Archive for the ‘God’ Category

About a year and a half ago, my uncle Larry was diagnosed with stage four cancer.  I wept as my mother gave me the news on the phone.  Anyone who knows Larry at at all would describe their relationship with him as at the very least, unique.  He’s a unique little bastard.  Unique, yep.  Indefatigable, ornery, lovable, loyal.

He and my uncle Skip visited a few years back and helped with some insulation in my sister’s house.  After that they rubbed it in my nephews beds.  When their skin became inflamed and the mad itch had set in, Uncle Larry advised them to take hot showers.

Unique.

Here’s an excerpt from a blog I wrote at the the time:

“He was a bastard.

He deliberately shocked me with the horse equivalent of a cattle prod. He told me he’d caught a frog and wanted to show it to me. With glee, he electrocuted me.

He once moved our Christmas tree into the front yard and decorated it with my mothers bras and underwear.

I woke up one morning with his socks in my mouth.

I watched him wipe snot on my mother’s neck from the backseat of my father’s Mercury Cyclone.

He visited egregious acts on everyone he ever liked. It really was his way of showing you he loved you. Really.

Ten or twelve years ago, the Hardings had a reunion in a small town owned by my uncle Tyke in Washington just south of the Canadian border. I brought The Fish, my new girlfriend at the time.

The Matriarch of the clan had just passed. My Grandmother, eighty nine years old. She was awesome. We’d been lucky enough to have her for the holidays.

There were color themed t-shirts indicating which family you were from. We were purple.

We tore it up.

A very small town. If you didn’t mention you were a Harding and therefore related to uncle Tyke, you got no service, not even a smile. Play the Harding card and you were royalty.

We tore it up.

One night we cousins got to talking about Uncle Larry and how we’d suffered his obstreperousness. His orneriness. We decided to act. We dispatched one of his own children to secure his motel room key. A younger Begat had caught a six inch fish in the creek that day; it was confiscated under rules of executive privilege.

We salted his sheets and crumbled potato chips in them. We removed all towels and toilet paper. We covered every surface with shaving cream. We turned the thermostat all the way up. I placed the dead fish inside his pillowcase. We returned to the reunion and drank with him.

We tore it up.

Last time I saw him was two years ago at another family reunion. He and my Uncle Skip are a pair. It occurred to me they may as well stick thumbs up each others asses. There was chaos that only the Harding clan produce or tolerate. I’m sorry now we didn’t visit much but it sure was nice to see him. I can’t honestly remember if he knows I was the mastermind behind that revenge.

He is sixty six years old and cancer has invaded his body. There are plenty of loving Hardings, In-Laws and Begats to do everything they can. They will.

I will come too. I will make sure he knows I put that fish in his pillow.”

Well, he beat it.  Lost his teeth and ended up around ninety pounds, but he whipped it.  His body was some seventy plus percent infested with death but he smiled, did everything his doctors told him and beat it back.  Cancer free.  As of two weeks ago his back was beginning to bother him but he was up to his fighting weight and treatment was behind him save for checkups.  Clean bill of health.

He was a jockey so he knew well what it’s like to break bones.  When he heard of my father’s recent injury, I was the one to tell him, he was devastated and told my mother he’d be here if need be for anything including to drive the forty foot castle to Yuma so they could winter there.

My mother called today.  It has returned.  The big C is in his spine.  Not fair.  Not fucking fair.  The universe has chosen to shit on this miracle.  He starts radiation right away and twelve rounds of chemo immediately after Christmas.

For the first time in my forty four years, there will be no Christmas with my family.  This is not so much because of my uncle’s illness as it is the result of my sister’s deliberate blindness and irresponsibility with love and family.  Life sucks today.

Drinks for my friends.

The talking heads were hard at it yesterday, pontificating on how Obama has yet to accomplish anything.  This pisses me off for a number of reasons.  Dumbya accomplished nothing good for the average middle class American in his entire eight years.  All he did was consistently kick the feet out from under them.  With the palm of his hand, he held skulls against any given surface and visited violent intercourse upon them dispassionately, save some boyish cowboy glee, from behind.

Primeval.

Archaic.

Yup, in the ass.  Clearing brush and evildoers.  Smokin’ em out.  Fucking retard.

He smirked and smiled all Alfred E. Newman, chuckled and believed his retardedness to be anointed, appointed and ‘special’, to carry out such an awful and dastardly thing.  God made him do it, as opposed to Cheney and the PNACs I guess.

I beg to differ.

The quintessential violent and clueless bully who turns out not to be so bad when it’s over.  Except he’s dumb as a stick.

Oh, and President.  Elected twice and all.  By us and and all.  Without prejudice and presence of mind and all.  I mean President of the US of A.  Dumb as a goddamn branch floating in a polluted river.

And all.

The clusterfuck that Obama inherited is arguably the worst any president has ever walked into.  The blind partisan obstruction by Republicans is easily the most egregious in our history.

A wounded cur, sits and drools increasingly intrepid and malignant.  Snarling and snotty and shrinking.

Still, she keeps barking and smacking.  Protesting everything that moves.  She just can’t stand anything that moves.  Anything that moves.  Oh, she can’t tolerate it.  Kill it, she thinks, the vicious bitch canine trained to hate toddlers and grandmas and the disabled.

You know, not since FDR has any president walked into such a shitstorm.

Bear with me as this is entirely different, from FDR, or any other presidency ever.  Waaay different.

Needless to say, FDR strode bravely into the worst of modern times.   Still, he enjoyed near total congressional cooperation.  At least to begin with.  All on the same page, all willing to advance what needed to be done.  Patriotism over partisanship.  Few questions asked.  Get this shit done.  It was bad and in need of immediate repair.  What follows is the golden phrase.

They worked together for the benefit of us all.

Our man faces the extreme opposite while enduring the same environment and circumstances.  No cooperation.  A stark and ugly deficit of good will.  Twice as hard and he’s black.  So six times as hard.  This man is hoping for eight years and despite my lack of religion, God love him, his family and all of their souls. Godspeed, good luck and pancakes with peanut butter and syrup for each of their souls.

I say to you, you fucking go.  You charge ahead and do as much damage and make as much difference as you can.  Bring it.  Show us your courage and we will fly your flag.  I care less that you are our first black President than I do that you are MY first inspirational one.  You speak to me and to we and it really could be you and me together.  You may stumble, but as long as you get up, we will will be behind you.  At your back.  Wanting and hoping for the the same things.

Bring it and we will stay.  I will.  I will, you are stuck with me.

Fury, hatred and racism have once again become the dubious hallmark of the far right Christian wingnuts and an alarmingly malignant  component of the generic conservatives and workaday GOP.  The likes of Limbaugh and Hannity are so emboldened they simply lie these days.  By what?  Where does the courage come from?  Why?  Where do these fucks get off?

The public option has not the support of the majority they screech, it’s a government take over they wail.  I watched Cornyn puke it up yesterday morning.  He was lying.  They lie.  Over and over, again and again, on national television or whatever venue they happen to ass warm a seat in.  The money for their re-election is a greasy pizza with shitty crust but plenty of cash cooked and delivered by the folks who own and control over 16 percent of our entire GDP.

Let me tell you something.  Americans are goddamn dumb.  Gullible.

You losers who eat this shit should be ashamed.  Show up at the 7-11 after dark for your beef jerky and canned meat.  Slim Jims and greasy food for dipshits and protein starved mouthbreathers.  Watch your Springer and listen to your Hannity while you drive around in your ridiculous trucks feeling your genitalia are somehow more special than they should be.

Over two thirds of adult Americans want and wish for a public option.  I don’t believe a president has ever been elected with as vastly voluminous a majority as the one in favor of a simple public option right now and today.  It’s what we want.  It’s so simple.  But this is your government at work and it’s disgusting.  One of the biggest businesses in the history of man.  The precise and exact opposite is the truth and they know it as well as I and as well you should if you can afford to pay any attention at all.  Without shame or conscience they just throw tires on the fire, so everyone can see the thick toxic smoke.  Lie and lie, because that’s what they’re paid to perpetuate.  No different than your bought and paid for Congresspersons and Senators.

If we do not get this, it will not be ok.

I’m really not holding my breath because the Democrats have been nothing but a lesson in how to suck so far without regard to future endeavors at all.  Oh well.  I’m a little drunk.  Yer mama.

Drinks for my friends.

A composition:

The difference between Republicans and Democrats is painfully obvious.

Republicans are greedy sociopathic reptiles who don’t give a mad fuck about their constituents but love to suck corporate dick.

Democrats are spineless douchebags, who lack the courage to get down in the mud and fight for their constituents but love to suck corporate dick.

Evidence being the massive ongoing struggle for any meaningful legislation despite significant majorities enjoyed by Democrats in both houses of congress.  A pathetic, ridiculous and vulgar burlesque.  Shameful and stupid but an attestation for Democrats being far more inclined to think for themselves or someone else as opposed to conventional party wisdom or lack thereof.

All on embarrassing and inept display.

Libertarians don’t care about anything, they just want commerce to flow.  Anybody who wants to suck dick should be allowed with a particular deference to profit.

If you’ve been paying attention to the main stream media of late, you know that Republicans want to save us from socialism despite not understanding the concept, and Obama’s government lusts like a pizza faced adolescent army in neck braces or orthodontal head gear to takeover our health care so we can be killed off at their convenience.

Meanwhile, Republicans seek to kill pizza faced teenagers or adolescents in head gear for profit if possible.

Libertarians take no exception.

Responsible parents everywhere insist children wear helmets these days.

If you choose the contemporary Republican model,  you see them as unrelenting right wing, neoconservative, intolerant evangelical Christian zealots who are afraid of anything homosexual or any other religion.  You understand that they believe they know better while enduring a fusillade of common sense and science to the contrary.  Book burning and creationism and the like.

Retards at the Roundtable.  Scopes trial as blasphemy and all that.

I remember a time when what was contested was ideas, philosophy and policy.  Discourse was just that.  Polite and respectful.  It was about issues.  Then something happened.  That something was William Jefferson Clinton.  Far from perfect, but charismatic and smart as all get out.  He presided over the longest period of economic prosperity America had ever seen.  He left us with a massive surplus and a balanced budget for the first time ever.

We were cookin’.

The Republicans though, they did hate.  They began to investigate.  Afraid Bubba was Jesus, a special prosecutor named Kenn Starr was appointed to investigate Hillary’s real estate dealings while she was a member of the Rose Law Firm and they came up with dick.  Pun to be intended.  Nothing.  Sand in hand they kept on…… and discovered Bubba got a blow job and so they impeached him.  Never mind that it was none of our business.  They spent tens of millions of dollars, more than on all investigating into the events of 9/11, to shine light on a Jewish woman unable to remove a stain from a dress.

First one ever I hear.

And that is really why we are where we are.  It will all go down as the darkest and silliest period in American history.  Yet it’s sordid smell means we are less likely to forget it than UFOs, Elvis or pick a disease.  Let us hope the legacy will not be merely that of a cautionary anecdote, but rather a lesson about a forest instead of individual trees.  Otherwise, America will not be America come one hundred years from now.

Tom DeLay is on dancing with the stars and it offends me.  He’s paired with Cheryl Burke whom I think is the hottest thing since Georgia asphalt.  Goddamn, the woman is gorgeous.  Delay grins his lying rictus and looks as he has the breath of a sewer rodent.  Creepy with a ‘K’.  I really don’t like this guy and I’m a little jealous.  Never watched the show and don’t intend to but that woman is one ripe gust of feminity

Share a smoke, Make a joke
Grasp and reach for a leg of hope
Words to memorize, words hypnotize
Words make my mouth exercise.
Words all fail the magic prize
Nothing I can say when I’m in your thighs
Oh my my my my my mo my mother
I would love to love you lover  -Violent Femmes

Democrats are communist, anti constitution, caped crusaders who want to steal from anyone who has anything and give it to anyone who has nothing no matter how big of a loser the loser happens to be.  I’m not really a Democrat but I tend to identify with them and that sucks on many levels.  Giant dingbats who somehow manage to keep their self righteousness in place while failing at everything they attempt like pre-pubescent soccer players who get a trophy for simply showing up.

Democrats seem to “fail up”, almost as much as Republicans although not quite so deliberately.  Max Baucus may be shocked to see the hand entirely up his ass and into his mouth via x-ray, but John Boehner would consider it as much business as usual as his spray on tan or morning knuckle and back shave.  I fucking hate that guy.

They are different, Democrats and Republicans, but they are all still politicians.  The qualities they share are a moral and ethical bankruptcy, a willingness to feast on or make a meal out of any cock connected to money, and an instinctual fondness for anything other than the absolute truth.

This is why reasonable reform of any kind, be it health care or of industries financial or military, is in perpetual jeopardy.

Nothing can change until we have reform for our system of campaigns and polling.  Zero corporate money.  None.  Entirely financed by the electorate.  Firm start and stop dates for campaigns and equal air time for candidates.

No meaningful change before that one.

Drinks for my friends.

After that communist/socialist, hypnotizing, brain washing, indoctrinating speech by our elected president yesterday, I felt the need to check on all of you.

The Human Shitsmear complained today that Obama’s speech was an attempt to rob our youth of their God Given right to be losers.  I’m not kidding.  I heard him say it on EIB Network live, on his golden EV RE20 microphone.  It’s fascism indeed to encourage our youth to be something other than losers.  How un-American.

Rush crapped himself while announcing this philosophical gem.

I don’t mind telling you, I’m a little confused.

I just had a lively debate with the mostly ignorant and under informed housewife denizens of Carson City Nevada.  They appear to have given up for now in the face of a vicious fusillade of facts and demand for the same.  One actually accused me of being pedantic, which I took as a compliment when she was unable to answer exactly how.  I suspect she knew not of what she spoke.

I’m just so confused.  What makes these people tick so irrationally?  Yeah, it’s a free country.  I guess.  But when we have have major televised media opposing and even demonizing of our elected President for addressing our children with nothing more than a message of hard work, hope and aspiration, I can’t help but see racism in it’s most insidious and cloaked derivation.  Crude and neanderthal enough for it’s purveyors to deny it while they pursue it with zeal and absentmindedness.

Forgive them for they are not aware of what they do?

It may indeed be a lost cause.

At the recommendation of an ancient genius friend, Master Michael J. Bacon. I bring you Bertrand Russell:

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”

“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”

“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

My favorite:

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

I wrote this next one:

” ……..don’t doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we don’t
understand about the universe. It’s what we do know that confounds us.                                                                                                                                                                                       All the while, what we don’t know blows us along. ”

Drinks for my friends.

Last night I pontificated vitriolic over the idiots that think President Obama’s address to America’s school children is some sort of socialist plot to indoctrinate them.  It goes without saying it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.   A shining example of the stupidity, ignorance and racism that still runs rampant in this not so great country.  It’s sad.  It breaks my heart.  I’m not kidding.  It breaks my heart.

The one man who represents most of these moron’s best shot at a better life is vilified by them.  They are programmed, indoctrinated if you will, by those shallow, transparent entities who have their very worst interests at heart. Vicious irony.  Cruel.  The blind and deaf hatred, suspicion and fear sometimes overwhelms even a cynic like me.

I stand in awe.

It’s all about blatant, overt avarice.  Simple.  Plain.  Machiavellian in the most perverse sense.  Sociopathic in it’s indifference.

It moves me.  I can’t help but write about it.  It’s my therapy.  My vent.  My catharsis.

It occurs to me that the difference between liberals and conservatives is profound.  Duh.  Aside from the obvious, I’d like to point out the less than.  Liberals have a tendency to be disgusted with conservatives.  So much so they are reluctant or refuse to listen to them at all.  Yet they are still willing to investigate, seek alternative points of view and even sample the rantings of those irresponsible broadcasters who’s stock in trade is the fomenting of hate and judgment.

Conservatives on the other hand, refuse to listen at all.  To read or investigate.  They do not want to know.  They don’t want to hear or see anything contrary to what they’ve been told.  They don’t care.  They are unwilling to care.  What their icons tell them is better than good.  It is their truth, regardless and despite.  It’s all they need or want.  What lies beyond is confusion, vast tracts of gray between black and white.  George W. Bush was famous for not doing nuance or subtlety.

The great unwashed take orders very well.  They adhere and obey very well because they don’t want to to think for themselves.  Intellectually lazy and spiritually complacent.   To discern or debate confounds them and makes them very uncomfortable.  They have an overriding need for all or nothing.  Right or wrong.  No in between.  From there, the pattern is clear.  God is good, all knowing and all seeing.  God will keep them from harm or even mistake because he is always right.  Follow God and you’re cool no matter what.  You simply cannot wrong if you go with God.  It’s an absolute and the contemporary conservative covets the absolute.

Without absolutes, they flail and flop, sweat and panic.  They are agitated and bewildered because their whole system of belief is under a fire that only logic and rationale can bring to bear.  What follows is desperation, irrationality, lies and obfuscation.  They show up at political events with guns and rhetoric invoking Nazis, communism and Armageddon in the biblical sense.  The only thing they have in the face of an onslaught of truth is what they see as their absolutes; the lie of contemporary Christianity, morality as they define it and the righteousness of their twisted concept of patriotism.

They spew an invective infused jingoism and mediaeval archaic notions of religious superiority.

It’s like battling robots.

By the way, their next actions will be violent.  Violence will be justified in their minds.  They imagine it as we speak.  Many of them on the fringe have already  embraced it.  They shoot doctors don’t they?

This how we arrive at tomorrow.  Our president will address the children of America and simply encourage them to be good people.  Work hard, study hard and dare to achieve and aspire.  That is all.  But the right wing paints it in very broad strokes as something entirely different and I for one understand exactly why.  I’ve just described it to you as best I can.

Without further ado, I give you his words to be spoken tomorrow, so you may judge for yourself the potential of his dangerous and controversial words.  If there is a God, may he help us all.

“The President: “Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.”

“Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book.

Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Drinks for my friends.

The Lion sleeps tonight and forever.  I for one am deeply saddened at his inevitable but still tragic shuffling from underneath his mortal coil.  If nothing else, I’ve been reminded anew of the sheer abundance and magnanimity of his legislative accomplishments.  A profound practitioner of comity and perhaps the fiercest defender of basic human rights to ever serve in what used to be at least, the greatest deliberative body in history.

A force, a  human hurricane of kindness.

Senators McCain and Hatch have take it upon themselves to soil it with contempt and hypocrisy beyond the proverbial pale.  They suck.  To think McCain had the audacity to run for President.  Stupid is as stupid does.

I don’t believe in heaven or hell, armageddon or a Christian God, but for his sake, I do hope Mr. Kennedy is somehow reunited with his so tragically deceased brethren.  I do believe in the soul, and I believe Mr. Kennedy’s to be of the most authentically unadulterated kind.  His passing is every single American’s loss whether they know it or not.

A grand patriarch of Americans needs and wants.  A father and protector.  A good man.

Teddy.

The tragedy for the redneck, great unwashed, is that they fail to realize what he did for them and including their hatred, vitriol and ultimate stupidity.  When made plain to them, they pretend not to care or understand.  Such is the state of filthy willful ignorance in contemporary American politics.  Ugly, shortsighted Americans that purport, at best despairingly, unable to understand the truth.  Hopeless and deliberately imbecilic because they’ve been indoctrinated with a simple shallow fear.  A fear they know and understand to be baseless and without merit.

Fools.  Goddamn fools.  Goddamn fools.

I’m not sure how this is, all the sudden, I’m reminded vividly of a retarded man named Johnny I knew some twenty five years ago.  I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with  him and a best friend for whom Johnnie is his charge.  My longtime friend, Sean and his significant other Johanna, are living with and taking care of, Johnny who is 56 years old and ridiculously sweet and affectionate.  Johnny is well adjusted, poses no danger to anyone but maybe himself and is funny as fuck. Can’t remember whether it was Jo or Sean who shared it with me, but apparently Johnny exclaims “I made it!”, every morning when he wakes.  How cool is that?

Whatever God there is, he loves you Johnny.

From Bob Cesca at Huffingtonpost.com, “Health care reform named after Ted Kennedy must not suck”.  If and when this gets done it better be good if we dare to do it in his name.  Are we clear?

So by the way, any of you assholes on the the right who choose to accuse us of politicizing Edward Kennedy’s death by celebrating his unapologetic liberalism can take a long slow suck on my runny scrotum you stinking cunts.  He was a proud liberal who never succumbed to the right wing stigmatization of the word or the concept.  He was never afraid of it, he embraced it. His record glows with it.  It’s why we loved him.  Piss up a goddamn rope, you misguided obtuse demagogues.  Tread there at your peril.

Not a single one of you dickwads who would take exception, ever voted for any bill, proposal, or amendment he ever put forward for the common man’s health and well being as far back as ’94.  Eat me.  Now is not the time to pretend you would have negotiated.  Simple bastards.  Disingenuous mouth breathers.

Puke on your own shoes.  Don’t even try to define this man as some moderate obsequious compromiser; even you respected him because he stood up to you and told you to pound sand over and over when you chose to abandon reason and logic.

Outclassed.  Way outclassed.

I’m so weary of the stupidity and the vacuum of logic or reason.  The only industrialized country, and by far the richest in the world, that fails, fails again and again, to care for it’s people in the simplest, most fundamental of ways.  I’m sick to death of the tower in place that dictates our basic needs according to profit and the filthy lucre that has poisoned the process for decades.  It’s bullshit and whenever someone, be they elected representative or clueless ideologue, tries to tell you different, you can bet they are far less than than full of shit.  Empty.  I mean empty.

Bet they are corrupt.  Bet they are ignorant and scared.  You can bet they will do no good.

I will never, ever lie to you.  I’m telling you the way it is.

Johnny wakes up and says, “I made it!”.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve gone through a change.  Transformed.  Like menopause.  Suddenly, the Republican Agenda makes sense to me.  I’ve gone from liberal to vacuous.

Seriously.  Work with me here.

Torture makes complete sense in the context of liberty and justice for all.  Dick Cheney and his minions should not be investigated or prosecuted.  They were merely doing their best.  It’s hopeless silliness, not to mention unpatriotic, to pursue any form of persecution of these brave defenders of the American way.  As American’s, we are better than everyone else, we don’t deserve the scrutiny.  We are above it.  God put us here to rule the world and he is on our side.  Our unique responsibility is to rid the world of evil.

We are special.  Jesus tells us so.  The Bible tells us so.

Our qualifications are exclusive and divine.  Christian Americans are The Chosen.

Republicans in particular.

The faithful.

Those who’ve failed to reach their fiscal potential are not my problem, my concern and certainly not my fault.  Maybe God’s will is that they should be left behind.  A kind of religious natural selection.  Ha!  Take that you atheist Darwin lovers.  After all, God only helps those that help themselves.  Christ has no use or patience for the weak or impaired, they are unable to do for themselves and are therefore worthless to the Holy Spirit.  Never give a fish to a Democrat, teaching the worthless to fish is a waste of time. Some have been chosen and some have not.  The Christian way and obviously what the Heavenly Father intended for the Christian nation of America.

The rich should be taxed minimally, if at all.  Wealth drives the modern economy.  They provide the largess for jobs and industry.  They are the chosen.  Thus, their generosity is evident and already in place.  They do far more than the beggar or the homeless can or would.

I’ve come to loath the rotting toothed, stupid and desperate poor.  God has not chosen riches for me but I shudder when I gaze upon the worthless because I know my tax dollars go to prolong their miserable lives.  Poor but obese, they lack the sense to choose wholesome and nutritious food.  They neither know nor care enough too seek proactive medicines or practices and I don’t doubt that’s all part of God’s plan.  That these zombies are allowed to drain the money and resources of American society in general confuses me.  God does work in mysterious ways.

I don’t hate them because God says not to.

America is the land of opportunity.  Always has been.  Those who’ve failed to take advantage of America’s vast and ripe system of free education and abundant possibility are simply beyond hope, especially once they pass the threshold of adulthood.  I work, I have a job, so these greasy, dentally challenged trailer park dwellers, these weak and worthless veterans of our wars who can’t get it together and refuse to do for themselves, make me want to puke.  Look at all the goddamn foreigners that take jobs as convenience store clerks or manual labor workers that take jobs from worthy Americans.  Are these people less capable, less able than honest Americans?  Maybe they are, maybe they’re not.

Falls under not my fucking problem.  All I know is I’d much rather have my tax dollars go towards fighting the raghead terrorists than these wastes of God’s air.  I see these people in wheelchairs sporting an oxygen tank in casinos and I just know my money is paying for them instead of keeping us safe from Satan’s Muslim evil doers.  They should be euthanized like the diseased cat’s and dogs that make a mess of my trash and threaten neighborhood children with a cornucopia of malaise.  Tics, fleas and ringworm.

Ever heard that expression “Kill ’em all and lot God sort them out”?  I’m down with that.  I’m no judge and jury but get them off my block and out of my town.

Sometimes I think Hitler was more on the ball than he gets credit for.  Everyone knows the Jews control the banks and the entire entertainment industry.  You know “The Family” on C Street more or less agrees.  He really was just looking to rid his country of Faggots, Gypsies, Jews and the ethnically impure. Hitler was a Christian too, you know.  He had “The Ultimate Solution” and I think we could take a page or two from his playbook.

It’s a good dose of reality as opposed to the fascism and socialism pinko liberals try so hard to cram down our necks every fucking day.

See, they’re not patriots like me and you.  They love niggers and spics and anyone who isn’t from the Mayflower like us.  They are weak.  They give money to all the dirty and lazy regardless of their color.  Ask me for money on the street, I’ll tell you to get a job you piece of shit.  They wander around pushing their stolen shopping carts full of stolen trash and I hate them.  Their skin a map of rashes, their eyes bloodshot with their hands out and the cloud of foul stink they walk in.  This instead of a job?

Fucking lazy if you ask me.  No excuse.

Christ has blessed my soul with charity but these people have no will or desire and don’t deserve the fish I can afford.  If they won’t die, better off behind bars at $30k a year because they are a menace.  Know God or pay the price.

We should attack and punish those countries who threaten us.  The future of the world depends on the triumph of Christianity over Islam.  They’re heathens and there’s no chance of co-existing with a bunch of towel headed camel jockeys.  Crude and uncivilized.  We have nukes and they don’t.  Time to use them.  Negotiation is pointless.  Turn their the desert into glass.

Take a breath.

I hope you understand that I’m kidding.  I’ve painted a picture for you of what I hate.  It is a caricature for sure.  A broad stroke, the impetus, the catalyst, being a solid month of right wing talk radio and it’s blatant, overt dishonesty.  Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are simultaneously American icons and stains on America’s aspirations and her identity.  What they do everyday is sick, irresponsible and evil.  They and their ilk seek nothing more than to pollute our national discourse so egregiously as to rile the stupid and offend the thoughtful to the extent that they are actually paid handsomely for their treason.  Shining examples of the worst of us.  The physical manifestation of everything that is wrong with American society, patriotism and all our precious ideas.

They are paid handsomely to stir shit.  Disgusting.  I would swing on either one.  I fucking hate these guys.

This blog is dedicated to Teddy Kennedy.  Not perfect by any means, I understand his flaws better than you can know, a lion nonetheless.  A champion of all those I’ve lampooned so harshly here.  The dynasty has ended.  It really is America’s loss.

His passing is poignant and symbolic.  It was with JFK’s assassination that the modern era of brutal politics flooded us.  The subsequent courage of LBJ and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King cemented the vulgar ugliness of right versus left in this once vital and proud nation.  We have fallen from those heights.  Those ideals and those hopes.

In so many ways, we are in the same place.  A half African, half Caucasian man as President.  We are back in that place more than you probably know.  Round headed idiots showing up to Town hall meetings sporting  loaded weaponry enough to slay everyone in front of them.  Adolph fucking Hitler invoked over and over.  There are so many children in America, both literally and figuratively.  I worry so much that despite the election, we are forced to choose between a martyr or Superman.

It would be convenient and gratuitously exculpatory to pontificate here, but I’ll spare both you and me.  Save this:  Both John McCain and Orin Hatch disingenuously lamented the absence of Ted Kennedy from the health care debate in the last day or two, insinuating that his presence would have made a difference.  Fucking pricks.  Shame on you assholes.  You and your ever shrinking party are beginning to trip over your own dicks in your own race for shamelessness.

Public option or bust.

Drinks for my friends.

Here I am in Carson City Nevada.

Back on the grid.  Internet access achieved.  Kinda proud, as I’m a bit of a luddite.

The capital of the great state of Nevada, merely titular as the seat of power.  Since the seventies or early eighties,  the actual force and center of political influence has resided with indefatigable dominance in Clark county, some five hundred miles to the south, by virtue of the voracious development and a subsequent population explosion in Las Vegas.

Despite all that, Carson City remains a cracklingly political town.  My sister tells me it’s all about to change.  Power will return to it’s rightful place in the North.

Between nation trotting sojourns with my father in an RV better appointed and more luxurious than most apartments I’ve lived in, my retired mother still oversees vital components of the bi-annual legislature.  They are somewhere between small towns in Washington state as I write this.

My sister swings a heavy municipal bat.  She has big plans for this town.  A media center unrivaled on either coast.  Her husband, whom I’ve known since grade school, wields substantial influence with Nevada’s nearly omnipotent Gaming Control Board.  Friends of the family are the wealthy, elite and intelligentsia as well as the kind, humble, ordinary and delightfully quirky.

Hello, Don Carlson, Harry Reid and the rest of you.

Not at all out of the ordinary for me to crack my hometown paper to find an article or editorial written by my uber talented and modestly ambitious sister.  Just last week while having lunch in an ordinary burger palace, I enjoyed such occasion.

Their lives are impossibly full.  Easy to envy.  Very busy and purposeful people.  Even my sister’s three children, two in college and the youngest a senior in high school,  are elaborately involved.

The net effect of all this furious activity and humble accomplishment  allows for me to feel distinctly and unmistakably slovenly.  Sloth like.  As I sit writing this from my parent’s kitchen counter, my trophy, a gold record, prominently adorns a living room wall.  Not much in the scheme of things, but I’ll take what I can get, at least until I’m a famous and/or critically acclaimed writer.  Or maybe head of the cheese department at Whole Foods.  

Another thing that impresses the crap out of me is the depth and breadth of both my mother’s and sister’s larders.  The culinary treasures in each are enough to sustain one through the apocalypse.  Exotic condiments, mustards, pickles, oils and dressings of all kinds.  Cheeses and sausages.  Canned fruits and vegetables.  Spices, soups and seasonings.  Refrigerators and freezers stocked with meats and nuts, breads and more vegetables.  Everything from freshly frozen hand picked huckleberries to chicken nuggets, huge sides of mammals, frozen diet meals and seafood.  Sauces from barbecue, to soy ginger and sesame, vidalia onion and fig, chili, rice vinegar and raspberry pecan.  Tomato paste, tomatoes chopped, tomatoes whole.  Soups and pasta, raw beans and crackers.

Slim fast in a can and baby corn in a can.  Microwave popcorn and Cups O’ Noodles.

Alcohol from fine wine to to cheap champagne.  Malibu Rum to Creme De Menthe, blood orange liqueur, vodka, gin, whiskey and Amaretto.  Soda, beers and juices.

All manner of candies and chocolates.  Jams, jellies and preserves.

Farm fresh eggs from my brother in law’s chickens and home made pies from my sister’s oven.  She has an herb garden and shops the farmer’s market every Saturday morning.  She runs marathons.  Her husband is soft spoken, brilliant and absurdly funny.

Not much substance here I know.  Been away from the wheel for awhile so give me some room.

I will tell you this.

Without a public option at the center of any health care bill, all is lost.  Obama will have squandered too valuable political capital for next to nothing.  The only efficacious mechanism for curbing corporate insurance greed, for legitimate reform, will be missing.  Without it, it will be a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.  Consequences of a bill without it will be dire.  All momentum and any mandate from an overwhelming majority will expire.

The ideas of hope and change will atrophy.  No bill will be failure.  A bad bill, without a public option, will be a stage for blame deserved, optimism smashed and the very last chance Americans will ever have at fair and equitable health care will fade to black.  The best promise of this administration will be shit.  Obama’s presidency, and our last best hope, will surface out past the breakers, missing a limb.

Fuck the Republicans.  Take one lesson from them and get the goddamn Democrats to march in step.  Marginalize the flat earthers by excluding them.  I’m weary of the vagina monologue here.  Tell the assholes that would terrorize their constituents  with stories of “death panels” and grandma’s plug being pulled to shut the fuck up.  Go to those states and wage war.  Get proactive.  Get medieval on their asses, with the truth.

Chuck Grassley should be invited to suck his own dick.  He’ll never vote for health care reform unless he’s shamed into it.  Obama needs to go to Iowa.  I’m not sure what Ted Kennedy’s status is but wheel him in.  Get proactive.  Fight, you you pussies.  More than health care is at stake here.  Don’t you see it?  Hope and change hinge on this.

Absent a public option will be proof that Democrats are unable to even lead a horse to water.  A majority in the House and Senate will be meaningless and it will all be for nothing.  Not a goddamn thing.  All for naught.  God will whisper in Michele Bachmann’s ear and she’ll be your next President.

You think the last eight years sucked?  I’m just sayin’.  It’s all about this.  Right here.  Right now.

Drinks for my friends.

So Ann Coultergeist goes on Faux news and says Lou Dobbs was right on racism, I mean immigration, but wrong on the Birther movement.  Dobbs is saying he’s not a Birther but merely wants proof.  Nevermind that the issue is less than silly and Dobbs is at least willfully complicit by irresponsibly shining a mainstream media spot on it.

Duh.

The punchline is that Coulter is in a shitstorm over the whole thing.  The far right whackaloons are marching on her cottage with torches and pitchforks.  I love it.  What does it say about these people if they’re too nuts for Coulter?  Ignorance is bliss.  If you’re retarded, do you really know you’re retarded?

This is rich.

Somebody on Hardball put it pretty succinctly.  I’ll paraphrase.  When the river is low, sand bars and rocks at the bottom are exposed to the light of day.  The Republican river is low.  I may have put a more than poetic flourish on it than was originally intended but that’s my job and I’m sure you get the point.  The GOP is experiencing a drought.  With that drought comes famine.  A famine of ideas, leadership, intellectual honesty and common sense.  The fabric of commonality, the fish net if you will, is rent asunder and the carp are left to flop and writhe and wheeze amid the sand and stones while baking in the hot summer sun.

I can’t help it, that visual makes me a little sad.

Ahhh, but then the lunatic fringe marches ever onward, if not forward.  Not forward at all.

Through nefarious effort of various obfuscationists, I may have just invented a new word, the elderly are being led to believe they will be evaluated on their individual likelihood to die and whether it’s cost effective for the government to pay for cost saving measures based on that likelihood.  Some are even expecting government employees to literally visit their homes to determine how they would prefer to die according to mortality statistics and actuarial tables with their specific affliction as a determining factor.

Think I’m kidding?

“The Republicans have a better solution that won’t put the government in charge of people’s health care……… and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government”  -Virginia Foxx (R-NC) on the floor of the House of Representatives

“A lot of people are gonna die……..this program of of government option that’s being touted as this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price is gonna kill people” -Paul Broun (R-GA) on the floor of the House of Representatives

I think he might be saying quality affordable care is impossible unless we kill some of us off.

What new devilry is this?  They have either been led to believe by lobbyists that it’s all true and that would make them gullible idiots, or they are so deep in the pockets thereof that their chief concerns are money and power.  Either way, it is profoundly fucked up.

And as Rachel Maddow points out, all this morbid retarded fucking bullshit starts with and is propagated by the likes of America’s preeminent Human Shitsmear, Rush fucking Limbaugh.  They are taking their talking points from this drug addled, lying and thrice divorced douchebag.

The GOP needs immediate health care.  The GOP needs a surgeon for it’s tumor.

But wait, there’s more, lets listen!

“This is very dangerous.  We, in Michigan have already fought back an attempted assisted suicide several years ago and yet you see that the people who support this are trying to use this bill to advance this agenda.” -Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

Really, what?

Wait.  It get’s better.  Let’s listen!

“We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens.  They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as quickly as they need… Once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what to eat, what you drink, how to exercise, where you live…Any time you have economic chaos, people are always willing to give up their liberty to get economic stability” -Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Sheezus.  I really like the word ‘diphthong’ don’t you?  It’s meaning is so nebulous.  A sliding vowel.  Sorry, let’s keep moving.

He then goes on to compare the quest for reasonable and affordable health care for American citizens to the aspirations of Hitler and Mao.

This asstard is a genius.  Buy his free book.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is simply the most voluminous wad of shit any single agency, much less, American political party, has ever attempted to shove down your ignorant neck.  If you buy into a single aspect of it, you are stupid and worthless.  You probably still think the Iraq war was a great idea.

Ask yourself what this is about.  The answer is Fisher Price.  Money.  Each one of these shriveled dicks is gagging on giant pharmacuetical cock and loving it.  Can’t get enough of that huge milky cock.  These fucks.  These fucking fucks, are nothing but avaricious politicians who’s sole concern when they wake up everyday is money and power.  They don’t give a mad fuck about you.  They don’t want you decent tax paying citizens to be able to cross violent car crashes or brutal insidious cancer off your list of things to worry about because they’ve got eyes on a new boat or hookers in another city.

They lay their heads each night on pillows wrapped in high thread count sheaths and pray for your continued gullibility.  Oh, and more pharmaceutical cock.  Milky cash and medicine spewing cock.

This, is the exact nature of the battle being waged on your behalf by your elected representatives.  These are actual statements mouthed by the lying thieves you elected and trust with your best interests and every single goddamn one of them is a Republican.  I’m not here to tell you Democrats are much better because they aren’t.  At best they are spineless pussies and supine in contrast to the snarling overfed neoconservative hounds wandering the moors in search of weakened foul exactly like you.

God helps those that help themselves.  I don’t believe in your God but you better believe in this one thing or we all get nothing.  Nothing.  The richest country on earth will deny you treatment that will save your life when disease is acute enough to kill you if we don’t make this happen now.  It won’t even be your country, it’ll be your insurance company.

Here comes the hard part.  The irony.

You think the horror they preach isn’t possible?  Get sick now.  What they are screaming about has already happened.  Fourteen thousand a day losing any chance at affording a life threatening occurrence.    It’s a right, not a privilege and as the richest nation on earth we deserve it.

What these fucks would have you believe is worse case scenario, already is.  If you have insurance, you assume you’re insured.  You get sick and it’s fifty fifty at best.  Your insurance provider can and will walk away from you and there isn’t a damn thing you can do.

Now, there is no bill yet, but why are they so scared?  Simple things like no discrimination against pre-existing conditions etc……

Let it begin.  It won’t be perfect but it’s easier to fix a tire once the car is on the road rather than having to reinvent tires all over again.

We spend more than ten times our nearest competitor state on WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and we pay for all of it, there’s plenty of room and money for us to be taken care of when our darkest days come.  And they will come.  For each of us, they will come.  Wanna be scared?  Be scared of that, because it’s inevitable.

Fuck Israel, fuck Iraq and fuck Afghanistan.  There is plenty of filthy lucre and it’s ours.  All ours.  Time to stand up and tell them how to spend our goddamn money.  Our money.  Our country.

” We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

So be it.

Drinks for my friends.

Today the House passed H. Res. 593, a resolution “recognizing and celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the Union as the 50th State,” contains this provision: “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii”.  -Think Progress

Our first Hawaiian President.  Pineapple pizza for everyone.  I favor this particular fruit on pizza as in contrasts so well in both flavor and texture with ham and cheese.  Ever grilled it?  A little teriyaki, A nice dry rose’ and Bob’s your uncle.

Although it’s true that resolutions are for all intents and purposes toothless, the symbolism and import of this one is pretty obvious.  Interesting that CNN has no mention of it on its website.  The network itself is experiencing a very specific malaise by the name of Lou Dobbs.  A border line bigot (pun intended) who’s recently colored outside the lines by lending credence to the elaborate falsehood propagated by the “Birthers”.  A collective of flat earthers who’s entire impetus is the spurious contention that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States.  Dickheads, who make the swiftboaters appear sane in comparison.

So egregious, racist, irresponsible and desperate are these Birthers, that they have become a boat anchor for the GOP as it claws and scratches for relevance.  A party that pines for the days when the cacophony of derisive laughter didn’t disturb the waking hours and interrupt the sleeping ones.  As little as twelve months ago they would have embraced these dickheads and fomented their baseless nonsense in the interest of business as usual in context of slash and burn politics.

Today, 158 Republicans voted aye, not a single nay vote and Bill O’Reilly debunked it saying “It was easy, the State of Hawaii sent us a copy.”

Not without a whimper do they go however.  I give you Michele “crazy eyes” Bachmann (R-MN):  “BACHMANN: Mr. Speaker? I object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and make a point of order that a quorum is not present. […]”  -Think Progress

Michele ““We’re Running Out Of Rich People In This Country” Bachmann is one stupid bitch.   “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter…….” -Huffington Post

Except it actually occurred under Ford.  She’s sure carbon dioxide isn’t harmful because it’s a “natural gas” and from “nature”.  I adore her.  Vicious little cupcake without a clue.

Together, Bachmann, Dobbs and Palin represent the best case right wing Christians have for their argument against evolution.  Despite gravity even, they demonstrate an uncanny ability for failing upward.

It speaks volumes about American zeitgeist that we even allow such poison to pollute our sociopolitical discourse, that these clowns are elevated to a platform where they are listened to by anyone.  A special kind of sickness, unique to Americans.  The same kind that allows us to tolerate the impeachment of a President for sexual indiscretion.  The very same that makes us reluctant to investigate and prosecute a former President and his Vice for war crimes.  An insidious brand of false entitlement and judgmental narcissism that allows some of us to believe we have every right to estimate the worth of another without regard for facts and before we’ve walked any distance in their shoes.

It works both ways.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was more right than wrong when he said “Goddamn America”.

Here’s my new thing.  When dining Mexican, I’ve always felt a bit guilty when the customarily ubiquitous tortilla chips arrive.  I never eat them.  I’m not big on the free salsa.  Lately I’ve been taking a lime from the salsa bar, squeezing it over the chips and sprinkling a little salt on them.

You’ve just paid five dollars for a five seventy five show.

Drinks for my friends.

Birthers.

For those of who haven’t heard this nomenclature of dolts, it refers to a small but vociferous group of nutbags who insist, despite all legitimate evidence to the contrary, that Barack Obama is not an American citizen by virtue of not having been born in the United States.  Gotta give to them.  Sounds big.

Eh.  Gimme a break.  Like McCain Palin or Hillrod wouldn’t have beat this like a baby seal.

I’ve been aware of them for nearly a year and rightly assumed they were a brand of conspiracy theorists who’s inevitability was matched by  inconsequence.  Now, regrettably, it seems the media has afforded them some attention.  Regrettable for a handful of reasons, the most important could be the silly but vulgar stain the movement visits on an already gore festooned Republican party.

Swinging for the fences.

So there’s a bill in the house, authored by a Republican and sponsored by ten other Republicans seeking to mandate Presidential candidates prove citizenship before being inaugurated.  Redundant methinks.  This bill will end up in someone’s ass long before it sees the floor.

It is raw, desperate and willfully ignorant racism.  Stupid, unfounded, crazy eyed hate.

“The conservative talk show host Michael Medved recently referred to the movement’s leaders as “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters” who are “the worst enemy of the conservative movement.”  “It makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company,” he mourned.” -Politico

Interesting that journeyman nutbags have issue with these particular nutbags.

On the other hand, world class dipshit Alan Keyes called it, “the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen” and warned of “chaos, confusion and civil war.” -Politico

Sheezus.

What concerns me here, and what may be the salient reason this whole thing is so unfortunate, is the insidious and desperate rage it lays bare.  I’m compelled to draw some frightening but obvious parallels.  I’m neither predicting nor endorsing what I’m about to say so excuse my caveat.  It’s just that these kinds of shrill and intellectually bereft movements provide fertile ground for the gun loving, God fearing wing nut, who sooner or later opts to take matters into his own hands.  These people are around whether we like it or not.  Often the best we can do is not stir them up.

By the way, if there was no religion and they couldn’t be addicted to God,  maybe these people would come to worship the clarinet.  In a few thousand years, the oboe.  Eventually the saxophone.  Sounds nice doesn’t it?

Guns don’t kill people, people do.

Unless there’s an accident.

Give them a really dumb reason and they morph from plain nuts to domestic terrorist in a week or two of  24 hour news cycles.  Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P which stands for personality disorder at the very least.  Already angry and just waiting for a reason.  Probably off the meds because of no supervision or no money.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

I’m watching Liz Cheney and The Ragin Cajun, James Carville, go at it on Larry King.  Tonight’s topic comes up and I’ll bet Liz is about to stick her foot in her mouth.  Let’s watch!  She’s all supercilious as she says ‘one of the reasons people are so concerned, is they are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, a President who’s so reluctant to defend us overseas……….fundamentally uncomfortable with a President who seems to be afraid to defend America.’  -Larry King Live

What the fuck?  Are you kidding me?  Instead of calling it what it is, retarded and paranoid, she chooses to offer rationale.  A rationale of fear for our national security.  Pathetic.  The GOP insists on puking down it’s frilly conservative blouse.  Cut to the sins of the father.

Please let this ridiculously stupid cunt run for office.  Please.  She could honor tradition and be Palin’s running mate.  Oh my stars the grandiose buffoonery.  Palin McCain.  I’m so on board.

Given that I’m a bleeding heart, progressive goddamn liberal, I have real reservations about our role in Afghanistan.  The escalation and troop infusions.  Military might can’t ever be long term infrastructure and anchor for a foreign people’s societal and political constructs in their own land.  We are perfectly capable of kicking their asses but what then?  Iraq again with darker facets of Vietnam.

Afghanistan is a far bigger and more lethal power vacuum than was Iraq.  Iraq was stable.  This, the part of the equation Dumbya’s sock puppets ignored.  This, the part of this equation no one is really talking about now.  In fact, no one seems to be talking about that war very much at all.  You know we’re losing lives over there.  You know we’re mowing them down.

It is a movie far worse than you can imagine.  Just watching the movie would change you forever.

These “birthers” do us all a bad service for polluting the national dialog with their baseless and recklessly incendiary crap.  Swift Boaters still wearing paper masks of patriotism.  Traitors.  I wonder what would happen if we tried them.  Bet we’d figure out they’re breathtakingly despisable.

Drinks for my friends.

 

Johnny Angel Wendell is actually owed credit for the subject matter here, a left leaning radio talk show host, by simply voting yes in a facebook poll as to whether Sarah Palin should run for the Presidency in 2012.

I too am in favor, if only for the burlesque it promises.  After reading “It Came From Wasilla” in the latest Vanity Fair, I’m convinced that the entertainment value of such an endeavor would be no less than awesome by way of spectacle.  And really, if by then that’s the best the GOP can do, it will guarantee a  second term for Obama or whomever else the Democrats see fit to choose.  Just think of the gritty pathos.  The humanity.  The vacuum of humility.

Now, 2012 is a political millennium away.  To be honest, I estimate Palin’s political career, much less her aspirations, to be toast crispy and black.  Stick a fork in her.  Sarah Palin is a dry, overdone pot roast no gravy can mitigate.  So yes, it’s a fantasy.  Forgive me; it would be grande.

The thing is this, the Republicans have nobody.  Not one man or woman.  Not one credible individual with even the remotest potential to entertain the notion of leading the party to any elected office other than say, dog catcher or assemblyman.  Bereft of leaders, message or even philosophy.  Reaping what they have sown.  Karma not just nipping at their heels but ripping chunks from their asses.  Callow adolescent diphshits and geriatric has-beens.  The C Street house of cards collapsing on what would have been potential stewards like Ensign, Pickering and Sanford.  Not so much burlesque as an ill advised, asinine dress rehearsal.

It get’s harder and harder to watch.  More and more disgusting.

As much fun as there is to be had here, this shit is pathetic.  It’s embarrassing.

There are members of congress who believe the earth is but six thousand years old.   Yep, Republicans almost all.  We look to these assholes for leadership?

I feel a rant coming on.  Yep, it’s in the back of my throat.

I’m coughing.  It’s like a goddamn sagebrush.  This is gonna hurt.  Sorry.  Feels like a tumbleweed.  Yep.  Sorry.  Got any grape Kool-Aid?

Ahem.

Go ahead, read your Bible or your Qur’an or whatever gets you through the night.  I’m less sick of your shit interfering with my life than it so violently and presumptively interferes with the lives of everyone else.  Then, it influences my life.  This is no way to run the world.  My God can beat up your God.  Wanna race for pink slips?  Archaic and absurd.  Fonzi vs. Ponch.  Two would be Italians, one played by a Jew the other an Hispanic.

We really need to leave this shit behind.  It’s stupid.

Catholicism is dumb and hypocritical and evil.  A religion based on ancient, obsolete treatise and decorum as much as rampant Church sponsored pedophilia.  Fuck these cocksuckers.  Pun violently intended.  Bullshit from the ground up.  The bureaucracy of this institution has no excuse and even less shame.  They steadfastly protect those who have or would have diddled your children.  Those who have or who would have ass raped your little boy or girl.

Yet they posture in front of you and deign to share God’s will and the way to a moral life with you.  Snake oil.  Charlatans.  Idiots.  Pretenders.  Phonies.  They don’t know or understand shit.

Them having never shared their pudenda with a mature female makes them sacred?  Holy?

Bullshit.  They stick it wherever they can.

I use the Catholics as an example because I loathe them.  But really, all organized religion is the same through the jaundiced lense of hypocrisy and evil.  So many of you need to go play in the street.  You’re not relevant and don’t deserve to be tax free.  You hurt and damage far more than you help and your “faith” is literally based on an imaginary man in the sky.

And they believe the earth is six thousand years old.  I’m done with you people.

Shut up.  Go away.  Jesus is not the way, if he existed at all he may have been a nice guy.  That’s it.

I hate religion.

Drinks for my friends.

“Joe The Plumber…you can quote me…..is a dumbass.  He should stick to plumbing.” -Meghan McCain

Nevermind his name’s not Joe and he’s not a plumber.

That’s rich.

Sarah palin has the highest favorability rating of anyone in the GOP and she remains the parties most effective fund raiser.

That’s just sick.  Disturbing.  Portentous.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sessions, Cornyn and Grassley step on their dicks in the Sotomayor hearings.  They focus on her speeches as opposed to, and in obvious ignorance of, her seventeen years as a sharp and capable centrist jurist.  Dogs and ponies.  They can’t come up with a damn thing.  Didn’y lay a glove on her.  Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow collided over her on MSNBC earlier today.  Rachel rocked by telling Uncle Pat he was “dating himself”.   Summed up the disconnect between asstards like Buchanan and well, the rest of us.

That guy doesn’t lose many fights.  She kicked his ass.

I’ve written about this a lot but I’m not tired of it yet.  The Republican party is one hot mess.  Tying their own shoes and that’s a bad thing.  An implosion that keeps on giving.  Three sex scandals in as many weeks, all three by prominent moralizing Republicans, who happen to live on or in (?), C Street and happen to call themselves a Christian Mafia.  I believe all three have waxed hypocritical about other politicians who’ve been caught engaged in acts of untoward.  They hollered self righteously for resignations, and now refuse to resign.

Fucking poseurs.

All this in a venue the IRS has been led to believe is a church.  A goddamn church.  Some media began calling it a frat house today.  That works.  The fraternity is the Christian Mafia.  Fuck me.

Spying and torture and assassinations, oh my.  Now I hear they used insects, fire ants even during interrogations.  Another wingtip slams the marble everyday.  Turns out, Republicans really are idiots.  Fucking arrogant, willfully ignorant, lazy morons.  They do nothing but posture and make insipid pronouncements awkwardly disguised as rational disagreement.

The hangover is getting to be a bit much.  I knew it would be a long one but it’s becoming insufferable.

You can’t write this shit.

When I hear about this kinda buffoonery, I can’t help but wonder just how much of this ‘berg is above water?

It’s like Republicans only drink a certain kind of water and the Democrats just figured out how to infiltrate the supply.  It has become the perfect storm.

Or maybe, within the most cosmic of ironies, evolution is biting them in the ass.  A burst of honest, progressive and still empirical thought manifests as their own species threatening comet.  Or maybe ice age.

Whatever it is, a hard winter is upon the Grand Old Party.

Drinks for my friends.

There simply is no cogent remonstrance to be made for Sarah Palin’s resignation being in anyone’s best interest but her own.  Callow, cowardly and nothing if not character as yet still inchoate.  A better, smarter  politician would have stepped back, done personal inventory and realized her own tempest was precisely that.  Her own.

Instead, she threw in the towel and walked away, blaming everyone but herself.  She did not belong there and that’s not entirely her fault but none of it is mine.

Maybe there was an epiphany.  Maybe she finally realized she was in way over her head.

That would be nice.

Ideally, she could own some some humility, regroup and educate herself on the issues;  a little geography and some foreign policy.  If the content of her character was what her and her mouth breathing Christian conservative base would have us believe, after some sincere and earnest wood shedding, she could rise to the occasion.  Re-emerge a more sober, thoughtful and with luck, a far better informed public figure.

Either way, I suspect she has for all intents and purposes, taken the political dirt nap.  Notwithstanding her rabid enthusiasts, typically of the under informed and aforementioned mouth breathing variety, the pooch has pretty much been gang raped.  The resolute, far right, Christian neoconservative base is in decline.  An accelerated rate of atrophy as it goes the way of the Dodo.

Cheney tried.  He failed.  He will be hated forever.  He dines on live infants.

I’m not too broken up.  Political Darwinism eroding a really stupid and toxic doctrine.  As rapidly as the jackasses ascended, so precipitous is their decline.  Self correction as it should be; kinda vengeful.

Should she choose to run in 2012, her comeuppance will be complete.  Even were she to stage the most spectacular transformation ever witnessed by the instantaneous post technocratic media, she will arrive obsolete.  Redundant.  Too little too late.  She will embarrass herself and her party.  Her mascara will run.  She will remain a sullen runner up to prom queen.  No ride in the magic float.

It’s my hope she tries her hand at something else.  I get the feeling this was her first real ass kicking.  She caved.  Better to know it now, huh?

Sheezus.

My advice to you Mrs. Todd Palin is to pursue entertainment.  Not journalism.  Entertainment.  Broadcasting.  Somebody said something about a talk show.  This your best option.  I would get there soon.  You’ve already got a huge book deal.  Get a radio show.  Start slow.  Learn the business.  You’re not stupid, just not very smart.  You are the paradigm of right wing radio.  Right between G. Gordon Liddy and Glenn Beck.  The very exclusive, very elite of the ridiculous douchebags.

Learn to talk to people that are only as smart as you are.  You’ll be so much happier.

So will the rest of us.

Drinks for my friends.

The salient point I’m about to serve up is not original.  It is not mine, I just happen to enthusiastically agree.

Names have not been changed to protect a single asshole.

Off we go.

If I hear another Republican dipshit criticize Obama’s reaction to the the Iranian election clusterfuck, when they all know as well as anyone else, for us to intervene or interfere anymore than we have is counter to foreign policy 101, with a country like Iran who’s history we’ve meddled in disastrously, I’ll projectile puke.

Shut up you idiots.  Our Man’s course of action is obvious, informed and reasonable.  What would you have him do?

Ridiculous and absurd.  Their own people asking us not to wade into their affairs again.  They are grateful for our support.  Yet they understand better than the royal “we”, that any influence perceived as American fuel in this struggle will dilute it and ultimately disease it.

Duh.

Iranians and Americans cannot afford for American government to be a component of this struggle.  It would ruin it.  It’s that simple.

The douchebags that persist in shouting that crap from the roof tops aren’t doing favors for anyone.  McCain, Bill Bennett, Lindsey Graham and Newt.  A message that only falls on the ears of the great unwashed.  The lowest common denominator.  The deaf.  The stupid.  The under informed.  The arrogant jingo assholes who think it’s our duty to force our bullshit on every other camper.

Work with me, it was this exact thinking that got us into the trouble we’re in now.

I’m here to tell you that terrorists will not be killing you in your bed.  They really are the least of our worries and even that’s an accident.  If you’re on a list as a suspected terrorist, your biggest problem will be boarding a commercial airliner.  The least of your inconveniences are buying guns or explosives.  If you are an evil doer (love those two words), your best bet is some destruction at home as opposed to interstate travel.  Our advice to you is to shit where you eat.  The current terrorist watch list of more than a million members, does not prevent anyone from purchasing guns or even explosives, interstate travel however, is far more difficult.

You bet.  Yeah baby we’re on it.  Fear not, the NRA has your back.

It’s a goddamn joke and we are pigs.

God has not even dick to do with it.

An election was stolen from the Iranian people.  They are indignant and I understand.  I think they just might be an example to us.  C’mon.  Their bravery is awesome.  We have been giant vaginas.  Forgive the gender aspect.  I’m just saying.

We should stay out of it for obvious reasons and let them show us how it’s done.

I’m getting tired of American hubris.  Who the fuck do we think we are?

Drinks for my friends.

More than a little pensive.

The citizens of Iran have a profoundly legitimate beef.  One of the best kind.  Noble and justified.  An obviously rigged election.  Blatant.  Ridiculous.  The turn out was over 120%.  Bullshit is the given.

Tomorrow may inform us of eventual fate.  The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  deigned to wade in today on the Sabbath, by vehicle of his scheduled sermon.  Just another day of worship.  He was clear:  Those who “take wrong measures which are harmful, they will be held accountable for all violence.” He called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the absolute victor” in last week’s election…..”  -CNN.com

This sucks.

I’m spooked.  The difference between these human events and Tiananmen Square for example, is that despite the Iranian government’s game face and perseverant campaign to control information, this revolution just may be televised.  Forgive my trite.  I’m not here to obviate something so big and ripe.  I fear what happens next.  Both sides are more than aware that the entire world watches.

The chances of a fistfight are always multiplied by an audience.  Always.

The Ayatollah didn’t merely draw a line in the sand.  He came out with serious lumber.  He tells the people of Iran that they are welcome to test his bat.  He tells them it will be ugly.  I’m really afraid of that.  I think it’s quite likely.  Man, I hope not.  Did you know that Iran is arguably the most pro-American country in the entire region?  These people are in trouble and I doubt they will walk away.  There will be blood.  There already has been.

Iranians are not pussies.

Our Man’s facility with it all has been pitch perfect.  He understands that any movement in Iran perceived as being fomented or even endorsed by the US government is a guarantee it will sink under that weight.  The asshat Republicans shouting jingoistic bullshit from the rooftops are posturing with lamentable irresponsibility.  Man I hate these pricks.  No compassion, zero sensibility, reckless abandon in pursuit of grandeur.  Shut the fuck up.

Iran is a modern society.  It has a vibrant and youthful population, progressive by regional standards.  Amazingly, a huge chunk of them don’t hate us.  Really.

My fear is that the Iranian people will suffer for whatever they do tomorrow.  For years.

It is the covert option that most media fails to talk about.  I’m afraid they will be picked off at random, regardless of participation, until, you know, morale improves.  I don’t see tanks but I do see terror.  For years.  They know full well, both sides get it.  Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

See, we’re all just citizens of the world.  After the sun impregnates the horizon and the stars come out, the day is done and we are all the same.  We really are all the same.  I live in a big city so ethnic diversity is but a part of my coat of many colors.  Whether your thing is prayer or the power of positive thinking, it’s time to do a little dance.

Wisdom, safety and support to the people of Iran.

And, um, fuck the Ayatollah.

Drinks for my friends.

Today the DOJ, in support of the DOMA  (Defense Of Marriage Act), issued a brief using language invoking pedophilia and incest, eerily reminiscent of the vituperation vomited by the religious right ad nauseum since the dawn of the cerebral cortex.

Puns intended.

So much for change.

I don’t care if Obama was aware of this or not.  The only acceptable action here is swift, unambiguous refutation.  Obama and his administration need to get in front of this crap like yesterday.  It’s not just bullshit, it’s madness.  Best case scenario is Obama talking about this before I get out of bed.  The time difference alone gives him a hell of a head start.  Time to show me something Mr. Fierce Defender.

Enough.

Let this pass at your peril.  Hope will turn to doubt.

While we’re on the subject of Our Man, I was none too thrilled by the glaring omissions in his remarks in front of the AMA today.  It was a good speech, but no substantive reckoning that big pharma and big insurance are hopelessly infected by avarice and therefore ground zero for reform and regulation.  No mention of what an inefficient, bureaucratic clusterfuck the FDA is.  These items are at the very root of the problem and no reform has a chance at efficacy without force being brought to bear on them.

Blowing up balloons with holes in them.

The sad truth lies in the why.  Along with the AMA, pharmaceutical and insurance companies are championed by some of the biggest and most influential lobbying cabals in Washington.  If there were stars on K street or Pennsylvania Avenue like Hollywood Boulevard, two thirds of them would be dedicated to these filthy bastards.  For all you sniveling morons who live in such fear of communism, here is a bonafide  Red Menace for you.

Welcome to the plutocracy.  This thing is way bigger than just stubborn Republicans.

Along with energy, campaign finance reform and the military industrial complex, these are the windmills I expect Our Man to be tipping.  That’s why I voted for him.

We loves us some Bill Maher.  Maher said the other night in his New Rules segment:  “…..I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity”.

Me, I’m looking for those balls of zirconia  I thought I glimpsed on the campaign trail.  Dude, please don’t Jimmy Carter us.

Remember how I was pissing and moaning about pumps on lotion and soap bottles not long ago?  Well, for the record, adding water to any of the soap dispensing ones is pretty viable.

Sometimes I think all Americans are either corrupt or stupid.  Often both, but rarely neither.

Drinks for my friends.

Good evening.

Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee yesterday.

I’m cutting to the chase here with direct quotes.

“Global cooperation is crucial for the survival of mankind…..”

“If we have a chance, it has to begin by people accepting that they can be proud of who they are without despising who someone else is,”

….”we are genetically “99.5 percent the same……..”

“From time immemorial, people have fought over identity rooted in that (half percent),” Clinton said. “We should have spent more time thinking about that other 99.5 percent of ourselves.”

“You teach your children their ethnic heritage; their religious heritage; their cultural heritage with no negative reference to anyone else because it’s the only shot we’ve got to make the most of our interdependent world,”

All quotes from CNN.com

You’ll have to forgive me but these sentiments strike a real chord with me.  Beyond that chord, is a three part harmony and a choral ethereal behind it.  With a Hammond B3 through a tube Leslie cabinet and some tympanies and strings.  Some brass and wood.  French horns and Oboes.  Oooh, and a Moog.

“Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you’ll know by.” -Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

These simple notions explode in my heart.  If we could just live by them, we’d enjoy so much more peace.

John Lennon beseeched us gently to imagine.  To imagine an entire world with no religion, no hell and just the blue sky above.  No country.  No nationalism or even patriotism.  No reason to even covet wealth or profit from famine.

“A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world” -John Lennon

That’s big stuff there.

Then there’s proof we’re almost outta rope.  This is such a simple thing but the climate is getting ever more polarized and violent.  While the right wing frolics in it’s own pudenda, evangelicals are snug as a bug in a rug with the idea they are somehow among the righteous and will somehow live forever.

These folks are stupid.  These folks are mean.  Sheezus.

As cynical as I am, I’m still an optimist.

The latest xenophobic diatribe from the asshole club foolishly denounces the concept of being a citizen of the world.  Newt the Salamander (new nickname alert), mocked it last week in a speech before rotting doddering sycophants.  That’s dumb.  I don’t care what backward crap you subscribe to, if you are reading this, you are a citizen of the world.

Some of you don’t like it.

Tough shit.

Newt the Salamander cracks me up.  The hair of a robust but premature gray talk show host, the face of a caramel and Scotch addicted bigot, the grill of an octogenarian who’s still got some baby teeth.  Thinks he’s got a shot at the head office.  The way he’s shoveling sewage, he doesn’t have shit to say.

Whatever he does say smells like ass.  He packs his jowls with feline fecal tootsie rolls to lend his face symmetry.  I’m really happy I just said that exact thing.  I don’t care much for the Salamander.

Nattering nabobs of negativity want to know Newt’s languor.  How does the Salamander balance the warm rock and the cool water?  Plump and bellicose.

I’d like to have him over for drinks and duct tape him to a space heater.  Make him watch CSI Miami.  Feed him nothing but Slim Jim’s and Dr. Pepper.  He would change his own diapers whilst suspended by a chin strap.  Morticians would be allowed to practice on his pale countenance and somewhat alien bone structure.  I could invite some NBA size trannys.

” George W. Bush left office with a public approval rating under 30 percent. Less than 30 percent of Americans currently describe themselves as Republicans. The amalgam of evangelical Christians, hardcore gun-rights fanatics, anti-tax, anti-immigrant and anti-choice voters who make up the base of the Republican Party amount to less than 30 percent of the overall electorate.” -William Rivers Pitt, truthout.org

Salient point of ensuing article by Mr. Pitt is that it’s own base is reason for the GOP’s demise.  The Sarahs, salamanders and Huckabees are prisoners of their own device.  The once muscular, hard right base of the Republican party, the guns and God crew, are essential for candidates to be allowed to sit at the table, but now a virtual guarantee they’re exempt from being dealt a winning hand.

My synopsis: These guys are fucked and it’s all their fault.

Will Pitt rocks.  Like a hurricane.

As much as I loathe the great unwashed, I sincerely wish they’d wake the fuck up and smell the world along with America’s place in it.  They nearly screwed the pooch when they were in power last time and now they are poised to do their worst despite being the minority.  Irrational fear, ignorance, prejudice and unwillingness to judge a man based on the content of his character, but rather his religion, political affiliation, culture or social beliefs, has the whole movement flirting with obsolescence.

The Republican party is a parody of itself.

They have begun to eat their own.  They drag their party moderates toward a house still fully engulfed instead of even entertaining the idea they are less than absolutely right about everything.  Frustrating to watch.

It has always been true, always an imperative, but now it’s damn near an emergency; we must get along.  Share the world.  Humankind can no longer afford to relinquish reality and truth while clinging to individual interest and willful ignorance.  The fomenting of hate by right wing media is not just reckless and irresponsible but is literally a menace to society.  I’m not here to suggest we revoke the first amendment rights of fucktards like The Human Shitsmear (Limbaugh), Hannity, Coulter, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly or even the Cheneys.

Fight fire with fire by using your own rights under that same amendment to drown them out.  How hard would it be for every American who loathes Rush to storm his phone lines regularly?  Sunday afternoon in the park.  We could do it from facebook and myspace.

What then, of the example by the Iranian people this weekend over the travesty of their national election?  They took to the streets.  I understand that the chronic malfeasance of our ’00 and ’04 elections was not nearly so obtuse.  We are guilty nonetheless, for behaving.  Not nearly enough ‘what the fuck?’

They are furious and showing courage.  Point to me the American who doesn’t cheer this struggle.  These people are ass pissed as they should be.  This is incredibly good stuff.  Anybody looking for inspiration or even an example?

As I write this I watch dickheads go swine stupid downtown over a goddamn basketball championship.  Now that’s blind shithouse irony.

I have it on mute but LAPD are going paramilitary and scaring the crap out of them.  Herded like cattle and KCAL9 cuts to commercial.  Lean it up against what’s happening in Iran right now, that’s all I’m saying.

Drinks for my friends.

If I don’t close a few deals tomorrow, we all may be killed.

Gotta pay the rent and peanut butter by way of index finger is getting old.

Meanwhile the asstards of the GOP have decided that Sotomayor is so very experienced, possesses such an elaborate history of jurisprudence, that her confirmation must be delayed until after the end of the Mayan calendar, as they need to study her every move.  They prefer her confirmation hearings begin sometime after the world ends in 2012.

What exactly do these men of lust, greed and glory hope to accomplish here?  Don’t know about you, but they look like dickheads to me.  She’s gonna be confirmed you assholes of the flat earth society.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, another right wing, homophobe, bigot loses his shit and goes off on innocents with a gun.  This guy’s done time just like the last uniquely American tumor.  You know by now DHS distributed a report a few months back warning against this specific conflagration.  The Republicans piled on and forced an apology out of Janet Napolitano.

How rigoddamndiculous does that dance look today?  Looks like under Obama, DHS might have a chance at efficacy.  Might just be the most prescient and important thing they’ve ever done, you know, that report that predicted all of this.

Fucking Republicans. Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.

The frontline of the GOP is the Human Shitsmear, Sarah Palin and some human salamander named Newt.  The bench is Guy Smiley (Romney), McCain and John Voight.  Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.  Rounding out Republican leadership is Michele Bachman and John Boehner.  Mr. Everglow and Mrs. Dipshit.  I understand now why Republicans pretend to stay right with God.  Hypocrisy is in their blood and they are not then, easily embarrassed.

Still can’t figure out why they aren’t embarrassed.   They have become parodies of themselves.  Not a single original thought, plan, strategy or policy.  Nothing but anti.  Nothing but no.  They just don’t get it.  The weight of circumstances and the gravity of right now is barely in their periphery.  They wander through fields and ditches without any concept of consequence.  Not a single Republican is thinking about anything beyond itself.

Rome is dry.  Rome is a tinderbox.  Rome is about to burn and you assholes can barely be bothered to get off the phone.

Wake the fuck up you Republican moderates.  You think you got no place to go other than Independent?  A lot of us will be inclined to join with you or at least work with you if you can behave.  We’ll hold it against you but we won’t throw it in your face.

Let’s get on with it.

Drinks for my friends.

“And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum.” -Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America.

Awesome.

Honestly, I teared up.

I am so very proud of my President and my country.  Our Man was amazing today.  He said things no American President has ever said.  And they were all true.  I was transfixed.  Enchanted.  Slack jawed.  I’m grateful I was alone, just in case I drooled.

It’s worth pointing out that in light of the elaborate smear effort to paint him as some sort of extremist Muslim conducted during the Presidential  campaign, his speech in Cairo today was goddamn courageous.  Beyond that, it was an overt in your face to his neoconservative right wing Christian critics. You know, the ones that so desperately want you to believe that we’re in the middle of some war that is ultimately about our God being able to beat up their God.  The ones for whom ridiculous dogma and apocryphal ideology trump compassion, reality and common sense.

“More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.”

“So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.”

Oh man.  That’s the shit right there.

“As the Holy Quran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.  That is what I will try to do today — to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

There it is.  We are all just people.  Humans first and foremost.  How breathtakingly refreshing.  How important and authentic.

Obama quoted John Adams: “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”

This notion, so widely held, that America is at war with a religion or an ethnicity or even a geographic region is so very wrongheaded, so perspicaciously misguided, that most Americans, along with too much of the world, have no realistic understanding of just exactly what is happening and why.

It’s understandable, given the litany of lies we’ve been force fed, and our own failure in laziness and apathy to not even bother to investigate for our own edification, the absolute crap the media has foisted upon us so irresponsibly, so relentlessly and for so long.  The failure of journalism in America is mirrored by the doppelganger of breakdown by Americans ourselves, to question what we’re told, to challenge what we are led to believe.  Exactly why we are in this mess.

Willful ignorance.

“The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.”

As an agnostic,  I am moved  to say Amen.

“Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world……….Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Sheezus.  Wow.  In Cairo, Egypt.  An incredibly bold admission about the abject failure of American policy.  I can’t tell you how impressed I am at this honest confession by Our Man on the world stage.  It’s true, America fucked up by invading Iraq.  We screwed the pooch.  Shame on us.

“And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or forget our principles. Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.”

Of course I was aware of these steps by Our Man, but his restating of them beneath and behind the proscenium of a stage in front of the entire world is nothing less than golden.  And again, the admission of just how far this once great country has strayed, is so brave and nakedly honest, that I am at a loss for words.

He recounts these events, these egregious mistakes, because his intention is to put them behind us by reconstructing our integrity and pride with honesty and transparency, whenever and wherever possible.

Then, he swung the mother of all haymakers:

“On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations — large and small — that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”

“It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That’s not how moral authority is claimed; that’s how it is surrendered.”

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.  This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Unbelievable.  Finally.  A sitting American calls Israel on it’s shit.

This is change.  I can’t speak for you, but this is why this man earned my vote.  It is why I didn’t hesitate to hope.  I believed him then.  I believe him now.  I believe in him.  As I write this, I am inspired and awfully proud.

This speech will no doubt be read, remarked upon and lauded for decades.

This guy is so fucking cool.

Drinks for my friends.

Fuck that shit.  CHRISTIAN TERRORISM.

Timothy McVeigh was a domestic terrorist.

Whackjobs like Scott Roeder, who assassinated Dr. George Tiller yesterday in his own goddamn church, what should be a sanctuary, do so in the the name of their Christian God.  No surprise here that Roeder was a homophobe as well.  Christian Terrorist, nothing less.

Thank God I’m agnostic.  I crack me up.

“A man named Scott Roeder was convicted in 1996 of criminal use of explosives and sentenced to 24 months probation….” -CNN

Imagine this man was Muslim and he was known to stalk and then kill a Rabbi or a politician.  Think about it.  Really.

Like it or not, George Tiller was engaging in a legally protected activity.  Do these assholes really think these women simply wake up, watch an episode of Maury Povich and decide to seek a late term abortion as a matter of convenience?  I’m not even going to look it up, I’m confident that’s not the case.  Shut up, I will not entertain the issue.

Enter the glowering spectre of egregiously irresponsible “journalists” like Bill O’Reilly.  How much blood on his hands?

“Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006″ -salon.com

As of today, no apologies from O’Reilly.  In it’s stead, Bill the pinhead offers that: “The far left is exploiting the death of [sic] Dr. Tiller to stifle any criticism of abortion.”  Note the euphemism “death of” in the the place of what should rightfully be “assassination”.  As though, “Tiller the Killer” some how expired or succumbed to natural causes.

There is no doubt in my mind that O’Reilly and his ilk are responsible in some degree for so recklessly fomenting the hate and fear for which such tragedies are an inevitable conclusion.  Inevitable, you douchebag.  Time to man up, you penisless reptile.  Do you imagine your useless vitriol to be without consequence?

To quote Snoop: “Fuck Bill O’Reilly.”

Man I hate these guys.

In other news, I’m thinking Sonia Sotomayor has benefitted  from the magic of rhinoplasty.  Good decision methinks.  She used to have a honker like a potato.  Seriously, she’s hot, smart and exotic, at least to me, self confessed trailer trash.  I’m saying that under the right circumstances, I’d hit that.

For the record, my current significant other is very smart and way hotter.

I gotta tell ya, I think Barack taking Michelle out for dinner and a show in New York is unbelievably cool.  He loves his wife and so do I.  Class and glamor.  A little Camelot for us all.  I am only able to muster a mere modicum of amusement at the FOX news talking heads invective over the cost of the outing.  Vainglorious and vituperatively disingenuous valor on part of their talking heads pretending to give a mad fuck over the expense to you, dear reader.  Did they complain, on your behalf, about Dumbya’s record amounts of vacation time to clear brush in Crawford?  I think not.

Assholes.

Man I hate these guys.

Drinks for my friends.

I had a pretty swell day today.

I actually went to a barbecue.  I brought a couple good zinfandels, one was a Pejut.

I contributed in other ways.  I grilled some pineapple.  Quartered slabs of it.  I brushed one slab with teriyaki and another with a with a blackberry preserve based homemade bbq sauce.  I sprinkled garlic on both.

I like that both Deanna and Lisa don’t like to smoke in front of the kids.

Me, I don’t care.

I grilled red onions too.  I think my pineapple went over pretty well, it was gone fast, but I brought home some onions.

Extraordinarily nice people.

We watched the first half of the laker game and these women were on it.  I was the only adult male of ten people.  They sort of assumed I’d be some alpha male grill master.  We had ribs, hot links, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers and I grilled pineapple and red onions.  The women and children were forced to cook the meat as my emasculation bloomed.

I supervised while I smoked a few of Deanna’s Marlboro Lights because they tasted interesting and I was drinking good zin.  They seemed to have a handle on it.

Anyway, shoulda heard the women talking the game.  Awesome.  Kinda bitchy but not missing a single thing.  I’m not a sports guy but I likes me an NBA playoff game.  I was sitting with at least three women that had been paying attention all season.  One told me the Lakers could for sure stop Cleveland.

There was too an enclosed porch on the second floor with widows on three sides.  As it got chillier it was a nice place to watch the sun sink and have a smoke.

Children were the stars of my day.  These little girls, sisters, were diamonds in platinum.  I tried not to smoke in front of them.  They sang to us on the way home.  I can’t put my finger on it.  Their obvious independence, their overt dependence on mother and whatever innocent sweetness they threw my way.  A rosy spotlight on them.

Two sixteen year old boys named Jonathan and a very pretty girl about the same age.  The young lady such a wide eyed doe.  All three literally teetering between adolescence and early adulthood.  I see it in their eyes and read it in their gestures.   Charismatic geeks and thank the powers that be.  Smart, funny and not thugs or idiots.  Good kids.

Then there’s me.  Huffing on Marlboros, drinking wine and soliciting the cooperation of any teen I can coerce into my onion and pineapple experiments.

It was an unconscionably pleasant day.

I brought a plate home.

It is Memorial  Day, a year and a half after the Thanksgiving I first and last met the Grandma.  No sooner did I enter the living room than she was pulling the thin tube for oxygen that ran across her cheek up so that I could kiss her there.  Not much can make you feel that welcome.

I hate war and I don’t believe in your God.  I am respectful of every single American that has served his or her country in any capacity that includes war.  It is a very big deal.  I have an uncle that served and he is damaged.  I’m an agnostic and a Democrat but I’m also an American.  I love this country, but  I’m not afraid to express my disappointment, disgust and dismay.

I am a patriot.

I take it very seriously.

Would any of you out there be willing and of a mind to come at me from there, I respectfully invite you to bring it.

My gratitude for every man woman and child who has defended these principles and this country.

Drinks for my friends.

Cable is out. Chose not to pay the bill.

What people fail to understand is that Obama cannot afford to even address this issue of guns, to do so would ignite an already hot pile of insanity. These fucks, these crazy zealots, are lying in a puddle of their own excrement waiting for Obama to utter the words “gun control”. It will be an excuse for them to snap.

Patient but dumb.

Wouldn’t be prudent.

Most of you are just stupid enough to not understand how dangerous you are. It really bugs me.

Sorry boys and girls. The issue of guns will see no play this season. Understandably so methinks.

Unless assholes keep shooting shit up. Give it a rest already. I refuse to to fear this.

I got comic books on the brain. I bought a thousand bags & boards and five long boxes the other day. For the last three days I’ve bagged and boarded. Surreal. Amazing nostalgia. I adore comic book art. My collection is perfectly preserved. Exactly the way I left it. Beat up books are still beat up books, but pristine ones are still pristine.

Crazy. I touch each one as I place it on a board and manuever it into a bag and I remember reading them, almost everyone of them stirs something in my head and there’s over a thousand. Damn. They were gathered with care as well as abandon. As I rember them, I understand they have informed me as much as they are going to.

They are everywhere in my apartment now. Leaning or stacked, grouped by title. Huge swaths of Ironman, Spiderman, The X-Men, Daredevil, Avengers, Fantastic Four……The Flash, Superman, Batman, The Justice League……….Star Trek, Adam 12, Richey Rich, Zoro and Archie……Boris Karloff, Ripley’s……….Swamp Thing, an assload of MAD magazines, Heavy Metal, Conan and Epic.

An amazing historical capsule. Late sixties to early eighties. The breadth and diversity of my collection affords me permission to brag and be proud because I was a child when I assembled it.

My folks are heros for packing them, storing them and delivering them to me when I bought my first house.

The way they smell and the way they look and my absolute romance with them when I barely had opinion about anything. I began to obsess when I was twelve. I was twelve.

John Byrne, Jim Starlin, Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor Smith, Frank Miller…… Jack Kirby

Life is so sticky I feel the need for a bath about every hour. Sign of the gypsy queen. As thick as an old Supertramp record.

Everything I ever did you could hear the fucking kick drum.

The kick drum is lichen on a boulder.

When I was a kid there was lichen on boulders.

Primus grooves way hard.

My sincere advice to you is to Sail the Seas of Cheese and clean your house.

A little Tommy The Cat will cure whatever ails ya. I’m also a spokesperson for Alka Seltzer and fragrant pinecones.

Anyway, today Michele “We’re Running Out Of Rich People In This Country” Bachman (R-MN), by far the biggest assclown in the US House of Represenatives, gracelessly attempted to infer that flu epidemics somehow only occur under Democratic administrations. See if you can follow her logic:

“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter…….” -Huffington Post

The Human Shitsmear had this to say:
“[E]verywhere Obama is spreading Obamaism, there is a deadly disease taking place, either in the TARP community or in the newspaper business … Obama goes to Mexico — they have an earthquake. Obama goes to Mexico — get pig flu,” -wowwowwow.com

Awesome. Do the math. You’ve got an evil humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winning philanthropist, and our current President, a nefarious community organizer and two, count ’em two, outbreaks of flu related to pigs of all things. Oh, and, they’re both Democrats. I bet they used the same lab. It’s probably deep in the basement of some Red Cross shelter or maybe a Salvation Army thrift store.

Sheezus! That’s iron clad. A slam goddamn dunk! But wait. The original swine flu epidemic occured under Ford. I feel dizzy. I think I smell yellowcake uranium……my vision is clouded by pockmarks not unlike those littering the visage of George Tenet.

In late March 1976, President Gerald Ford emerged from a meeting with 27 health advisers with an ambitious request: “I am asking every man, woman and child in the country to get an inoculation this fall.” -dumpbachman.blogspot.com

It’s fair to say I love to loathe this woman. I adore her stupidity. I covet her retardation.

Why, just the other day she deigned to lecture Congress about Carbon Dioxide. She posited over and over that it’s a natural gas. She’s right about that but then so is the methane in my flatulence. What’s the point? She’s sure it can’t be bad for us because it’s from “nature”. She goes on to inform the esteemed deliberative body that there exists not a singly study proving this natural gas is harmful to humans. Five syllables Michele, asphyxiation.

She gives truth to the concept of failing upward:

In response to a question from host Chris Matthews, Bachmann said on the Oct. 17 show that she was “very concerned” that Obama “may have anti-American views” and that the news media should investigate the views of members of Congress. -Miami Herald

Hello McCarthy.

Then there’s Arlen Spector. Booya! I’ve always thought this guy to be inconsistent but obviously of his own mind. He confuses though not predictably. Maybe he actually has his own mind. Just can’t tell with these damn white collar tweekers.

Franken will get to sit and Spector makes sixty. A nice number. The Democrats, should they choose to act in concert, will have a majority immune to fillibuster. It’s something they rarely do regardless of whether they’re formidable or not. I’m not about a lockstep majority in the Senate but we need to be able to swing haymakers and roundhouses. Change won’t take unless we land some.

Homogeny is not a given among the jackasses.

Whatever. What these two stories point to is serious structural damage in the GOP. Take Mehgan McCain’s remarks:
“Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy, and ” Later, she wrote: “I can’t shake the fact that Karl Rove is following me-it can be creepy. So watch out.” and “Call it savvy marketing, but I find it disingenuous,” she said. “And it’s a bit weird to think his people-not even Rove himself-are following me.” -CNN

This thing will heat up. It will be a battle of the titans. Not so much between Democrats and Republicans but a contest between progressive and ignorant. Between smart and stupid if you will. Pro peace, pro choice, not fooled by creationism or abstinence, unafraid of gay people, tired of organized religion in our face rational humanists, versus desperately afraid war pigs that believe shit like Democrats are responsible for the fucking flu.

Guess who wins.

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.

So I’m watching Southpark tonight and it’s about the Jonas Brothers. I never watch Southpark but it can be hysterically funny, vulgar and nail on the head relevant all at once.

I guess I’ve heard of the Jonas Brothers. My brain performs some functions automatically. I’m grateful for my brain. The simplest notion of them as another boy band was was all that ended up in some tiny little neglected room full of dust and weird odors somewhere in my brain.

I didn’t understand they were Christians. Sheezus.

The scene where Mickey himself walks in, emasculates them then beats the shit out of them is a goddamn scream. Hollywood Records, bitch. At Disney, nobody fucks with the mouse. Harlan Ellison has an excellent story with the same title I think.

I need to add the following anecdote. The people from Hollywood Records whom I encountered during my time in the biz, from execs to staff producers, were quite honestly among the most clueless fucks from any business I’ve ever been involved in and that includes my teenage tenure as Der Wienerschnitzel management.

I spent eight hours one night punching the same eight bar guitar solo with a coked up CC Deville because nobody including the producer, had the balls to stop it. It was for some Pauly Shore movie, a cover of ‘Hey hey good lookin’. Julian Raymond had no clue how to run a recording session. Kaffel (Philo) was probably getting paid by the hour. Phil always looked like he’d combed his hair with a sharp rock.

Bristol “abstinence is unrealistic” Palin won’t be marrying oily variety bohunk Levi Johnston anytime soon. My sources tell me that at the same time Bristol had the epiphany about Levi being a worthless knuckle dragging dipshit, Levi realized that Bristol was merely one generation removed from elk eating trailer trash.

If they weren’t God fearing Christians, she coulda aborted that there fetus before it started thinking. Well, before the election heated up anyway. Then again, if she’d been wearing a Purity ring it mighta been different. Them Purity rings keep our kids from fornicating.

The biggest news of the day for me is Jon Stewart’s humanely brutal dissection of Jim Cramer. Jon Stewart has gargantuan balls. Jim Cramer no slouch, as after days of having his lunch punched down his gullet like a musket being loaded, he showed up on The Daily Show, mea culpa in tow.

What followed was some of the most compelling television I’ve ever seen. Cramer acquiesced while Stewart walked it forward, with class, humility and transparent anger.

Intelligent, moral and ethical clarity. Very, very impressive. Lest ye be tempted to draft this man into public office, understand he is exactly where he needs to be. He is achieving maximum good. Let us all be thankful for Mr. Stewart and The Daily Show. The most kaleidoscopic of ironies is that it masquerades as snake oil but consistently hoists the best truth there is to come by.

Well done.

Drinks for my friends.

A moment of zen?

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