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Why Paul McCartney Still Matters
06.05.2010
04:09 pm
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Posted by Brad Laner
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06.05.2010
04:09 pm
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Arizona is in a hell of a mess
06.04.2010
09:21 pm
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The following was posted on Wonkette and I am reposting it here in full because I don’t think they’d mind and I sure couldn’t say it any better. As an American I am horrified by this. Please post this story on your Facebook and Twitter and get it out there:

Hard to find even the Gallows Humor in this story, so maybe we won’t even try. Maybe it’s time to admit that large chunks of America are in the hands of unreconstructed racists and vulgar idiots, and that the popular election of a black man as president just might’ve pushed these furious, economically doomed old white people into a final rage that is going to end very, very badly. Ready? Here you go: An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face from the mural, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students pictured on the school wall to be repainted as light-skinned children.

This is America, in 2010, and there’s a dozen more states and endless white-trash municipalities ready to Officially Adopt this same Official Racist Insanity.

From the Arizona Republic:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity….

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

The children depicted on the mural, as we mentioned before but feel compelled to repeat, are little kids who go to the school — “a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project.”

And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.

And now the faces are being painted white, “because of the controversy.”

Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists and Arizonans, because funny time is almost over. If the unemployment keeps up — one in five adult white males has no job and will never have a job again — and people keep walking away from their stucco heaps they can’t afford and the states and cities and counties and towns keep passing their aggressive racist laws to rile up the trash even more, shit’s going to very soon become very bad, and whether it’s the National Guard having wars in the Sunbelt Exurbs against armies of crazy old white people who are finally using their hundreds of millions of guns, or whole Latino neighborhoods burned to the ground the way the Klan used to burn down black neighborhoods a century ago, we are in for a long dark night and no light-colored paint is going to fix that.

Postscript: So that asswipe Steve Blair got fired from the radio station. Blair emphasized in his statement that “I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand.” What a fucking idiot.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.04.2010
09:21 pm
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BP kills Aquaman
06.01.2010
11:57 am
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(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.01.2010
11:57 am
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The ‘Best’ party wins in Icelandic election: Comedian now the mayor of Reykjavik
05.30.2010
07:06 pm
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You have to love the fact that a joke political party in Iceland, started six months ago by a comedian, won the most seats during a local election The party, know simply as “the Best” won local elections in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, scoring 34.7% of the vote and securing 6 of 15 seats of the city council. The campaign video featured members of the party, including founder Jon Gnarr—now the city’s mayor—singing Tina Turner’s “The Best” (what else?)

From BBC News:

Key pledges included “sustainable transparency”, free towels at all swimming pools and a new polar bear for the city zoo.

The party also called for a Disneyland at the airport and a “drug-free parliament” by 2020.

As well as specific pledges, its video promised change, a “bright future” and suggested that it was time for a “clean out.”

Clearly Icelanders, who have seen their entire economy collapse, get the joke!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.30.2010
07:06 pm
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Tea party candidate in NC shunned by GOP for believing he is the Messiah, and other things
05.25.2010
09:25 pm
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What fun watching Republicans in Raleigh, N.C. trying to throw Tea party-supported candidate Tim D’Annunzio under a bus. He’s ahead in the polls, his campaign has deep pockets and yet Tim’s a pariah in establishment GOP circles in the state. If I lived in North Carolina, I’d vote for this guy and I have not cast a single Republican vote in my life. To elect a pothead, ex-junkie deadbeat dad Republican who believes he’s the Messiah? You are kidding me? This is going to be the best contest in the entire country! I may donate to this guy’s campaign.

From AP:

Tim D’Annunzio, a congressional candidate in North Carolina’s most competitive district, has run an anti-establishment campaign with vows to dismantle entire branches of the federal government. His ideas have drawn support from tea party activists, and he has raised more money from individuals than his GOP rival while also contributing more than $1 million to his own campaign.

Republican leaders in both Raleigh and Washington, however, are worried about his electability in November if he wins a primary runoff next month. They’re publicizing court documents about D’Annunzio’s past legal, martial and business troubles and denouncing him as unfit for office.“Mr. D’Annunzio has disqualified himself by his background, his record and his behavior,” said Tom Fetzer, North Carolina’s Republican Party chairman. He said the GOP embraces the tea party but doesn’t believe a person with such a checkered past should be the party’s nominee.

In Hoke County divorce records, his wife said in 1995 that D’Annunzio had claimed to be the Messiah, had traveled to New Jersey to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. A doctor’s evaluation the following month said D’Annunzio used marijuana almost daily, had been living with another woman for several months, had once been in drug treatment for heroin dependence and was jailed a couple times as a teenager.

The doctor concluded that his religious beliefs were not delusional. A judge wrote in a child support ruling a few years later that D’Annunzio was a self-described “religious zealot” who believed the government was the “Antichrist.” The judge said he was willfully failing to make child support payments.

D’Annunzio declined Monday to discuss the specifics of his past and refused to confirm or deny the details of the court documents. He acknowledged having “a troubled upbringing” but that he got himself out of it and changed his life 16 years ago, when he had a religious conversion.

“The bigger story is that the power brokers in Raleigh and in Washington are willing to go to any length and use any unscrupulous tactic to try to destroy somebody,” he said. “They think that they’re losing their control over the Republican party.

They obviously are! This character makes even Rand Paul seem sane. Can the Sarah Palin endorsement be far behind?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.25.2010
09:25 pm
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Why we need Latino immigrants part 345
05.25.2010
02:26 pm
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And no, Taco Bell does not count. Lest anyone foolishly believe this to be a racist prank let me emphatically state that this is obviously a pointed reaction to Arizona’s hideous new xenophobic, institutionalized racial profiling law. Nicely done !
 
Freeway Sign in Florida Hacked: No Latinos, No Tacos

Posted by Brad Laner
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05.25.2010
02:26 pm
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The Media Attacks: Bring Me the Head of Rand Paul
05.23.2010
10:42 pm
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It’s been fascinating—and fun—watching Republican Tea party favorite, Rand Paul implode this past week. In my never so humble opinion he’s a straight up nut job—no wonder the teabaggers love him so much—who’s a card carrying member of the tin foil hat brigade. Did you see the stuff about him warning against the “NAFTA Superhighway” and the “Amero” on TPM? When someone starts talking about the fucking Amero, trust me, it’s time to get off the bus and wait for the next one! (He even warned of a Hitler-style dictatorship coming to America at a speech at a “machine gun shoot” last year)

But aside from the culturally unsophisticated Paul bringing the funny, which as I say, I enjoyed very much, one of the commenters about him on YouTube got me noticing how ready the media is to rip this guy apart. The poster wrote some typical “They’re just trying to tear a brave man down” BS. Well, brave or not—I think Rand Paul is an absolute moron—the guy did have a point: The media IS trying to tear Rand Paul down. This is not a conspiracy, it’s an easily observable fact. It’s not just about him saying some dumb shit and then it dies down, the members of the media actively want his blood. Look at the video below from Meet the Press. The sharks are circling Rand Paul.

I’d argue that this is an entirely appropriate reaction to a guy who espouses the brand of dangerous horseshit Paul does. This is a case, right before our very eyes, where the media—and I remind you that the media is made of human beings with opinions and feelings, I work at the LA Times myself—is acting like white blood cells trying to rid the body politic of a cancer.

A cancer named Rand Paul. Fuck this guy!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.23.2010
10:42 pm
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Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?
05.21.2010
01:41 pm
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Painting courtesy of Rosco Kickingstone at Le Voyeur Cafe and Lounge in Olympia. Photo courtesy of Robert Whitlock. Irony courtesy of Arizona.


As seen in an Olympia, WA coffeehouse.

Update: Xeni Jardin points out, “Y’all know the origin of that, right? Yolanda Lopez’ iconic mid-90s poster art.


(via Seattle Weekly)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.21.2010
01:41 pm
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When reality collapses in on itself: Sarah Palin strip-a-like contest.
05.20.2010
05:55 pm
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“Less Taxation, More Stimulation.” Yeah… right. I found this by accident today, I swear it. And you can believe me when I tell you this, because the idea of seeing Sarah Palin (or someone who looks just like her) naked is not something I’d personally find very exciting. (In fact, I’m not sure I’d find a nude, ready, willing and waiting Sarah Palin sexually enticing even if I’d spent the previous two decades in a state penitentiary… Thankfully this is not a dilemma I am likely to face in this lifetime).

Two amusing things: One, they extended the invitation for Sarah Palin to be a celebrity judge, “although no response was received” (offer her $100k next time and she might show up) and two, the strip club where this event takes place in Chicago, the Admiral X Theater, is offering to donate the proceeds from selling their “We support the Tea Party” tee-shirts to the local chapter of Tea partiers. Will they accept these tainted funds? Let’s hope so!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.20.2010
05:55 pm
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Los Angeles: clueless about pot then and now
05.17.2010
12:03 pm
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(above image: Van Nuys Police Station 1951 via Valley Relics)
 
As our fair city continues to scramble to find more jobs and programs to cut due to massive budget shortfalls it strikes me as more than a little counter-productive to shutter hundreds of thriving, law-abiding small businesses. It’s amazing to me that in 2010 there are those who still fear the demon weed as if it’s anything more than a simple plant capable of providing relief to the ill and inspiration and tranquility to the healthy. People are dumb.
 

Los Angeles has lost over 150,000 jobs in the past year, is on the brink of bankruptcy, and experienced an unexpected 16 percent decline in sales tax revenue last year. And it’s located in a state with its own dire fiscal situation that is also facing unexpected gaps in tax revenue. Yet this week the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office made a move that’s certain to make things worse for its citizens: forcing over 400 functioning businesses to close shop, under threat of jail time.

Don’t worry, though. It’s no big deal. Those businesses are only selling medicine.

Medical marijuana, that is. As detailed in my May Reason magazine cover story, Los Angeles struggled for years with regulating medical marijuana storefronts—which thrived in L.A. as in no other city. In January the city finally came down with an ordinance imposing a variety of new restrictions, including how the businesses handled cash, provided security and lighting, and paid their employees, as well as insisting that the shops were not technically allowed to make a profit.

But the ordinance’s most important effect will be to reduce the 500-plus functioning storefronts serving the city’s medical marijuana community to a mere 70 (with some possible grandfathering that might bring the eventual total higher).

 
Reason.com: Los Angeles Destroys Functioning Businesses in a Recession
 
thx Giga Granada Hills !

 

Posted by Brad Laner
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05.17.2010
12:03 pm
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