Three months and four days ago, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I sit, was devastated by a monster tornado.

A couple of days later Charlie Sheen came to town and toured the destruction with Mayor Walter Maddox.

Mr. Sheen said it was the worst thing he had ever seen. He called it a life-changing experience.

He met here with adoring fans who adoringly ooh'ed and aah'ed at the sight of the famous star.

A few days after that, on May 2, his failed actor buddy, one Stefan Hajek, of Los Angeles, California, registered the internet domain, via TUCOWS, torpedosagainsttornados.com, which requested donations, and still requests donations, to help the people affected so severely by the storm.

Curiously, the website is registered in Paris, France. That seems more than a little odd to me.

http://torpedosagainsttornados.com /

Charlie Sheen, while he was here, toured the newly-constructed Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, seemingly brainstorming ideas for his planned benefit show. It's all on video, on YouTube.

As he departed on that day, he said "I'll be back. I promise!'

http://www.google.com/search?q=charlie+she...

For the better part of three months I've been checking Charlie's Twitter feed, at http://twitter.com/charliesheen, even though I am twitterly challenged. He seems to have let the Tuscaloosa situation slip off his map. Instead, he tells us about which concerts and nightclubs he's going to attend.

Maybe I'm all wet and Charlie is privately planning a huge, star-studded extravaganza that will blow the lid off this sleepy, Southern town. I hope that's the case.

But I'm wondering about the money that he's raised from his fans to help the people in Tuscaloosa.

Is there anyway to track what his website has raised? Is there anyway to find out if he is personally profiting from a false charity?

Can someone with a twitter account tweet him the question "how's the Tuscaloosa benefit show going?"

Several big stars have stepped up and done benefit concerts. Kenny Chesney did one at the Amp. Rhianna did one in Birmingham. The country band Alabama has one coming up soon. I hate his politics, but Hank Williams Jr. did his part.

I just want to know if Charlie Sheen is sincere about wanting to help the people, or is using them for his own financial gain.

He's the eternal teenager, loving "individual freedom," and the right to suck a bone on his lunch hour.

But he's also a middle-aged fan of the eternally juvenile philosophy of Ayn Rand. You'll have to spend a dollar to rip the first red cent from his cold dead hand. Especially if it is for a good cause.

And what should one make for his ever devotion to that most unforgiving "fabric" known as leather?



I've seen him on television, literally hundreds of times. Never without the leather.

Sometimes with leather pants. Once, I think, with a leather hat. But never without at least a leather jacket.

Is he just trying to piss off PETA?

It's weird.

He seems like he might smell a little.

Am I the only one that thinks it is hilarious that he used to give teenagers bad advice on purpose, and blamed it on Alyssa Milano?


http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/...

I bet he hangs out with the likes of that Greg guy on FNC. You know that really sleazy seeming guy, with the widow's peak. You know the dude that is even too sleazy for Steve D. to hang out with. The guy that is always talking about committing sex crimes, and killing hobos and houseboys. You know the guy. He said the other day that "I have never worked in any media outlet where extreme drug use was not the norm." While he was on a media outlet know as Uncle Rupert's Fox News.

We're on the verge of a constitutional crisis over the national debt, and what to do about it.

It appears that the nation is constitutionally obligated to pay it's debt (14th amendment), while at the same time being legislatively restricted from further borrowing, or, more importantly, further taxing, at the same time we are unwilling to cut the Department Of War, or still nice enough not to bulldoze millions of poor seniors into early earthen graves because they can't afford medical care.

It is so goddamn obvious that the War Department must be cut, and that the uppermost marginal tax rate must be increased a few damn points.

But the establishment is so selfish that they'd rather the entire nation cease to exist, than to see us transform into anything resembling a civilized society.

It is sickenly apparent that the blame for this nation's economic downfall lies at the feet of the lecherous military-industrial-financial-media complex, ably represented by the renamed "Department Of Defense."

When was the last time the Defense Department defended us against anything?

Perhaps the USA did not face an existential threat during WWII. Still, I think that was probably the last "good war" we ever participated in. And then they changed the name from "War" to "Defense." Orwellian, while Orwell was still alive.

Since then, it has been one stupid-ass "police action" and "kinetic military action" after another. We've fed human beings into a proverbial meat grinder to produce the sausage that feeds the pigs that come up with this shit.

To enrich the bastards that are evil and selfish enough to come up with these ideas, we sacrifice millions of people, our own and others, so that a few people at the top can live in multiple fancy houses and dictate policy to the rest of us, and tell us that if we view things more humanely that we are "un-American." And they feed us bullshit about "American exceptionalism."

I know this is not an original opinion. But it is an opinion too rarely heard today in America. Many more people feel this way than you would ever know from media.

And I know many would call it naive. But I assure you I'm not naive. I'm on the cusp of being "old," for fuck's sake. I'm more likely cynical.

I have had enough with empty sloganeering and photo-ops.

I want America to live up to it's slogans and images.

I want America to be a "shining city upon a hill." I want tomorrow to be "morning in America."

But it isn't. Not even close.

We are in a spiraling descent, headed past our crumbling roads and bridges, toward the drain.

Not because we asked too much from the billionaire. But because we promised too little to our children.

Crescent Ridge Road is the main street where Cottondale and Alberta come together with the Holt area.

I've been trying to get into that area, off-and-on, since the first weekend after the storm. I finally made it.

Large stretches of the street are virtually unrecognizable.

There used to stand a convenience store there, where you would turn to go into the public housing area known as Crescent East. Ages ago, when I was in high school, I had some friends that lived there. I think they've mostly moved on by now. But I still wanted to check out the place, and see what condition it was in.

I don't want to mislead anyone. I only went up Crescent Ridge, and back again. I did not ride up and down it repeatedly.

But on my one round-trip, I could not locate the entrance to the place. There's just not much left to give a frame of reference.

I think I did spot the childhood home of my high-school girlfriend, and probably the love of my life. There was nothing left, but a bathroom, or maybe a closet. She doesn't live there anymore, and I know both her parents have passed away.

And the home of my mother's best friend's parents was gone, as best as I could tell. Again, the complete lack of identifiable landmarks is disorienting in the extreme.

Neighborhoods of scores and scores of modest homes have been reduced to nothing.

The New York Times said that one-seventh of Tuscaloosa has been destroyed. I don't know how they came up with that figure, but I surely wouldn't say it is too high.

Maybe in the next day or two, I'll get up the nerve to drive into the heart of Alberta, or maybe onward onto 15th Street. But Wednesday, I confronted the area that is most personal for me. And I didn't like what I saw.

The link below is what I think is the video I watched of Crescent Ridge Road earlier. Being on dialup, I can't easily and quickly check it to make sure.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=vide...

Or I should say it was before the tornado.

Last week it was pretty much wiped from the earth.

It is impossible to overstate the violence of the storm.


A fourteen-year-old boy was sucked out of his apartment by the tornado.


http://cw.ua.edu/2011/05/01/in-rosedale-wh... /

That's from the student newspaper at UA, which has been putting the commercial papers to shame, with their coverage of the disaster.

And the disaster is epic and ongoing.

NBC-Universal had their whole A-Team here for a few days after the storm. Brian Williams, Lester Holt, Jim Cantore, etc. Then Osama bin Laden got killed, and now it's like it never happened. Well it did happen. It's still a major event, even if it's no longer a "story."

And I don't mean to make it all about Tuscaloosa. Countless communities in Alabama and Mississippi have been devastated.

But I couldn't believe what I saw Thursday when I drove around the back roads and alleys of the area.

Very large slices of Tuscaloosa have been erased from the map. Totally wiped out. Nothing there.

And I know they are here to help, and we couldn't get by without them, but still, it is very unsettling to see so many military vehicles everywhere you look, especially since it looks like we were hit with a nuclear weapon.

It's surreal and dystopian.

I was a little kid back in 1974, I think, when what we considered to be a major tornado hit Tuscaloosa. If I recall correctly, one person was killed in that storm. That very unlucky person was a maid in a motel called the Scottish Inn, I think.

On that scale, this storm was 41 times worse, so far. In terms of infrastructure, it's probably more like 400 or 4000 times worse. I'm not kidding.

And we are going to need the help of the federal government.

It's probably not appropriate to talk about this kind of stuff at this time. And I know that Alabama routinely votes 60% republican. But just so you know, the city of Tuscaloosa leans liberal. Tuscaloosa went for Obama over McCain. And Mayor Walt Maddox used to work for the state teacher's union, so he probably isn't a Republican.

I'm saddened that the wind suddenly sucked out all the energy from his progressive plans, and now his effort will be directed toward digging us out of this hole. At least we got the amphitheater built, and it survived.

I guess I'll let you all go now. So sorry to ramble on like that. I intended to post the excerpt from the CW, and be done. But I'm just so wound up with anxiety. It's really a mess down here.

Hissyspit was on top of the situation before I was even aware of the impending doom.

I was without electricity from about five a.m. on Wednesday, until about seven p.m. Friday night, so I missed out on reading in real-time the fine DU coverage and concern of the event.

But I've gone back and read a lot of it. (If you ever want to read "archival" threads from DU's homepage, I think the easiest way is to click on page "2," then experiment with replacing the "2" in the URL at the top of your browser.)

I live in the Tuscaloosa area, though slightly outside the city limits. That means I can't vote for mayor, but if I could I would vote for Walt Maddox any day.

I was worried about some friends in the Holt neighborhood, because damage was said to be pretty high there. I couldn't get a hold of them on the phone. Their land-line is with Comcast. The Comcast system told me that their voice mail was full and to please hang up. I thought it was very odd that when I hesitated to hang up for about two seconds, the automated voice said to me "You're still there? GOOD BYE!" That's just weird, isn't it?

I tried to drive out there to check on my friends, the state troopers wouldn't let me into that area of town, and they made me turn around. I didn't like that at the time, but in retrospect, it makes a lot more sense than the Comcast thing. They don't need a lot of traffic clogging up the roads when the rescue vehicles are trying to perform their important work.

I have since heard from the friends in question, and they are all okay, though they had a really close call. The monster tornado literally missed their homes by a few feet. They had some roof damage. That's a good thing, considering the situation.

Only a few identities of the fatalities have been made public so far, and they are predominantly students. Mostly from the University Of Alabama, but also from Stillman College, an historically black college.

I haven't personally witnessed the brunt of the destruction yet, only because the authorities won't let outsiders venture into the hardest-hit areas.

I wanted to go see President Obama Friday morning, but that wasn't feasible, even though he was just up the road a few miles. And a few feet from the friends I mentioned.

President Obama visited Holt Elementary School. That's the school that I attended when it was known as Boteler Junior High.

Personally, I'm pretty much unscathed by the storm. But our community is devastated.

Brian Williams came to town, and my electricity came on just in time for me to see his special program Friday night. That was the closest view that I've gotten yet of what happened. And it was scary and riveting.

And Tuscaloosa isn't alone. It isn't just Tuscaloosa. Also the Birmingham suburb of Pleasant Grove. And the tiny towns of Smithville, MS and Phil Campbell, AL, and numerous other little communities.

It's some scary stuff. All over.

Most twisters are much smaller than this one was. And they usually hop and skip and jump around.

But this one was a half-mile to a mile wide and stayed on the ground for well over a hundred miles. It was a freak of nature.

BTW, I found out late today that the folks that restored my electricity were from the Pike Electric company, based out of Mt. Airy, North Carolina. I want to say thanks to them. And I can only hope they say hello to Andy Griffith for me.

Thanks for the love.

Tuscaloosa is injured, but we'll get better.

But rather, right and "left."

And I put "left" in quotes for very good reason.

There is scarce little force in America today advocating the leftist perspective.

The Tea Party people lust in their loins for the "founding fathers" that they imagine. Glenn Beck even, regularly, invokes the name of Thomas Paine. Is Beck even aware of Paine's call for a "guaranteed minimum income?"

And if he is, what does he think about it? Thomas Paine is one of Glenn Beck's favorite people, he says. Yet, he doesn't have an inkling of an idea about what the man stood for.

What if we could run a controlled experiment, using as our subjects two parallel United States Of America?

One test subject would operate under the rules set by Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity. That's USA1.

And the other America would be run by the standards of ME. That's USA2.

I think USA1 is very easy to imagine, because that's pretty much where we are today. Thirty-plus years of dog-eat-dog dismantling of anything resembling a real society.

Corporations would swallow each other up, getting bigger and bigger, having more and more money with which to buy our government. They would have so much sway, that our Supreme Court would grant them all human rights, while not bestowing any human responsibilities.

Sound familiar?

The meanest alpha-dogs of inherited wealth rule the pack.

It reminds me of the quintessential 1980's movie bully.



And the snowball would just roll on down that hill, getting ever bigger, until a handful, or maybe a fingerful, of people held total control of literally everything. And everyone.

It sounds almost like a dictatorship to me. Even dystopia.

On the other hand, if the mainstream, so-called "leftists" came to power, you could still get rich if you had some great idea for a product or service that people wanted. Actually, you have an even better chance of doing so, because the people that were already rich wouldn't have an unfair advantage.

Plus... and I really think this is a plus... all of the people that weren't "rich" would still have food, shelter, and medical care.

Am I such a hopeless idealist because I think everyone should have food, shelter and medical care, along with an outside chance of one day sipping champagne from a drunken starlet's high-heeled shoe?

This is a provision in Senate rules that allows a single senator to stop legislation, anonymously. Without accountability.

In my opinion, this is insane.

If you want to stop action on a certain bill, you should have to stand up and say why.

The United States Senate is one messed up organization.

There is no excuse whatsoever for the United States to delay impeaching Justice Scalia and removing him from the court.

He has openly asserted that women have no rights, and that women are not human beings, and have no human rights.



Has this imbecile ever read the United State Constitution?

Right there, in the open, the 14th amendment states, quite clearly:


Apparently Scalia doesn't consider women to be "persons."

There is no reason that the man should be allowed to serve on the nation's highest court. He is not of this century. He is not of humanity.

The Congress should gather their reserve and remove this despicable man from the court and send him into retirement, without pension or admiration.

Why do we constantly have to tell ourselves that we are the best, baddest country in the world?

Can't we just get along, instead?

Maybe dead in waiting, but still dead nonetheless.

They're saying it will be fixed in August. But hasn't BP been overly optimistic all this time. What if the gusher goes until Christmas? Or what if it goes until all the oil has been expelled from that well? (Which I think is the most likely option.) Years of that shit spewing into the gulf.

That's going to kill everything from manta-ray to microbe. This is serious stuff.

I'm in serious despair about the goddamn food chain. What is going to happen?

And don't think you're not in danger because you live so far from those goddamn Jesusland idiots. The currents are already carrying all that poison around the tip of Florida, and it's going to up the eastern seaboard, to North Carolina, and maybe all the way to Canada, killing sea-life all the way.

I think this is the most serious ecological catastrophe since humans have been alive.

Talk me down, if you can. But I'm just beyond depressed about this. I'm beginning to take that 2012 shit seriously.

Long-ago replaced with soul-less concrete and steel condo high-rises.

The destruction of so many livelihoods and lives saddens me profoundly. The livelihoods of people, and the lives of so many precious wild creatures.

It's a disaster of biblical proportions. And it's not even reached a climax yet. I'm sad. This is a disaster that will continue to grow, and it was all caused by the relentless pursuit of the dollar -- and pound.

Did anyone see Kevin Jackson, the African-American "tea party" guy on the O'Reilly Factor last night? I just watched part of the show, fleeing an onslaught of get-rich infomercials and ads for various sexual products.

The purpose of Mr. Jackson's appearance was to make it crystal-clear to Mr. O'Reilly's viewers that Democratic critics are the real racists, and that the tea party gatherings are multi-cultural shindigs of the utmost propriety... just regular folks, blind to skin color, that are concerned for the future of our great nation.

I smelled a rat.

"Kevin Jackson" has got to be a really common name. But O'Reilly had said that Mr. Jackson was from St. Louis, so that gave me a starting point.

I searched Google, and was helpfully directed to linkedin.com. The third person listed on the resulting page was listed as being from St. Louis.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Kevin/Jack... /

It said that he's a senior sales director at Hackett Technology Services Group.

Then I found a yahoo profile that seems to confirm that we're talking about the same guy.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/jaxonstl007

That profile contains the quote:


So I went looking for his employer's website.

http://www.thehackettgroup.com

Their "about" page describes their corporate mission as the following:


And they have right there on their "about" page an image of the logos of some of their clients. I've copied it to photobucket, in case it gets deleted.



Also, Kevin Jackson has a book out called "The Big Black Lie." The product description on Amazon calls him the "black Glenn Beck." I hope his mother is proud.

http://www.amazon.com/BIG-Black-Lie-Learne...

So it couldn't be any more clear. The whole Tea Party thing was created, or at least has been co-opted by, the very corporate entities that are doing all they can to enslave Main Street America.

We simply must get this information out to the mom and pop Tea Party people that have no idea how they're being taken in, and how they are being made fools of.

It was a historic day, as the President signed health-care reform into law. And I'm pleased, overall, with the results. I'm very happy that health-insurance rescissions and "pre-existing conditions" will become things of the past. Elated in fact.

I'm not so happy about the government mandating that private citizens buy a product or service (I'm not sure which category insurance would be classified as) from a private, for-profit corporation.

To be clear, I hope the legislation stands. There is more good to be gained from it, than evil to be endured, and hopefully the evil parts can be eliminated by an administration and congressional majority with newly-gained traction.

My mind is twisted up in a knot as I contemplate how the courts will rule on the lawsuits being filed by state AG's.

Regarding the falsely-labeled "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court, I'm sure that John Roberts, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and maybe Anthony Kennedy, are in a state of apoplexy at the very thought of poor Americans being more able to obtain needed medical coverage. "It's just un-American" for such a thing to happen, I'm sure they are thinking.

At the same time, I'm sure the undies of those same justices are bulging at the seams at the idea that billions upon billions of hard-earned dollars will be ripped out of the pockets of ordinary Americans and delivered unto the cottony-soft palms of the "private sector," represented by the pampered, overfed executives that are the very embodiment of the "America" that they all love so much.

I hope the legislation stands, until it can be improved. But I think the most interesting thing to watch going forward may be which way the largely right-wing judiciary rules on the matter. Will they rule in favor of their mantra of "states' rights," or will they cave to their bizarre and perverted infatuation with corporate power? I think that's the most interesting question.

Have you noticed how many of the ads that are run on most of the channels, are either promising to improve you sex life in some way, or to make you rich?

They are playing a game. They can't tell you how to get rich, though if money is all that matters to you, you could do worse than emulating them.

They can help your sex life, I guess. For $25 a month in recurring credit-card charges, until you ask them to stop, or more likely until you call the cops, they send you a box of capsules containing various substances that may or may not help you sexually, that you could have bought much cheaper from the health store at the mall. Or if you want to spend a lot of people's idea of a week's salary on a dildo, you can turn to shop erotic.

Late-night infomercials are all about cheating people out of their money.

And that's what America has become, writ large, too.

Our economy is about people trying to cheat other people out of their money.

That's what our economy is based on now.

Whether it's the insurance companies and their policies, or the telemarketers, or the infomercials, or the bankers, or the ceo's of Enron and Aetna.

It's all about cheating people. That's what our economy is now.

Manufacturing, for a large part, has left the country. And where we do have manufacturing, the unions tend to be pretty weak.

Financial. I guess New York is still the king of Finance, though I don't know anything about that stuff. But Wall Street has been completely exposed as the cesspool of greed that it is. Still, that sector will continue over the years to grow and thrive. Unfortunately, all that growth will be centralized. That will just mean continued concentration of wealth.

Our system, not originally, but now, is set up to provide complete ownership of ourselves to the most brutal and heartless, those that have a killer instinct, but no moral compass. The class bully. The guy that tore wings off a fly, just because it was "fun." The guy who blew frogs up with firecrackers.

Those are the people we must resist.