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If this article at engadget is correct, 500,000 units of the new phone have been sold so far. That’s 250 million dollars at the bare minimum, not counting those folks that sprung for the more expensive unit or maybe dumped some cash on some accessories as well. Have people forgotten who the exclusive carrier for this thing is? The company that helped Bush spy on millions of American Citizens? Does that ring a bell? This company now has 250,000 new customers with thousands more before the week is over, who knows how many millions before the year is over.

The telcos have sold everybody out to the sham government that has taken over this once-free country and, unbelievably, the People are slobbering all over themselves in all manner of ugly ways to pay for the privilege to be spied on.

What bugs me most about this whole thing is the complicit hardware designer. By signing a deal to give this telco an exclusive contract, they have sided against the American people and decided that unlawful wiretapping is okay. Man, that’s just not cool. I won’t be giving them any more of my money so I need to start looking for a new laptop that’s GNU/Linux-friendly…something compact like my iBook 12″…any suggestions?

It’s been quiet over here lately because I’ve been setting up a deal. Looks like the deal just came through. I accepted a position in Paris, working for Paris Match as their political commentator. I’ll be covering the French Socialist job strike on Tuesday. In case you’re not aware, the French Parliament adopted the “First Employee Contract” law, aka CPE. This contract allows a company to fire anyone under the age of 26 during a two-year trial period without having to give a reason. More here.

I don’t claim to know a lot about politics or psychology but the two subjects fascinate me to no end. A good part of my day is spent combing through various RSS feeds and catching up on “what’s happening” in the world that surrounds me. My point being, I get a lot of information and read a lot of “news” so there’s not much that surprises me out there but every now and again I still find myself stumped. Like now.

News all over The Wire is letting me know that Tom DeLay won the GOP primary in his district by what looks like at this time to be about sixty-one percent. That’s a pretty decisive victory for somebody that is currently embroiled in criminal charges of conspiracy to violate election laws. Somebody that resigned his post as House Majority Leader because he was too close to Jack Abramoff.

What does this say about the voting public in DeLay’s district? What does this say about voters in general? Is our country on some weird path where we don’t care about the actions of our leaders but instead blindly follow the rhetoric that they give us? DeLay’s recent victory leads me to believe that, yes, indeed, the “War against Terrorism” is far more important to voters of this country than the actual facts of their leaders.

God help us all.

Ha! This blurb on RollCall made me laugh. Look, it doesn’t take much brain power to stuff a ballot box but fer fuck’s sake at least make sure you don’t overdo it and put in more ballots than people who voted. What the fuck is going on with the Republicans?

I cannot believe that the idiot that is the Governor of California denied clemency to Stanley “Tookie” Williams. I guess political suicide is in vogue right now because California is going to kick him out on his can’t-even-pronounce-the-name-of-the-state ass. Tookie was executed last night but the thing I find disturbing is that there was no mention of it on the front page of google’s news site. I found articles after doing a search but the front page is blank. I guess nobody wants to admit what fucking barbarians we are. Maybe it’s already old news and I missed the boat, ten hours can be an awful long time when we’re talking news and there are more important things to get the latest on, like how EmptyVee and Microshaft are going to offer yet another fucking music download service. Glad that one was on the front page!

Why do we still have the death penalty? When has the threat of death ever stopped a crime? Some say that executing a prisoner brings closure to the family. Bull. Shit. What a lame excuse to try to push on us. There’s no fucking closure for anyone. An eye for an eye some claim. Like the fucking bible is some sort of guide to living. People that quote the bible so that their actions are justified tend to pick and choose certain things and pretend the other stuff doesn’t exist. The incest. The murder. The drunken carousing. Fuck you and your bible, it was written by mysoginistic men. Bring me a book actually penned by a god and maybe I’ll be a little more interested. The fact is that this nation is a bunch of so-called christian savages who get a hardon thinking about putting a man to death.

Tookie was a shining example of rehabilitation but the fucking terminator decided that he had to die anyway. Look, when someone kills another person we punish them by killing them. What makes us different than a common murderer? Nothing. We’re a nation of murderers who sleep easy at night because we know that we’ll be in church on Sunday morning where God loves us. We sit and listen to some idiot that claims he is sent by God and then after the service we stand around and yank on each others dicks and talk about what wonderful people we are and then we go home and covet the neighbors wife and try to think of ways to steal cable.

I can think of a few elected (hah!) officials that hide behind the cloak of God. Maybe some of them hang out in a big white mansion when they’re not taking a vacation, organizing the killing of thousands of people is tiring after all. These evil bastards smile their political grimace-smiles and make sure that the cameras are rolling as they stroll into church. After they are done they send American citizens overseas to countries like Iraq and where they blow the shit out of innocent people and get the shit blown out of them. But that’s okay, God sanctions those murders. Murder in the name of God is fine, especially if you’re white and not a muslim.

God Bless America! I hope you all choke to death on your pretzels.

Technorati Tags: tookie, death penalty, california, politics, right wing bullshit,

Congressman Randy Cunningham (R) tearfully resigned yesterday after being caught with his hands in a two million dollar cookie jar.

The thing that really bothers me about this is the way the guy denied that he’d done anything wrong back in July. “Noooo. Blah blah blah, this is a witch hunt, blah blah blah. I’m innocent of all charges, justice will reign, blah blah blah. War in Iraq!” I watched him last night on the news as he cried about, I dunno, trust and family or something but I just wasn’t biting. I think he’s only sorry that he got caught. Too bad he’ll have a couple million bucks to console himself in ten years when he gets out of prison.

The one line that really glared at me from the article says, “Prosecutors did not identify the defense contractors.” This shows that the problems with our government lie not just with officials. Halliburton? Nope, never heard of ‘em. Secret deals with defense contractors are nothing new but the outright raping and pillaging that is going on in Washington makes me gag. These people aren’t even trying to hide their shenanigans. Well, Cunningham tried…

The GOP is crumbling like a cookie made without butter. These arrogant warmongers are on the way out but they’ll be leaving a dessicated husk of a country behind. They have sucked this country dry and will be tossing it out of the car window on the way home. The true mind boggler here is that they’ll be back at some point because there are a lot of ignorant, uninformed people in this country that will vote for them again.

How many times will you look at the guy humping a corpse before taking action?

The Grope-inator got bitch-slapped on his ballot measures and I’m very happy with the results. Californians did not need this special election, did not want this special election, and they showed their feelings by voting negatively to the asinine measures that the actor backed. I’m still unsure of how he got elected in the first place but this and his recent approval-rating speak volumes of how people will react when he tries to get re-elected next year. Goodbye Grope-inator, can’t say that I’ll miss you.

Also, New Jersey and Virginia got new Democrat Governors which will be putting the GOP in a tight spot come election time 2006. Hats off to Tim Kaine (Virginia) who was able to defeat his opponent despite said opponent’s dirty trickery and last-minute campain visits from GWB.

Too bad about Texas banning same-sex marriages. I fail to see how who you fuck has anything to do with the courts but there you have it. They’re not the only state to do this though so those of us that are interested in human-rights and equality for all still have an uphill battle that won’t end anytime soon. With all the assholes in the world I really don’t understand why people want to waste their time and resources on outlawing what people do in a bedroom, especially since it doesn’t affect anyone except those that are in the bedroom and if it really bothers you than you should pull your goddamned eyes away and spy on your own life. Damn, this issue really burns me.

Enough of all that, 2006 is going to be an interesting year for politics and I’m ready for the wild ride ahead. Money is going to be changing hands faster than it can be recorded into ledgers while PR consultants kick out the jams and show us pictures of smiling devils that kiss babies and shake hands. Blood is in the water and the sharks can smell it.

It looks like the Republican monster is getting desperate. The Republican Governor’s Association has now stooped so low as to use misleading robo-calls to show their support for candidate Jerry Kilgore, who is running for Governor of Virginia.

I often discuss politics and at some point during the conversation someone will say that a person’s individual vote doesn’t count, that there is no point in going to cast your vote because the decision has already been made. If this were true then the RGA wouldn’t be willing to violate federal laws to get their man in.

Thirteen electoral votes (based on the 2000 census) might not seem like a big deal but it’s pretty substantial and the Republicans obviously want to hold onto the state, leading me to believe that an individual’s vote is VERY important.

Politics is a dirty business and I’m not saying that the Democrats are some sort of shining example that would never use misleading tactics to get a vote. All I want is for people to go to the polls and let their voice be heard regardless of which party they vote for.

The game is on and we must all play…

Via [dailykos]

The United States Senate is hard at work again, making sure they screw everyone in the country but themselves. The Washington Post is reporting that $54 billion will be saved through 2010 because of cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and other programs.

When I was a lad of eight years old or so my family went through a bit of a rough period. My dad had to close his three retail stores due to what he called “Regan-omics” and the only job he could find was through the church (I grew up LDS) at some meat-processing plant. The job didn’t pay very much and certainly wasn’t enough to feed a family of five so food stamps was the answer. I don’t know how it is these days to apply for food stamps but back then it was a real time-sucker and the process was slow. There was a bit of a gap from when he got his last paycheck to when the food stamps would arrive so he did what any other family-provider would do. He sold his blood.

My father sold his blood so that he could have a little money to buy some food for his family. He didn’t get very much money, only enough to buy a crate of oranges, which he’d decided was the best buy out of his options because they were a good source of Vitamin C. My eyes are watering as I write this memory. Perhaps I’m crying because my dad is gone now and I miss him. Perhaps it’s because my heart breaks everytime I think how much my dad sacrificed for his family and never asked for more than a peanut butter sandwich to take with him to work.

The food stamps eventually arrived and we were very grateful. Eating nothing but oranges for a week sure plays havoc on the ol’ intestinal tract. We would have died without those crummy food stamps because a person can only give so much blood and I don’t think my dad had any more to give.

We of course qualified for other things such as free lunch at school and Medicaid for my sick mother and government-sponsored cheese (which, contrary to what everyone always says about it, didn’t taste all that bad). My family wouldn’t have been able to survive without these programs and there are thousands of families across America right now that depend on these programs as well.

Please, please go the polls and express your dismay by voting these useless people out of their six-figure jobs. They are not representing you or your friends or family and the only way for the madness to stop is by voting in good candidates and holding them accountable for their actions.

The price of citrus is high but it should never have to be paid for in blood.

For some reason, the recent ixnay on a minimum wage increase doesn’t seem to be getting much coverage and I haven’t heard anybody discussing it in public like they do for, oh I don’t know, the latest episode of Desperate Housewives. It’s a truly sad state of affairs when the public is more interested in what happens to fictional characters then in what’s happening in their own streets and town and cities. The same Senators that begrudge a lousy buck an hour increase for the toiling masses are the same Senators that have given themselves eight pay increases since the last minimum wage increase. This is voting season, get out there and vote these chumps out of office.

More links about this issue here and here.