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e for those who refuse to let them in the justices refused without comment to intervene in the case from san diego county where investigators from the district attorney s office show up unannounced at applicants homes and conduct searches that include peeking into closets and cabinets the visits do not require any suspicion of fraud and are intended to confirm that people are eligible for government aid failure to submit to the searches which can last an hour disqualifies applicants from assistance the fourth amendment should supersede any desire to make sure that every damn nano penny of government assistance is spent in exactly the correct morally upright way if the da suspects a crime even welfare fraud then the da should go get a warrant just like for any other crime there was some buzz recently i m too lazy to link it so too bad about why conservatives favor private charity over government assistance one possible reason that was put forth is that they want to be able to control not only what their beneficiaries use the assistance for but also what they do or don t do in the other parts of their lives as well so you get the soup kitchens that require hungry people to sit through a church service before they get to eat for example having done that type of thing and i m profoundly regretful for it it now seems to me that if you can t get people to stick around after they ve eaten you re doing it wrong there s nothing wrong with governmental or private assistance requiring certain qualifications and even some behavior standards but enforcing the regulations associated with welfare assistance needs to happen within the established laws of the usa it is a sign of profound societal decay that a lousy couple hundred bucks a month justifies a violation of our constitutional rights i don t regret trying to help the meals served the time spent in conversation the nights spent out on the streets in ocean beach i regret following the pattern of making hungry men and women act like they wanted to have a church service before they could eat a hot meal and i freely admit that very few people would have bothered to stick around to listen to me preach after the meal at least after hearing me once or twice no college sophomore is a good preacher permalink 10 40 am stephen the real silly season liberty counsel s naughty or nice list of businesses is absurd on so many levels it s hard to get through them all the naughty nice concept is of course part of the secular santa myth and presumably liberty counsel would hope to keep the focus of christmas on christ and not a contextually flexible secular icon of spending on credit the list itself was last updated a year ago i do hope they not only update the business listing but the reasons for including particular businesses on either list a sampling cabela s web site has a christmas shoppe and one customer reported a sales associated greeted him with merry christmas dollar tree customer reports store is avoiding the c word everything is holiday although it s pretty obvious which holiday they will not discuss i don t think it s at all clear what holiday they won t discuss they re not discussing bodhi day dec 8 eid al adha dec 20 yule litha in the southern hemisphere dec 22 or zarathosht diso dec 26 there s all sorts of religious holidays that never get discussed never completely take over the airwaves never become the focus of countless news stories and never morph into the only hope that our nation s economy has to look like it s growing some holidays are incredibly important in other parts of the world lunar new year is pretty big in asia i spent one in singapore and our group had to physically hold on to each other in order to not get separated in the crush of people buddha s birthday is another significant holiday but for some reason it s never mentioned over here it s not like americans aren t able to appropriate holidays when it suits them cinco de mayo and st patrick s day are good examples though i suppose that americans have so missed the point on both those days that asian cultures should be happy to be ignored people like those at liberty counsel who insist upon fighting a war against christmas are wrong wrong about their ability to celebrate any holiday they see fit wrong about how much christmas is pushed on everyone in this country all the time starting 2 weeks before halloween wrong about the idea that belligerence and jingoism are appropriate for celebrating any religion s holiday the current american christian way of celebrating christmas has nothing to do with ancient church tradition it s completely backwards actually traditionally advent the month before christmas day has been a time of solemn reflection and penitence not 30 days of parties eating to the point of nausea lying about our families accomplishments for the year sending cards to people we can t really remember and racking up even more consumer debt after 12 months of spending too much i have some friends who celebrate christmas the ancient way i think it s weird and my family won t do it it s not like having a month of joyous anticipation and celebration which culminates on christmas day is wrong what is wrong however is spending 365 days a year in a righteous little snit over the utter gall of some people to not only refuse to address one s every whim but their failure to anticipate what whim currently occupies one s attention this afternoon when god sent his only son to the world he considered it good enough for his son to be born a bastard reeking of donkey piss and ox shit somehow it was just fine for the messiah the king of kings the alpha omega and big man on our campus to show himself first to some men whose primary notoriety up to that point was the persistent rumor that they diddled with the sheep under their care good enough for our heavenly father i guess but not good enough for us we expect extra discounts on our useless consumer crap obsequious clerks who bow and scrape for our pleasure inane songs about reindeer and chestnuts on our radios and garish lights everywhere we look behold how we honor the birth of jesus and despair permalink friday november 23 2007 11 54 am stephen not much how about you so i m in new mexico for the holiday it s been surprisingly cloudy and yesterday it even snowed a bit it s just a warmup for tomorrow when we start to head back to kansas city last year was so bad we headed due east into texas and went through wichita falls to get to oklahoma city normally we head northeast to amarillo and the panhandle so we ll see what tomorrow brings word around here is that udall will win domenici s senate seat against pearce though he and wilson will bloody each other up quite a bit in the primary and no one is taking marty chavez very seriously i m with kos on this i hope he trashes udall to heaven hell and back loses in a landslide and never gets to run for elected office again i m sick of bad democrats oh yeah i m in plateau espresso again and it s still the best coffee shop in the world bar none i just wish i could pick the whole place up and take it back to kansas city with me i ll get back to regular posting after a while and there s some fun stuff happening in the background right now that i ll be able to write about further soon permalink friday november 16 2007 12 50 pm stephen working the refs if a presidential campaign especially that of a democrat and oh god yes if it s that woman democrat plants a question in an audience then it s news but if a news organization such as cnn decided to plant a question at a presidential campaign debate that s apparently just business as usual this is just another example of the utterly exquisite ways in which the gop has been working the system to their advantage think of it like this i was a resident director at a small christian college in the kc area we had some really good sports teams and since athletes actually lived in the dorms and took an active role in campus life one of the basketball team captains was an ra for me they were quite popular we had a small gymnasium at that time with the space between the basketball court boundaries and the bottom bleachers being very narrow just a couple of feet it was a terrible place for other teams to play a hard place to be a referee though our students did keep it clean they were just loud i had one kid in my dorms who was really good at working both the refs and the other team he realized that everyone expects yelling and screaming lots of noise ah would yell and scream of course since that is a big part of the fun of a basketball game but when he really wanted to work people over he would get quiet he would stand at the sidelines next to a player trying to inbound the ball or next to the ref and just keep up a low volume but very steady stream of patter commentary on what the other team was doing in terms of fouls faking out the other player as to who was open stuff like that i started watching him do this and it was amazing he really did get into the refs and other players heads i watched the refs get distracted and miss calls i saw the other players get confused and irritated ah was more than anyone else our 6th player the shrieking about a liberal media is only one aspect of the gop s plan to work the refs and the other side as this strategy has aged it s become less and less important the rank and file still believe it and will engage in loud obnoxious yelling and screaming about it but in dc they ve been working on other ways to work the refs when you were a ref at one of our basketball games and you got anywhere near ah you got a constant barrage about the other team he didn t really go after the ref not when he got quiet his whole strategy was to get the ref on our side to make him laugh to turn him into a friend and to point out constantly every little thing that the other team was doing since the other team didn t have anyone doing that it was pretty effective that of course is where we are in the media s political coverage they ve been under constant pressure from millions of people to stop showing a liberal bias while powerful politicians and wealthy business people have been very busy making friends being pleasant at all the right events and in all the right ways they ve flattered and flirted and made them laugh all the while keeping up a very quiet yet steady and reasonable sounding patter about the democrats about every little thing those democrats have done the gop has included the media in their inner circles they ve invited them to not only witness decisions and events but to participate in making those decisions and events happen and because of all this the pundits identify personally with the people of the gop even if they don t support any of their politics that s how we get utter nonsense like this from andrew sullivan i have always found it very hard to actually hate george w bush he maddens me his policies have shaken my political allegiances and identity to the core but i ve always found him pretty congenial as a person from a distance i m glad i ve never met him because i d probably be totally suckered even on some of the deepest betrayals spending and torture i think his main crime has been criminal negligence and shallowness not evil but i do despise what he has done to this country the wreckage in iraq and the dishonor of the torture interrogation policies i despise what he has done to conservatism and the economic and environmental debt he will pass to the next generation but i really honestly don t hate him personally certainly not in the same league as my visceral dislike for the clintons the gop spent years working on media figures for exactly this result report after report has come from people who know bush personally that he s arrogant crude he likes fart jokes proud of his ignorance and in possession of a truly terrifying temper he s condescending especially to women and generally acts unprofessionally all the time by contrast george h w bush would apparently have the company of bill clinton than his own son and senators from both parties have expressed admiration and affection for hillary clinton as a fellow senator cinton didn t set aside the constitution didn t ignore our laws and our rights didn t lie to the entire world in order to start a vanity war he was impeached for lying about a sexual escapade during a grand jury investigation here s a question without googling for it do you remember what that grand jury investigation was even about did clinton lie about anything else especially anything that had to do with the ostensible purpose of the investigation of course everyone especially that execrable ken starr knew that there wasn t anything to investigate that s why he veered so far off course why he spent over 50 million and never managed to do anything of value clinton regularly reached across to the gop to pass legislation even to the point that progressives now feel like we got a bad deal certainly he didn t just issue edict after edict from the white house and expect them to be obeyed nor did he ignore the gop completely and use white house influence with the press to keep gop politicians and officials off the air all of these things bush has done and more but he s the genial one he s the scion of one of our nation s wealthiest most powerful families he s the one that grew up with friends that have titles like prince and king in front of their names he s the legacy admission to yale and somehow he s also the regular guy bill clinton earned every damned thing he s ever gotten he came from the little town and grew up poor he stood up to his abusive stepfather he s the one who had to accomplish things by being the best and the smartest and the hardest worker bill clinton personifies the american dream which of course is another reason for those privileged cocooned elitist snobs in the national media to sneer at him and despise him all of this to say that i don t believe there is a conservative bias in the media i do however believe that there is a gop bias a clear practice of favoritism of double standards of ignoring the very real corruption and lawbreaking that s currently happening in every level of the republican party while focusing on stupid things like wondering if hillary clinton prefers pearls or diamonds or if barack obama wears an acceptably jingoistic lapel pin the refs have been played to a degree i wouldn t think possible if i couldn t see it with my own eyes it helps to have shallow unintelligent clowns like russert matthews and broder as your refs of course but they couldn t have come all this way on their own they lack the imagination for it we need to fight back of course work the refs harder than the other side but the goal needs to be fairness not to merely twist the system so it favors our players and the continued development of commentary and news sites from tpm to dailykos will help as the stranglehold those few...