Archive for the ‘Habeas Corpus’ Category

How do we do this?

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

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

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

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

Here’s the sobering part. The reckoning.

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

The scared.

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

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

America is still profoundly fucked up.

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

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

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

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

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

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

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

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

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

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

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

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

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

But that’s no good, see?

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

Who doesn’t like pancakes with peanut butter?

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

Drinks for my friends.

I came into the world only to discover my head is too big. I’ll come around. It’ll take me a while. I need a bone saw. It’s crazy, I have very broad shoulders. Yet my head is still too big.

Like I’m wearing a helmet.

It doesn’t really bother me. I have big hands and a deep voice. There’s some symmetry there.

Otherwise I seem to be normal. Typical.

That’s where it ends. I’m strange. I’m just fine on my own. For the most part. People like me because I know how to talk to them. The smarter the better, but I do fine either way. I like to sit and think. I don’t know many other people that do that. I understand life gets ever faster and our level of media saturation is invasive and insidious, but I need to sit in silence daily.

To be fair, I know a few who do at least something like turning the sound and fury off for a little while pretty regularly and I seem to get along with them well. I know some who think on their feet almost exclusively and I seem to like them too.

It’s the folks who just can’t be bothered that I have the toughest time with. Sometimes I can’t stand it and that’s just part of it. Sometimes I hate it. It makes it hard to care. People are stupid. The masses frustrate me constantly.

Many of your fellow Americans hate your freedom.

They hate it more than does the Taliban.

*GASP*

These Americans would take your right to free speech, free assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, your right to privacy, your fundamental right to face your accusers, be appraised of the charges against you as well as access to counsel and the entire legal apparatus. I call them willfully ignorant mouth breathing Republicans. They are why Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus are empty shells today. They are right across the street.

Anyway, I remember that there are quite a few people I like a lot. Quite a few. I’m no misanthrope. I’m just a little hateful here and there. I can’t suffer fools.

I’m either going to realize my potential or not. It’s getting close. I’d bet on me.

She sings to me. All of the sudden her voice fills my head with a melody so beautiful and delicate I am awe. My mouth is wide open in despair and joy. I don’t make a sound. Who am I and what is this? Now I’m confused by a song.

The world should be painted blue. It’s too much you see? As it is, it’s way too much.

I can’t wait to consume more of it. Greasy kiosk tacos and ancient structures. Cannons, flowers and violent seas. Symphonies and wine. Morning in the forest and afternoon in a meadow.

Figure in concepts like dinosuars and Christianity, along with the Big Bang and love of family and cats. Hitler. Manson. Lobbyists and the greedy bastards they service. Great writers and great thinkers.

She walks back in to my head with a melody. Oh my she can sing. Velvet to gravel and back in a single word. Effortless. Sublime.

As near as I can tell, the closest thing to reality is ice cream. A well known quantity. Predictable, but ice cream always delivers. Soft serve from the drugstore, Häagen-Dazs or any ice cream parlor, ice cream makes the time spent consuming it a little better than it would have been. Always.

The opposite is giant green grashoppers busted open with orange tic tacs coming out. Crazy. I’ve seen and held giant green grasshoppers in my hand. The strength, torque, the thrust of those crazy hindquarters is fucking spooky. Hamsters and gerbils can’t kick or launch like that. I’ve busted them open and seen there eggs spill on the hot concrete too. Disturbing. I fear man sized grasshoppers more than just about any other man sized insect. I loathe bugs. I loathe them.

I had a lovely afternoon. I’m pretty sure I saw Angry John on the sidewalk before I got on the 101. I spent it with my girlfriend and her two daughters. Four and seven and they were delightful. We had lunch. Chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese, a salad and cherry pie. Watching these two eat and color with crayons and talk to each other and talk to me and their mother is an essay on it’s own.

Walking back to the car, the little one asked for my hand. She talked to me the whole way. She asked me questions and told me about her favorite things and revealed that she’s a little afraid of stairs. I noticed she keeps a hand on the rail in her own house. She danced while her mother and older sister played the piano.

A little out of tune but the best sounding upright I’ve ever heard. It sings. A generous slice of sweet melon on a Sunday afternoon.

Wanna wrestle?

Drinks for my friends.

What we have here……is a huge celebrity. Worldwide. Global. Looks like it’s a problem. Our Man, by virtue of charisma, an absolutely uncanny ability to communicate, to orate a fresh and hopeful message, not just to Americans, but a good number of this planet’s citizenry, may have doomed himself for being so goddamn adept at showing us there is a better way.

Two hundred thousand plus showed up in Berlin.

What a shame, that so many of have grown so cynical as to stare so arrogantly into the mouth of this gift horse.

What a shame, that upon finally being presented with the real deal, so many many of us can’t help but be convinced that he must be an elitist. An arugula eating snob because he talks to the people of the world like adults.

I confess, I like arugula a lot. My favorite is a dish with perfectly grilled polenta, a thick vinegarette and a generous amount of gorgonzola. I get it to go and put a little Bob’s on top when I get home.

With the exception of the Bob’s, the other ingredients would probably lead most of the great unwashed to assume I’m an enthusiastic pole smoker. Were I to mention that it pairs well with a nice blanc de blancs, well then, I’m sure they’d be willing to assume the worst, that it’s not the only salad I’m willing to toss. Whatever.

They would be right. I don’t imbibe penis, but have no problem with those that deign to do so, regardless of gender. It goes without saying, I encourage and applaud the females. I am a progressive individual in both thought and deed.

I love sushi and crave caviar.

I believe health care should be free or at least affordable for the people of the richest country on earth. I think we should stop shaking our fists at countries that disagree with us. In fact, I really would prefer that we stopped bombing all the brown people. After all, the back of the most formidable military in the history of the world has been rent asunder by that very policy.

We should do our best to stop sucking our planet dry and instead utilize what the universe offers for free. The sun and the wind and the tide.

Know what else I like? Risotto. When prepared with care, it is like the most delicately textured pasta imaginable, in the unlikeliest pellet form. Mushrooms. Get it with mushrooms and aged parmesan.

I think we should legalize most drugs. Tax and regulate them to eliminate the criminal infrastructure and mitigate the astounding numbers of incarcerated that we pay for on top of the ridiculous “war on drugs”. On the other hand, it may suprise you to know that I’m thinking maybe anyone dealing meth or in the business of propagating it, might be better off dead.

Ever had a perfectly BBQ’d pork chop with a really good zinfandel?

You know what really chaps my ass? The erosion of our civil rights and liberties. FISA. Posse Comitatus. The Patriot Act. Amendments One and Four. All of the aforementioned have been severely and egregiously advanced in the last seven years while we voluntarily popped our thumbs into our asses and looked the other way because we were scared.

The most successful society in the history of humankind allowed itself to be frightened by it’s own so thoroughly, it’s literally frozen at the wheel. A deer in the headlights.

Both. Ha!

Try this:
Find a place with good, thin shoestring fries. Squeeze a lemon over them. Apply salt, preferably from the sea. Dip in mayonnaise and/or ketchup. I’m not a big beer drinker but most beers work well with this. Stick to lighter ones. Hefe weizen, pilsner and most authentic lagers work nicely.

I’m going to hold out two hands. You’ll need to pick one. Fair warning, in one hand is the very aggressive sale of fear and doubt. Let me know if you want me to tell you which hand it is.

I’ve started eating chili cheese fries. So far, Carl’s sets the bar.

I hear Cheney won’t be at the convention. Fuck me, that’s funny.

Drinks for my friends.

Sheezus! Our man opts out of public financing worth about eighty five million dollars and instead, decides to bet on his own fundraising prowess where he’s so far been able to accumulate around a quarter billion.

Duh.

The ‘duh’ is my sentiment, but Candy Crowley just uttered it on CNN.

You can bet your vagina that if the situation were reversed, the former champions of amassing massive war chests, that would be Republicans, would bust the very same move.

For what it’s worth, Barack raised his money in large part from the people, in small donations. Republicans typically benefit from corporate money.

In all fairness, it is a reversal on the part of our man. However, it is a practical and intelligent decision for Barack to utilize the funds provided by individual American citizens who want to see him as President. Doubtfire calls him a flip flopper less than a week after doing the very same thing on an issue far more important; offshore drilling and expolration. Why, experts speculate that could save us a dollar a barrel in a decade or so. I thought I came up with that last point myself, and I did. Carville beat me to the punch just now on CNN.

Not only that but the poor bastard is pissed because he’s completely outmatched.

Prescience is mine. I hope.

I hope this man will remain accountable to the citizens, the Americans, who have and will fund his ascendancy to the White House because we hope and understand the fierce urgency of now. The imperative for change.

Consider the alternative. See? You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Yesterday his campaign ended up in a minor shitstorm for not allowing some women in tradititional muslim garb to appear behind our man on camera. “Insensitive”, they said. The pot indignantly describes the kettle as more black. The culture fomented by fear mongers and bigots under the guise of terrorism is the reason, right or wrong. The media insists it’s a story. It’s not our story. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just we’re painfully aware from whence it came.

All I have to say to Cindy Stepford McCain is shut the fuck up. She says she’s always been proud of her country. Well, that’s jingoistic, nationalistic and just plain stupid. She thinks she speaks of patriotism, it’s abundantly clear she has no clue.

Did she take pride in Abu Ghraib? How about the assassinations of 1968? Is she taking pride in the geopolitical/economic disaster her husband has not only been complicit in but helped to engineer? How about the savings and loan scandal her which husband escaped unscathed? How proud of her country and her husband was she when the Little Bootlicker hugged Dumbya and endorsed him after losing the nomination in part for him being accused of fathering an illegitimate black child that they in fact adopted? Or when he voted against fair treatment and a modest education for our troops returning home from an unjustified war in Iraq? Slavery? Was she proud when her doddering husband suggested there was nothing wrong with staying in Iraq for a hundred years? New Orleans? Plamegate? Executive priviledge? Suspension of Habeas Corpus? Tax cuts for the rich? Sean Hannity? Rush Limbaugh? Ann Coulter? Bill O’Reilly? Is she proud of her country for slaughter after slaughter of millions of innocent civilians caught between competing corporate financial interests over the last five decades?

I for one, have been profoundly ashamed of all these things and it’s an abbreviated version of a very long list.

She’s proud of getting richer while everyone else gets poorer.

The phenomena of Barack Obama is reason for me to be be proud of my country for the first time in a very long time. So is Michelle Obama for that matter. They are both, a class act. I can’t wait.

Cindy Stepford McCain might be an asshole, just like the rest of them.

Drinks for my friends.

Didn’t the white hats win big in ’06? Wasn’t there winds of change, maybe not blowing, but wafting? There was an anticipated shift in the breeze away from the inferno. Right?

Here we are and I can’t believe it. All fucking OJ
all the time. So a sociopathic scumbag might actually
go to jail. Good. Beyond that, I couldn’t care less.
Last week it was Paris Hilton and the week before it
was Ms. Lohan sucking paste in a toney rehab bathroom.
I may have the timeline wrong but honestly, who gives
a mad fuck?

Yesterday our very own Senate was unable to restore
the nearly nearly one thousand year old institution of
Habeas Corpus, “The Great Writ”. The Republicans
didn’t even have to fillibuster, they merely threatened to. Not enough votes for cloture, thanks in part to Benedict Joe Lieberman, so the invertebrate Democrats went to lunch.

Shouldn’t they have at least forced the Reps to read aloud
from Mein Kampf or The Enquirer on the Senate floor?
For fuck’s sake we’re talking about the Constitution here.

Today the Unites States Senate, the most powerful
legislative body in the world, took it upon itself to
admonish Moveon.org for an ad that “impugns the honor
and integrity of … all the members of the United
States Armed Force”. What kind of chickenshit move is
that?

The confederacy of callow dipshits took the time to
pass a resolution with the same bullshit hollow
rhetoric spat at everyone who has objected to this
insane war since it began. The very best they can do
is miss the point entirely. One of the reasons we
take exception to this clusterfuck is because it’s
killing our troops for no goddamn reason you idiots!

Also yesterday: “Senate Republicans yesterday rejected a bipartisan proposal to lengthen the home leaves of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, derailing a measure that war opponents viewed as one of the best chances to force President Bush to accelerate a redeployment of forces.” -The Washington Post

Our esteemed Senators have their heads so far up their
asses, their bowels don’t know which way to move.

Yet, in the last two nights I glimpsed none of this on
the news, save OJ’s latest fifteen minutes, of course.

You have got be fucking kidding me.

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.

It’s not just your fault America, although you are culpable. Even if you’re one of those being gagged by the media with shit you’d rather not swallow, you’re still complicit.

How do I know? One word. Ratings.

Turn it off. Read. Ask questions.

Stop being a common patsy.

Drinks for my friends.