a little bit of late election coverage from the Onion.

Posted on November 25, 2008

wish I’d found this before the election so I could have posted it then.  still, better late then never…

Struggling Lower-Class Still Unsure How Best To Fuck Selves With Vote
from The Onion, Oct. 30, 2008

WASHINGTON—As election day nears, millions of the nation’s poorest voters have reportedly yet to settle on the most profound and enduring way to completely fuck themselves over when they head to the polls this year.

“On the one hand, I’m pretty sure Barack Obama will undermine my best interests by maintaining the same centrist, pro-corporate policies of previous Democratic administrations,” said Jim Estey, 34, a recently laid-off assembly-line worker. “Conversely, I agree with McCain and Palin on abortion, which might just balance out the fact that they’ll further marginalize people like me by supporting deregulation and slashing social programs. So it’s pretty much a toss-up at this point.”

Though such behavior appears to directly undermine their own well-being, lower-income voters have historically supported candidates determined to screw them six ways to Sunday, including Bill Clinton, who incarcerated them in record numbers and cut the welfare benefits many depended on for day-to-day sustenance, and George W. Bush, who widened the gap between them and the rich and sent thousands of them to die in Iraq. This year’s election is reportedly unique in that the nation’s poor must not only weigh how deeply and painfully their chosen candidate will penetrate their rectums, but must also consider unforeseen outside circumstances—such as economic collapse and terrorism—that might allow the next president to bend them over and brutally rape them in ways they never thought possible.

The latest polls indicate that a majority of lower-class citizens might choose not to vote at all Nov. 4, preferring instead to leave the details of how they get fucked to the moneyed classes.

And that pretty much sums it up as far as I’m concerned.

The Boondocks on the Riaa and File Sharing.

Posted on November 22, 2008

Those of you who read this blog regularly know I’m a big supporter of open-source and filesharing, including sharing of music.  The fact that the RIAA had the balls to claim they’re suing people to “protect” artists – when everybody who knows a damn thing about the industry knows it’s really about making it more difficult for independent artists to get heard – leaves me livid.  And the fact that they continue to get away with it burns me even more.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Iraqi death toll passes 1 million

Posted on November 17, 2008

the number 1 story from Project censored – the death toll for the iraq war has almost definately passed 1 million (it’s hard to confirm because the US hasn’t bothered to count the bodies reliably).

Now stop and think to yourself how your average American would feel if a hostile foreign power that we had never once attacked or done any harm too (remember, Iraq didn’t have a damn thing to do with the destruction of the WTC) invaded the USA, occupied our country for 8 years, and murdered a million people.  Now take into account how tiny Iraq’s population was to start with and realize that 1 million people is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/6th of their total population.   Think about that for a second.  1 in 6 Iraqi’s have been killed in a war ostensibly launched to eliminate an oppressive (US backed) dictator and his (nonexistant) WMD’s and “liberate” them.

Now that’s some kind of liberation.

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

ORB’s research covered fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions—Kerbala and Anbar—and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.

Authors Joshua Holland and Michael Schwartz point out that the dominant narrative on Iraq—that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility—is ill conceived. Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.

Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

Check out the full story at ProjectCensored.