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.

Still digesting

So how did your mixture of tryptophan, alcohol, and relatives go yesterday?

By all indications, Walmart's Black Thanksgiving is going just as badly as you might expect.

Just be thankful you aren't relying on food stamps -- or the generosity of Republicans -- to have a happy holiday season.

The pope is not a liberal, Sarah Palin

He is a full-blown socialist.  Maybe even an anti-capitalist.

Pope Francis has taken aim at capitalism as "a new tyranny" and is urging world leaders to step up their efforts against poverty and inequality, saying "thou shall not kill" the economy. Francis calls on rich people to share their wealth.

The existing financial system that fuels the unequal distribution of wealth and violence must be changed, the Pope warned.

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?" Pope Francis asked an audience at the Vatican.

The global economic crisis, which has gripped much of Europe and America, has the Pope asking how countries can function, or realize their full economic potential, if they are weighed down by the debts of capitalism.

“A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules,” the 84-page document, known as an apostolic exhortation, said. 

I love this guy!

Now if you really want to have some fun with it, tell your Drudge-reading, O'Reilly-watching, Limbaugh-listening relative what John Fugelsang said to Ed Schultz last night...

“I think you might just want to blow their minds, Ed, and say that back at the first Thanksgiving, when the Wampanoag fed the Pilgrims, they didn’t know it, but they had just invented socialism for undocumented immigrants,” Fugelsang said. “Then they’ll spend the rest of the night trying to process that.”

[...]

“You can also point out that under Obamacare, we are now making people buy a corporation’s private product — it’s pretty much the opposite of socialism,” Fugelsang argued. “What we have now is socialism; when uninsured people go to an emergency room, and the local taxpayer has to pick up the tab. ‘Hey, right-wing Uncle Larry, why are you defending the socialist status quo?’ That’ll freak them out.”

Happy Turkey Day!

Update: Crooks and Liars assembles some of the right-wing outrage.

Tryin' to get in the spirit of the season ovah heah

First: thanks to Juanita Jean for ruining my appetite for Big Bird tomorrow.

 Guess I'll have to stick to the ham.  Then again...

Here's some things on my wish list.

-- To drive my conservative family members crazy during Thanksgiving dinner, I'm going to pour all of the gravy onto my plate first, and then tell them it will eventually trickle down onto theirs.

-- To piss off the Fox News junkie across the street, the twinkly lights in our living room window are going to spell out SURRENDER, CHRISTMAS.

(Yes, these first two were plagiarized.)

-- I'm going to tip my servers double-time and a half tomorrow just to one-up Neil, and I will not go anywhere near a mall, a big box store, or an airport.  I will probably go to the last days of the Texas Renaissance Festival this weekend, and Dickens on the Strand next weekend.  And I heartily recommend that you do the same.  No amount of shopping, Christmas television specials, or Yuletide radio channels -- nothing -- is better for putting a person in the holiday spirit.

And there'll be more toons tomorrow.