Wednesday Outrage: Business Edition
18th October 2007
by gordo
For quite some time now, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been using lawsuits to keep people from downloading music without paying for it. They’ve sued file sharing sites, music pirates, and even teenagers for ridiculous sums. Their new target: Usenet.com, which does nothing more than redistribute the usenet feed to its subscribers (more about usenet here). This makes about as much sense as suing grade schools because the some of their students exchange music during recess.
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This week, there’s been yet another gigantic recall of unsafe meat.
Has anyone noticed that these recalls have become a lot more frequent since the Bush administration began cracking down on undocumented workers in the meat packing plants? Maybe this is what happens when you hire a bunch of filthy Americans.
In a sane country, the recent spate of food poisonings would lead to calls for greater regulation of the food industry. But this is the United States, so instead we’re cutting back on a health care program for poor children and examining our politicians’ lapels to ensure that they’re sporting little American flags.
Obamamania
Eugene Volokh became the latest commentator who failed to find legitimate grounds on which to attack the only African-American presidential candidate, and so clutched at the “no American flag lapel pin” straw:
Wearing a flag pin is not supposed to be an explanation or an argument, just as “I love you” is not supposed to be an explanation or an argument. It’s supposed to be a traditional statement of affection, powerful because it’s cliché… yet if you used to say this and then you stopped, the symbolic message is pretty powerful.
My younger readers won’t believe this, but I can remember a time when you could take Eugene Volokh seriously. At any rate, here’s Roy Edroso’s response:
Wearing a flag pin isn’t like telling your spouse that you love him or her. Unless you are a U.S. servicemember, or Captain America, or attending a naturalization ceremony, wearing a flag pin means you are a dick… Seldom have I seen an otherwise normally-dressed guy wearing a flag pin and thought, oh, isn’t that sweet, he’s telling America that he loves her! No, long experience has taught me that the pin-wearer wants something from me: either my vote, or an unearned advantage for whatever song-and-dance or sales pitch he’s about to spool out. Or he wants the other Republicans in the room to spot him, so they can huddle privately and exchange stories about how they dicked someone over. Or he wants to pass for a dick so the other dicks won’t gang up on him. Which makes him a dick.
Eugene Volokh, an America-hating no-lapel-pin-wearing philistine who thinks that cliches are powerful because they’re cliches, and who doesn’t tell his wife that he loves her. But at least he’s not a dick.
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Making a fool out of yourself with a ridiculous attack on Obama has become the new Republican sport. Here’s Rudy Giuliani getting in on the fun:
“I say this most respectfully, you’re not Ronald Reagan,” Giuliani said, adding the Reagan called the Soviets the “evil empire” and pointed intermediate range missiles at them before calling for negotiations. “He made sure this country was negotiating from strength.”
Here’s Obama spokesman Bill Burton’s reply:
While Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton do not think we should engage in the type of strong diplomacy practiced by Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, Obama does. And given the hefty fee that Hugo Chavez’s oil company paid Rudy Giuliani’s firm, he apparently thinks we shouldn’t talk to Chavez, but it’s fine to take his money.
Seriously, it’s one thing to criticize a candidate’s voting record or his policy positions. But to criticize him for saying he would negotiate with other heads of state, or for not wearing jewelry? That’s just outrageous.
Outrageous Republicans
Mitch McConnell
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Marlboro Country) led the campaign to smear 12 year-old accident victim Graeme Frost. Then he lied and said he’d had “no involvement whatsoever”. (VIDEO)
Keith Olbermann interviewed Graeme Frost’s parents and showed photos of the boy and his sister after the accident that nearly killed them (video). That prompted fringe lunatic Michelle Malkin to become completely unglued:
The Frost parents finally made a wise choice and decided not to put their son on Olbermann. Instead, they appeared to field Olbermann’s softball questions about the “lunatic fringe.” Olbermann prodded the family to supply pictures of their children in the hospital recovering from their terrible accident. The photos were displayed as Olbermann and the couple complained about the Right’s “distraction” techniques.
It really doesn’t get much lower or much cheaper or much sadder than this.
Actually, Michelle, it gets a LOT cheaper and sadder than this. For example, a very cheap and very sad woman was recently observed stalking the Graeme family in an attempt to dig up some dirt on them.
(via Feministe)
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The Bush administration fired eight US Attorneys for either prosecuting Republicans or for failing to prosecute Democrats. (background here). One thing they didn’t fire any US Attorneys for was flagrant racism.
WTF?
The Office Collar (click to inflate)
Do you want to look less ‘ethnic’? Maybe a bit MORE ‘ethnic’? Why not get a ‘race lift’ at the Institute of Ethnological and Racial Modification?
Outrageous Anti-Feminist Women
Crazy anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, claiming that laws against homosexual marriage, bigamy, prostitution, and statutory rape discriminate against women.
A prostitute in Pennsylvania was gang raped at gunpoint, but judge Teresa Carr Deni ruled that the defendants could only be charged with theft of services. She explained that cases like this “minimize true rape cases and demean women who are really raped.”
So if it wasn’t really rape, judge, what the hell was the gun for?
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Anti-feminist Jill Stanek says that Halle Berry is a poor role model for choosing to bear and raise a child without being married. It seems to me that there are a lot worse behaviors she could model, like staying in an abusive marriage, or marrying a man that she doesn’t love just because she’s pregnant.
(via Trailer Park Feminist)
A Day in the Life…
…in South Carolina:
A teacher’s aide in Indiana is in hot water and has resigned after trying to staple a note to a fourth grader’s forehead. School principal Bob Remenih says, “She had a Post-It not on her shirt and then she put it on her forehead. And she was asked to take it off. I’m not quite … and then when she didn’t, I think there was some sarcasm of ‘Do you want me to put it there permanently?’”
…in Pennsylvania:
How much ransom money would you pay to get your cell phone back from a robber? Perhaps $50 or $100 — maybe more if the phone were equipped with all the latest features. But not a whopping $185,000.
That was the initial amount an alleged purse snatcher told his victim he wanted in return for her cell phone, Lancaster police said. After a few minutes of negotiating with the victim, the robber lowered his ransom figure dramatically — down to $200. But the victim, a 29-year-old Philadelphia woman, got her phone back — and her stolen purse — without paying a single cent.
That’s because Lancaster police listened to the negotiations and met the alleged robber at a rendezvous point with drawn guns.
…in West Virginia:
He told police he just wanted to take the grandchildren out for a spin and treat them to some food at an area drive-in restaurant. But a police officer warned the man that hauling four unrestrained children, all around age 4, on a busy street in a 15-foot motorboat pulled by a lawnmower isn’t a good idea.
…in Florida:
A robbery suspect who stumbled into a swarm of police officers while leaving a bank with a bag of loot dashed back inside the bank and berated tellers for tripping the alarm.
”You ruined my life!” he said in Spanish. “I told you not to call police.”
Then he gave himself up to the Miami Springs officers who had surrounded the bank.