Don't drink from the Republican trough

It’s hard to imagine politicians telling lies. It’s a dirty job but somebody had to do it seems to be the message coming from Washington, D.C. these days when the topic of waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison surfaces.

Having nothing but bitterness to cling to following the trouncing President Barack Obama gave Republicans in November, the GOP is now trying to blame torture on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The party of elephants has called for an investigation into claims that Pelosi had been briefed by the CIA about the tortures, as Obama is stepping up pressure to close the prison.

As if out of a cheap dime novel, former Vice President Dick “Shoots his friends” Cheney made a sinister appearance on TV demanding that the prison remain open and touting the benefits of torture outweigh the detriments.

Now that’s a charity that could possibly fix the economic mess Republicans created, isn’t it? It’s difficult to see what useful information any of the torturees would divulge, though. As Judge Judy tells miscreants on her TV court show, “I can tell you’re lying because your lips are moving.”

-Peace

Karl Rove deserves a cell

'Rove'ing conspiracy against Don Siegelman

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman ran into another brick wall on Friday, March 6 when a three-member panel of the federal appeals court upheld most of the bribery and conspiracy convictions that were clearly manipulated by George W. Bush’s former political adviser Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove.

Siegelman dedicated nearly three decades to public service, becoming the only elected politician to serve in the swing state’s four highest offices. So popular was Siegelman, the Democrat, in the Republican state, Rove and company pushed the trial during the governor’s 2006 re-election bid.

For those unfamiliar to Rove, he’s one of the guys who helped manufacture “proof” that Saddam Hussein was seeking “yellowcake” uranium, which helped sell the U.S. Congress on the invasion of Iraq. He’s the Dark Lord lurking behind the “hanging chads” shenanigans in Dade County, Fla. to structure a Republican dictatorship during the 2000 presidential elections.

Rove, in collusion with Dick Cheney’s since convicted former Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, is also the guy who leaked Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. This was in retribution for an op-ed titled “Mission to Niger” her former Ambassador husband, John Wilson, published in The New York Times.

Those are merely a few of the more noted scandals and conspiracies Rove has been connected with. When he was summoned to testify at Siegelman's trial he refused.

Rove is the guy who should be heading to prison, not Don Siegelman.

My multifaceted bias about the case comes not only from the contempt I’ve developed watching Rove’s devious political maneuvering dating back to the 1994 bullshit he pulled in Texas to get George W. Bush — that’s right, he was Dubbya’s campaign adviser in ’94 and ’98 — elected and re-elected as governor.

I’m also concerned because the evidence in Siegelman’s case, as well as well-known prosecutorial misconduct, is extremely sketchy (topics I’ll address in an upcoming Daily Forty-Niner editorial).

I’ll also disclose that Cal State Long Beach alumna Dana Siegelman, Don’s daughter, is a good friend of mine through promoting peace, human and civil rights.

Her father has just filed a second appeal to his convictions seeking a full-panel review because the last jury was not given important instructions that could have ended this.

In the meantime, Rove continues to enjoy freedom and wealth. He’s so slippery, the U.S. can only estimate his overall worth at between $ 1.5 million and $6.3 million. Instead of being a prison cell, he continues to enjoy his freedom, something possibly allowed by connections in the IRS. If ever a conspiracy theory stood out….

BLR blurs lines of ethics

Image from Google Images

Total world domination

After editorializing recently about insignificant state and national political gunk, it’s time to bring it back down to Earth here at good old Cal State Long Beach.

The recent Beach Legacy Referendum that was put out for a campuswide vote -- and failed -- brought student campaign ethics under the microscope.

Probably the most disturbing part of the BLR blur was that it wasn’t a binding vote; it was merely to test how students might feel if they were slapped with a new fee for athletics goodies, as we learned by perusing California State University Executive Order 1034.

Regardless that the campus community overwhelmingly voted the BLR down, CSULB President F. King Alexander holds the power to impose the fee anyway. What it boils down to is an administrative power play, manipulated largely by a few insiders. There were a few suspected dungeon masters in this conspiracy.

Any student in their right mind should be pissed that the thing was treated like some winner-take-all Obama/McCain-Sarah “America’s favorite MILF” Palin campaign when the BLR was merely a survey.

This issue was essentially relegated to guerilla warfare. The Athletics Department was told, “There are no rules” and fought a no-holds barred battle accordingly. They took off the gloves and boxed bare-knuckle style.

Some of the chicanery included turning rowdy student athletes loose in the dorms pestering sleeping students in the middle of mid-term exams, celebrating victory while the election was still in process and punking students into voting ‘yes’ at the makeshift “unofficial voting” booths set up in the CSULB Pyramid.

I had tried to warn them of the implications in both editorial and signed opinion that we were putting our campus soul at risk.

There were reliable reports about swimming coaches canceling scheduled classes and walking students to the Walter Pyramid to vote.

In the end, however, the campus may have deteriorated a great deal of its essence. When ethics and fair play are overshadowed by the need to win at any cost, the money becomes secondary to benevolence.

In the arena of applied ethics, the entire CSULB community lost.

The death knell to BLR? Hardly, me thinks!!!
Enjoy the video of my homie, Tiffany Rider.

'Ahnold' takes red-eye to D.C.

Illustration Duke Rescola and Google Images
You've been screwed, Golden State...

READ MORE BELOW!

Probably the least effective teaching strategy imaginable is to slap a student upside the head with an eight-pound civics textbook and pray they absorb California politics.

I can't believe Californians haven't seen through the glitter and glam of the quasi-red carpet persona to see that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is nothing more than the bully in charge.

It’s easy to put the broken promise of his gubernatorial years under a microscope and understand how I was able to copyright the term "Educ-Hater" (sort of rhymes with Educator) in editorials nearly two years ago.

While it began as part of an editorial about the "College Textbook Affordability Act," in 2007, I tried to warn you guys against Arnold when he was running to replace former Gov. Gray "the clerk" Davis. Now we’re $42 billion in debt and on the verge of insolvency (not an economic term as gentle as it sounds).

Schwarzenegger might be many things to many people, but to me he transcends his silver screen image; he is a wealthy ne'er-do-well intent on stepping over our corpses to be a career politician.

No sooner had he given a "Terminator" reminiscent 'thumb-up' to the vile Golden State budget and he was off to promote himself as a moderate/conservative in Washington, D.C. Hell, he didn’t even leave Sacramento before he whored himself as a redeemed national conservative by pushing to have needles quickly spiked into inmates on Death Row.

Arnold is simultaneously selling himself as a George W. Bush-type kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em-out tough-on crime governor and giving a "woot-woot" to President Obama's stimulus package. This is playing both ends against the middle, but it isn't because Schwarzenegger thinks it’s a Kennedy/Shriver privelege; he’s spreading his political safety net.

You have to wonder if he or his agent Lou Pitt have a soul by taking a role from Sylvester Stallone in the soon-to-be flick,"The Expendables" that Arnie is locked into. Ask yourself, fellow Californians, “Who are 'The Expendables' in this multi-gazillion dollar production, where Arnold is expected to play, ahem, a governor?" They are us.

Have you any doubt that the acting role is a result of lobbying by the film industry? Part of the California budget agreement was to pony up preferential tax cuts (notice a pandering trend) to the Hollywood machine.

And now, some Ahnold via The Simpsons

Some peanutty humor to make you hungry

If this 'toon doesn't make your
mouth water for the article below,

From Google Images

Maybe this original one will:

Anybody up for grilled cheese?

Mr. Peanut delivers death threat

When Stewart Parnell, owner of Peanut Corp. of America, was questioned this week by the “House subcommittee on PB&J” he seemed to have some of his tainted product stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The beleaguered peanut butter magnate, under congressional fire for the recent salmonella epidemic that has thus far claimed nine lives and made 600 others violently ill, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday.

The most dramatic part of the hearings came when Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) offered Parnell a taste of his own poison.



There’s lots of evidence that the Food and Drug Administration knew about the salmonella infection but failed to warn the public. This is problematic because PCA had contracts with the federal government to sell its products as part of the federally-funded free school lunch program, which feeds millions of poverty-level children.

One of the largest food recalls in history is having a rippling effect as even pet products are being yanked off of store shelves.

It’s no small wonder the goober tycoon Parnell has gone into hiding. Just three weeks ago, a Chinese court sentenced two men to death and sent a host of others to prison for last year’s tainted milk fiasco; an international disaster that claimed the lives of six children and made thousands more ill.

As a result of the untold stomach aches Parnell’s greed has allegedly caused, his company now seems on the brink of going belly up. One tragic irony is that Parnell lives in the Virginia town of Lynchburg. Hopefully, nobody will practice lynching.

George Washington Carver, the historic peanut promoter, is probably turning in his grave. Carver, told Congress in 1921, “I do not know of a single case … that complains because peanuts hurt them.” You stand corrected, Mr. Carver.



Hopefully, chocolate is safe. Depriving us of peanut butter cups is bad enough without having to worry about threatening the planet’s second greatest addiction — caffeine, of course, being the first.

Loose Cannons