Archive for the ‘Ted Kennedy’ Category

So, the Democrats run a lame candidate for Senate in Massachusetts while turning their backs on a nest of Republican snakes.  So, the Republicans simply cater to the lowest common denominator.

Meet Scott Brown.

He posed.  Hairspray on an empty corn cob.  He’s a goddamn lead singer.  How new are you?  Look at my thumb, gee you’re dumb.

Maybe, just maybe if he wasn’t up against cardboard.

I should be angry.  I suppose I am.  Should I be angry at Republicans for being such ignorant, obstructionist asstards, or Democrats for being such paper tiger pantywaste losers?  I feel like being confused, but I’m not.  What I am is disgusted.

“The Republicans are playing chess and the Dems are in the nurses office because, once again, they glued their balls to their thighs.” – Jon Stewart.

Teddy Kennedy held this office for forty seven years.  The lion of the Senate.  I admired Ted Kennedy.  Comity no longer exists anywhere in the Senate.  It went from solid to gas.  The way of the Dodo.  What we have here, is piss all over his grave, equal parts Democrat and Republican.  It will freeze and eventually evaporate come spring.  It will still stink for summers to come.  Them with more mild sensibilities and weaker constitutions will wonder if the reek is merely rotting vegetation.  The dying foliage of deciduous urban landscaping.   Only in the fall.

You and I, along with the forest rodents will understand it to be the odor of personal weakness and the strength of filthy lucre.

And the shit of urban rodents.

No equitable, compassionate health care for the richest nation ever.  Health care is a right, not a privilege.  Yet this crap persists to blow in our faces.  Tens of thousands die here every year because of greed and cowardice and/or no health care at all.  Then there’s them that go broke.  Hundreds of thousands dead in Haiti, not because of an earthquake, but because of decades of poverty and neglect.  Wait til you hear how complicit we’ve been.  Hundreds and thousands die every month in the various wars we conduct.  Plenty of funding there, but no conscience.

We are getting sucker punched every morning out of bed.

I need to remind you that by shaving one tenth off our budget for the military industrial complex, we’d all have health care and groceries forever. Higher education would be free.  No potholes.  No collapsing bridges.  We’d all have enough for the fruit of the month club.  We’d be excited about the pears.

Pete Townshend once said something about ending The Who before they became parodies of themselves.  He was anxious for them not to become a joke.  It’s too late for America.

Since when did a party have to have 60 out of 100 votes in the Senate to scratch their own balls?  How is it that after barely a year under a new administration, a twisted referendum is allowed to hold sway in state like Massachusetts?

This is profoundly and spectacularly ridiculous.

I’m not sure I give a mad fuck.  The only option now is to ram the diseased phallus that is the Senate health care bill down the blistered, milky, puss oozing upper gastrointestinal tract of the house.  It’s a shitty bill.  A mandate to buy but no mechanism for controlling cost or avarice.  A non starter for me.

I’m having a hell of a time giving a shit.  Whatever happened to hope and change?  Does anyone remember laughter?

I am disgusted.  I’m romancing apathy.  Sure, there’s been progress, but on such an infinitesimally incremental level that I’m struggling with what appears to be a wish sandwich.

“Have you ever heard of a wish sandwich? A wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you, hee hee hee, wish you had some meat.”  -The Chips 1956

This really is stupid.

You give me twenty, maybe twenty five bucks, I’ll make you the best salad you’ve ever had.  I have skills.

Drinks for my friends.

What the hell?

A thoroughly embrocated, hallowed chair and institution of itself, was became the Senate seat occupied by Mr. Kennedy for decades until his death.

Now threatened by an “independent” Republican goddamn teabagger.  I stumble over the last sentence more than once because it sounds so dirty.

In Massachusetts for fucks sake.  He posed nude in Cosmo for crying out loud.  Show me a politician with some juice and I’ll show you a lead singer wannabe.  Even Ashcroft had pipes but he was ugly, stupid and mostly evil.

A bitch.  A diva……

A frustrated cross dresser like Guiliani.

Scott Brown claimed to not know about the tea party movement but took their money after attending a fund raiser this very month.  He supports Roe v. Wade as “the law of the land” but pledges to be the the 41st vote against virtually any health care reform.  He says he drives a truck with over 200,00 thousand miles but is by any contemporary standard, at least somewhat wealthy.  What and who exactly is this guy?

According to his own website he favors lower taxes.  Forgive me, but a Republican never says that without meaning lowering taxes on the rich and to hell with the rest of us.  Trickle Down Economics is pure crap and anyone in favor of it is either ignorant or not a friend of the middle class.  The middle class used to be our moral, ethical and intellectual ballast.

Now that it’s in atrophy, we’re having an identity crisis see.

“Israel has made enormous sacrifices in an attempt to secure peace – including unilateral withdrawal from Gaza”  -from Scott Brown’s campaign website.  And yes, that is bullshit.

What we do know is that a health care bill is on a very steep hill if we lose this seat.

I’m having a tough time giving a mad fuck because the last one out of the Senate was prime swampland.  No public option but a mandate to buy with fines if you don’t.  Fines that go directly to the insurance companies.  There’s more but that’s enough.  Blow me.

Other than that, I’m real worried about Sarah being a contributor to FOX tie me to the bedpost News.  Not.

I gotta find that O’Reilly interview.  This shit is gonna be great.  What I’ve seen is already good.  Pray she doesn’t wig to early because the longer it goes on the more spectacular the flame out.  Don’t be afraid.  Embrace the Palin.  Encourage her celebrity.  Don’t buy any of her books though.  Make sure you don’t end up providing her with a dime.

The best part of this circus is about to be free.  Jon Stewart and the like are pants shittingly gleeful.

Cirque du Palin.

It works if you make the ‘a’ long……like Pawlin……accent second syllable.

Make the ‘a’ long….see?

Another thing that is bothering me still:  How much faster our black President responded to an international disaster of enormous magnitude than did our white president to a domestic disaster that was allowed to live up to most of it’s potential as a direct consequence of neglect and egregious incompetence.  Maybe it’s genetic.  Dudes from Hawaii with big ears are smarter.  Dudes from Texas by way of Connecticut with big ears are charismatically retarded.

It’s not racial at all.  Despite Limbaugh, The Human Shitsmear’s assertions that our current President has hopped and skipped to because of the color of your average Haitan’s skin.  Without a nod to any other megalomaniac with media access, it’s not racial at all.  Don’t forget that.

Understand, Rush Limbaugh is a racist.  For those about to rock, we salute you.  He’s a turd in the punchbowl.  He’s a bloviating, pontificating, make shit up as he goes, racist, bigot fucktard that I would debate or play chess with or both in a heartbeat so I could pull his limbs from his body after spanking his brain with the brick of my own.

Sincere political debate pivots on policy and reason and a modicum of comity.  That there’s a dialog here about Haiti beyond what to do, is proof that the conversation is in the woods.  Proof that a lot of us still aren’t paying attention.  Let me say this, 25% of Americans are incurably stupid.  This is a long standing theory of mine that consistently bears itself out.  Proof can be had on this very show.  It will now be known as “The 1/4 Paradigm”.  You will think of it often as one of every four people you meet is a dumbass.

That’s all you need to know.

Drinks for my friends.

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

Spruce Goose bitches.

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

Good job everybody.

Jackasses.

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

I really hate you guys.

Did I say that or just think it out loud?

Is there a difference?

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

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

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

This party might just might be over.

Have you no shame?  No decency?

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

Sick.  Fucking sick.  Pun intended.

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

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

Cigars and cognac all around.

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

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

Some tomato soup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It makes fucking sense.

At least pot is legal in LA.

Drinks for my friends.

He spoke clearly.  With confidence and conviction.

Righteous ferocity.

“Ours is not the first generation to understand the dire need for health reform. And I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

No more Rope-a-dope boys and girls.  Ha.

“We did not come here to fear the future; we came here to shape it.”

“The danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little”

“If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”

“But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the
calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve
it.”

As for the “Deathers”:

“Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.”

And the Republicans.  The Fucking Republicans like Boehner and Cantor and McConnell and Hatch, who sat seething and smirking with turds in their mouths.  Transparent and stupid.  Cantor texting.  What a dick.  The whiplash of your arrogance is on the way.  Half of you will be gone come 2010.  I can’t wait.

Republican Joe Wilson actually shouted “You lie” while Obama assured us that reform will not cover illegal immigrants.  Fucktard.  Our Man flashed anger and moved on without missing a beat.  A superhuman burst of restraint, composure and civility.  A class act Our Man.  Not less than brilliant in the face of callow contemptible disrespect directed at a man who has earned and deserves nothing but respect.  He didn’t miss a beat, wasn’t rattled or even distracted.  We are lucky to have this man leading our country.  Forgive my gushing, but that brief moment reinforced everything I admire about our president.

At the end of the day, Joe Wilson did us all a favor by exposing what jackasses the contemporary GOP are.  Thanks Joe, you’re still an asshole, but I thank you for being one.

He stared down those Republicans.  Watch it.  When he looks to the right on television he’s looking to his left in the chamber.  The irony of where Republicans sit has never been lost on me.  Observe the steel of his countenance and the fire in his eyes.  He was picking them out and staring them down individually.  One by one.  The unspoken question, are you reptiles or humans?  His words and his gestures signaled unequivocally that the blatant ridiculous fuckery is over.

You know Fox news carried some reality show instead of the speech.

Whatever.

He delivered unambiguous  and vigorous support for a public option with some amount of caveat.  We’ll have to wait and see but I welcome the predilection.

Then Charles Boustany appeared on my screen and lied.  The same boilerplate, fear based bullshit.  He spoke as though he hadn’t heard the speech the president had just given.  Actually, given logistical constraints, he obviously hadn’t.  It was a joke sans punchline.  Pathetic, out of touch and he looked a fool as much as Jindal did.  How do they get these poor bastards to do this?

The GOP are famous for exploiting the stupid, often of late towards their own demise.

The Republican party has never looked more like a bunch of dickheads than they did tonight.  They have marginalized themselves with help of an unforeseen catalyst of Barack Obama’s expert political judo.

I have been frustrated for months now at the political calculus from the White House.  The passive taking of blow after blow on the ropes like some cheesy boxing movie.  I was disheartened and becoming bewildered.  Now I wonder if he really did know what he was doing the entire time.  Let them swing and shout, taunt and lie until they trod heavily on their own pudenda and cease to lay leather at all on anything that matters.

Masterful.

He may just be that good.

Wow.

Can one speech, even if before the entire congress and a national television audience (except Fox), function as a game changer for such a momentous and hotly contested concern?  The question on the lips of almost every progressive in America since it was announced.  We shall see.  It is more than incumbent on me however,  to point out that this is no ordinary president.  By that I mean he is extraordinary.  He did exceptionally well tonight.  Tone, nuance, sincerity and an overt sinewy rigor were all on display.

Impressive and I’m impressed.  The character of our country.  The letter from Teddy Kennedy.  He framed it earnestly and effectively as a moral imperative and I have no reservation in declaring him to be absolutely right about that.  Invoking Teddy was an appropriate, as well as emotional homage to a man who declared this the cause of his life.

Obama has once again acquitted himself a very smart man.  A very sensitive man.  An incredibly capable man.  Deft and adroit and not to be underestimated.

Awesome.

He came off the ropes to swing hard and with precision.  An expert boxer against a reckless and stupid brawler.  They retire to their respective corners, our man fresh and with lightning in his eyes and fists furious.  The brawler with legs of rubber, pukes his bloody mouthpiece, head swimming eyes confused as his crew goes to work and dreading the bell.

Todd Westergard, you may have been correct sir.

Show us this until it’s done Mr. President and we are golden.

Well done Mr. President.  Very well done.

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.

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.

You know, gently, when a foot slips from beneath the sheets?

Change is inevitable. Unavoidable. Hard.

I left a job I’d been at for almost a decade. I had to. I hear they replaced me with a ringer. That’s good.

Some days are productive and sometimes I never shuck my robe. I try to always brush my teeth. And write. My robe stinks.

Obama parked a dozen balls tonight with a Gibson Flying V plugged into a wall of Marshall Amps. Iowa. People with televisions heard it all over the world. The grace he exhibited when talking about the pantsuit was mesmerizing. It’s already been said and it will continue, yet I must; Barack Obama is as fine an orator as seen for generations. If he means what he says, and I believe he does, he will be the finest President in generations.

I try not to fire up the plasma too early. It’s been warm and she runs hot. It’s an anesthesia I need to monitor the consumption of anyway.

Bad news about Teddy huh?

My mother is so cool. She packed a grocery bag full of food for our train ride back from Yuma. Chicken salad sandwiches with fresh lettuce, water, juice, stawberry pie with an Oreo crust, rhubarb cake and potato chips.

We hung out under the awning of a palatial coach and a bigger thing on a slab with a structure of steel and a skin of white aluminium siding. We grilled and ate. We cruised the neighborhood in a Subaru to look at my uncle’s properties and where their friends live. Cocktailed and watched election returns. We drank good wine with stellar pork chops and a fantastic corn casserole. We drank better wine with a giant tin of Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese and Cesar salad.

There’s a bay on the side with a sliding platform. It has a refrigerator full of beer and sodas as well as my brand of gin. There’s satellite tv.

A three legged black lab named Billy who never met a man she didn’t like. She’s about as sweet as a domesticated animal gets. I think of her as Tripod. She enjoys licking and tug of war with toys.

Maybe we’re not supposed to live as long. After the age of fifteen or sixteen, how pure can your soul be?

We all lost consciousness. The train was to leave Yuma at 4:15 a.m. She must have been up for the better part of an hour. Everything in individual ziplocks or perfectly sized tupperware packed neatly into a grocery sack with a pristinely folded top. I have to tell you, that was the least of her kindness. My mother is very much the matriarch. She takes it seriously. She does whatever she can possibly do to help her children, her husband, her brothers and sisters and their children.

She will cook, clean, do laundry and ride a white horse over the horizon waving a broadsword.

She decides where everyone sits in the car.

I had a scrape with the law twenty years ago and could very well have ended up in prison for possession. She bailed me out of jail, took me home for a shower and change of clothes and we got down to business. Within a few hours and after a pleasant meeting with a very prominent attorney, my worries were over.

Too bad it made the front page.

My old man had that paper in his hand when he hugged me and told me he’d done a lot worse. My folks rock.

My mother is whip smart. An intellectual without the hubris of her son. She and my father are ardent NASCAR fans. Democrats who pay attention. She can cook. All her sisters can cook. Her brothers are awesome whackjobs. She comes from a family of eleven, all good people.

The in-laws are somehow crazier. Just about every man or woman selected by my mother and her brothers and sisters is arguably even crazier than his or her mate. Family reunions are an absolute blast. The amount of chaos is impressive.

By the way, my sister can really cook. I mean really.

She once showed up at my house with her entire family for Thanksgiving. They drove five hundred miles on a few days notice with an entirely prepared Thanksgiving meal save for the turkey languishing in brine.

In my family, if you get sick, you won’t spend a day alone in the hospital. If you’re down and out, someone will take you in and help you find a job. Be a shithead, and all will be forgiven.

These are my people.

It’s intimidating. I think I might be the lamest of the bunch.

Drinks for my friends.

Those of you that have been reading me for awhile, may recall that my take on the last State of The Union was titled “No babies in garbage disposals”. A not so subtle nod towards the populist pablum. Tonight was more of the same.

He still insisted on mispronouncing ‘nuclear’ six or seven times and stubbornly whipped the deceased equine carcass of social security, or “entitlements” in the euphemistic vernacular of the neocons. Fuck that. Social Security is not an entitlement. We pay in when we are young, it pays out when we are old.

More pointless and baseless saber rattling at Iran. Way Too many Democrats hauling asses out of seats for this particular round of applause. Sheezus.

I feel like an eight year old. I was bored and really, I just don’t give a mad fuck what Dumbya has to say anymore. He may still be dangerous, but his irrelavance metastasizes by the hour.

I found more intrinsic entertainment in the shifts of smirk Cheney wore behind Dumbya’s right shoulder. I was amused by the Republican lockstep of standing ovations.

C’mon you pinheads, you’ve got be fucking kidding me.

Perhaps it’s irresponsible and lazy, but to counter the address point by point would be futile and didactic. If you don’t realize how full of shit he is by now, you never will. Like I said, I just don’t care.

On a far more interesting note, Obama collected the endorsement of Senator Ted Kennedy as well as a glowing op-ed in the New York Times yesterday titled “A President Like My Father” written by Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, in case you didn’t know. Now this, is heavy.

The momentum that Obama is gathering is formidable. Although still very early, it is of a brand that could thwart the Clinton Machine. Wow. A certain degree of credit goes to Barack himself. He’s demonstrated a not so simple grace in allowing the Clintons to make themselves look bad. Zen judo. Awesome.

Time to take a walk John. Don’t go too far.

Goddamn Super Tuesday will roar at us I hope.

Drinks for my friends.