DAILY NEWS – AUGUST 26th, 2010

DAILY NEWS – AUGUST 26th, 2010

DATELINE: JUMPING INTO A BOWL OF TROJAN SOUP – When it comes to poetic irony, you can’t really beat this one. Easter 2009, Zdenek Philip Hodousek dipped into a bowl of French Onion Soup while dining with his family. He thought he was biting into some melted cheese on top of the soup. Instead, he had sunk his chompers into a condom. Nothing says family brunch like a floating prophylactic. Here’s the funny part... the name of the restaurant that served the tantalizing dish was Claim Jumpers. Think about that for a moment, and if you have a sick enough mind, you will smile. While the restaurant denies there was any foreign object in the dish, and that no one was being jumped on the prep table in the kitchen, yesterday they did agree to make an undisclosed settlement to the claim.

DATELINE: SIPPING TEA IN BP HELL – Well, I am anyways, watching and reading. In coverage of the latest inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, yesterday it was released that the well casing was not properly structured, a point that Halliburton reps say they pointed out to their BP counterparts (they shared the same fucking office, for the love of God) but apparently without being overly emphatic about the engineers concerns. Now it is TransOcean’s turn to point a finger, stating that the blow-out preventor, the one thing that was being depended on to prevent any disasters for this well, had not been recertified when it was supposed to have been. To recertify it, making sure it is working properly and in good condition, would have required the well to be shut down for the process. However, one employee states that it was working properly because he was in charge of maintenance, and he knew it was working. I can save you all a whole lot of fucking time though... the three companies, Halliburton, TransOcean and BP were focused on one thing and one thing only, and it was not the welfare of the ocean, the people who live on the ocean or the people working on the damned rig. Their only concern was the bottom line. That’s why Halliburton pointed out deficiencies, but not really, and why TransOcean made sure the equipment was all working, but not really, and BP made sure they were compliant with all regulations and guidelines issued by the federal government, but not really, especially when it was just a whole lot easier and cheaper to pay off/bribe people in the MMS. Now they will all sit and point fingers, but in the end the cause of the entire incident will come down plain, simple, self-serving greed.

DATELINE: CELEBRATING A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT – This family is either incredibly close or they should be buying up lottery tickets because they do like to challenge odds. On Friday, Saby Pazos and her sister Leslie Pazos both gave birth to their babies, one boy, one girl, at the Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Illinois. The following day, a third sister, Lilian, gave birth to a baby girl at the same damned hospital. Three babies in two days in one family in one hospital? Astounding, you say? But wait! On Monday, a fourth sister, Heidi, gave birth to a baby boy in California. In case you are running out of toes to count on, that would be four babies born in four days. Hello, hormones! Welcome to little Abel, Ashley, Emily and Jonathan.

DATELINE: PIMPING BABIES ON CRAIGSLIST – Despite their claims of having all ads reviewed by their attornies to ensure there is no pornographic material being pimped on their sales sites, it seems that ‘the trade’ is alive and well and raking in the ‘craigsbucks’. Enter the attorneys general of 17 states, furious over the still rampant ads peddling women for sick bastardos unable to get a date or tired of the one they have. Despite their claims, some of these ads most certainly involve children, most of them cater to sexual predators, many of them are incredibly degrading to women. Yes, I know there are some women who chose this lifestyle... but there are a hundredfold more of them that do not, but have no way to escape it. And as for th children? No, there is absolutely no fucking excuse for anyone to do anything to a child. No matter how you argue that one, it is just plain wrong and sick. Despite the legal pleas from the collective Attorneys General, though, they have no authority to do bugger all... the onus is totally on Craigslist, and as this issue has been going on for years now, and has been raking in the money for them, it is highly unlikely they really give a flying fuck about any moral, social or ethical responsibility. While I embrace the principle of free enterprise, I have to say that the accompanying disregard for anything but the amount of money to be gained is disgusting at best.

DATELINE: WHERE THE BIG BOYS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN SCHOOLYARD BULLIES -- For the ninth fucking time, a girls’ school in Afghanistan was attacked with poison gas, sending 59 high school students and 14 teachers to the hospital. From 1996-2001, under the rule of those fucking sweeties, the Taliban, girls were not to attend school at all. Today approximately two-million girls attend school, but do so in fear for their lives. What a sad fucking state of affairs. The big bad Taliban only has the fucking gonads to bully little girls. The truth of the matter is that they are afraid of women, realize that women can be smart, arguably smarter and braver than any fucking lowlife who blows poison into their lungs while they are learning. Stonings, scourging, poisoning of women... the Taliban—nothing more than a bunch of lowlife feckless fucking thugs.

DATELINE: ROLLING A CUBAN – Raul Castro, new Cuban Kingpin, has decided to stop the subsidy of cigarettes for men over 55. It would be totally fucking awesome to think he did this in an attempt to help improve health and to stop the devastating effects of smoking, but instead he did it to help increase the government bank account. Sadly for some people, this will present an unbearable burden, because they require the subsidized smokes so they can in turn sell them and have money to buy food for their table. Welcome to the communist way of life. The monthly pension for the average person in Cuba is a whole $10.40. With cuts to cigarettes as well as to coupons for other food items and necessities, the gap between the few rich and the growing number of poor widens. Its a great page to take from Chavez’s book.

DATELINE: SPEAKING OF DESPOTS AND ASSHOLES – Kin Jong Il is in China today. While no one has yet been able to determine the purpose for his visit there, you have to know this is not a good thing. If good old Mahmoud Ahmedinejad happens to stop by to join them for a cup of chinese tea, it could well be time to start building that fucking bunker in the back yard. Climate change – it could refer to political cold wars as well, and it would seem the climate’s a-changing.

Daily News – May 10TH, 2010

Daily News – May 10TH, 2010

DATELINE: IN THE LAND OF ‘WILL WE EVER FUCKING LEARN’ -- In the wake of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent oil spill disaster that is still gushing unchecked, Chevron has started drilling their new deepwater well off the coast of Newfoundland. No worries, though, because according to the CBC, Chevron ‘promises they will be careful’. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. They will be careful. Well, I will rest much easier now, as will the puffins and whales and lobsters and everything else living along the east coast. Chevron says that despite the fact that this will, the deepest in Canadian waters, will be a full kilometre deeper than the Deepwater Horizon was, and will be in infinitely colder and rougher waters, they have done a complete review... of themselves and their processes... and THAT should be enough to ensure nothing can happen. And even after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron says that there are no changes necessary to how they will be doing their drilling because ‘...the systems, the equipment, the processes, the people and the skills’ are all hunky-dory. There has been no mention of an Acoustic Switch, the remote controlled shut-off at the ocean floor that is meant for catastrophic situations, and there has been no mention by Comrade Harper and his Gang of Merry Men about requiring one, because, well, god forbid we fuck with an oil company. Chevron promises to have people watching though; I imagine that will be just like all those people with BP who sat and watched the fucking oil consume the Gulf for the last two weeks. Perhaps we should make sure they have some tax-payer funded popcorn to chow down on while ‘watching’, cause once the shit starts to happen, that seems to be the extent of what they are able to do while water is contaminated and animals by the thousands die.

DATELINE: SPEAKING OF THE GULF OF MEXICO CLUSTERFUCK -- The giant con-dome of hope didn’t work to contain the oil spewing from the seabed. Crystallized hydrates clogged the top of the structure and made it buoyant. It was a neat idea, although one that had never been tried in such deep water, and so some of the complications that came up were unforeseen. I commend them for trying the idea, because something has to be done before all coastal life there is wiped out. So, while they continue to drill relief wells that could take up to three months to get into place (Plan A) and they continue to overcome the problems with their concrete dome (Plan B), they will now work on a Plan C – stuff the whole with crap and hope that it clogs. Yes, this is the science we are now looking at... let’s jettison some shredded tires and old golf balls and other crap like that, and cram it into the end of the pipe, sorta like sticking wadded up panties into the mouth of a volcano. While I applaud the creativity, it does nothing to stop the surge of total fucking rage within me that NO ONE bothered to consider what would happen ‘if’... well, they did, but the fucking piece of equipment that very well could have been their saving grace cost a whole $500,000, and god forbid money gets pissed away on something so totally frivolous. Oil companies should be REQUIRED BEFORE starting to drill to provide detailed disaster relief plans that do consider the unlikely, properly thought out plans that don’t leave the fate of a whole fucking ecosystem hanging on the hopes of pressurized crap. Perhaps they should be sending invites to SpongeBob Squarepants to come and help, because seriously, that makes about as much fucking sense, and at least he would do it with a song in his heart.

DATELINE: SPEAKING OF CLUSTERFUCKS – The Pope has accepted the resignation of German Bishop Walter Mixa. Mixa was accused of hitting children in his care, and of making funny business with the books for the orphanage. Yes, this man is accused of stealing money from orphans, because apparently one way or another, the kids are gonna get fucked. According to canon law, a member of the clergy can resign ‘because of illness or some other grave reason’ (apparently the only other ‘grave’ reason would be that the guy died) or if he has ‘become unsuited for the fulfillment of his office’ (which seems to assume he was suited for it at some point, which in light of recent developments, seems questionable). Funny enough, though, there is NOTHING from Rome about them requesting the police to investigate either the assaults or the theft/fraud – it’s just fucking business as usual for them; so much more the pity.

DAILY NEWS – APRIL 29th, 2010

DAILY NEWS – APRIL 29th, 2010

DATELINE: WALLSTREET -- Lloyd Blankfein claims that since Goldman Sachs is a ‘market maker’, they are automatically absolved from any fiduciary responsibility to its clients for any bullshit piece of crap deal they set up for their clients. Their only responsibility was to provide money for Goldman Sachs…themselves and their designer pockets. Even as they KNEW the disaster they were inflicting on millions of people, they were still selling fucking crap to (ie robbing) widows and little old ladies, knowing that it would destroy the purchaser. You see, apparently the financial industry has changed in the last 15 years, and because big business had stopped going to Goldman Sachs for ‘solid investment’ guidance but rather for them to broker deals that most likely screwed over someone else, it was apparently okay to fuck over every one of their OTHER not big-business clients… the ones who would lose their homes, their pensions, their jobs, their entire life, because they were on the other side of the equation—the ‘bend over and smile cause we are gonna screw ya’ side. But THAT’S okay, because this is business, and Goldman Sachs had NO moral responsibility to anyone other than the big dogs while they sat and licked their wounds about not being the total fucking be-all-and-end-all in dishing out advice on how people should invest. No, they did not hold a gun to anyone’s head to make them spend the money, BUT they did have a reputation of being Goldman Gurus, and so whatever they said had to be right. Funny, but fraudsters don’t typically hold guns to anyone’s head either, not do Catholic priests with overactive penises looking for anything available to fuck over. So, it seems to me that the one sure way to determine the integrity of ANY bank manager or financial advisor is really very simple – they should be forced to disclose how much money they lined their pockets with in wages and bonuses for a three-year period, and based on that, the ones who have something even remotely approaching a realistic normal amount are probably the ones with at least a smattering of morals. Unless and until the public gets detail accounts of the amounts of money that these pricks from Goldman Sachs made while they watched the rest of the world, yes, the world, burn, they will have zero credibility and prove only that they are arrogant asshole crooks in Armani suits. For that reason, every one of those men sitting at the table in front of the Senate Subcommittee, should no longer be allowed to manage money for ANYONE ever again, because their warped sense of self-righteousness, entitlement and ethics more than proves they have no intention to ever change how they do business. They are the pedophiles of the financial world. Lock the assholes away.

DATELINE: IN THE EMERGENCY WARD, GETTING HIS FOOT OUT OF HIS MOUTH – You just have to love these stories, the ones where politicians, all polish and sparkle and teleprompters, forget all that crap when wearing a microphone. Gordon Brown followed in the footsteps of George Bush, Jean Cretien and Ronald Reagan, voicing his not-delicately stated editorial opinion of someone with whom they just dealt. I totally LOVE how the first thing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wanted to know was who had arranged for him to meet the lady he was talking to – and NOT that he was a total fucking idiot. To be fair, I thought he handled her comments adequately, so I am not sure what he was so worried about as he walked away from the on-the-street interview while he was campaigning this week. However, in reading through the MANY available transcripts of his interaction with the senior constituent, I have not seen ANYTHING that she said that makes her a bigot. She asked about all the immigration, just one line, about all the immigration they have experienced from eastern Europe. She has a right to ask that. Perhaps it was that buried between the lines of her short one-sentence comment about the issue, there was what could be maybe stretched to imply an editorial comment on political correctness and how it might be wrong to ask about the issue, but it was an issue nonetheless, and to be honest, all this politically correct crap only allows more opportunities to be politically incorrect for whatever the hell is the reason of the day. Gordon Brown is, as well, entitled to his opinion and certainly he should be allowed to it while in the privacy of his own chauffeur-driven car, however he said a mouthful about HIS intolerance to the concerns of the people he so wants to represent. Start packing, Gordo, because I think you are gonna be out house-hunting in very short order.

DATELINE: CHINA – Apparently even when the flame dies down, the games are never really over. In 2000, at the Sydney Olympics, there were questions about the age of Chinese gymnast Dong Fangxiao. The Chinese athletic organization argued that she met the minimum competition age of 16, and although the IOC tried to investigate, there was no evidence they could find to support claims that the diminutive athlete was only 14. The same issues existed at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, with some of the Chinese team appearing to not meet the age requirement, but the paperwork confirmed the claimed ages of the girls. Now, however, as a result of the Beijing Olympics, it seems the evidence required to prove Dong Fangxiou’s age surfaced when she filed paperwork to be an official at the 2008 games. Yes, she wrote down her age, and after some simple ciphering, the International Gymnastics Foundation had the evidence they needed, and the IOC stripped the team of its bronze medal, awarding it to the US team that had come in fourth in 2000. I can’t help but wonder how a 14-year-old girl, living in a communist country where, if you are told to shit in the corner, you ask how much and what color, because it could be a life-changing (or life-ending) thing to refuse, could be held responsible, but that being said, I think there is a very simple way to deal with the issue from now on, because stripping medals under these circumstances sucks, AND it sucks even more that the team that should have been given the medal at the time, with the flags and the pomp and ceremony, were robbed of that. So, the IOC should state, in no uncertain terms, that ANY time this shit comes up, either because of the actions of the athlete or the ‘patriotic pressure’ (wow, how’s that for putting a nice name on a can of crap) of the country that athlete represents, at the NEXT Olympic games following the discovery of the lie/abuse/cheating/etc the ENTIRE TEAM in that event is not allowed to compete. If they know they will have to wait 8 years for the next chance for ALL members of that particular team, then maybe this shit will end. Belated congrats to the 2000 Sydney Olympics Bronze Medal winning Olympic team of Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Krista Maloney, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert.

DATELINE: TORONTO -- There is a man, a hawt man, a talented man, a man with an arm that is the envy of every baseball team in the land. No, I will refrain from breaking out in song, but it will be a challenge. The man? Jon Lester. The feat? 11 strike-outs and only one hit in 7 innings of play against the Blue Jays, taking the three-game series and soundly tucking it into his incredibly hawt back pocket. Backed by an equally talented, equally hawt team with the likes of Jonathan Papelbon, who pitched the ninth to clinch the deal, Marco Scutaro, Adrian Beltre, Dustin Pedroia… well, the list would be as long as the roster. My only bitch? That I can’t get the fucking games here… all we get is hockey hockey hockey, enough hockey to make a person puke daily in their shoes. I hate hockey, so I hope they hurry up and get the crappy Stanley Cup over with so we can watch something with totally hawt guys in red socks.

DATELINE: GULF OF MEXICO – Before I start, lemme check on just what Sarah Palin is saying these days, her ‘Drill Baby Drill’ regardless of the costs. For the cost of something as simple as a remote-controlled shut-off valve – called an Acoustic Switch in the industry -- 5000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil would not be contaminating the Gulf of Mexico every day right now. According to the federal Mineral Management Services, the issue of making the valve mandatory has been discussed before, but the oil companies argued about the cost and effectiveness, and besides, they had a failsafe method for dealing with emergencies. They say there is not enough data to substantiate that the valves would really work, but evidence from both Brazil and Norway show them to be incredibly efficient and necessary, to the point where the MMS publicly stated they consider the acoustic switch to be ‘an essential component of deepwater drilling’. But for some incredibly arrogant reason, the switch still is not necessary in US waters, because why in the hell would ANYONE in the US want to regulate the oil industry? Sarah Palin would kiss their fucking asses every day, give them the world on a platter as she prostrates herself on the altar of the Oil Big Boys. Perhaps she should be down there looking at the fucking damage being done, damage that despite the efforts of clean-up crews will STILL impact the fishing industries along the coast. This stuff all comes with a price, and when dealing with oil companies, that price is substantial to the taxpayers, the consumers and the environment. The cost of the clean-up so far has been estimated at $6,000,000.00 each DAY, and they have a long way to go before they will be able to plug off the three breaches in the underwater oil pipe. Lemme end with some ‘say it ain’t so’ numbers, because I totally love em. In 2006, there were 3858 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. They all have a main shut-off valve on the ocean floor. Many, but not all, have a ‘deadman’ switch that is supposed to shut the valve on the ocean floor in case of catastrophe. Since 2001, according to the federal Mineral Management Service, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions. That’s just in 9 years. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, the deadman switch did not work, remote control submarines are not able to get to the shut off valve in the sea-floor. The cost of this? Replacement cost alone on the rig is $560Million. Add the cost of the cleanup, the cost in human lives, the cost in environmental damage and the damage to industries in the area, and you have to wonder… an Acoustic Switch costs $500,000 – chump change for any oil company.