Archive for the ‘Television’ Category

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

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

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

CBS, NBC and ABC.

CBS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We ended up with Nixon.

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

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

Good luck old man.

My hope is that you went gentle into that goodnight.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

He’s a primate at best.

His eyes are too close together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Cable is out. Chose not to pay the bill.

What people fail to understand is that Obama cannot afford to even address this issue of guns, to do so would ignite an already hot pile of insanity. These fucks, these crazy zealots, are lying in a puddle of their own excrement waiting for Obama to utter the words “gun control”. It will be an excuse for them to snap.

Patient but dumb.

Wouldn’t be prudent.

Most of you are just stupid enough to not understand how dangerous you are. It really bugs me.

Sorry boys and girls. The issue of guns will see no play this season. Understandably so methinks.

Unless assholes keep shooting shit up. Give it a rest already. I refuse to to fear this.

I got comic books on the brain. I bought a thousand bags & boards and five long boxes the other day. For the last three days I’ve bagged and boarded. Surreal. Amazing nostalgia. I adore comic book art. My collection is perfectly preserved. Exactly the way I left it. Beat up books are still beat up books, but pristine ones are still pristine.

Crazy. I touch each one as I place it on a board and manuever it into a bag and I remember reading them, almost everyone of them stirs something in my head and there’s over a thousand. Damn. They were gathered with care as well as abandon. As I rember them, I understand they have informed me as much as they are going to.

They are everywhere in my apartment now. Leaning or stacked, grouped by title. Huge swaths of Ironman, Spiderman, The X-Men, Daredevil, Avengers, Fantastic Four……The Flash, Superman, Batman, The Justice League……….Star Trek, Adam 12, Richey Rich, Zoro and Archie……Boris Karloff, Ripley’s……….Swamp Thing, an assload of MAD magazines, Heavy Metal, Conan and Epic.

An amazing historical capsule. Late sixties to early eighties. The breadth and diversity of my collection affords me permission to brag and be proud because I was a child when I assembled it.

My folks are heros for packing them, storing them and delivering them to me when I bought my first house.

The way they smell and the way they look and my absolute romance with them when I barely had opinion about anything. I began to obsess when I was twelve. I was twelve.

John Byrne, Jim Starlin, Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor Smith, Frank Miller…… Jack Kirby

Life is so sticky I feel the need for a bath about every hour. Sign of the gypsy queen. As thick as an old Supertramp record.

Everything I ever did you could hear the fucking kick drum.

The kick drum is lichen on a boulder.

When I was a kid there was lichen on boulders.

Primus grooves way hard.

My sincere advice to you is to Sail the Seas of Cheese and clean your house.

A little Tommy The Cat will cure whatever ails ya. I’m also a spokesperson for Alka Seltzer and fragrant pinecones.

Anyway, today Michele “We’re Running Out Of Rich People In This Country” Bachman (R-MN), by far the biggest assclown in the US House of Represenatives, gracelessly attempted to infer that flu epidemics somehow only occur under Democratic administrations. See if you can follow her logic:

“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter…….” -Huffington Post

The Human Shitsmear had this to say:
“[E]verywhere Obama is spreading Obamaism, there is a deadly disease taking place, either in the TARP community or in the newspaper business … Obama goes to Mexico — they have an earthquake. Obama goes to Mexico — get pig flu,” -wowwowwow.com

Awesome. Do the math. You’ve got an evil humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winning philanthropist, and our current President, a nefarious community organizer and two, count ’em two, outbreaks of flu related to pigs of all things. Oh, and, they’re both Democrats. I bet they used the same lab. It’s probably deep in the basement of some Red Cross shelter or maybe a Salvation Army thrift store.

Sheezus! That’s iron clad. A slam goddamn dunk! But wait. The original swine flu epidemic occured under Ford. I feel dizzy. I think I smell yellowcake uranium……my vision is clouded by pockmarks not unlike those littering the visage of George Tenet.

In late March 1976, President Gerald Ford emerged from a meeting with 27 health advisers with an ambitious request: “I am asking every man, woman and child in the country to get an inoculation this fall.” -dumpbachman.blogspot.com

It’s fair to say I love to loathe this woman. I adore her stupidity. I covet her retardation.

Why, just the other day she deigned to lecture Congress about Carbon Dioxide. She posited over and over that it’s a natural gas. She’s right about that but then so is the methane in my flatulence. What’s the point? She’s sure it can’t be bad for us because it’s from “nature”. She goes on to inform the esteemed deliberative body that there exists not a singly study proving this natural gas is harmful to humans. Five syllables Michele, asphyxiation.

She gives truth to the concept of failing upward:

In response to a question from host Chris Matthews, Bachmann said on the Oct. 17 show that she was “very concerned” that Obama “may have anti-American views” and that the news media should investigate the views of members of Congress. -Miami Herald

Hello McCarthy.

Then there’s Arlen Spector. Booya! I’ve always thought this guy to be inconsistent but obviously of his own mind. He confuses though not predictably. Maybe he actually has his own mind. Just can’t tell with these damn white collar tweekers.

Franken will get to sit and Spector makes sixty. A nice number. The Democrats, should they choose to act in concert, will have a majority immune to fillibuster. It’s something they rarely do regardless of whether they’re formidable or not. I’m not about a lockstep majority in the Senate but we need to be able to swing haymakers and roundhouses. Change won’t take unless we land some.

Homogeny is not a given among the jackasses.

Whatever. What these two stories point to is serious structural damage in the GOP. Take Mehgan McCain’s remarks:
“Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy, and ” Later, she wrote: “I can’t shake the fact that Karl Rove is following me-it can be creepy. So watch out.” and “Call it savvy marketing, but I find it disingenuous,” she said. “And it’s a bit weird to think his people-not even Rove himself-are following me.” -CNN

This thing will heat up. It will be a battle of the titans. Not so much between Democrats and Republicans but a contest between progressive and ignorant. Between smart and stupid if you will. Pro peace, pro choice, not fooled by creationism or abstinence, unafraid of gay people, tired of organized religion in our face rational humanists, versus desperately afraid war pigs that believe shit like Democrats are responsible for the fucking flu.

Guess who wins.

Drinks for my friends.

So it begins.

What a shame.

We were expecting it weren’t we?

They set to sea to plumb the depths for the next twenty eight days. Oh boy. I knew it would piss me off.

Governor Avon Lady* accused Our Man of “palling around with a domestic terrorists”, today. She refers of course, to Bill Ayers.

Our Man served on the same board, that of a charity for public schools. He was chairman. Yes, there were other associations but at the end of the day:

“……the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.” -NYT

Ayers is currently a respected and esteemed professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He’s been praised by Richard M. Daley as a valuable community leader. I would posit that to be a more dubious connection than Ayers to Obama.

We likes us some Daley, his father gave JFK command of the ship.

I hear Moosewoman is attemtping to resurrect the by now rotting corpse that was the Reverend Wright controversy. Yet another pale and very dead horse exhumed for flogging.

Fucking silly.

All painfully obviated in predictability. Easier to foresee than events subsequent to sticking any given digit or protuberance into a household electrical outlet. Just like fucking with the Jack Link’s Sasquatch. Outcome inevitability, off the scale.

Why?

Because on the issues, Doubtfire and What’s Her Name own the political equivalent of not even dick. They have nothing. They do not have dick.

He’s a terrorist, he’s a muslim, he’s a nigger! Good God, run for the hills. Steadfast family values and the enrichment of a small percentage of white people are at stake. Contact your local militia. Don’t talk to any Jews or Black people even if they tell you they’re voting McFuckstain*. Whatever you do, ignore the issues. Don’t tolerate any discussion regarding the economy, the war etc.

The message is clear, our rapidly imploding economy and potential global warfare and strife are not what’s important. What IS important is our way of life, hand in hand with good Christian acts and zero tolerance of anyone remotely different. Without food or gas maybe.

It doesn’t matter that McCain provided enthusiatic oral relief to Charles Keating in exchange for cash and prizes two plus decades after William Ayers protested the Vietnam war. It’s irrelevant that McFuckstain and his champion economic adviser, Phil Gramm, were the self appointed laureates of deregulation.

Here’s what we need to keep our eye on. The next President is going to inherit a ship with sales so tattered, she can barely catch enough wind to steer. A hull so compromised, she rides lower by the day. A crew so demoralized, if they ever see land again, they’ll all find counseling before they look for water.

If you’re among the rare, pink eyed albino undecided voters, you need to study this vessel and who you think can handle preventing it from becoming an aimless spectre. A ghost ship.

So, your skiff is no longer in this regatta. No excuse to throw your vote away. Unfortunately, third party alternatives are still a waste of energy. Now is not the time to stand on principle at the expense of pragmatism. Man up and pick the lesser of two evils. We’ve been doing it for years. This time, one is way less evil, far smarter and far more sincere than the other. A good man that just might change the way we look at ourselves on top of being able to slow or maybe halt this march to madness.

Wouldn’t that be swell?

Do you really want to risk being called a pussy for the next four years while we suffer under the other man flirting with the ethereal? One who will likely cross over into that realm while President, thereby abdicating the chair to a successful Avon Lady? Seriously? Fuck Ron Paul and Ralph Nader. Sheezus.

Let it go.

*New nick-name alert, the first supplied by Bill Maher, the latter hatched by own evil and diseased brain.

Drinks for my friends.

Bitches.

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

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

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

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

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

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

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

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

There is a cure. Might be too late though.

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

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

You’ve got be fucking kidding me.

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

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

Americans are astonishigly stupid.

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

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

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

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

Drinks for my friends.

Know what? This shit is making me crazy. The mainstream media has just devoted an entire day to whether Our Man was sexist when he utilized an expression that I’ve even heard from my own Father’s mouth. My Father wasn’t talking about women, he was talking about Republicans.

They want you to believe they’ve never heard the expression before?

McCain has used it and so has Clinton.

I don’t care what he meant when he said it. It was either innocent or excellent swordsmanship. If he meant it, he wasn’t being sexist, he was calling her a dipshit.

Fifteen Minutes is all she has. Perhaps more of an empty suit than Dumbya. Been nowhere done nothing, disingenuous hockey mom from Wasilla Alaska. Had to look up the spelling.

This is fucking ridiculous. It won’t last, but please.

When Doubtfire first announced her, I was confused. Dumbfounded. I gathered my thoughts and faculties and arrived at the judgement that it was the most cynical and profoundly ridiculous move in contemporary politics I’d ever seen.

I was right. It is. I admit I’m mouth breathing over the interest, sensation and spectacle surrounding the entire debacle, but I’m here to tell you, it won’t last. She brings nothing. She has nothing. It may look like a brilliant move this week, within two weeks, it will be over save for the shouting.

I’m hoping sooner.

Our Man played his bishop on the chessboard with Biden. McCain took a pawn out of his pocket, painted with sparkly nail polish and placed it on the board with a reluctant palsy. He realized it was plastic and it’s weight confused his geriatric hand. He briefly forgot what he was doing when he noticed the rest of the pieces were made of marble. He took a drink of his diet soda and struggled to remember.

Despite it all, the great unwashed did a standing O and then executed a near flawless wave. Tens of them.

As I write this, a private jet lands on some tarmac in Alaska accompanied by the theme music from Top Gun. Top Gun? Sheezus. Seriously, it’s live on CNN.

By the way, She’ll be relying on a teleprompter to address her home crowd. So far, they’re not willing to let her work without a full body condom. What does that tell you?

Empty boilerplate rhetoric, POW regurgitation and talk of a tough “maverick” delivered in a breathless rush from a cheerleader running for student body vice president with the crutch of a teleprompter. Fuck me.

A heartbeat from the Presidency. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously America, work with me here. It’s about the top of the ticket until the top of one of the tickets could die at any moment and his chosen successor sucks donkey dick.

Did I say that or think it?

Enough!

Drinks for my friends.

There’s this guy who I blog dick (the practice of cutting to the head of the line by commenting on the first comment and then leaving my banner/link), that I pick on a little. I don’t take him too seriously but I like to piss him off whenever I can.

He’s written something today that pissed me off for it’s level of douchebaggery.

So, if you want to see who I’m writing to and exactly what he said in his blog “Who vetted Obama?”, you’ll need to go here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=132557808&blogID=430526492&Mytoken=E027339C-F95B-43EA-B0F81E678E0F3225100679766

Here’s what I wrote in response:

Lazy? Dumbya has spent a third of his Presidency on vacation, more than any President in history. McCain makes one campaign stop a day, Obama makes at least four.

I’ve got news for you. The American people vetted Obama.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

Despite what I may have said to you before, I doubt you’re an idiot. You seem like a reasonably smart guy. So you really um, you buy this shit?

You think Our Man has gotten a free ride? Are you outta your goddamn mind? You reference Jeremiah Wright. The media took it upon itself to beat Obama about the head and shoulders for weeks over it. It was brutal, exhaustive and plenty damaging. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t find fault with much if anything the guy had to say.

Allow me to point out something else equally as obvious. No such thing as bad publicity. Particularly for a newbie like What’s Her Name. The attention such an incredibly dubious and irresponsible pick for VP has generated is electrifying your easily suckered base. You should be thrilled. Are you too stupid to understand this?

By the way, Obama himself declared Palin’s family and that of anyone else off limits. Beyond that, he will not even discuss it. Even Michael Moore agrees.

Another by the way, Sarah Palin made the anouncement to the media about her daughter’s pregnancy. She announced it you fool. By accepting the job and announcing her daughter’s pregnancy to the press, Sarah Palin is the one responsible for shining the light here.

One more by the way, he admitted his drug use, early and often and was skewered by the media for it. What more do you want?

They will not allow her to be interviewed by anyone but teenage slow pitch Bobby Sox pitchers, however. Trust me. They’ll keep her far from legitimate questions.

You won’t see pictures of her from the side because she’s two dimensional and disappears at 90 degrees off axis. They will feed her words and she will vomit them. She’s proven to be adept in that area. Joe Biden is more than likely to crap on her lunch in the debate, however.

No matter what, he’ll leave a stain. I’m betting on her forehead.

I don’t give a mad fuck what the mainstream media says or does because that’s not who I rely on for the truth. You shouldn’t either. I’d assumed a man of your age and experience would already be cognizant.

Your man McCain has a history as long as Obama’s time on this planet of unsavory characters. Charles Keating *ahem*. The ties you attribute to Obama, specifically Rezko, Wright and Ayers are scurrilous and weak. Bullshit mainstream media talking points.

It’s kinda like you get your information from FOX but choose to whine about MSNBC or CNN.

I hate, hate, hate when you people attempt to reduce things into terms like “baggage handlers”. You think a man who ran The Harvard Law Review couldn’t get a job as a baggage handler? And aren’t you insulting them at the same time?

I’ll stop short of calling you an asshole but I think you just might be.

That brings us to the fact that McCain has been a mainstream media “maverick” darling for the last decade. Are you unaware of this or just willfully ignorant? I mean, please. The man has enjoyed the spotlight since Dumbya handed him his ass but withheld his pride in 2000.

Poor John the war hero. Just like Max Cleland. I just puked in my mouth a little.

Mr. Cleland (D) slaps a hand against his torso because it’s attached to the only limb he has left. The rest of him is in Vietnam. He lost his Senate seat to a moron named Saxby Chambliss (R). Saxby ran ads that pictured Max with Osama and Hussein. Dirtiest campaign on the planet. You’re own man McCain said “[I]t’s worse than disgraceful, it’s reprehensible;”

Rove and the rest of them now working for McCain despite destroying him in the same way in the same year.

You lose. This is the weakest and emptiest blog you’ve written in awhile.

This kind of crap serves no one but you.

Good luck with that.

Drinks for my friends.

As far as I’m concerned, the Clintons have done their job. Passionate, sincere speeches full to bursting with conviction and enthusiasm. The matriarch and the patriarch of the Democratic party have gracefully bequeathed the Democratic flame.

Well done Bill. Well done Hillary. Very well done.

I mean at the very least, we know Bill to be an expert liar, but I bought his message tonight. Call me crazy.

I must tell you, my optimism is renewed.

“Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here,
It’ll be, better than before,
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.” -Fleetwood Mac

Amen.

Be afraid you willfully ignorant Republicans. Be scared shitless.

I’m an American. I love my country and what it has stood for. It is time for us to stand for those things again. I say fuck you John McCain. In light of the policies you endorse and the ideals you embrace, I’m more than willing to question your patriotism. I’m here to question your judgement. I’m here to seriously question your sanity.

I’m not as anxious to cut you the slack everyone else seems so willing to afford you. I think you’re wrong, anachronistic, obsolete and absurd. I think you suck and you’re bad for America and the world.

I gotta tell ya, this convention is good stuff. The Democratic party has been gathering steam for years and they are about to explode all over America. No worries, it’ll be like a warm spring rain. Not sticky at all.

The Republicans have nothing but ad hominem rhetoric, fear and divisiveness. They sure as hell have nothing on the issues. They have rent the American ethic asunder, without apology, without remorse. They have no business attempting to cast aspersions on those of us who dare to think outside of their stupid, pitifully small box. How dare they question us after how badly they have screwed it all up in so short a time.

Ever notice how their eyes are way too close together? And they squint when they think hard.

As my old producing partner Al used to say, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid.

Then there’s Joe.

There is perhaps no better person in the U.S. Senate than Joe Biden. Know how I know? After thirty six years in the United States Senate, he’s it’s poorest member. On paper, he’s not worth shit. He’s in debt. My kinda guy.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the perfect ticket. A man of hope and optimism and the intelligence to see it through and a man with the experience and the goddamn down in the dirt kick your ass toughness to get shit done.

My man Biden parked it tonight. It was not one inch short of gorgeous. Biden is the shit. Powerful, pissed and righteous.

Republicans may as well sit this one out. Why show up if you’re just gonna get your ass handed to you? Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground? Stay home. Have a few beers and don’t worry. You only stand to benefit here, even though you may not deserve it.

What we have here, is a successful communication. Yes we do.

Doubtfire will go down in flames because he has it coming. He deserves it.

And really, this is far larger than either he or his faithful, or party-line Republicans have the capacity to grasp. It’s weird that it’s beyond them, but it is.

Drinks for my friends.

I was troubled after the CNN presentation of interviews with both candidates by the leader of the Saddleback Church, Rick Warren.

Question number one is who is this friendly bastard and why is he here? National Television. An influential religious figure gets this kind of airtime on a cable news network?

All I care to know is he heads a megachurch. The fourth largest in the country. The biggest in the biggest state of California.

So you know, fuck him. Ha! That much power in the venue of God and fear and the fear of God, discredits the man entirely in my book.

Ever seen “There Will Be Blood”?

He seemed nice enough. Some of the questions were compelling.

John “conception” McCain did very well. The bar was low but he succeeded in raising it. You know, they said the same about Dumbya. So yeah, Doubtfire did quite well and that pains me of course. He was direct and resolute. Simple. I imagine he’d just had his cocktail of vitamins and stimulants via the nightly needle.

Our Man was far more conversational and relaxed. Yes, he was nuanced. Profoundly. When he spoke of the humility we must maintain when confronting evil because too much harm has been done in the name of good for example. Eloquent and salient. This guy is good.

The thing is this, that honest and thoughtful shit doesn’t always play in Peoria or Clearwater. That’s a shame.

I’m angry. I’m over having to make room for the stupid, lazy and underinformed. It doesn’t take a genius to see we’re fucked and the group that’s fucking us are all dressed the same with similar haircuts. The codgers all sport the “Doubtfire”. The Dorothy Hamill for the pasty set. Often they look like their pink heads are about to combust under their pale gossamer combovers.

Except the insurgents, they look like us. They talk liberal but vote neocon.

What that is, is talking complex to obfuscate ignorance. Willfull ignorance.

I have empathy for the authentically stupid.

I have disdain for the willfully ignorant. They disgust me. Intellectually dishonest, most likely greedy and dispassionate.

Sometimes it all seems so hopeless.

I talked to two good old friends today. Older and younger by about the same amount. Both very good men. I have a much stronger bond with one of them but it doesn’t matter here. The older was far more pessimistic than my younger friend. I was curious to find myself in the middle. It struck me that chronologically, my veiws were predictable. Typical.

Then I considered the company I was in. That thought became a bit of a revelation. I flirted with epiphany.

It never quite came.

The older said truthfully that we can and always will do worse.

The younger said honestly that he believes we will do better and there is a way.

I have Deja Vu.

Drinks for my friends.

Various sources.

America closes in on one million foreclosures.

Indymac is the third largest carp in our country’s history to reveal it’s pale belly in the polluted waters of American finance.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in trouble and needing a federal bailout they will get. Two companies responsible for over half the mortgage debt in this country. Five trillion dollars.

Lists of vulnerable banks contain as many a hundred and fifty. Google the Texas ratio. At what point does the FDIC become FEMA?

Two million refugees from Darfur and and four hundred thousand slaughtered. Twenty first century genocide. A half a billion in aid a year from the US as opposed to to ten billion a month we spend in Iraq. Bin Laden used to live there so we favor their government with a blind eye because they occasionally share what kind of underwear he wears, his favorite Starburst flavor and pictures of his enormous horse package.

Over four thousand dead and thirty thousand horrifically wounded Americans by Iraq. Some estimates put Iraqi dead at over a million with some four million refugees. Meanwhile, we’ve blown the entire place apart.

National debt approaches ten trillion dollars. We had an actual surplus eight years ago.

A trade deficit approaching four hundred billion a year.

Nearly fifty million uninsured.

The Earth’s filthy nectar, which literally fuels everything we do, is imported by more than seventy percent. The price of that dirty ambrosia has risen nearly four hundred percent in the last seven years.

In America, the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to plunge.

There’s a seventy five percent chance the icecap at at the earth’s north pole will be gone within the next three years.

Twelve percent of the electorate still believes Our Man Obama is a Muslim. Over seventy percent who voted for Dumbya in ’04 still believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the events of 9/11.

“Most people are dumber than dirt.” -My Father

“The best country in the history of the world, and we’re going to fuck it up.” – My Mother

The stock market has been on a well oiled slide for a while now. One of it’s nipples went turgid last week because oil dropped three days in a row. First time in seventeen years. It’s because speculators knew we were gonna talk to Iran. They hoped we’d make nice. It’s a wash so far. We’ll see.

I encourage the stupid people to hold their breath.

I’m thinking it’s time to stock up. Get myself a gun.

I just jacked the sound on the local news. A story on corn ethanol. I’m not kidding when I tell you that a cutaway shot showed cars travelling backwards. If we go nuclear and corn ethanol, I think we should store all the nuke waste at corn ethanol stations.

Stupid fucks.

Forgive my pessimism. If you look at the numbers………..

My point is this. The Evil Empire is not looking at the same numbers we are. If they were, they’d pay attention and do something, like come up with better explanations for not giving a mad fuck.

Drinks for my friends.

That’s what we call it. I began utilizing the action (?) as an alternative to the more customary handshake while doing trade shows a handful of years ago.

I’m a little bit of a germaphobe and it seemed an appropriate way to avoid sweaty hands, urine and booger residue. This one guy, big account in the midwest, could throw thirty to fifty thousand our way on a single order. Cool guy. Chronic hyperhidrosis.

He pretty much inspired me to join the cult of the “TERRORIST FIST JAB”.

I’m also a fan of what I call “ass gaskets”. I’m loathe to use a public restroom but I’m a pretty regular guy, if you’re picking up what I’m laying down.

I apologize to all of America for engaging in such blatant and overt support of killing the innocent and subverting Christian dogma. Not only am I a fool, but a patsy as well. I’ve been duped.

I saw that speech where that married couple who might be muslim terrorists did the dreaded “TERRORIST FIST JAB”. I saw it live. I’m ashamed. At the time I thought it was cool. His kinda hot wife gave her man knuckles.

We Americans are so naive and I’m not exempt. What I processed as a simple, perhaps somewhat hip gesture, was really a well understood signal by a pair of evil doers to the evil doers of the world to do more evil.

This is old news to some of you but I just happened onto this raging controversy today. My friend and sometimes sugar momma mentioned it as we jaywalked to my apartment after she sprung for sushi and beer.

“During the June 6 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” In the ensuing discussion with Janine Driver — whom Hill introduced as “a body language expert” — Hill referred to the “Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound,” adding that “people call it all sorts of things.” Hill went on to ask Driver: “Let’s start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that’s what most people are writing about — the fist thump. Is that sort of a signal that young people get?” At no point during the discussion did Hill explain her earlier reference to “a terrorist fist jab.” -crooksandliars.com

Mirror mirror on the wall, who be the most simple minded jingoistic network of all?

This is the silliest shit I’ve ever seen. Color me fucking dumbfounded.

The lowest watermark in public discourse I’ve ever witnessed. That there isn’t widespread outrage over it is definitive proof that we are a nation of dumbasses. I heard on Stewart tonight that only one in seven Americans can find Iraq on a map.

We have managed to elevate a fine man all the way to the contest for President of this once great country. He is perhaps the finest to run for that office in almost half a century.

Fox news can suck a fart out of my ass.

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.

Shrillary got her clock cleaned last night in North Carolina, she was able to come up long enough for a gulp in Indiana.

Today we learn she’s loaned herself another six million plus.

The other shoe fell from forty stories in slow motion and made a nuclear racket that no amount of movie theater subwoofers could hope to reproduce. George McGovern, a very loyal and long time Clinton ally, flopped all over the Pantsuit today. He withdrew his support, threw it behind Obama and humbly suggested she take a walk.

Obama talked to us last night and was brilliant. Give this man a microphone and he will park a ball with it.

I popped a vike and spent some time smoking and drinking and engaging in somnambulance while the Pantsuit bleated.

I watched the highlights, but they confused me. She was conciliatory at first, I actually guessed out loud that she was conceding at one point. Chelsea’s chin was wrinkling and she looked to be on the verge. Bill’s face was a bad news shade of crimson.

I was like, hmmmmm. Cool.

She did the strangest thing then, she revved her motor and left the line tires smoking. She hollered no brakes ’til 1600 Pennsylvania. Showed up in West Virginia fifty minutes later, motor oil on her face. Wierd.

Think she’s bucking for assistant manager?

Could very well be a power move.

They, Billary, are too smart for it to be hubris alone.

She’s determined to collect support and voters while consolidating as much power and influence as she can. She will continue until she can’t. She’ll then take those tools and present them as a chip with which to bargain. Or she’ll wield them as leverage. It’s possible she will brandish them as weapons.

I could be wrong. I just got to thinking.

Whatever she does, the imperative is to be gracious. She WILL exit. That is unless, somehow she’s able, in the next three weeks, to catch him raping an underage white woman. It’s sick that she’s willing to wait for that.

She absolutely must walk away with dignity and class. Campassion, courtesy and humility.

There is no doubt he will handle her concession with decency, aplomb and a sincere lack of vanity.

So now you know what I’m looking for, the way I hope it plays.

Whatever her move is, so be it. She ran hard but she is the second horse in this race and the time for her to act accordingly is nearly upon her.

Drinks for my friends.

Aug. 10, 2007
Ok seriously. What’s the deal with our media?
Am I wrong or was Cronkite not only an excellent journalist but a responsible one. Anyone remember Eric Sevareid? Murrow was clearly a tough act to follow but these two guys I remember.
By no means do I discount the others of that era.
Am I wrong, or were they all pretty respectable back in the day?
Ooooh! ABC science correspondent Jules Bergman? Anyone? I had relations with his daughter. Seriously. She was hot and sultry. And whip smart.
Certainly, anything I’m about to say about the sport of journalism has it’s exceptions. Every rule does. Mr. Olbermann is one of those exceptions. Randi Rhodes, Greg Palast, Tom Hartman, there’s far more than a handful.
They don’t piss me off. Therefore, I have little to say about them other than at least the complimentary, if not a slice of sheer idolatry.
We’re done here.
Onto the subject at hand:
OUR FUCKTARDIAN MEDIA!
Anybody else notice the sheer brilliance of Jon
Stewart’s assessment of the candidates from both
parties and his take on the ridiculous syrup of media coverage not
just poured generously but trumpeted by a chorus of
media vessels simultaneously glugging while emptying the other night?
That’s a goddamn sentence, yes it is.
He did it comprehensively, accurately and gin through
the nose funny in twelve minutes flat. An intellectually honest take on the state of the race and the irresponsible, open sore inducing mainstream coverage.
And his point was well taken. It’s fucking
ridiculous. His last look at the camera before
commercial is fierce and tells us that
he wasn’t fucking kidding.
He’s saying it’s been a loooong time since the media
took it’s responsibility seriously or took any
responsibility at all.
Television news in America is a giant and dangerous
fucking joke.
This week it seems to be about Nicole Richie. I’m a fan of her father, actually worked with him once. A sweet horsefaced man with a lot of talent.
Forgive me, I don’t give a mad fuck about his daughter.
While we’re on the subject of forgiveness; this bridge in Minnesota is a tragedy without question.
I’m over it. I didn’t know any of them and I’m not sure I care about the hundreds of bridges likely to toss us into a school of Great Whites within the next twenty seven years due to lack of oversight or overt fraud.
Am I gonna swim or hike across whatever the bridge spans?
In a pigs ass.
Yet we still lap at the sick sweet syrup. We love it.
We tolerate it socially and lick a
little up in private. It’s chronic, insidious and
reiterative.
Take Cheney on King a few nights ago.
Boilerplate Cheney.
The most outrageous and elaborate falsehoods. Really
a howler.
Honestly, I was entertained.
That man lies with more conviction than anyone I’ve
seen besides Dumbya, and I’m not sure Dumbya knows he’s lying most
of the time.
Darth called the Alberto Gonzales clusterfuck a partisan
witch hunt. Said Al is a good guy.
You have got be fucking kidding me. Half of his own
party wishes this asshole would disappear.
Al, is an arrogant pinhead.
Ha! He’s our attorney general.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I kinda like Larry King, he looks a little like Beavis to
me and Cheney makes a swell Butthead come to think of
it.
Or is it the other way around?
Anyway. Larry does the best he can but he’s no
journalist. That’s not saying much. He’s the CNN
equivalent of people magazine.
Some of the most honest journalists on TV are comedians. That’s sad
but I’m grateful for them. They’ll end up folk heroes.
I don’t doubt that this dumbing down is
deliberate. For the sake of brevity, let me just share
that my conviction is primarily a result of my not being
a dipshit.
Yet, Americans are complicit. Despite the designs of the
evil empire, our acquiescence is the fusion that makes
a combustion almost inevitable.
It sickens me to watch the lazy minded imbibe the sanitized zeitgeist offered up by a mainstream media so infected with hubris and powerlust that they don’t even have time for what’s actually important and maybe even germane to the events of right fucking now.
They are far too busy emptying drool buckets and getting us to buy shit that’s either of no use, bad for us, or both.
What I’m saying here is that combustion is upon us.
It’s happening.
There is an unjust and virtually unexplainable war. There is real potential for much, much more. Half our damn navy is in or around the Gulf.
Kids. If this one starts, it’s gonna be huge.
Our economy is showing the first fractures in a series
of events that will end up being sustainable only by a
class of working poor and a class of impossibly
wealthy.
Highest foreclosure rate in decades. Banks and
lending institutions starting to panic over their
depth in the subprime lending market. Inflation is here. Unavoidable
after the surge in oil.
Then there’s the fact that as a country, we owe more
than we make.
Don’t forget that everyone loathes us. Don’t forget, the rest of the world factors in our meat puppet president when evaluating us.
Actually, remember that the rest of the world hates us.
By design the middle will implode. The now heavy Top
will collapse on the Bottom and the Middle will spray
out of all four sides.
As the the social and moral pendulum swings back to
the left, to the West, the yang to the yin continues
it’s long planned trajectory east, towards the twelfth
century.
According to schedule, we’ll be completely powerless by the time we’re liberated.
Unless we’re careful.
Drinks for my friends.