Chills! Thrills! The terrifying sequel!
But first, I've shortened the title, which used to be "Extremely Annoying People Who Should Just Shut Up." Part of the reason is the fact that a fellow Kossack remarked in effect under the first installment that the First Amendment means we can yap all we want. Which is right--and I also realized that if every Annoying Person who said offensive, ridiculous, or other stupid things actually did "shut up," I wouldn't have any material.
Also, many of the Annoying Things I've been hearing and reading about lately have had to do not with what an individual, group, etc., has SAID, but with something they've DONE without verbally saying anything. Or maybe NOT DONE. So their actions--or inactions--are like giving you the finger. Or maybe things they should be saying or talking about, but haven't been--in which case their silence is annoying. And it doesn't make sense to say "Just Shut Up" when nothing is being said.
So here it is--the horrifying sequel. But first, an Annoying Person Update: Hypocritical "family values" Sen. Larry Craig was over the weekend indicted--I mean inducted--into the Idaho Hall of Fame for 20 years of service. I wonder how the men's rooms are there. Then, yesterday, Craig appealed the judge's decision not to let him withdraw his guilty plea in his bathroom bust--then on NBC Nightly News last night he whined that Mitt Romney
"not only had thrown me under his campaign bus, he backed it over me."
What an idiot--I mean, who can blame Mitt? Craig should have thought about consequences like that BEFORE he started men's room messing. Or before he pled guilty after having been caught dancing the "bathroom boogie."
And I also have an Ignoble Prize Update on the Army Corps of Engineers. Isn't it ironic that the same federal outfit that drowned New Orleans is allowing Atlanta to run dry? Per a story I heard Friday night on the Weather Channel, Georgia has been suffering from a lengthy drought and the lake that supplies Atlanta's water has a 3-month supply of water. The Weather Channel said part of the problem was the drought, part was something that was going wrong that was the responsibility of the ACE. (I didn't catch what it was--drainage, maybe?)
I'll start with the lighter awards--things that are merely silly:
- New York City for throwing the book at a law-breaker. Now you may wonder, exactly what is this miscreant's heinous crime? Mass murder? Serial pedophilia? Plotting a terrorist act? Nope--the scofflaw in question is a 6-year-old girl who had been fined $300 for drawing on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. I mean, I understand that the crime rate in the Big Apple is much lower than it used to be, say, back in the 70's or 80's, but just the same I don't think Gotham has gotten to be such an earthly paradise that her finest can waste their time and resources busting kids who draw on sidewalks. The ironic thing about this case is that it had happened early in the week, then it rained Thursday and the evidence was washed away.
- The Newark, New Jersey school which suspended a student for five days as a security risk. Was he a troubled teen plotting a Columbine-style massacre? No, it's a 7-year-old who drew a pencil sketch of his school on fire. This student has won awards for his artwork in the past.
- Mississippi Congressman Bernie Thompson, Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, for ordering his staffers before a trip to get diptheria, tetanus, and hepatitis A and B shots. Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. Now, to what pestilence-ridden hellhole of the War on Terror do you think they were going? Afghanistan? Somalia? No, the outpost in question is a NASCAR track in North Carolina. Regarding which, I must say, utterly ridiculous. Though, wouldn't it be funny had Thompson gone all out and ordered HazMat suits for his staffers.... A North Carolina congressman whose name I don't recall made the great comeback that maybe NASCAR fans should get their shots before visiting Capitol Hill.
- Crap alert: Rita Cosby, a nominee from the first installment, and other Anna Nicole Smith media whores. They've begun coming out of the woodwork like roaches now that the authorities have raided the homes and offices of ANS' doctors. The person who'd nominated Cosby had said she was being sued about a book she'd written, but didn't know why. I found out, per Fox News Saturday night (Don't laugh, it's homework!) that in Cosby's book "Blonde Ambition" she says there's a gay sex tape of ANS' lawyer Howard K. Stern and her baby's father Larry Birkhead. (What is it with guys named Larry?) And that per ANS' nannies in the Bahamas, ANS regularly viewed the tape which showed--oh, I think I'll quit here because some details too salacious to go into in a family blog were gone into on Fox News. Snarky prediction alert: It will be revealed that while Larry was ANS' babydaddy, Howard was actually the mommy--and that the embryo had been implanted in ANS....
- NBC Nightly News, which Friday Night aired a full report on the pressing domestic issue of Laura Bush's White House gardens. I need not name the substantive news stories that had not been covered because NBC Nightly needed the time to air this mother of all pro-Administration fluff pieces. Then Sunday night they ignored more relevant news to air a 20-year "blast from the past" on Jessica McClure. Which was even crappier than the overhyped story of her rescue back in the day.
Now for the more serious "Extremely Annoying" awards--which are, in the spirit of the Halloween season, scary. CAUTION--some of this material may be Extremely Disturbing to sensitive political junkies.
- The police force of my fair (in the snarky sense) Midwestern city. They mounted on Sept. 28 an organized operation--not to target violent crime or the drug trade, or even the local gangs. Instead, they went after... jaywalkers. Were the details different, this would merely be silly. But 32 tickets, some as high as $100, were written to students at two city high schools. And out of those students, only three were white--the rest were either black or some other minority. So, rightfully, about 50 black leaders and residents demonstrated outside Police Headquarters, asking for fairness and an end to racial profiling. The $100 tickets have been reduced to $75, but that's not good enough. Anyway, if the city's finest don't bend and the black kids end up going to court, I hope that they don't come before...
- All-white juries. I'll preface this by saying they're O.K. as long as ALL parties involved are white (assuming they'll otherwise be fair). However, show me a trial or other court case with an all-white jury, where one of the parties involved happens to be black, the other, white, and I'll show you one where the black person gets the shaft. And this is scary. A good recent example is Friday's verdict in Florida in which an all-white jury acquitted a boot camp where a black child had died after having been kicked and beaten. Then there was the infamous adult trial by an all-white jury of Mychal Bell where he ended up in an adult prison for nine months. And this is not unique to the South--remember the trial of the four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King? The all-white Southern California jury found the officers Not Guilty, despite the beating's having been shown ad nauseaum on TV. Here's a challenge to all legal experts who may be reading this--has there ever been a trial in front of an all-white jury in which a black person WON his/her case against a white?
8. Sen. Joseph "Liar-man" Lieberman. Today Capitol Hill Homeland Security Committees must be batting 1000 because he's the chair of the Senate's. In 2000 when he was Al Gore's running mate, I admired him. He seemed to be an upstanding, mature (not as in old, but as in adult, compared to Boy George) candidate who would not be business-as-usual.
Last year when he was campaigning as an Independent in Connecticut, Liar-man hoodwinked the good people of that lovely state by calling for an investigation, complete with subpoenas, to relevant individuals into the Bush Administration's lackluster response to New Orleans' flooding. He also angrily denounced the Bush Administration's cover-up.
However, right after the new Congress was seated, Liar-man took his seat as Chair of the HSC. He now has the power to issue subpoenas. But it became obvious that he'd undergone a horrifying transformation not unlike those experienced by characters in "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." For in the place of a warm-blooded human being with a conscience had appeared a soul-less, repulsive, evil anti-Louisiana "pod." He decided not to investigate.
Don't count on the mainstream media to even look into or even cover Liar-man's turning on New Orleans. For in the eyes of their corporate bosses Liar-man can do no wrong. And they don't give a damn about New Orleans anyway because she doesn't fit into their view of America's future. So it's up to us bloggers to come up with possible reasons as to why he practically told New Orleans to go to hell.
Liar-man is an obnoxious, filthy political whore ready to prostitute himself to the highest bidder. Obviously there was nothing in it for him to stand behind Louisiana and open an investigation. But there must have been plenty in it for him to support the Bush Administration cover-up. For all we know, some sort of bribery or other favor was offered Liar-man to betray Louisiana. Or maybe the Administration has the goods on him regarding something that would potentially be embarrassing were it to come out. All that's left for Liar-man, Bush's butt-buddy, to do is join the Republican Party.
So I hereby include the Dishonorable Sen. Joseph Lieberman, traitor to Louisiana, on this installment of "Extremely Annoying People."
Now for another nomination from a commenter on my first installment:
- Clarence "Coke Can" Thomas. Not merely annoying--but terrifying. He never would have made it to the Supreme Court in the first place had a committee room full of clueless, senile males who had probably been involved in similarly nefarious frat-boy hi-jinks with their female staffers not dissed Anita Hill and catapulted "Coke Can" to final approval. Now, being young and healthy as he is, he can easily sit on the bench for another 50 years--and, should he much of the time vote in the majority, will influence the course of American life for at least the next 100 years--and that ought to give you the willies. Pleasant dreams!
Speaking of nightmares, here's a monster in more ways than one:
- Rep. Denny "Prince of Darkness" Hastert. He revealed the depths of the darkness of whatever he has in place of a soul right after the levees failed, when New Orleanians were still stranded on rooftops awaiting rescue. He chillingly said New Orleans should not be rebuilt, but revert to swampland.
Had the Prince of Darkness just been some junior congressman no one outside of his district had ever heard of, such a despicable statement might have escaped notice. But, as he was Speaker of the House at the time, the venomous anti-New Orleans vomit that had spewed from his lips quickly assumed a life of its own. It became the mantra of the ignorant and the racist--those who saw in the drowning of New Orleans and dispersal of her people a golden opportunity. They were all too happy to see an ethnically- and socially-cleansed Louisiana free of poor people of color (which was how they envisioned the diaspora, which was actually far more diverse) who tended to vote Democratic.
Back in Congress, the Prince of Darkness' GOP minions prostrated themselves before him and the Bush Administration of which, after all, he was a toady, and did what they could to throw roadblocks in the way of Louisiana's getting the aid she needed for her very survival. And it would not be surprising if the Prince's spew about New Orleans has been, at the very least, paid attention to by the Bushies. Which could help explain why New Orleans has been ignored and allowed to languish instead of being the national priority she should be.
Now for Foleygate. The Prince of Darkness, a "family values" conservative, played a major role in covering the derriere of Rep. Mark Foley, another "family values" conservative and protecting him from the consequences of his dirty e-mails to teenage boys, which I read about on ABC News' website and learned about what guys use hand lotion for. And despite this involvement in Foleygate, the Prince's home district, instead of being smart enough to boot him out on his substantial derriere, voted him back in. He must have been doing a stellar job of bringing home the pork.
Last but not least, the Prince of Darkness has been receiving pay-offs from Turkey. What, you may ask, is the big deal? The pay-offs are to keep the Prince in line on the following: Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians during the World War I era. For decades, Turkey has thwarted all efforts by the Armenians to have the killings by Turkey declared genocide. Back then, the Turks ravaged Armenian lands like a hurricane, forcibly marching Armenians from their homes and destroying their villages. The Armenians had to march without food and water, through hot deserts. Those who did not die from the heat, thirst, or hunger were murdered by the Turks, who raped the women and girls before killing them. So 1.5 million Armenians had been murdered by the Turks. This means the fact that the Prince has been pocketing Turkish cash to further Turkey's interest in not having what they did to the Armenians declared genocide is especially corrupt. It's the same sort of thing it would be were a member of Congress getting money from a Holocaust-denial or white supremacist group to support legislation that would uphold their world view.
In fact, I see an odd and disturbing symmetry between the Prince of Darkness' desire to commit genocide in Louisiana by extinguishing the light of New Orleans and his bought-and-paid-for support of the Turks' claims that they didn't commit genocide against the Armenians. Racists tend to stand by other racists.
Supposedly, the Prince is not planning to run for re-election in 2008. I say supposedly because I wouldn't put it past him to pull a "Bathroom Larry" and decide to run again. Evil-doers don't give up their power so easily. Snarky prediction: He'll be ba-ack! Especially if he thinks the Democrats will win the White House.
Because he's a Republican and a "family values" conservative, I figure other Kossacks will have a plethora of additional reasons why the Prince should be on this list. But the three above are enough for me. So Rep. Denny Hastert--the Prince of Darkness--is on my list of "Extremely Annoying People."
Now for this installment's Extremely Annoying Presidential Candidate:
- Tom (der Fuehrer) Tancredo. I'm not going to go into his Hitlerish stance on undocumented immigrants because, while enough to qualify him for this list alone due to his harping on this single issue's being annoying and sinister, it's too well-covered by the mainstream media and, I assume, has already been extensively diaried.
But there's this: Der Fuehrer seems to view Louisiana the same way Adolph Hitler viewed Poland. Soon after New Orleans had been flooded and Rita compounded Louisiana's anguish about a month later, this disgusting Nazi argued that Louisiana should not be allowed to handle federal money.
Then, early in September, after Katrina's anniversary, der Fuehrer demanded that federal aid to Katrina survivors--who he said were riding a "gravy train" of "runaway" federal aid--be ended.
(I strongly doubt that der Fuehrer would have said anything similar about 9/11 survivors, even though they got a hell of a lot better deal in terms of aid and compensation than the Katrina and Rita survivors can even dream of expecting from a Bush Administration that doesn't give a damn about them.)
Gov. Kathleen Blanco replied,
"Federal investments in the Gulf Coast's recovery have been generous and historic. However, appropriations still have not come close to the magnitude of our damages or to the commitment President Bush pledged in Jackson Square. To characterize our ongoing recovery challenges as 'runaway government spending' is an insult to Americans in need."
She added that Louisiana has contributed nearly $5 billion of her own resources to the recovery effort.
But fortunately der Fuehrer's anti-Louisiana bull seems not to have helped his campaign. (Yes!) Per a Colorado blog called "Tancredo Watch":
"The muted reaction to Tancredo's latest outrageous comments suggest that perhaps the national media is getting wise to what Colorado's press has known for a long time. Tancredo is an inveterate headline-grabber who will say anything, no matter how stupid, insensitive, or inflammatory, to get more column inches."
As if being a Nazi regarding Louisiana weren't enough, der Fuehrer is also one regarding the issue of recognition of the Armenian genocide. (Another example of racists sticking together!) And here the Hitler analogy isn't far off--reason being Hitler once said, when plotting the mass murder of the Jewish people,
"After all, who remembers the Armenians?"
Reason being, last Wednesday he was one of the congressmen who voted against this resolution in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Fortunately it passed in spite of him--but it would not be surprising if it comes out that his campaign has been getting money from Turkish lobbyists.
Snarky prediction alert: Tancredo will be undone by a scandal--but this one won't be ordinary. This anti-undocumented immigrant, "family values" conservative presidential candidate and congressman will get caught with his pants down in an illicit affair with a male Turkish lobbyist who's been contributing heavily to his campaign. But the best thing about this scandal is that it comes out that our Turkish lobbyist doesn't have the required documents. So--Bingo!--he's what Tancredo would call an "illegal alien!
So I hereby include Tom Tancredo on this list as an Extremely Annoying Presidential Candidate.
This, then, is List #2 of Extremely Annoying People. Feel free to nominate anybody but the following Usual Suspects, any of which could provide enough material for a List consisting of one:
President Bush
Rush Limbaugh
Ann Coulter
Britney Spears
Paris Hilton
Lindsey Lohan
Preferably Annoying People who are also scary--there's enough time for at least one more of these lists before Halloween!