Bloodstar

Whatever you want to call this, this is pretty screwed up

Imagine you come home from work one day to a notice on your front door that you have 45 days to demolish your house, or the city will do it for you. Oh, and you’re paying for it.

This is happening right now in Montgomery, Ala., and here is how it works: The city decides it doesn’t like your property for one reason or another, so it declares it a “public nuisance.” It mails you a notice that you have 45 days to demolish your property, at your expense, or the city will do it for you (and, of course, bill you).

Of course the whole idea is to get around the laws passed to prevent eminent domain in Alabama, so now the Government declares a property to be a nuisance or a blight and then takes control of the property. Of course, unlike eminent domain, the government doesn’t have to pay you, and in fact can bill you for the cost of leveling your property. Then they can sell it to the businesses that want to build on the property. It’s a creative use of the laws, it’s totally evil also.

We’ll see how long it lasts, after all, it’s primarily being used against really poor black people. So chances are most people aren’t even going to care.

Tags: Evil, Law, bloodstar by bloodstar
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I mean, if you’re going to vilify the person who has tried his best to work to demonstrate a willingness for to talk, to work as a true moderate of his faith, then the reality is, aren’t listening to what he’s saying:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic
faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai
Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am
a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to
love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I
have always been one Mr. Pearl.

And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of
the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.
It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values

In fact, I suspect that quite a few of the people who want to have an enemy, who doesn’t want Islam to moderate, who want to radicalize Christianity and make it a hateful, narrow, bigoted belief system. They’re not looking to do anything more than demonstrate their superiority by destroying anything like like them. They’re evil.

Tags: Evil, Religion, bloodstar by bloodstar
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It’s insanity like this

State agencies are investigating whether any of their employees leaked Social Security numbers and other personal information after a list of 1,300 people who an anonymous group claims are illegal immigrants was circulated around Utah.

The anonymous group mailed the list to several media outlets, law enforcement agencies and others this week, frightening the state’s Hispanic community. A letter accompanying the list demanded that those on it be deported immediately.

The list also contains highly detailed personal information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, workplaces, addresses and phone numbers. Names of children are included, along with due dates of pregnant women on the list.

One of the most disheartening things about this is seeing the comment thread on the yahoo article. I’m beginning to lose faith that the majority of Americans are good people. People are too easily swayed by fear and xenophobia, and a bad economy will cause people to overlook the xenophobia and racism that has poisoned the Republican party.

I’d call this a stunt, and dismiss it, but when you read studies that show that too many people are willing to ignore accurate information if it doesn’t fit their worldview, you realize that it doesn’t matter if something is a stunt, it helps solidify the worldview, and in this case the worldview is that there are too many nasty dirty illegals downloading babies and stealing from America. Just because the facts on the ground don’t support this worldview does not matter, because facts no longer matter and America is a weaker country because of the continued use of fear which weakens reason and the resolve in America to do the right and reasonable things instead of reacting like scared children.

Where’s the America I love?

Tags: Criminal, Evil, Immigration, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Sometimes things just seem to go backwards

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed a number of new bills into law regarding abortion regulation, including mandating ultrasounds before the procedure, denying doctors who perform abortions malpractice insurance, and banning public insurance coverage.

To add insult to injury, there is no exception for rape or incest. and all ultrasounds require using the probe internally, as in into the woman’s vagina in order to make the ultra sound more accurate.

The added fun of denying malpractice insurance is simply designed to find more ways to cease all abortions in the state. So no one can afford abortions, well, except the people who are rich.

For the SoCons, women really are nothing more than chattel.

Tags: Evil, Health, Law, Political, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Maybe this is part of the reason:

“We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy. We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such. We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases,” – the platform of the Republican Party of Texas

Why I’m surprised they even bothered to use such a nice term as Homosexuality. The spread of dangerous communicable diseases? What the hell? I mean, I know almost all the Republican Party platforms support creationism and the criminalization of Abortion. But usually they don’t dog-whistle quite that loudly.

(HT: Sullivan)

Tags: Evil, Political, Republican Death Spiral, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Frankly, I could care less if the economy takes a hit from it, but BP as a corporation needs to go away. Their very existence eradicated from memory. your negligence and desire to maximize profit by recklessly disregarding all reasonable precautions and ignoring the most basic warnings that something was wrong, has done incalculable damage. Now you attempt to manage the images because you don’t want people to over react? Maybe, just maybe, just this once, over reaction is impossible.

But the burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle researchers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum before they are burned alive.

Much of the wildlife here seems doomed in any case. “We’ve seen the oil covering the turtles so thick they could barely move, could hardly lift their heads,” Witherington said. “I won’t pretend to know which is the nastiest.”

Tags: Criminal, Disaster, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Seriously, how are these goons still operating?

BP processes about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, across six refineries in the United States. In total, 150 refineries in the United States process just under 18 million barrels per day, so BP processes about 8.5 percent of it. However, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity, 97 percent of the most dangerous violations found by OSHA were on BP properties.

And no one noticed or cared enough to say something, or is this a case of, ‘it’s all good unless there’s an environmental catastrophe, then maybe we’ll do something.’

If there isn’t serious repercussions from this, then why are we even bothering?

Tags: Criminal, Disaster, bloodstar by bloodstar
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I’m sure someone well tell us this is all Obama’s fault. But in the meantime, the disaster just rolls along:

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

Tags: Criminal, Disaster, Environment, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Don’t use your dead daughter and sister to raise money for yourself. Dear god this is disgusting. What happened to Terry Schiavo was awful, and there wasn’t an easy answer or solution, but this makes me wonder about the real motives of her parents and family

In most recent IRS report that the Foundation filed for 2008, it shows the foundation took in $91,568 and paid Terri’s dad Robert Schindler Sr., her brother Robert Jr. and her sister Suzanne Vitadamo $59,275, or 64% of the money they raised.

Charity Navigator a respected Charity Rating organization says any charity spending more than 30 percent on salaries gets a zero rating. The foundation doesn’t come close.

In the meantime, since the report was filed, the salaries have increased to $80,000 a year, but the Foundation says one salary is in arrears causing some family members to work without pay. Also since the IRS report was filed and Terri Schiavo’s father died.

Where the hell?

Tags: Evil, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Because this isn’t the America I’d want to belong to. I mean, really, not even a cell phone call to 911? What the Fuck is wrong with you people?

Tags: Criminal, bloodstar by bloodstar
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A former White Collar criminal chimes in on the Goldman Sachs case and explains how the SEC’s ‘Kiss of Death’ on friday induced Goldman Sachs to compound their errors and open themselves up to more charges.

Really really interesting reading.

Tags: Criminal, Financial, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Well, it now looks like that Pennsylvania lawsuit against school districts secretly looking in on and recording students conversations could end up being blown wide open.

More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins’ school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district.

Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into “a little LMSD soap opera,” a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.

“I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

I wonder how long before some court rules that people under 18 don’t have the right to privacy in their own homes.

Tags: Criminal, bloodstar by bloodstar
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After all, people will deny that innocent people were rounded up and held for years down in Guantanamo Bay. But when it’s obvious that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush all knew that there were innocents, but felt that holding hundreds of innocent people was worth it, if it meant that a few hard core terrorists were held.

Obama continues his approval of the previous administration’s policies, by obfuscating and wanting to put it behind us. And in the end most peopl don’t care, because the people being screwed over aren’t enough like us.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Freedom for me, not for thee.

Tags: Criminal, Evil, Political, Teh 'war' on (of) Terror (ism), bloodstar by bloodstar
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The headaches for the Republicans with Ensign just won’t stop:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury looking into the aftermath of Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair with a former staffer, adding a new political problem for GOP leaders in their response to the dual criminal and ethics probes of the Nevada Republican.

Why Ensign hasn’t resigned yet is beyond me. Is he really that optimistic that people will forgive and/or forget? Other days I’d say yes, but right now? I wouldn’t be holding my breath if I were him. I can’t even really get mad at the Republican’s for most of this mess. At the same time, they’re not exactly trying that hard to dump him either. which kinda kills their credibility on ethics (of course neither party has any real credibility on ethics).

Tags: Criminal, Political, bloodstar by bloodstar
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I would like to ask McCain and Lieberman to respectfully stop being scared little fuckers who want to tear more holes in the constitution in their evident fear that a few big scary evil terrorists are some how so dangerous that we need to rip up the constitution so they can sleep better at night:

A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity.

McCain and Lieberman you don’t deserve respect for being such scared little children. So please, retire and quit trying to solve everything with a horrible bill designed to play on the fear of people. There is no way this can pass constitutional muster, but since people won’t be able to bring a suit, (as they’ll be held outside the legal system), nothing will be around to challenge the law.

I dunno, maybe someone can challenge on their behalf, but that’s going to be difficult to gain standing, particularly if the person isn’t permitted contact with the rest of the world.

Indefinite detention without trial for US citizens is a awful horrible nasty idea no matter what they may be accused of doing. So, Yeah, McCain and Lieberman, for proposing this bill, please just fuck off.

Tags: Criminal, Evil, Political, bloodstar by bloodstar
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