Archive for the ‘Morals’ Category

This is goddamn ridiculous.  No public option, no expansion of Medicare but a bill that still mandates Americans buy insurance from private, avaricious, corrupt, compassionless corporations that avoid caring for the sick as deftly as they obviate promoting health care for the healthy.  This is fucking bullshit.

Zero sum game.  Embarrassing.  All this work and debate.  We will end with nothing or worse than nothing.

Depends on how you look at it and what passes.

All the power in the hands of this jackass Lieberman?  How did that happen?  He says he’s getting closer to being able to vote for health care reform.  Closer?  Who the fuck is this guy?  I’ll tell you who he is.  His state, Connecticut, is ground zero for the insurance industry.  They give him tons of cake and they let him eat it too.  He first championed expansion of Medicare during his bid for the Vice Presidency with Al Gore.  He’s said it since in many ways and so many venues.  Now he says he’ll support a Republican filibuster for any bill containing that, or a public option.

That or a public option.

Benedict Fliptop, what a dick.  The ghost of Ted Kennedy should visit this asshole over the holidays and punch him in the mouth.  Then Teddy should show him the future of his Christmas’ with thousands dying and him losing elections.  I loathe this prick.  I will personally campaign against this douchebag like nobody’s business.  Did you know that Joe Lieberman has sex with prostitutes?

See?

He will never again represent the citizens of his state or anyone else in this country.

Then we have Ben Nelson from Nebraska.  He’s still not happy with the abortion language in the current bill.  This guy is a fuckhead.  This is not about your ridiculous moralizing, it’s about 140 people dying everyday for lack of coverage you asshole.  Ben Nelson and Trader Joe can take a long slow lick on my diseased scrotum.

Here’s the bottom line.  This bill mandates that we buy into this egregious clusterfuck without any mechanism for protecting us from their abhorrent policies.  If we don’t, we will be fined and that money will go directly to their coffers.  How’s that for truth, justice and the American way?  Here’s a shit sandwich, no condiments, no lettuce and no bread.  Just shit.

This is what the cause for health care reform has become.  A cool water sandwich and a Sunday go to meeting bun.  What do you want for nothing?  A rubber bisquit?  Bow bow bow.

See the job of our legislative branch has never been to legislate morality, although it too often has, it’s job is to legislate ethics and fairness, although it too often doesn’t.  This protracted and vulgar instance is a shiny red thumb of that example.

People are so fond of screaming for the reconciliation strategy.  What they don’t understand is that it’s a purely fiscal process.  Preventing big insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or exercising caps on lifetime or annual coverage is not possible in this process.

Dr. Howard Dean is a physician, that’s why he has that “DR.” before his name.  He’s also a former candidate for President of The United States and former chair of the Democratic party (DNC) where he was a leading architect in gaining a legislative majority in congress.  He’s smart and has the courage of his convictions.  Despite my impression that he always looks like he’s swallowed a turd or at least snorted one, I like him.  He’s tough and speaks truth to power whether it gets him in trouble or not.  This is a man who doesn’t give a mad fuck and has nothing to lose.  Tonight he announced on public television that the bill, as it exists, should be killed by Democrats.  He said that his recommendation to U.S. Senators is to vote against it.

That’s pretty heavy and it carries more than water where I’m concerned.

He pointed out that although the bill provides for no exclusion based on pre-existing condition, it does allow for charging three times as much based on age alone.  It’s a fecal falafel.

I understand there are important reforms still in this bill but they are rendered moot by the mandate that we purchase the product.  It’s right here that it becomes nothing more than smoking a Tootsie Roll of cat crap in hell.

We’ve reached a point where the greasy oily Republicans aren’t even a legitimate factor in the debate.  The ignorant fucktards have long since marginalized and rendered themselves inconsequential.  Now it’s just the Democrats fighting among themselves over the definition of “Real Reform”.

This really is nothing but a butt based product buffet.  Spoons up.

The good news better be what I think it is.  Reconciliation.  Could be used after some legislation has passed.  Fund stuff through the back door to support the bill, the policies, the ideal.

I’m really not holding my breath but you can’t telegraph that move even if both parties know what’s next.  It would be nothing short of grandiose to find out Harry and The Dems are as clever as Benny and The Jets.

I gotta tell ya, this piece has been easy to write but tough to stomach.

Drinks for my friends.

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

Spruce Goose bitches.

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

Good job everybody.

Jackasses.

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

I really hate you guys.

Did I say that or just think it out loud?

Is there a difference?

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

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

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

This party might just might be over.

Have you no shame?  No decency?

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

Sick.  Fucking sick.  Pun intended.

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

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

Cigars and cognac all around.

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

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

Some tomato soup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It makes fucking sense.

At least pot is legal in LA.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

I stand in awe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s like battling robots.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Why is Obama allowing him self to be so humiliatingly chumped by empty suits like Chuck Grassley?  I’m hoping it’s political rope a dope and Grassley will soon wake on the canvas, the taste of his blood in his mouth.

Fingers crossed, boys and chicks.

I’m betting on it.  Think a knuckle dragging moron like Chuck Grassley is any match for our President?  Don’t forget the guy you elected is whip smart.  Made the Clintons look Fisher Price and McCain was Play Doh.  Five or six moves ahead.  The entire GOP will be crying in front of their friends by the time the leaves begin to fall.

Wanna know how I know?  Unwitting pawns showing up to town hall meetings wearing AR15’s.  A shrieking right wing media.  The paranoia is palpable.  The Secret Service could easily expand the perimeter to a mile or more at the behest of the White House and that would be that.  Ask yourself why that hasn’t occurred and a correct answer affords you a glimpse into what is really happening here.  When the day is done, if meaningful health care reform is not passed and signed, the entire GOP will  be left to suffer the slings and arrows of their own outrageous demise.

They will be forced to filibuster, actually filibuster.  Bring on the cots and porta-potties.  Coverage will be live and through the night while ass squeaking octogenarian obstructionists are forced to ramble ad nauseum for the purpose of keeping the poor and middle class from accessing what should be their right in a country so rich, a society so advanced.  This, after every opportunity to entertain compromise has been offered and then scorned.

What we see unfolding here is analogous to the sixties civil rights movement.  The guns.  The shrill psychopathy  I pray not the violence.  It is the old guard Republicans resisting change and what is right with lies, deceit and power whatsoever they are able to bring to bear.  Same as it ever was.  Same as it ever was.

I may be wrong, but when the talking heads gasp and wonder at what the White house is up to, when they all scratch their collective crowns at the the strategy or lack thereof, I’m hoping hard it is this.  I’m hoping this administration and it’s super intellectual brain trust is allowing this pot to boil over on the stove because they understand that the only way real change comes is through this brand of passive violence.  Political judo.

I pray it is so.

Today, former Homeland Security honcho Tom Ridge, from a book to be released September 1st, finally cops to the fact that terror threat levels were subject to political manipulation by the White House and the DOJ.  Um, no shit.  Thanks for your candor, you spineless coward.  Somebody get this man a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  I mean, Tenet, Franks and Bremer got one.  It’s only fair, clearly commensurate…….

In other news, John Ensign deems himself morally superior to Bill Clinton because he broke no laws.  Remains to be seen.  Hold your breath.  Former House Majority Leader, felony indicted and architect of K street, Tom DeLay, announced his new gig on dancing With The Stars and called for Obama to produce a birth certificate.  We also learned that Cheney’s secret CIA assassination program was to be outsourced to the notorious Blackwater.  Keystone fucking Cops.

Oh, and today Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed called for an apology from The New York Times and The Washington Post saying, “Judging from the evidence released, [the committee] uncovered facts that show that my role in the U.S. attorneys issue was minimal and entirely proper.”  My advice to the periodicals in question?  Invite Mr. Rove to piss up a goddamn rope.  And maybe request a sample of whatever he’s smoking.  Rove is as filthy as a half melted plastic doll discovered in a native American fire pit.  His hubris blocks out the sun.  His mother sucks cocks in hell.

Man I hate these guys.  Even after they’re gone, a pungent, greasy slick glistens on the surface of our water.

Then, my beloved Jon Stewart has Betsy McCaughey, propagator of the “death panel” schadenfreude and big medical industry shill, as a guest and subsequently shellacs her like a bar stool missing a leg.  A premature halt is called so we may watch the entire charade unedited online.  Brilliant.  We loves us some Daily Show.  What the hell was she thinking?  Oh, the shameless cuntiness.

You just can’t make this shit up.

And it goes on and on and on.

Drinks for my friends.

More than a little pensive.

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

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

This sucks.

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

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

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

Iranians are not pussies.

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

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

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

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

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

Wisdom, safety and support to the people of Iran.

And, um, fuck the Ayatollah.

Drinks for my friends.

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.

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.

7-11 has gotten pretty aggressive with branding of late. The products seem to be of quality and affordable. I tripped on a canard though. I bought some trail mix labeled “Swiss Trail Mix” that contained M&M’s. How can it be Swiss, if it’s most delicious ingredient is an iconic American candy? Not only do they contribute to the palatability of the recipe, they are the backbone in terms of contrasting flavors and textures. In concert with, but far beyond, the raisins.

It’s not a stretch to view this instance as an analog for the salt and pepper of Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Actually it is, but bear with me, there’s a tragic flaw. These two elements are not mixing with any sort of shared purpose. Too bad, ever had sea salt and ground pepper on calimari? Far less pepper is required than salt.

The Republicans are pepper.

No unity. Zero cooperation. What should be a symbiotic relationship, is the furthest thing from it. A contemporary example of the classic conundrum; the pot accusing the kettle of blackness and all the internecine feline agitprop.

Ladies and gentlemen we have a blog title.

I gotta stop buying those Cheladas.

Childish, churlish and obstructionist. They are the body designated and elected to serve our best interests. We The People.

“Watch for the classic tactic of American rightwing propaganda: Always accuse one’s opponent of doing the very thing that one is doing, especially if one has been caught or exposed while doing it.” -from my friend J’s blog

It’s what they accused Democrats of over and over when they were in charge. Obstructionism, when they encountered opposition to silly irresponsible tax cuts to the very rich. Fiscal irresponsibility is at the top of their lungs now, though it was the Republicans who ran the deficit up to a trillion dollars with chickenshit tax cuts and senseless wars.

Nothing proactive there. Our man understands he’s steering into deeper waters. He’s not happy about it but he understands that any way he turns the wheel, people on this boat will piss and moan. He’s got a very smart crew. They think the sea might be more manageable where we’re headed. He’s chosen course as best he can because we have to keep moving. Stand still you die.

Just who the fuck are these guys? Identity and principle have never been less important to the GOP. The tragedy is that in times so breathtakingly dire, they still think it’s 1994. They still think it’s a goddamn game.

They don’t see America. Criminals, pimps, whores, fastfood workers and union folks. We want to address the malaise at this point. Lawyers and midgets. Philanderers and microbioligists. Those chicks who paint you up at Macy’s. We all want it to work.

We’re a mystery to them. They know not what to make of us. See how they walk around with their mouths open?

I’m still fond of the notion that our government benefits from some modicum of parity. A ballast to power absolute. Checks and balances. It’s just these jackasses aren’t up to the ideal. Virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity perhaps. They’ve praticed a black art with such facility for so long that they now practice it exclusively for the sake thereof. Completely absent any regard for the people, their constituents. They have no moral or ethical imperatives. They have no center.

Like balloons in a thunder storm. No power against the Earth’s whipping wind. Notice how they keep falling? Have you seen the debris? The wind has no regard for faith. Faith is centered in the Midwest. So is wind. Huh.

You know why I like Biden despite him being such a loose lipped cashier? He’s the least wealthy member of the Senate and probably most of Congress too. The Guy’s broke despite having been there forever. The only guy in debt. Just like the rest of us, he’s got a mortgage. Now he’s the Vice Goddamn President. Not much speaks louder than that.

As near as I can tell, Our Man has done more in a month to reach across the aisle than Dumbya did in eight years. Magnanimous. Refreshing. Futile? Naw.

I think it’s important for this administration to continue being the better man. Extend a hand and when you get a fist, walk away. Spit over your shoulder. Maintain transparency and clarity all the time. Have the cameras rolling and the microphones on. Play us like they did, only in the right direction. There’s no sin in that.

Let the record show who played good honest ball and who didn’t bring a decent game. Who subsequently lied, obfuscated and willfully assumed ownership of the Sore Loser Trophy. All the Republicans are willing to offer is business as usual. I don’t need to point out they’ve screwed the pooch at the expense of the middle class for not just eight, but every year since Reagan. They would have us believe tax cuts to be the key to the Rapture.

Innocence in America ended with the assassination of Jack, Bobby, Malcom and Martin. Corruption enjoyed a nascent emergence with Nixon. Ford fell down the steps and Jimmy fell up. Corruption became an institution with Reagan and Iran-Contra among other things. 41 was hapless but not evil. Definitely a prick. Barbara was and still is, a platinum haired sasquatch. I bet she stinks like bad deer meat.

Clinton was almost exactly what we needed. He stepped in shit but it was mostly his own. Not ours. And forgive me, but he beat them back, they were at the gates brandishing torches and he sent them home. Rockstar.

It all became business as usual with the Dumbya administration. An administration so corrupt, it’s towering incompetence was overshadowed by ghoulish moral depravity and malignant avarice. These guys fucking sucked.

One last thought on this subject: Let’s not forget, despite the gale, it’s in Barack’s best interest to deliver this vessel into more pleasant waters.

By the way. The Cartoon in the NY Post? Fucking racist.

Now they’re shrill about all the humor comparing Bush to a monkey because he was a dipshit. See, that was legit in my mind because it was the truth. The funniest shit is almost always the most truthful. Nothing to do with racism. Whenever blacks have been degraded in this country to the point of dehumanization, monkeys have been used as overt and shameless imagery.

A dead chimp and the caption: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

The Post is owned, along with Fox, by Rupert News Corp.

That may be all boys and girls. I had to get that out.

Make sure you check him before he wrecks him. Our Man. Stay engaged. Think globally, act locally. Judge not lest ye be.

I mean, don’t do what I do, do what I say.

Drinks for my friends.

Bitches.

Still in the full body condom, America’s moose gutting mom avoids engaging the media like the kid in the Casper costume glimpsing the gang of Metallica wannabes drinking beer and leaning against a Camaro after midnight on all hallows eve. Nose running. With a fuckin pillow case full of The Kind.

She’s afraid and so is the campaign. The polite term is neophyte. The accurate term is wolf slaughtering doe in the headlights.

I hear the next official media exposure will be a gritty, no holes barred interview with Sean Hannity. What we have here is the body condom, a net, some matresses and a fucktard. Sheezus. If Americans are actually this dumb, how does bread end up on the shelves? Produce?

“The fundamentals of the American economy are sound”, now watch while I coin this phrase.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

That’s really the salient argument here. The catastrophe that keeps giving. We’ve gotta half a billion dollar a day war addiction and the banks are dropping like flies. Big ones. The biggest ones. People are dying.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

I heard tonight the housing debacle will begin to heal early next year. Bullshit. America has a chronic and potentially lethal fiscal disease. Picture liver and kidney failure.

There is a cure. Might be too late though.

The housing conflagration was merely the first obvious symptom. Pretty nasty boils, but a symptom nonetheless. Not unlike those carbuncles from my last blog. These knuckes of flesh will still be festering and oozing after first thaw.

The disease is another matter. I’m here to talk about the part of the disease that is pure, blind hubris. It’s name is Sarah Palin and she doesn’t know shit. That is exactly why she thinks she can do this, because she doesn’t know shit. She has no fucking idea where she may be allowed to walk.

You’ve got be fucking kidding me.

She’s under investigation, she’s ducking subpeonas. Half the women in her state loathe her. This is ridiculous. The top of their ticket is seasoned, albeit bitterly, and the bottom is a blowhard. She shouts less than nothing. She lies. Bridge To Nowhere anyone? ANYONE? Earmarks, Bueller, Bueller? The plane, the plane? Tattoo?

It’s a goddamn joke half of us are too stupid to get.

Americans are astonishigly stupid.

Know what really chaps my ass? The drooling, sewage vomiting, talking head Republicans. They just make shit up. I’m constantly asking myself how they can sit through makeup etc. and appear on camera fully prepared to utter the words that manifest into sentences and then paragraphs of such transparent, wholesale, sociopathic lies.

Yes, I understand we do it too. It bothers me. I offer this caveat: my side is rarely, if ever as audacious and never as vicious as the Republicans. Have you seen them go after each other? For what it’s worth, my side is not exclusively Democratic, they are always independent thinkers.

Republicans routinely push the envelope of decency and consistently push past the bounds of common sense. Always beyond reprehensible. No ethical imperative. No moral compass.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

Drinks for my friends.

What more do you need?

The ineptitude.

I would refer you first, to today’s stock market performance. Next, I’d like to point you to the likely failure of AIG and WAMU. Our nation’s largest insurance company and largest S&L respectively. Wall street will break a few records this week. Last but not least, I would have you read the last two blogs by my guest contributors, Josh and J.

The ugliness has begun.

The American economy and therefore that of the world, is a mere sigh away from spectacular collapse not seen since the towers on 9/11. Repercussions not felt since the Great Depression.

Now, who are you voting for?

We got trouble, right here in River City.

Here’s a big ass truth for you. The war is no longer an issue of morality and justice, it’s all about the Benjamins. For years we haven’t been able to afford this reasonless war. It’s been waged on credit, while contactors stink atop piles of filthy lucre. Fom now on, everyday it’s allowed to continue, is a guarantee of a dark day to come for every citizen in this country from the upper middleclass on down.

Just today Doubtfire said the fundamentals of the American economy are sound. Boys and girls, this man is an idiot. He’s either in denial or lying. The fundamentals of our economy are imploding you jackass. The banks are failing you moron.

McCain has admitted not knowing much about the economy and his running mate lies about earmarks while overseeing a cash cow of a state. The most government money per capita of any state in the union. Doubtfire, along with Phil Gramm, is the king of deregulation. From the housing bust, to the debt and the buckling of historied financial institutions, deregulation is the catalyst. Merrill fucking Lynch disappeared today. Remember the Keating Five? The original Enron.

Shut up, I know he was exonerated but he was in past his elbows. He got slimed. Got some on his face, gave him face cancer.

By the time we next inaugurate a President, our faces will have become familiar with the canvas. The question has become not so much about the fittest to be Commander in Chief, but rather about which team is best able to get us back on our feet.

He will begin to slip in the polls. The Republican Rovenesque juggernaut didn’t anticipate this particular strain from the virus of fear they so carefully nurture. Clearly, these asshats did not position adequately for the advent of cleaning up their own mess BEFORE leaving office.

What?

They were gonna just dump it on whoever. They got behind McCain because he’s more profitable and he mitigates the chances any of them will serve time. Either way, they’re cool. You can tell they don’t give a mad fuck. No worries.

They didn’t plan for the house to be on fire while they were in it though. They pass out marshmallows with a nervous grin, a sheen of sweat on their faces.

Boil and chop kids, boil and chop. Tell me you’re on the motherfucker.

Something wicked this way comes.

Drinks for my friends.

Here’s something I do a lot. Contemplate. Remember, analyze and perseverate.

I think about shit. I can’t help it.

I have to say, despite most of us not actually dining on each other, we are brutal cannibals. I wonder what raw percentage of us kill another in a lifetime. I mean in a war, through criminal neglect or a car crash. Whatever. Bet it’s pretty high.

Yet, our various capabilities and intelligence as a species are far beyond anything to ever inhabit this tiny, microscopic sphere. As far as we know.

Telescopes so powerful as to allow us to see back in time. We got gear on Mars that talks to us constantly. It’s understood that the faster you go, the slower time is. We think it comes close to stopping once you seriously approach one hundred eighty six thousand miles a second. The speed of light. Basic relativity. Nothing new. Did you know time and space are pliable?

Dolphins and whales, mammals both, are closest to us in intelligence. They don’t even have fingers to dial a phone or run a calculator. Maybe their fins could work an abacus someday. I hope so. They seem to have a dignity and wisdom that humans lack. It occurs to me that most animals do.

We know dung beetles are over a hundred million years the same and we’ve long since made more than enough bombs to probably erase any evidence of ourselves.

It’s a theme I visit often. Our individual morality versus our collective ability to swing a sword ever more effectively.

Geologists, anthropologists and archeologists have successfully debunked the monolithic myth that is any Bible or religion, ancient or contemporary.

Here we have the competition in black and white. A bas relief. Right there in goddamn front of ya.

This is the race humans are running. We cling to fables and ancient justifications for things we didn’t understand and those we still don’t, while our capacities increase beyond our abilitiy to control them.

Realistically, the disconnect is emotional and spiritual. As a species and a community, we are not merely callow, but inept in any way having anything to do with any pursuit of right and wrong or responsible, individual morality.

Our demise will be the triumph of technology over the failure of philosophy and compassion.

We commit the error of substituting religion for philosophy over and over and over.

Having “faith” does not guarantee an advanced level of kindness or or anything like it. I observe it to be a likely indicator for prejudice and intolerance. I’ll be blunt. I think it’s stupid and counterproductive.

We all die and that’s all we can know. I don’t know about you but that fact lends me considerable humility. As far as I know I’m finite and so are you. Get over it. There is no Santa and your beliefs don’t make you special.

Somebody remind Darth Cheney.

What I’m trying to get to is this:

The longer people hold fast to these archaic notions about God, religion, nationalism, patriotism, jingoism, et al, the faster we race headlong and pell mell towards the abyss of extinction.

The good news is the Earth will survive us. She’s just as responsible for shaking us off as we are for killing ourselves. Maybe she’ll give the insects the next big chance. Who knows? I’m pulling for the fish with hair.

Drinks for my friends.

Americans have become so painfully obsessed with morality we’ve all but abandonded ethics.

Too many steer by some absurd moral compass as opposed to basic rules that any group of humans should abide.

I’ll put that another way and not to make you more comfortable. We’re so ridiculously consumed with judgement and diving for a role to render it, we’ve abandoned common sense and the idea of walking in the shoes of another.

Tragic in more ways than one could possibly swing a dead cat.

The rub is thus, morality is nebulous and subjective. More than vulnerable to wrongheaded interpretation. Ethics are hard and fast rules, based more on the doctrine of ‘do unto others’, rather than the ‘don’t covet thy neighbor’s wife’ school of thought.

See? One is Jello. The other is currency.

Don’t bother telling me I can’t lust. I have no control over it and refuse to beat myself up for it.

Those who value morals over ethics, go home, cook up some lime Jello and cover your gold bullion with it. If you’re not rich, you’re obviously stupid. If you’re stupid, try mayonnaise and pineapple on top. It’s tasty.

The wealthy can afford to perpetuate a moral code of their own because they have money to cover their asses and it’s a wonderful vehicle for them to exert influence and control.

We have ethics. Trust me when I tell you it’s better to have ethics than the morals of anyone else.

Pineapple and kiwi make my tongue itch and swell. The sides of my tongue will then chafe against my bottom molars and cause considerable discomfort for a few days.

Morality inevitably sucks compassion and sensitivity out of a society if allowed to commence without check.

I have my own moral code. I struggle with it. It is mine, I’ve no desire to foist it on anyone else. I may have set my bar a bit high but it’s better than too low.

At the same time, I expect that others will not steal from me, betray me, treat anyone without equality or kill anyone I love. These are ethics.

They seem elementary. They are. There is a myriad of ways to break these simple rules, however.

My particular morals are an extension of ethics. As it should be, but they are my individual rules. I decide these things myself. They are mine. I endeavor to keep them to myself.

But, I’ll share a little for the sake of example. I do not betray confidence, especially if I understand that something bad has happened. I wouldn’t protect a serial killer mind you, let’s just say I possess secrets that will never experience sunlight on my behalf because it wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.

I don’t care who you fuck, why or how, as long as it’s consensual and not my girlfriend. I believe war is immoral unless we’re attacked or know for sure we will be. I believe the rich should help the poor and shouldn’t seek tax loopholes or to hide their filthy lucre in offshore accounts.

I believe I don’t want fuck all to do with your church, your thoughts on abortion, sex, contraception, civil rights et. all. Those are morals generated and perpetuated by a religious bureaucracy that is absent accountability or logic and insists on defying the brick and mortar fundament of ethics.

It is unethical in every way to fuck little boys or exploit the poor by taking their money. It is a betrayal and a theft to posit that God favors one political candidate over another. It is a betrayal to insist creationism is taught in any classroom or to withold any information about birth control.

Any grey area associated with issues like these are afforded by someone’s morality. Ethics remain crystal clear.

I trust my friends to go further. We are friends and I will not take advantage, exploit or lie to them. My real friends see it the same way. We are here to support and enrich each other. I try very hard not to lie to anyone.

If I don’t give a mad fuck about you, I might lie to you. Morals.

Drinks for my friends.

I watched the American Women’s Gymnastics team at the Olympics tonight and had two thoughts:

They are amazing. They tease and defy gravity with muscle and balance. Fascinating and compelling.

I felt vaguely pervy as these are not women, but girls, who’s physical maturity has been suspended by vigorous athleticism.

It’s bad enough what they did.

Dick-in-Bush sneered at the Fourth Amendment and gleefully engaged in an end run around existing FISA laws to illegally wire tap and otherwise surveil American citizens. They didn’t tell anybody. They even attempted to strong arm a United States Attorney General while hospitalized in critical condition to sign off on their egregious trangressions.

They sent Gonzales and Andy Card.

Upon The Grey Lady exposing them in early 2005, they postured for all the world like they had done nothing wrong and in fact, had our best interests in their heart of hearts along with the telecom companies that were complicit.

If you bought that when it went down, I’d like your phone number and credit card info.

Dumbya then called for retroactive immunity for those companies because he understood very well that they had violated the law and the Constitution and were they ever held accountable, well then, he would be too.

So the sycophantic Republicans floated a bill to make everything milk and honey for the telecom giants and therefore Dick-in-Bush. I was proud of the Democrats when they stood on principle and said no fucking way.

Responding on January 28, our man Obama said:
“I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill.

Ever since 9/11, this Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.

The FISA court works. The separation of power works. We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight, and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend.

No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people – not the President of the United States, and not the telecommunications companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program. We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed.

That is why I am co-sponsoring Senator Dodd’s amendment to remove the immunity provision. Secrecy must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens – and set an example to the world – that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient.” -firedoglake.com

For what it’s worth, The Little Paste Eater stood proud and quoted Ben Franklin to remind us that those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither.

What’s worse is what we did. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with a hundred and five Democrats, aided in passage of a bill that DOES provide immunity for the telecom arm of the plutocracy. Our own man Obama brought gravel chunks of salt to the laceration by declaring his support for the “compromise”

He said in a published statement:

“It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.” -Salon.com

Let’s cut to the chase. He says this, knowing full well how unlikely such an effort is to enjoy the remotest chance of success. Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged the dubiousness of such.

Fuck this shit. It’s a fool’s errand and Mr. Obama is no fool.

They all know it will pass the Senate as though lubricated with Crisco. So easily was it shat by the House after insertion of a suppository chock full of fear, terrorism and national security paranoia.

Mr. Obama, fuck this shit.

You are here, a man who will most likely be the next President of The United States of America, because we the people have put you here. We put you here, because we have been led to believe that this is precisely the brand of malfeasance you will fight against. You have ignited in us a hope, that this brand of fuckery will not be allowed, not tolerated, not even negotiated.

The law has been broken and you know it.

The idea that you would break our hearts this early, in context of a principle this vital, disturbs and gives me pause. Thus far, despite your imperfections, I’ve believed in you. In this instance however, I simply cannot abide. It makes me furious that otherwise my choice is an asshat like McCain.

Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it to us. When, inevitably, efforts to remove immunity from the bill fail, vote against it. Stand on principle, the rule of law and most important, why we have come to believe in you.

Tests for you so far have been Fisher Price, pale, in the face of this most important one so far. There is no room to move here. It is as black and white as a moral imperative can be.

Vote against it. I almost care less about the outcome than I do your vote.

What exactly are you so afraid of?

Hey Barry, this isn’t change we can believe in.

Drinks for my friends.

I’M SO SORRY FOR THE SANDWICH I’VE CAUSED YOU.

You know, maybe I put too much faith in intelligence. It has always been paramount to me. I think I’ve become naive about it.

I understand a lot of smart people possess a capacity for compassion that borders on the sublime. Yet, some of the smartest people to walk this world have been brutes.

Somehow, I’ve always given the intelligent ones a pass. With ethics and morals, it’s probably fifty fifty on a good day no matter how you codify the masses. Lower if you’re Christian. Ha!

The human population is an organ of the Earth.

The pendulum swings from conservative to kinda populist liberal every 7-10 years in this country. The United States is an organ of the world.

I don’t even want to go into which organ we are because it’s full of cancer.

Anyway. Perhaps good and evil are the same. They, the two prevailing social doctrines, are not static. They ebb and flow and subscribe to their own cycle.

Forgive me, I’m moving pretty fast, I just don’t want to belabor the point.

Therefore, so do all the individual organisms everywhere. Humans, for example, are reasonably complex and it goes with out saying that we all have our own clock.

Yes, I think I’ve observed this on an individual level of late, for the last few years actually. I worry about the amount of dark I see instead of light among humans.

I would imagine anyone paying attention hasn’t missed the the way of the world and the earth, lapping at the conscious.

Despite what I’ve seen just lately, my gut tells me that the pendulum is weightless. At it’s apogee, the very glimpse of time between the end of one arc and the beginning of another. So, perhaps what I’ve observed lately, is not what it will be soon. I hope.

I’m just sayin’.

Drinks for my friends.