into the pockets of oil companies and investment banks.

Nothing new about the practice. Nothing new about their lies.

Sit on cellphone + phone calls wife = SWAT raid on school!

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A 30-man armed SWAT team stormed a school in Illinois after a staff member accidentally called his wife from his pocket, causing her to believe that he was being held hostage.

Officers in America wearing riot gear and carrying automatic weapons searched Carlton Washburne School, Winnetka, for almost three hours after the woman, who has not been identified, called 911.

Joseph De Lopez, the local police chief, said the woman reported receiving a call from her husband in which she could hear muffled voices and believed he was being held captive by a man with a gun.

Within minutes a security perimeter was established around the school, whose pupils had left for the day, and officers poured into the building. Three TV news helicopters were circling above.

But while they were still searching the school, and the man’s distressed wife remained connected to his mobile phone and to 911, he returned home.

While driving back from work, he had called his wife by sitting on his mobile phone, which was in his back pocket, while he listened to hip-hop and talked to himself.

“His wife was the last number he’d dialled,” Chief De Lopez said.

Mark Friedman, the school district interim co-superintendent, explained that the music’s “gangster-like” lyrics had contributed to the woman’s concerns.

This passes for “good, clean fun” in the United States of America.

Kindergarten student finds Oxycontin in her pocket

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Uncle Dickie

A kindergartner knew exactly what to do when she found a bag containing 23 high-powered Oxycontin pain pills in her pants pocket Friday morning, which is more than can be said for her 28-year-old uncle who allegedly put them there.

The 5-year-old girl was walking to class at Surgoinsville Elementary School first thing Friday morning when she felt inside her pants pocket and pulled out the bag containing 23 40-milligram Oxycontins, according to school Principal Susan Trent.

“Her teacher was standing at the door waiting for everyone to get into class, and she told her teacher, ‘I found this in my pocket’ and handed it to her teacher,” Trent said. “The teacher brought it straight to the office, and of course we called the police. We were just so proud (of the little girl) and praised her to high heaven because she did what we’d taught her to do.

“The teachers and guidance counselors teach them that any time they see anything suspicious they should bring it to the attention of a teacher or an adult, and she did exactly what she was trained to do.”

Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Chad Gillenwater obtained the girl’s address from the school, and then responded to the residence where he reportedly interviewed the girl’s live-in uncle, Dickie Lynn Keirsey, 28.

Keirsey allegedly offered a written statement admitting to hiding the pills in the child’s pocket Thursday while the jeans were hanging on a clothes rack. Keirsey is listed as unemployed on his jail intake sheet.

He’ll have a reliable address for a spell, I’ll bet. I hope.