Believe it or not, the small sleepy city of Paducah, Kentucky always has some sort of low level scandal going on at all times.  You have cops resigning for inappropriate non-sexual contact of a sexual nature while on duty.  A hotelier holding out to be paid to leave town, and a hotel he could not afford so the city could buy it and tear it down.  The city buys a Convention Bouncy specifically for one yearly event, puts it on land they do not own and then attempt to circumvent the building code in the name of ice skating.  And then you got a guy named Steve Dolittle.  Basically, there has never been a job opening the City has felt he could not fill.

Come to find out today the executive director of the Julian M. Carroll Convention and Paducah Expo Centers embezzled somewhere around $200,000.00 in the past year.  If don’t know where the convention and expo center is, do not worry.  It’s obvious you have not been there since (a) you realized a wedding themed after anything Bristol Broadcasting promoted would be cheaper than champale (b) Dr. Kelly’s office moved to Reidland or (c) J.R.’s Pub finally fell off and floated down the Ohio.  This place is supposed to bring in people to convent about things, or to expose others to stuff.  Last time I was down that way, the only thing I saw was a convent of nuns running from a man who was exposing himself.

So to sum this scandal up, a cat named John Patrick Kerr, Jr. had been scamming the Paducah-McCracken County Convention Center Corporation – “PMC4″ for our purposes – out of at least $68,000.00 bucks a years while pretending to be the executive director.  Well, that was the part of the scam PMC4 cannot deny knowing about because it was his salary.  That was actually up almost $8,000.00 from when he started.  Kerr got a fleece increase because he met or set a bunch of “benchmarks” and worked “unusual and extra hours to accommodate events.”  For instance, he worked a lot of extra hours around the end of the month when bank statements would be mailed, and also the last couple weeks before April 15^th each year.

The PMC4 gave a press conference where they stated Kerr’s evil genius first came to after Paducah Bank gave notice a specially trained bank teller had noticed a sticky note attached to a check indicating someone was not suppose to forget to bring someone their half of the money.  The teller’s handler could not be reached for comment.  Paducah Bank released a statement saying, “We knew the investment in note-detecting trained tellers would pay off.  This is exactly the type of fraud that is perpetrated every day by the misuse of sticky notes and we here at Paducah Bank are not going to just sit around and take note of it anymore.”  The bank then alerted the previously fiscally comatose PMC4, who sprung into action and quickly realized no one should be getting half.  After an intense investigation from Friday through Sunday, the PMC4 had cracked what has been described by some as an intricate scheme.  Apparently, Kerr would write “single-signature account checks” to an alleged embezzlebell named Susan Wilson. She was posing as what is known in the convention and expo world as a “vendor”, and would issue Kerr fake invoices, cash the checks, obey the sticky notes and give him his half.  It was intricate because he worked there but actually signed his own name, instead of forging another person’s to the checks he apparently was not authorized to sign.  Contrary to reports, Wilson did not have a mobile cart or stand outside of the convention center selling fake documents.

How in the hell can a place in Paducah that is hemorrhaging almost a quarter of a million bucks, which is run by a government affiliated entity, not notice a whole bunch of what little money they have is being spent with just one vendor?  I guarantee you the only time a sole entity was the main cash flow of that joint was The Silver Saddle just after the premiere of Urban Cowboy and in the heyday of the Charlie Daniels Band.  The place has about one or two conventions a year at the most.  One of them is some bridal thing and the other requires you to either fail or pass some sort of health test.  You never know which one is going on until you show up.  It is ridiculous anyone tries to keep that place alive.  In fact, during the flood of Ought Eleven, after the million whatever renovation the City and County joined in on, it was determined that, if the flood water rose past a certain point, it would be able to convene and expose itself as much as it wanted all over Julian Carroll’s architectural namesake.  The City finally paid a guy to sell off the hotel not worthy of Baltic or Mediterranean Avenues and tore it down.  However, the structure still standing appears to have been abandoned like the square building block that could not be shoved into the rectangular hole by the slobbery -handed baby that is governmental waste is still standing.

Kerr and Wilson perpetrated their evil scheme of writing and cashing checks on a board of citizens and hope-to-do-wells and a bank who apparently did nothing but sit around and wait to be given “note-ice” something was wrong.  Just from an office supply standpoint, why didn’t anyone ask Kerr where all those checks were going?  To embezzle enough to support Tony Montana’s cocaine habit, you’ve got to be going through a couple saplings worth a day.  If Kerr was really doing enough business to write that many checks and generate enough paperwork to fool the PMC4 into believing the place needed money to actually operate – as opposed to just keep the utilities on because it was vacant – the Super Shredder would have been swinging by every couple of days.  The bank statements no one was paying attention had to be as thick as phone books because of the copies of the checks.  Rumor has it a couple of law firms were close to sealing deals to put magnets on them.

How did whoever balance their books?  I get this picture of the PMC4 handing a bunch of wadded up receipts, some pocket lint and a gum wrapper to their CPA.  I don’t know enough about taxes to go any further with this.

Steve Dolittle was appointed the acting executive director to take over where Kerr stole off. Most people around here remember Dolittle from his most recent government employee incarnation as executive director of the Paducah Renaissance Alliance.  It makes sense they would bring in Dolittle because he needs two more city-county government related jobs to get a set of gold plated steak knives.  It also makes sense because he has been executively directing an Alliance to rebirth Paducah, and what better place needs rebirthing than the convention and exposition center?  As of today, there has been no word on whether or not he will executively direct rebirthing, conveneing and exposing simultaneously.  It all sounds rather arduous.

It’s time once again to check out a few headline articles of no interest that Yahoo! has plastered across their front page today, and heckle them roundly:

“Michelle Obama Rebellious About Her Role”

This article infers that the First Lady has been “rebellious” during her tenure thus far; but after reading it, I began to wonder if I had been misinformed on what the world rebel meant.  The first sentence in the article is, “The most recognizable woman in the world routinely ducks reporters to have what she calls a “normal” life.”  First off, I have a hard time believing Mrs. Obama is the “most recognizable woman in the world.”  I’d say that title goes to the Virgin Mary, since people continue to recognize her in potato chips and burnt pieces of toast thousands of years after her death.  I also don’t see how wanting and/or trying to live a normal life can be considered rebellious.  Just because she married a guy with big ambitions of being the most powerful man in the world, that doesn’t mean she has to enjoy the spotlight.  And if you ask me, it’s probably better that she lay low and let her husband do all the shit work.  She was blasted by people like Sarah Palin for simply starting a campaign aimed to encourage fat American children to play outside or eat a damn vegetable in between Happy Meals sometimes.  And you also have to consider the legacy of other great programs started by former First Ladies, like Nancy Reagan’s highly successful “War on Drugs.”

“Palin Adviser Slams Bachmann”

Long story short, a backer of Michele “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann trashed Sarah Palin on a radio show saying that she wasn’t qualified and is a “joke candidate.”  Palin’s advisor then asked for said adviser to retract his statement, and there are sources that say Palin has expressed “disdain” for Bachmann.  If this bad blood somehow escalated and resulted in a real live catfight between the two, it would probably be the only time I wouldn’t root for clothes to pulled off.  I would much rather see them rip out each other tongues.

“More Democrats Shun Weiner” (When you click on the article, the next headline is “Pressure Mounts on Weiner…”  Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up)

If you haven’t been keeping up the news lately, you might think this article is about Democratic party members boycotting products manufactured by the Oscar Meyer company.  But as you probably already know, it pertains to Anthony Weiner’s now infamous frankfurter pics.  His constituents are apparently abandoning his banana boat, and some are publicly calling for his resignation.  Yea, I know it’s very surprising that none of his colleagues, whose livelihood revolves around public opinion, has supported Weiner like his boxer briefs apparently do.  But I’m of the opinion that if sending crotch shots is the worst thing he’s done while in office, this phallacy should be forgiven and forgotten.  I mean, hell, at least he was doing something.  I’d say there are a lot of politicians who spend all their free time twiddling their thumbs and thinking about ways they can line their pockets on the backs of the American people.  All this guy wanted to do was show some chick an outline of his pocket rocket.  So in other words, I don’t see any reason to shun Weiner, and I don’t know if I ever will.  Well, in the political arena anyway.  I will, however, still continue to employ the Weiner shunning technique whenever I watch porn.

“Oh I wish I hadn’t tweeted a picture of my Wei-ner,
That was truly the one that belonged to me.
‘Cause if I hadn’t tweeted a picture of my Wei-ner,
There wouldn’t be calls for my re-sign-ing.”

Your last name is Weiner.  You’ve accomplished a lot in your life.  You are a United States Representative from New York.  You somehow won an election in New York with the last name Weiner.  Seriously.  Seemingly everything was going your way, until you got the hots for some 21 year old Huskie, combined photography with technology, and tweeted a picture of your blue veined mansnake across the world Wide Weiner Web.  You dumb bastard.

I guarantee you there are going to be close friends, relatives and vienna sausages come out of the membrane encased gossip closet to tell hopefully tall tales about you, Weiner, and their belief you’d expose your true self at some point.  It isn’t so much that you tweeted your weiner.  Anyone who has ever been to a hot dog eating contest or a public urinal at a sporting event has thought about weiner tweeting.  It’s just that you actually weinered through with it.  Drunkeness, philandering, lying and having a general distaste for reality are all rights you enjoy as a United States Representative.  Tweeting a picture of your weiner degrades all you can get away with.  Weiners can be adequately described for sketch artists, identified in photo lineups and closed in on during slow motion film.  Figuring out their technological birthplace isn’t something necessitating the input of Bill Gates. They ain’t called IP addresses for nothing you idiot.  @MyWeiner isn’t Sanskrit, and you won’t have to call in the Windtalkers strapped with decoder rings to cipher this cloak of obvious nomininity.

“Twitter was made for talkin’,
And that’s a lot of what Twitter do.
But if you’re famous and you start tweeting body parts,
Twitter is going to be the end of you.”

Rep. Anthony Weiner and his staff first claimed his Twitter account had been hacked.  That wasn’t all that bad of a cover up considering the tweet of interest revolved around Penistweet – which does not contain aspartame – and a guy with the last name of Weiner.  However, the truth circumcised itself from the foreskin of his lies when he evaded questioning, and then refused to categorically deny that was indeed a photo of the conduit to another generation of Weiners.  He should have just enlarged the photo, distributed it to the press and Photoshopped in “9th Inch District”.

Everyone does ignorant stuff on the Internet.  People on FaceSpace actually check to see what question a friend answered to declare them good looking.  I’ve been known to open and read an occasional email just to be sure I’m not related to the Royal Family of Zimbabwe.  You know you didn’t really win that $15 gift card to Boston Market, because you didn’t tell a friend their meat loaf sandwich was meatier than that singing fat guy who looks like Tom Arnold.  But you opened the email up and read it anyway.

Ignorance on the Internet is just magnified if you’re nobody who has become somebody.  People who are famous because they are rumored to have some sort of talent or just a whole tweet-load of money can get away with more online ignorance than people who’s weinerhood depends on public perception.  You can tweet pictures of your stuff all everywhere if you got enough bank to cash out everyone who thought they saw your puddy tweets.

Contrast that with someone whose professional career is built off convincing people they are the best person for whatever the hell the job it is they claim they will be doing, and you can see the differences.  People with heavy $$$$ who have enough dough to forget worrying about worrying about it, don’t have to worry about worrying about whatever it is everyone else worries about.  Politicians, particularly, have to deal electile dysfunction and, therefore, have to worry about what those who don’t have to worry don’t worry about.  Sure, tweeting pictures of your weiner may get you votes.  Hell, it may help you cross into a completely untapped section of the erectilelet you had never thought about.  Butt, more likely than not, your campaign for erectile support will get you kicked out of the very office you think your congressional junk can keep you ensconced in.

I would say I feel sorry for Rep. Weiner.  No, I wouldn’t.  I don’t.  If there is ever anyone in the history of political pubic picture scandals that should have 38 Specialed before they hit tweet, it was him.  It all comes back to that old cabbage, “What’s in a name?”  Apparently, it’s a desire to represent yourself outside of New York’s 9th District.

JIS
(I take full responsibility for all grammatical and spelling errors contained in the preceding, including this statement of exceptance of responsibility, due to my lack of memmory, desire to refresh myself with grammatical basics and an overall carelessness)

According to Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden was killed last week.  Funny thing about that is, it jives with what our government was claiming.  Since Bin Laden hasn’t Bin Livin’, these two strangest of political tunic sharers have been, at least on one point, ideologically conjoined like two Siamese Allah twins.

Bin-yond his death itself, I think my favorite reaction to the whole shootjahdine has been the “George Bush finally got his man” sentiment.  Yeah, G.W.B. was on duty when O.B.L. royally fucked up and killed all those Yankee fans; but, let’s be observant here, Barak Hussein Obama had his wrist firmly ensconced in the wrist loop of the government Wii remote when big Bin Laddi was more suitable for taxidermy.

“Bin Ladi dadi.  Bin Ladi dadi.  Bin Ladi.  Dadi.  Yo peep this.  Bin Ladi dadi.  We came for a body.  We gonna shoot anyone, kill everybody.  We’re just the SEALS that are on Team Six and…”  I think that is one of the cheesiest, yet most patriotic things I’ve ever written.  I feel like I need to shower and dry myself off with a Budweiser beach towel.  Who the fuck would have ever thunk goddamn Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh and a fucking dead terrorist could ever come together in a bastardization of a seminal – meaning original, not fluid – rap song?

Before I go any further, I want to make something clearer than that sticky substance on the inside of Barry Bond’s pant leg.  I am 100% elated O.B.L. is D.E.A.D.  I’m not above killing people who deserve it.  I believe people who kill people who deserve it are deserving of a large cash reward payable in one lump sum.  I think his takedown was absolutely necessary for what he did, might have done or even thought about doing.  More importantly, I think killing him may actually give our troops a morale boost.  I don’t buy into the wars, but I buy into the people who are forced into fighting them.  That being said, I do think there is one absolutely glaring and hilarious aspect of this story.

Well, before I get into the hilarity, let me further sayeth.  Who gives a fuck how he was killed?  Whether there was a reenactment of the O.K. Corral or not, I don’t give a damn.  If they shot a bunch of unarmed motherfuckers, so be it.  It’s war goddamn it.  These people are living with the most wanted man on the planet.  It ain’t like they didn’t know who he was.  You can’t have two different names with multiple wives living under one roof.  Telling Wife No. 3 your name is O’Henry Ben Logsdon don’t mean Wife No. 5 won’t spill the beans in the laundry room.  If you’re living with a dude who is constantly filming himself talk while wearing camo and flaunting a fucking AK-47, you have no excuses.  I don’t consider these people innocent.

OK, back to the hilarity.  When all this came out, the media (I know I’ve gained weight, but I’m now starting to sound like Rush Limbaugh?) went on and on like an ADD dildo off its meds about what a fantabulous job the CIA did.  Uh, seriously?  For a decade the word on the dirt path was O.B.L. was always roaming from cave to cave to escape the scrutiny only a smart bomb with a hard-on could provide.  Well, turns out the son of a bitch was living in a “million dollar compound” 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.

This is from Yahoo News:

“…The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama Bin Laden,” another administration official said.

Have you seen pictures of this place?  It’s three stories tall.  It is “eight times” the size of other houses.  It his 12 to 18 feet outer walls topped with BARB WIRE.  It had security gates.  The people that lived there burned their trash.  There was no phone or internet connection.  There are not very many windows.  Couriers came to and fro.  People routinely trafficked goats to them.  And, oh yeah, the people who lived there had no obvious source of income.

It took years to figure out there was a strong probability the “terrorist” who was living here was O.B.L.?  If it wasn’t O.B.L., who in the hell was it?  Was it some terrorist who never got off the terror bench, or one that got a big terror contract, got injured and never really scared or killed anybody making none of it that big of a deal?  If the mailbox had just said “Bin Laden” instead of “Terrorist” there is a very high probability he would have been assessed dead years ago.

Much like the bullshit stories told to make it seem this wasn’t a hit, I don’t think the CIA really figured all of this out.  I think they fucking stumbled onto it like a chicken scratched from the Kentucky Fried Derby due to bumble foot (That’s a whole different story).  With this fucking place being so open and obvious, anyone could have figured this shit out:

-A cab driver dropped a guy off there carrying a surface-to-air missile and accidentally butt-dialed the F.B.I.

-The mailman noticed the DirecTV bill for Mr. Bin Laden had been forwarded to that address.

-The only barb wire salesman in town turned him in when he got stiffed for the bill.

-Gary Faulkner, the looney from Colorado who was running around with the pistol and sword when he was captured inside the border of Pakistan, really knew what the fuck he was doing and tipped the government off.

-A Redbox email was accidentally forwarded to www.marines.com.

-Publishers Clearing House called information to find out who lived at the address on the sweepstakes winning entry.

-O.B.L. answered the door when Ty Pennington showed up for a very special episode of Extreme Terrorist Compound Makeover.

-Charlie Sheen got all coked up, threw a wooly mammoth tusk handled pocket knife at a map, booked a charter, grabbed a pillow case, more blow, his script from Navy Seals and went to fucking town.

I think any of the above scenarios are far more believable.

JIS
(I take full responsibility for all grammatical and spelling errors contained in the preceding, including this statement of exceptance of responsibility, due to my lack of memmory, desire to refresh myself with grammatical basics and an overall carelessness)

The Internet has been inundated with stories covering every angle of the killing of Osama bin Laden, from the secret Seal Team Six to the terrorist’s sprawling, and in no way conspicuous “mansion” in Pakistan.  I wanted to briefly discuss one of the most interesting stories I read on Yahoo! this morning, which revolves around Osama’s code name for this mission.  From the Associated Press:

The top staffer for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is objecting to the U.S. military’s use of the code name “Geronimo” for Osama bin Laden during the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader…Loretta Tuell, staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said Tuesday it was inappropriate to link Geronimo, whom she called “one of the greatest Native American heroes,” with one of the most hated enemies of the United States.

My first thought after reading these couple of paragraphs was, “Who knew there was such a thing as the ‘Senate Indian Affairs Committee’?”  I didn’t even know there were enough Indians left in the United States to constitute something that could be called a committee once white eyes was done with them.  After doing a little bit of research I found out the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was first established in 1820.  And the U.S. government has abolished, re-established, amended and re-aligned the committee on several occasions since its inception, because our government felt like almost completely annihilating their entire population wasn’t enough already.  It wasn’t until 1984 that the group finally received status as a permanent committee of the US Senate, a mere 164 years after it started.  One more fun fact, John McCain has served as the committee’s chairman on two separate occasions, even though his ancestors were slave owners, and he’s about as Indian as the guy from Short Circuit.

Now I agree that there were no shortage of other code names that the military could have came up with before settling on a famous Apache leader.  They just as easily could have called him “Bin” or “OBL”; and if they weren’t dead set on using a historical figure, names like Hitler or Stalin would have definitely been more logical choices.  On the other hand, I would like to think the only Senate committee that represents the 2 million or so Indians left in the United States would have more pressing issues they would want to bring to people’s attention.  Instead of taking offense to a code name created by a group of people who are not known for possessing attributes like sensitivity or social awareness, they should be complaining about living on the shittiest, most barren pieces of property in the country.  The fact that their people have the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, and disease of any ethnic group in America also seems like an issue of more importance.  I just don’t understand how Indians could be so offended by a simple word when one considers everything they’ve had to endure.  I understand feeling disrespected and wanting to speak out about it, but it’s obvious they have not learned anything at all about the white man over time.  A man by the name of Jefferson Keel, who is the president of the National Congress of American Indians, said, “Osama bin Laden was a shared enemy.”  So now that he’s out of the picture, I guess the committee will have more time to focus their efforts on other evil individuals.  Hmmmmm, I wonder who they could consider to be the next worst enemy on their list? (Full Story)

When I woke up this morning and turned on the TV before going to work, I was taken aback by videos showing massive celebrations breaking out across the U.S. last night and this morning.  At first I thought all the jubilation was due to some new Apple announcement about their newest iPhone.  But then I found out the revelry was due to something that excites Americans even more than the newest technological distraction, symbolic revenge.  Now don’t get me wrong, Osama bin Laden was an evil, calculating, and cold-hearted sonofabitch who deserved the Navy Seal treatment he received.  But I heard President Obama proclaim that, “The world is now better and safer” since he is dead.  I know that politicians are often prone to hyperbole, but that statement far exceeds even an over-inflated exaggeration.  Is there any possible way the world is really better or safer now with him gone?  Simple logistics and a little common sense should tell you no.  Think about it this way, did bin Laden have anything to do with the 29,596 firearm-related deaths that took place in the U.S. in 2004?  Will the death of an infamous terrorist have a positive impact on the lives of the 13-17% of Americans who currently live below the poverty line?  Will it ease the physical pain of the September 11th first responders who are now dealing with life-threatening health complications like cancer and respiratory illness?

One of the more disturbing things I have noticed as a result of this are the types of events that now seemingly have to happen before the American people rally together as a nation.  Besides today, 9/11 is one of the only other times in recent memory where I can recall so much collective pride and social cohesiveness throughout the country.  How fuckin’ sad is the state of the U.S. when basically the only two things that can bring everyone together is either a monumental tragedy or an assassination? When did death and destruction turn into that time during the Olympics, when Americans vicariously experience a sense of pride and accomplishment for something they ultimately had nothing to do with?   Perhaps the most disheartening part is that all this collective euphoria will vanish as quickly as it sprung up, and then everyone will go back to arguing about more important things like the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate, who’s worse “Republican’ts” or “Libtards,” and of course, the pro’s and con’s of buying the new white iPhone 4.

For whatever reason, all these Wizard of Oz-like “Ding, Dong, Osama is Dead” celebrations reminded me of this clip from Family Guy.  With bin Laden out of the picture, I guess it won’t be long now until Democracy kicks in all across the world:

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Picture Via Rolling Stone)

While addressing the mayor and council members of Atlanta, Georgia in 1864, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman once said:

“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.”

This was in response to an order he had given during The Civil War to have the city evacuated and burned, and over the years it turned into a simple phrase that would also be attributed to Sherman, “War is hell.”  Although I don’t know for certain, I’d like to think those three words pretty much sum up the feelings of anyone who has actually been on the frontlines and experienced war firsthand.  Yet it’s also naive to think that every person in today’s U.S. armed forces is an intelligent, idealistic freedom fighter who only enlisted so they could help ensure citizens in foreign countries have the rights and privileges that all humans should be afforded.  It’s quite another thing altogether to read a chilling article that meticulously details how a group of soldiers intentionally and brazenly murdered innocent people, due to some sick fantasy that resulted from a mix of boredom, racism, and sociopathic tendencies.  And to make matters even more disgusting, their actions were eventually discovered and brushed aside by esteemed, high-ranking military officials who simply viewed these deaths as collateral damage.  Now, I know this article in Rolling Stone magazine is not the norm, and I’d like to think these incidents were carried out by a few “rogue soldiers” who went against everything that our military represents.  However, the following account also proves once again that war is like hell, in that it often brings out the evilness in people; but unlike hell, war is all too real.

Excerpt from “The Kill Team” by Mark Boal

Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.

Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions…But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.

On the morning of January 15th, the company’s 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields.

To provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot…While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. “The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it,” one of the men later told Army investigators.

The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots…And just like that, they picked him for execution.

His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan…He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. “He was not a threat,” Morlock later confessed.

Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still…The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun.

Back at the wall, soldiers arriving on the scene found the body and the bloodstains on the ground. Morlock and Holmes were crouched by the wall, looking excited. When a staff sergeant asked them what had happened, Morlock said the boy had been about to attack them with a grenade. “We had to shoot the guy,” he said.

Even the top officer on the scene, Capt. Patrick Mitchell, thought there was something strange about Morlock’s story. “I just thought it was weird that someone would come up and throw a grenade at us,” Mitchell later told investigators.

But Mitchell did not order his men to render aid to Mudin, whom he believed might still be alive, and possibly a threat. Instead, he ordered Staff Sgt. Kris Sprague to “make sure” the boy was dead. Sprague raised his rifle and fired twice.

Following the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, they cut off the dead boy’s clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Next they scanned his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner.

Then, in a break with protocol, the soldiers began taking photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. Holding a cigarette rakishly in one hand, Holmes posed for the camera with Mudin’s bloody and half-naked corpse, grabbing the boy’s head by the hair as if it were a trophy deer. Morlock made sure to get a similar memento.

No one seemed more pleased by the kill than Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the platoon’s popular and hard-charging squad leader. “It was like another day at the office for him,” one soldier recalls. Gibbs started “messing around with the kid,” moving his arms and mouth and “acting like the kid was talking.” Then, using a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears, he reportedly sliced off the dead boy’s pinky finger and gave it to Holmes, as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

After the killing, the soldiers involved in Mudin’s death were not disciplined or punished in any way. Emboldened, the platoon went on a shooting spree over the next four months that claimed the lives of at least three more innocent civilians. When the killings finally became public last summer, the Army moved aggressively to frame the incidents as the work of a “rogue unit” operating completely on its own, without the knowledge of its superiors.

But a review of internal Army records and investigative files obtained by Rolling Stone, including dozens of interviews with members of Bravo Company compiled by military investigators, indicates that the dozen infantrymen being portrayed as members of a secretive “kill team” were operating out in the open, in plain view of the rest of the company…”The platoon has a reputation,” a whistle-blower named Pfc. Justin Stoner told the Army Criminal Investigation Command. “They have had a lot of practice staging killings and getting away with it.”

Read the full story at Rollingstone.com

I didn’t think there would ever be a time where a post would highlight a story found exclusively on FOX News, unless I was going to make fun of it.  But as anyone with an overactive bladder or IBS will tell you, there are just some things that one can’t control.  I even gave some other news outlets a few days to pick up the story, since it involves some very disturbing findings that should infuriate every American.  I guess a mind-blowing amount of wasteful government spending just can’t compete with Charlie Sheen’s tiger blood and Adonis DNA in this country anymore.

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the “transportation disadvantaged.”   I can’t believe we have that many programs for people without legs.

Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality – something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on.

These are just a few of the findings in a blockbuster report on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.  The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes.  This may be the only time where you see the words “Congress” and “streamline” used in the same sentence.

“This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government.  We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing.  The executive branch doesn’t know. The congressional branch doesn’t know. Nobody knows,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in a statement Tuesday morning.  Boy, that’s comforting, isn’t it?  A report that confirms what most Americans already assumed: The people we elect either don’t know how much money is wasted every year, don’t care, or don’t know and don’t care. So, it sounds like our government is currently being run by Paris Hilton.

The well-timed release comes as Republicans and Democrats fight over how much to cut from the rest of this year’s budget, not to mention next year’s $3.73 trillion spending plan.  Because everyone knows the only way to combat wasteful spending and trim a budget is to throw trillions of dollars at it.

The study found 33 areas with “overlap and fragmentation” in the federal government.  Among them, it found:

- Fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing with financial literacy.  I’m not even sure what the hell that is, but I know we’re not good at it.

- More than 2,100 data centers (up from 432 a little more than a decade ago) across 24 federal agencies.  GAO estimated the government could save up to $200 billion over the next decade by consolidating them.

- Twenty programs across seven agencies dealing with homelessness.  The report found $2.9 billion spent on the programs in 2009.  I’m sure if you ask any of the 700,000+ homeless people in the United States, they’ll tell you this was money well spent. “Congress is often to blame” for fragmentation, GAO wrote in this section, explaining that the duplicative programs in multiple agencies cause access problems for potential participants.

- Eighty-two “distinct” teacher-quality programs across 10 agencies.  Many of them have “duplicate sub-goals,” GAO said.  Nine of them address teacher quality in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.  And yet these are areas where the average student in the United States continues to fall behind.

- Fifteen agencies administering 30 food-related laws.  “Some of the oversight doesn’t make any sense,” the report stated bluntly.

- Eighty economic development programs.  We still just have one economy, right?

The lengthy GAO report was mandated by Congress the last time it raised the debt limit in January 2010.  (Tom) Coburn said the report makes lawmakers look like “jackasses.”

“We don’t know what we’re doing,” Coburn said.  At least one politician has enough balls to finally state something that I’ve known for years.

Full Story

If you’ve ever seen any coverage of the British Parliament in action, it’s easy to notice at least one difference between our two governments.  When the United States Congress meets, it’s like a board member meeting at a large retirement community; a place where old curmudgeons complain about nurses stealing their money, and argue about what renovations should be made to the existing shuffle board court.  I’ve even heard that some doctors are suggesting insomniacs ingest large viewing doses of C-Span as an alternative to expensive sleep aids.  The British Parliament, on the other hand, is like a verbal Royal Rumble where pasty politicians slam each other with backhanded insults and snarky remarks (example).  That pretty much sums up my knowledge of the inner workings of British government, so I had more than a few questions after reading the following story out of the UK.  It involves a landmark decision handed down by a British “Court of Protection,” and the ruling is one that I hope our own judiciary branch will examine closely in the near future:

What does a “vigorous sex drive” and a low IQ get you?

In Britain, the answer seems to be a court order preventing you from having sex.

In a ruling that was attacked by some as homophobic and insensitive to disabled peoples’ rights, a British court ordered last week that a man with a low IQ be banned from having sex.

The man, a 41-year-old identified in public only as “Alan,” was involved in a relationship with another man. Social aid officials from his local town hall had argued in court that Alan’s “vigorous sex drive” combined with his “moderate” learning disability made him incapable of consenting to sex, the Telegraph reported.

They argued that, even though he is capable of understanding the mechanics of sex, he is not capable of understanding the health risks involved. Officials also reportedly argued Alan should be kept away from sex education because it could “confuse” him.

In ordering the sex ban, the judge noted that the case is “legally, intellectually and morally” complicated because sex is “one of the most basic human functions.”

Alan’s order came from the Court of Protection, a body PinkNews described as “a secret court dating from medieval times” that holds trials in secret.

According to the Telegraph, the court was given new life by a 2005 law that authorizes government officials to make personal decisions for people deemed not mentally competent.

Under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, its judges have the power to make life or death decisions for people deemed to lack the intelligence to make them for themselves – such as ordering that they undergo surgery, have forced abortions, have life-support switched off or be forced to use contraception.

Alan reportedly came to the attention of authorities in 2008 when it was alleged he made “lewd gestures” at children at a dentist’s office and on a bus. No police action was taken, but a year later the local town council began proceedings to stop Alan from having sexual relations with his male partner.

The judge’s order requires “close supervision” of Alan to make sure he isn’t engaging in sexual relations. Officials told the Telegraph Alan was being closely monitored at home, except when alone in his bedroom.

“This may not be outright homophobia, but I think a general distaste for gay sex underpins the council’s attitudes,” a retired lawyer and blogger told PinkNews. “The court debates issues of informed consent, wondering if any partner might be accused of raping him. Would this issue even have been raised if they were discussing a heterosexual relationship?” (Via Raw Story)

Let me first say, if the court’s decision was indeed motivated by the guy’s sexual preference, then the ruling is completely without merit.  However, if it was based on the fact that the guy is a complete moron who can’t comprehend the “ins and outs” of sex, imagine the benefits of preventing heterosexuals of the same ilk from shooting their stupid seed into an unsuspecting uterus.  Sure, the birth rate in the U.S. would probably drop from its current rate of one every 8 seconds to one every 8 months or so, but that’s a chance I’d be willing to take for the greater good.