VA Lady2008's Comments (246)

“This bigot has been a judge for 34 years, with I presume the same attitude for his entire tenure. Is there anyone here with an education and a three-digit IQ who thinks this is the FIRST TIME someone has complained? Or is it just the first time that someone has complained, and someone actually listened?

Part of the listening involves the Internet. Hate, bigotry and lawlessness do their jobs best when covered up and kept dark, and the Internet acts as a real ball of sunshine in exposing this kind of hatefulness.

This judge has been elected and re-elected without opposition EVERY SINGLE TIME. This says quite a bit about the parish, where--pre­sumably--a­t least some black people, or half black people, or black people with white blood, or white people with black blood live.

None of what it says is good: I suspect were a real Department of Justice to look further into the matter it would find out that a good many non-whites don't vote in the parish, either because they have been discouraged, or just aren't allowed.

We'd also find out that the white so-called people, a lot of them anyway, think the judge's opinions are just fine.”

“The flailing GOP leadership has been more than happy with the tea-baggers, who demonstrate that it's a lot more fun to party on than to try to figure out actual, WORKABLE solutions to real problems.

The tea-baggers, for their part, while funded at least in part, and at second hand by the GOP, have demonstrated a surprising unwillingness to play along. Witness their refusal to allow RNC Chairman Steele to speak at their summer sheniaguins. Even so, the GOP has cozied up to these crazies, because they see money and votes in the pot.

The trouble here is that the "stuff" in the pot is fools gold. These screamers, who include gun nuts, racists, bigots, haters and criminals-­-including people who would be more than happy to pick up their NRA-GOP authorized and condoned assault rifles to "water the ground" with blood, have demonstrated that some of that blood might well come from insufficiently like minded Republicans.

This faction of the party has always been with us, one way or another, but lacks the votes to win a national race and in fact, is pushing the remaining moderates (including this socially progressive, pay as you go fiscal conservative, who has long since been booted from the tent) away from the party, as well as disgusting the increasingly large number of independents.

Finally, the remaining intelligent members of the GOP have realized that cozying up to the crazies is going to cost them.

What delightful symmetry.”

“The apparently charming (in small doses) Sarah Palin, who has a truly hard core specialty: creating fear, hatred, anger and pain. Leading Republicans wince at her appearances and commentary, they probably don't even believe the polling numbers, because they can SEE the apparently unending pot of gold she's raking in. She energizes conservatives and aggravates Democrats.

Given that, they're not likely to rein her in. The telegenic rabble rowser, although she will claim, probably correctly, that she represents her own unique personal point of view has been co-opted by the a failing, and flailing about, Republican hierarchy to do the ultimate dirty job: get her adherents focused on hate and fear, so they won't bother to think.

The trouble here is that the "stuff" in the pot is fools gold. Ms. Palin and her like minded adherents can make a lot of noise and trouble, but lack the votes to win a national race and in fact, are pushing the remaining moderates (including this socially progressive, pay as you go fiscal conservative, who has long since been booted from the tent) away from the party, as well as disgusting the increasingly large number of independents.

In the long run, what passes for the GOP leadership will see that they've sold their positions, party, and country for a mess of stinking cabbage.”

“I was still marginally considering voting for McCain--I crossed party lines to vote for him in the primary in 2001-- UNTIL they nominated the slick chick hillbilly from Wasilla.

From the first words out of her mouth, I knew she was not just completely unfit--tem­permentall­y and intellectually--but totally unqualified to be sitting one heartbeat away from a presidency that might go to a 70 year old plus cancer surviver.”

“This is nothing. Today, Friday, at 3:09 pm I made a $200 cash deposit in person to my local Wachovia Branch. I was informed that not only would my deposit not be credited for today, it wouldn't be credited for Saturday OR Monday. The cutoff time was apparently 3:00.

I listened to two lame sets of the same regurgitated babblespeak and called them out for what they are: THIEVES.

There were prominent signs all over the bank noting that the bank would be OPEN on Monday, Columbus Day, which is unusual, but NO WHERE did they say that they'd be grabbing my money, and the money of (probably millions) of fellow depositors and pocketing the floating interest.

I know many of you are incensed at BOA, and as a former BOA customer driven out by bad customer service, I can't say I blame you. However: I walked one block and across the street and asked BOA what their policy was and was told that as long as I made the deposit by closing time (6:00 pm on Friday) at the counters, or by 8:00 pm in the ATM, I would be credited for today.

I'll be opening a new account elsewhere on Monday, and will transfer the bulk of my savings immediately. As soon as I can get the direct deposit paycheck transferred and all my checks clear, it's AMF to Wachovia.

They all stink.”

“Did Cigna fire the employees involved? Did Cigna even discipline them?

I thought not.”

“To Antonin Scalia, I'm sure the cross really does represent "everybody­."

That would be everybody who counts, in his opinion. You all know: the right kind of people. White Republican Christian men.

That cross does not me, my family, or my son.”

“I suspect that Senator Ensign WILL testify, because he'll be responding to a grand jury subpoena, and he'll be under oath, as well. However, as we know in our bones, Republicans have absolutely no problem lying under oath--at this moment I imagine he is creatively making up exactly how he'll word his eventual allocution­...which he will be forced to give when he pleads guilty, as have so many before him.

My prediction is that he will testify, he will lie, and eventually some sharpie in the DOJ will nail him for perjury. And then, some other sharpie in the IRS, will nail him and his parents for tax evasion in the matter of the "gifts" to the mistress and her family.

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Former Senator Bob Ney remains in stir for , among other things, lying in the Abramoff case. Scooter Libby was convicted, but never served a day, for obstruction, making false statements, and perjury. Al Capone actually went to jail for income tax evasion.

Republicans of the Ensign persuasion think that truth is elastic, words mean what they THINK they mean, and that following the law is for little people, like you and me to follow, and taxes are also for little people,

Well now, finally, it's the little people's collective turn.”

“Where have I heard of this scenario before? Oh, right, in the barely believable Fletcher Knebel's novel (and later movie) Seven Days in May. A thoughtful President, an arrogant-out-of the chain of command 4 star general who wants to be president, a bunch of loonies from the other party: all trying like mad to unseat, somehow, an elected president to install a "we can control him" General.

It didn't work out for the general in the novel, or the movie, and I suspect the denouement will be the same in real life. : the general will be allowed to retire, with no reduction in rank or retired pay.

We have a chain of military command in this country: it starts at the top, with the President of the United States. McChrystal actually got a favor in meeting with the President, and one that he obviously neither appreciated nor deserved. The President is well within his rights to do his communicating thru the Sec Def, or General Petraeus, although Petraeus, no matter what he claims, obviously has been out of action for the past couple of months for radiation treatment of prostate cancer.

All the braying and howling of the tin-foil hat brigade in time can't change it.”

“Well said.”

“We're facing 10 percent unemployment, and far more were you to add in the underemployed, and those who have just given up even looking for work because there are, according to the NYT 6 unemployeed people for every job available. We've bankrupted the country by giving tax cuts to the wealthy while squandering our honor, dignity, and blood on a foolish war of choice, not necessity, and then faility to PAY for it. We've given free reign to do anything they want to the likes of banks, major corporations, health insurance companies, food producers, drug producers--on Alan Greenspan's lunatic theory that corporations will behave in their best interests. All of these things occurred on Greenspan's watch, and not only did he not lift a finger to STOP any of it, he encouraged it and provided the intellectual enabling necessary to allow it all to happen.

It's not as if George Bush could have thought of any of these things himself.

Quick someone, explain to me why we should listen to ANYTHING Alan Greenspan--who like his faux god George Bush--is busily attempting to rewrite history to clean up his own role in creating and enabling this mess.”

“When Krugman writes that the Republicas are behaving like a bunch of bratty 13 year olds, he just blows past the fact that the Democrats used to behave that way as well. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was coming of age, much of the "activity" of the Democratic party was centered on a huge fight between "youth"--who wanted free love, and an end to war, and an end to bigotry, and "maturity" which had slipped into supporting a horrible war (mostly because it was too stubborn to admit it had been swindled) and which was, now notoriously, moving away from the racial bigotry of the south.

The Democrats of the day could fairly have been called bratty 13 year olds; the Republicans, at least those who showed prominently in public, as mature, responsible, intellectually sharp adults.

What a change we've seen. Now it is the Democrats who are the grown ups. All semblance of honor, dignity, intellectual rigor, fiscal probity, and a willingness to look out for anyone except themselves has vanished from the Republican Party.

I was long since booted from this increasingly tiny tent. Actuarily, I have less than two decades left to attain readmission, before I shuffle off to a much bigger tent.

With the current crew in charge, I not only see no possibility of being invited back. Even if I were, I wouldn't be interested in going.”

“The trolls have lied so often, about so many things, and for such a long time that they are incapable of telling the truth.

Most of them probably think they're pretty sharp, and can tell when they're being lied to, because they have so much practice doing it in person. In my observation, however, being a congenital liar doesn't mean you actually can recognize when you're being lied to.

Just ask everyone who fell for King Cheney's lies about WMD in Iraq. They believed that, too.”

“Republicans don't believe in paying taxes: taxes are for poor people, powerless people, and Democrats. Republicans only believe in sucking in tax money. In their corporate enthusiasm to buy off the Senator's mistress (and her husband) they might not have violated any campaign laws (although that is yet to be determined) but they may have gotten crosswise of the IRS.

Hello, Al Capone? Can you hear them talking?

The rules on gift taxes are clear and specific: you may make as many gifts to as many different people in a year, up to a total of $12,000 per person, without incurring any tax penalty. The tax covers cash, services, and articles (like stock, or bonds) at their fair market value. I suspect any effort to hide the nature of the gift, let's say of the Ensign parents EACH gave $12,000 to the mistress, would be considered as a single gift. I think it would also classify as a willful failure, which invokes a penalty.

A big one.”

“Occasionally, the epithet "rogue" is applied to man, and always preceded by the adverb "charming.­" The idea is that while the person is utterly dishonest, in inferior, he is also at least charming, which is how he gets away with it.

Only the odious Ms Palin, uneducated yahoo that she remains, would deliberately apply the full epithet to herself.”

“I believe it's fair to say that if someone told the NY Post (owned, after a fashion, by the odious Rupert Murdock) that Ms. Palin's lectures weren't selling, and there wasn't much interest in her book (to be published by Harper Collins, owned, after a fashion also by the odious Rupert Murdock) and the Post was permitted/saw fit to publish the information, it's probably true.

How frightening to think that this dimwitted, uneducated yahoo came as close as she did to being one heartbeat away from the presidency.”

“Good. Sometimes, regrettably, the ONLY recourse an ordinary person has in the United States, the government having failed abysmally in protecting our rights, is to sue the pants off these suckers.

In previous postings, I've noted that using shame might be the very best "preventive" medicine, at least for the next future felon, but the felonious Constitution busting dogs of the Bush administration are obviously oblivious to shame, and their courting of the tin-foil hatted evangelical fringe voters notwithstanding, none of them believes in God, or the next life or punishment.

Therefore, we citizens have to get them in the only way that we can, and which, ironically, the only thing that will hurt: take away all their money. Take away all their possessions. Bankrupt them, their families, and their children.

Every dime.”

“The congresswoman's statement, like clues in any good crossword puzzle, except on "easy" day, is subject to several interpretations:

"Thank you so much!" she said.

Was she trying to convey the following:

1. Thank you for doing this, to the perpretrator? After all her poisonous screaming, someone went out and did exactly what she wanted by knocking off a federal official? I'd bet, were she to be threatened, she'd be the first to be screaming for protection. Ms Bachmann is a liar and a bully because she's fundamentally a coward with a big mouth.

2. Thank you for asking me about this, because it's free publicity?

3. Get the heck away from me, because there's a thing called incitement, which in English common law, from which our principles derive, is: In the act of persuading, encouraging, instigating, pressuring, or threatening so as to cause another to commit a crime.

I believe, should this turn out to be a hate crime against a federal official, she could be indicted as an accessory to murder.”

“Not all weather delays are CYAs by the airlines, or at least they didn't USE to be.

Years ago, I was flying out of DCA (Washington National) to Indianapolis, in late August, when the DC area is prone to thunderstorms, and on Friday, probably one of the busier days, so the plane was quite full. I was going home to visit my ailing mother. I was a regular on the 4:35 on Friday afternoons; the flight crew knew me by name. I belted in and closed my eyes. As soon as we pushed back from the gate, I was in dreamland. In those days, a push back was pretty much as good as a takeoff, and I saw no point in losing some shut eye.

Apparently we taxied over to the pad, awaiting a take off slot. And waited. And waited. Now none of that would have roused me, but the chatter from the flight deck did. It went something like this:

"Folks, I've decided to hold here for a couple of minutes. If you look out the left side of the plane (which gave a view, after a fashion, in the dirction of the Potomac) you'll see why." My eyelids popped back and I watched while a humongous bolt of lightnight hit the pavement, probably 200 yards from us.

I went back to snooze land, secure in the knowledge that a real, live, human beinging, a pilot--and proabaly military trained at my expense--was on the case!”

“Good. Let them go bankrupt, at a minimum, but that's not nearly enough to prevent these perverts from striking again.

The United States, preceded by the American colonies, has a long history of using SHAME to keep people in line, sometimes as a part of legal proceedings and sometimes when the law simply cannot. The notion of shame formerly extended not just to the ...crimina­l but to the criminal's family, and was a powerful motivation to straighten up--if not to the potential criminal--at least then to the criminal's family.

The Madoff family has profited by the criminal activity of the husband and father, and for a good long time. "You're poor now, Ruthie" has failed to assist in ferreting out the suspect billions which this criminal conspiracy, aided and abetted by the loose tax laws and lax oversight by the SEC, has apparently managed to secret away somewhere, where they'll eventually flee and live large.

I vote we indict and prosecute them all, and seize and sell at auction absolutely everything, down to the shower curtains. We need to make a few sharp examples around here, and this would be a good place to start.”

“Current theories on the motive behind the death of Census worker Bill Sparkman seem to include:

Meth/marijuana producers, fearful of discovery and jail, and NOT TOO BRIGHT, murder him and string him up as an example.

Anti-government hate groups, fearful of discovery of their stupidity--but understanding that stupidity is not indictable--figure they'll murder him and string him up as an example.

The fact that the body was exposed to the elements for a time, possibly quite a long time, will make this crime difficult for the local law enforacement--which apparently let's the meth producers and the marijuana growers have their way with the district-- to solve, but whoever is responsible failed to consider Mr. Sparkman's part time job: he was a federal official, of a kind, and that makes his murder a federal crime.

Enter the FBI, at a minimum. Let's hope they do a better job here than they seem to have done, lately.”

“Ms Whitman is a businesswoman, with every unsavory, dishonest, creepy, anti-American, destructive, lying trait that we've come to associate, sadly, with a formerly respectable profession: business people, CEOs, and MBA's (think George W. Bush). ALL these people really care about is the bottom line for the next quarter, and staying out of jail. They don't give two hoots about next year, much less the next decade.

These people have done everything in their power to destroy the middle class, which ought to be their prime customers, by downsizing their staffs, offshoring the work force, and generally gutting America. All in favor of their personal holy grail: positive results and a smile from Wall Street.

Now, under their leadership, aided, abetted, and led by an intellectually inferior and morally bankrupt Republican party, they intend to MOVE on from the current wreckage, into politics, where they think that somehow, magically, they'll get their second wind and restore the old regime. Meaning they'll get richer, at the expense of the rest of us working stiffs.

Well, now, the stiffs--the ones with three-digit IQs, have wised up, and it's OUR turn. Let the run. Let them hew ever farther and farther to the tin-foil hatted, teabagging crazies. The more the better. Meaning the more of this, the more Democrats we'll see elected.”

“The core principle of incarceration upon conviction is punishment. Sadly, we Americans don't much go for "rehabilitation" which I happen to think is a mistake, but that would be for another comment.

Allen Stansford, as far as I know, has been convicted of NOTHING, although the public, and I suspect law enforcement, is reasonably certain he is guilty of plenty, and probably far more than he'll ever stand trial for. Once indicted, tried, and IF convicted, let the punishment roll on, and let's be clear here: it needs to be extraordinarily long, uncomfortable, painful, and embarrassing. Shame, regrettably, has left the American psyche, but the punishment for his alleged misdeeds, should be sufficient that everyone in his family is forced to change his or her surname to avoid embarrassment.

That said, his pre-trial detention should be designed to prevent flight, and ONLY to prevent flight. I'd say that getting beat up in a jail house fight probably is not part of the pre-trial, flight-avoidance incarceration policy, and that any police department or law enforcement group that permits this likely can, and SHOULD be sued until their pants fall off.

It's not that I don't believe in punishment, which certainly will come later, but I do believe in taking things in their proper order.”

“A mind is a beautiful thing; it's capable of change. Our solons, once elected, generally do not fear being overturned in the general election. Our elected representatives, who generally aren't very forward looking, think it will stay that way forever. Maybe they think incorrectly.

Lawmakers from each party DO fear primary elections, because such a small proportion of voters control the outcome.

Republican lawmakers are hewing ever to the right (or in the case of the odious Joe Lieberman, actually changing parties) to avoid a primary scrap. They figure they can win the general election.

Meanwhile, the equally craven "conservadems" and others, figure they can pick up a few cheap conservative votes by "showing their independence" forgetting that they were elected as Democrats, and can be replaced by BETTER DEMOCRATS.

There's nothing like a little competition to put the fear of unemployment into these craven men and women. Of course, first we get to watch while they cave to the crazies on both sides (this has been going on since Reagan and the Reaganauts) but now, finally, the majority of voters is utterly disgusted with them all.”

“This request, more than anything, shows us exactly what the Party of No is all about. The GOP thinks everything is just fine as it is--they're PAID to do that-- so they don't want to see any changes.

They've had more than enough time, and the fact that they want their thuggish controllers, the lobbyists, to have more time to read it, pretty much says it all.

Move on. Jam it down their throats. Let people have health insurance immediately. Then, in 2010, let them campaign on the fact that they voted against it. Death panels? I'd say the entire GOP is one huge death panel.”