Tossed into his rich and simmering ragoût of stupid was Mittens’ recent offer to take Obama to the closet – um, poor word choice – woodshed for a good old fashioned water-ski whooping. But no golf. He hears Obama is good at that. Presumably, Mitt would borrow the Presidential barge for the match. I don’t blame him. In 1981, he tried to do the whole middle class water-ski thing and managed to get himself arrested for disorderly conduct. Not a big, Earth-shattering deal, but a deal nonetheless. The story goes something like this:

The Salt Lake Scion Goes to Jail

The Salt Lake Scion, a true Masshole,was launching his boat at Cochituate State Park, MA. One of Cochituate’s finest took issue after seeing the boat’s registration painted over. After a ‘confrontation’ in which the ranger warned of a $50 fine, Mitt pulled out a crisp $50 and handed it to the ranger -  probably in much the same way he tips reporters after they write flattering stories. The Ranger promptly arrested him for disorderly conduct and everyone else stood around thinking, “Damn, I wish I could piss away $50 like that.”

The boorish Romney cash – valid only at the Salt Lake Tabernacle Gift Shop (sorry, no women allowed) – was bad enough. If I had defied the cop’s order to stop, I would’ve found myself prone on the pavement with a Glock to the back of my head or maybe even a pair of scissors in my hair.

Mitt, I know you’re a little thick, but here’s a simple example why your $50 payoff was just wrong.

Say I was speeding and was pulled over. I’m not allowed to throw a $50 out the window and assume that takes care of the whole thing. There are laws to be followed, and yes, they apply to you too. If I can’t just throw some money in the hat and drive off disregarding points on my license, higher fines for arguing with the cop, and additional fines for driving with Irish Setters strapped to the roof, neither can you. BTW, they apparently let you off the hook completely for having an unregistered boat so you should consider yourself lucky.

But he couldn’t leave it at $50 worth of dipshittedness. No, his defense was that he was wet and in a bathing suit when they hauled him off to the Natick lockup. His kids could see his embarrassment as he argued with the cops. Poor dears. I’m sure the cops were visibly moved by the sight of a grown man in madras swimming attire, especially when most of their clientele is vomit-covered and naked for their big night at the Soap on a Rope Invitational.

Ipso Facto, Caveat Emptor, Lorem Ipsum: INNOCENT!

He then went to court and defended himself by claiming the cop didn’t specifically tell him he would be arrested as a law-breaking swine – ipso facto, caveat emptor, lorem ipsum – he was innocent. He iced the cake by threatening to file unlawful arrest charges and backed that up using the firm legal principle that since the cop didn’t show up in court, he must be innocent.

Newsflash Newton, cops usually go to court on their own dime. No overtime. No pay at all. No water skiing with the kids and getting arrested for disorderly on a lost day off to attend to a shitheel like you. Shocking, I’m sure. Besides, what does the cop need a tax break for?

Um, Mitt? The rest of us don’t go to court. We’d be laughed out of the place for a story as lame as this. We pay the frickin’ fine, consider ourselves lucky that SWAT didn’t show up, and say, “Thank you for guarding my safety Mr. Law Officer, sir. I shan’t do it again. Have a good day!”

A very, very understanding  judge let you off, which explains why I’d never make it as a judge. Had you been in my court, I would’ve forced you to launch your boat – carefully supervised to ensure you do it legally this time – and I’d have dropped you overboard without your gold-plated water-wings.

Let me tell you buddy. You’re one lucky sumbitch.

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• Anarchist Mitt Romney arrested in 1981 for ‘disorderly conduct’ (dailykos.com)
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• Supporters of ex-cocaine user Obama fail to capitalize on recycled Romney arrest story (twitchy.com)
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• Mitt the Merry Prankster and Barack the Pusher Downer (omnipotentpoobah.com)
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In a target-rich environment filled with the likes of BP and all the bailed out banks setting up shop faster than Starbucks stores in Manhattan, let’s pick perennial California magnificent malfeasant assopoly Pacific Gas and Electric for today’s lesson.

PG&E is no stranger to bashing actual breathing humans with the exhalted power that springs from corporate personhood. Erin Brockovich went to war with them. They forced electronic meters onto customers despite claims the infernal things didn’t work. They did it by coming onto your property to do the work without permission or even notice. Where the hell are the howls of tyranny now that it’s a pretty logo doing it rather than the ignorati of Capitol Hill?

Making it ‘Right’ Again…NOT!

PG&E’s latest shakedown – well, the largest of their burgeoning list anyway – is the ongoing fight over a deadly Sept. 2010 explosion in San Bruno California. After destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and killing several residents PG&E issued feel-good messages telling everyone they would make everything right again. However, it wasn’t clear just how you make the dead “right again”. Clearly, the messages were ghost written by the PR hacks at BP.

Within hours the company began making everything right by offering residents low-ball settlements. As investigation after investigation showed the company had no idea where pipes were or how serviceable they were. They missed court-ordered deadline after deadline for turning over important documents. After more than a year, they finally copped to not even knowing where all the paperwork was or even if it had ever existed.

They promised customers again to make it better by testing other parts of the same line along with other pipelines across the state. There were cracks a few blocks away  and pipelines exploded elsewhere in a deadly game of  Whack-a-Conflagration across the Golden State. Even they admitted that it was (or is, because they are still testing and blowing stuff up) an embarrassing show of ineptitude. But they had  a plan…impose huge rate increases on customers to pay for the overhauls, later struck down by the court.

Color Me Shocked

Oh, did I mention they already received several million dollars specifically earmarked for repairs the year before for repairs they never made? Surprise! The money went to large compensation packages for the corporate swells and big bonuses for investors.

Color me shocked.

Regulators weren’t much better. They had essentially allowed PG&E to self-regulate themselves for decades, despite a long history of cock-ups, over-charging, and deceptive practices. They eventually fined the company a token amount and a judge kicked it back, calling it ridiculously low for the magnitude of the crimes. The company and their cozy regulators tacked on another few million. The court is still weighing just how absurd this fine will be.

And yet, there are still whiners for poor, beleaguered companies that can’t compete because of oppressive regulation.

It’s nigh onto two years. Several people lost their homes through PG&E-induced default. There is still a big hole in the street which the PG&E CEO probably wants to make into a private swimming pool. The dead are still dead. And, the town is still at odds with the company, regulators, and even itself.

While I’m no great believer in Castroism, I find myself sorely tempted to support having the outlaws nationalized. I couldn’t get a worse deal for their marginal service. They’d be stripped of the over-expensive board. And plenty of “excess employees” and their promised benefits would disappear in the “cleansing” fire of an exploding pipeline. You know, just like rank-and-file government, private, and unionized employees are having inflicted on them.

You would have to fight a titanic battle to screw their response up any more. They make “Helluva job Brownie” look like, well, Brownie doing a helluva job. The company is compounding this crapitude by demanding more ratepayer money to retain the board for their “expertise”. They are in the process of “making things right” by declaring the “right” complete as they get the hell out of the California Afghanistan they created in the picturesque San Bruno hills.

Open your wallets and turn off the gas, PG&E is on the lookout for their next display of stellar corporate personhood and you just might be it.

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• San Bruno Says PG&E Abandoned Pipeline Explosion Settlement Talks (sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com)

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Proving the Poobah’s posts are prescient, it’s seems the threat to smite the Mormons over posthumous baptisms caused them to collapse into mint jelly and quash the practice.

Maybe.

After the recent string of religious recycling, the all-male church elders have put the chastity belt on its database of Jews. It’s nice they’ve taken the pledge to swear off wholesale religious reassignment surgery but the promise has the smell of Rush Limbaugh’s apologies over Slutgate. Still, in a religion famous for resistance to change, it is a big step.

If only they’d not made the same promise in the 1990s, I’d be willing to give them a little more wiggle room. But for the time being, I’ll take the advice of St. Ronny of Reagan and, “Trust, but verify“. However, others aren’t quite so forgiving.

To Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff, who was involved in the 1990 negotiations with Jewish leaders, the promise doesn’t mean much.

“By not allowing public access to the records, it creates the illusion they have something to hide,” Mokotoff said.

Apparently, he is not the only one with lingering concerns, genealogical researcher Helen Radkey has been blocked from the database, but is eying how she might continue revealing the ongoing practice.

“I don’t believe for five minutes that they’re going to stop baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims,” Radkey said with good reason”. She claims former Mormon bishop Larry Shaw, who she hadn’t spoken to for more than 20 years, tried “to silence me as a dissenter.”

Radkey says Shaw, “told me, years ago, as a Mormon bishop in Salt Lake City, that God would kill me if I laid a hand on the Mormon church. The first question he asked me tonight was how is my health?” In fact, he played the death card three more times in the same phone call Radkey says.

Creepy.

The Mormons may also be hedging their bets by failing to mention members of other churches and non-Jews like Mahatma Gandhi. The Mormons caught his runaway soul in 1997, after the initial promise to leave other people’s religion to other people. It is a loophole big enough to give a 1 percenter a tax-free exemption hard on.

I’m no expert on the Book of Mormon, but surely there must be a “thou shalt not” clause for telling fibs. If so, they already have two strikes.

It’s time the Mormons stop acting like crapweasels and do the right thing.

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• Mormon church moves to end Holocaust baptisms (cbsnews.com)
• Mormon church blocks whistle-blower’s access to baptism data (wilmingtonfavs.com)

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Let’s get this straight. In my opinion, Rush Limbaugh was wrong. He was wrong in calling a young woman a slut and prostitute. He was insincere, at best, in his multiple apologies. He was wrong – or deliberately lying – about salient information covering contraception.

He’s done this many times before. Yet, the Dittohead Nation always answers the clarion calls to defend him and their other conservative heroes with a scorched earth policy comprised of, “it was those dirty (liberals, leftists, socialists, communists, Nazis, or secular humanists, take your pick) “made me do it” and a series of “heartfelt” apologies that are anything but.

In short, the man is a dog rocket, but his oft repeated claim that Democrats are just as guilty at slinging the mud at him has some validity.

Previously rebuked Don Imus called Limbaugh an “insincere pig“. Liberal talking head Ed Schultz made similar cracks about Fox’s Laura Ingraham, calling her a “talk slut”. Not exactly taking the high road and just as bad as taking Rush’s low road.

This same tit-for-tat, “I never do it, but the other side always does it” argument is rampant in today’s toxic political environment. Politics has become a zero sum game where scorning any sort of compromise is accepted as the cost of doing political business. It’s unfortunate, but not unexpected.

America’s biggest bloviators have honed the art of sneak attacks while hiding behind the other side’s temerity in saying bad things. The point is you poke another kid on the playground in the eye and then deny the whole thing ever happened – despite witnesses and security camera. Though both sides claim the righteousness of taking responsibility for their actions, they really mean everyone but them.

If you call someone a slut, own it. Say, “Yes I did it” or say nothing to start things at all. This takes a disciplined mind, but it also takes a disciplined mouth – something most commentators don’t have.

I take full responsibility for what I write. I frequently say bad things about stupid people, but try to acknowledge that folks of the opposite opinion do stupid things too – like in this post.

My blog may be bombastic, but I try to be open-minded about what other folks feel. I learn a lot from those exchanges and sometimes so do the people with opinions different than mine. Those exchanges rarely change my mind because I believe for a variety of reasons mine are better. The only thing I’m normally swayed by are immutable facts – not opinions about them – that cause me to question my own logic. Agreeing to disagree is a good thing, but truly taking responsibility for what you say is even better.

Let the disagreements begin!

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Rush likes to exercise his First Amendment Right to free speech with extreme prejudice. He’s allowed to do that. The Constitution only talks about free speech. It says nothing about stupid speech. He can insult as much as he likes and he’d be legally right. Morally right is something with which Rush has only a nodding acquaintance.

In the panoply of things he’s said about others and that others have said about him, calling someone a slut and prostitute is pretty tepid. I’m sure George Carlin’s advice would be, “Hey, they’re only words man. They won’t hurt you.”

I agree. In fact, people have called me much worse and I didn’t get mad about it. It goes with the territory. But then, I have rhino-like skin and am very poorly socialized. I also like to piss off people like Rush and The Dittohead Nation, so any verbal havoc I can raise is icing on the cake baby. Still, I know others aren’t so thick-skinned and will be outraged when he says stupid things.

He will go on – as he did in Slutgate – standing at a podium in a huge, imaginary stadium and nodding and thrusting his chin out like Mussolini to accept the rapture from the likes of Fox,  The Conservative News, and CNSNews.

As he had done so many times before, Rush said something stupid, doubled down on it, and watched the advertisers jump ship like Captain “I Forgot My Glasses” Schettino of the Costa Concordia. Finally, he issued an apology blaming everyone except himself.

With Rush, these things never last long. He’ll immediately ignore it as soon as the chatter blows over as if it never existed at all. Rush’s Rubes will finally stop slobbering and pretend as if it never existed. Eventually, enough of them will drift back so that advertisers will see a large block of people who are easily fooled and start advertising to separate them from their money. Think a 7-month plague…with a lot of weaselry going on.

To the extent that Rush babbled when he should’ve bobbled, he brought things on himself. He could’ve saved himself some bucks by simply keeping his perpetually flapping pie hole closed, but it doesn’t matter.

Rush knows the money will be back as sure as there will be a morning tomorrow. Though money appeals to him like a jackal loves a T-Bone, he managed to highlight some important testimony that otherwise would’ve appeared next to the pork belly prices  in the newspaper. In an odd sort of way, he handed the Democrats something of a victory, tiny though it may be. Lots of people heard not only the insults, but also the actual issue. And judging from the advertiser rebellion, more people were agin’ him trather than fer him.

This entire thing could’ve been avoided if Rush STF up for a change and lefties ignored him (unlike me). In the end, it will all turn out to be a wash. The teabaggers will brew a fresh pot. The Obamainatorists will continue to call him a numbskull and life will go on with more important, or at least more entertaining, fare.

Like the 6 billionth Republican “debate”.

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