World's Most Worthless Leech

This weekend, we took the train back from a much-needed vacation in NY. Normally, this is a pleasant experience. Not this weekend.

After Philly, where our seat-partner got off the train, a shortish woman who reeked of body odor and tobacco smoke asked if the seat next to us was open. Naively telling the truth, we said yes. She then asked for help to hoist her bag into the overhead. Since we had to stand up to let her into the seat, we hoisted said bag. As soon as she was seated, the woman behind her passed a baby to her; the worthless leech thanked the other woman for her help.

The baby, who couldn't have been much older than 1, began crying, and the Leech bounced the kid on her lap to comfort him. As soon as he stopped bawling, Leech asked us if you can buy drinks on the train. We almost said, Yeah, ring the call light and the stewardess will bring you a fkn martini, but instead informed her that there was a snack bar two cars forward. She immediately asked, "Could you go get me a diet Coke and also a Coke for my son?"

Hell no! Well, actually we smiled meekly and said, "No, sorry," but we were screaming inside. After a few minutes Leech got up and took the kid to the snack bar. She came back with kid in tow and some poor sap balancing his snack tray alongside hers; she settled back into her seat and he passed the snack tray and then a fistful of napkins to her before wishing her a happy vacation and walking on down the aisle.

As the kid contented himself by making a mess with his potato chips, she asked if there was a public phone to use on the train. What, don't you see the bright red phone booth at the end of the train car? "You'd have to ask the conductor," we told her. But then our phone rang. Shit. Cover blown. Thankfully, the conductor came asking for the Leech's ticket just then. She said it was in her luggage, which she had "her friend" stow at the front end of the car; couldn't he just go get it out of the front pocket of the big brown suitcase. He told her she'd have to get it for him by the time he came back to her seat or get off the train. Oh, that we'd be so lucky to see her thrown off the train. So she stood up to get the ticket.

When she came back, the first thing out of her leech-mouth was, "Can I borrow your phone? Do you have some minutes, because I need to call my friend to pick me up at the station?" Well, having so far been as aloof as possible, we folded and handed her the phone. She proceeded to call about 10 different people over the next half hour. Well, a couple of those calls were because she got cut off when the train went through the tunnel, so maybe more like 8 different people.

By the time we got our phone back from her, greasy and tobacco scented, the train was pulling away from the last stop before DC and a few seats had opened up, so we brushed off the rugrat's potato chip crumbs and seized the opportunity to get the fk away. As the train pulled into Union Station, though, we overheard the Leech asking some unsuspecting bystander if he could help her with her bag. "Actually," she added after he offered to help, "there are two bags, a car seat, and a stroller, all in the next car. Let me show you." You can hear the sound of her sucking his very blood from here.

Wal-Mart Kills Man For Shoplifting

A man in a Texas Wal-Mart was said to be shoplifting some diapers. So the security guards--who are civilians, by the way--chased him into the parking lot, where they wrestled him to the ground. As one security technician held his knee on the back of the accused neck and another stood on his back, the accused began to scream in pain as the asphalt burned his body.

At this point, we imagine the security people bitching about how criminals always try and hide behind their "rights" and muttering, "Criminals are like dogs--ain't got no rights but we give 'em."

Some passersby started yelling at the security goons to let the guy up off the ground. They did not. Some started shouting, "Call an ambulance! He isn't breathing!" The security experts said no one was calling an ambulance. The accused was no longer moving or breathing and someone noticed his fingers were turning an ugly blue-gray, so they called 911. When EMS arrived, they assured Wal-Mart that this master carpenter and father of a 2-month old son will never shoplift again.

To the security goons: If Wal-Mart doesn't promote you, the Bush administration will gladly give you any number of jobs.

Check out details and discussion at Daily Kos.

Cindy Sheehan Wants Answers

Casey Sheehan was killed last year in Iraq. And now his mother Cindy wants President Bush to answer some basic questions about why he had to die. Seems fair. So she is holding vigil along the road to Bush's Crawford Ranch, where he is vacationing this month, in hopes that he will have to decency to talk to her, face to face.

Cindy, we are with you in spirit. But the realist in us thinks Bush will explain himself to the citizens of this nation when hell freezes over. Hell, he swaggered, ahem, walked into office even though most of us voted for the other guy, so he basically thinks that the political opinions of at least 50 million of us are worthless, so we can assure you that your claim to an explanation from him doesn't even register in his mind.

Old-School Southern Bigotry

Last month, Georgia Equality put up a bunch of billboards all over the Atlanta suburbs featuring neighborly looking teachers, firefighters, and others with obvious slogans: "I teach your children." "I fire your fires." "We are your neighbors." In phase two of the ad campaign, they revealed another line on the billboards: "...And we are gay."

That got the Atlanta suburbanites all riled up. Both the Forsyth County residents, a county north of Atlanta infamous for its rabid KKK members--word on the street is, if you's black, you have no business in Forsyth County after dark, so you best be movin' on before sumthin' happens to ya--and also the purportedly more modern, soccer mom-infested Gwinnett County. To wit, a Gwinnett resident who refused to give his own name--perhaps it was Mr. Akai--had this to say about the billboards:

“It’s just another trick by fucking faggots to recruit,” he said. “I would rather my house burn down than have a fag save it.”

A New South indeed.

At the door to American democracy, God is the bouncer.

The New Republic celebrates Frist's support of stem-cell research. The editors are fully aware that Frist came out in support of stem-cell research to compensate for coming out in support of quackery back when Terry Schiavo was in the headlines. But they point out that pandering to reason is better than pandering to quackery any day, and we agree.

They also have some great insight into the Christian Wrong. The money quote:

Politically speaking, the Christian right is a kind of sacralized protection racket: nice little presidential campaign you have, pity if something should happen to it.

There's Someting in the Water

Dahlia Lithwick has some theories about what makes conservative Supreme Court Justices mellow into moderate- to liberal-minded jurists with age. (Your Honors O'Connor and Kennedy, we are looking at you.) Since some hardasses do not mellow or open their minds or outgrow their bigotry or become even a little tolerant (ahem, Your Honors Thomas and Scalia), we doubt that there is really a phenomenon of mellowing going on over at the Supreme Court, but this sounds about as good as any theory you're likely to come up with:

Scalia's "acerbic comments on his colleagues' work," and his general tendency to run with constitutional scissors, ultimately drove both O'Connor and Kennedy to form alliances with the court's liberals.

As we've said before, Scalia is our favorite judge, but we can see how his brute force could drive justices of lesser mettle into the awkward, dorky, but benign embraces of Souter and Breyer.

Al Gore Invents TV

Current TV goes live today. Has anyone seen it?