Archive for the ‘Media and journalism’ Category

I hope you’re not yet tired of me railing against all things Dick Cheney.  I know I’m not.  History will will estimate him to be nothing more than a misanthropic war criminal.  Besides that, I admit again that it’s morbidly cathartic.  What began as an effort on his part to rewrite history and burnish his legacy, has morphed into a risible rhythmless boogie of dodging bullets fired at his feet by truth empowered gunslingers.

Today he tells us that there was never any evidence of a connection between 911 and Iraq.  Um, no shit.  This despite his persistent insistence that there was ample evidence, long after it was thoroughly discredited. He said:  “pretty well confirmed” that a 9/11 hijacker met with Iraqi intelligence officials before 9/11. -thinkprogress.org

Understand how deliberate this dog and pony show was.  In the ’04 Presidential election, over 70% of people who voted for Bush/Cheney believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the attacks on 911.  One could rightfully argue that these two assholes were re-elected by and large because Americans believed their lies and the spell of fear they so successfully instilled.

You gotta love the great unwashed.

He also tells us that those memos he wants declassified don’t necessarily prove, as he claimed just days ago, that torture saved thousands, if not hundreds of thousand of lives, but rather the entirety of the interrogation program did.  What the hell does that mean?  Olbermann wondered if he was referring to instances like the fact that we gave sugar free cookies to a diabetic terrorist.

Then, he has the audacity to blame his lies on George Tenet.  That’s right, the infamous dickhead in charge of the CIA at the time, who said that making a case for invading Iraq to the American people and the world was a “slam dunk”.  As if to say, it wasn’t his fault because that’s what Tenet told him.

After months of pressure and obtuse harangue by Dick truly and his mob.

For his part, Tenet received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

It’s gets better.  He now claims we missed 911 because of former terrorist czar Richard Clarke.  I suggest you read Clarke’s book on the matter.  One of the very first insiders to be overtly critical of the reckless and ideologically driven Dick-in-Bush administration and the Keystone Cops approach they took to every single circumstance after that fateful day.  If Clarke is to be believed, and I believe him, he had been ringing the bell since day one.  The book is titled “Against All Enemies” and it’s a page turning indictment of the whole crew, from Condoleezza Rice, on up.

While you’re at it, pick up of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s book, “The Price of Loyalty”.  An astounding glimpse into the pre-911 days and the Bush administration’s determination, even then, to to invade Iraq.

What baffles me is how so many talking heads, Dan Rather included, seem wont to purchase that at the very least, Cheney is sincere, that he believes what he says.  No sale here.  He’s a charlatan and should be tried and convicted for war crimes.  Every prediction has been wrong.  Every “fact” he’s ever foisted has been a lie.  The idea that this prick is able to command a single American’s attention on any public airwave, makes me want to puke in technicolor.

Here’s where we are.  No WMD.  There never was and there remains no credible reason to tell Americans it was…..was.  No connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.  No connection whatsoever between Saddam Hussien and the events of 911.  Again, never was and no credible reason to tell Americans there was.  Nothing, no symbiosis between a secular dictatorship and an extreme religious movement.

No was.  None.

Here we are.  Not a single fucking reason for invading a sovereign country that posed no threat to us or even it’s neighbors in the foreseeable future.  No reason for killing hundreds of thousands if not more than a million innocent people.  No reason for displacing millions of innocents.  No reason for the deaths of thousands of proud American men and women.  No reason for the incalculable grief visited on millions and millions of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers across the entire planet.  No goddamn reason at all for any of it.

No was and no is.

I usually endeavor to bring a little humor to you the reader, while drawing your attention to the horrible events that surround us all in this world.  Forgive me, this just isn’t funny.  There’s nothing funny about it.  It’s all tragedy kids.  A long slow, brutal and still developing nightmare that will disturb the world’s sleep for decades because Richard Bruce Cheney was somehow allowed to have far too much influence on the course of human events.

More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for a consummately unjust war with Iraq.  More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for the abject and utterly reprehensible torture America visited with malice and viciousness on America’s “enemies”.  More than any other human, Richard Bruce Cheney is culpable for America’s woefully reduced standing in the world.  More, than any single other human fucking being, Richard Bruce Cheney is responsible for the hole that we are now at the bottom of.

One of the prevailing messages of the Obama administration is to look forward and therefore not dwell too zealously on our recent past.  It is ever more apparent to me that however wholesome and well intentioned such sentiments are, they are naive and for lack of a better adjective, simple, in an increasingly complex world.

Richard Bruce Cheney shits where he eats.

Hold Dick Cheney responsible.  Show the world that accountability is still a respected idea in America.  Prosecute this prick.  In so doing, we will demonstrate the best we have to offer as a first step, to ourselves and the rest of the planet.

Fuck this guy.

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.

If Dick Cheney’s lips part at all, he’s lying.

I’m nurturing a man crush for Senator Carl Levin after he bitch slapped Darth Cheny and his little dog Liz with what I’m certain will be the facts.  You know those classified torture memos Darth and Liz persist ad nauseum in referring to? The ones they say prove torture works and saved hundreds of thousands of lives?

Senator Levin said last night that Darth and his little dog too, are full of shit.

“When former Vice President Cheney said last week that what happened at Abu Ghraib was the work of “a few sadistic prison guards” acting on their own, he bore false witness. And when he said last week there was no link between the techniques used at Abu Ghraib and those approved for use in the CIA’s secret prisons, he again strayed from the truth. The seeds of Abu Ghraib’s rotten fruit were sown by civilians at the highest levels of our government.” -Daily Kos

“Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction. Mr. Cheney has made other false statements. For instance, his claim that the techniques used on detainees were the “same exact procedures” used on our own people in the SERE training regime. That could not be farther from the truth.” -Daily Kos

Booya!

Bear in mind that Levin is no partisan firebrand and certainly not an ideologue.  Level headed, reasonable and very well respected on both sides of aisle, when Carl speaks, people listen and they are inclined to believe him.  In contrast, the Cheneys’s aren’t exactly the picture of sartorial splendor.  Dick is the most accomplished and prolific liar to ever sit at the second highest level of our executive branch.

Man I hate this fucker.

In the post Dick-in-Bush era, Darth Cheney has taken it upon himself, with earnestness, to incite and maintain the market for debate over all egregious actions and policies of his administration, despite legitimacy, credibility or even relevance.  My guess is that history will judge this man with an earned but graceful combination of malice and impunity.  He is without question evil and black of heart; his legacy will suffer accordingly.  It is my sincere wish that his charred and diseased cardiac will endure long enough to afford him a fulsome mouth full of what he has wrought and the disgrace he deserves.

It’s ironic that we’ve arguably heard more from this prick in the last few months, than his entire reign as puppet master and dark lord.

He got hammered, shot a man in the face, and somehow orchestrated for his victim to apologize for the inconvenience.  Who would even attempt to question his prowess for malignancy and obfuscation?

With such a thorough biography of lies and deceit, what will it take for America to stop listening to this vainglorious asshole?  No amount of pride or shame seems enough to compel him to shut the fuck up and disappear.  Are we a nation of masochists?

Fuck this guy.

I confess to a certain vulgar delight in writing about him.  Such an easy target.  So obviously flawed.  He is nothing if not compelling in a macabre sort of way.  I love to loathe him and perhaps that’s his appeal.  I can only hope it’s that simple.  Whatever the case, I’m certain his post Vice Presidential fifteen minutes do far more harm than good to the causes of conservatism and Republican ideology.  Perhaps he unwittingly performs a profound favor by not yet letting America forget just how much his administration sucked.

Drinks for my friends.

http://www.truthout.org/052209R

Cut & paste.  It’s unbelievable.  It scares me.

Darth Cheney.

I cannot countenance who we are.  I can’t stand what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.  I can’t stomach those who would defend these bastards and the actions they so relentlessly try to sell us as performed on our behalf.  For our safety, they tell us.

This is bullshit.  These are egregious crimes.  These people are lying.  The media pads around it with careful feet on deep pile Berber, giving them their say.  People died in custody of the United States government.  The sickest aspect?  They probably expired whilst we pursued our efforts to extract reason for a war that Darth fucking Cheney knew was complete crap.

Bullshit.

Despite all this, we still have to suffer through the airtime the mainstream media affords this lying, disgusting evil jackass who spent his eight years in office doing his damndest  to pervert, distort and destroy all things that allowed Americans to be proud.

I bet this guy is hung like a gnat.  Had a giant safe in his office.  Kinda the bureaucratic equivalent of a big stupid truck in the ‘burbs.  See what I’m saying?

Look, I’m not naive.  Any American who’s lived with eyes wide open for the past handful of years, understands all too well what the Dick-in-Bush regime has done in our name.  What chaps my ass with such profound cheese grating efficacy, is that this pinhead Cheney, is allowed for a single second to utilize public airwaves in an attempt to mitigate, in such an obvious fashion of puerile necropsy,  policies and actions that have indelibly stained us all. 

Actions and policies, for which he should clearly be behind goddamn bars.

It’s crap.  Elaborate falsehoods.  Complete shite.

The neocons and this dickhead Cheney in particular, are attempting to rewrite history as we let them into our living rooms every evening for such dubious ends.  Man, I hate these guys.  In the words of Reverend  Jeremiah Wright, “Goddamn America”.  Any asshole who even attempts to change the elaborate and true path of human events past, should be muzzled and pelted with rocks and garbage.

“They pelted me with rocks and garbage”.

History is sacred and Cheney will do his best, but his legacy will ooze a vile, stinking sewage.  Not even gulls will go near it.  The EPA will get involved.

Write your local network affiliate, tell them you don’t want to see the vulgar and vile visage of this man or any of his lackeys on your television anymore.  Lying to you and impugning the efforts of the man we elected by an unprecedented majority to right the wrongs his administration and office so recklessly and relentlessly pursued and wrought.

I’m all for free speech.  But not if what you say on our air is an incendiary lie.  It is crying fire in a crowded theater.  At the very least the crawl underneath should go bold and all caps when he lies.  Cheny’s kinda soft spoken so it would be like someone yelling from underneath.  I’ll call Rupert.

We, America, tortured.  We killed people in our charge.  Worse, we killed hundreds of thousands and visited life altering suffering on millions for no good goddamn reason.  I’m ashamed of my country and you should be too.

Who are we?  What have we allowed ourselves to become?

This tumor is us.

This parading of a simple dog and a forlorn pony is contemptible and absurd.  Stand up.  Be an American.  Do not tolerate this man man and his lies.

We are so much better than this.

Tell Rush Limbaugh he can blow me.

I’m trying to tell you something and you should listen.

Drinks for my friends.

Hello,

Fuck this guy.  Cheney is a vacuum of credibility.  A black hole.  He is a liar and a thief.  He and his cronies profited immensely from the war in Iraq by engaging in fraud perpetrated on our own troops and we the people as often as not.  Haliburton and KBR.  You think this guy gives a mad fuck about you?

Yet he deigns to flatter us with his opinions by the hour, or so it seems.  Who exactly does he think he is?  What new arrogance is this?  Dude, you were the Vice President and most of us agree you sucked.  Go away.

The CIA isn’t exactly a pillar of truth, justice and the American way these days.  They, both the CIA and Darth, deliberately “fixed the facts to fit the policy” that led us into one of the most unjust wars in history.  Can you say Downing Street Memos?  Nonexistent yellowcake uranium or mobile bio weapons labs that turned out to be balloon trucks?  The Keystone Cops in color.

This guy gets on TV.

They tortured in fact, to gain and supply reason and rationale for that very war.  With every fiber of my being and every ounce of conviction I can summon, I say fuck these guys.  Furthermore,  I invite Dick Cheney, with zero respect due, to shut the fuck up and go away.

Or, we get to waterboard the prick bastard.  I’ll settle for either and sleep soundly.

Dear Dick, You suck.  Please vanish.  Go gentle into that hot cave.

Fear, fear fear.  This is a mess created by our former arsonist laureate, the Dick-in-Bush administration.  “…if we continue to make decisions within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes…..” -President Barack Obama.  Cheney calls Our Man’s policies, “recklessness cloaked in righteousness”.  I can’t help but wonder just what Darth Cheney knows about righteousness.

The past administration swore up and down that we did not torture.  Upon that lie of extraordinary magnitude becoming as common as the knowledge that one should avoid using motorized garden shears for personal grooming, they try to convince us that torture kept us safe, was justified and wasn’t really torture but “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  My guess is Cheney’s next career will be in real estate.  You know, bridges, swampland, timeshares in Baghdad, that sort of thing.

Or maybe the latest incarnation of Swamp Thing.

I am in awe that this douchebag Cheney is able to command any attention at all.  Why is anyone even listening to such a notoriously full of shit, black hearted blowhard?  Why?  He’s been wrong about everything, caught in more lies than Baron Munchhausen and he should be in goddamn Leavenworth.

It’s all smoke and mirrors.  It’s all they’ve got.  Fear wrapped in the worn gauze of  some obsolete notion of security.  That’s it kids.  There’s nothing more to see here.  It is exactly as it appears.  Move along please.  Please.

Understand, this man, our President, has more on his plate than you can possibly imagine.  The tasks he faces every morning require superhuman effort, attention and acumen.  Most of what our man struggles with in the shower, the great unwashed are willfully ignorant of.

This guy is inside a cat 4 tornado and he doesn’t need Dick Cheney’s irrelevant shit right now.  If Darth were an actual patriot, he would pull a fade starting now.  Cheney, of all people is intimate with the toxic pile he and that little monkey left behind.

This subject of torture has become far too convoluted.  Too nuanced even.  It’s simple.

Torture is immoral because it is cruel and inhumane.  At the very least it pollutes the soul of anyone who orders it and any who would administer it.    We must understand that these people, these candidates for and of torture, are human beings.  Right or wrong, these people believe what they believe just as fiercely as we do.  Under the last administration, anyone who believed differently than you or Sean Hannity, could literally be tortured for disagreeing, whether they knew shit or not.

Surveilled.  Wire tapped which means computer tapped.  ……..anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law……..

Torture is unethical because the result is at best dubious.  With resolute men, the decision about what they are willing to disclose, even when faced with death, has already been made. Count on such men to spew crap when tortured.  It’s useless.  Even the economy of the concept is bankrupt. They think it’s a game of Stratego.

Drinks for my friends.

I talked about it last night but didn’t realize that Senate Democrats had walked away.  Seems they want a specific plan.  As in, where exactly will the money go?  That seems reasonable to me.  $80 million is a lot of cake.

You know, Gitmo.

What baffles me is this:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    “I can’t make it any more clear,” Reid said. “We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.”  Was he quoted out of context?  As far as I know there’s no debate here about what town or city street they’ll be dropped on, they are to be incarcerated.  Harry is a friend of my Mother’s.  I got an inscribed, autographed copy of his book for my birthday.  I’m wondering if he’s getting a little old.  His handwriting describes the drawing of sea monkeys.

What is the deal?  There’s two hundred and forty of them and we already have more people behind bars per capita than any nation on earth.  There’s two hundred and forty and if America has a specialty these days, it’s locking people up.  Specialty?  Industry.  Bring them here, try them like Americans because we still have a system of justice and courts in which they may prevail if they aren’t guilty and are allowed to prove it.

Regardless of the outcome, the truly guilty ones will burn in a Christian hell.  Right?

What scares politicians so much about our justice system functioning as an equitable litmus for these particular “detainees”?

Anyway, it get’s better.

“Republicans are poised with an amendment by James Inhofe of Oklahoma that would block any of the Guantanamo detainees from coming to U.S. soil to stand trial or serve their sentences” -yahoo

Republicans just keep on sweetening  the elixir that will be the lubricant of their demise.  Ha!  Can I make that stick?  I’m way ahead of you.

“Shuttering this facility now could only serve one end: and that is to make Americans less safe than Guantanamo has,” said GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.”  -yahoo

Guantanamo made us safe?  I’d say with the torture and death and all, the hawks would be lucky to slide into obscurity as opposed to jail.  Zero sum for them but a nasty stain on the rest of us.

Mitch McConnell is a scurrilous,  multi-chinned rodent of a Senator.  A nasty, long of tooth and sharp of teeth, a warm blooded, razor incisored dumbshit.  Even his dog hates him.

He warned that if the United States withdrew from Iraq, “the terrorists would come after us where we live.” -1/10/07 CNN

I can actually smell that sentence.

He loathes the idea of campaign finance reform.  He get’s giddy over the NSA listening to whatever and whomever blows their skirt up.  Sans warrant.  He’s very pro Iraq war as a central front for the war on terror.  I love how they accuse us of dangerous political stripes like socialist, when they stand to applaud fascism and nearly shit themselves with glee.

The cherry atop my shit sundae is the reality of scripture superimposed over  dramatic military landscapes as cover pages for top secret war memos to Dumbya.  While we were beating and abusing, torturing to death, people confined and bound.  Dumbya got a report with an inspirational poster for a cover.  I hear he really likes pears and carrots from a jar.  We did this to extract corroborating evidence for what we were about to do and then continue to do in Iraq and everywhere else.  On the off chance there was to be a super secret memo on Sunday, it was wrapped in Easter themed paper.  A candy bar tied in the bow.

Spuriouser and spuriouser.

Dumbya knew there would be pretzels later.  With supervision of course.  Plenty to wash them down with.

Drinks for my friends.

So the titular head of the GOP says, “The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over”.

Huh.  You think?  In light of all the malice, avarice and incompetence your party has fomented and been complicit in for the last eight years, you’re no longer accountable?  Not to be asked or even compelled to apologize?

Michael Steele issued this proclamation.  He has giant balls made of flaky, semi solid, foamy stuff.  Premier asstard of the GOP.

Hey Mike, wanna bet?

Mike is a loose lipped cashier.  He’s also an idiot.

Looks like somebody picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

This dark stain is your legacy.  I’m thinking you guys need to make peace with that.  It’s a blood stain.  You won’t be taken seriously until you do.

It is this exact brand of arrogance that keeps Republican stock in the shitter.  That, and the looming visage of dickheads like Darth Cheney and  the Human Shitsmear.  These two aren’t the only ones tripping over themselves while waltzing  through the GOP’s intestines.  I adore how jacked up they are.

Somebody doesn’t get the difference between consonants and vowels.

Meanwhile and just in time, swine flu rears it’s ugly head again.  Somebody died!  Quick, call Mr. Little, first name Chicken.

In other news, two groups are seeking disbarment of twelve Bush administration lawyers.  Despite a rather overt political posture, their argument is pretty airtight:

“Just as the bar would suspend an attorney who advised a police officer to torture and brutalize a detained immigrant or criminal defendant, the bar must suspend these attorneys for advocating and causing the torture of war detainees,” said Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for the groups. -UPI

Fuckin A, I’m good with that.  All the assholes were named.  Yoo, Ashcroft, Gonzales and Mukasey et al.  Don’t know about you, but I’m getting a half leaner over here.  It won’t amount to shit.

Hi.  I oppose birth control and abortion in the same breath.  I really believe you should get married to experience live dick insertion.  Who am I?  I’m the Catholic Church and I’m okay, I lust all night and I hypocrite all day.  Premarital sex is a sin but ass raping young boys isn’t even outre’…………

When did prisoners become detainees?

John Boehner actually said “our constituents don’t want these terrorists in their neighborhoods”.  He fucking said it.  The subject was Gitmo detainees.  Boehner’s neighborhoods are in Ohio.  How do you say that with a straight face at a press conference in front of cameras?  John Boehner’s neighborhoods in Ohio, are light years from a military prison in Kansas surrounded by a military base.  This whole debate is regoddamndiculous.  Boehner needs to lay off the bronzer.  His eyes are particulary reptilian in contrast with his earnestness to become a lite skinned black man.

Who is this fuck?

Boehner is creepy weird and an astoundingly magnificent dickhead.  He’s so full of shit his caramel orange pallor may just be benefiting from the tremendous output and efficiency yielded by his super human shit producing capability.  It’s all he can do to keep from vomiting actual warm crap while speaking.  Several times a day he burp-pukes and swallows turds back down into his gullet.

Let me tell you how I feel about John Boehner.

This guy is more queer than a pole vaulter in an ice storm.

What the rest of us need to remember, is that are we to march jackbooted in lock step like the Republicans did until the obvious consequence of rot and implosion transpired, events will be eerily similar.

Or, diversity will emerge as strength.  It already has.

Diversity could be the next exclusivity.  Beware.  Don’t laugh, because I’m not kidding and that could be scary.  Ubiquitous caucasian males would be in for a tough time.  Too many of us.

White power!

Drinks for my friends.

Republicans are a hot mess.

This poor bastard, Sgt Russel, and the five brothers in arms he felled. All the families too. A big bag of tragedy for no good reason. Not that all involved weren’t brave committed men who’d sacrificed for America more than we can comprehend. All the more sad.

It’s just that it didn’t have to happen. A man on his third tour of hell lost his shit. It seems so random but it’s not. He was in treatment for “stress”. These guys are fucking tough. They are crackerfuckingjack. They tipped Iraq over in weeks. Lots of things are very wrong with this story.

A badass soldier whom I presume was sane before he arrived, killed his own, not just his own, but his fellow soldiers. The antithesis of anything like heroic bravery. Almost as curious as it is tragic. PTSD. A political potato of some heat. Inconsistent to nebulous in terms of definition or perception. Through the roof nonetheless. Our veterans are struggling on a scale we’re not even aware of.

This is a gift from the Bush administration that will keep on giving for years to come.

Just like Vietnam!

The dude does not abide and neither do I. This is insane. See what I’m saying?

I really need for you dear reader, to concentrate here. I’m going to cut and paste a news item from today below, and I want you to compare and contrast the news I’ve written about above with this actual piece that appears below inside quotes. All I will say is that I think the two issues at hand are symbiotically entwined:

“In an interview on Fox News, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney sharply criticized the new administration for agreeing to release photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration.

“I think it is really appalling that the administration is taking this step,” she said in the interview. “Clearly what they are doing is releasing images that show American military men and woman in a very negative light.”

“I have heard from families of service members from families of 9/11 victims this question about when did it become so fashionable for us to side, really, with the terrorists,” she continued. “You know, President Obama has a lot of rhetoric about support for American military families, support for our men and women who are fighting for us overseas. But if he really cares about them, then he wouldn’t be making such an effort to release photos that show them in a negative light.” -CNN

Ok, I can’t help it. Liz Cheney you stupid fucking cunt. What about this whole egregious clusterfuck do you not understand? You actually seek with all gallows composure to spin this tragedy into some lame evidence that the Obama administration attempts “….to side, really, with the terrorists”?

In a war started by your father without reason?

Look up her name and insult her personally. Liz, you ignorant slut. You have betrayed your country and if Olberman or Stewart did the same schtick I swear I just turned on the glass teat.

Time for a fireside interlude. Picture me with a blanket over my legs in a wheelchair beside a crackling hearth:

A tale related by an excellent friend.

This story is about a man named Donald.

Donald farts in the car, back on a sweltering day. Turns out to be a withering expulsion, weakening the senses of the propagator. He’s impressed by his own ability to generate an odor that would be a captain of any industry. So inspirational that he wonders about his own health.

He then ventures into a video emporium of the strip mall variety. He feels the build. Pressure in his lower abdomen. And it’s hot. It’s temperature is like heat from a crack in the Earth. As though his bowels are about to volcano.

The gastrointestinal expulsion is nuclear but not cacophonous.

He’s grateful he’s not shat himself.

Get my drift? More or less silent but indisputably toxic.

He understands the affront he’s just committed. He flees to the right, past the first few letters of the alphabet. He works his way quickly to the D’s and F’s. Doctor Detroit to Fargo.

A fresh couple enter the emporium. They immediately ventiure into a cloud of Donald’s anal vapor in the A through C sectiion. They are apalled and disturbed. Their faces are an ugly mask of assault and disgust.

This is Donald’s story.

Drinks for my friends.

So Darth Cheney declared today that it would be a mistake to for the GOP to “moderate”.

“This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles,” Cheney said in an interview with North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen Thursday…… -CNN

North Dakota radio, heh.

Dick Cheney is a consummate douchebag. Commitment to the constitution? Fuck you, you lying hypocritical sleazy piece of shit. The object was for you to serve at the convenience of The Costitution, not for it to serve at yours. This statement by you makes me so angry because it reveals you as a world class liar and you still have the withered stones to beak sociopathic bullshit.

You Mr. Cheney, are the depth and breadth of the entire aggregate from dipshit to insanity. You are it’s evil and myopic, it’s misunderstanding, from front to back, from top to bottom. You pull strings for Limbaugh to Hannity, from Bachman to Lieberman.

You’re a dirty bastard.

You think you know, you imagine you have a handle, all in your hands is calcified turds. The fate of sucking is really bad enough. The idea of sucking and not knowing, is about as bad as it gets.

Poster child.

What’s occuring in the Republican party of late is beyond fascinating. It’s a multi car pileup with people face down on the pavement in their own gore. It’s that and a hokey, amateur production of The Music Man or Dirty Dancing or maybe a circus with only invalids for performers. They are breathtakingly out of touch.

Matt Taibbi wrote a great piece about it recently in Rolling Stone. He rocks.

With GOP spotlight whores like Michele Bachmann, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin and Tricky Dick Cheney, it’s not about to get any better. These people are clowns. Forgive me, it’s fucking awesome. The best and the brightest.

Too many of them don’t get it. It amazes me. They have zero grip on the simplest of things like conventional wisdom, current polls and even the goddamn news. The GOP has lost it’s romance with America. They were lying. Thank Sheezus we smelled the goddamn Joe.

I loathe right wing Christians. They’re stupid and diabolical.

Have you noticed how close together their eyes are?

I reserve the right to tell people their beliefs are stupid if they knock on my door or approach me in public. If their shit ends up all over the news, they should practice pissing up a rope.

Drinks for my friends.

It would be nice if we could simply choose our own channels. If I don’t pay my bill, Direct TV shuts me down in a heartbeat. I call them on the phone, arrange payment and within thirty seconds, access to like three hundred channels is restored. I don’t believe for a second that making individual choice available to customers isn’t possible.

I’d do the networks, they should be free and I’m a news junkie, including FOX, CNN,and MSNBC. Part of my addiction is to monitor the mainstream. Comedy Central, HBO and Showtime for movies, excellent series’ and boxing. One local affiliate. They all suck but I need access to at least one local news outlet. Maybe some nature channels, IFC and that other one……..

I need to step off this topic for awhile. You who read me regularly understand I am wont to do.

I am moved by this President. He takes complex questions and answers them with intelligence and nuance. He talks to us and explains himself with an earnestness and sincerity that make plain his need for us to understand. He does want to include and engage the lowest common denominator. I believe I’d be remiss were I not to point out the glaring contrast between Mr. Obama and our previous President, who catered to and exploited the lowest common denominator almost exclusively.

Our man was asked this evening, what about his first one hundred days suprised, enchanted, humbled and troubled him the most, on live television. He answered adroitly, compassionately and honestly. This is the kind of question that would never even be allowed under the Dumbya regime. Were such a question somehow allowed to slip through, trust that Dumbya would have stuttered, paused and visited abuse of malapropisms to hitherto unseen depths of national embarrassment.

He’s a primate at best.

His eyes are too close together.

I couldn’t help but remember Clinton. He would appear on television in the middle of our dark years and answer any question by framing it’s context, explaining the variables and then recommending a course of action so expertly that you knew he’d wrestled with it until he understood the issue thoroughly and had arrived at a solution that he grasped completely and had no reservations about endorsing. The man was flawed but he was whip fucking smart and he gave a shit. He was a lighthouse in the dense fog of Dick-in-Bush.

First 100 days? I’ll give Obama a B+. Not bad for his first semester midterm. About what I expected and I’m pleased. My biggest concern is the financial swamp thing. I can’t really pretend to understand it. It goes without saying I don’t have an opinion worth sharing. I will tell you that the more I learn and understand, the more I wonder about moving somewhere I can have a garden.

Those fuckers left us hanging. Cheney won’t shut the fuck up and neither will Rove but have ya heard from Dumbya? The barn door was banging at the start of the storm when those three bastards ran out. Man they were bad news.

Say our man gets us to 911 of this year without a domestic terror attack of similiar scale. Will you then shut the fuck up about your keeping America safe audacity? Allow me to date myself by saying you people sound like a broken goddamn record.

Some advice. The sky has been falling for some time now. You just looked up. You just noticed it could really crack you hard. By the way, if you did just notice all this, part of this is your fault. So anyway, settle down.

What we really need is for you mouthbreathers to be calm. Don’t stir shit up. Try not to shoot fellow humans. Stop turning out like zombies for corporate lobby funded tax protests when you’ll all do better under what you’re marching against. Have some dignity. Pull your pants up.

More of my advice to you is to wade back in. Forego ideology and sincerely look at what progressives are attempting to do here. Find fault with the policy or find flaw with the process. Stop dropping the ‘socialist’ bomb and find a way to participate. Start rolling up your sleeves and stop crapping your pants.

Hannity and Limbaugh are the clown princes of the conservative stagnation and they will be your demise.

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.

I have no problem with Miss California’s answer to the question put to her on same sex marriage. I disagree, but it was an honest answer. I don’t think she was particularly inarticulate; she was plain spoken and sincere. She did the best she could, I’m fine with it.

Having said that, I’ve long maintained that the legitimacy of same sex marriage fits succinctly and logically in the context of civil rights, obviously a much broader issue. I heard Dennis Prager say the other day that it can’t be a civil rights issue because there is no difference between a black man and a white man but there are profound differences between any man and any woman. It’s not an entirely weak point, he’s on the nose about substantial biological differences at least.

But that’s easy. And weak.

What a firebrand.

Maybe he wasn’t deliberatly being intellectually dishonest, but his argument is just that. I think it’s stupid. The most salient flaw being a presupposition that homosexuals choose to be homosexuals. I’m here to tell you that they do not. They will tell you the same. Individuals have no more control over who they are attracted in terms of gender, than they do over whether they end up with an innie or an outie.

Some of these things do go together.

I cannot wait for the day when science bears this out so people will shut the hell up about it or at least look ignorant.

I want to talk about the instructions posted at the trash chute.

I started to tear the laminated sheet from above the very well maintained, door to the trash chute. Right away I knew that was a mistake. I’m no longer twenty five years old. Stainless steel handle with a locking lever handy to your thumb.

If I ever get to design my own house, I’m going to include a dumbwaiter.

The Rules:

1) All trash bags must be placed inside the chute.

2) Do not leave trash bags on the floor.

3) Do not clog the chute. Use smaller bags.

4) Do not leave recycalable boxes or bags on the floor.

I have some observations I’d like to share. First, rule #2 is really just an extension of rule #1. What they are trying to tell me is to make sure I put my bags in the chute. In addition, they caution me that my bags are not welcome on the floor. In a sense, they posit that the only place for my bags, is the chute. Well, inside the chute.

I understand and agree with where they’re going with this. It’s the only place I really want to put my bags.

I’m a bit of a rebel but so far, there’s no conflict here.

I’m just a little troubled by how fucking stupid they must think I am or maybe how dumb the people around me are. It gives me pause.

I’m not looking to go in there swinging a Hefty sack full of holes, filled with yogurt, cat litter and rotting meat. Are they worried about that? I hope not. It’s this tiny little room just off the elevator.

I’m happy to follow the rules. They make sense.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve heard a cornucopia of justifications. Reasons from ratiocination to mythical fables, about why today is THE day to celebrate pot day. Makes no difference to me. Marijuana never hurt anybody and hemp fiber and oil is the answer to more of our problems than you know.

I visited a dispensary in a past neighborhood today.

This place was barely two blocks from my old apartment. In Koretown. I got a glimpse inside my old window right before we pulled up in front of a bright green door with green balloons whipping in the hot breeze. I didn’t see much, it was fleeting, but the window was dirty and that gave me pause. It was at least a hundred fucking degrees today.

I was with this guy Fred, who is a friend of Evil Lars and works with the institution now. He’s like six four and handsome. We’re in his pick-up and he has an excellent air conditioner. It was a hundred goddamn degrees today. We’re here to replace a terminal that’s gone down. It’s April twentieth, they sell pot and their machine has shat itself.

I lived here during the riots. Two blocks off Vermont and Third. There was lots of shit on fire. Heavily armed personnel in black and the reek of destruction for months after. It freaked me out. I remember convenience stores and liquor stores looking like they puked into the parking lot after being looted. That smell of burnt. The sky was black west to east from Mulholland that day.

I fled to the valley.

I left in a hurry seventeen years ago.

It was cathartic to see it on a hot sunny day today. People on the sidewalks, fruit & vegetable corners. The only thing that’s changed seems to be that it’s healed. It’s bustling.

We walk up after being buzzed in and go up two flights of stairs. There’s a nice palm or fern every six steps or so on the right under the rail. I notice Fred has huge feet and he’s well dressed. His clothes are nice. I have no idea if he’s fashionable or not but he’s very well dressed. Me, I’m a sweaty pale primate.

We’re first greeted at the top of the stairs by a smaller black guy with neck tattoos and a gun. Hindsight tells me I was moving through this place way too fast. I was following Fred and neither of us seem to have a confidence problem. We arrived behind the counters and into the backrooms pretty fast.

Fred moves immediately to do the install and I start asking for Larry, that’s who Lars said to ask for. There are two empty eyed pitbulls that keep smelling my legs. Pale blue eyes that look scared more than anything else. A frightened animal is a dangerous one. I’m telling you this now and thinking I should have been more respectful.

I should have pet the dogs but everything was going well and I didn’t want to touch them.

Fucking hot up there. This place was crazy. Not my first dispensary, but easily the most ghetto. I liked it. I was comfortable there. There was an older woman walking around with a paper cup the size of a shot glass full of water. People buzzing in and out. A small grow operation in the back. A flat screen with at least six different angles of security. I stopped short of looking for myself on the monitor.

Utensils everywhere. I swear I saw a Crouch piece on the desk. Wham. I walked out with two fistfulls of the most aromatic herbinacionous addition to any entree you can picture. Fish, fowl, mammal or mollusk. A flower for any meal.

Ipso Facto, I’m back at my car with two pinecones of earthy. I drive home.

I have the back of Evil Lars.

Happy Holiday.

In other news, the truth is bubbling to the top about America’s role in torture. Regardless of your position, you were lied to on national television by your dipshit retarded President about it. America has tortured. And as The Daily Show so adroitly pointed out, all we can do is be outraged over the secret getting out.

Weak. Fuck me.

I can’t believe these retired, retarded fucking clowns on television trying to mitigate the fact that we torture. We prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding. Were we more morally advanced back then?

Fuck me in the neck.

Drinks for my friends.

I felt compelled to share this. It really is remarkable.

Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for John McCain while speaking to Log Cabin Republicans today, had this to say:

“There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage,” Schmidt, who was McCain’s campaign manager, told the group. “I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one’s liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage. In a marriage, two people are completely responsible to and for each other.”

He added: “If you are not willing to accept and faithfully discharge those responsibilities, you shouldn’t enter the state of matrimony, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if you’re straight or gay. It is a responsibility like no other, which can and should make marriage an association between two human beings more fulfilling than any other.” -CNN

Gorgeous. Eloquent, fluent and beautiful.

This kind of thinking and honesty is precisely what the Republican party owes America.

Yep, I said “owes”. Given the damage the Republicans have wrought the last three decades and particularly the last eight years, well, I feel they are beholdin’ to the rest of us.

Mr. Schmidt also had this to say:

“If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party,” Schmidt declared. “And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party.” -Huffington Post

Hallelujah! Pun intended. Wow. This is one man who understands what the future of the GOP will look like if it has one. I am impressed. Social issues such as these, as opposed to those of policy, are our biggest divide. To table such concerns, might could be an envelope for allowing vibrant philosophical debate to once again rise to the watermark of legitimate. Without such violent and vigorous clouding and muddying of what is actually an important and vital set of issues, this country stands a real chance of moving forward and so then, does the rest of the planet.

America was never intended to be the world’s police anymore than it was to be the world’s moral arbiter. We’ve become mired and lost in that as a nation and have as consequence, lost our way on the world stage. It is exactly because of this that we are estimated by every other State to be anything from silly to hypocritical to lethally wreckless.

Guilty as charged. We are all of those things.

Far too long we’ve neglected tragedies that demand our attention and devoted it instead to situations that were barely our business. A lumbering giant, recklessly careening, who’s size and stature shrinks by the day.

A modicum of humility is therefore in order.

But wait, there’s more:

Hugo Chavez said to Obama today, “Eight years ago I greeted President Bush with this same hand. I’d like to be your friend.” -Fox News

Let the record show it was an interlocking opposable thumb shake. A ‘bro’ shake. I like this guy Chavez, he called Dumbya “The Devil”.

On Cuba, Obama said:

“decades of mistrust” must be overcome, but noted that he has already loosened restrictions that limited Americans from traveling to visit relatives in Cuba and from sending money to them.

Obama lifted all restrictions Monday on the ability of individuals to visit relatives in Cuba, as well as to send them remittances.

That may be just the beginning. “I am prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues — from human rights, free speech and democratic reform to drugs, migration and economic issues,” -CNN

This comes a day after Cuban President Raul Castro said he was prepared to discuss “everything, everything, everything” with the United States. -CNN

The neocons will no doubt bristle over this. I anticipate high comedy for my witness. Yet, this is the change we voted for. The one we Americans turned out in overwhelming numbers to endorse. We are beginning to understand that saber rattling is far from our only option. It’s stupid to assume that’s all we have to offer countries in our own hemisphere who pose no military threat to us whatsoever.

We could probably kick Venezuela’s and Cuba’s ass on any Thursday afternoon. That’s not the point.

The same way our opinions about our own citizens must change, so does our thinking about the rest of the world. Our bigotry and bias has led us to this precarious point in human history. America has within her reach, the potential to allow itself and the rest of humanity to progress beyond and above where we find ourselves now. If we can only learn to accept and tolerate a little more ourselves and then, the rest of the world.

See, I’m not here to endorse torture, terror, fascism, dictatorship or anything resembling. I’m trying to tell you that we’ve been going at this assbackwards. Archaic and absurd.

All good change comes from inside. We are all people, humans. We all bleed and suffer. It’s time to abandon the notion that to prevail, other humans must suffer and bleed.

Mr. Steve Schmidt has said and done a wonderful, cognizant thing.

Drinks for my friends.

A trifecta of issues have been chapping my ass of late.

ITEM ONE:

Is there a more appropriate term for the completely contrived “protest” by whackjob flat-earthers other than “teabagging”?

Methinks not.

“the insertion of one man’s sack into another person’s mouth. Used a practical joke or prank, when performed on someone who is asleep, or as a sexual act.” -UrbanDictionary.com

I love this shit.

In effect, they will protest the single largest tax cut on America’s middle class, working poor and impoverished in our history. They will actively lament an increased tax burden on America’s wealthiest five percent that still ends up being less than what their sacred small government charlatan Ronald Reagan imposed.

These people are idiots.

Not only does it pervert and vulgarize the original defiance by colonists who orchestrated and participated in The Boston Tea Party, it’s a knock kneed, anti-intellctual parody of genuine patriotism. I’m here to tell you these fuckers heads are as round as the average potato. Think pineal.

The lockstep conservatives have chosen the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. They are retarded and unable to wipe their own snot bubbling noses and drool weeping, recessed chins. Pathetic.

No one but Fox News seems to notice. Can you say ‘marginalized’?

ITEM TWO:

Looks like the GOP is resolute in blocking the release of actual legal opinions produced by the Bush administration’s OLC (Office of Legal Council), regarding torture. There are in fact three such memos issued by the OLC, one of the highest legal offices in the land, permitting and allowing for, under the auspices of American legal authority, the sadistic treatment and physical violence upon captured individuals in violation of Geneva Conventions as well as human decency and longstanding American ideals related to the treatment of prisoners of war.

Actual legal opinions proffered by the Bush administration that are apparently so profound and disgusting that Senate Republicans are willing to engage in blackmail to prevent their being released to media and the public.

“A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward…” -Scott Horton, The Daily Beast

Fuck me running.

They all stood right in front of us and swore up and down that America does not torture. That we don’t kidnap and “render” to countries that attach electrodes to the genitals or nearly drown “detainees”. That we don’t beat and humiliate or emasculate. They are fucking liars. And now, sitting members of the Senate, the world’s ‘greatest deliberative body’, openly engage in foul and despicable brinksmanship designed to keep the official sanctioning of that truth from our citizens.

Fuck you John Yoo. Fuck you Alberto Gonzales. Fuck you Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. There is nothing and no things any of you could possibly do to right this wrong you all so willingly and zealously fomented and encouraged. The stain you leave will be visible for centuries and the damage you have wrought will be your legacy long after worms have consumed your rotting corpses and shat them into soil.

ITEM THREE:

Al Franken.

Hey Norm Coleman. Shut the fuck up and start looking for a job. Al Franken didn’t clean your clock but he won. Have some dignity or maybe some vanity. Sheezus. You lost. Everyone agrees. Have you no shame? A whip smart comedian bested you in a public contest. Ten out of ten dentists agree, time to look for a job. Maybe you could be Michele Bachmann’s pool boy.

This shit is ridiculous.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

I break a sweat. This has never happened before.

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

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

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

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

It’s a sweet chunk of change.

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

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

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

So yeah, today worked out well.

Then the news from the State Supreme Court of Iowa.

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

Watershed.

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

We are changing.

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

I don’t really have anything to add here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My sincerest apologies if I left any one out.

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

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

You gonna eat that?

Drinks for my friends.

They are sprinting. The entire executive branch are running like there’s only a few hundred yards in front of them. They tackle or block almost everything in the way. The pace is impressive. It won’t, it can’t last forever.

Our Man will see some time on the bench. I will worry, along with Paul Begala, if they’re still running this hard in six or nine months. For now, they are impressive.

Don’t talk to me about minutiae. What they’ve done here is hit the ground running. What they’ve done in sixty plus days is impressive even if only for the sheer volume of work spent and tasks accomplished. If you disagree with every single policy issue, you still must admit that these folks have been burning it hot at both ends.

They are on this economy like sauce on wings. As far as I can tell it’s bold. Code for risky.

So many second guess. They example past economic scenarios that I can’t help but wonder might be obsolete. This is serious business. So many of them are full of shit.

It’s not like the Republicans have even floated a turd. I half believe they actually served us the turd, smoked and on a gilded platter. Cocktail forks and horseradish. Champagne they’d pissed in.

They just might have Huck Finned us into this Presidency. If that’s the case, I wonder how long they knew they had a turd on their hands. Gingrich knows. So does Frist and Santorum. Pricks.

On the other hand, I very much like what Obama has to say. Long term thinking our leadership has been bereft of for eight years. Education, energy and health care must be part of any plan for long term, not necessarily prosperity, but lack of abject poverty and widespread toothlessness.

You know what? This guy is talking to us. He’s taking questions. You know what else? He’s fucking smart. This guy has a command of facts and information that is dazzling. He talks to us and tells what he knows and he knows a lot. He does questions in a way that give you more than just an answer, but some background as well. Reminds me of Clinton, a President who was nearly impossible to stump unless you asked him where his dick had been.

Man, I’m so grateful to have a President who can answer questions without dodging and then go on to actually illuminate the average American. He is sharp and he is good. Masterful.

Dumbya could not have handled a tenth of this.

He took all comers, from Ebony and Politico, to ABC Radio, Washington Times, Agence France-Press, Univision, Stars & Stripes as well as CNN. A tour de force in terms of Presidential press conferences. Lungs full of fresh air and intelligence. Awesome.

Goddamn this guy works hard. He is so smart and I am so proud.

If they don’t applaud his acumen in the reviews tomorrow, we will learn something about the measure of our post election contemporary press.

I understand this guy is hanging his ass in the wind. He’s riding the lightning but he’s not kidding. Barack Hussein Obama is not here to fuck around.

Drinks for my friends.

March 19, 2009 – Thursday

Gambling with no money
Category: News and Politics
Insurance is a bit of a gamble. If I am an insurance company I am betting that what I insure against will never happen, and if it does, the risk will be spread out amongst other insurers.

So, if you insure homes in fire prone areas in California you had better not be the only insurer, and you had better have insured homes in other areas of the nation, as a nation wide fire or natural disaster is a risk you can accept.

AIG insured the financial markets, almost all of the markets, and they burned down.

If my name is Bernie Madoff, and you gave me all of your money, and I told you I was going to invest it, and pay you interest on your money based on the investments. However, I took the money and paid you interest on the money with the money the next person gave me, and spent the principle instead of investing it, I would be a criminal, and guilty of the largest Ponzi Scheme in history.

If my name is AIG, and I insured your financial transactions, and I told you I was putting money aside to pay for what I insured. However, I took the money you paid me for your insurance, and I gave it to my stock holders, and brilliant employees, not keeping any money to pay for the insured financial transactions, thinking they will never need to be paid, I would be too big to fail and bailed out.

In Bernie’s case, those that invested in him are out their money.

In AIG’s case, those that bought insurance for crappy investments (liar loans to name a huge number of them!!!) are having those insurance policies paid for as those crappy investments fall apart, starting with the Lehman Brothers’ investments. Going on to Goldman Sachs …

AIG entered the unregulated CDS market insuring anything that Wallstreet threw together. Put their AAA rating on those investments through insurance, and are now forced to pay out the losses in the markets.

Sure, the bonuses are wrong, and they should be clawed back, but what the hell was going on on Wallstreet? What was going on at AIG?

Most people would agree that when Lehman Brothers fell, September 15, 2008, the market crashed right along with them. I wonder how far the market would have crashed if AIG went bankrupt? When the true lose is known…

When Lehman Brothers went under the gambler was exposed. What was insured came due, and the gambler had no money. What happens to gamblers with no money? They usually get their legs broken…

I found this gem yesterday. I guess Glenn “Punch me in the face” Beck went on a tear filled gyration on air, ending in this:

“Believe in something — even if it’s wrong. Believe in it!”
Glenn Beck

Please, believe in something, but make sure it’s right, and stop believing the lies.

Peace,
J

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Category: News and Politics
Sad to say, but with each passing day President Obama looks less like an agent of change and more like the latest installment in a never-ending series of Washington powerbrokers. This is doubly disappointing, since if there is a silver lining to the current crisis, it is that we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally change the way things are done. So far, all indications are that the Obama Administration lacks the courage and integrity to deliver upon the hopes they raised during the course of the campaign.

Case in point is the omnibus spending bill that the President signed last week. Despite promising repeatedly to veto any budget with earmarks, Obama signed this spending bill containing over 8,000 earmarks. Granted, it would be much more difficult to cobble together a congressional majority without the sweeteners that these earmarks represent, but this is precisely the kind of situation that tests the mettle of a leader. Does he have the strength to hold the line, or will he cave in to the status quo when push comes to shove? Obama could have stood up to the corrupt leaders of his own party (Pelosi, Reid, Frank, etc.) and refused to sign the bill, but he didn’t.

Another example of failing to lead is this week’s populist pandering over AIG bonuses. Yes, it is infuriating for the American public to see executives being rewarded after the enormous amounts of public money that have been pumped into their companies. That being said, the bonuses in question are microscopic in comparison with the real story. In the context of the trillions of dollars the government has already used to prop up the financial system, $165 million is completely insignificant. By turning it into a public firestorm, our leaders are cynically exploiting the public’s inability to comprehend the magnitude of the amounts of money currently being thrown around. $165 million, $20 billion, $1.5 trillion, what’s the difference? They’re all staggeringly large numbers. That being said, there’s a very big difference between a hundred million and a hundred billion, and our leaders are counting on our inability to tell the difference.

Of the money that has been pumped into AIG, over $12 billion has gone to Goldman, Sachs, the company once led by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. The President and the leaders in Congress have nothing to say about this, while they make an enormous stink about bonuses that represent less than 2% of that amount. This is a deliberate and cynical error of omission and emphasis. By making a spectacle out of a relatively insignificant issue, our leaders are hoping we’ll be distracted enough that we won’t notice the hundreds of billions that are being allocated according to a process that is both opaque and riddled with conflicts of interest. In other words, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…

DeWitt writes:

“Fighting on the internet is like competing in the special olympics; even if you win, you’re still retarded. This is not third grade; I am an adult.
Do you never tire of being the schoolyard punk?

Perhaps you lack the ability to understand complex language, so I will be as simple and direct as I possibly can.

I come to MySpace to have a few laughs and exchange ideas with friends. You are not my friend, and I have no intention of making you one. I have no interest in exchanging insults with you or any other Obamunist on the internet. If you and the rest of your fascist ilk want to fight about it; go ahead and fight amongst yourselves. Let me know how that turns out. If you don’t like what I post, good. I wouldn’t want to think I had done anything to make your existence on this planet less odious.”

My response:

No, you’re wrong.  You post this kind of deliberately irresponsible and obviously incendiary bullshit in public and you deserve at the very least to answer for it.  This is no mere lunch conversation among friends.  You put it out there.  You want to say what you have to say?  Own it and understand that there are people like me out there who will call you on it.

It’s not the first time you’ve resorted to the simplicity of labeling me a “schoolyard punk”.  It’s one thing I can honestly tell you I’ve never been.  If anything, I’m an intellectual bully.  I hate stupidity and I loathe your lazy pronouncements and casual, convenient under informed straw man tactics.

You call me a fascist.  That’s just empty and ignorant.  A definition:  “a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.” -dictionary.com

Hello?  Is this thing on?

I’ve got to put somewhat of a disclaimer in here.  My angst is not directed exclusively at you.  It’s your kind.  You are a symbol of the ignorance that so plagues and infects the national dialog.  It pisses me off.  Under informed, ignorant and irresponsible.  I hold no hope of changing your mind.  You’re too far gone.  My goal is to hold you to the light so that the open minded understand that you are see through.  Transparent.  Your logic is archaic and your positions are absurd.  The world has left you behind because your acuity has lapsed into boilerplate neoconservative ideology that is obsolete.

On a directly personal note;  you say, “Perhaps you lack the ability to understand complex language, so I will be as simple and direct as I possibly can.”  This would be funny if it weren’t so absurd.  I’m not merely here to tell you I think you suck.  I explain myself and my objections in detail, in language far more detailed and nuanced than anything you have ever begun to approach.  That explains why you won’t engage me as well as anything else.  You’re outmatched.  Overwhelmed.  Afraid.  You are a coward who lacks the courage of your convictions.

My advise to you is to leave the game.  Once you can no longer adequately defend yourself and your opinions, it’s time to leave the game.  Shut up and walk away.

You are bad news Dewitt.  You poison the waters of what needs to be a healthy, progressive and proactive debate.  You Sir, are the problem.  Go away.  At the very least, do us all a favor and resign yourself to regaling your fellow ignorant flat earthers with your stupid opinions and reckless vitriol.

I am here to encourage and foment forward thinking and action.  I genuinely hope for America to replace her standing as a progressive, compassionate and generous force on the world stage.  In my mind, the opposite of what she’s been and how she’s been perceived for the last eight years.  You contribute nothing.  You detract.  You are destructive and contrary.  You have no hope.  Get the fuck out of the way.  Leave.  Please.  Let us get on with it and please shut the fuck up.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

I respond:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

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

Oh the humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

Doesn’t Meghan McCain have a big rack?

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

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

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

See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

Hoorah and in your face bitches.

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

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

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

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

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

Well said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.