“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

WRITERS WANTED - Keeping this blog current can be a bigger job than for just one person. “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” is looking for VOLUNTEER guest writers to contribute to our blog to help make it worth visiting more than once a week. To contact us, please send an email to the address on our About Us page along with a sample and/or link to your writing skills. - Mugsy

The first two weeks of this month had to be the worst string of bad news headlines I can ever remember. The stock market had lost nearly 1,000 points in the space of a week. The price of oil has been sprinting towards $100 per barrel. The number of home foreclosures is through the roof and job layoffs are on the rise. I started collecting clips after the first week and scrounged the Net to recover clips of the stories I missed. I then assembled them into this video:

I had originally planned to call it, “Two Weeks Under Bush”, as an indelible reminder to all of posterity of life towards the end of Bush’s Presidency and as a warning to the future. But as I followed that theme, my chosen title seemed less and less adequate.

So I’m leaving it up to you. Watch the video, and if you can think of a better, more inclusive title for it, let me know in the Comments. - Mugsy

WRITERS WANTED - Keeping this blog current can be a bigger job than for just one person. “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” is looking for VOLUNTEER guest writers to contribute to our blog to help make it worth visiting more than once a week. To contact us, please send an email to the address on our About Us page along with a sample and/or link to your writing skills. - Mugsy

About a week ago, I received a Copyright Infringement Notice from YouTube regarding one of my videos: “Thompson delivers GOP talking points to deafening silence”:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing:

I responded to them with the following:

If this is the case, I recommend you simply search your site under “Thompson Leno” and remove the half-dozen or so other copies of this same video.

A week has now passed, and as you can see from the link above, every other copy of the exact same video… sans my critical comments… are still there. Only my video critical of Fred Thompson’s announcement has been removed. Those copies intended as praise for the Presidential Candidate remain.

Now, whether Thompson’s campaign themselves or just some Brownshirt little Thompson-supporting Hitler Youth didn’t like my video and reported it to “the powers that be” over at YouTube, I can’t say. But it is obvious that it wasn’t “NBC Universal” themselves behind the complaint, going through YouTube and targeting every video containing the word “Leno” or “Tonight Show” or else ALL copies of said video would of been targeted for deletion.

So this got me wondering, “Is someone targeting anti-Fred videos?” It’s impossible to say for sure, but a quick search of YouTube on “Fred Thompson” produces a long list of PRO Thompson videos containing long clips of copywritten material. Those few videos criticizing Thompson are almost entirely “self produced” with all original content, of which no one could accuse of “Copyright Infringement”. I did find one video critical of Fred using copywritten footage from Fox Newz, but it is less than :30… the ceiling for the “Fair Use” Law.

Over the weekend, two New Hampshire surveys showed Thompson was now in SIXTH place with just 3%. Support for the intellectually challenged, short on current-events Thompson (he recently referred to Russia as “The Soviet Union” in one speech) has been shriveling under the spotlight like a grape in the hot Texas sun. Someone, either his campaign or his supporters, seem to be getting desperate, taking to scrubbing the Internet for negative portrayals of their candidate.

Served up to the populace as the GOP’s White Knight to rescue Conservative voters from the unpalatable choices of Rudy, Mitt or John, it wasn’t until his official (and much delayed) announcement on The Tonight Show that night that most voters got a really good look at him to discover their actor-turned-politician “Ronald Reagan wannabee” was more like Dan Quayle (Bush Sr’s bumbling VP) than “The Gipper”. And pointing out just how anti-climatic his announcement was… six minutes without cheers or applause… on Leno, is apparently something Thompson’s supporters don’t want anyone pointing out.

I’m actually posting this entry unfinished. A nasty computer problem last week took me out of commission for several days, and family events have distracted me further still. So rather than delay this next post any longer, I’m posting it incomplete in the hopes that you, dear reader, will contribute your own thoughts in the Comments section to flush out the missing points. (You’ll also get a small glimpse at my writing process). I’m also hoping to assemble a new YouTube video on the subject fairly soon. - Mugsy

I‘ve never been prone to hyperbole. I’m not easily excitable and “overreact” is not in my vocabulary. When I encounter some prophet of Doom & Gloom, my usual first reaction is to roll my eyes and chuckle. But every once in a while, a string of events so worrisome cross my notice that they simply cannot be dismissed as the machinations of some Nervous Nelly.

This past week, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf declared “Emergency Rule” (aka “Martial Law”), disbanded the government and ordered the police to arrest THOUSANDS of lawyers, politicians, civil servants and citizen protesters in the wake of the riots following the visit of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to challenge Musharraf in their upcoming elections. Musharraf claimed the move to suspend their Constitution was due in part to “a wave of attacks by militants linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban this year” and ‘interference’ by the judiciary”.

Now, if George Bush needed a blueprint for how to suspend OUR Constitution, the chaos that might result, and how to respond, Musharraf just gave it to him on a silver platter.

I remember when President Bill Clinton gave his first State of the Union speech after his first year in 1993. That is when he first spoke of his Administrations’ plan to finally bring a National Healthcare system to America. In his speech, he held up a mock red-white-&-blue “Health ID Card” that would be given to every U.S. citizen, upon which, a persons’ entire medical history could be stored. The Right went into hysterics, slamming it as “an invasion of privacy” and “a way for the government to collect information on every single American without their consent!“. The Evangelicals even alluded to “The Mark of the Beast”, the Biblical notion that in the endtimes, every person on Earth would be “cataloged” and identified only by their (ID) “number“.

Now, if you can stop giggling long enough to provide your own thoughts on the following current events…

Other points to address: o collapse of the U.S. dollar. o closing in on $100/barrel for oil o The plunging DOW o The current mortgage crisis o Democrats in the House voting NOT to begin Dick Cheney impeachment hearings. o Pat Robertson of the “Christian Coalition” choosing to endorse the formerly pro gay rights, formerly pro gun control, thrice married, cross dressing, “moved his mistress in to live with his wife and kids into the Mayors’ mansion”, has friends with mob ties, “hated by the NYFD” Rudy Giulliani because he is the candidate most likely to continue Bush’s War on Brown People in the Middle East (and South of the Border), promising to kill as many non-Christians as one can in the time allotted, should he be elected President… while they ridicule and jeer candidates like Dennis Kucinich… whose very slogan is “Strength through Peace“. o etc…