New United States

Don't like the fact that you live in a city with actual people in it and that legislative priorities you favor that benefit those areas with people in it are typically thwarted or largely mangled by lawmakers from states that don't have people in them? You know, like when the Senate health care bill was negotiated by the Gang of Six that represented 2.75% of the nation's population?

One man agrees with you: Neil Freeman. As such, he's devised a simple solution to fix the over-representation of small states and under-representation of large states in elections and legislative matters: redraw all the states!

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Each new state contains about 5,617,000 people, preserves the electoral college system which we seem to like for some reason, redistricts states and power like congressional districts, and let's us keep that 50 number we all like.

The negatives are we lose all those state names and barriers we like so much, "some county names are duplicated in new states", and new state laws will have to be drafted.

See: simple. I personally would love to live in a state called Allegheny (FUCK WILLIAM PENN AND HIS WOODS!), Okefenokee, or The Delta. But I also realize this is like looking at a map of Narnia and wishing you were BFF with Mr. Tumnus. I'll stop fantasizing about ways in which this country might work better and get back to the criplling reality of what actually is.

Seriously, two Dakotas?

Coleman is the nation's new largest homebuilder

It's finally happened. Americans reduced en masse to living in tents? No, the New York Times finally got around to doing a story on people affected by the economy who weren't fired bankers, gold digging girlfriends hitting the hard times, millionaires having to pay for their own lunch, or hedge fund managers who were rally regretting leasing that second Humvee for the use of their maid staff.

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.

Herbert Hoover has been dead for nearly 50 years and we still have to name our shanty cities after him? Dear God, hasn't he suffered enough? This one wasn't even his fault. At least the good people of Seattle have named their tent city Nickelsville in an attempt to blame the local mayor for a national crisis. We need a name more reflective of the times. Bushvilles? Cassanotowns? Grammburghs? Paulsenhausen? Surely we cannot keep tying Hoover to this.

Maybe we should sell the naming rights to corporations, get enough money to pay for running water. AIG presents Shame City. Cititentcity. It's best we get these people up and funded, they are building and founding the new cities we'll all be living in. We'll want the infrastructure and hobo hierarchy figured out by the time we get there. There aren't enough state fairgrounds for all of us.

It must make those tent dwellers warm inside that the debate over money to corporations is over how large and how soon, the debate over money to people affected by the crisis and programs that help those people are over whether the money is needed at all. Hopefully that warmth is enough to sustain them on cold nights.

Guantanam-over

Obama Plans Guantanamo Close, US Trials

President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

You hear that America? The soft liberal pussification of America is at hand. No more will the terrorists fear the harsh imprisonment on our own prison island. We're releasing all the scofflaws and loosing all the innocent people who we captured and have become terrorists because of our false imprisonment and harsh conditions onto Main Street, USA to disrupt Boscov's sales, Homecoming dances, and Oklahoma football. The remaining real terrorists will be used to knock down the pillars of our democracy with open trials and humane treatment. Also, Rush Limbaugh is going to have a fuckload of "Club Guantanamo" merchandise that just isn't going to make any sense.

What will it all be replaced by? Therapy. Detainment at a two star Bahamas resort. Then there's the pillow fight room. That's where government interrogators ask you questions about terrorist activities followed by hard pillow strikes. You don't get a pillow and it kind of hurts, but you don't feel all that freedom leaking out the Statue of Liberty's ass. Plus you'll give up the info, because while it doesn't really hurt it's keeping you from the 6:00 stage show at the resort. It's not a good show and the resort is kind of shitty, but it's better than Bahrain. You don't even want to know what Obama is doing will all the waterboarding tables. They told Cheney....and he put his fist through a staffer.