Not the News

-- Share this article, add something like "Obama 2016!" when you post it, and then stand back and watch heads explode.

-- Texas boy tasered by officer after breaking up school fight, remains in a coma:

A high school student suffered a brain injury and remains in a medically-induced coma after a Texas sheriff’s deputy tasered him without cause following a skirmish in a school hallway, the boy’s mother claims in court.

Maria Acosta has sued Bastrop County, its school district and Randy McMillan, a Bastrop County sheriff’s officer and school resource officer, according to Courthouse News.

Noe Nino de Rivera, Acosta’s son, suffered a “severe brain hemorrhage” when McMillan Tasered him after the boy, known as N.N., had intervened to halt a fight between two females at Cedar Creek High School on Wednesday, November 20, Acosta claims in a federal lawsuit.

[...]

McMillan and another security officer arrived to break up the fight upon being called by school officials. Acosta says her son “diffused the situation” by the time they arrived on the scene.

McMillan told N.N. to step away, and he did so with his hands raised, but McMillan tasered him nevertheless, Acosta alleges.

Immobilized by the Taser, N.N. fell and struck his head on the floor, at which point McMillan handcuffed the unconscious boy, 17.

[...]

Acosta says the deputy officer was never in harm, and that the defendants allowed him to work at Cedar Creek High School even after he Tasered another student a year ago. That history created a “foreseeable danger” that led to N.N.’s injuries, she says.

According to the Sheriff's Office, McMillan has never received complaints for using excessive force, and he's never been disciplined for using excessive force.

I would have said 'I have nothing to add' to this story, except for those last two sentences. The Bastrop County sheriff's deputy had Tasered a student previously, and the department's official response was that he has never received any complaints, nor been disciplined, for excessive force.

Now then... I'm speechless.

-- Do racism, conservatism, and low I.Q. go hand in hand?

I believe we all know the answer to this question already. But it's nice to see some empirical data... even if it will be rejected by those most in need of it.

-- Diebold charged with bribery, falsifying documents in a 'worldwide pattern of criminal conduct':

One of the world's largest ATM manufacturers and, formerly, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic voting systems, has been indicted by federal prosecutors for bribery and falsification of documents.

The charges represent only the latest in a long series of criminal and/or unethical misconduct by Diebold, Inc. and their executives over the past decade.

According to Cleveland's Plain Dealer, a U.S. Attorney says the latest charges are in response to "a worldwide pattern of criminal conduct" by the company...

They won't face any jail time, however, because they are a corporation. And you are not.

-- Something else everyone knew already.  Except for a few souls who watch Fox News (sic).

-- Rooting for failure.

It’s hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose. When the first attempt by the United States to launch a satellite into orbit, in 1957, ended in disaster, did Democrats start to cheer, and unify to stop a space program in its infancy? Or, when Medicare got off to a confusing start, did Republicans of the mid-1960s wrap their entire political future around a campaign to deny government-run health care to the elderly? 

Of course not. But for the entirety of the Obama era, Republicans have consistently been cheerleaders for failure. They rooted for the economic recovery to sputter, for gas prices to spike, the job market to crater, the rescue of the American automobile industry to fall apart. 

I get it. This organized schadenfreude goes back to the dawn of Obama’s presidency, when Rush Limbaugh, later joined by Senator Mitch McConnell, said their No. 1 goal was for the president to fail. A CNN poll in 2010 found 61 percent of Republicans hoping Obama would fail (versus only 27 percent among all Americans). 

This is all that the mission of Republicans and conservatives is to accomplish.  Their constant complaining, refusal to live by the law of the land, and perpetual obstruction are harming the United States of America.  Eventually their inability to win an election outside the South and a few western outposts may convince them to change tactics, but in the meantime there will need to be another vote taken in Congress to continue funding the federal government on January 15, 2014.  What's the early line on how that might go?

Honestly, at this point, it would be best for the nation if the GOP keeps contracting until there's barely anything left of it but fond memories.