Archive for June 27, 2011
Bachmann Confuses John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy
OMG. The campaign for president on the GOP side is going to be a laugh a minute:
Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo’s own John Wayne.
The only problem, as one eagle-eyed reader notes: Waterloo’s John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.
Mrs. Bachmann grew up in Waterloo, and used the town as the backdrop for her campaign announcement, where she told Fox News: “Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”
John Wayne, the movie legend, is in fact from Iowa and the John Wayne birthplace is a celebrated landmark — only it’s in Winterset, which is a nearly three hour drive away from Waterloo.
Gacy, though, had his first taste of the criminal life in Waterloo, where he lived for a short time, and where he had his first criminal conviction for an attempted homosexual assault, which landed him in prison for 18 months.
Here’s video:
(Video via BachmannLovesGacy. Heehee.)
The GOP mantra must be something like “close enough.”
Imagine Being Tortured Every Day for Nine Years
Today marks the 31st anniversary of the massacre at Syria’s infamous Tadmor Prison. In 1980, hundreds of political prisoners were killed there after a failed assassination attempt on then-president Hafez al-Assad. Following the massacre, the prison was used as a tool of fear to quell opposition to the regime. And many of its prisoners were university students.
Tadmor is closed now, but the prison’s dark legacy lives on in the memories of those who survived the brutal torture there.
One of these survivors is Chicagoan Bara Sarraj. In 1984, Bara was a college student in Damascus when he was arrested and taken to Tadmor, where he was tortured almost daily for the next nine years. Now a transplant immunologist at Northwestern University’s School of Medicine, Bara recently sat down and wrote about his time in the prison. He’s posted his memoir online in Arabic, and has graciously shared his story with us.
Listen to Dr. Sarraj’s story here.
Bernie Sanders Speaks for the People
I’m watching Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I) kick President Obama’s ass on CSpan2 right now. He is telling the President to listen to the American people: raise taxes on those making over $250,000, tax corporations and don’t cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Listen to the wishes of the people, not those of Wall Street and the rich.
If CSpan airs a rerun, I highly recommend it. You don’t often see a Senator standing up for ahem, we the 350,000,000 people in this country. They seen to have forgotten about us.
Markos Predicts Bachmann Will Be the GOP Nominee
Markos Moulitsas (the founder of the DailyKos) predicts that Michele Bachmann will be the GOP nominee.
A snipet:
Michele Bachmann will be the GOP nominee.
Yeah, yeah—this could be wishful thinking. Bachmann would gift Obama a second term and would lead to another Democratic wave election in the House. And yeah, this assumes that Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin don’t get into the race. But this is the age of Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck. Republican primary voters don’t give a damn about electability, but about casting a vote for the purest candidate.
Currently, there are three real candidates in the race—Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich is history, Rick Santorum is yesterday’s news, Ron Paul is a niche product, John Hunstman has six supporters, and Herman Cain exists only to allow Republicans to say, “Some of my best friends are black!”
Of the three credible candidates, Bachmann easily wins the purity test. Romney has been on the other side of pretty much every issue of current importance to Republicans, while Pawlenty supported the individual mandate. They’re toast.
But it’s not just policy substance. The early GOP nomination calendar clearly favors Bachmann.
The other thing about Bachmann is that she lies with a straight face and she sounds credible while doing so. Insofar as the “liberal media” doesn’t correct or call attention to lies, she could attract a real following of very pissed off people, of whom there are millions.
Then there’s Rick Perry. We’ll have to see how he fits into all of this.
Read the whole article here.
Half the Bay Area’s Trash Comes From Fast Food
Apropos of the post below, wow, check out this factoid:
(Image via.)
Litter from fast-food chains is spreading far and wide. When a team from the environmental nonprofit Clean Water Action surveyed litter in four cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, it found that trash from four restaurants (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and Starbucks) and one convenience store (7-11) made up more than half of the litter it collected.
So, fast food is bad for us in more ways than one. And natch, insofar as our governmental entities move at lightening speed, I’m sure they’ll get right on this.
Package-Free Grocery Shopping
The first zero waste, package-free grocery store in the United States — in.gredients — is slated to open in Austin, Texas later this year. You have to bring your own containers.
It’ll be interesting to see how it does.
Here’s a promo spot about it:
Hey, I’m all for it. I recently started taking used plastic bags; you know, the kind you put fruits and veggies in, to the store with me so I don’t need a new one every time I buy one of those items.
As the Incidence of Diabetes Increases Worldwide, Walmart and Kmart Jack Up Cost of Diabetes Drugs
Ah yes, capitalism is a wonderful thing:
There’s this:
Diabetes Rate ‘Doubles’ – Imperial College and Harvard Research Suggests
The number of adults with diabetes in the world has more than doubled since 1980, a study in the Lancet says.
And there’s this:
Wal-Mart Hikes Branded Diabetes Drug Prices — Study
Big-box retailers Wal-Mart Stores and Kmart, pioneers in the push to cut consumer prices for generic drugs, have been raising prices for the most popular brand-name diabetes drugs, according to a new study.
[...]
The study also showed that Wal-Mart has raised prices for the 10 most-prescribed diabetes treatments by 32 percent between 2008 and 2010, compared with an average industry-wide increase of 21 percent, which includes chain drugstores, mail-order firms and independent pharmacies.
Kmart, a unit of Sears Holding Corp, raised its prices by 35 percent over the same two-year period, according to the study.
