Speaks for itself, does’t it?

(I dedicate this post to Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield, the closet-case numbnuts who introduced the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Call Ted Haggard, Stacey, he can help you!)

Via Joe.My.God

 
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!”

Sir Walter Scott wasn’t talking specifically about self-proclaimed “corruption fighter” Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, AZ, but he could have been all the same. Babeu’s the strident, rightwing, bald-headed blowhard who’s neck and neck with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the contest to see which of them can get the most “Hey, look at me!” media attention for being the most hateful racist hard-ass in Arizona law enforcement. He was in John McCain’s “border patrol” campaign ad in 2008. The guy’s got an insatiable need for media attention and is frequently seen on Fox News whenever they require someone to play a border hawk. Babeu recently spoke to the CPAC gathering of religious conservatives in Washington, DC. He’s got big plans to springboard from his anti-immigrant notoriety to a seat in Congress.

Uh… not so fast… We all know what this sort of idiotic attention-seeking did for Arpaio, who is the subject of a major Justice Department investigation that already looks so incredibly gnarly that Arpaio’s dumbass is obviously toast.. Now investigative journalist Monica Alonzo, reporting in the Phhoenix New Times has broken the story of a scandal that involves Sheriff Paul Babeu and it’s a doozy:

Babeu’s Mexican former lover is claiming that the sheriff’s attorney has threatened him with deportation unless he signed an agreement never to discuss their years-long relationship!!!

*Sputter* *cough*... I mean, you can’t make this shit up. And no one did. The evidence seems pretty damning to say the least!

The latest of the alleged threats were made through Babeu’s personal attorney, who’s also running the sheriff’s campaign for Congress in District 4, the ex-lover says.

He says lawyer Chris DeRose demanded he sign an agreement that he would never breathe a word about the affair. But Jose (New Times is withholding his last name because Babeu and his attorney have challenged his legal status) refused.

The 34-year-old from central Mexico charges that the sheriff’s lawyer warned against mentioning the affair with Babeu. DeRose said gossip about Babeu would focus attention on Jose, attention that could result in his deportation, Jose says.

Melissa Weiss-Riner, Jose’s attorney, confirms her client’s account.

She says she spoke directly to the sheriff’s lawyer, DeRose, about the Babeu camp’s threats that Jose could be deported if he “revealed the relationship.” She says DeRose falsely claimed that Jose’s visa had expired.

“Jose came to our firm because he felt he was being intimidated, and he was in fear for his life,” Weiss-Riner says. “He wanted his legal rights protected.”

Babeu didn’t respond to requests for comment by publication time for this article, but his attorney, DeRose, says the dispute between Jose and the sheriff concerned Jose’s work on Babeu’s websites. He says Jose was a former volunteer who hacked into a campaign website.

DeRose didn’t immediately address the other claims against him and the sheriff, except to say, “I never threatened to deport anybody” and that “[Babeu’s] not threatening anybody.”

Believe that if you are really gullible... There’s even a part of the story that involves a jealous Jose doing a “Babooshka” on Babeu, writing to him under a nom de plume on a website called adam4adam.com and posing as another man in order to catch him in the act! More from the New Times article:

Informed of the situation, Nancy-Jo Merritt, a longtime Phoenix immigration attorney, says such a threat would be indicative of an “atmosphere that’s been created politically in this state, so that if you get angry at someone who is Hispanic, you immediately jump down to the level of threatening to deport him.

“If what [Babeu’s attorney] says is correct [about Jose’s being illegal], either the sheriff had a long relationship with someone he knew was undocumented, while all the time being Mr. Bluster about the border and using it for political gain,” or he threatened to deport someone he just broke up with, Merritt says. [Emphasis added].

“That’s just the worst kind of hypocrisy.”

She adds that federal immigration-enforcement agents have better things to do than “take care of Babeu’s boyfriends.”

Antonio Bustamante, a criminal defense attorney and immigration activist, tells New Times that if the allegations against Babeu are true, “To use a position of authority . . . and make legal threats opens a Pandora’s box of ethics issues for any law enforcement person or any elected person. In this case, he’s both.”

Paul Babeu’s a lot of things!

When asked for a statement about the allegations and the online profile, Babeu’s attorney said:

“He believes he’ll be judged by his record as a 20-year veteran of the United States Armed Forces, police officer who has saved two lives in the line of duty and responded to thousands of emergencies, and Iraq war veteran.”

Tell that to Sean Hannity and your former friends in the CPAC crowd, Babeu…
 

Scandal Rocks Pinal County Sheriff’s Election Campaign: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

 
The anti-piracy group BREIN has been accused by a soundtrack composer of not having permission to use his work in their well known “you wouldn’t steal a car” anti-downloading campaign. The image above is a still from the infamous advert, which has been satirised heavily (most famously by The IT Crowd). 

You couldn’t make this shit up. Well no you could - but no-one would believe you. Which is why Melchior Rietveldt, the Dutch musician whose work was used on the huge international ad campaign after it was commissioned for a only one-off screening, wore a wire to record the conversations he had with his national royalty collection agency Buma/Stemra. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his music was used without permission (in a bloody anti-piracy campaign, of all things) Mr Reitveldt was then told by a representative of Buma/Stemra, Jochem Gerrits, that the issue could be resolved if Gerrits was given a 33% share of the possible million-Euro-plus pay out that Rietveldt was due. In effect, a bribe.

Via Torrentfreak:

It all started back in 2006, when the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN reportedly asked musician Melchior Rietveldt to compose music for an anti-piracy video. The video in question was to be shown at a local film festival, and under these strict conditions the composer accepted the job.

However, according to a report from Pownews the anti-piracy ad was recycled for various other purposes without the composer’s permission. When Rietveldt bought a Harry Potter DVD early 2007, he noticed that the campaign video with his music was on it. And this was no isolated incident.

The composer now claims that his work has been used on tens of millions of Dutch DVDs, without him receiving any compensation for it. According to Rietveldt’s financial advisor, the total sum in missed revenue amounts to at least a million euros ($1,300,000).

The existence of excellent copyright laws and royalty collecting agencies in the Netherlands should mean that the composer received help and support with this problems, but this couldn’t be further from what actually happened.

Soon after he discovered the unauthorized distribution of his music Rietveldt alerted the local music royalty collecting agency Buma/Stemra. The composer demanded compensation, but to his frustration he heard very little from Buma/Stemra and he certainly didn’t receive any royalties.
Earlier this year, however, a breakthrough seemed to loom on the horizon when Buma/Stemra board member Jochem Gerrits contacted the composer with an interesting proposal. Gerrits offered to help out the composer in his efforts to get paid for his hard work, but the music boss had a few demands of his own.

In order for the deal to work out the composer had to assign the track in question to the music publishing catalogue of the Gerrits, who owns High Fashion Music. In addition to this, the music boss demanded 33% of all the money set to be recouped as a result of his efforts.

Unbelievable! I hope Mr Rietveldt rinses these bastards for everything they’ve got. Here’s the original BREIN anti-piracy advert:
 

 
Thanks to Paul Shetler.

 
A) Hilarious? B) Tragic? C) Who gives a flying fuck anymore? D) All of the above.

The saddest thing about the whole debt ceiling spectacle is that the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House during the worst economic downtown since the Depression and we’re actually hearing talk about the death of Keynesian economics? Unfuckingbelievable, but there you go.

Bruce Bartlett writing at The Fiscal Times wonders if Barack Obama is “the Democrats’ Richard Nixon?” He makes some good points

By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.

And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.

Thus Obama took office under roughly the same political and economic circumstances that Nixon did in 1968 except in a mirror opposite way. Instead of being forced to manage a slew of new liberal spending programs, as Nixon did, Obama had to cope with a revenue structure that had been decimated by Republicans.

Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.

Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:

His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.

Further evidence can be found in the writings of outspoken liberals such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has condemned Obama’s conservatism ever since he took office.

I’m with Krugman myself. I simply can’t believe Obama is negotiating with these assholes (see below) and losing! It’s incredible to watch.

What would Obama do in a fist fight, you know? He should have told the House GOP to do their worst but that he’d veto anything too aggressive and make sure the bills were paid under the 14th Amendment. He should have started there!

Then what would have happened?

It would have been a different story altogether. He should have listened to Bill Clinton.

Instead we’re getting a deal that the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, called “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”

With fuckin’ Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans, anyway?

This country is doomed…
 

 
Via Think Progress