Archive for the ‘News and Politics’ Category

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.

I hardly know where to begin.

Just when I think the army of ignorant, mouth breathing retards who oppose all things Obama, consistently and without grace or agility and discrepant against their very own interests, cannot possibly get anymore hypocritically and incoherently shrill, well, they pull down their pants, run around screaming, shitting and pissing themselves.

Now these roundheads are encouraging their children to skip school on Tuesday to save their fragile minds from some evil socialist indroctination by the President of The United States.  You can’t write this shit.

My old friend Gabby put it this way:  “Don’t worry kids, Obama’s not gonna ask you to procreate or practice loading your 45s.  He just gonna ask you to do your homework, which I guess from the conservative stand point, is a horrible thing.  Ok, so all you Republican Kids, just go back to your unprotected sex and guns.”
-Gabrielle Birchack

Racism, ignorance, stupidity and fear are alive and well in America.  It reminds me of leaving wet food as a treat for the warehouse cat at work, only to discover the bowl squirming and glistening with maggots the next morning.  I remember my disappointment and nausea inducing disgust vividly.  It was summer and I was a little saddened that my gesture had been so perverted by some of earths lowest creatures.

Well, it’s summer.

They would have us believe and likely believe themselves, that health care reform will:

1) Ration care, deny treatment to the elderly based on whether a government death panel deems them worthy and deserving.  It will do neither.  Um, by the way, health care is rationed rather egregiously in America today.  Weeks, sometimes months for an appointment with your doctor if you have insurance.  Automated phone voices instruct us that in the event of an emergency, meaning care is needed any more urgently than say, a month, hang up and call 911.  The chances of your insurance paying for the specific treatment, prescription etc. that you and your doctor have agreed is most efficacious is as low as sixty percent in many cases.  People have died and are dying as a result of the insurance company coming between patient and doctor.

Sounds like rationing to me.  It’s not just the uninsured that are going bankrupt or literally dying.  Sounds like death and or bankruptcy panels to me.

2) All illegal aliens, undocumented workers et al. will be automatically covered at our expense.

Guess what?  They already are.  They, as well as uninsured Americans go to an emergency room, as there are laws in all fifty states mandating that no one be turned away from emergency rooms.  We pay for it in higher costs across the board.  It should be noted, there is no provision in any of the bills in committee, that provide for care to illegals.

3) This is just the first step in a government take over of health care.

My first reaction is so what?  We’re the only modern industrialized nation without it and the wealthiest.  Contrary to the opposition’s chronically mendacious bloviating, those people in those other countries are quite happy with the care they receive.  Perfect?  No.  Would they choose to do without it?  In a word, nofuckingway.  Then, the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are tremendously popular in this country, despite both programs being entirely administrated by the government and the appearance that most of the opposition are willfully ignorant of this, reveals the argument to be specious on it’s face.

They use Stephen Hawking as example of someone who would never survive socialized medicine, despite socialized medicine being the best and only reason Mr. Hawking is still with us.  They are full of shit.  Idiots.  Empty blowhards.  Liars.

The stated goal is to increase efficiency and foster competition to bring down costs and end the chronic, unchecked avarice of the insurance and drug industries.

Every year, insurance company profits go up, premiums go up and the the number of insured goes down.  Remember, one way or another, despite the rampant suffering, it’s you and me who pay for those uninsured whether we like it or not.  Some estimates have the price of health insurance requiring half the median income of Americans within ten years.  Are you ready for $20,000.00 plus premiums?

4) We can’t pay for it.

I will admit, this perhaps their most legitimate protest.  But first, I say to you who would tout it, so what?  Remember Reagan spewing the nonsense of tax cuts to none other than our children during a period of double digit inflation, interest rates and unemployment?  Remember your icon telling us that deficits don’t matter?  So why do you care?  Why all of the sudden are you so ardently in favor of fiscal responsibility?  Why so vehemently concerned about the price our children will pay?  I smell political opportunism.  I smell hypocrisy.  You folks stink of intellectual dishonesty.  You folks reek of goddamn stupidity.

I’m a firm believer that increases in efficiency and a slim tax increase on those who’ve prospered so plenteously the last eight years will go a very long way towards funding a program that will improve the life of virtually every American.  Failing that, let me say this very plainly, we could opt to spend somewhat less than the near trillion dollars we spend each and every year to kill brown people overseas.  It’s just that simple.  Kill less brown people and foment life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, including the brown people.  

The fact is, that without a robust public option to not only cover the 50 million who have fallen through the the cracks, but to obviate the greed and vacuum of compassion of the status quo, any “reform” legislation is antithetical and more than likely worse than nothing at all.

See, it will fail to incentivise competition and nothing will change. The simplest and most comprehensive as well as comprehensible way to do this is expand Medicare appropriately.  A walk in the park.

As to the trigger idea that has surfaced of late, I’m calling bullshit on that.  Ostensibly, it would give insurance companies a few more years to clean up their act before a public option would be implemented.  It won’t work.  The dirty greedy bastards will conduct business as usual at best, daring the powers that be to do what they haven’t been able to do for half a century anyway.  A pretty safe bet on their part.  At worst, they will go for broke, wring us all dry in the time allowed, take the money and run, much like the Bush administration and it’s corporate cronies did with everything including the war, leaving a gigantic mess, nearly beyond repair.  For eight years it was open field running for the plutocracy under Dick-in-Bush.  It’s insane to think they’d behave any differently under the same circumstances.  These people care far less about you than your government and that’s a mouthfull.

The real reason for such virulent opposition to health care reform is that it is literally the first, and therefore most important, domino to be tipped.  Should it lose it’s center of gravity, the horror show that is the great unwashed will be subject to any socialist whimsy we in the majority see fit to impose on their jingoistic, empty headed sloganeering asses.

We may choose to prevent bloody mass murders by over armed nut jobs by pressing for incrementally better gun control.  No, we’re not interested in taking your fucking guns away, even though you dress ridiculously to kill defenseless animals.  We may seek to at least make sure that creationism can’t be taught exclusively, but mandate that evolution at least be offered along side it.  We may just, *gasp*, insist that gay people be treated fairly under all aspects of law, including marriage.

The prerogative to get all bold and righteous will be upon us.

We might legalize the demon weed, in order to tax it, better regulate it and keep it out of the hands of teenagers.  Legalize hemp production and we’ve got oil, paper, textiles, plastics, even high protein food, all renewable in twelve weeks, no pesticides and no detrimental environmental impact whatsoever.  We may push to stop imprisoning all non violent drug offenders because we currently incarcerate more people per capita than any country on earth at $30k per.  You can bet we’ll pursue green industry more aggressively because even if we’re wrong about global warming, and we’re not, there’s nothing wrong with cleaning up the water we all drink and the air we all breath.

Our sun vomits more energy in an hour than we use in a millennium.  Might as well work that shit.  It’s free beyond the technology to collect it.

The whole human race can survive without war.

The churches will have to endure a renewed and vigorous scrutiny.  The message will be, get the hell out of and stay the hell out of politics or your considerable largess will be taxed.  Oh, and maybe, just maybe some real and actual campaign finance reform.  I’m getting carried away here but I hope I’ve scared the living shit out of all you neocons and thoughtless, unpatriotic, yes unpatriotic, dittoheads and obsequies followers of Hannity, Beck and O’Reilly.  Let’s be honest, you’re already scared shitless because a half African American, progressive Democrat is your President.

We know why you show up to town halls armed to the teeth.  It’s because you’re stupid and scared.  We’re not at all impressed.

The opposite also applies, should the first all important domino fail to be moved off it’s axis by the will of the people and a pantywaste full majority Democratic administration, any subsequent metaphorical monoliths will be twice as hard to encourage toward a capitulation to gravity.  We will be left with an administration weaker than that of Jimmy Carter and a better than even chance our next president will be some empty headed dipshit like Sarah Palin or crazy eyed Michele Bachmann (God will have whispered in her ear).

This is the first fight and it’s the most important because of the obvious and enormous precedent.  They know it on a sub-genius level almost as well as we do.  Get involved.  Contact your representatives, sign petitions.  You want change you can believe in?  Get up and get out.  This is no time to fuck around.

Drinks for my friends.

It’s crazy.  DJ AM was found dead in his New York apartment due to an apparent drug overdose.  What’s even crazier, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is.  Or was.  What does that say about me?  I’m 44, a former multi-platinum record producer and I’ve never heard of this guy in my life.  Obviously he was a dj.  So?  High profile romances with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore.  I kinda know who they are but again, so?  Not even a musician, much less a talented one, and he’s dated Nicole Richie who’s famous for what?  Being friends with Paris Hilton?  The adopted daughter of Lionel Richie?

I’m not so clueless as to know there exists an entire dj culture I know nothing about.

I worked with Lionel Richie, hell of a nice guy.

And Mandy Moore.  Never heard of her.  Sold some ten million records and is an actress.  Honestly never heard of her either, couldn’t pick her out of a lineup.  What does this say about me?

My adolescent heroes are by and large, still names on peoples lips, or at least, still familiar to most people eighteen and over.  Journalists, musicians, actors and writers.  Cronkite, Brokaw and Olbermann.  Miles, Eddie, SRV….  Sean Penn, De Niro, John Goodman, Frances McDormand….  Poe, Steinbeck, Capote, Vonnegut….  I could fill pages.

What does it say about us?  About me?  My generation?  Do the people who know who DJ AM is know who the Vice President is and that he spoke at a very important memorial this evening?  Do they know the last scion of Camelot is dead?  Do they even care?

I understand that there’s always been a disconnect between the youth culture and the more sober reality of the adult world.  Often that cleavage has yielded important cultural upheaval.  If American society had just listened harder and paid more attention to our youth in the late sixties, events might have been significantly less disastrous.  The under under 35 demographic played a huge role in last year’s elections.

A force to be reckoned with.  Pure and not easily confused.

I have to admit, beyond my bewilderment, I don’t necessarily have a point.

Well, maybe I do, but it smacks of codgerliness in an embarrassing ‘kids these days’ sort of way.  I mean, these are pivotal times.  The fate of the country certainly hangs in the balance, as does every single individual who has DJ AM on his or her radar.  Is our children learning?

I read Rolling Stone these days because Matt Taibbi has piece inside, otherwise I have no idea who or what they’re talking about.  The new artists are a mystery to me.  Weird.

To be sure, part of the problem is the phenomena of unchecked media saturation.  I grew up with two and a half channels, the newspaper, a 7-11 a half a hour way on a skateboard and a library forty five minutes away on a bike.  No cable, no internet, no cell phones, no video games except Pong and nothing but time.  I responded to this brevity of stimuli, entertainment and information by constructing powerful homemade explosives, listening to records, reading everything I could get my hands on and learning to play the drums.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I had no interest in sports.  I played a little tennis, these days I like to watch boxing and a little basketball, maybe the Superbowl.

Far  more constructive than today’s youth, I’m sure.

I understand that raging, pulsating hormones and prodigious pressure to succeed  pollute common sense and sometimes erode sensibility entirely, but work with me kids.  Whoever DJ AM was, I’m confident he commands no amount of gravity that even approaches the fight for your future that rages in town halls and the corridors of power as you lament the passing of this cultural speck.

What I’m trying to tell you is we need you.  Pay attention.  You helped us elect a man who was by far the best choice.  Your work is not done.  Sorry, it’s just begun.  It is the price you pay for what you already have.  It is what you owe for it.  Sincere earnestness is required to improve it all.  You are the future.  Read and masturbate more.  Reverse that, spank it more often and then turn off the insidious and ubiquitous media and read something.

The engine of youth is quite capable of driving the course of human events in this country when it’s fuel is righteous.

Drinks for my friends.

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

A force, a  human hurricane of kindness.

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

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

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

Teddy.

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

Fools.  Goddamn fools.  Goddamn fools.

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

Whatever God there is, he loves you Johnny.

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

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

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

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

Outclassed.  Way outclassed.

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

Seriously.  Work with me here.

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

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

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

Republicans in particular.

The faithful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fucking lazy if you ask me.  No excuse.

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

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

Take a breath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public option or bust.

Drinks for my friends.

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.

……a constituent asks, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?”  Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He then calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” He closes by saying: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.”  -The Huffington Post

And thus, Barney Frank owns the crazy bitch on national television.

Fucking brilliant.

Barney Frank blows my skirt up.  My favorite gay Jew member of Congress schools us all on how to respond to the paranoid obstructionist right wing nut bags.  Closest thing to tumescence since I woke up this morning with a piss hardon.  I hate waiting for those to go down so I can do my morning business.  Otherwise ya gotta get kinda horizontal; very tricky and often messy.  It does beg the question, why has Obama not said something similar to Senate Republicans?  I for one, think it’s time.

This national debate has long since devolved into a vulgar burlesque.  A cirque de bullshit.  Once again, I find myself embarrassed to be an American.  If only it could be about facts.  If only it could be about exactly how it will be funded as opposed to whether or not abortions will be free, or illegal immigrants will have access, or whether grandma will be euthanized, or whether Medicare, Medicaid or veteran’s care will be compromised.

It’s not about any of that.  Trust me.

How about the efficacy?  About exactly how the middle class and the poor will benefit, as opposed to what makes these fucking idiots think it’s somehow appropriate to show up with goddamn loaded assault rifles to what is obviously intended at least, to be a civil and decorous exchange of information on one of the single most conspicuous issues of our lives as topic.

Who the fuck are these morons?

Ladies and gentlemen, because brains are back, so is ignorance.  Say hello to militias and all the congruent, potentially violent, paranoid consequences.  Word is at least one of the asshats to show up at a town hall recently was a member of the Viper Militia, a 90’s group that saw many of it’s members end up in federal prison.

Oh man, here we go.

There is no action without an equal an opposite reaction.  An intelligent President equals the emergence of weird flat earther, birther, deather, desperate mouth breathers.  There is no free lunch.

He is a good man, our President.  If he’s unable to accomplish what we who elected him expected, who he is and what we hoped for will not be without the tragedy of disappointment.  But it does not change the righteousness of our aspirations and expectations any more than those of the man himself.  It changes nothing.  Man does not live by bread alone and Obama is no island.

This is on us.

Hunter S. Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”  It is time.  Barney Frank, that smart and strange little bastard showed us today.

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain’t got time for that now”  -Talking Heads

Wade in you bitches.

Drinks for my friends.

I like talk radio.

There is no talk radio in Carson City.

That’s not exactly true.  The only kind available is of The Human Shitsmear and Sean Hannity variety.  I wake up every morning to Limbaugh.  Entertaining.  Yup.

I am in awe.  Astounded.  I’m sure it’s a very lucrative gig.  It must be.  It would have to be.  He’s got a damn good radio voice.  He certainly sounds as though he’s bringing an abundance of conviction.  Despite my abject cognizance of what a despicable, hypocritical douchebag this consummate fuckhead is, were I retarded, I might be inclined to succumb to the rancorous enmity he so effortlessly pontificates toward anyone with a triple digit IQ.

Without a doubt, his audience, some twenty million or so, are mouth breathing, snot oozing, Depends wearing, pasty and pallid, gun loving, Jesus worshipping, irrationally fearful dipshits.  Just ordinary folks who would never vote for a black man or a woman because the very idea scares the living shit out of them.

This man, this Human Shitsmear , is not nearly as stupid as his brethren.  He is a master charlatan.  The hoax he perpetuates pollutes the most valuable and vital discourse we engage in.  Always, no matter the issue, Limbaugh and his ilk walk wide with nonsense and lies to distract and obfuscate.  How he sleeps at night is a mystery.

The entire behemoth of far right conservatives and GOP dickheads afford this gold bricker an amount of fealty that makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.  A racist drug addict without any evidence of faith or religious persuasion at all.  Yet they embrace him.  That he’s allowed to play on the national stage as an arbiter of anything is as disgusting as it is confounding.

A champion of idiots.  A prurient propagator of lies, deceit and disinformation for and to the great unwashed earn him a fat check.  Still, how does he sleep?  He’s no idiot.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  Everything that is wrong with America is manifested by this Human Shitsmear.  The worst brand of sociopath.  Without a broadcasting career he would likely be a serial killer.

Or perhaps a very successful used car salesman.

I’ll be switching to a classic rock station.

Drinks for my friends.

Here I am in Carson City Nevada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will tell you this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

Duh.

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

This is rich.

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

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

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

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

Think I’m kidding?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But wait, there’s more, lets listen!

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

Really, what?

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

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

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

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

This asstard is a genius.  Buy his free book.

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

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

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

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

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

Here comes the hard part.  The irony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So be it.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It works both ways.

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

I’m not gonna look this up because it’s stuck in my head.  Some 75% of Americans want health care reform anon.

This is about as popular an issue gets in America, as at least a quarter of us are retarded, misguided, rich or willfully ignorant.  They kill horses don’t they?

I love that phrase.  Willfully ignorant.  I made it up for my own self but it’s a likely coupling so I’m sure I’d read it somewhere, then one day I summoned and it became mine.  Non exclusive of course.

Yet congress and their convoluted committees scramble, and media is so complicit it’s pissing kerosene onto the politics thereof as opposed to shining the spot on the humanity of it.  How important it is for the individual as well as the whole.  An equitable system in the world’s richest country and the only one without it.  The promise of helping the economy and by giving the middle class a little more discretionary cash by simply reducing what it costs to protect a family.

Now that’s a tax cut.

Taxing the rich.  Yep, they that had largess heaped upon by the last administration might now be called upon to put a little paper in the pot instead of nickels and slugs.  Oh my God it’s socialism!  You people are killing me.  Teabaggers and racists.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Big important stuff that is nothing more than a goddamn pinata on the nightly news.  They are creating a degree of drama that is understandable given the short attention span proscenium beneath which they are forced to enact and pontificate, but this shit is important and their looseness with the football is inexcusable.

What the fuck is going on here?  Ratings and revenue.  Our own damn fault at the end of the day.

It never stops being about our own stupidity.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.  The tremendous pressure brought to bear on already spineless elected bureaucrats behind virtually the same proscenium.  Again, the asshats in Congress playing inexcusably loose with the ball.

Four lobbyists for every elected member of the legislative branch.  Three quarters of the people wanting what they don’t understand will be a bloody beatdown on industries from insurance to pharmaceutical.  The big boys besides energy and military industrial.  The Democrats pissing themselves.  A signpost ahead.  No Walking In The Park.

I need to wade in and study the minutiae further but we don’t really have a bill yet.  I was hoping to read a bill.  Maybe it’ll be less substantial than an Elmore Leonard novel.  Hoping for a thickish pamphlet.

This is huge and so are Obama’s balls.  He’s pushing a big pile out there after just sitting down.  They make him work for it.  I confess I have yet to see tonight’s press conference.  Didn’t pay the cable bill.

This Clintons saw their clocks cleaned over just such calumny decades ago and the beast has gained muscle and influence ever since.  The gravity of this specific issue is almost immune to underestimation for anyone who pays attention.  If Obama manages to prevail here, his wizardry will be all but unavoidable.  At his command will be the attention and affection of America’s heart along with her best and brightest.

Should he be bested and lose this contest, the path for him to accomplish any other important thing will be much steeper and traction much harder to come by.  I worry because so much is out of his hands.

This is bigger than you know.  Support your President.  He is showing you courage and fortitude.  Just because you voted for him is no reason for you to think your job is done.  Civic duty and patriotism are an American imperative.

“Walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and rising in my own wierd way”
-Art Alexakis from Everclear’s “Santa Monica”

Drinks for my friends.

Birthers.

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

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

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

Swinging for the fences.

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

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

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

Interesting that journeyman nutbags have issue with these particular nutbags.

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

Sheezus.

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

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

Guns don’t kill people, people do.

Unless there’s an accident.

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

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

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

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

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

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

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

Bullshit.  They stick it wherever they can.

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

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

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

I hate religion.

Drinks for my friends.

“The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.” -1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”

It’s a trite understatement to say he lived a full and long life.  My first memories of Walter Cronkite are from a handsome cherry wood Zenith console television, the smell of hot vacuum tubes and visions of astronaut endeavors in black and white.  The Columbia Broadcast System was the only channel with reliable reception on the outskirts of a very small town.

Rabbit ears but no foil.  We were a class act.  Roger Mudd.  Eric Sevareid.  Walter Cronkite.

CBS, NBC and ABC.

CBS.

The great improviser, who declared the Vietnam war unwinnable, after seeing it himself.  Pretty much ending the presidency of LBJ.  Legitimately speechless when Neil Armstrong declared one small step for man.  Yep, he paused when announcing the death of JFK.  Maybe teared up a little.  Unafraid to cover America’s civil rights struggle.  Back then there was the newspaper and the evening news.  The evening news was Walter Cronkite.  An icon who managed to eclipse Edward R. Murrow as America’s pre-eminent journalist.

Comforting that he wasn’t felled early like Murrow, Jennings or Russert.

But oh, what he must have thought of contemporary journalism.  The bar he hoisted so high, disgraced, disregarded and ultimately ignored.   Charlatans like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh et al. Infotainment and Fox News.   Rampant unfounded celebrity worship.

He came from an era when network bosses weren’t sure if America would tolerate a half an hour of hard news as opposed to fifteen minutes.  They did.  They craved it.   To then witness our attention span shrink and atrophy.  Popular culture force fed to America and the rest of the world, a phenomena that eventually rendered actual news not entertaining enough, no matter it’s truth or content.  Mr. Cronkite was already on the sidelines.  Retired.  How this felt to him must have been devastating.

One could argue that America has gone to shit since Cronkite retired.  Sure seems like the time we really began to lose our way.  I’m thinking Reagan era.  Could have used him then.

His own truthful ideal obsolete.  Forced to witness it decline from there.

Graceful and honest.  A surrogate for the people’s necessary information.  He chose to color outside the lines but once or twice.  When he did, he did so with the best intentions and the result sent magnificent waves through all of America.  He affected change by telling HIS truth.  Otherwise, he did a little bit less.  He told us THE truth.

We ended up with Nixon.

He told us what we needed to know as best he could.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember him quite fondly.  The smells of my father’s aftershave and dinner in the kitchen, waiting for Mr. Cronkite to finish with the day’s events.

Good luck old man.

My hope is that you went gentle into that goodnight.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

That’s rich.

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

That’s just sick.  Disturbing.  Portentous.

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

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

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

Fucking poseurs.

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

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

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

You can’t write this shit.

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Seemed like a kinda profound topic when it first occurred to me.

I want it to be good.  Pleasant.  Everyone gets their fair share and we are allowed to make our own happiness without concern for shelter and food or medicine.  We should have to work for these things for sure.  But, it’s ridiculous given the largess mother earth produces every day that so many go without.  Criminal that those lacking do so only by the hands of them that have so much.  There is a point where sanity ceases to be sane.  A point where it all is so ridiculous.

We are there.

Work with me here.  The last decade has seen the the single most massive redistribution of wealth in the history of history.  The rich got filthy richer and the poor got less and less than shit.  Veterans, handicapped and disabled.  Mentally ill and inner city humans, minorities and laborers.  All of them bound ever harder.  And middle class mouth breathers shriek about socialism and health care like they haven’t been ripped the fuck off by their own for decades.  Absurd.  Stupid.  The richest country ever on the face of this blue marble, afraid to distribute her gargantuan excess equitably enough to provide for the common welfare at hand.  To secure liberty and perhaps even the pursuit of happiness.

They wail and whine about any change at all to a corrupt system that incentivizes greed over service, while their very own pockets are beseeched and invaded by the paper champions they so covet and support.  Them that fall from grace in hypocritical scandal after embarrassing calumny.  Just how stupid are the great unwashed?

Yep, just that frustratingly stupid.  Just like that.  Over and over.  Again and again.  Fucking stupid.

Fools.  “Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?” -DLR

An 8,000 square foot house for two people?  Maybe.  I don’t know.  Why would someone who makes twenty million a year aspire to make two hundred million?  Who cares at that point?  Unless you intend to give it away.  I can see buying a nice car.  I like cars.  I have a penis.

A guy named Horace Walpole said a hundred years ago that life is is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.

I don’t want my government using my money to buy so many fucking bombs and guns and ever more efficacious ways to kill.  WWII was the really the last time we needed all that paraphernalia of death and destruction.  What we need now is clean air and water.  A safe and reliable food supply, a clean well lit place to live, health care and a decent education.  These are not outrageous things to ask from the richest country in the world.

I’m not suggesting that everything be free, rather simply that productive employed citizens be able to afford life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The poor and disadvantaged should at least see a light at the end of a tunnel.  We can’t take care of everyone but we can do a helluva lot better than we are now.

I don’t understand why the great unwashed or so afraid of it.  Health care.  I believe it to be a right.  It shames and sickens me that we are not afforded this merely because all of our money, yes, our money, has been spent on our ability to wreak havoc on the undeserving around the world for the last six decades.  To establish dominance.  To show who’s boss.  So there’s no mistake about who’s boss.  Disgusting.

I love this country and I love it’s people.  Well, some of them anyway.  We all deserve it, whether you’re one of the shit bags who buy into the specious, self serving bullshit fear the Republicans cram down your neck everyday or not.  We’ve all actually earned it.  We deserve it.

Are you aware that there at least four pharmaceutical/medical insurance lobbyists for every member of congress?  The legislative branch of our government is bought and paid for.  Duh.  The thing is this, we the people have the same advantage we’ve always had.   Same potential.  Same power.  They all still need to get elected.  It’s true we’ve seen rampant polling malfeasance, but I’d like to believe that if Iranian brand fuckery happened here we’d be pretty pissed and the revolution would be televised.

I’m not so cynical as to as to imagine the reverse.  Just cynical enough to understand why they do it so slow, so incremental, so deliberate.  The powers that be fear this muscle unflexed.  They know better than most that should the muscle contract, they are fucked.  So they shoot anesthesia directly into it wherever, whenever and however they can.  Enough of you turn the other way for them to get away with it.

It’s pretty fucked up.

Ultimately, the power lives and dies with the people.  I’m not sure how to put a fine enough point on that.  You want health care?  “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  – Smokey Bear

See what I’m saying?  We are in a better position now to get what we want than we have been in a long time.  What we have coming.

Look at it like this, nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and they are obsolete.  It’s razors edge, but right now the game is plus or minus zero.  Even Steven.  Penis withering logic.  So long as no other country or state manages to acquire them.  That would be a game changer.

Anyway.  Massive armies are made obsolete by two things.  The clash of hundreds of thousands of soldiers is an archaic concept.  It will never happen again.  And the advent of nuclear arsenals ensure that as strategy, a hundred thousand on a battlefield is a relic of an idea.  Kind of  two in one bonus logic.

I work hard to bring this to you.

The only realistic way to cure what infects us is a carpet bombing of our defense budget.  The biggest budget for any single concept in the history of man.  Eisenhower warned us of the perils of a military industrial complex and it all came true regardless.  The peak of the pyramid of our plutocracy is breaking this country’s back more than anything else that is actually on the goddamn TV.

I’m cutting to the chase here.  The 800 lb. pound gorilla is us and our ridiculous fantasies of superiority and exclusivity.  America needs to understand that we are no better than anyone else and by that I mean country, state or ethnicity.  If we want a kinder gentler world we need to back off.  This insane figure of over a trillion a year spent for the killing of other people is just not getting us anywhere.  We’re good at it but does nothing but backfire.

I’m no xenophobe but we really need to look inward.  Devote more time to introspection and infrastructure.  Acting as the world’s over armed mall cop has done nothing but cost millions of lives and elevate us to the level of world bully.  The bully they can’t wait to see trip so they can kick and use their sticks and clubs.  Our foreign policy sucked and so did domestic.

Israel, for example, is a billboard for diminishing returns.  A postcard for liability.  Our sugar daddy relationship with Israel is embarrassing.  I don’t doubt they have enough nukes to turn the middle east into glass.  Time for them to pull their shit without the biggest guy on the block backing them up.

For example.

We are stumbling and it’s ugly.

We are the only wealthy country without health care.  We are the wealthiest.  We pay twice as much as most and  what we get kinda sucks.  It’s a joke.

It’s not that simple but it’s a good place to start.

Drinks for my friends.

Robert McNamara shuffled off his mortal coil yesterday.  Ninety three.  Architect of America’s abject folly in Vietnam.  In his time, he was humankind’s most  notorious failure.  He confessed to understanding as early as 1965 that the war was unwinnable.  Without Mac, there’s a chance the world would never have suffered his contemporary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Almost 60,000 dead Americans and some two million dead Vietnamese.  For nothing.  Well north of 4,000 dead Americans and as many as one million dead Iraqis.  For nothing.  A zero sum game with the exception of the enrichment of our military industrial complex.  A serious hole when you look at things as diverse as money and reputation lost.

The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War”, although fascinating, falls limp as a mea culpa.  It serves as more of a rationale for a despondent and tortured man than anything resembling an explanation or apology.  I believe he suffered.  Most people would say it’s lucky to live for ninety three years.  I’ll bet Mac didn’t think so.  He was haunted.  Every day.  He deserved it.

As near as I can see, we’ve learned nothing.  America is still a swamp for this brand of reptile.  Soulless  technocrats in charge of carnage.  Captains Crunch.  Obsolete but we still breed them.  By the hundreds of thousands.  Mac was a far bit smarter than Rummy so he had a way higher body count.  Maybe they’re getting stupider.  Maybe.  But if that’s true, then so are we, because we just got fooled again.

I don’t believe in Heaven any more than I do in Hell.  But if there exists a destination for a soul this guilty, it is my hope he ends up there and that Donny boy Rumsfeld ends his days suffering and tortured just like Mac.

Fuck these guys.  They sucked.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

That would be nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheezus.

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

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

So will the rest of us.

Drinks for my friends.

Michael Jackson.  I’m a fan.  Brilliant pop composer.  Tragic.  Bona fide ElvisBelushiAnnaNicoleChrisFarley syndrome.  I don’t believe he was a pedophile but he sure did some stupid shit.  I can’t but think his persecution and prosecution for child molestation tore at his most human fibers.  It really was his proverbial straw.  It was then  he began to fold.

I’d always kinda liked the music, but only in the periphery.  He sealed the deal with me when he let  Eddie Van Halen tear it up on what would be one of his biggest songs.  Brilliant move.  Gave all us naive white boys an open door.  Brave if you acks me.

He was damaged and Papa Joe is clearly a sociopath.  The face is of evil.  I see an asshole.  What disturbs me the most is the inevitable slow but hot coal lambaste by the media.  Sheezus.  Randi Rhodes and Tom Hartman were all over it on Air America today.  When it gets that deep, it’s because they hafta.

His star was likely the biggest ever seen by earthlings, despite some rather advanced oxidation.

In death as in life, more than anything else, the world’s most accomplished and beleaguered defendant of celebrity obsession.

It’s true that I am of fan, but I’m not overly sympathetic.  At the end of the day, he was the leading architect of his own demise.  I ultimately believe anyone with the aforementioned syndrome knows exactly enough of what they do to understand just exactly what they’re doing.  Add Kurt Cobain to the list.  No piss mocking of the burden of celebrity.  Fame flat out fucks with most people who end up in the light.  It fucked with Michael Jackson as early as five years old.  This end as predictable as always for people with this syndrome.

His affliction was chronic and acute.  You know what they say about walking in a man’s shoes.  Truism.

And yet, the tragedy.  There is family, friends and fans.

In other news, Samuel Wurzelbacher, in his current role as Joe The Plumber, graced us with his prowess for history today by reminding us that our founding father’s knew full well that Socialism and Communism were not at all efficacious.  Kinda hard to figure how he can say that with such conviction as neither concept was to be born for another half century.  He went on to suggest with the certitude of round headed jackass that Senator Chris Dodd should be lynched.  More than once.  Every time I see this nimrod on television I flash back to projectile vomiting as a kid with the flu.  Specifically the aftertaste of a partially digested dinner and the corrosive agents of digestion in my windpipe.

Having said that, I owe Joe.  He’s a bit player in the neoconservative production that caused me to vomit so often that I’m no longer traumatized by it.  Now it’s pretty much ‘Oh Liz Cheney is on, pardon me while I paint this hedge with the contents of my upper gastrointestinal tract’.  He’s a goddamn plebian narcissist.  And a fucking fool for thinking he has something to say.

“The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud” -Tennessee Ernie Ford

I’m sticking to the current events thing.  This just in from an old friend:

Hey Mike,

I’m writing you in confidence, just to let you know what kind of trouble my ex is.

she asked me if I had ever heard of the Powerhouse. I said “NO”,

she then told me that you had told her that I was there the night the bar tender showed you her oral talents. And that we both got service on the bar.

And then she told me that you once had a cocaine problem and it’s back again.

She said that you contacted her directly by email and that Misty is also still in contact with her.

I went and looked at your blog and put two and two together.  = trouble with Capital T

later

****

I respond:

Sheezus Crap!  How’d you end up with this kinda crazy?  I’m spooked.  My stalker and you’re stalker activate their wonder twin powers.  I don’t believe I was ever at the Powerhouse with you.  Blow was never my thing.  It’s merely the wrong direction for me.  Pot and booze are my elective poisons.  I don’t mind a little xanax or vicodin.  This woman is crapping in public nuts.  Obviously when I first engaged her, I had no idea who she was.  I want nothing to do with this.  We are longtime friends ****, let me know what I can do and/or keep me out of it.

Tell the bitch we were complete blow hounds and routinely got our stingers moistened on the bar, in front of the juke, in the bathroom, the alley……..

Take care

Then there’s this:

I was in another medical marijuana dispensary today, the terminal I’d brought acted like it hadn’t been downloaded.  My name was on the box as well as that of the business.  Still had to download it twice, adjust the time and date and finally ended upon a conference call with our technology partner.  Got it done while the staff did bong rips in the back office.  I like stoned folks more than drunk folks, but even the stoned ones are a pain in the ass.  To be fair, I like these people quite a bit.

My one pair of Kenneth Cole dress shoes were fucking killing me.  My feet ached ached to my knees.  What should have taken ten minutes took two hours.  This on top of the dance I’d done with my superiors a few hours earlier to deposit funds in my girlfriends account so she can pay her state bar license, among other things, after she helped me with my rent.  This and a just now phone call telling me she’s still $400 short.  If I had a gun, I’d be tasting steel.

Anybody want Spiderman #22, X-men #94 or an original A/DA flanger?

Drinks for my friends.

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

Names have not been changed to protect a single asshole.

Off we go.

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

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

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

Duh.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a goddamn joke and we are pigs.

God has not even dick to do with it.

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

More than a little pensive.

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

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

This sucks.

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

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

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

Iranians are not pussies.

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

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

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

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

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

Wisdom, safety and support to the people of Iran.

And, um, fuck the Ayatollah.

Drinks for my friends.

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

Puns intended.

So much for change.

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

Enough.

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

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

Blowing up balloons with holes in them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Good evening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All quotes from CNN.com

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

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

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

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

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

That’s big stuff there.

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

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

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

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

Some of you don’t like it.

Tough shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will Pitt rocks.  Like a hurricane.

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

The Republican party is a parody of itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s get on with it.

Drinks for my friends.