Here’s a young mother of two children who lives in Venice, La., speaking at the Gulf Emergency Summit on June 19, videotaped by PBS News Hour.

Arnesen apparently was handpicked by BP officials to be one of the Gulf residents to whom they could hand-feed their corporate propaganda, so she was invited “behind the enemy lines,” as she puts it, given a security clearance and allowed to witness BP operations strategy meetings, take tours of the affected areas via helicopters and boats and generally swallow a bunch of bullshit.

Unfortunately for BP, Arnesen is “not at all impressed.” Watch her deliver an inside report from the belly of the BP beast…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3bzypjTIWg

(More Fighting the Power)

Girl, 12, to Sue NYC for Excessive Force in Unwarranted Arrest for Doodling on School Desk

Bank of America Employee Fired for Helping Customers Being Gouged By BofA Policies Tells Her Side

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgec9WX21ik

And really, who could argue with this kind of reasoning?

“I am originally from Nicaragua, I run away from Communism. I realized that Communism does not work, Socialism does not work, and the death of America will be socialized medicine. That is so clear, because I came to this country looking for freedom, for the freedom to choose my own doctor, not for the government to tell me when to live and when to die!”

I’m normally not in the business of helping the teabaggers, but listen up, teabaggers, that quote above would make an excellent bumper sticker or rally button. You might have to bump down the font a bit, though.

From boston.com:

William Gunn is angry about big government, the bailouts, and especially the big health care package President Obama signed earlier this week — so much so, that the Western Massachusetts resident came all the way to Washington, DC and got himself arrested Sunday night after heckling lawmakers in the House gallery.

Gunn, by the way, works for the town of Palmer and administers federal grants for a living.

“It’s sort of ironic,” said the 48-year-old Gunn, who is scheduled to come back for a court appearance in the nation’s capital next month.

Gunn administers Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs), a federal program meant to spur local economic development.

“Absolutely, it is” a “big government” program, Gunn acknowledged. But “if I lost my job because they didn’t have it any longer, I’d be fine with that,” he said.

Full. Of. Shit.

The great political thinker also was worked up by “arrogant” House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi for walking through the gauntlet of sputtering (and, in one case, spitting) teabaggers “almost as if she was trying to incite people to do something,” boston.com reports. Because, you know, until that unprecedented provocation, it had been a peaceful, respectful gathering. (See video below.)

And, of course, if she and the other lawmakers had taken the underground tunnels from their offices to the Capitol, then they would been “cowards.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ3bNhSYG6Q

Charlie is the older brother of comedian and actor Eddie Murphy. When Eddie’s career began skyrocketing in the ’80s, Charlie was there, working as part of Eddie’s entourage. In “True Hollywood Stories,” Charlie recounts his experiences playing basketball with Prince, rolling (and fighting) with Rick James and, in this segment, his run-in with a paralyzed former New England Patriots receiver during a dinner in Chicago. The truly fucked-up shit begins around the 6:15 mark.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-tpzA4wt_o

Oh, and if the ignorant comment by a racist asshole who calls himself kotapaka is still near the top of the page, feel free to vote it down. Somebody should stomp on his fucking mouth.

So either 1) Wikipedia has his birthdate wrong, 2) Dave was 17 but said he was 19, 3) Whoever told me Chappelle was 19 either was wrong or high (or both), or 4) I was wrong or high (or both). All are equal possibilities.

I mentioned in the earlier post that the Comedy Cafe’s regular open-mic host, The Fat Doctor, always introduced Chappelle as someone who was “going to be a star.” And you could see why, especially knowing how young Dave was. It’s not like Chappelle was blowing the other open-micers off the stage, it’s just that he clearly was a cut above them. Dave had more polish than anybody there — no hesitation in his delivery, no forgetting jokes, no monotone, good eye contact with the crowd, a complete lack of discernible nervousness or fear.

Having said that, Chappelle still wasn’t great by any stretch. He was just the best of an open-mic crowd. Dave wasn’t nearly as good as any number of comics you’d see back then on “Evening at the Improv,” the Budd Friedman stand-up comedy show that ran for years on A&E. But how could he be? They were seasoned, professional comedians. Chappelle was a work-in-progress, someone who had training (he had gone to — or maybe still attended — a performing-arts high school in D.C.) but lacked the years-long experience of trying out jokes, honing them, discarding the weak ones — in other words, building an act.

In the video below, Chappelle uses a joke that was in his set back in early 1991. Actually, it was more than in his set, it was one of his big laugh-getters. He might even have closed with it at the time (at least at the open-mic nights). It doesn’t come until the 0:58 mark of the video. It’s his “Batman” bit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsowYYv8suI

Word for word, Chappelle’s “Batman” joke in this video — which probably is from a performance in the 1994-1998 range — is virtually identical to the way I had seen him do it several times in 1991, especially how he delivers the punchline. What’s different in the video is his much stronger facial and body gestures, his use of space and vocal tone in the set-up — in other words, he now is performing the joke, not just telling it. Which comes from familiarity with the material, stage time and confidence. And if there’s one thing you sense from watching Dave Chappelle perform, it’s his confidence and apparent sense of ease.

I emphasize apparent because when you watch Chappelle in the clips below being interviewed by James Tilton for a segment of Inside the Actors Studio, he appears awkward and uncomfortable (though humble and honest). Dave talks about his early days in stand-up, bombing at New York’s Apollo open-mic night (and how it liberated him), and his fondness for weed.

There are some good clips from Chappelle’s show that I’ll feature from time to time in The Bonedaddy Kingdom because, well, they’re funny.

Now meet former Bank of America employee Jackie Ramos (video below), who was fired by the bank on Nov. 25 for helping customers who were being gouged by the bank’s policies. As HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney reports:

Ramos, of Fairburn, Ga., worked as a “customer advocate,” which involved calling people who fall behind on credit card payments and either encouraging them to pay or modifying their accounts. But not all customers qualify for modification programs that will help them, and Ramos grew tired of saying no after six months on the job.

“So I stopped denying people,” said Ramos. “I helped people get on programs that they didn’t necessarily qualify for but who definitely needed the help.”

Sort of like what banks did when they were handing out credit cards to high school kids, dogs and others who “didn’t necessarily qualify.” You’d think BofA would have promoted this young woman for taking some initiative instead of terminating her!

On the other hand, an employee who says stuff like this…

“There was something inherently evil about my job.”

…could be a real buzz kill at the office Christmas party.

Watch Jackie’s YouTube video explaining why Bank of America fired her. It’s another inside, personal account spotlighting the soulless, self-serving policies that compel corporations to abuse their customers and prey upon the weak and helpless.

Here’s O’Reilly’s latest pathetic effort to position himself as the Christian holiday’s noble and heroic defender:

Gillibrand, of course, was named by Governor David Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton as New York’s junior senator after Hillary was tapped by President Obama to be secretary of state.

It was a terribly misguided appointment; Gillibrand is a DINO’s DINO. Her father is a Republican lobbyist and she interned for former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. Now there’s someone who will fight for oppressed people against the power structure. Move over, Emma Goldman. But the 20th is a solidly Republican district, and Gillibrand was the first Democrat to hold that seat since 1979 (having been fortunate enough to run against this fat, corrupt, drunken, wife-beating fratboy).

Which was the other reason it was a stupid move by Paterson. Why remove a Democrat from a conservative congressional district and give the Republicans a chance to retake it? I knew the guy was legally blind. I was unaware he couldn’t recognize simple logic staring him in the face.

The special election pitted longtime Albany political hack James Tedisco, the Republican minority leader of the New York State Assembly, against relative unknown Scott Murphy, a 39-year-old venture capitalist from Glens Falls, in the sparsely populated northern part of the district. Coming from more than 20 points behind in the polls eight weeks before the election, Murphy pulled slightly ahead in the final poll over the weekend before the election.

Babes, beer and weed (at least theoretically)

Now it was Tuesday night. I had voted for Murphy in the morning and had a chance encounter with him Tuesday afternoon at The Uncommon Grounds coffee shop in downtown Saratoga Springs, where he was dropping by to urge people to vote. We had a brief conversation in which he invited me to his campaign’s party at the historic Gideon Putnam Hotel in Saratoga Spa State Park. He said it would be a great place to “troll for babes.” (OK, I made that part up.)

I got there too early — about 8:30 p.m. — and really had to pace myself with the beer. (I went with Beck’s, a pricey choice at $4.75 — at least until the event went “open bar,” no doubt thanks to some siphoned stimulus funds.) I brought my BlackBerry so I could “live-tweet” the event, thrilling several followers with observations such as, “I appear to be at a table of Corrections Dept. personnel. Chances of scoring weed have skyrocketed.” You won’t hear that on the 11 o’clock news!

There was an awful lot of waiting around. Polls closed at 9 p.m., and because the race was so tight, it was hard for the crowd to develop a collective mood beyond tentatively hopeful — hardly the optimum backdrop for babe-trolling. What you really want is for the women to be drunk on the high of victory (and open-bar beer) or emotionally shattered and thus in need of consoling. (Being married, I couldn’t play either game; I’m just offering an objective assessment.)

By 9:30 or so the ballroom was packed with a healthy mix of idealistic young campaign workers and political veterans — labor people, state workers, etc. Large-screen TVs on either end of the ballroom kept party-goers updated on the votes in each district, while local TV reporters did their live spots on a raised platform in the middle of the room. (None of them seemed destined to rise much beyond the Albany market because, well, they aren’t attractive enough. Cruel, but true. Hey, I don’t make the TV journalism rules.)

As the night went on, Tedisco’s lead of several hundred votes slowly began to shrink. By 10:15 or so the crowd started to get excited because Murphy had pulled even with about 97% of the total vote in. He eventually opened up a lead of more than 100 votes as the counting neared the finish. Murphy’s lead settled in the 59- to 65-vote range by the time 100% of the vote was reported.

The silent sound of sleaze

Around this time Tedisco came on the big screens. The sound was turned down, so you couldn’t hear what he was saying. But the fact that he spoke to his supporters before Murphy spoke to his was telling. I knew he wasn’t conceding — the vote was too close — but clearly he wasn’t happy with how the night was turning out.

About 20 minutes later I heard someone say that Murphy was making his way down to the ballroom to speak to supporters. I fought my way toward the podium through the by-now SRO crowd and waited. Murphy came in to wild applause and cheers. Emma Goldman was with him.

Here’s a YouTube video of Murphy’s election-night speech below. The camera guy was right next to me, so you’re pretty much looking at things just as I was. I will say, however, that video doesn’t quite capture the feeling of being there in the crush of the crowd. It was pretty exciting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6UirO0TiWI

Murphy was very eloquent and upbeat. At one point he made a reference to Gillibrand as being a great representative of the 20th and a woman in the crowd shouted, “The next president!” Apparently political delusion isn’t restricted to Republicans.

Other notes: Murphy’s wife is the brunette right behind him holding the young child. The numerous other waifs near her were bused in from a local orphanage to dress up the shot. Or they were his other children, nephews and nieces. I forget which.

The camera pan at 2:40 just misses me, but it settles on a nattily dressed gentleman in a well-tailored suit, yellow scarf, shades and checked Trilby. The guy was stylin’ like a motherfucker. My big regret of the night was not getting the name of his haberdasher.

Finally, the photographer in the right foreground for most of the video gave me a couple of dirty looks because I accidentally hit his head a couple of times while holding my BlackBerry up to take pictures. I was just trying to do my job, dude, just like you. Also, I’d like to point out that you got scalp oil all over my smartphone. So really, who’s the victim?

The election is far from settled. More than 10,000 absentee ballots were issued. They have to be postmarked by March 30, and the final results are due to be announced April 13. The National Republican Congressional Committee already is playing the “we can’t allow them to steal this election like Al Franken is trying to steal the election in Minnesota” card. It’s called counting all the votes, assholes. Oh, right, the Republicans consider that cheating.

And as unimpressed as I am by Emma Goldman, I’ll be physically ill if that Albany pukebag ends up as my congressman. Oh well, I survived (barely) eight years of the Texas Dunce in the White House. I can live through this. But I sure as hell don’t want to.

Will’s “final thought” on Obama speech and aftermath: “I don’t know when men started to hug each other, but hug they do, and look at that.”

Indeed, who can deny him his point? They don’t make presidents like they used to.