Abusing Human Rights

Yesterday the United States State Department released its annual report on the state of human rights around the world.

China was chastised for repressing freedom of speech, religion and the press, along with prison torture and forced confessions. Cuba was criticized for prisoner abuse, life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary arrests and denial of fair trials. Russia was cited for, among a few other things, problematic elections. (See Texas Caucus Debacle)

Was it not Jesus who is reported to have said "let you among me who is without sin cast the first stone."? Did Jesus also not say something like, "don't worry about the sand in your neighbor's eye, worry about the sand in your own eye."?

I don't bring up Jesus and his supposed words due to me being some sort of proselytizer living in the buckle of the bible belt. Rather I bring up the supposed words of Jesus because many in the United States like to think of this nation as being a Christian nation. A Christian nation which somehow tends to sort of ignore basic Christian values. As practiced by the original Christian. That being Jesus.

And so how do we Americans have the gall to go about pointing out other nation's human rights violations? Are we without sin? Have we not as a nation cast the first stone a time or two?

America has more people in jail than any other nation on earth. America has a higher percentage of its people behind bars than any other nation on earth. We execute people. Who are sometimes later proved to be innocent.

In America you can get handcuffed, strip searched and thrown in jail due to a 6 year old $20 bounced check that you had no knowledge of. I really can't imagine Jesus handcuffing and strip searching someone over a 6 year old bounced $20 check. The same thing can happen to you for annoying a prosecutor by calling him an idiotic baboon. Currently, here in Texas, there are thousands of arrest warrants out for citizens who have committed no crime, but instead got in to the system for the most innocent of reasons. Innocent reasons, I say, not crimes. I wrote about this in a posting I called The Soviet State of Texas. It shocked me that such things could occur here in America, where we are the supposed champions of human rights world wide.

Did the State Department cite the United States for violating the human rights of young Americans who were sent to invade a sovereign nation for bogus reasons, where no weapons of mass destruction have been found and where, yesterday, the U.S. admitted there was no tie to Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda?

Was the United States cited by the State Department for the human rights abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad?

Did the State Department cite the United States for the practice of waterboarding?

How about for holding prisoners without charge at a base on an island the State Department did cite as a human rights abuser, the base being Guantanamo Bay and the island being Cuba?

Okay, one thing I'll admit, if I were in China, Cuba or Russia I would be afraid to mouth off about my government's hypocrisy like I'm doing here. That is a good thing. But a better thing would be if my government did not give me so much material with which to point out the absurd hypocrisy of the United State's overbearing and self-righteous chastising of other nations for their supposed human rights abuses.

Let's get ourselves a totally clean American record and then start preaching to the rest of the world. Until then the United States should shut up.

In my humble opinion.

The Village Idiot & the Texas Caucus

How totally disrespectful to call our Dear Leader a Village Idiot. Whoever made this sign should be thoroughly ashamed.

Then again there was that exchange between our Dear Leader and CBS newsman, Peter Maer, at a recent news conference in which Maer asked The One Who Does Not Read Newspapers, "What is your advice to the average American who is hurting right now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline."

Our Dear Leader interrupted at that point and asked, "What did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?"

Maer patiently explained that it was not he making the prediction, rather it was "A number of analysts predicting $4 a gallon gasoline."

Our Dear Leader was shocked and stunned at this late breaking revelation, saying, "Oh, yeah? That's interesting, I hadn't heard that."

And in even more shocking revelations a study was released by the U.S. Government yesterday which concluded that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Al Queda. I hope someone informs our Dear Leader before he puts his foot in his mouth again on that one. I can't remember the last time he has mentioned Weapons of Mass Destruction or declared one of his Missions Accomplished. Are the levees fixed in New Orleans yet?

On a totally unrelated note. I just returned from the library. Loyal readers will remember the library is where I voted a week ago today and returned that night to experience the Texas Caucus Chaos that still has not been sorted out.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a piece on Saturday's called CHEERS AND JEERS. On Saturday there was a CHEER that had the ladies in the library today all atwitter.

The CHEER said---"Cheers: To the staff of the East Regional Library for graciously putting up with 500 of us Democrats caucusing at the library until midnight Tuesday."

I learned about the Cheer when I asked if they knew how the caucus went. I told them I'd tried to participate but bailed when I saw that it seemed to be spinning out of control. I told the librarian there were more than 500 people there, when I bailed, and more were arriving. She told me that the Cheer was also wrong about the time, that the caucus actually lasted til past 1am Wednesday morning! That is way past my bedtime. I don't think I've stayed up that late in this century. I don't know if I've stayed up past midnight since Christmas of 1994 at Disneyland. That was exhausting. But at least there were fun rides.

I mentioned I had called 911 when I saw things were spiralling out of control. The librarian told me police arrived and started ticketing people who had blocked others in. I told her it was the election workers who told people to park anywhere, especially if they were trying to vote and needed to get in line before 7pm.

So, I guess I will never know how many people actually made the attempt to vote at the East Regional Library. I'm amazed that 500 made it til, at least, midnight. Much more determined democracy participants than I. That or they are more driven than I to make sure we have a good replacement for our current clueless Dear Leader.

The Pacific Northwest Drives People Crazy

I go through phases of what type book I read. Like I came home from a road trip where I'd been to many battle sites of the Indian Wars and started reading books like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. If you've not read that one, you should. It tells you what really happened during the settlement of the west, not the propaganda version we learned in grade school.

And then there was my WWII phase, mostly books about the Nazis, like Inside The Third Reich.

A constant genre for me is the true crime book. My favorite true crime writer is Ann Rule. With Jack Olsen a close second. He's dead now, and was never as prolific as Ms. Rule, but his way of telling the story varied from book to book, like last month I read Jack Olsen's Rat Dog Dick. It seemed more like a novel than a non-fiction true story.

Currently I'm in the middle of Jack Olsen's "I" The Creation Of A Serial Killer. It's the story of yet one more Pacific Northwest serial killer, a Canadian named Keith Hunter Jepperson. Apparently the Jepperson serial killing took place while I was still living in the Northwest, but I've no memory of this particular story. Jack Olsen was allowed to interview the killer at length. Much of the book is written in the first person in the voice of the killer. I've not seen this in a true crime book before. It's kind of creepy.

If one were to extrapolate from my personal experiences it would seem if you live in the Pacific Northwest you likely have had personal connections to serial killers.

I was going to school at Central Washington State College when Ted Bundy took Susan Rancourt from the school library and killed her. That was near the start of Ted Bundy's serial killer career.

Spokane had a serial killer, that I also don't remember, that took place while I lived in the Northwest. This killer operated during the same time frame, sort of, as the Green River Killer. With so much killing going on it's easy to see why one can't remember them all. Anyway, the Spokane Serial Killer's name is Robert Lee Yates. I have a personal connection to him too. He grew up in Oak Harbor, Washington. That is a short distance from where I lived. He went to SVC at the same time I did. But I don't recognize either his face or name. And one of his earliest murders took place in the Skagit Valley. I lived in Mount Vernon in the Skagit Valley.

And then there is the Green River Killer, the worst serial killer in United States history, with at least 71 victims. The Green River Killer is a sicko named Gary Leon Ridgway. He worked at a truck parts manufacturer called Kenworth. My oldest sister worked there with him. Kenworth had a company party for workers and their families at this theme park called Enchanted Village. I was at that company party. So was Gary Ridgway. This was well before he began his killing spree.

Geez, I'm being as absurd as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram with these "personal" connections to serial killers. Well, at least I'm aware that I'm being absurd, so I guess that makes me less absurd than the Star-Telegram.

Speaking of absurd. I had no idea that the world is suffering from an epidemic of serial killers. Wikipedia has an article listing serial killers by country. I was surprised by how many Canadian serial killers there have been. I was not too surprised to see that the United States had the longest list of serial killers. With, I am assuming, the majority coming from the Pacific Northwest.

A Party Without Me

My oldest nephew's first born son, Spencer Jack, had his 1st birthday yesterday. Spencer Jack had a birthday party. And I was not invited. I can't tell you how badly this hurts my feelings. When Spencer Jack's dad had birthday parties I used to get invited.

Spencer Jack's Uncle Joey mentioned to me some time ago that he would need to consult with me as to how to make the type birthday presents I used to make for his birthday parties. It was a very elaborate process. Involving a lot of unwrapping and varying levels of difficulty and a big mess. One year it was glitter in balloons that had to be popped to find clues as to where the actual present was located. (the trunk of my car). And then when the package was hauled in from the trunk the new package started up a fresh mess of unwrapping with squeals of fun from the kids, groans of will this never end from the stodgy grownups.

Now the actual birthday present was always totally lame. It was the elaborate packaging that was the actual present. Now, one of my, well, sort of humorless and at times slightly clueless, yet self-righteously overbearing siblings felt, I guess, that I needed to be taught a lesson. I believe it was on my birthday, maybe it was Christmas, I don't remember. But she'd gone through a little bother to wrap something sort of remotely like I did for my nephews. When I got to what was inside it was a jar of peaches with a note saying "How does it feel now?" Or something like that. I guess this was supposed to teach me how awful it was to put my nephews through the extreme trauma of opening one of my birthday presents and end up causing them to be upset because I didn't buy them a video game. Trouble was, I like peaches so the lesson was totally lost on me.

Nonetheless, the peach incident was confusing to me. So when the next nephew birthday invite came along I politely declined the invitation, saying that I didn't want to upset my nephew with one of my awful birthday presents. I was then told it would break the boy's heart if I didn't do my usual birthday thing that was the highlight of their birthday parties. That would be the nephew who told me he needed to consult with me as to what to do for Spencer Jack's birthday party. I told him to wait a couple years, that Spencer Jack was too young for that type fun.

I wonder if the reason I didn't get invited to Spencer Jack's birthday party is because maybe his Grandma (it was she who sent me the pic above taken at Spencer Jack's party) told Spencer Jack's mother what a nightmare it was to clean up after one of my birthday presents. I remember the year the package exploded shooting thousands of those little circles you make with a paper punch, apparently she was finding those paper punches for months. I recollect hearing that the glitter from the popped balloons had been a gift that kept on giving too.

I will admit, all these years later, part of the fun was watching my sister-in-law, a certified neat freak, squirm as she saw the mess unfold. Of course when it was all over I'd help the nephews pick it all up. But you can't easily pick up glitter and paper punches.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Spencer Jack. Sorry I couldn't be at your party.

Electronic Bad Wiring

I grow tired of all the complications I encounter with all these new devices that are/were supposed to make our lives simpler and easier. Of late it's been one aggravation after another. All electronically related.

One aggravation is cell phones. Currently Lulu in Tacoma is cut off from the world due to her third cell phone in 2 weeks ceasing to work. When she does have a cell phone that can make a call those calls are very unreliable. As in at any point in a call, 2 seconds in or 20 minutes in there can be this annoying boop boop noise and then the disconnect. Or the latest variation is I can hear Lulu saying are you there are you there with me replying yes over and over again. And then the disconnect.

A couple weeks ago my durangotexas.com website was taken over by the Ebay home page. Before that all my websites had their index pages altered with javascript that caused a pop up window that opened a Vietnamese music website.

The past few days I've been having email problems. As in trouble sending. And then yesterday that woe escalated when I was also not able to receive email. I submitted a support ticket. But as the hours passed I got more annoyed. I knew if they were having a serious issue calling the toll free number would put me in a long line. So, I did their live chat thing. I don't know why it is called that because you aren't chatting, you're typing.

It only took about 5 minutes before Alexander Gudonov in my webhost's bizarre Ukrainian call center asked how he could help. I asked if they were having an email problem. He said yes there had been a problem. I asked when would it be fixed. He said it was already fixed. I clicked on my email and saw that he was right, it was fixed.

And then this morning I'm once more having trouble sending email. I was about to do the live chat thing again when it started working again.

Yesterday the Google AdSense ads were acting up for awhile. As in they would not load. This would cause the page load to keep going and going. Logging into the AdSense account didn't work either. But this problem did not last long.

And then this morning I found out that this Feedjit thing I use to put Live Traffic info on some of my websites, like this very blog, stopped working. I went to the Feedjit website and learned they'd done some maintenance thing overnight that they said was successful. If by successful they mean it no longer works, I guess they are right. I'm assuming this is going to start working again.

I'm done whining now. It wasn't therapeutic.

UPDATE: After I posted the Blog above I then started having problems with the Blogger website! As in if you tried to go to a Blog you got a message that there was a server error. If I tried to log in to the Blog all sorts of odd things happened. Now, several hours later, everything seems to be working again. Well, everything I've checked on, I forgot to mention that Google AdSense also went screwy with a message in many languages saying there was a problem. I'll go see if that's fixed as soon as I'm done with this.

Texas Snowman

After being cooped up much of yesterday due to ice, snow and cold it was nice to escape today to Oakland Lake Park. You wouldn't know we had a blizzard here yesterday except for some archaeological evidence, such as the snowman you see in this photo with the Fort Worth UFO in the background. Other snowmen in the park had already collapsed into their component parts and were now just slowly melting balls. But this one guy remained intact, standing proud with his orange nose pointing towards the lake.

The snowman looked a bit lonely, standing like a guard in front of the tennis courts, and with the snow gone from the ground and Texas back to its usual brown color he looks really out of place, like ice in a desert.

More Texas Two Step Chaos & Weather Woes

We are back with clear blue sky again after yesterday's weather extreme. This morning did not bring the expected ice covering. Yesterday's afternoon sleet canceled about 500 flights out of D/FW, leaving some people stranded on planes for over 5 hours. Which is one of my many personal visions of a living hell.

Meanwhile reports continue to accumulate like snow regarding chaos and confusion at the second step of the Texas Two Step. One caucus goer reported his wife called party officials for help during their caucus meltdown, the person who answered did not know what to do, so the caller asked to speak to a supervisor who she heard say "just hang up on her".

On a plus note a Texas legislator is introducing a proposal to end the ridiculous Texas Two Step as practiced by the Texas Democrat party.

If you've not heard what the Texas Democrat Two Step process is, or don't get why it is absurd, let me lay it out for you. 55 percent of the delegates are chosen directly by the voters, with each vote weighted differently based on how the voter's precinct voted in the last 2 elections. Another 19 percent of the delegates are chosen at precinct caucuses with vague rules regarding how to weigh the votes. 11 percent of the delegates are chosen at the state convention and the remaining 15 percent are appointed by party bosses, a leftover from the good ol' boy network that used to run things.

Now do you get why we still don't know for sure who won the Texas primary election on the Democrat side, Obama or Hillary?

The Republican Party in Texas uses what would seem a revolutionary democratic method for picking their delegates in that 99 percent of the delegates are chosen directly by the voters. What a concept. And there is no chicanery regarding 'weighting' the votes based on past elections. Each vote is counted equally. I don't know how that remaining 1 percent of the delegates is chosen by the Republicans. I do know that John McCain is the nominee. And that he won Texas.

It's Snowing in Texas

A little before noon the National Weather Service changed today's forecast from a snow advisory starting about 4pm to a Winter Storm Warning starting at noon. A few minutes after that the white stuff began falling. Before the weather got dire I was getting ready to drive to Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market to get cilantro and other things I needed to finish the chili I made this morning in a crockpot using ground venison I got from a local hunter who'd given it to a local Puerto Rican who can not cook.

When got outside I found out it was very icy and slippery. I debated whether I should be careful or throw caution to the snow. The latter option won out. By the time I got on a street and driving up a hill I found I had some traction problems. I made it as far as the Albertsons parking lot and re-debated the wisdom of going cilantro hunting under these conditions. Sure, I could have gone in Albertsons and bought cilantro and likely easily gotten safely back here. But I do not like Albertsons and was in need of adventure.

So, on to Wal-Mart I went. But I needed gas. $3.05 a gallon. Like I've mentioned before, when I get gas I call my mom in Phoenix to tell her how much it cost and what the weather is doing. She had trouble believing I was being snowed on. So did I.

I got to Wal-Mart driving slow like everyone else. The parking lot was not too slippery. Quickly got my stuff. Helped a little old lady with a cane load her stuff into her car. Drove slowly back here, slowly sliding down my hill, gently applying the brakes. Got to my parking place, took the pic you see above, looking out my vehicle window, walked carefully to my entry, got in, turned up the heat, chopped the cilantro and am now in the process of hunkering down til this is over. Everything outside should be covered in thick ice by morning.

Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday, Spring in 2 weeks. Global Warming has yet to arrive in North Texas.

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UPDATE: It is now about 4pm. Snow has been falling hard for a couple hours. It is freezing. Everything is icing up. Schools have been closing early. People have been leaving work to try and get home before the roads become impassable and impossible. By morning North Texas should be on one icy cold lockdown.

Global Warming, Snow & the Texas Two Step

It is only a couple weeks til the start of Spring. And yet this afternoon North Texas is predicted to get snow. Possibly up to a couple inches. When is this Global Warming thing you hear so much about scheduled to kick in?

It now looks like what I predicted days ago is about to be official, that being that though Hillary won the Texas primary vote and the most delegates from that win, Obama won the Caucus Chaos by a larger percentage and thus won more of those delegates and is expected to come out ahead with 99 delegates to Hillary's 94, gave or take a few in either direction.

Meanwhile the scandal over the largely botched second part of the Texas Two Step, that being the caucuses that Barack won, continues to grow. Angry voters are being heard, made more angry as they share horror stories and realize their experience was not unique, but was more the norm.

In one D/FW suburb, Mansfield, voting did not end til 20 minutes before 10pm. Many of the hundreds who showed up at 7pm for the caucus left in frustration as the hours clicked by. These people were left standing outside in the cold. And to add more pain to the pain, when many of them tried to escape they found their vehicles stuck in mud requiring a tow truck to unstick them.

Other precincts broke the election rules by allowing caucusers to sign in before the voting ended and letting them make their caucus choice. Other precincts did not realize that once the caucus began a voter could make his presidential choice and then leave without participating in the rest of the caucus.

At a caucus location in Denton County over 1000 showed up. People got so frustrated by the confusion that at least half of them left. One of the frustrated said, "I've never experienced anything like this. It kind of makes me want to leave the entire state."

I think that is a common sentiment here at times.

Caucus Chaos

My experience at last night's Texas caucus was not an isolated one of a kind fluke. Even though the Caucus Chaos that I witnessed was not mentioned in this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram similar scenarios played out at voting locations all over Texas to varying degrees of chaos, confusion, disorder, turmoil, discord, pandemonium and borderline anarchy.

At some polling places in Tarrant County (location of Fort Worth) the primary voting ran over an hour late, causing the caucusing to begin over an hour late.

In many locations, when the caucusing finally began, more chaos followed with no one knowing what to do and then, when the process finally got under way, running out of sign in sheets and ballots. As a Hillary supporter, Michelle Coomer put it, "I was so appalled at how it was run. It was a terrible mess. It was a fiasco. There was no organization."

Approximately 500 people were left out in the cold at Fort Worth's Southwest Subcourthouse waiting for the voting to end. Some people had been directed to the wrong voting place leaving them not enough time to get to the correct location.

Various locations reported people showing up to vote in the primary who had early voted, taking literally those campaign slogans telling them to vote twice. Other voters somehow thought they had to participate in the caucus or their primary vote would not count.

It is not yet known who won the caucuses. It is known Hillary won the primary. Like I said before, it is likely Obama will end up with more Texas delegates because it is likely he won the caucuses.

So far I've not heard any noises, beyond my own, regarding declaring the caucus results fraudulent due to all the problems and the large number of people who were unable to participate due to all the ineptitude.