Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

The latest figures indicate that the fiercely embattled public option will cover a mere two to three percent of the currently uninsured and the CBO says premiums will most likely be somewhat more than current market price.  Sounds like a wash to me.  Sounds like the sucking of a drain.  This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous.  Smoke and mirrors, dogs and ponies.  You can bet your ass, along with your lunch money, with those kinds of numbers, the whole thing is doomed to failure.

Spruce Goose bitches.

It will flop like Gerald Ford coming down the steps of Air Force One but it won’t ever get up again, at least not in my lifetime.

Good job everybody.

Jackasses.

The only customers it’s poised to attract will be our sickest and least likely to succeed.  No prom kings or queens here.  Bottom of the gene pool, unhealthy, lowlife, walkin’ the dog saps.  So it will be fiscally overburdened by virtue of our lowest common denominator and our last shot as the richest nation on earth to provide health care for our citizens will probably not even enjoy another attempt for at least half a century.  Good job Democrats, you fucking pussies and even better job Republicans you obstructionist, plutocratic, avaricious, disingenuous, lying pieces of self serving shit.

I really hate you guys.

Did I say that or just think it out loud?

Is there a difference?

Well, let me say this:  Fuck, fuck, fuck, snot and mucus and bile and shame and fear and stupid and puke………

You, Joe Lieberman, who’s state is ground zero for health insurance HQ’s and who announced publicly the intention to filibuster the very debate,  and you, John Boehner lay off the embarrassing spray on tan and you, Chuck Grassley you lying prick and you, Mitch McConnel with more chins than a Chinese phonebook and you, Max Baucus who can suck my caucus and you, Kent Conrad and you, Blanche Lincoln, you Democrats in name only………every single one of you has sold out the best and most important life or death interests of the American people in general and your own constituents in particular for what you know will line your pockets, get you you re-elected and is nothing more than a pack of aspersions, distortions and preposterous calumny.

Whomever the asshole was that declared health care reform to be Obama’s Waterloo, forgive me it was Jim DeMint, might just have been exactly right.  I don’t care who you are, that there’s fucked up.

This party might just might be over.

Have you no shame?  No decency?

Y’all negotiated and philandered, lied and decried, wrung your hands and whined like little bitches while thousands died and ended up with the pussy party (D), still being able to save face with a donut hole public option, the asshole party (R), still able to fool some of the people most of the time while still screwing them with an atomic fucking jackhammer that put them there and paid there salaries and benefits all of the goddamn time.

Sick.  Fucking sick.  Pun intended.

Everyone got what they wanted, what they imagined they needed, while the lobbyist pimps, four to one for every legislator, spent a million bucks a day to make sure they and their corporate sugar daddies maintained the status quo and everyone got paid.  You and me excepted, of course.

Because a horse is a horse of course of course and what does that make a dumbass donkey?

Cigars and cognac all around.

Some one hundred and twenty two people die every goddamn day because they lack the insurance to pay for what is killing them and the naysayers would have us debate socialism.  Government takeover.  Bullshit.  Not just a theater but an opera house, with excellent acoustics, of the shrill and reverberating absurd.

I’m needing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Seriously.

Some tomato soup.

Mission Accomplished.  Major combat operations are at an end.  It’s all over but the shouting.

If I did my job as well as you do yours, I wouldn’t have one.  Either that or I’d be a CEO.

This health care bill, all 1990 pages of it is going to be such a charade, facade and so spectacular a bellyflop of POLITICAL PORNOGRAPHY, so profound and disgusting, that any chance of, or attempt at, meaningful reform in banking, civil rights, justice, execution and prosecution of wars, foreign entanglements, energy, food supply, federal aide, education, accountability by any bureaucracy, institution, agency, corporation or industry will be so stained and suspect and blood spattered from other more egregious crimes, that this administration, all it’s good intentions intact, will experience a serious faceplant and we will all have been complicit in climbing decades backwards.

There’s you and there’s me, rip off the mask and let’s see.

We’ll march I guess, with rotting teeth and stage four cancer and we’ll get coupons for nachos and Hostess products at the 7-11.  They’ll sell those bacon wrapped franks along the quarter mile route.  There will will be tents for the overexerted at the halfway point.

Watch your NASCAR and your World Series while the politicians dither away at your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  By the way, I was more than happy to see the Phillies hand the the Yankees their ass tonight and did you see the wrecks on Sunday at Talladega?  Nice that both Newman and Martin walked away.  But by the time both contests are actually decided, your life or death fate will most likely be determined well in advance.  If you are uninsured, it is likely you will remain uninsured.  Categorize yourself as therefore fucked.

The irony of death panels is that it’s a reality here and now.  The irony of health care rationing is that it exists and is practiced without compassion today.  The irony of socialized medicine, which we have now via Medicare and Medicaid, is that no country that enjoys it would ever give it up, us included.

There is no irony about the lies and obfuscation.  They are simply lies and and obfuscation.

The idea of single payer health care is among the most humane, compassionate and progressive notions ever implemented by modern states, governments and societies.  It is growth and progress where the human condition and even evolution are concerned.  After all, it does serve to affect the perpetuation of our species in a constructive way.  To utilize a small portion of the proceeds from our labor and largess to care for the people who are responsible for it, is a profoundly good idea from the perspectives of either the often mutually exclusive concepts of morality and commerce.

It makes fucking sense.

At least pot is legal in LA.

Drinks for my friends.

Obama wasn’t able to score the economic boon that would have been the Olympics in Chicago.  I kinda assumed it was close to a done deal and he was going there to seal said deal.  Turns out it was the opposite.  Turns out that’s why he showed, to try and save it.  This is our President and it’s why he’s our President.  The shining American city of Chicago placed dead last.  Sucks don’t it?  Not just because of the potential jobs and renewed  dignity on the world stage, but because of the mill grist his unsuccessful sprint to Copenhagen will avail itself of; we’re off to disingenuous right wing shovelry again.

They wasted not a second.  I listened to Hannity and the Human Shitsmear yesterday morning and they were having a field day.  Extended recess and shitty pizza for the retards.  Toxic glee. They pretend not to be cognizant of the guaranteed monetary benefits to be reaped.  They posture as though it were warrantless hubris.  They carry on exploiting the stupid and making a killing on the backs of the ignorant.  As shameless and vulgar a debacle as I ever have borne witness to.

That’s not entirely true, they’ve done so much worse.

Still, this sucks.

He tried.

I’m not about to say he fucked up.  He didn’t.  He did the right thing.  It was important.  It would have been instant jobs.  Enough to eclipse the current losses for months.  It is why he was there.  He understood it be an opportunity to salve his country’s considerable wounds.  Deep lacerations courting infection that he discovered only after walking in.

The irony is that it has more to do with the leadership for the previous eight years than anything else.  It was Dick-in-Bush that raped the pooch.  Our system for awarding visas is archaic and that is the least of it.   Whenever former leadership took a step, it was bad and stupid.  Unilateral wars and severely mitigating civil rights and ignoring laws both domestic and international for reasons unsound and flat out made up.  No wonder the world thinks we’re shit and I can’t blame them.  It isn’t Obama’s fault that everyone now knows we’re dicks.

Yet, everybody knows.

Can you say conventional wisdom?

Zeitgeist?

I could not and do not blame them.  We’ve been the biggest assholes on the planet for almost a decade now.  I’m sick of America and I live here.

I simply must be unpatriotic.  Un-American.  According to all the jingoistic rounheaded fucktards.

I pride myself on being well informed.  I am well informed.  I’m as certain of this as I am of adoring  large breasts.  Boobs.  Knockers.  Huge scoops of flesh and the sigh of brainrot.

Oh Lord, don’t strike me down.

Once again, our man’s biggest problem is the one who came before him.  Handicapped by the mentally handicapped.

The mess he inherited is more copiously voluminous, egregious and self inflicted than any man before him in recorded history.

Obama walked willingly into a shitstorm.

Remind yourself of that.  Often.

He knew.

George W. Bush wasn’t evil, just breathtakingly stupid, though everyone around him manifested inky terrifying darkness of a magnitude beyond 8.9 on the Richter-O’-graph.  This here is a mere symptom, a flesh wound requiring a band aid in the scheme of damage done and waste laid.  Obama is no ordinary President but I’m hear to tell you, and I endeavor to make it clear, that his circumstances may just be as extraordinary as the birth of this nation and the attendant violence that ensued.

I fear the violence that has yet to come.  I fear it because I know it’s coming.  I fear it’s inevitability and the uncertainty of how it will most certainly emerge.  The Rednecks Cometh.

They just can’t stand that a nigger and his wife sleep between the crisp white sheets in the White House.  An affront to their sensibilities.  So much so that they attack every common sense thing he does.  Maneuvers and criticisms are ugly and transparent.  Senseless and obvious.  Plain, overt, and embarrassing for the rest of us.

Were he to walk on water they would whine about his inability to swim.

I stole that but it’s completely true.

I think we should suspend the sale of Happy Meals.  Prizes in cereal boxes are shit these days so I’m not overly concerned there.  While we’re at it, Crackerjack treasure is shite too, so you know, whatever.  We have nothing to celebrate until Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Those holidays are stained with dubiousness too.  We are so hopelessly flawed.

The most racist among us protest so vehemently that they are not, while they are nothing but.

We’ve got no reason to be happy about a goddamn thing.  Our tits are in a ringer.

This shit is way fucked up.

Drinks for my friends.

So I’m sitting here today in my monkey suit, getting ready to go to the bank to bang out a proposal with the Evil Lance. I’ve been chasing this merchant for months. It’s a comic book shop. His name is Cat.

I was in the middle of reading truthout.org and and the place went quiet. Everything blinked off. The bastards at DWP had cut off my power.

My girlfriend walks out of the bathroom to say “You paid the power bill?”

I break a sweat. This has never happened before.

It’s really ok. I have the money. I was just being stupid frugal and retarded reluctant to pay a bill. Being poor makes you brave. Still, it’s more than a little discomfitting. My first thought is about what a dick I am because I made mad cash this month.

I go to the bank and make a big deposit. Call up DWP and pay the bastards. Call the other department of DWP and give them the confirmation number and they say by five p.m., power restored.

Get me a a couple chili cheese dogs with mayonnaise, mustard and onions. This is why poor folks are fat. I blame society. I cut a check for my rent and drop it off. The manager is this cool guy named Antonio. He smiles and shakes my hand. First time I’ve paid rent on time in months.

I go to my bank, the Evil Lance and his wife, mother in law and daughter are there, along with my significant other, the new guy we will refer to as GQ Todd, the Lovely Linda and the hot new receptionist. Ken, the head fromage is nowhere. The Evil Lance has done my homework for me. I get a folder with the proposal, the original statement and a printout of the ACH statement for money I’m being paid on a previous deal that will hit my account on Monday.

It’s a sweet chunk of change.

I threaten the daughter of the Evil Lance with cannibalism. I tell her to bring me butter and pepper. I demand a giant fork and tell her that her ankles will be chewey. She is gorgeous and I am charmed.

I come home and there’s an ominous yellow notice on the door. Mine heart doth sink. I’ve just figured out how to buy enough gin for the weekend and I felt like I may have fooled the world once again.

I walk into a dark silent apartment. I go on the balcony for a smoke and to read the ominous yellow tag. Turns out I just need to go get my security gaurd buddy to open up the meter room so we can flip the switch. After all, I’m paid up. I, we, do that. He’s the same guy who gives me the stink eye through the peephole when my shit is way too loud.

So yeah, today worked out well.

Then the news from the State Supreme Court of Iowa.

What a swell little gem. In Iowa of all places, we get a State Supreme Court stocked with Republicans to pretty much vociferously defend marriage between anybody who really wants to. The decision respected and actually honored the the concept and spirit of civil rights.

Watershed.

Iowa. The one state in the union where you dare not sell a bong. Wow.

We are changing.

Just look at the world stage today. Barack Hussein Obama and First Lady Michelle. Europe sees Jackie and Jack. They are abroad doing the absolute best they can to represent the rest of us. They are proud because we are or should be. They are humble because Americans have walked face first into humility.

Although I worry, I’m sure the ratio of smart Americans vs. stupid is in our favor. If you had to repeat that sentence to yourself, you’re not one of us.

They begin to repair the damage. The Obama’s show up in front of the people who need and want to see them. They show up at every chance they are afforded to distill themselves and what America is instead of what Europe has seen for the last eight years. Our knuckles don’t drag.

Bill Maher scores an interview with Joe The Plumber. Oh me oh my. See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

Bill O’Reilly, who’s likeness appears along side the definitions of both ‘hypocrite’ and ‘blowhard’ in the most reputable dictionaries, said in an interview today that he boycotts any film in which Sean Penn appears because of his political views. In the words of Snoop Dogg, “Fuck Bill O’Reilly”. And, “He’s a motherfuckin’ prick”. And, “Suck my dick”. And, “so I can kick his motherfuckin ass when the show is over with”.

I don’t really have anything to add here.

In other news, I thought it was pretty cool to hear that the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, was walking away at the behest of the Obama administration. That is, until I read the greedy bastard could tip the fuck out the door with as much as $20 million. Excuse me, there seems to be some sort of canker on my penis. Does this look infected to you? It’s like deja vu all over again.

Also, thirty thousand pythons as long as twenty feet are threatening to go forth, multiply and overrun Florida and there’s a million pounds of pistachios out there that will kill you in your bed.

The world is an increasingly perilous place and I’m almost out of pot again. It’s legal here in California as long as one suffers from a serious and/or chronic malaise like ingrown toenail, sebaceous cysts on one’s genitalia or say, brewer’s droop from drinking beer.

A prescription costs between a hundred and a hundred fifty bucks. My fridge is broke.

I watched a comic tonight on Comedy Central. Josh Blue. Self deprecating, brave, honest and very funny. He suffers from cerebral palsy. Walk a mile in another man’s shoes but never forget about the man with no feet.

I’m an agnostic. My position has more to do with the abject silliness of just about every organized religion on the planet, as opposed to some sort of soaring epiphany. Honestly, I owe my stake more to the vacuum of logic that exists in every dogma fomented by people of faith on up to, but not exclusively, the goddamn Pope.

For example:
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (March 17) – Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse, setting off criticism Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent where some 22 million people are living with HIV. -AOL news

Don’t lose sight of the fact they boink all the little boys and girls they want.

Good luck with that crap you pointy hatted pontiff. I’m not sorry to tell you that Catholicism just may be the most egregious and archaic “faith” practiced in America certainly, and under the world’s proscenium without a doubt. I will be as blunt as possible here. Catholicism encourages me to root for Satan. Catholics are fools. So are Baptists, Mormons, Anglicans, Protestants, Muslims and especially Evangelicals and Born Agains.

They are all petty children in the eyes of the universe.

My sincerest apologies if I left any one out.

Buddhism occurs to me to be the only discipline that bothers to address the existential nature and uniqueness of the human condition. I just can’t help but appreciate a fat guy with a shit eating grin in the context of all the other tragic and sometimes stigmatically bleeding religious icons.

Most of it is about guilt and non intellectually curious blind shithouse faith. What I mean to say is it’s spectacularly dumb.

You gonna eat that?

Drinks for my friends.

I’m fourty four years old. Sometimes I think about that and it impresses me. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot.

I’ve seen a kid on a bike launched by a car doing sixty. I’ve seen people splattered and dying face down on warm asphalt. I’ve been rushed to the hospital bleeding in an ambulance. I’ve met governors and senators. I’ve seen comets and eclipses. Managed a Der Wienerschnitzel. I’ve rolled end over end off the side of mountain in a Subaru. I had a knife pulled on me. Been to a whorehouse and ridden miles above in a giant balloon. Lost my mind on hallucinogenic drugs. Got booked on a felony and made the front page of my hometown paper.

All by the time I was twenty one or twenty two.

I always wonder how many other people flirt with insanity as much as I do. I don’t think I’m going crazy or anything but I wonder about everyone else. Imagine working in a hospital. People with there shit hanging out or infected with insidious diseases. There are so many professions I’m automatically excluded from because of my prejudice for gore and human or animal excretions be they voluntary or not.

I am grateful to be an American. Despite her flaws, copious and profound, I’m happy I was born here and not anywhere else. They call India ‘the worlds largest democracy’, yet the caste system in India allows for a man’s only employment prospect to be diving in the crude sewage system to clear obstructions. These poor fucks have little beyond facemasks, gloves and snorkels. They climb out of manholes covered in shit.

Fuck me.

Welcome to Planet Earth.

“So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests……For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” -JFK

He said that nearly a half century ago. How far have we come? We’ve elected our first bi-racial or racially mixed President. A very high watermark. To my dismay we are still coated in fear, willfull ignorance and graceless stupidity. Still so disasterously handicapped by institutions and insipid indoctrination. People actually lament the end of Dumbya’s dynasty. Millions still believe reproductive rights to be a priority beyond any other issue. Millions still have mullets and poor dental hygiene. They all listen to Rush Limbaugh.

We can’t ignore these bastards. They used to just be stupid. Now they’re mad. Not a welcome development. Seems like the only thing to do is marginalize them. Zeitgeist appears to endorse that notion. The pendulum is in motion and it’s arc seems to favor sensibility. I don’t trust these zealous fuckers, they may be mad now but they’ve always been insane, that’s how it all happened in the first place. It’s been welcome to the monkeyhouse for eight goddamn years.

“…..in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

I just have to say this. As fucked as we are, these dipshits want to stand at every hole we attempt to fill stomping and screaming about how we shovel or what we use to fill the hole. The Republicans, after all this time pissing and moaning about the budget, finally produce a document we’ll have to call an alternative. We can’t call it a budget because there are no goddamn numbers in it. I haven’t read the whole and I refuse to. I have neither the time, the patience or the humor. It’s a joke.

And another thing, most of the people who manage to get a degree in this country end up owing an assload of money. In their early twenties they are desensitized to the idea of humongous debt. So, duh. No wonder so many are so confused. They were working and now they’re not. They had savings and now they don’t. They were living check to check and now they live hand to mouth. They lived in their cars and now they live on a sidewalk.

Another indicator of just how bad the shit is hitting the fan is conflagrations on our southern border. Juárez is occupied by the Mexican military. Thousands dying every year. Far more than our wars across the globe. It is blowing up. This shit is fucked up and it’s because of our senseless, pointless, compassionless and thoroughly ineffective ‘War On Drugs’.

Evil, draconian policy arriving home to roost. Hillary showed up, I don’t know what she did. People who buy pot, smoke pot or even sell pot should not be behind bars anymore than people who buy booze, drink booze or sell booze. It’s that simple. It’s that regoddamndiculous.

My cat Beddy likes to sit on my back while I take a dump. She let’s me know with her eyes and one of at least ten variations on the sound of a pigeon. She’s petite but I still need to lean forward a bit. She turns every direction of the compass. Otherwise she doesn’t approach me in the bathroom much. She’s transfixed by the water closet however. I call it that because of her. It’s a story for another day.

It’s just that we are still so plumbing the depths.

I no longer buy bottled water.

This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.

Drinks for my friends.

A massive swing of the pendulum to the right along about 1999. A percieved, albeit shallow impetus had been in place since Newt Gingrich fell from grace. Republicans got out outfoxed by Bubba. Clinton spanked their faces with bricks. They were pissed.

So, it had been brewing despite their growing power, not because of it. Slow but deliberate and venemously vengeful at the behest of the most unimaginably foul people. Like a bow being drawn. Weird. I ask myself about the hang time. I wondered how long circumstances and zeitgeist would favor such momentum. Rules of inertia and gravity dictated it would swing back, but social will and thorough retardation of the great unwashed can effect more than the laws of physics.

How is it a grown man pulls off the name Newt? He’s a bit of a baby face.

Years go by. Dark and horrible years. Death, destruction and redistribution of wealth on a biblical scale. Richard Bruce Cheney. Karl Rove. Unimaginably foul people.

Then, seems like it’s been forever, but the arc of the bob is once again in motion. It grows larger. It steams towards us. It’s path is to the left by way of East . After years of near suspended animation, the air displaced as she gains velocity goes from a whistle to a howl. I worry about apogee and thrust. Seems she’s coming too fast.

The initial violence of the movement could send the bob swinging violently over the top. Three hundred sixty degrees. It’s that nine o’ clock position I worry about. No need to go far past there on the dial. Ninety degrees.

Sad and regrettable that events so odious as an economic implosion were the only catalyst with mass enough to dislodge the bob from it’s parking place in the neoconservative lot.

From a howl to a scream.

Ah well, here it comes and this is America goddamnit. Religious adherence is down, correspondingly, common sense is up. The pious right revealed as the shallow, callow, two dimensional fucktards they are. Credibility across that side of the spectrum in severe disrepair.

Republicans are flailing in a vast puddle of human excrement. Yes, their own shit.

Ann Coulter and The Human Shitsmear Rush Limbaugh bleat incendiary expletives between gags on authentic Red White and Blue liberal American cock. Cheney shows up on TV specifically to say thet we’re already less safe because we don’t torture. Just tell me what has to happen to shut this quacking, rounheaded, corpulent fingered fucking penguin the fuck up.

Booya! Bitch!

Are you getting the sense this is an angry sort of hit piece? I gotta tell you I’m feeling it. I really hate these bastards. I’m not even sure what I mean about that American cock bit, but it speaks to the spirit and depth of my rage somehow.

This is an opportunity for progressive thinkers to pay it forward. Foment and supply the kind of disciplined thinking, politics, and ethics America has been so deliberately starved of for so long. Pushback. Give to the ignorant and fearful in equal measure what they’ve so successfully crammed down our gullets for the last eight years at least.

They can all blow me.

Go ahead with the truth. It is more than good enough.

Drinks for my friends.

He’s not exactly my arch nemesis but he’s fun to poke my stick at. Just ignorant enough to be a flat earther. He wrote the following on his myspace blog:
“Many of you have heard of the Mustang Ranch. It was a famous brothel in Nevada where prostitution is legal. Anyway, back in the 90’s when Bubba and Hillary occupied the White House, the Mustang Ranch was seized by the IRS for failing to pay income taxes. It’s a little known fact, but; as required by law, the government tried to operate the business but failed and had to close it down. Now you want to trust the economic security of this nation to the same morons who couldn’t make money running a whorehouse and selling whiskey???

You must be kidding. . .
Don’t even think about turning our healthcare system over to them.”

I respond:

You’ve no idea of what you speak. Big suprise. Balloons and confetti. What you don’t understand is that the last administration installed a parade of idiots. While some are controversial, this administration endeavors to employ smart qualified people. One of the ideas here is for things to run much better. Smoother. More fair. More equitable.

I’m quite sure the failing brothel’s ultimate demise was directly attributable to Bill and Hillary. Gimme a break. Joe Conforte was a charismatic criminal but not a business man. The Mustang Ranch had already been closed and dormant once. When the feds took posession it had been closed and inactive a second time.

I don’t know the government even bothered to make a go of it. Work with me here, like the Federal Government is gonna try to run a brothel. Next. It was relocated and eventually auctioned off by BLM, the Bureau of Land Management. BLM owns about85% percent of most western states on average. The leisure suited wonderkind in bolo ties at BLM wouldn’t begin to have a clue about running a whorehouse.

Now, Bubba might just be the world’s greatest philanthropist. He shakes a hand and millions of dollars go to AIDs medicine in countries that can’t possibly afford it otherwise. He walks a tarmac and water flows. Wells are dug and they produce clean water. Irrigation networks are constructed. He’s an extraordinarily effective human. What’s your guess how a post Presedential Dumbya will do?

The first comment on his blog:
“If Dennis Hoff CAN do it and the Gov’mnt can’t then yes, by all means DO NOT turn anything over to them!”

I’m from Carson City Nevada, Dennis Hof is a friend of mine. He’s decent honest man with integrity. He’s done me more favors than I can count.

For my birthday I recieved a signed and inscribed copy of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s autobiography, “The Good Fight”.

So as a disclaimer, I’m a bleeding heart pinko liberal Democrat.

Dewitt and friends, you think you know something you don’t. You think you understand something you cannot.

Your lack of depth pains even me, someone who has very little respect for you. You’re reach exceeds your grasp and allows just enough for you to be detrimental. Not part of the solution, so definitely part of the problem. Just so you know, when I engage in name calling; asshole and idiot for example, it’s merely shorthand for what I’m trying to tell you here.

Those profane sentiments made by me you choose so conveniently to hide behind as a reason for not engaging me… You are a coward. A meat puppet.

I just loathe your perspective, your intolerance, the narrowness of your mind and your lack of intellectual curiosity. A sheep in wolf’s clothing.

That you could seize on an example such as this to make some grandiose sweeping point about the future of this once great country under our new President, is just Fisher Price ludicrous. Do some homework. Pay attention. Stop grabbing at ankles from the ditch.

Such a hypocritical and selective lover of government you are. You adore the mansion the neocons and religious zealots built. If you’ve got an ounce of sack left, you’ll answer my next few questions honestly. I am calling you out.

1) Do you have adequate healthcare for your age and condition? Yep, it’s a trick question.

2) Do you understand that George Dumbya Bush inherited a massive surplus from Willam Jefferson Clinton? Seriously, do you get that? Do you understand that this giant rotting swamp in the middle of a vast arid desert used to be sparkling streams rushing through a verdant landscape?

3) Tell me, without resorting to WMD, Al Qaeda or imminent threat, why we invaded the sovereign country of Iraq?

It’s a good place to start. I’ll do the same for you. Ask me three questions. Seriously and with a modicum of respect. I’ll answer them.

What we’ve witnessed here is the worst capitalism has to offer. What about a little socialized medicine and nationalization of less than half of our banking institutions? What are you so afraid of?

We are course correcting here. Greed has been completely replaced by jeopardy. So called Republicans and conservatives seem content to sit on their hands and bleat from the sidelines. Passive obstructionism. You offer few if any answers and seem content to deride and divide wherever you can. Totally in lockstep.

If I’ve never said this before, I’m remiss. I don’t imagine you to be a bad guy. I do think you lack the courage to question what you’ve been indoctrinated with and it frustrates me. And I do think you’re a fool. Fool and decent guy aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. A decent fool just gums up the works, see?

The U.S. is 35th in the world for math. According to the International Trade Centre, in 2005 the United States imported $494,477,000 worth of explosives and pyrotechnic products, or 24% of the world’s total. -rankingamerica.wordpress.com

According to a 2006 study first published in the magazine, Science, the United States ranks thirty-third out of thirty four nations (32 in Europe plus Japan and the United States) in acceptance of evolution. Iceland ranks first. Only Turkey ranked lower than the United States in the acceptance of evolution. -rankingamerica.wordpress.com

They’re talking about you Dewitt. Tell me you don’t buy into creationism Dewitt. If you do, the discussion might be over before it starts. I just can’t engage you there. It’s silly. There was no Noah. There was no Arc. There was no garden, no apple and no serpent. Sorry. Metaphors at best.

There’s no reason America should be so far behind in every way. Education and healthcare are long term issues we need to pay attention to immediately. A robust economy cannot be complete without moving to solve these problems now. Bedrock stability depends on those two issues in motion now, in five years and peaking in ten.

The culture of fear is obsolete. What we are being offered is hope. It is the the antidote.

What’s happening here is the mother of all adjustments. We do it the right way, ride it out with class and dignity and a genuine ethic of sacrifice, we’ll all be cool. Make no mistake, things will get smaller and stay that way for some time. We will be walking it back.

I really want to know what the average ketchup packet costs. It doesn’t stop there. What about mayo, mustard, relish and ranch? The nearly elegant, in the world of single servings of condiments, foil envelopes of soy with the post modern red and white. Heinz Mayonnaise is classy packaging.

Which of the aforementioned are no longer available at your neighborhood 7-11?

At what point does it cease to be cost effective to provide these delicious pillows for free? I am concerned.

Drinks for my friends.

A colleague and I had a mildly intense but friendly conversation about politics the other day. I’m hoping I disabused him of few ridiculous notions but I doubt it. Maybe I gave him pause on one or two matters. I may never know. Interesting guy. Very bright, very calm and very friendly.

I really like my little department at the bank. It doesn’t suck that Skippy’s gone.

So, same colleague tells me he agrees with Warren Buffet’s remarks this morning. I wasn’t aware of what he said but told my friend that I thought Buffet was a bright guy. He characterized what he’d heard as Buffet saying that the Obama administration should limit it’s focus to issues economic and stop using the power of majority to ram a liberal agenda down the throat of congress.

I thought to myself, less than fifty days in, and we’re being accused of precisely what Republicans have been audaciously guilty of for the last eight years, plus twenty.

Oh the humanity.

Here’s what Buffet said:
Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter, famously described the economic crisis as an “Economic Pearl Harbor” — but now says Congress, especially the GOP, has failed to adopt an appropriately unified “Dec. 8th” mentality. -politico.com

“The minority really do[es] have an obligation to support things that are clearly designed to fight the war in a big way,” Buffett said. “I think the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and realize you need one leader… I think the [Democrats] should not use it … to roll the Republicans.” -firstread.msnbc.msn.com

I asked my friend if he thought Obama’s executive order today lifting the ban on federal funding for stem cell research was an example of the gratuitous Liberal agenda. His answer was, “absolutely”.

In other news:
The daughter of Republican Sen. John McCain called President Obama “the hippest politician around” – then complained that being a member of the GOP is “about as edgy as Donny Osmond” and blasted conservative commentator Ann Coulter as “offensive” and “radical.” -nypost.com

This sort of betrayal pleases me to no end. I wonder how long before she’s forced to walk it back a little. It won’t be long before daddy starts to forget.

Doesn’t Meghan McCain have a big rack?

Also, the practise of organized religion is on the decline. Some 86% indentified themselves as religious in 1990. These days it’s around 75%. Salient point here is that’s a long way to go. We need it closer to fifty-fifty. I’d feel better.

Last but not least is Our Man’s signing of the executive order today. Not only is it an economic opportunity and therefore part of a much bigger picture, but it’s intended to help “restore scientific integrity in government decision making.” -whitehouse.gov

“Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.” – President Barack Obama -whitehouse.gov

See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

Just recently Our Man announced another welcome reversal from Dumbya era policies.

Along with closing Gitmo, ending torture, bringing troops home, allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire and no more raids on medicinal marijuana, Obama announced a lifting of the ridicilous restrictions on government funded stem cell research.

Hoorah and in your face bitches.

I’m looking at change. I’m looking right at it.

So today, Sunday, this tool who’s been on my radar for some time, Eric Cantor (Republican Whip) had this to say, “Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let’s focus on what needs to be done,” – CNN

Hey Cantor, how is this a distraction? Why are the economy and potentially life saving scientific techniques or methodologies mutually exclusive? What kind of simpleton are you? One who’s so clueless as to imagine himself to be fighting for a baseless retarded principle? Or, so cynical as to pander impudently to right wing Christian whackjobs by fomenting ignorance and fear?

No secret that Cantor has been one of the most shrill Republican voices pissing on any and all of Obama’s economic proposals and policies.

White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes: “Advances with regard to science and technology help advance our overall national goals around economic growth and job creation,” she said, adding, “I think anytime you make an effort to try and separate these pieces of the puzzle, you’re missing the entire picture.” – CNN

Well said.

Cantor also said: “Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning that occurs,” Cantor said. “We don’t want that. That shouldn’t be done. That’s wrong.” – CNN

Fear, ignorance and proof that Cantor either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or at the very least, doesn’t think Americans do.

Government has very little judicature to be palavering over the morals or ethics of scientic research, save maybe for defense and national security. See how I just bitch slapped you with the irony? Did you like it? Call me daddy.

We would do well to remember that history provides plethora example of scientists and philosophers jailed or executed for telling what they knew to be the truth. We are not the center of the universe. We are not the center of the solar system, the sun is. The earth is round. Germs are really small.

I will paraphrase the local NBC affiliate coverage by telling you that opponents of stem cell research fear the destruction of human embryos and that the government will now be responsible for loss of human life.

Here are the motherfucking facts. We’re not even talking about embryos, we’re talking about blastocysts. I microscopic ball of about thirty cells, four or five days fertilized by in vitro fertilization only. In vitro fertilization is about numbers. The more eggs sperm conquer the better the odds. What I’m trying to tell you is that the blastocysts that don’t get used are discarded. Thrown away. The ones we want for research, end up in some strange receptacle with a scary symbol on it.

The entire controversy is over what has been biological waste until tomorrow.

Eric Cantor, fucktard that he is would have you believe that he’s not the one doing the distracting. Methinks he doth protest too much. Me also thinks he’s a jackbooted, lockstep Republican who’s just stupid enough to not see his base eroding.

Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground? – DLR

Two names: Bill Frist and Rick Santorum. Mumbling stumbling fucks, welcome to the clubhouse Mr. Cantor, sodas are free.

Drinks for my friends.

My question is, what’s wrong with this picture?

So we’re in the middle of an economic clusterfuck. Um, no shit.

The housing bubble erupted like a volcanically abscessed cow and deflated into a crater with a bottom below sea level. Tragic. I saw it coming. Twenty five percent annual appreciation in home values was unsustainable. Duh. I understood housing sales and speculation to be the last pole standing underneath the tent of our economy.

I was at the table, bought a brand new house in ’94, sold it in ’96 just after I no longer had to worry about capital gains. In and out at the last minute. I was lucky.

The consistent erosion in value of the dollar against foreign currency was troubling. Dragster fueled gold prices were an omen. Unemployment began to walk up a precipitous ladder. Then there was a deficit ballooning like a hemorrhoid after a dinner of habaneros, jalapenos and horseradish. A senseless war we couldn’t begin to afford.

I was and am a salesman, I talk to people all over the country everyday. I saw it coming.

Jon Stewart made a hysterically funny point tonight about how CNBC, a self proclaimed financial network, just missed it. Didn’t see it coming just like Alan Greenspan didn’t. I don’t know about CNBC, but Alan Greenspan is a liar.

How is that? You know, Greenspan turns into an idiot overnight and entire network devoted to the economy has fiscal Down Syndrome?

I predicted it. Read my old blogs. Am I a genius? One could argue it as a purely academic exercise, but that’s not the point. I am as clueless as the next Joe in most matters financial.

Shhhh! We’re hunting wabbit. See what I’m saying?

Here’s my point. We’ve got 90,000 troops in Europe, almost a hundred thousand in Asia and various amounts in twenty or thirty other countries. We’ll be spending well north of six hundred billion this year for “defense”. More than ten times as much as any other country.

Economies expand and contract. America’s economy is contracting at about the same rate as that of the planet. Our actual vulnerability in terms of national security are more congruent and even symbiotic with world economic fortune than any other facet of anything we do here on the blue marble.

Time to reckon and then contract. Not saying we should get all xenophobic at the bacchanal. How about we shrink some of our imperialistic aspirations around the globe? America must sacrifice her codependent love affair with the military industrial complex. If we don’t, we’ll fold like the Soviet Union for the same reasons and in the same way. Trust me.

It will be chaotic, noisy and there will be food lines.

Drinks for my friends.

Oil and pot. One syllable, three letters each. What’s the only difference? One’s legal and one’s not. People die, get kidnapped and beheaded at the behest of both. A simple product. A commodity. The bad people get rich either way. The terrorists are just as sexy.

Among the most dangerous and foolish of games.

The prison industrial complex. Mexican warlords. Where the money goes has not changed since Nixon. The only significant change has been the amount of money. Can you say exponential? The gleaming city is underwater. The levees have failed. The cash overflows. America’s Drug War is the second or third stupidest thing we’ve ever done. After slavery, Viet Nam and Iraq.

It may be the second or third most expensive.

Then there was The Pet Rock, The Osmonds and Spam as meat.

Lives lost and innocent imprisoned in numbers staggering and shameful. Pigs at the trough, persecuting, prosecuting and killing their own while they horde the filthy lucre. You want terrorism? It’s on your southern border and it’s blowing the fuck up. Terror not mutually exclusive with the North American continent anymore.

It’s state sponsored, by your state, by the US of A. As we speak, it spills over. Civilians slaughtered. Juarez, Tijuana, El Paso and San Diego. Every American city bends and groans under the weight of our archaic policies and a draconian incarceration non-solution.

Enforce, enforce, enforce.

We learned in the thirties that prohibition is wrongheaded and the furthest thing from efficacious mankind could possibly muster. Stupid then, stupid now. It gave rise to a brand of crime we came to call ‘organized’. I wonder why we called it that. Seems kinda non-nefarious. A non sequitur. What it is today, is bad news. Organized crime like this, is American made. Homegrown like Jazz and The Blues. Just like a gorgeous and unique art form, we are worldwide with the violence and the ignorance.

I worry about my parents. They winter in Yuma. They have the world’s best insurance but they still cross the border to save money on a few things.

This is where we are. This is what we’ve allowed to happen. It’s sick. The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. The conversation with my mother will be about their safety on the border, because of The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. Because they could be killed on a lazy Sunday.

This is bullshit. We need to shut this nonsense down. We reap what we have sown. Did you know Reagan dealt drugs? He also dealt arms to folks we’d all decided as a country we couldn’t do business with because they were brown and kinda socialist. Or was it the other way around? I forget.

Even in my world the clouds part.

Then there’s Our Man’s choice for Drug Czar (head of the ONDCP), Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. I don’t know much about this guy yet but he looks to be pretty progressive. Alternet calls him “a relatively enlightened cop.” Seattle is goddamn liberal. They’ve lowered marijuana as an enforcement priority and have needle exchange.

Maybe there’s potential.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed he will not be pursuing DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics. A policy shift that’s precisely 180 degrees out from the previous administration. It’s a waste of time and money and it foments distrust and fear. Smart move. Makes me smile.

Pretty big deal the aggregate of these issues alone. The departure they represent, despite them not being secondary or even tertiary to the electorate these days, it’s awesome. Forgive me but it is. It reveals a compassion and pragmatism people won’t recognize because it’s been so long since they’ve seen it.

Trust me, this is big.

My sincere hope is that it’s harbinger of things to come.

It he tells us he’s closing Gitmo, ending torture and the war in Iraq. Gonna wind down the defense budget a little, spend lots on infrastructure, healthcare and education. He seems to understand this is a long term deal. This is not your father’s President. His short game looks good too. Aggressive and decisive. Perhaps we should do something to revive the patient as opposed to speculating ad nauseum over what will be it’s demise.

If we could just stop spending money to kill people or be able to kill them better in the future. Not forever. Maybe for a few years. You know, a three year moratorium would just about get us out of this mess. It could work pretty well in the short term.

End the drug war, stop killing folks. Stop putting them in jail. Let the masses self medicate and get off your asses and allow America to cultivate hemp. Oil, nutrition and textiles in a crop requiring no pesticides that can be turned around every twelve to sixteen weeks. It’s illegal because it scared the shit out of Hearst (paper) and Rockefeller (oil) back in the thirties.

Good green bud has Pfizer horrified and vomiting.

Life is not a game and we’re not necessarily here to compete all the time. But when people succumb, when they become overly cynical and bitter. They have lost. They are losers on the human stage. They may succeed in some ways, but when they lose in important ways, nobody gives a damn.

Drinks for my friends.

Our man has delivered a budget. That word reads so simple. A budget. It’s more than that. A philosophy. He has huge balls. He’s not here to fuck around. It’s a lot of goddamn money. An unbelievable, unimaginable amount of money. Three and a half trillion at least. History will repeat itself like pi before you and I can realize a number like that.

Hoo ya!

“In keeping with my commitment to make our government more open and transparent, this budget is an honest accounting of where we are and where we intend to go,” Obama said at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House before the budget was officially released. He said previous budgets have “not told the whole truth” about spending and that “large sums have been left off the books,” including war costs that have been funded by separate emergency supplemental appropriations.

“And that kind of dishonest accounting is not how you run your family budgets at home; it’s not how your government should run its budgets either,” Obama said. -truthout.org

It’s spooky ambitous and ideological even. It’s visionary. The symbolism of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building is not lost on me. Long term thinking as opposed to thumb in the dyke stop gap chicanery. He’s made the very bold and cold shower honest move of including the cost of our wars in the official accounting of our government’s spending. The first time since we began to wage this unjust war. It begs the question of why it hasn’t been included so far. Did they think we didn’t know? Did they think we didn’t understand they were spending more money than you and I can make?

That all the while the rich were getting richer and we didn’t know?

“I have serious concerns with this budget, which demands hardworking American families and job creators turn over more of their hard-earned money to the government to pay for unprecedented spending increases,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. -truthout.org

That is a lie. He is a Senator and he is lying. He sucks. His lament was for the wealthy. He presided over what will be the bulk of your debt for the last eight years. He’s an asshole. Google him, you can tell by looking at him. He was the kid you beat up for trying to tax Jello or maybe sell you gum by the stick.

These asshat Republicans have forced us to double down. They act like they left us a pile of chips. They left a pair of red panties on the green felt. Cotton granny drawers XXL.

Get out of the way while we play bold because it’s the only option you left us. Peniswhipdrinks. Go sit by the pool but you can’t put your drinks on your room.

We intend to use the rollback of tax cuts to the absurdly wealthy as our marker. Spreading the wealth around indeed. 80% of the world’s wealth in the hands of 1% of it’s people. Socialism my ass. Looks entirely equitable and ethical to me. Again, you haven’t left us much choice.

Here lies some proof in the moveable feast of the pudding. We spend ten times more than our closest competitor on guns, bombs, missiles and fighting men & women. America is responsible for forty percent of the entire global outlay of guns, bombs, missiles and humans. It’s ridiculous and obsolete. The single biggest component of that expense is humans. The world has changed. The ideology and geography of huge human armies is obsolete. Wars like this are no longer sustainable. If they prove to be viable at all, we will lose them. Good Morning Vietnam. A lesson we should have learned forty years ago.

“WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama Thursday unveiled a 663.7 billion dollar defense budget, up a modest 1.5 percent on 2009, but projected a sharp decline in spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming years.”

Somehow under the new administration, it’s ok to photograph and reproduce images of coffins containing our dead service members. You may call the changes so far symbolic, I call them substantial.

We’re not in Kansas anymore. Kansas is no longer Kansas, despite how bad the people who live there want it to be. The world has changed and continues to do so. Pay attention. Nobody is in Kansas anymore.

We need to be as fierce in battle as we are gentle in friendship. I stole that but I don’t remember where.

Maybe next we’ll talk about education and health care.

Drinks for my friends.

Title courtesy of Jon Stewart.

Subject: The stimulus bill.

He didn’t invite them to his table, he sought to sit at theirs. He told them what he intended to do and solicited their contributions. He asked them for their ideas. He made concessions. Diluted his ideas with theirs in the spirit of bipartisanship.

Despite such pointed magnanimity, every single Republican in the house walked away. Irresponsible, single minded, tunnel vision afflicted pricks. Shameful and embarrassing. How ridiculous. Yes Virginia, Republicans are not only assholes, but deaf, dumb and blind assholes.

He knows better than they do that he doesn’t need them. They’ve been marginalized by their own actions. They are fools and he understands this better than they do. He didn’t do this to them, they are prisoners of their own device.

He walked straight at them with hands open and they chose instead to piss into the wind. Let the record show they are damp and they stink.

Like soldiers stranded on remote islands with no evidence the war is over.

Punks. Dipshits. The most clueless union of fucktards to ever inhabit our government since they were the most clueless union of fucktards ever in power. Children.

“Why behave in public when you’re living on a playground?” -David Lee Roth

Stay with me.

Are we to expect this sort of partisan obstinance to continue? Did they not get the memo? Do they not understand that they are over? Ignorance does not always prove to be bliss. Led by House Minority Leader John Boehner (Boner), The Repugnicunts marched in jackbooted lockstep. Lemmings. They haven’t even bothered to wet a finger and hoist it. They still think it’s 1992. Chronic insouciance.

Boner quotes:

“This Was a Bipartisan Rejection of a Partisan Bill” Um, what? How can it be a bipartisan rejection when it was a single party exclusively doing the rejection? Spot the retard.

“I’m just a Congressman, so I have no opinions about what the government does. My opinion on waterboarding is classified information.” -WEBCommentary

John Boehner is a clueless dickhead. The poor dumb saps from Ohio got him as substitute teacher after Tom DeLay was forced to walk the plank.

I say slash every concession out of the bill, every unecessary tax cut and let them eat goddamn cake. Our man should take full advantage of the bully pulpit and otherwise let be what will be.

There is no tangible difference between House Republicans like Boner and the CEOs that rode corporate jets to to Washington to beg for money. No different than the megalomaniacal Wall Street captains that took tax payer money for bonuses in an awe inspiring display of ostentatious avarice.

I gotta give it to Claire McCaskill for proposing legislation that would cap salaries for Wall Street execs of firms recieving TARP money at $400k, the same as President of The United States. “These people are idiots. You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses… What planet are these people on?” -Daily Kos

Couldn’t have said it better myself. How many of the aforementioned would you guess are Republican? I imagine the answer would delight me.

I’m reasonably sure that this style of creep is on the verge of extinction. I’d like to believe that anyway. One thing is certain, they are no longer at the wheel and that is encouraging. Fools. Insidious fools.

If House Republicans are in any way representative of the future of their party, it may be time for them to contemplate the most flattering diorama they can afford in backward ass country fuck museums across our great land. Dinosaurs anyone? Neanderthal. Cro-Magnon at the very least. Reptilian perhaps. Assholes without a doubt.

The diorama itself would have to depict various men and women in obvious sartorial business splendor fellating a variety of other similiarly attired beltway professionals with wheelbarrows of filthy lucre at the ready and nearby. The obligatory backround matte painting would include poor folks suffering from hazardous chemical contamination, non US citizens impoverished and displaced by war and The Constitution being defecated on et al.

Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya you miserable bastards.

Drinks for my friends.

I remember when I had my first beer.

Instead of the Hostess cherry pie my father usually bought for me at the Country Store on the way back from the dump, Dad furnished me a Bud tallboy. We came home, I opened it, set in on the fence and started mowing the lawn. I don’t think I finished the the lawn or the beer. Suddenly, I needed a nap.

GOP Senator George Voinovich from Ohio announced today that he won’t seek reelection in 2010. Kit Bond from Missouri, Mel Martinez of Florida and Sam Brownback from Kansas are all walking away. All Republicans. Salt in the wound, Jeb Bush, “the smart one” says he won’t be running. Thereby proving he’s at least somewhat smarter.

Forgive my cynicism, but what I think is going on here is that the proverbial fat lady has sung. The GOP knows this, they got theirs, oh boy did they get theirs. Now it’s stage left and a pile a filthy lucre. Bush, Cheney et al. can’t wait to get out and with a little luck and black cancerous evil, they will all somehow avoid prosecution for war crimes.

These are very bad men.

Ask yourself how you can let this happen. They are dirty filthy bastards. Criminals. Scum. Sewage. Picture Cheney’s face. Dick-in-Bush should be consigned to an 8 X 10. A glossy and a cell. Dumbya is in good health. He’ll last forever. Cheney has five years, he will expire from a huge greasy black hole in his useless heart.

Dick Cheney is an asstard. He sucks. I want the glossy, autographed.

A familiar refrain I know; but we’re fucked. The planet is fucked. The economy is as fucked has it’s been since it was the most fucked ever. 1933 through 45 or so. The world hates us. Our rights to privacy and everything else constitutional are fucked. Civil liberties out the goddamn window. We fight unjust wars and then torture those who would object along with anyone else. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer. This administration has orchestrated and overseen the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of man.

Check it out uncle Tyke, it’s true.

The Republicans were evil and the Democrats were pussies.

Now, one by one and in groups, they will walk away. Gleefully and without remorse, they will leave this new generation of hope to shoulder a burden of filth and impossible moral turpitude. Events and policies that stain the perception of a once great country for decades.

A new generation with a moral and fiscal defecit.

Now I’m going to give you some culinary advice for the dark days to come. There is no actual nutrition to be had here. Merely a greasy, very satisfying gut bomb that will not end in you shitting like a goose.

Two packages of Top Ramen and a half stick of butter. In a smallish four quart pot, bring water, copious amounts of salt and hopefully some olive oil to boil rapidly over the highest heat. Violently. Plunge the noodles. Have a smoke. After a while, when the noodles are pasty and gluey, drain the water so that it barely covers the noodles. Add dry suace packets and sesame oil if you have any. Have another smoke. Make a short phone call, check out some free internet porn, watch a little of the Daily Show. Whatever.

Use your ears. It will begin to smack and splatter.

Wash a shallow bowl and a big fork. Drain almost all but a little bit of the water from the noodles and add the butter. Reduce the heat to about half. Add some canned peas or maybe some supermarket brand deli mustard, whatever you got, but be conservative. At this stage, the noodles are delicate and will absorb flavors like a sponge.

You’re frying over pretty high heat so stir vigorously.

Once the water is boiled off, upend the pot into the bowl and eat in front of a fan. The fan cools the noodles to an optimum temperature before you shovel them into your maw. Try to take really big hot steamy bites. It is a most satisfying density into one’s gulliver for less than three dollars. You’ll sleep well if even if you’ve been drinking. No need to worry about morning mud unless you flirt with hot sauce or canned vegetables, delicious but their may be consequences.

Now, back to the future and the legacy of the GOP. Expect the exodus to continue. They can’t possibly face their constituents after the ass rape they’ve subjected them to. They will walk away quietly. Clever but not smart, greedy shallow men. Horrible people who lack a mad fuck about anyone. I can’t stand it.

We’re about 90 degrees out. The world may have caught up with me.

Drinks for my friends.

Bear with me. Take your time. I had a lot to say.

Little explosions of pork fat in a heavy iron skillet. The fire is hot and I’m not sure, so I pull it off. Good move. The bacon just overdone but still sweaty and fatty. No aroma like that of fresh thick bacon. Most folks like it cooked this way. I use tongs to put it on a plate.

Motes bob and dance in rays of sun, a subject of birdsong, butterflies and dragonflies.

Man has almost complete authority over his own clock. Animals, from rodents to whales, have the sun.

I drop a fistfull of white raisins. Some diced yellow onions and a little butter into the cast iron.

Next up is to smack some eggs in the fat and put the skillet back on the crackling morning combustion. Beneath a canopy of primeval. This part’s easy. They cook like that, the eggs. Smacking and spattering. Hope ya like yours yellow loose. Quick and hot. Soft in the middle with brown bubbles at the edges. They’re done. Sea salt? Tapatio?

Someone else is doing coffee. I smell it. Raw like tilled earth. Berries.

Potatos cook the longest, garlic and rosemary. Moist in the center, otherwise crispy and taut. Steaming. Glistening with butter and oil. Fresh ground pepper. With potatos, I don’t play games I can’t win. The best way I’ve found.

Everyone stares up and around. Nobody looks at their food while they shovel it at their mouths. The savour does not compete with the vista, it compliments it, the ambiance of a deciduous forest in the chill of a late summer morning.

Have some champagne.

Next up, pine trees and a good classic novel. Some Fitzgerald or maybe Jack London. Twain. Capote. Then a nice clean spot to evacuate oneself and soap and water and towels after and what not.

I bring my own ointments and salves.

Maybe an afternoon walk.

I never would have made it as some pioneer or frontiersman. Maybe if I was some version of royalty. Afforded a certain amount of privilege and staff.

I just want to live in San Francisco.

Gin and chocolate.

I believe in mankind’s right to self medicate.

There is simply no reason in a country as wealthy as ours that people should go hungry, without health care or as much education as anyone can tolerate. I can’t stand it.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and proclaim that a little socialism might not be bad for us. Not just to give the folks who fall through the cracks a leg up, but to headbutt the absurdly wealthy who have enjoyed political, social and economic advantage by virtue of obscene largess for so long, the phenomena has manifested a momentum of it’s own now centuries old.

It may also serve to highlight the perverted version of Capitalism and Democracy we have chosen to embrace. We are in a place where our adherence to and practice of “free market capitalism”, as is the contemporary model, isn’t merely foolish, it is reckless, dangerous and unconscionable.

Fear and spying, rendering and detaining, holding people indefinitely without charging them………what does that look like to you? An economy hit by a wave any fool saw coming, so strong as to temporarily capsize us despite our size, displacement and power? More waves on the way.

Rotting infrastructure and an attitude of every man for himself on twenty million lips at least.

Hated so much a journalist throws shoes at Dumbya’s melon inside the Green Zone? More on that later.

We are stupid and greedy. Not necessarily in that order.

Fuck anything that moves.

Make these prick CEO’s live in a motel for a season. Three months. Twenty bucks a day per diem. Introduce them to the miracle of cheap chunky peanut butter and applesauce on the same spoon.

Ssshhhhhhhhh!!!

I covet and admire the idea of self determination. So far, the concept and my practice thereof has allowed me to reap almost exactly what I’ve sewn. Can’t ask for more than than that. What I’d like to see is that degree of parity afforded to not just every American regardless of race, color or creed, but every human.

We could render organized religion obsolete by achieving just that. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think so.

Replace an archaic institution that withholds (religion), with a concept, maybe a mandate, far more inclusive and progressive that holds as a fundamental ideal, prosperity of the earth and it’s inhabitants simultaneously. I’m a goddamn genius. Give me a can of beer and a Nobel, bitches.

Anyway.

I honestly believe that the defining moment of Dumbya’s reign occured on this very day, December Fourteen, the year of our Lord, 2008. I’m sure you’ve seen the footage by now. To his credit, our President did skillfully dodge two well launched shoes from not very far away. We learn that this is some major insult in that part of the world. To throw your shoes.

An Egyptian reporter with a pretty good arm fired said shoes at Dumbya’s head and screamed:
“This is a farewell … you dog!” “You killed the Iraqis!” -CNN

Ha! That’s goddamn golden. Forgive me, but if he’d taken one right in the fucking face? I would have called paramedics before screeching sobbing laughter could consume me. Go ahead, picture it. Me laughing ’til I puke or him taking one right in the kisser. Sheezus. That would have been gorgeous.

Picture it.

In any case, it was just so perfect. Vicariously cathartic. This really should be the swan song for the dumbest man to ever be President of America. We should remember him forever as the guy ducking shoes thrown hard by a journalist at a press conference in the “Green Zone”, the safest place in Iraq.

Bush Sr. had, “Read my lips…..”, Clinton had “I did not have sexual relations with that woman……”, Nixon had “I am not a crook”. Dumbya, among all the other ridiculous shit he’s said and done will nonetheless be remembered for his physical adroitness in ducking angry shoe leather in contrast to his profound lack of any kind of mental acuity in any shape or form.

He still doesn’t get that he’s an idiot.

Meet your legacy you stupid sonofabitch. Beet the Meatles.

I just want him to know what a complete loser he is. It’s not just angst. Hundreds of thousands died because no one in this man’s life had sense enough to teach him banjo and take him to the river everyday. They took him to school instead. Millions of Americans made the same mistake and now we’ll pay for it.

I went to hand her the remote. She said put it next to me dear, I’m scratching my butt right now. I looked and she was. So I did.

The Holidays. Weird. Didn’t have the Christmas I was used to last year. The old man was sick. Very. Spent my time at the hospital or sleeping because I’m a pussy and that’s what I do when I’m afraid. He’s so good now I want to punch him in the mouth.

To know my old man is to understand that he’s the shit. He’s only afraid of one thing. It has nothing to do with him. If you’re smart you’ll guess it.

My brother in law, Todd, a man I’ve known of since we were boys, lost his Mother just a few months before. Her name was Dixie and I really liked her. She was a writer. I see her face.

Here it is again. The Holidays. I’m expecting something different this year. It will be somewhere between now and then. Holidays are always a little step back in time. We may all have a similiar lense for this one. I hope so. I’m looking for the love and warmth of family unmitigated by illness and sadness. He is well now. I think it will be big and special.

My ass is broke so the only gift I have is my etchings.

Not being able to buy Christmas presents used to scare the crap out of me. It nightmared me. I was a fairly prodigious giver. I’ll bring really good wine.

Life is good.

Here’s the thing. A well worn theme for me, forgive me if I bore you. The difference between humans and animals is not the ability to reason. It’s not love or compassion. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to share your life with an animal you loved, you feel me. The difference isn’t even a sense of humor. Every cat I’ve ever shared a house with has been funny as fuck and tragic all at once.

The difference is art. Animals don’t make art for the sake of art. Humans do.

I sit telling you this, one of my cats is high up in a ficus tree I’ve had for twenty years that has been dead for at least a year. My other cat sits next to me on a dilapidated red velvet sofa staring at her. If only they could talk and I could understand them.

Happy Holidays.

Drinks for my friends.

We’re fucked.

In the past few months the market has lost forty seven percent of it’s value. Unemployment is a vertical dragrace. A precipitous ascent. These two items represent America’s testicles. The market and jobs is our nutsack. Balls meet vise.

There’s probably not a single business in this country that could weather a near fifty percent reduction in revenue and stay afloat. America, and the globe, are in huge trouble. We are in a free fall. I’m glad I have a place to go. There’s room for my stereo. Barely. Limited growing season, but that might change.

Bill Maher said that he always knew Dumbya had one giant fuck up left in him. Here it is on a platter. The mother of them all. Saved the worst for last. Where are the neocons on this anyway? Where the hell is Dumbya and Darth? Fucking clowns aren’t gonna do shit. They’ll wait it out and then take a walk.

A long time coming. Decades. Any fool with common sense understood our lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. The raw material we consume. The resources we exhaust and the pollution we spew.

I’m a little pissed my generation has to bear the burden. It matters not where the bodies are buried. If your at all curious, check your own backyard. Pervasive.

No one single action will solve this debacle. There is no magic bullet. We are in for a very long night.

Get ready, things are about to change.

Having said that, we need to tip the fuck out of Iraq and seriously slash defense spending. Pay the troops, take care of the vets, maintain infrastructure and walk away from everything else. Sounds drastic and it is, but once the DOW dropped below eight thousand and stayed there, the theoretical bottom disappeared.

This will take a decade at least.

Our Man is bequeathed a shitstorm of extraordinary magnitude. A cat five economic hurricane. I worry that he’ll spend his first term putting his fingers in holes as opposed to being able to move us forward. No matter what, the blood will make it to the stairs. Americans are impatient and stupid and I worry they’ll see it as an ineffective Presidency.

Bleak, bleak, bleak.

I’ve got ER on the plasma with the sound off and see that it’s pretty much the same. I learn US Attorney General Mukasey took a dive at the podium in front of the federalists. I see that gas prices are looking for bottom. This is not good news. Bear witness as the harbingers of doom testify.

It’s not just that we’ll be poorer. My ass is broke. I’ll find my own way out. I can deal with that. It’s the inevitable atrophy of society that gives me pause. Crime and corruption will enjoy a renaissance. We will be less safe from ourselves, never mind the mythical terrorists.

Get ready for an army of homeless. Abandoned vehicles. Fire. Food shortages. Fuel shortages.

See, I’m not looking to lower expectations, it’s just that the complexity and severity of what we all face is a long fast moving train with brakes that will take awhile. We might just aspire to counting ourselves lucky if we’re treading in the same water we are today four years from now. It may just look like a victory come 2012.

It’s bad.

Official brainspank prediction is that markets rebound enough tomorrow to prevent mass suicide this weekend. At least a few hundred points, probably four or five. Get ‘er up over eight.

See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

How do we do this?

Sure, it was a landslide. By popular vote Our Man won by nearly ten million. Seven points separating him from Doubtfire. Look at the map, more blue than I’ve ever seen. America bleeds red, but her map has rarely been more blue. Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia? 364 electoral votes to 163. A thumpin’.

A shit sandwich on a week old hot dog bun with colonies of green and blue spores. No mayo no mustard, no lube whatsoever. The cheese is hard and sweaty. Flies.

In place is the single most imperative mandate I’ve witnessed in my adult life. For change. For hope. America is loud and clear. We’ve been offered this sandwich says She. We say, fuck this shit.

Torture, rendition, spying on our own without a warrant, indefinite incarceration, election fraud, preemptive war and aggression with nothing but bullshit justification, raids on the public coffers, Habeas Corpus rendered null and void, same deal for Posse Comitatus. A Constitution in tatters. It really does go on and on.

Here’s the sobering part. The reckoning.

Almost fifty nine million Americans voted for McCain. That many citizens of this country giving at least a tacit nod of approval by proxy for all this fuckery. Among them are bigots, racists, people with shitloads of money but without soul or conscience. The ignorant and the evil.

The scared.

We are still badly broken. Prop 8 passed in California. Racism and bigotry alive and well in this land of opportunity. How soon we forget. As recently as 1967, marriage between black and white was against the law in sixteen states. For those who would posit that the the law is the law and now constitutional, that we should let it be, succumb and surrender, I say piss up a fucking rope. I say this, because it is wrong.

Bitch slap: In california it was mormons and the minorities turning out for Obama who pushed prop 8 over the goddamn seawall. Narrow and deep irony. It’s a civil rights issue. Shame on you. Mormons are polluted by stupidity and ingnorance. Blacks and Latinos should be ashamed. Bad form. Hypocritical.

America is still profoundly fucked up.

History shows us that almost every worthwhile struggle starts at the bottom of a very steep hill. This one, no different. It will be ugly. Hearts and lives rent asunder along the way.

We’re no longer at the bottom. I can’t say how far we’ve come, but we are about to find out. Fascinating times. The paradigm shifts. Lava begins to rush.

So, how do we do this? Martin Luther King bequeathed upon us the most valuable and sagacious of maxims; consistent, unswerving, intelligent and righteous resistance. Absent violence of any kind.

There’s a remote chance that by asking them the same question over and over, they will realize how stupid the answer is. Don’t forget to tell them that you are a fiscal conservative. Lots of liberals are. They like that shit, they think they believe in it.

Let’s talk about the ‘scared’ shall we? I’ll be brave and guess that’s the common denominator between a third and half of the the almost 59 million. We need to find these frightened folks and get them a better haircut. Shave them if necessary. Treat them nice. Feed them well. Be kind.

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

A complimentary delousing. Free tupperware and sporks. New socks.

There plenty of fights to be had. Most will be easy to pick. For a lot of us however, our job is to engage. Get involved. No need to be confrontational, talk about what you care about. Keep it on the front page.

Forgive me. I’m serious. Waste no time on the dogmatic idealogues. They’re too far gone. Falwell can tell them to eat the children. He could and they would. Ever look into an evangelical’s eyes?

Find those eyes frozen by the headlights. Buy them a taco. Lead them from winter to spring. They’ll be melancholy for the previous season and nostalgic for the Abominable Snowman. Try to present the new season as fresh and hopeful. Point out the flowers and that animals both wild and domestic are fucking like mad.

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

You can see I’m struggling with this. I’m convinced on an intellectual level I’ve nailed it. Up here on the top floor, I own it. Not only makes sense but it’s wise.

Down below, closer to me gulliver, I’m all about making them pay. Evil or just plain stupid, they deserve some amount of consequence. Pricks. Dipshits.

But that’s no good, see?

The hopeless will resent it, the fearful won’t understand and they’ll hold it against us. Be nice to conservatives, at least until you figure them out.

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

Your mission is to figure them out and determine who is worth your time. Coming soon, a national Adopt a Pants Shitting Conservative Day.

Drinks for my friends.

When the going gets weird, the wierd turn pro.

Dedicated to the memory of HST.

This whole thing is about to be a screaming, hungry, five year old nihilist with a full and oozing diaper, in a Burger King, sporting a flamethrower as well as a bleeding ass rash. It’s about to get regoddamndiculous up in here. Wait! Add swarming cockroaches. Rednecks and roundheads will go full tilt boogie as they realize they are going to lose their country to gasp! Liberals and a negro.

Let us hope that is the worst of it.

Yesterday, Doubtfire went after Our Man for outing Joe The Plumber and invading his privacy. You’ve got be fucking kidding me. I got nothing here. Not true, I have lots. Nothing usable though. Vitriol and utter open mouthed incredulity. Flames and super powers. Fucking fucks. The only thing I have to say is, who’s the idiot here? Him or you? Maybe Joe the Plumber? All of the above.

Yup, Nailed it.

My microwave has a whale in it. Sounds like that anyway.

I wanted to let you know that Michele Bachmann is a shameless cunt. Congresswoman from the sixth district of Minnesota. I’ve watched her on various networks spewing the worst kind of smack you can imagine in a painful Fargoesque, Minnesota dialect not unlike Moosewoman’s. She smiles and her grin is toxic. Venom and caustic fluid flood her bottom lip only to hang in snot like threads from her chin.

I’ve rarely been witness to such stupid coming from such an ugly human mouth.

“The issue before the American people is……Sarah Palin and her qualification, She easily has more qualifications than Senator Biden and Senator Obama put together if you look at executive experience, she’s been in an executive position for TWO YEARS” – Michele Bachmann on Larry King Live

Alaska ranks forty eighth in population, even when the territories are counted. Nobody lives there.

I bet I could learn to run the 7-11 in two days.

“Bachmann on Friday told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that Barack Obama is not the only anti-American member of Congress. “The news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an exposé like that,” she said.” -dumpbachmann.blogspot.com

Can you say Joe McCarthy? I gleefully share with you that to date, her opponent, El Tinklenberg, unfortunate name aside, has raised nearly half a million dollars as a result of Bachmann’s splendorous stupidity.

Here’s more:

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.” -TPM

On the gay community and same-sex marriage: “This is a very serious matter, because it is our children who are the prize for this community, they are specifically targeting our children.” — Senator Michele Bachmann, appearing as guest on radio program “Prophetic Views Behind The News”, hosted by Jan Markell, KKMS 980-AM, March 20, 2004.

“Yesterday in a House hearing on the financial crisis, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) spoke on what caused the situation. To make her point, she read from an article called “How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable,” written by Terry Jones in the right-wing publication Investor’s Business Daily.

The article criticizes the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for pushing “Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities.” Jones goes on to say that Clinton was misguided to push “homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.” -thinkprogress.org

Like this shit is Clinton’s and black people’s fault.

See a pattern? It’s like Republicans welcome women as leaders, so long as they show potential for beauty queen of the right wing. Lockstep demagoguery. Douchebaggery. Counter to their very interests as a vagina owners. I guess they be whacky Christians first and foremost.

Oh my.

Can I tell you I just had an image of Cindy Stepford McCain going all cougar on Ann Coulter? I swear I’m not gay. I just had to wash my hands.

I am a carbon based being. So are most of my friends.

There’s more than a few among us that are based upon another element. Silocone? Like the Horta from the original Star Trek. Not like us at all. Rolling, emotional pizzas, longing for mother and in tremendous pain. Silicone based life forms.

That shit’s not right.

If feces were among the elements listed on the Periodic Table, I suspect one would need look no further.

Concentration of wealth.

“Redistribution of wealth” is what they sing about these days. An awesome example of opposite day, counter truth and pure bullshit. They piss and moan and lament that it’s socialism. Couldn’t it theoretically be the redistribution of our wealth back to us?

The literal intent of Republicans and Neoconservatives has been exactly that. The concentration of wealth. No more dramatic in world history than the last six years. Trust me, it’s true. Don’t make me do the math because I damn well will.

I can’t toss a pebble without finding exemplary ripple, proof, of what has been taken from us and distributed among the wealthy. The Middle Class is an endangered species. Like it or not, everyone needs the Middle Class. A republic cannot thrive or even survive without a robust but ordinary, honest and hard working majority. We are way too top heavy and beginning to lean trepidatiously.

I may have made that last word up.

Unfortunately, Hell hath seen the fury of America’s middle class and frankly, from Beelzebub on down, they aren’t impressed. Yet.

There is gorgeous irony in the Republicans lamenting voter fraud and elitism. Cause for rage when they throw RACE into the mix. Fuck these fucking ignorant cracker clueless bastards that haven’t been able to taste or even smell the shit sandwich they’ve been gnawing on for the last eight years.

Fools.

This shit is ridiculous.

***Now, pay attention. There is a reason I’m about to tell what I’m about to tell you and I get to it before the end.***

I began writing this particular blog on Friday evening. I spent some time on it last night with the intention of finishing this evening. Most of you are are no doubt aware, a typical impetus for my writing is quite often disgust. I do a lot of name calling, often employ crude and vulgar analogy, both in the interest of levity and entertainment. It’s cathartic, but all in the spirit of good clean fun.

Never have I remotely suggested physical harm be visited upon those whom I choose to rail against.

At least I hope not and if I did I bet it was funny.

You should also know that I have the ability to censor any and all comments left on brainspank. I’ve always chosen to let people say anything they like, utilizing the function exclusively to eliminate spam. I welcome dissent. I actually wish more people would disagree with me.

Since launching brainspank in December of last year, there has been only one exception to this. An individual calling himself “Trueblood” became so hateful, incendiary, vicious and alarmingly bigoted, I was forced to consider deleting his comments. I was torn, so like a true coward, I left it for my readers to decide.

It was unanimous, everyone who weighed in thought I should censor this guy. Since then, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Predictably, the tenor of Trueblood’s comments devolved into pure hatred and threats of a personal nature. Whatever, I’m a big boy. I went on deleting and ignoring them and he eventually faded away. Today I recieved another message from Trueblood and I must admit, it gave me serious pause. So much so, I had to actually stop and give serious thought as to how to handle it.

One of the reasons I tolerated Trueblood for the time I did was I believed it was in the interest of my readers to see first hand that these kinds of people are out there. I’m allowing his comment this time around for that reason and for one far more important. To expose this individual to the authorities. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll be contacting the Secret Service and providing them with his e-mail address etc. Up to them to determine whether he’s committed a crime, I cannot in good conscience, decide for myself that he should go unnoticed.

His specific words today and his pattern of behavior in the past, lead me to wonder just how imbalanced this guy is. I do know he’s dancing at the edge of both fear and rage.

For now, you can find his exact words in the comments of my last blog entitled “It’s True” posted on October Seventeen.

I wouldn’t mind hearing from you all on this.

By the way, former Secretary of State Colin Powell threw his weight behind Our Man today. Thought I’d leave you on a positive note.

Drinks for my friends.

The DOW down seven hundred thirty points today. Uh huh.

CNN says Doubtfire won the first half hour. I have a bridge for sale. When the gate opened, he stuttered and the ball fell to the floor. He drooled a little and recovered, but c’mon.

Cool calm and composed was Our Man. Nice. Substance long. We did fine.

Doubtfire actually looked at Our Man this time and engaged him. Best he’s done so far. Still, far less specifics and far more boiler plate bullshit stump rhetoric spewed by McCain than Obama. The “he’ll raise you taxes and I won’t” crap.

Frustrating in light of Obama pointing out over and over that his plan calls for cuts for nintey five percent of us. It’s like Doubtfire has pockets full of dead horses. Turns out he does. Poor bastard.

Forgive me the anger of what you are about to receive.

McCain takes upon himself to label Our Man’s tax policies “class warfare”. Were he to say that sitting next to me at a table I’d have swung for his mouth hard. The most massive redistribution of wealth in history has taken place under this administration and guess where the fucking money went? Check your goddamn pockets. After knocking him from his chair I’d be yelling and probably kicking. I’d be screaming words like AIG, Keating, Haliburton and Exxon/Mobile. This particular kind of egregious double contrary speak makes we want to go fucking nuclear. Fuck you McFuckstain, that’s a lie.

Anyway.

McCain’s hatchet and scalpel analogy was damn good. Props. That would be excellent.

Ayers and Acorn flatlined and Joe The Plumber was far from a game changer.

Either his legs or his lungs failed him. It’s fair to say that he stumbled upon his own energy crisis. He has neither the wit nor the wherewithal to keep pace with this Man of Ours.

The Ohio undecided focus group (UM’s*), hosted by CNN said it was that one, over the other one, by fifteen to ten. Yup. The first CNN polls are pretty wide and I’m done with all punditry at 8:23 pm.

It was the most interesting and entertaining of all the Presidential debates. McCain swinging harder than ever but never finding much more than air. He just couldn’t connect. Obama was smooth, extraordinarily skilled and athletic. Doubtfire acknowledged it a couple times by remarking on his eloquence. He did so with a sneer and it cost him. John McCain is an arrogant prick and people see it.

Today CNN’s electoral map shows Obama all but locked down for 277 electoral votes? 270 is the majority. Ahem.

David Gergen said in answering the question what does Mcain do now, answered, “Beat’s the hell out of me”. Big laughs. The Bootlicker threw the best he had and it wasn’t good enough. He went on to advise that Doubtfire should begin working to stop the Republican loss of blood in the House and the Senate, get positive on the economy and lose the Bill Ayers obfuscation tactic.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Small, because most of you know or at least suspect. A lot of things being promised by either man, hoped for and aspired to, are not realistic. Probably not possible. Very unlikely. My focus is and has always been, on the intelligence and capability of the individual who would lead us out of this magnificent clusterfuck.

I am more secure than ever, that I and most Americans will ultimately do right by ourselves when it comes to these two men. Given the state of our Republic and of the rest of the world, I feel about as good as I possibly can about what is likely to happen next. I am pleased.

“Um’s” (unaccompanied minors)*, you know, independents and undecideds, will break for Obama. Not by a wide margin, but it will be more than enough to carry the day. Yes, that was an official brainspank prediction. We will know by midnight our time.

Here’s a keen and salient observation on my part. Their heads. They are opposite in shape. Doubtfire’s is bottom heavy. Fatty jowls vs. a rather sizable upper cranium. I’m just saying.

Seriously, who’s your Daddy?

Drinks for my friends.

*new nick name or nomenclature

So the market rebounded dramatically today.

Again, I’m no economist.

I am here to testify that common sense can and must be applied to every situation. So, at the risk of sounding pessimistic, I say so what?

Paul Krugman won the Nobel for economics today. He’s sure Dumbya is a retard.

Volatility IS the problem. Inconsistency IS the nemesis. Symptomatic of emotional instability on a foundation that is rotting. Eroding. Today we witnessed some euphoric sentimentalism. The economy is bipolar, perhaps even schizophrenic. At this point, it climbs hills only to tumble down the other side.

Common sense indicates to me that the market has yet to find bottom and the gains of today won’t mean dick within a month. Irrational exuberance. Denial ain’t just a river, it’s the season and the reason for the vulgarity of most things these days.

An economic clusterfuck years in the making is far from vulnerable to a single magic bullet no matter how pure the silver of the slug. Such precipitous decline cannot be undone or even mitigated by one day of activity on The Dow; hardly the Holy Grail of economic indicators.

Unemployment flirts with nine percent in places like Ohio. Auto stocks at a fifty year low. Record foreclosures and markets across the world reeling, careening. We keep talking about the cash we’re going to throw at the fan but we simply don’t have any and metric tons of shit have already hit that same fan. What little paper we can gather will probably just stick.

The hangover has just begun. America has regained a tenuous purchase on consciousness only to learn that even the hair on our head aches with vengeance and what may be the cause of our awakening is the oxygen from the respirator or the fact that our balls itch like mad.

I’m sorry to tell you that we’re still screwed nine ways to Sunday and from hell to breakfast. Drastic measures are no less vital than they were last week.

Sooner or later the fan will have to be cleaned.

By the way, why’s the NYSE open on Columbus Day? Even the banks were closed in recognition of the Grand Pooh Bah champion of revisionist history. Columbus Day is a mere symbol of American douchebaggery. By most accounts, Columbus tortured, raped and pillaged his new world. Amerigo Vespucci most likely discovered or at least recognized North America and guys like Leif Ericson were here a half a millenium before.

Let us not forget the rightful owners, the indigenous, the native Americans whom we would spend centuries slaughtering while cramming Christianity down upon. Today I drink to them.

Whatever.

I’m still excited about Our Man and he’s doing better everyday. Hope and Change. He offers nuanced and reasonably rich conversation on our economy. He is cool and consistent. Wisdom, restraint, discipline. By contrast, McCain is an ugly sightless carp half out of the pan and flopping while a blind eye burns. Talk of firing staff three weeks before the election.

Even I have to confess that despite the quality of Barack’s ideas, there seems to be little talk of how they will be funded. I don’t expect him too get too specific as he’s already talking over a lot of American heads, but I sure would feel better if he would just tell everybody our ass is broke and this is gonna suck for a month or so of your least favorite day of the week.

I would welcome that honesty from Doubtfire as well.

Sooner or later the fan will have to be cleaned.

Fuck me, everyone should be saying it. Do they think it’s a secret?

Drinks for my friends.

This is crazy. World markets are convulsing. Lose the image of a spasm. This is flopping on the floor foaming at the mouth crazy epileptic shit. Jam something in the maw to prevent tongue swallowing and pull the furniture away, it’s a grand mal baby.

Dumbya shows up on television like a deer in the headlights. This shit is way over his head.

In concert, banks of the world moved yesterday to simultaneously slash prime by half a percent. That’s five hundred basis points, as a neophyte banker I can tell you that’s a shitload of lucre. Money is traded on a hundredth of a percentile. This level of cooperation is not just huge, it’s completely without precedent.

Still hemorrhaging though. Bleeding badly. The Dow down a hundred eighty nine yesterday and over six hundred seventy points today.

The bottom is around eighty three hundred. Trust me. I have it on good authority. That’s a scary number. I know people who’ve lost everything already. They have no choice but to stay in.

This crisis will lay a finger on every single one of us. If it hasn’t already.

Truth is it has, and it’s not done.

American industry cannot lose forty percent of it’s value without far more than a ripple breaking across the country. It’s a tsunami that will wipe people out. I doubt America will end up a third world nation, but we’ll a see a huge increase in the homeless and poverty in general. Get ready for desperation and panic. Soup lines.

Lots more ugliness on the way.

I almost don’t care what you know. I know what I know. This prick Dumbya inherited a surplus and a balanced budget. We were fine, we were golden. Golden. The thing is, his eyes are way too close together. You can tell by looking at him that he’s stupid. Listen to him and it’s obvious he’s a dumbass.

The proof is in the now bloody pudding. It’s the biggest mess we’ve ever seen. At war in two countries for now at least, and an economy literally eroding by the day. By the day. The American domino keeps on giving as we see world markets slide with increasing velocity towards a pileup that portends to clog arteries major and minor. Asian markets are shitting pants as we speak.

If you voted for Bush, you’re an idiot bordering on asshole. If you intend to vote for McCain, you’re an ingnorant idiot, stupid asshole motherfucker. Despicable and dumb. Clueless and wortheless. The mouth breather at the pump unable to remember a zipcode. When I see you, I hope you haven’t procreated.

I don’t doubt you’re boring.

Certainly, this should command our attention by delivering a focus onto the crisis at hand in context of the Presidential race. McFuckstain and Moosewoman are suddenly delighted to exhume the corpse of a deceased and rotting nag for to flog in public. They do so with eyes bloodshot from venality and a frantic spraying of spittle.

Sheezus.

Ugly. Hard to watch. Dispiriting, demoralizing and ultimately detrimental.

They really should be ashamed, if for no other reason than their naked, vainglorious audacity.

Meanwhile, Our Man continues to exhort on the issues in general and and elucidate on the economy in particular. He remains above it. He attacks with vigor and his strikes are surgical, but always on issue, never personal. I am pleased and inspired. Obama consistently endeavors, despite every low blow, to remain on the high road. He is a class act.

Stewart has fucking Deniro on tonight. How cool is that?

Someone yells “kill him” at an event. McCain says nothing. He calls him “that one” in a nationally televised debate. Discourse off course. Reckless and irresponsible. Amateur hour at the feckless cafe. Farting in public. Blowing your nose over your date’s food. Shit running down your leg.

Fuck these guys. They act like they’re new.

Drinks for my friends.

I don’t know.

I was looking for more.

No wild swings, no haymakers. Certainly no knockouts.

Our Man was more dignified and in control. The composure of restraint served him well once again. Obama prevailed, but not so clearly or decisively, as last time. A net loss for Doubtfire, the salient reason, he’s behind in the polls and sliding. The onus was clearly on McCain to impress us. Didn’t happen.

The Bootlicker did a lot of flatlining.

I expected and even predicted that Our Man would throw more power punches tonight. I didn’t know then what I know now. He didn’t need to. It’s changed since their last meeting. He is winning.

I don’t mean to impart that I found it less than interesting. It was compelling.

Just talked to my Mother and her sentiment is more or less congruent with mine. She yelled at me for interrupting the post game analysis.

Cindy Stepford McCain said today that Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history,”. Fascinating. An insane thing to say in light of what the entire McCain family was subjected to at the hands of the unholy trinity of Bush, Rove and Cheney in two thousand. Amusing, in light of Palin’s recent remarks insinuating Our Man is some kind of terrorist.

That statement, by the actual Mrs. Doubtfire, smacks of raw and unmitigated desperation.

Also telling is the fact that McCain walked away when it was over and Our Man and Michelle stayed to engage.

Fresh diaper?

We are in good shape.

I can tell because they’re stepping on their own vagina lips to embarrass themselves. Desperation always smells worse than ass. More like many asses. Like a sewer. It’s why desperation rarely attracts much more than pity.

I need to address something else here. Forgive me, it’s not the first time. The question of why, if Obama is so clearly on the right side of America’s concerns and issues, why isn’t he ahead by twenty points? Economy in the toilet, unpopular war and McCain and his party are entirely culpable. It’s been an underlying theme since the primaries.

Why was it such a barfight for this man to close the deal and knock Hillary the fuck out?

Let’s just forego the requisite polite and feigned naivete here. It’s because he’s black and racism is alive and well here in the greatest country on earth. Were he a white man, it would be over but for the shouting.

The good news is, he appears to have left that brand of blasphemy behind. Not entirely, but you see it.

Indeed, America sees not a black man, certainly not a terrorist or a muslim. America sees a man. A strong, principled, intelligent, capable American man with the courage of his convictions. Congratulations my fellow citizens. The majority of us have seen fit to judge a man based on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. We have begun to realize a dream, the shape and size of which could propel all human beings further into this century with prosperity and equality unlike we’ve ever seen.

It doesn’t suck that the competition is the Keystone Fucking Cops.

Forgive my enthusiasm. It’s just that the unthinkable is damn near at hand. A shift of this archaic and obsolete paradigm. It looks like we may have had enough. Pretty goddamn exciting if you ask me.

Too bad they had to screw the pooch this violently to even risk losing power. Too bad about the mess Our Man is walking into. Don’t forget, getting elected President is like getting a record deal; not the end all but the very beginning. We hope.

Drinks for my friends.

So it begins.

What a shame.

We were expecting it weren’t we?

They set to sea to plumb the depths for the next twenty eight days. Oh boy. I knew it would piss me off.

Governor Avon Lady* accused Our Man of “palling around with a domestic terrorists”, today. She refers of course, to Bill Ayers.

Our Man served on the same board, that of a charity for public schools. He was chairman. Yes, there were other associations but at the end of the day:

“……the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.” -NYT

Ayers is currently a respected and esteemed professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He’s been praised by Richard M. Daley as a valuable community leader. I would posit that to be a more dubious connection than Ayers to Obama.

We likes us some Daley, his father gave JFK command of the ship.

I hear Moosewoman is attemtping to resurrect the by now rotting corpse that was the Reverend Wright controversy. Yet another pale and very dead horse exhumed for flogging.

Fucking silly.

All painfully obviated in predictability. Easier to foresee than events subsequent to sticking any given digit or protuberance into a household electrical outlet. Just like fucking with the Jack Link’s Sasquatch. Outcome inevitability, off the scale.

Why?

Because on the issues, Doubtfire and What’s Her Name own the political equivalent of not even dick. They have nothing. They do not have dick.

He’s a terrorist, he’s a muslim, he’s a nigger! Good God, run for the hills. Steadfast family values and the enrichment of a small percentage of white people are at stake. Contact your local militia. Don’t talk to any Jews or Black people even if they tell you they’re voting McFuckstain*. Whatever you do, ignore the issues. Don’t tolerate any discussion regarding the economy, the war etc.

The message is clear, our rapidly imploding economy and potential global warfare and strife are not what’s important. What IS important is our way of life, hand in hand with good Christian acts and zero tolerance of anyone remotely different. Without food or gas maybe.

It doesn’t matter that McCain provided enthusiatic oral relief to Charles Keating in exchange for cash and prizes two plus decades after William Ayers protested the Vietnam war. It’s irrelevant that McFuckstain and his champion economic adviser, Phil Gramm, were the self appointed laureates of deregulation.

Here’s what we need to keep our eye on. The next President is going to inherit a ship with sales so tattered, she can barely catch enough wind to steer. A hull so compromised, she rides lower by the day. A crew so demoralized, if they ever see land again, they’ll all find counseling before they look for water.

If you’re among the rare, pink eyed albino undecided voters, you need to study this vessel and who you think can handle preventing it from becoming an aimless spectre. A ghost ship.

So, your skiff is no longer in this regatta. No excuse to throw your vote away. Unfortunately, third party alternatives are still a waste of energy. Now is not the time to stand on principle at the expense of pragmatism. Man up and pick the lesser of two evils. We’ve been doing it for years. This time, one is way less evil, far smarter and far more sincere than the other. A good man that just might change the way we look at ourselves on top of being able to slow or maybe halt this march to madness.

Wouldn’t that be swell?

Do you really want to risk being called a pussy for the next four years while we suffer under the other man flirting with the ethereal? One who will likely cross over into that realm while President, thereby abdicating the chair to a successful Avon Lady? Seriously? Fuck Ron Paul and Ralph Nader. Sheezus.

Let it go.

*New nick-name alert, the first supplied by Bill Maher, the latter hatched by own evil and diseased brain.

Drinks for my friends.

This will get ugly quick because Doubtfire has nothing to lose. He’s in the suck and losing ground. It will be painful for a cornucopia of reasons. We’ll actually suffer for the inevitable shift of focus further away from legitimate issues and onto complete bullshit.

It’s gonna really piss me off. I can tell.

At issue and as example, something like a hundred and fifty nine thousand jobs lost last month alone. Double the average of monthly losses this year. This is very bad news. Think about it. That’s twice the number you saw packing the stadium in Denver for Barack’s speech at the DNC.

Understand, we need a net gain of somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty thousand jobs a month to sustain the zero sum game that accommodates nothing more than population growth and newly elligible workers. Assume this means men and women eighteen and up.

What I’m getting at here is this month alone, the actual net job loss was more like two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand. See, now we’re talking about three, almost four times the people in that stadium.

That’s a shitload of lives.

Don’t forget to add that figure to every monthly job loss report this year. It effectively doubles the figure of seven hundred fifty thousand so far, to about one and a half million jobs lost this year alone. Conservative estimate.

Ten thousand foreclosures a day.

We are in very serious trouble.

Can you hear me now?

Don’t forget the number of Boomers retiring and therefore acquiescing to a fixed income and the rite of passage into drawing from social security, medicare, medicaid etc. To be clear, they’ve paid into these programs their whole lives. They deserve every damn dollar. The Republicans hate these programs and call them “entitlements”. Just like they call their jihad against the average citizen being able to sue the shit out of a major corporation for punitive AND actual damages, “tort reform”. When they whine about “frivolous lawsuits”, they really mean we shouldn’t be able to take the rich to court.

I hate them. I see John Boehner. I hate that guy.

We are hopelessly entangled in wars and caught up in the gears of countless foreign policy debacles. Ten billion a month in Iraq on credit and we’re still obstinate enough to pick fights. No wonder the World thinks we’re assholes.

Whatever.

Still, the contest for our next President is up in the air. Obama’s numbers continue to encourage, but Americans are fickle and stupid. I will never again underestimate the average American’s ability to do the dumb thing.

Our Man will prevail and that’s good, but I shudder at the toxic hazard he inherits. I worry that unless he’s got spheres hanging, of beautifully sculptured cubic zirconia, he’ll end up with the blame for a country rent asunder, the fall of The American Empire. He may ultimately preside over our demise.

I’d still pick him for that. Who better?

McCain would end up a puddle of melted crayons. Maybe a cheap roadside firework.

I loathe that the best choice we’ve had for President in a very long time is to be bequeathed such fragile, dangerous and explosive wreckage. Hard to believe he wants the job at all. I do think he wants it for the right reasons.

In turn, I believe McCain either wants it for reasons he doesn’t understand or, more likely, reasons that are not in America’s best interest. I’m trying to tell you that he’s more than a little crazy. He scares me and his laugh is fucking creepy.

Sarah Palin is not merely an empty suit. She is handsome pinstripes, expensive wool of Italian design, floating in the vacuum of space.

She sucks.

This man, Our Man, might just be able to lead us from the desert. I believe it’s in him so long as it is in us.

Drinks for my friends.

Just like Doubtfire, economics is not my strong suit. I took macro and micro in college, over twenty years ago. I bought and sold a house that earned me a profit. Kinda. I can do math in my head. Kinda.

Ironically, in recent months I’ve become a banker, monkey suit and all. Not a real banker, but I sell credit, money. Most of my work is from home surrounded by empty containers of every kind. Gin bottles and ketchup packets, candy wrappers and Lysol dispensers. Fast food wrappers and plastic bags from Rite Aid.

I don the gorilla costume to actually show up at the bank and close deals I’ve solicited. Haven’t made shit yet, but I like my job.

Anyway, this bailout was a shitty bill, yet the stock market reacted disastrously when it didn’t pass. It cost American industry over a trillion dollars in one day. That’s a figure neither you or I have the capacity to even imagine.

The most humongous one day free fall in the history of the NYSE. Just last week we saw WaMu take the dirt nap. The largest bank in the history of the world to fail.

It’s gettin ugly up in here.

For once I agree with Ben Stein, he posits that the ideal would be a bill that extinguishes the fire from the bottom to the top. A bill that would allow for assistance to the homeowners and therefore trickle up if you will, to strengthen the lending institutions and banks on the verge of collapse. I’m a populist, so I tend to cast a favorable eye on an idea like that. The rich have made their money, the middle class are getting shithammered. The poor are more fucked than ever.

For you ingnorant fucks, ‘populist’ is code for socialist or even communist.

I also agree with Stein and Paul Krugman that something has to be done and fast. Credit must flow in ways you and I don’t understand. This is a financial conflagration that must have high pressure hoses trained on it right away.

Yes, it’s the fat bastards that are on fire, it’s weird how their outer layer pops and sizzles like bacon. I hate the smell of their hairy backs burning. Unfortunately, they still have the keys to the universe for most of us. Pricks. No matter what, it’s gonna suck, so we need to get started.

It’s ok they were allowed to burn for a few.

Put the fire out and hang the rich later.

I’m really not interested in who said what and why it didn’t pass. Pelosi chastised the dickheads and their panties ended up in a bundle. That makes them pussies. It’s awfully nice to see John Boehner get spanked by his own party though. I hate that guy. High comedy. Excellent drama.

Maybe just this once, partisan politics will lead to better legislation. Maybe. I hate to say it, but I’m of the opinion that congress needs to pass something and Dumbya needs to sign it. Sooner rather than later.

By the way, have you seen Dumbya lately? Looks like he’s been on the recieving end of a few too many blanket parties. I bet he’s drinking again and I don’t blame him. He’s the biggest fuck up in the entire world. He’ll end his days in a comfortable chair stinking of beer and cigarettes. In an upscale Texas trailer park. A doublewide with a paved carport at least. The high point of his day will be Jerry Springer and watering the dry patches out back. Around seven he’ll switch from beer to whiskey. His neighbors will like him and he’ll hang lights for Christmas until he falls in the kitchen and breaks his hip. He’ll stop beating Laura.

Forgive me.

What will be interesting, is the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday, the same day Congress returns after holiday. Palin vs. Biden. I like Joe Biden but it will be the blowhard against the moose in headlights.

What’s up with the old man showing up to hold Whats Her Name’s hand for round two with Katie? Pitiful. Sheezus. He doesn’t trust her and she doesn’t know shit.

So much for suspending your campaign and postponing the debate until the crisis has been averted, huh Doubtfire? Go home and ride the mower dude.

“He [Dumbya] tried to ruin the country in his first term, now he’s trying to ruin the world in his second term. Let’s not give him [McCain] a third term”. -Paul ‘high functioning moron’ Begala

“We may all be killed” -Paul, Blue Velvet

Drinks for my friends.