Jim Bob Darnell was the prosecutor in a very interesting case, you can listen to it or read more about it at NPR.

Lubbuck County, Texas. Black man, Jerry Wayne Johnson rapes a girl and smokes the entire time. Police take a photo of asthmatic, non-smoking, alibi having, black man, Timothy Cole, near the scene of the crime and ask girl if it’s him. She says, yes, assuming the police have some evidence. They don’t. He’s convicted by a jury of his peers in Texas, except they’re all white, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Jerry Wayne Johnson (guilty) was in jail and heard Timothy Cole (innocent) crying and decided to wait out the statute of limitations and then confess. But when Jerry Wayne Johnson (guilty) did confess, nobody would listen to him.

After Cole was convicted, the real rapist quietly waited for the statute of limitations to run out. Then, in 1995, Johnson wrote a letter to the district court in Lubbock in which he confessed to raping Mallin. He got no reply. So he wrote another letter asking for an attorney so that he could legally confess. Again, he was ignored.

Johnson eventually wrote to the former Lubbock district attorney who prosecuted the case, Jim Bob Darnell, and asked for his help. There was only silence in reply.

Since then, Timothy Cole (innocent) died in jail from an asthma attack because he couldn’t get emergency attention in time. After 14 years in prison. DNA evidence has proven his innocence and Jerry Wayne Johnson’s guilt.

I think Jim Bob Darnell should come forward and answer these questions for us.

1. Why did he try a man he had no evidence against, and to the contrary the man had an alibi with multiple witnesses?
2. Why was it so difficult, nearly impossible, for Jerry Wayne Johnson (guilty) to confess?
3. Why did he personally ignore Jerry Wayne Johnson’s (guilty) letter of confession?
4. Why would no judge in Lubbock grant them a hearing to assert Timothy Cole’s innocence?
5. Why is Lubbock law enforcement refusing to testify in the trial to assert Timothy Cole’s innocence even though the victim will?
6. Why is he not getting involved to at least partially right this wrong he was so much a part of?

But a Big Mac meal, not supersized or anything, and a 99 cent cheeseburger came to almost 8 dollars? Wha-huh?

The drink alone was like a $1.60. And the thing is, I had just gone to the grocery store and bought two twelve packs of Diet Pepsi for $3 each. And I had three two-liters of Diet Pepsi still in the back of my car because they had a buy two get three free sale a couple of weeks ago. Did I wipe out all my savings on this one Diet Coke at McDonald’s? It honestly depressed me a little. Being depressed in a depression, bummer.

Not only was it expensive, it was gross. I can’t believe I used to eat that. I mean seriously, yuck.

The good news is I bought a head of lettuce at the grocery store for under a dollar. I confess, I had been buying that pre-made salad. I finally realized it wasn’t that convenient, and worse, it seemed to go bad a day after you opened it. I cut a wedge off the head of lettuce to eat tonight, and when I cut into it, this aroma of fresh goodness was produced. It was amazing. And the texture of the lettuce was crisp and juicy.

Now, people make fun of me, but I’m very sensitive to these things. The quality of the aroma, texture, and flavor of this lettuce was truly amazing compared to the bagged salad. It’s a little thing, but a little thing that made a very hectic day much better!

I found myself holding back tears the entire time. It wasn’t really about the article, although it was in some ways, but about this incredible relief of getting that horrible George W. Bush out of office.

With the tears also came anger. Anger that someone could cause so much trouble for our country. Anger that someone could take away so many of our civil liberties. And even anger for the clear hatred Republicans have for gays and other minorities.

I feel like for the past 8 years someone has been hurting me in some way, not just as a gay man, but as a human being. Barack Obama signals the end of that. And it’s so wonderful, but it makes me realize how angry I am. I can finally look at what happened and really feel it, because I know it’s going to stop. And I see how horrible it was, and that brings out a lot of anger. I realize that anger has been sort of seeping out of me subconsciously. Now it’s conscious.

Here’s why I don’t feel sorry for the investors in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.

Many of them had all or a significant portion of their money invested with him. Any financial advisor and most regular people can tell you this is just plain stupid. These people are paying a stupidity tax. It’s sad, but it’s what happens when you ignore common knowledge and common sense.

Now these people are complaining that government didn’t protect them. Um, yeah, that’s called capitalism. When you’re a business and don’t plan for a rainy day or pay attention to market trends, you go out of business. When you invest all your money in one fund that has unbelievably high returns and that fund crashes, you lose your money. When you buy a house in a market that’s unbelievably high, and you get a mortgage you can’t afford, you lose your house. That’s capitalism. Stupid people make stupid decisions and the less stupid people get to benefit from it.

I don’t want any of these people rescued, because I was one of the less stupid ones. So listen up, get out of my business, hand over your money, and get out of my house. All your stuff is mine, because you are dumb, and I am less dumb. Thank you.

It may sound cold, and I am being dramatic, but again: that’s capitalism. And remember, if you’re looking for someone to blame, look in the mirror.

On NPR I heard the President might give them money out of the Wall Street bailout fund. He’s never been one for listening to the will of the people, or the congress, or anyone. But who cares, that money’s basically already been lost anyway, it doesn’t really matter who gets it.

A funny thing that came out of this is that the automakers are promising to change their product mix “substantially” and move toward more fuel efficient vehicles. Now if we’re going to give you money we want you doing whatever’s going to make the most money, see? And if changing to more fuel efficient vehicles was the thing that would make the most money why weren’t you already doing it?

It just proves it’s a no win situation. Either the automakers didn’t make the best choice or they didn’t know the best choice to make.

Also, while union politics are difficult to understand, part of the reason this failed apparently was that the Senate was asking for the workers to work for “parity pay” with non-labor auto makers. Along with salary limits for all employees of $100,000 or so (this is my personal thought), this seems totally reasonable.

So I’m watching The Daily Show today and I watch the interview with John Stewart and Mike Huckabee. I watch what I believe is the whole interview, pause the TiVo, write the last blog post, and then do a whole bunch of other stuff. This whole time the TiVo is paused waiting for me to return.

It’s dinner time, I feed Kody, make some food for myself, and sit down and un-pause the TiVo to hear, “We’ll be right back with more Mike Huckabee.” Uh-oh. I just know something is going to happen. Skip-skip-skip through the commercial and lo and behold, they turn the discussion to gay marriage. Well, I don’t have to tell you what happens.

I want to make some things clear:

1. While John pushed you pretty hard Mike, he gave in to not calling people against gay marriage homophobes when you said they were not. Well, the people against gay marriage are homophobes and so are you.

2. We are going to win. You know that. And when we do we are going to shove it in your face so hard you are never going to forget it. This is the real deal.

3. We’re at the point where gay people, and especially me, are keeping score. And I guarantee we will make you pay for this. We will remember forever. And while we may mellow a little when this is all over and you “change your mind” and say gay marriage is good, we will never let you forget this day. Whenever you speak, we’ll be there. Whenever you pretend to care about people, we’ll be there. It’s over for you. Not yet, but soon.

Last week John was talking about the auto industry bailouts and at the end of his rant said, “Just give them the money!” Like Congress was being so difficult by not handing out more money after the Wall Street bailouts have gone so poorly. It was just weird.

Also last week he had Arianna Huffington on as a guest. She was talking about how people should blog about what they were passionate about. He made a comment about how there would be tons of useless blogs then. She responded that she had a blog about cheese and he sort of got confused about whether she was joking or not (she wasn’t) and kind of started making fun of her. The annoying thing was that he clearly didn’t understand the concept of blogs and rather that let her talk, he kept interrupting her. Near the end of the interview he started complaining about anonymity on the internet. She said some of that anonymity was good because she had an accent and could communicate better online. He didn’t understand that if you have a blog your blog’s history is in one place, so while people may not know your name, your blog is not “anonymous”. She could have told him that if he would have let her talk.

Finally last night, he had Mike Huckabee on as a guest. Mike has written a book with the basic premise that if people would be nicer to each other, we could have smaller government. This idea, at least, is very reasonable and provably true. I don’t know if the rest of his book is crap, but I like the idea. John kept confusing less government with no government. He kept pointing at that at least some government was necessary. But Mike wasn’t arguing against that either in person or from what he said, in his book. At one point John said something like, “But you say in your book you’re for less government but we need some government.” He wasn’t even making sense.

Next up: But Mike Huckabee is the real douchebag.

There are many companies not going out of business right now, which just proves those that are going out of business deserve to be. The world will be a better place without them. Capitalism depends on them going out of business, so some really smart people who can run a business are able to replace them.

Having said that, I’m OK with taking a fraction of the bail out money they are requesting and offering the hard working employees of these companies some sort of severance and or retraining if necessary and productive. But to pay upper managers over $250,000 a year or more to keep running a bad business? Why would anyone do that? It’s wrong.

I’ll ask a favor of you. If you belong to a church, and give money to that church, please find out what your church’s position on gay marriage is. If your church does not support gay marriage, please stop giving them money. You may say that this is a bit drastic, but I ask would you donate to a cause that prevented muslims or blacks from getting married? You are doing basically the same thing by giving money to your church. Stop it.

Now some people say, civil unions should be enough. (Which we don’t have, so either way, it’s not enough.) If you’re one of these people you also say that marriage is a religious institution that needs to be protected. Well, if it’s a religious institution then it shouldn’t be a government institution because of separation of church and state. And if you are one of these people I expect you to be fighting hard to have marriage removed from the laws, and all terminology replaced with “civil union” and to have that concept be the default for straights and equal for gays. People could then get an additional religious designation of their relationship which would only have religious meaning. Why would I expect this? Because your whole stance is that you want equality for us and you also want marriage to be protected. Removing marriage from the government is the only course of action that will get you what you say you want.

If you don’t select one of these two options, you’re just a bad person. You’re just another person who says, “I’ve got mine, you’ll maybe get yours someday, but I either don’t care that much or I just plain don’t want you to get it.”

Well, as much as it pains me to say it, I need you to care. I’m depending on you to care. Here’s where your actions affect my life, so what will it be?

Thank you.

But I am going to try, and probably fail, to explain what really bugs me about Elisabeth, and Fox News, and the majority of vocal Republicans, or whatever name you apply to that group. But you know who I mean.

Today on The View Elisabeth and the gang were talking about the latest Barack Obama and Pastor Jeremiah Wright stuff. Now there is definitely stuff to discuss here, but what Elisabeth does is find one thing wrong with Obama and then blows it out of proportion. There’s no “forgiveness” and Obama can’t do anything right. Now that Obama has basically ended his relationship with Wright, she feels he should have done it sooner. And she doesn’t find it acceptable that he spent 20 years at his church. According to Elisabeth, he should have never attended that church and he can never make up for that. And to top it off, she is incredibly acerbic when she speaks of it. She’s not concerned or curious, she’s angry and bitter. In reality, Obama has not done or said anything wrong. In fact, he’s said everything right, but that’s not good enough for Elisabeth.

The thing is, it’s so obviously fake. She isn’t really worried that Obama is a bad man, she just wants him to be bad and he’s going to be bad in her eyes no matter what he does. She wants him to be bad so her “team” will win. Winning is all that she cares about. It’s very immature, and she’s willing to do or say anything to make it happen.

Elisabeth claims that it’s so amazing that a woman and black man are running for President, but not so amazing that she won’t smear them with every non-logical method at her disposal.

I once took a class where we were taught to choose between “getting what we want” and “being right”. It appears that Elisabeth and the people like her are simultaneously not aware of this choice and unknowingly making the wrong choice. All they want is Republicans to win. But we’re in a war we can’t win, our economy is going south, our planet is getting warmer, and there are 500,000+ newly dead people in Iraq including some Americans. Elisabeth will keep fighting because even though she claims to be a Christian, she’d rather defend 500,000 deaths than admit that getting a blow job in the White House is just not that big of a deal.

It’s this attitude that has people claiming Obama is a secret Muslim, and all the other emails that still go around criticizing any Democrat. It’s childish. It’s tiring. I don’t know what to end with, I just needed to vent.

The comments, posted Friday on The Huffington Post Web site, set off a blast of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials…

About Obama:

At issue are comments he made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

It’s not the kind of thing people say all the time, but it’s certainly true and everyone knows it. It’s not a criticism of people, it’s an understanding of why they feel the way they feel sometimes.

About Clinton:

Clinton hit all those themes in lengthy comments to manufacturing workers in Indianapolis. “The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich,” she said.

Gag. So now we see what slimy behavior Hillary Clinton is capable of when she becomes desperate. I don’t like it. She’s willing to destroy the whole Democratic party if she doesn’t win.

However, I have an idea of what would make this whole situation right. The View should send Elisabeth Hasselbeck in person to spend a day or two with the leader and the members of this church. She can find out for us first hand if they’re racist or not. If they are, the Republicans win and Barack will be dealt a huge setback. If on the off chance the black members of this church are not racists, then Elisabeth will have helped find the truth, will have helped Barack Obama, and can be glad she brought the whole issue up in the first place. Thanks Elisabeth!

Of course, this won’t happen because nobody follows up anymore. They just spout accusations and move on like nothing happened. The View is as guilty of this as Fox News.

Posts in this series:

• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Nonsense
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Addendum
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Completion

Posts in this series:

• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Nonsense
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Addendum
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Completion

First, no. Clearly Hannity and Hasselbeck have never been part of a minority. This church is talking about bringing black people up to the level of equality. If white people were to say this, they would be talking about whites who are already privileged staying in power and keeping basic human rights away from other races. To make it clear, this church is not saying black people are better than white people. They’re committing to helping black people move toward true equality.

Now Hannity and Hasselbeck clearly could have figured this out if they spent 30 seconds thinking about it. Or could they? If they couldn’t figure it out, they’re both incredibly stupid, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think they are both just hateful evil people who would dare to call a black man fighting for equality in America a racist and at the same time try to make all black people feel guilty for caring about themselves. To me, this is just so evil I have a hard time coming up with words to describe it. Elisabeth Hasselbeck should be fired from The View. She can go work on Fox News where she can spread her message of hate to those who like that kind of thing.

Posts in this series:

• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Nonsense
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Addendum
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck Completion

Here are some recent things (last week) people have searched for on Google which have returned my site as a suggestion:

• iphone kody
• mac software chapagne
• kody mcnichol
• do people find natasha bedingfield big legged
• kody bridle
• michal branch the game of love
• 5 types of men player pushover professional parolee
• horse poop trails
• rasterbating

The thing about Digg, though, is that it’s easy to cheat. If you have enough “friends” (employees) you can get any story enough diggs to make it to the front page. Making it to the front page also means the story is added to the most popular rss feeds, which is how most people get their digg news. If you don’t have “friends” or another source of diggs it’s almost impossible to make the front page. Lately I’ve been noticing that comments around stories about certain companies seem, well… odd. And the comment voting is off the hook bizarre. Especially the first day the story hits the front page. (When all the friends have been told to show up.)

Here’s the key to getting better information. First, ignore comment diggs, that is, feel free to digg comments yourself, but instead of viewing comments by most diggs, select “sort by date (show all)”. This way you’ll see everything. Once the story hits the front page, the corporation has done only half their job. The other half is digging down negative comments. Stories can’t be dugg down, but comments can, and comments with negative diggs are often hidden depending on how you view comments. After a few days the comment diggs begin to match what you would think general opinions are, but at first they often match what the corporation mentioned would want them to be.

On some recent stories about Microsoft’s Zune 2, which is Microsoft’s version of the iPod, some of the comments were almost comically positive. These are actual coments, the first is actually the first comment posted:

I want one right nowwww.

here we go. this is the time when the iPod market share drops immensely. the iPod classic has nothing on the new v2 Zune.

Looks like a pretty excellent spec, without having to associate with all the iSheep. Sorry fanboys, but it’s competitive, DRM-Free, a sexy interface, beautiful screen and includes an FM tuner. Beats the iPod classic hands-down.

TOO MUCH GOOD NEWS “There’s additional video codec support as well: h.264 and MPEG4. You don’t have to convert all your stuff to WMV” “The 30GB Zune actually isn’t being eliminated, and will be offered at $199. Amazon already has it for $165-$185 now. “

Here are some of the real comments:

Aww look, they have one in the same baby shit green as the olive XP color theme. Any takers? Didn’t think so.

i don’t even think too many people even know what a zune is, but they know what an iPod is.

The women on The View were all total bitches to Perez. Let me help him out here.

First of all, the ladies ask how he can justify outing people. That the things he says might hurt their families. Well, ladies, we only grew up gay and had to deal with feeling left out of key parts of our culture through our formative years. But please, do tell us how gay people should treat other gay people who are in the closet. You must know better than we do how to act as gay people. I wonder how Whoopi and Sherry would feel if Obama slapped on some very effective white makeup because he had a deep self shame and started using his whiteness to be even more successful while furthering the hate of black people? I came out of the closet as soon as I could figure out how to with no help from society, an adult mentor, or a role model. Don’t tell gay people how to act. It’s not our fault for outing them, it’s all the bigots who make people afraid to come out. We’re just ripping of the band-aid fast so it hurts less.

Second, why do we all (yes all of us) call Elisabeth “Elisabitch”? Well, Elisabitch, when you go on The View every day supporting the use of torture, that makes you a bitch. When you get all buddy buddy with a president who used us in his election to create a fear of gay people and take us further away from having equal rights, that makes you a bitch. I think we should just drop the nickname Elisabitch and just go with bitch. It’s closer to the truth. If people called me Mattifestobitch but I got to have equal rights I’d be pretty happy with this deal. Take some accountability for your actions.

Third, Perez called some child actor fat? Any parent who puts their child, especially their fat child, in the public eye is the one to blame for this. Not Perez for stating the obvious. Believe me that fat child’s parents are laughing all the way to the bank. Do you really think those parents didn’t say to themselves, “Our child is so cute and roly-poly. We’ll make millions!” Stop blaming Perez for things other people are accountable for.

Daniel (who shall remain nameless) contacted hotmail about this and they had the gall to tell him to discuss the issue with AOL. Wha-huh? Daniel, who actually pays the yearly fee for additional services, had a reasonable request: if he receives emails from someone who is in his contacts list, assume it is not spam. Their answer: We don’t have the time or inclination to deal with you.

Microsoft’s products seem to get worse by the moment and other people’s products get better. I would never pressure Daniel to change his email address. However, I have started sending mail to his work email because it literally is every other mail message that gets returned.

I’ve talked to my Mom about eventually moving her to gmail or aol mail, both of which are totally free and support either POP or IMAP or both and therefore can be used with any email program on Windows (yuck), Linux, Mac, or iPhone. Hotmail has recently gone through a redesign trying to make itself look and act more like gmail so why not just go straight to the source? Even Michal has started using his gmail account more often because hotmail will not work with the iPhone no matter how much you pay.

Edit: This problem is widespread, follow this link to see a google search for cases.