Archive for the ‘Reagan’ Category

The far right neocons persist in marginalizing themselves with hate and irrationality, taking with them the entire GOP, Christians, evangelicals, conservatives and moderates.  It’s a spectacle.  A spectacular one.  One buoyed exclusively by vituperative vitriolic invective vehemence.  Pardon me but brainspank literally loves alliteration and it just happens to be entirely true.

I’m trying to tell you it lacks substance entirely.

They’ve abandoned facts and reason completely for fear, anger and hatred.

Republicans used to be wrong, not unreasonably stupid.  Not so unapologetically obtuse.

Misguided perhaps but not insane.

What the fuck happened?  Whatever it was, it took place on my generation’s watch.  The elephantine have always been more racist, a little more greedy, a little too covetous of power and influence, a little too hypocritically pious and a little too lacking in compassion for the plight of the average American. That at least has been my perception.

Over the last two decades however, they’ve morphed into the political equivalent of little Regan from The Exorcist.  Pun firmly and resolutely intended.  Nasty, pea soup projectile vomiting, head spinning, cartoon effigies. When called on their bullshit, they hide behind an ugly wrongheaded nationalism thinly disguised as patriotism.  Naked ugly jingoism.  Ironic the “isms” they so casually toss at the rest of us.

They leave scales like fish wherever they go.  It’s true.

My generation has witnessed the emergence and fortuitous exorbitance of such profound and disgusting dicktards as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck  and Sean Hannity.  Elected representatives like Santorum, Ensign, DeLay, Palin, Dumbya, Grassley, Bachmann, Cantor, Gingrich, Joe Wilson and John Boehner.   Birthers, Deathers, Teabaggers, Tenthers and Twelvers.  Michael Steele, Joe The Plumber, Dick Cheney and Fox fucking news.  Each and every one on this incomplete list of a uniquely American cavalcade of contretemps is a lying, obfuscating, shamelessly and hypocritically unpatriotic goddamn piece of shit.

And they all represent the contemporary conservative movement.  Bear with me, I’m getting at something here.

Worthless, toxic, poisonous entities.  Zero contribution to constructive public discourse.  Absent everything save prurience and avarice.  Giant boulders of sand in a smallish tub of Vaseline.  Kidney stones the size of a thumb in an already inflamed urinal tract.  Ugly and dumb.

Soon, they’ll disavow being mammals.

Take for example the rhetoric over the Nobel.

Some dickhead from Fox, Brian Kilmeade, wonders aloud whether Obama delayed the decision on troop deployment in Afghanistan to better his chances for the Nobel.

The Human Shitsmear announces that the “Nobel Gang have just suicide bombed themselves”.

Some asshat from Redstate said it was part of an “affirmative action quota”.

Glenn Beck thinks the Teabaggers deserve it more.

And The Human Shitsmear says “Something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn’t deserve the award.”

Curiouser and curiouser.  Crazier and crazier.  From shrill and scary, to gangs of banshees on meth.

Thus they further isolate themselves and alienate the humane and honest.  As their bubble shrinks, it’s skin grows thicker.  They hear and see less and less of the real world.  Their shared view, ever more myopic.  They inhabit more and more the CAVE dweller acronym.   To wit: citizens against virtually everything.  Get it?

I could spend all day providing egregious example after outrageous foray into overt racism, lies, baseless smears, deliberate distortions, hypocrisy, mean spirited interpretations………but see, I already have.  I have been for years.  I’m not alone.  Not by far.  They are so very afraid and fear is a great force multiplier.

It’s a fact that the number of Americans who identify themselves as Republican is way down and there’s no end to that atrophy in sight.  Disdain for for their lies and misrepresentations grow.  The last two election cycles have borne this out.  Yet The Human Shitsmear still has about 20 million listeners and Fox yet enjoys better than twice the audience of CNN and MSNBC combined.  I can’t help but be ecstatic about the their self perpetuating and therefore self defeating dynamic, but they stall manage to kick a lot of balls and infect substantial consciousness on the way down.

I believe at least 25% of any given population is incorrigibly stupid.  Roughly the number that still supported Nixon.  Roughly the number that still supports Bush.  It’s a fact.  Show me what you’re workin’ with.

Ah but:

“The White House’s battle with Fox News reached a new high on Sunday, when Communications Director Anita Dunn went on national television to blast Fox as a partisan organization that functions as an appendage to the Republican Party.

“Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” Dunn told CNN, adding, “let’s not pretend [Fox is] a news organization like CNN is.” Dunn also took her beef to The New York Times, saying in a Sunday interview that Fox is “undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House [and] we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” -The Nation

Fuckin’ A.

There are those who would say, among them David Gergen of CNN, that the administration can neither afford to engage the FOX network in the context of so many larger issues at hand, and that it is somehow unseemly or inappropriate.

I admit I understand, and even feel that on certain levels, but still I have to call bullshit on it.  This ain’t your dad’s TV News.  There are no rules, no decorum, it’s all changed and these guys are assholes.  They have no integrity, they’re in it for the money and they won’t quit until it stops paying.  Reptiles pure and plain.  They all spend time on a warm rock every day.

Never has a President been so embattled with zero emphasis on policy, ever.  They never ever even bother to introduce or even recognize actual stated, written positions or policies ever.  Ever.  FOX news and it’s cadre of asshole spokesholes is the worst example of journalism in this or any other civilized country.  They are the suicide bombers of the American Media.  They would never die for their beliefs but they willingly fall on swords of stupidity and blow themselves up with combustible bigotry all day long.  The key difference between them and the real thing is the lack of integrity and courage.  Truth and honesty.  The ‘real thing’ being fanatics with the twisted courage of conviction and journalists with truth as their ideal.  FOX falls no where in between even those two extremes.  At the end of the day, they sacrifice their dignity and self respect.  They wake every morning fresh, to plunge into ignorance, reckless hostility and enmity and lie after fucking lie after fucking lie.

For nothing but the filthy lucre.

I’m completely aware of the potential consequence (s) a protracted street brawl between the White House and an entity like FOX and I am fully in favor of this administration taking them on and cleaning their clock.  When they do their damndest to lie, call them on their irresponsible and misleading shit.  You think the brain trust at FOX can even approach the level of intelligence, wit and wisdom in the White House?  Me either.  It’s not like it will be heavy lifting or time consuming.

I know full well that there are way bigger fish to fry but this has a strategic component to it too.  Although the mouth breathers are a minority, they are a sizable and vocal one, and the most obvious and singular ringmaster is…….well, the Cartoon Network and then FOX.

Again, this ain’t your dad’s TV News.

“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”  -The Talking Heads

I believe it to be an absolute imperative of cunning and tactics.  Bring it.  And just maybe, for once, the Democrats will be seen to have a spine and a pair of testicles.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  Like punching the bully in the mouth so hard he falls down in front of the bus and the Democrats just once, walk up the steps breathing steam, proud and righteous.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Drinks for my friends.

Newsflash for you right wing, neoconservative fear mongering, Red scare foisting douchebags:

The word “czar” is an adaptation by journalists, the mother of which is a necessity for brevity.  It’s merely colloquial.  Contemporary parlance, a euphemism at best for an adviser appointed by the president whomever he or she may be.

The idea that this is some novel and pernicious design on the part of Obama and his administration to foment communism is fucking absurd.  If this douchebaggery were visited upon liberals, we’d recoil in horror,  feeling our intelligence raped and our sensibilities violently maligned.  Then we’d call bullshit on it.  We would do this immediately because we’d understand it to be really fucking stupid.

But you know, the great unwashed just sucks that shit shake through a straw and ponies up for a month’s supply.  How is it so many asstards exist, live and breathe in America?  What kind of people are we growing here?  This is ridiculous.

Dumbya had 47 of them there dastardly czars.  Obama has 32.  The shorthand usage first occurred under Nixon and really came into it’s own under Reagan.  Drug czar, energy czar etc.

And, don’t you know, the communists kicked out the czars.  Look at my thumb, gee you’re dumb.  Not just misdirected, but extraordinarily fucked in the head.

Again, fear and desperation championed by Beckerhead and The Human Shitsmear.  Congratulations  you dolts; a little kool aid with that shit shake?

“Right-wing extremists live in a politically parallel world where everyone they know believes the same as they do. They don’t like established facts so they come armed with their own.” ~ Gary Younge ~

I’m a little worn out these days by circumstances other than politics, but this kind of crap still really chaps my ass.  Again, that such a bullshit meme is allowed to penetrate into the mainstream baffles me.  How and when did people become so goddamn dumb?  Is it something in the water?  Didn’t we manage to get most of the lead out of the air and out of paint on children’s toys?  Insipid, callow and shallow.

Worthless and weak.

Some 25% percent clung to Dumbya ’til the very end.  Even after the shit hit the fan.  To this day, the volume so overwhelming, the proverbial fan is so clogged with gore that a vapor of ozone from it’s failing engine rises above it all to sting any inhale over the heavy pungence of rotting sewage  About the same number stood by Nixon.  It is safe to assume that at least one of every four people one encounters might just be so intellectually challenged that truth is tertiary.  These people don’t understand just how stupid they are and in fact take an ignorantly sanguine pride in and of.

I do the best I can but it’s not good enough.  Cultures bleed.  Dogma is relentless.  Indoctrination is all the sudden ripe and healthy.  Into the mainstream miasma and malaise, racism and bigotry, afford white heat as we are confronted with society’s lowest common denominator marching ignorantly in numbers exaggerated while boiling and seething only to direct blind stupid hate into an otherwise honest and logical national discourse.

We are polluted by this phenomena that has only dared to rear it’s ugly head because for the first time in a decade, the inmates have lost control of the the institution.

What do I do?  It just keeps coming.  Every onslaught more illogical and less rational than the last.  With every 24 hour news cycle it gets ever more ludicrous and uncouth.  Nancy Pelosi stands up and warns us in no uncertain terms that it’s all leading to violence and the retards mock her and accuse her of stoking the very fire of violence she cautions us against because she brought it up.

We show up with fire extinguishers so they bust out with napalm.

We’re not really interested in harming anyone and they are happy to  reduce us all to carbon.  They just don’t care.  We do.  Therein lies the rub.

They are crazy from fear and confusion.  We are worried for humanity, justice, compassion and humane equity.

None of it makes any sense beyond the fact that they are blind shithouse stupid.  You go Patty.

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.

Fuck that shit.  CHRISTIAN TERRORISM.

Timothy McVeigh was a domestic terrorist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To quote Snoop: “Fuck Bill O’Reilly.”

Man I hate these guys.

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

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

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

Assholes.

Man I hate these guys.

Drinks for my friends.

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

ITEM ONE:

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

Methinks not.

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

I love this shit.

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

These people are idiots.

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

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

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

ITEM TWO:

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

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

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

Fuck me running.

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

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

ITEM THREE:

Al Franken.

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

This shit is ridiculous.

Drinks for my friends.

We are barely thirty days in and already a legion of Guy Smiley conservatives are pinning the tail of the demise of America on Obama, our shiniest donkey. Our best hope.

They piss and moan about the deficit like they didn’t oversee the most gargantuan one in world history. Like they didn’t inherit a massive surplus. See kids, the first rule of business is you have to spend money to make it. You guys spent it foolishly. Now, we need to spend more money because you assholes did it wrong. Shut up. This is your fault. You’ve left us no choice. Shut up.

Bill Clinton wasn’t Jesus but he was Elvis.

Wall street is tanking. Frightening indeed. World markets are falling towards the most spectacular faceplant we may ever see. It sucks. It’s bad.

But, I’m not willing to let the most concentrated army of irresponsible greedy speculators be some sort of barometer for our economic future. They surf economic waves, they straddle inflated bubbles. They knew housing was gonna pop like a greasy zit. Of course they’re not happy with current stimulus effort because it’s not about them. At least not in the short term. They will have to wait. Every damn one of them has let the phrase ‘long term thinking’ escape their pie hole. Time for some of your own serum you fools.

If you’re looking to the stock market as any indicator at all about this administration’s potential for edible bacon, you’re a damn fool.

They love to gripe about tax increases. They never even bother to mention that damn near every workaday American will see their tax burden reduced and that any increase will only be for the top one percent. One percent that owns eighty percent of this country’s money and assets. We’re talking about ninety five percent of us who will spend that money because we need to as opposed to the richest folks on the planet that will never experience the onus of spending a single dime more on anything. When the bottom line sags, they cut jobs. They tip less. They trim their own nose hair. Sometimes, they fold their own socks.

This trickle down economic theory hatched by conservative birdbrain/icon Reagan has done nothing but shovel fuel into the engines of the ridiculously wealthy to steam us further and faster towards an endogamous caste system. We’re already a plutocracy. It’s a really bad idea that has been exclusively antithetical to the American Dream of economic equality and social parity.

Trickle Down Economics is an anathema to the American Middle class. After almost forty uninterrupted years of said philosophy, the once strong back of the American middle class is all but broken. It’s never been harder to simply work for a living wage.

They would have us believe that any and all spending on infrastructure is pork. Nevermind that everything from electrical grids to bridges and hospitals are crumbling like dirt clods in the hands of fourth graders in an arid desert. Nevermind that these projects will create jobs immediately that cannot be outsourced. Nevermind the dignity and self respect it will restore to men and women that want nothing more than a job that contributes in a tangible way to their own communities and pays the bills.

Nevermind FDR and The New Deal.

What about this doesn’t make sense to you greedy bastards?

Drinks for my friends.

Oil and pot. One syllable, three letters each. What’s the only difference? One’s legal and one’s not. People die, get kidnapped and beheaded at the behest of both. A simple product. A commodity. The bad people get rich either way. The terrorists are just as sexy.

Among the most dangerous and foolish of games.

The prison industrial complex. Mexican warlords. Where the money goes has not changed since Nixon. The only significant change has been the amount of money. Can you say exponential? The gleaming city is underwater. The levees have failed. The cash overflows. America’s Drug War is the second or third stupidest thing we’ve ever done. After slavery, Viet Nam and Iraq.

It may be the second or third most expensive.

Then there was The Pet Rock, The Osmonds and Spam as meat.

Lives lost and innocent imprisoned in numbers staggering and shameful. Pigs at the trough, persecuting, prosecuting and killing their own while they horde the filthy lucre. You want terrorism? It’s on your southern border and it’s blowing the fuck up. Terror not mutually exclusive with the North American continent anymore.

It’s state sponsored, by your state, by the US of A. As we speak, it spills over. Civilians slaughtered. Juarez, Tijuana, El Paso and San Diego. Every American city bends and groans under the weight of our archaic policies and a draconian incarceration non-solution.

Enforce, enforce, enforce.

We learned in the thirties that prohibition is wrongheaded and the furthest thing from efficacious mankind could possibly muster. Stupid then, stupid now. It gave rise to a brand of crime we came to call ‘organized’. I wonder why we called it that. Seems kinda non-nefarious. A non sequitur. What it is today, is bad news. Organized crime like this, is American made. Homegrown like Jazz and The Blues. Just like a gorgeous and unique art form, we are worldwide with the violence and the ignorance.

I worry about my parents. They winter in Yuma. They have the world’s best insurance but they still cross the border to save money on a few things.

This is where we are. This is what we’ve allowed to happen. It’s sick. The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. The conversation with my mother will be about their safety on the border, because of The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. Because they could be killed on a lazy Sunday.

This is bullshit. We need to shut this nonsense down. We reap what we have sown. Did you know Reagan dealt drugs? He also dealt arms to folks we’d all decided as a country we couldn’t do business with because they were brown and kinda socialist. Or was it the other way around? I forget.

Even in my world the clouds part.

Then there’s Our Man’s choice for Drug Czar (head of the ONDCP), Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. I don’t know much about this guy yet but he looks to be pretty progressive. Alternet calls him “a relatively enlightened cop.” Seattle is goddamn liberal. They’ve lowered marijuana as an enforcement priority and have needle exchange.

Maybe there’s potential.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed he will not be pursuing DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics. A policy shift that’s precisely 180 degrees out from the previous administration. It’s a waste of time and money and it foments distrust and fear. Smart move. Makes me smile.

Pretty big deal the aggregate of these issues alone. The departure they represent, despite them not being secondary or even tertiary to the electorate these days, it’s awesome. Forgive me but it is. It reveals a compassion and pragmatism people won’t recognize because it’s been so long since they’ve seen it.

Trust me, this is big.

My sincere hope is that it’s harbinger of things to come.

It he tells us he’s closing Gitmo, ending torture and the war in Iraq. Gonna wind down the defense budget a little, spend lots on infrastructure, healthcare and education. He seems to understand this is a long term deal. This is not your father’s President. His short game looks good too. Aggressive and decisive. Perhaps we should do something to revive the patient as opposed to speculating ad nauseum over what will be it’s demise.

If we could just stop spending money to kill people or be able to kill them better in the future. Not forever. Maybe for a few years. You know, a three year moratorium would just about get us out of this mess. It could work pretty well in the short term.

End the drug war, stop killing folks. Stop putting them in jail. Let the masses self medicate and get off your asses and allow America to cultivate hemp. Oil, nutrition and textiles in a crop requiring no pesticides that can be turned around every twelve to sixteen weeks. It’s illegal because it scared the shit out of Hearst (paper) and Rockefeller (oil) back in the thirties.

Good green bud has Pfizer horrified and vomiting.

Life is not a game and we’re not necessarily here to compete all the time. But when people succumb, when they become overly cynical and bitter. They have lost. They are losers on the human stage. They may succeed in some ways, but when they lose in important ways, nobody gives a damn.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

The Republicans are pepper.

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

Ladies and gentlemen we have a blog title.

I gotta stop buying those Cheladas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

There is a kind of brutal asymmetry about the death of Jesse Helms today, the same day that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shucked their coils mortal in 1826. The birth of our once great country. A campaign season with the first ever African American leading in polls for President.

Happy Fourth of July.

Likely the best thing to be said of him, he had the courage of his convictions. He was consistent. Still, I wouldn’t cross a country road to piss on his grave. Mr. Helms was an evil bigot.

He opposed Martin Luther King Day in 1983.

“Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of “Dixie” on a Capitol elevator.

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about “the good life” during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16″

“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” -From a campaign ad Helms was involved in creating.

Another ad featured photographs Helms doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (FAIR 2001-09-01, The News and Observer 2001-08-26)

A former Democrat, Helms straddled the Republican expoitation of racial division in the south to fuel his own success.

He consistently opposed gay rights. Although he did once describe the genitalia of Strom Thurmond as “gorgeous” and a “splenderous tract of man flesh”. This, despite the fact that Thurman’s unit had seen battle in an African American vagina.

He was instrumental in the ascendency of Ronald Reagan and therefore a major player in the birth of contemporary conservatism. Neoconservatism. The beginning of what may be the demise of our republic.

Jesse Helms was an asshole, I regret that I have but one toast to hoist in celebration of his dirt nap.

Drinks for my friends.

Chelsea is hot.

I really think so.

“I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so” – The Vapors.

Anyway.

They did swing hard. Some good stuff. We like a good dustup between mostly like and right minded people.

Obama does very well. He’s taller and tends to throw his punches down. He really is impressive.

Hills takes punches and throws uppercuts like Roberto Duran. She is tough and fascinating.

I do believe Obama’s remarks about Reagan are what they are. His point was that Reagan was a transformative president, no value placed, good or bad.

I think he was alluding to Ronnie being able to so effectively snow so many rednecks and the great unwashed. See, Reagan sucked and he was, in the contemporary tradition of Republican presidents, an absolute out of touch dipshit.

Ronald Reagan was a human hurricane for the have nots. Let me be clear here; Reagan fucking sucked.

Russia was broken on the backs of our middle class and poor. And the rich began to get richer.

Reaganomics. Trickle down. Shut the fuck up. He was an actor, and not a great one by any stretch.

Ok, sorry.

Edwards is a class act. My mother was a delegate in the Nevada caucuses and she was there for Edwards. I agree with her. He is the best of the three. She wasn’t able to make it happen. He got his “butt kicked”.

I would like to see Edwards prevail in South Carolina. A little leveling of the field would be healthy and his is a good voice in this contest. The man has integrity.

To one degree or another, I like them all. It’s not perfect, but we are lucky. This is an excellent group. Intelligent and passionate.

Then there is the big picture. The entertainment value. Not since the last time a diminutive jug eared paste eater waded in (Perot/Kucinich), has the contest for leader of the free world been so compelling.

Sometimes I wax pessimistic and realize that what we have here is the best of a worse case scenario. Our country is so broken. I understand that not one of these three may be capable or even desirous of the profound shift we absolutely need.

America is in a very bad way. Yet, despite which one prevails, it is a long step in the right direction. I really can’t afford to think about whether any one of them can do enough. Probably not.

But you know, small steps?

Drinks for my friends.