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Mother Davis has noted the shrinking of mainstream journalistic businesses, and suggested that small, independent news media has an increased responsibility for spreading information that the diminishing field of American journalism has not touched.

There are plenty of stories out there to be told. Yesterday, That’s My Congress found one of them. There’s a lot attention being given to the multibillion dollar bailout being pushed through Congress for the Detroit automotive corporations this week - and rightfully so. However, there are other things going on in Congress as well.

One curious little bill that was introduced into the House of Representatives a couple days ago was H. R. 7319. The bill was written by Illinois Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez for the exclusive benefit of just four people: Simeon Simeonov, Stela Simeonova, Stoyan Simeonov, and Vania Simeonova. The proposed law provides a special exception to immigration for just these people, allowing them to establish permanent legal residence in the United States the instant they enter U.S. territory.

Why? Who are these Simeonovs, anyway? That’s My Congress writes that the surname appears to be Bulgarian, and identifies some prominent Simeon Simeonovs, including a venture capitalist already working in the United States, the commander of the Bulgarian Air Force, and a board member of a Bulgarian real estate company who is accused of some sort of fraud.

I can find only a bit of information on the name Stoyan Simeonov. There is a popular soccer player by that name - but would we stretch the law just for the sake of soccer? Also, here’s a possibility on Facebook - but there are two other Stoyan Simeonovs on Facebook, and 58 Simeon Simeonovs listed.

Here’s a little bit more information to look at: In 2005, Danny Davis, another Democrat from Illinois, proposed H.R. 1484, a law that would have given special immigration privileges to someone named Stoyan Simeonov Stoyanov. Is this the same Stoyan Simeonov that Luis Gutierrez is trying to get special favors for?

If so, what’s the urgency? Does a Simeonov who needed special help to immigrate in 2005 really still need that special help three years later? A similar bill, H.R. 3649, was proposed for the sake of Stoyan Simeonov Stoyanov by Representative Davis in 2003. Has the need really been there for five years?

These Simeonovs clearly have political connections of some kind, but what kind of connections? What’s the Chicago link? Why did the Simeonovs switch from working through Danny Davis to working through the office of Luis Gutierrez, whose district is sandwiched by the Davis constituency?

The office of Luis Gutierrez is not responding to requests for information about the Simeonov bill. Why not?

This isn’t a huge story, but there is enough of a story to get the attention of two members of Congress over a five year period. It’s a little mystery on the public books, and it deserves some small explanation from somewhere.

In a poorly targeted advertisement online, a fundraising company asked me the following question: Are you a nonprofit?

I’ve never heard the word nonprofit used in that way before. An organization could certainly be a nonprofit, but a person? How could a person be a nonprofit?

Is this a new insult, perhaps? “Girlfriend, don’t waste your time with that man. He ain’t nothin’ but a nonprofit. 501c3 to a T.”

I didn’t think I was a nonprofit, but perhaps I am.

Greetings! God, Grand Ruler of the Universe and judge of All, the master of your fate and the fate of your little dog too, yes God greets you through me. It is God who called your soul to this website today. It is God who called on your spirit to read these very words. God has ordained that you should hear this message:

The following is the Word of God:

Here is my call to you today, O lowly Earthling scum. If you wish to obtain eternal reward in Heaven, I want you to start referring to Saturday as “Plumbun.” Not Saturday — Plumbun! Those who continue to refer to Saturday as “Saturday” will receive eternal punishment in my furnace of… burny things. Those who righteously refer to the day as “Plumbun” get to live with me in my groovy spaceship when they die.

Are you going to follow my orders? Well, it’s possible that I’m lying to you, and that I’m not really God. If I’m not God, and you don’t start using the word “Plumbun,” then no harm will come to you. If I’m not God, and you DO use the word “Plumbun,” then no benefit will come to you from using the word “Plumbun,” but no harm either. Now, If I AM God and you use the word “Plumbun,” you get eternal reward on my groovy spaceship (including use of my eternally groovy hot tub). Finally, if I AM God and you do not use the word “Plumbun,” you will receive eternal punishment. Burn, burn, burn, burn, burn! It’s your choice, lowly Earthling scum… but if I were you, I’d start referring to the days of the week as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Plumbun.

That is All! You have your orders from God. Now get to it! And, oh, have a very relaxing Plumbun this weekend.

There’s a fair amount of talk in Republican Party circles that Barack Obama must really and truly be the son of Malcolm X, because Republicans keep encountering pictures of Barack Obama in the checkout line, and a few of them saw the movie Malcolm X once, and to their eyes Barack Obama and Malcolm X look alike. There is a fatal flaw in this reasoning: to these Republicans, all black people kind of look alike. Hey, maybe every black kid in America is the love child of Malcolm X!

An alternative theory that just might be a bit more reasonable came to me when I was watching PBS this morning. Could Barack Obama be the secret son of Tinky Winky?

Consider!

1. Barack Obama has big ears. Tinky Winky has big ears!

2. Tinky Winky is a creature of color. Barack Obama? A person of color!

3. John McCain had to yell at the Teletubbies to get off his lawn. What were the Teletubbies doing on John McCain’s lawn?

4. It has been said that Barack Obama’s charm runs deep… down to his DNA. Tinky Winky is a very charming “father figure” to children around the world. Coincidence?

5. Jerry Falwell said Tinky Winky is gay. Gay men across the country are attracted to Barack Obama.

6. At no time before her death did Stanley “Ann” Dunham, alleged mother of Barack Obama, distance herself from the Teletubbies in general or Tinky Winky in particular.

7. This secret picture of Tinky Winky during a break in filming has emerged, conveniently less than a week after the election:

… and as we all know, Barack Obama kisses a portrait of “Papa” Stalin every night before brushing his teeth. Josef Stalin brushed his teeth.

8. The whereabouts of Tinky Winky during the period in which Stanley “Ann” Dunham attended the University of Washington nine months before Barack Obama’s birth ARE UNKNOWN.

9. Barack Obama has not answered questions surrounding these allegations. Why the cone of silence around this matter? WHAT IS BARACK OBAMA AFRAID OF?

Uh oh!

Robert J. Moore started seeing “Single?” yard signs everywhere:

I seriously can’t take a ten minute drive without passing one of these signs. What fascinates me more, however, is that they never seem to last more than a few days in one spot. In most cases, I’ll see a “Single?” sign somewhere and the next time I drive by it will be gone. I can only assume that these signs are being taken down by whomever maintains the property where they are placed (they are almost always stuck in the lawn of a public park or building).

The fact that these signs are still so prevalent today, more than a year after I saw the first, means two amazing things:

* Despite their short shelf-life (or, lawn-life), sticking these plastic signs into the ground in small towns has proven financially viable (I can’t imagine that a year’s worth of data to the contrary would result in the business continuing to print and plant these signs).
* Someone must be monitoring and replacing these signs as they are taken down. When you consider the number of towns likely involved in this system, it’s clear that this is far from a one-man show.

Then, just this past Friday, I saw the most amazing sign yet. A town not far from my house is called Haddon Heights, NJ. It is a miniscule town that occupies just 1.6 square miles of land and has a population of barely 7,000 people. Furthermore, 56% of the population is married and 25% is under the age of 18 (thanks Wikipedia!). Not exactly a ripe market for a dating business. Nonetheless, as I drove through the town, I saw (no exaggeration) twenty signs that read “Single? www.HaddonHeightsDating.COM.”…

You may have seen these, too. What’s the story behind these signs? Moore figures it out and shares what he knows with you in an article oozing with the infectious pus of giddy curiosity. Moore’s research skills are on impressive display as he uncovers a vast and quite possibly nefarious network stretching across the country, overseas as far as India, and through tens of thousands of websites online. Following Moore’s line of thought and course of research was both entertaining and illuminating.

A fascinating idea is presented by National Geographic News this week, discussing A Measurement of Large-Scale Peculiar Velocities of Clusters of Galaxies: Results and Cosmological Implications, an article published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 20th.

The idea is this: Because galaxy clusters in vastly separated parts of the universe have been observed moving at a uniform velocity in a uniform direction, it is possible that cause of this movement is located outside of our universe itself.

Think of the universe as a basin of water in which the water is all flowing at the same speed in the same direction. The cause of that flow couldn’t be in the basin itself, or there would not be the uniformity. Instead, the flow may be caused by something like a tide, the gravitational pull of the moon, affecting the entire basin uniformly all at once, but coming from far outside of the basin.

What would the equivalent the cause of our universe’s tide be? It would have to be pretty darned big - a lot bigger than our universe - if big is even the right word.

On the front page of today’s USA TODAY there’s a photograph of two women standing in a public square and praying. The New Testament tells Christians not to make spectacles of themselves in public demonstrations of prayer; nevertheless we see these two women putting on quite a display. Their hands and elbows are inclined just so; their heads are bowed to the horizon just so; their eyes assume the preferred not-quite-closed status.

The event sparking this prayer spectacle is the sad disappearance of a seven year-old boy. That seven-year-old boy later turned up very sadly dead. What went wrong? Were these women’s hands not placed in proper orientation in relation to the Zodiac? Were their eyes not shut properly? Did they simply not pray hard enough, not want that little boy to be alive hard enough? If prayer can work wonders, is it the fault of these women that the seven year-old boy is dead?

If it is not the fault of the women who prayed for this poor boy’s safety, then is it the fault of God? God is all-knowing and all-seeing. God was well aware of the mortal danger facing this young boy. God received the prayers of these two women and presumably thousands of others. God could have done something about it; he is omnipotent, after all. So why didn’t he? Is God an asshole?

Or is intercessory prayer without effect? Is God either indifferent to suffering or nonexistent? Is the main function of public prayer to make ourselves look good and feel better when bad things happen to other people?

Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.

Did George W. Bush order yesterday’s attack across the border of Syria? He should have been the one to do so if he is the actual and not just the nominal commander in chief of the armed forces. A president should be the one to order the military violation of national borders. If he did not, then there is some other group within the Bush administration taking on the authority of the commander in chief… or no one in the White House is in charge.

So which is it: did George W. Bush (or some group of regents) choose to manufacture an international military crisis one week before the 2008 presidential elections… or is the American military out of civilian control?

For some time now we’ve been dissatisfied with the high prices and low control provided by the print-on-demand bumper sticker service CafePress. We’d much rather make and sell the bumper stickers ourselves. We do sell some stickers that we’ve had a third-party union shop make, but the upfront cost of that is relatively high. We could run a silkscreen press out of our homes, but we already have thousands of designs we’d like to be able to offer and that means making thousands of screens. Finally, we could purchase a machine to print directly on vinyl, but these tend to run for about $10,000, which again is a high upfront cost. Although we may eventually go with one of these options, we’ve continued to rely on CafePress as we search for a solution that better fits our needs.

I was intrigued when I came upon a website claiming to offer a bumper sticker printer costing a little less than $600 with supplies. After a couple of weeks of effort, I’m less intrigued and frankly more suspicious.

If you decide to pursue the purchase of a Bumper Magic bumper sticker printer, I encourage you to pay attention to the phone number, the address, and the names of the individuals and/or corporations manufacturing and selling this printer. You can’t find one. When a whois search revealed the domain registrant to be an Oregon printing company, I called that company only to be told that the Bumper Magic bumper sticker printer was an effort independent of it and that the names and contact information for the Bumper Magic company were secret. This was to avoid, I was told, annoying phone calls from “Star Trek watching geeks living in their Moms’ basements.”

The only way to contact the anonymous makers of the Bumper Magic bumper sticker printer is an online contact form. The makers promise to “get back to you via phone or email as soon as we get your request… we will get in touch with you ASAP.” Unfortunately, the speed with which these anonymous people return contact has been, in my experience, in inverse proportion to the presence of actual questions on my part. My first contact attempt with Bumper Magic, which contained questions about the printer, gained no response. My second contact attempt, in which I simply asked for a price quote, resulted in the following response:

The printer is $399.00. With an auto cutter, you’d add another $200.00. The vinyl rolls are all 150′ long. The standard bumper sticker is either 2″ or 3″ x 11″. Assuming you’d make them 11″ long, you’d get approximately 163 stickers per roll. Of course you are not limited to just making 11″ bumper stickers. You can make stickers of any length from 1″ up to 39″ long.

You will need 3 items for this to operate; the printer which comes with software, vinyl rolls and ribbon. The ribbon is the color that prints on your vinyl.

Printer - $399.00
Auto cutter - $200.00
2″ x 150′ vinyl, your choice of color - $49.95/roll
3″ x 150′ vinyl, your choice of color - $59.95/roll
4″ x 150′ vinyl, your choice of color - $79.95/roll
Ribbon - Black or white, 984′ long - $69.95/roll (will last through 6+ rolls of vinyl)

If you do the math, a 2″ x 11″ sticker would cost .36 cents. A 3″ x 11″ sticker would cost .42 cents. That’s including ribbon.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Bumper Magic

Since the Bumper Magic website provides very few specifications for the printer, I did have further questions, and so I sent them on via the e-mail address provided at the top of that message. I received no reply. After a few days, thinking that perhaps my e-mail was stuck in a spam filter, I returned to the website and sent another message from there with my questions again attached. Again, I received no reply.

There could be a reasonable explanation for this pattern in which I only receive responses when I don’t ask questions and simply want to place an order. Unfortunately, I can’t determine what the explanation would be, since the company and/or individuals selling the Bumper Magic bumper sticker printer are not communicative.

My best recommendation is that if and when you try to contact the purveyors of bumpermagic.com, you ask these questions:

1. What is the warranty, if any, offered with the sale of the printer and with printer supplies?

2. What is the print resolution of the printer, in dpi?

3. What is the effective printing border of the printer (does the printer make borderless prints, and if not, what is the print area?)

4. Does the nature of this particular thermal printing process result in the creation of chemical fumes? If so, what are they? What ventilation is required?

5. What is the nature of UV resistance and waterproofing, if any, for these bumper stickers?

6. Are there any high resolution graphics of sample printed stickers that I might be able to review online?

If you manage to receive answers to these basic questions, please let me know. Until I get those answers, I have no intention of sending on nearly $600 to this mysterious and anonymous entity.

We’ve just received what could be the best link partnership request ever. Apparently, if Irregular Times will provide a link to a Christian dating website for Britons, we’ll get a link back to us from a website soliciting California sperm donors.

The United Kingdom has released its UFO files, and there are a few really interesting, mysterious events in the files.

Consider, for example, what was recorded by air traffic control back in 1991. LiveScience summarizes,

“a sighting a month later by crew aboard a Gatwick-bound Britannia Airways Boeing 737, who saw a “a small black lozenge-shaped object” zipping past about 100 yards (90 meters) to the left of the aircraft. The airport confirmed seeing an object on its radar and clocked it traveling at 120 miles (190 kilometers) per hour.”

Slow meteorite? American test aircraft? Interdimensional messenger service? Aliens from the plutoid Sedna? Divine cough drop?

Nobody knows, and that’s pretty cool. It’s good to know that there are some things we don’t have answers for.

You may ask how African pastor Thomas Muthee ended up in Wasilla, Alaska to lay hands on Sarah Palin’s head and pray for Palin to be elected Governor as part of a new plan for American theocracy. The answer lies in a video and in testimonials extolling Muthee’s supernatural power as a witch-hunter. In the video, Muthee himself claims to have figured out that a woman in his town of Kiambu, Kenya named “Mama Jane” was a witch because of traffic accidents near her home. He claims to have run Mama Jane out of town after issuing death threats for her to convert to Christianity or die, and what’s more to have dispelled her witchy power by having her magical witch’s python shot by police. Finally, he claims that — miracle! — since she was chased out of town, there have been no traffic accidents.

Zoe Alsop of WeNews personally traveled to Kiambu, Kenya. What Alsop found was something different than what Muthee claimed:

1. “Mama Jane” Njengu would not have to convert to Christianity, since she is pastor of a competitor Christian church, the African Mission of Holy Ghost Church, which lies down the street from Thomas Muthee’s compound. In the edited scholarly volume The Bible in Africa, Nahashon W. Ndung’u of the University of Nairobi explains the Biblically-centered five-hour-long worship Sabbath-day services of the AMHGC.
2. Njengu is still pastor in Kiambu, not having been run out of town at all.
3. Traffic accidents in Kiambu are down despite “Mama Jane” Njengu not actually being run out of town. The main road has been paved and speed bumps have been installed during that time (presumably not by the power of witchcraft).
4. Njengu doesn’t own and says she has never owned a python.
5. Njengu confirms, however, that Thomas Muthee issued death threats against her, broadcasting demands over a loudspeaker that townspeople pray for her death.

Thanks to the work of Zoe Alsop, Thomas Muthee’s tale of supernatural witch-hunting prowess has been debunked. In its place appears a more mundane tale of intramural competition between two Christian churches involving death threats by Muthee. And “Mama Jane” is still there. Thomas Muthee, who declared in a sermon that “the Violent take it by force,” turns out to be a rather flaccid flim-flam artist.

Yes, I know it’s a long headline. That’s because it’s news that makes a connection between three events.

1. First, the new revelation: the Associated Press reports today that Sarah Palin seems to have written in a 2000 letter about watching a video of Thomas Muthee. In the video, Thomas Muthee brags about running a woman out of his town, a woman he decided was a witch because there were some car accidents near her house. Police fired shots at her, police arrested her, all at the behest of mobs of Muthee followers who also threatened to stone her to death. Sarah Palin — who wants you to put her heartbeat away from the presidency — crows with pride about this in her letter:

“What a blessing that the Lord has already put into place the Christian leaders, even though I know it’s all through the grace of God,” she wrote in March 2000 to her former pastor. She thanked him for the loan of a video featuring a Kenyan preacher who later would pray for her protection from witchcraft as she sought higher office.

2. Second, having been made aware of what Thomas Muthee was and what he had done, Sarah Palin chose to attend the Wasilla Assemblies of God on October 11, 2005 to see Thomas Muthee preach about her and the special part she had to play in God’s plan. Read the transcript, or see the video of Muthee’s sermon for yourself:

In that sermon, a sermon in which Thomas Muthee appears to have violated tax laws by telling congregants to vote for Sarah Palin, Muthee makes the following case for the election of Sarah Palin:

A. God needs fundamentalist Christian believers to “infiltrate” and “invade” government;

B. After successful infiltration and invasion of government, fundamentalist Christians should use their positions to put Christian teachings in public schools to counter the social influence of Buddhists, Muslims and Wiccans;

C. Fundamentalist Christians who have infiltrated and invaded government should more broadly use their positions to enact and enforce Christian dominance over business and law;

D. And that’s why the election of Sarah Palin to office is so important.

3. Third, knowing that:

– Thomas Muthee’s mobs had threatened to stone a woman to death, had put local police up to invading this woman’s home and firing shots, had her arrested, and then had her run out of town because there were car accidents near her house;

– Thomas Muthee had violated tax law by endorsing her candidacy from the altar;

– Thomas Muthee had just endorsed her as the perfect opportunity for fundamentalist Christians to “invade” and “infiltrate” government in order to implement Christian theocracy in the areas of education, business and law…

Knowing all this, Sarah Palin chose to take the stage, have Thomas Muthee lay hands on him, and pray with him for his vision to come to pass.

This isn’t a mere matter of “guilt by association.” This is about the active choice of Sarah Palin to come up on stage and pray for the radical and violent theocratic agenda of Thomas Muthee to come to fruition through her.

This is, in short, not simply a matter of “character,” but of a policy agenda that stands in direct opposition to the Constitution of the United States of America.

America needs someone in the media ask Sarah Palin this question, point blank:

“Why, Governor Palin, did you take to the stage of the Wasilla Assemblies of God in October 2005 to pray with Thomas Muthee for your election to office when Muthee had just named your election as the lynchpin of a plan for the Christian ‘invasion’ and ‘infiltration’ of American government?”

I hope someone in the media is paying attention.

One of the more interesting stories of the election is playing out right now in Nevada, but it doesn’t have to do with the polls, or the candidates. It has to do with the voters, and the people who register them to vote.

There is either voter fraud or voter intimidation going on in Las Vegas - and I can’t say that I know which it is.

What’s happened is that the Las Vegas offices of ACORN, the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been raided by police, and voter registration information has been seized.

The raid was ordered by Republican politicians at the state level, on the basis of criticisms that ACORN has submitted some duplicate voter registration information and some voter registration forms that haven’t been filled out properly. These mistakes have led the Republicans to accuse ACORN of purposefully engaging in voter fraud, and trying to get fake votes cast in order to manipulate this year’s elections.

I’ve worked on voter registration drives and petitioning drives before, and to tell the truth, I’m not surprised that there were a few duplicate registrations and mistakes. It’s pretty difficult to run a voter registration drive or a petition drive and not have those kinds of problems - especially when you’re working with volunteers as ACORN does.

Of course, I don’t absolutely know that ACORN has not been involved in some kind of voter fraud scheme. However, in cases like these, there ought to be a presumption of innocence. That’s just what’s been missing, however, in the publicity surrounding this case. I can’t say, either, that I know what exactly motivated this investigation, but it’s possible that intimidation of ACORN was the underlying purpose.

Whatever the truth in this case, voter turnout ends up being a much more important issue than voter registration, voter fraud or vote suppression. For every election in memory, there have been huge numbers of people registered to vote who didn’t bother to show up - much larger than the number of votes that are alleged to have been “stolen” or fraudulently cast.

If ACORN is in earnest about community organizing, focusing on turnout is where its focus ought now to turn.

As for registering to vote in Nevada, well, if people really want to vote they can always go down to their local board of elections and register themselves. Being registered by a third party is risky. I’ll never forget what happened to me back in the year 2000, when I signed a voter registration form at a Green Party booth in Memphis, Tennessee. The local Green Party people down there never bothered to turn the form in, and so my change of address was not noted, and I was turned away from the polls, and had to run miles across town in order to cast my vote.

Why would citizens who truly care about their communities need community organizers to register them to vote? It seems to me that the biggest challenge is voter apathy, not vote fraud or suppression.