White smoke from the Vatican.
We have a new pope! 115 elderly, almost exclusively white men have voted. It sounds like the sort of electorate that Republican state legislatures are trying to create in states all across America.
This is the
worst budget that Paul Ryan has ever come up with. Mitch McConnell called Ryan’s proposal “serious.” Yeah, it’s as serious as a heart attack, and 10 times more deadly. The cuts in this budget would reverse this country’s economic growth. And I don’t mean the growth of the past year, I mean the growth of the past 200 years. Ryan’s budget would be impossible to actually put into effect. But that is the only redeeming thing about it.
A judge in Colorado is going to allow the suspected shooter in the Aurora theater killings to be
tested with a “truth serum” if he pleas insanity. I don’t know if he is insane, but using something called truth serum in the American justice system is certifiably insane. They’re giving him a psychological drug to force him to talk. It’s not exactly waterboarding. It’s more like “water-couching.” They haven’t identified the drug. They’re just saying that whatever drug that is used will be “medically appropriate.” That’s good, because any drug used for this purpose can’t possibly be legally appropriate. But seriously, we can’t be giving people drugs to determine their guilt or innocence. That’s like a pharmacological version of the old Puritan “if she floats she’s a witch” test. Giving people truth serum shouldn’t be part of the American judicial system. Let’s keep the truth serum interrogations where they belong—in North Korea and in James Bond movies.
A Montana man has pled guilty to actually
waterboarding several children. Court records say the man has body armor, assault rifles, and armor-piercing ammunition. In Montana, that’s what is known as being a “member of the community.” The guy waterboarded children, he broke his girlfriend’s wrist and fingers when she tried to stop him, and he has an arsenal of weapons. If there was a prize for “Most Republican,” this guy would be a contender.
The Koch brothers are said to be
trying to buy the newspaper division of the Tribune Company. If they buy the entire company, that would also include 20 television stations. Media conglomeration is a terrible thing just on its own. But it’s 10 times worse when the media is being conglomerated under the worst human beings in the country. Republicans can’t win elections in the real world, so they’re buying up all the media so they can create their own alternate world where they can win. The problem is that they don’t just want it to be their own world—they want to force us to live in it as well. And they don’t want it to be an “alternate” world either. They want it to be the only world.
Listen to The Randi Rhodes Show Monday through Friday 6 PM to 8 PM on WWRL AM 1600.
