Religious Values

From Yahoo Sports:

Roethlisberger isn’t living with fiancee because of religious beliefs

 

Roethlisberger and Harlan became engaged around Christmas, but the quarterback refused to talk about the subject during the Steelers' run to the Super Bowl.

Another revelation in the lengthy interview was that Roethlisberger won't live with Harlan until the wedding because of their religious beliefs. She still lives at home with her parents in nearby Newcastle.

Oh, good for you. Ben! Because we all know that the Bible forbids you to have sex with a woman to whom you are not married. Unless you're really drunk. And you follow her into the ladies' room. That's apparently OK.  Nice values, there, Ben!

Caturdayphin

Election Fraud in Wisconsin

via HuffPo:

Wisconsin Election Surprise: David Prosser Gains 7,500 Votes After 'Human Error' In Waukesha County

-- In a dramatic turn of events on Thursday, the Waukesha County clerk announced that the vote total announced for Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court race had been mistaken -- and that the corrected numbers changed the outcome of the entire election. 

So basically, Scott Walker's favorite judge lost his re-election bid. Not too terribly surprising, given Walker's  unpopularity. But wait! Suddenly this county clerk found a whole big bunch of votes that she had sorta lost somehow. And surprise! They're mostly for Walker's guy!

There were 3,456 missing votes for Democratic-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg and 11,059 for incumbent GOP-backed Justice David Prosser. Kloppenburg has previously been beating Prosser by just 200 votes of the roughly 1.5 million cast statewide. The new total puts Prosser on a significant path to victory, about 7,500 votes ahead of Kloppenburg.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced the news in a press conference at 5:30 p.m. local time, sounding nervous and, at times, on the verge of tears. She insisted that there was no foul play in the results and blamed the mess on her own "human error."

Is anyone buying this? What do we know about this Kathy Nickolaus? Personally, I know absolutely nothing about her, but the Google  found this:

via AP:

Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the assembly Republican Caucus. She worked for 13 years as a data analyst and computer specialist for the caucus.

She resigned from her state job in 2002 just before launching her county clerk campaign.

So, sure, why shouldn't we trust her? She was involved in illegal activity while working for the Republican caucus? That just screams impartial & trustworthy to me! 

And her stellar record overseeing elections just speaks for itself:

An audit of Nickolaus' handling of the 2010 election found that she needed to take steps to improve security and backup procedures, like stop sharing passwords. The audit was requested after the county's director of administration said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have county experts review her systems and confirm backups were in place.

Then there's this from  Daily Kos:

Nickolaus says repeatedly that she imported the data into Access, but through a process of "human error", she "forgot to save".  Then come the tears, repeatedly, throughout her presser.
Here's the problem.  Microsoft Access (any version) doesn't ask you to save. When you enter data into a table, it automatically updates the underlying database.  If you close the database accidentally, the data you entered (or imported, in the case of Nickolaus) remains.  If you stop to take a phone call from your buddy the governor (for example), your data will still automatically save.

So I decided to make a little voting database in Microsoft Access 2010 and 2007, to test her story.

I entered 10,000 votes for Prosser, and closed the database.  No save prompt appeared.  I came back in, and there were the 10,000 votes!  Thanks Bill Gates!  I entered 20,000 votes for Prosser, and did a hard shutdown of my computer.  When I booted back up and reopened the file, the 20,000 votes were there!  Thanks again Bill Gates!
Bottom line: Nickolaus is clearly lying.  Not only did she insist on having her own private system based on some of the most unsecure, pedestrian computing technology available (Seriously?  Access and Excel controlling such an important part of our democracy?), but she apparently assumes that nobody else has ever used Microsoft Access.

So a dishonest election official is apparently trying to commit a pretty blatant election fraud on behalf of a right-wing scumbag candidate. Why not? It worked in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. There is nothing these people will not do to hold on to power.

Am I the Only One who Finds This Sorta Creepy?

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the TV and this ad was running. I thought maybe I was still asleep having some bizarre nightmare. But no, it's real. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this creeps me out.

BP is Shameless

From Yahoo News:

In its first sustainability report since the Deepwater Horizon explosion triggered the spill last year, BP claims that it leaked more oil in 2006 and 2008 than it did in 2010. 

How is this possible, since 2010 included the worst oil spill ever in the history of everything?

. . . on the first page of the report, the company lists the amount of oil, CO2 and methane it released into the environment in 2010. However, on closer inspection it turns out that those figures don't include the oil leaked in last summer's Gulf spill. The reason? According to a message from the company in the report's fine print, "no accurate determination" of the extent of the disaster has been made to date. The survey goes on to note that the company decided to omit that embarrassing incident in the Gulf "due to our reluctance to report data that has such a high degree of uncertainty." 

 So they're not going to count the Gulf spill because the amount spilled is too much to count?

Your honor, my client can't be charged with murder since it is impossible to count the number of stab wounds inflicted on the victim.

 But honey, you can't accuse me of cheating! Not until there's an accurate count of how many women I've slept with!

Oh, and also there's this:

via AP:

BP employee lost a laptop containing personal data belonging to thousands of  residents who filed claims for compensation after the Gulf oil spill, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
The data included a spreadsheet of claimants' names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses. But Thomas said the company doesn't have any evidence that claimants' personal information has been misused.
Asked why nearly a month elapsed before BP notified residents about the missing laptop, Thomas said, "We were doing our due diligence and investigating."

But they did finally contact the people whose data was on the missing computer. People like Matt O'Brien.

Matt O'Brien, part owner of Tiger Pass Seafood, a shrimp dock in Venice, La., said he had filed a claim with BP before the GCCF took over processing claims in August. A call from an AP reporter on Tuesday was the first he had heard that his personal information may have been among the data compromised.

Okay, maybe not him, but they notified everyone else, I'm sure.

Beau Weber, a fishing guide in Lafitte, La., also had filed a claim with BP prior to Aug. 23, and he had even received several monthly payments from BP. He said he hadn't received a letter from BP about the missing laptop.

Shameless. Utterly shameless. And they have the balls to issue this statement:

BP spokesman Curtis Thomas said the oil giant on Monday mailed out letters to roughly 13,000 people whose data was stored on the computer, notifying them about the potential data security breach and offering to pay for their credit to be monitored.
"We're committed to the people of the Gulf Coast states affected by the Deepwater Horizon accident and spill, and we deeply regret that this occurred," he said.

If this is what committed looks like, count me out.