Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

You are here.

No closer.

I keep paying attention to this.

I keep pointing it out.

There is just enough to keep the women and kids all fired up.  Just enough to make us all afraid of things we don’t understand.  Things they aren’t about to explain.

We can dance to it but we absolutely hate the beat.

At least the American impetus is often enough about race exclusively.  Spectacularly.  Race on the most granular level.  Not only its institutionalization but the  bones of the implementation.   The talking points of bigotry.  Calves the size of cantaloupes on drug mules threatening our way of life and diseases like Ebola flooding our borders every minute.  Stealing our jobs and all like that.

It’s a goddamn political discipline.

The indiscriminate killing of young black men because they are young and black and because entire swaths of America have decided that they are a problem before figuring out they are human.

You know, the fundamentals.

White cop shoots unarmed black kid to death from like twenty feet away.  Unarmed. With extreme prejudice.  At least six times.  Twenty feet away.  Broad daylight.  Almost two weeks ago.  Eyewitnesses.  No tazer.  No backup.  Walked around the body for awhile.   Hasn’t even been charged. You gotta be kidding me.  They need a grand jury.  Might take until mid October.  That’s some bullshit.  Everybody knows who did it and it’s murder.

The cop never even filed a report.  Think about that.  He never filed a real goddamn report.  Who’s kidding who here?

5th amendment about to become  an eight hundred pound pain in the ass.

Everybody knows.

The local powers think it’s a secret.  Really.  They think they are keeping a secret from the world.  Kinda like they believe they have superhuman abilities of deception and obfuscation and no one suspects anything at all.  It’s like they don’t know that we can see.   What kind of bubble are these abominable white men living in?  They leak unrelated information, video, toxicology, they invent blunt force trauma injuries nearly two weeks after the fact.

What we have here is an entire municipality with lungs that turn oxygen into shit.

More than anything else,  I’m fascinated by this dance in particular.

He was gunned down in the street for no good reason.  He wasn’t armed with anything.  We actually know who did it.  And the dance is awesome.  Damn near overwhelming.  Everyone with a microphone keeps playing along.  Everyone in front of a camera sways to one version or another.  To keep the peace.  To preserve some semblance of order.

Like if they stopped dancing and admitted that a kid was shot full of holes and the cop who did it was allowed to flee the state, we’d all go fucking nuts.

We might.

We should.

Because that’s exactly what happened.

They tell us he shoplifted.  They called it burglary.  Not true.  Didn’t happen.  Store owner and video. They call him a “thug”. Racist code for “nigger”. Fuck me I hate that word.  Both of them.

But no, goddamnit, no.  We breathe a sigh of relief and maybe exhale some gratitude and focus a little more on the problems at hand.  We’re able to do that because the media is waltzing to insipid disco and refuses to belly up to the bar.  Our cue to have another. See?

If only they could join us in our disgust.

Instead they relieve us of it.

What we have now is a pointless debate where none is necessary.  There is nothing to argue here.  A dirty cop executed a man in the street for no reason and we jump around pretending to figure out what happened and what to do.

Pathetic.

We know what happened and we know what should happen.  We know what is right.  We know what to say about it.  We know what to do about it.   There is no religion here. We kneel at the altar of a certain convenience of views. We recognize the folly of too much courage and too little.

One only feels respect when it’s mutual.

Or all we have to do is dance.

Drinks for my friends.

At this point what we don’t know is not important but what we do know is of awesome relevance. We know that a white police officer pumped at least six rounds into an unarmed black male who witnesses say was earnestly trying to surrender. That police officer had only foreknowledge of one rather innocuous crime upon initiating the confrontation.

That crime was jaywalking.

What we know is that the killing occurred in a city with a rather notorious and insidious culture of racial animus.  A consistent and verifiable history of prejudice, persecution and prosecution against the majority of it’s citizens who are black.  What we know is the majority of the residents of Ferguson Missouri are fed the fuck up.

Here’s another thing we know, in any other scenario, with any of the finite number of variables altered or reversed, the shooter would be in jail, in custody, charged with murder.

The local, state and federal authorities appear to be at a loss.  All of them confused about what to do to control the demonstrations.  What to do to stem the violence and looting.  What to do to curb the understandably spirited civil unrest.  You’d think they would have caught a clue last Thursday when cooler heads prevailed briefly and the flagrant show of over the top military style force was dialed back for an evening.

But no.

The next day, local authorities, despite the protestations of the federal DOJ, released convenience store video of the victim apparently pilfering some cheap cigars.  Not long after they were forced to admit it was completely unrelated and that the officer in question had no knowledge of it.  Today it was leaked that toxicology reports indicated the victim was on the pot.  Really.  That he had marijuana in his system.  Really.

Here is what I know and what you probably know too:  If the sonafabitch were in fucking jail and being charged with murder, the mood might just change a little.

I’m not sure it would alleviate the tension entirely but it occurs to me if there is any sincere desire to ameliorate the situation in a meaningful way they would arrest the murdering prick and parade him on perp walk  with all attendant pomp.

Drinks for my friends.

I get it she says.  I understand she tells me.  All those hoses and belts, all the tubes and valves, all those wires and lines that are leaking and spraying so much sorrow and doom and that man thought four or five times more and four or five times faster than me…… It makes sense why he would take his own life.

It makes complete sense.

She tells me this on the way to the balcony for a smoke.

I follow her out while it makes sense to me.

Maybe it wasn’t just Mr. William’s own morbid malaise.

Maybe it’s us.  All of us.  The worst of us.

We live in an age where heroes are impossible, where dignity and elegance are endangered if not extinct.  There is hardly any grace anymore. It is now virtually impossible for a champion of ordinary people to establish any meaningful foothold before they are either dissected by corruption or seduced by it.

Selfishness now elevated to virtue.

Peace, love and understanding bifurcated into “isms”.

I think we have reached the point of no return.

We may just be fucked.

The only question I have is who we’re taking with us.  How many other species?  How many beavers how many whales how many bees?  How many fucking caribou are we going to take with us?  Every mammal on this planet knows the entire planet is now toxic.  They can see it smell it and taste it while they swim or hunt.  While they forage and breathe.

They know.

And so do we.

Bloodshed is the new normal and nutritious food is neither.  We cannot bear witness to all the war and famine and suffering on this scale now, just how jacked up shit is, and not know how goddamn close we are to the end of days for too much longer.  We cannot keep this up.  You cannot smell your shampoo in the morning without understanding that rain forests are evaporating.  It’s virtually impossible despite your personal grooming choices.

Goddamn we are brave.  We rage against the dying of the light.  Oh my how we rage. We have cable tv and relatively slow internet.  We have HD and smartphones that keep us from even looking at each other.  Been in an elevator lately?  We consistently vote against our own interests out of fear and ignorance. The human race is stuck in its own stupidity.  Our very own vulgarity and self loathing. We can’t be bothered about the better angels of our nature having expired.  We are now subject to barely more than our foibles and weaknesses as the race of man and they will most surely be our demise.

The planet cooks, it’s actually baking.  Soon water will be at a premium like gasoline.  Politicians rape and steal.  Religions and ideologies visit war on the rest.  All covered, spun, spewed and packaged for our entertainment and so called edification on cable tv in HD.

Violence and firepower elevated to a virtue.

There simply is no countervailing wind to blow against the avarice and mendacity that constantly engulfs us with every breath we take and every move we make.  There simply isn’t.  It doesn’t exist.  It’s not democrats.  It’s not liberals.  It’s not social workers or teachers or unions.  Combined they have not enough to oppose the human mountain of filthy lucre that piles everyday despite the best intentions of what is not a unified front.

What we have now is a gale, a hurricane, that has already ripped apart any sail that would turn its wind, its force, into anything but malice .

It really is like evil is winning.

We slash funding for education while we demonize teachers and then build more prisons for profit.  We cut food stamps and unemployment beneficiaries off at the knees while we arm our police departments with weaponry intended for third world military conflicts.

She tells me this on the way to the balcony for a smoke.

Drinks for my friends.

His hand passes in front of my face, its trail is all tobacco and wool and after shave with a wooden top.

He’s showing me the ticket he just bought.

The goliath in my periphery.

I can’t stand it.

Giant cacophony of the calliope.

Light and sound shrink me.

I can’t help it.

It scares me sick.

I know if I knock on hindquarters it will be impossibly hard and hollow.

The other kids can barely stand it.

Their glee is desperate and horrible.

They screech bloody and hysterical.

He talks on his phone, glasses reflecting the sun  so I can’t see his eyes and know who or what he is.

He wants me to get on it.

He wants me to ride it.

The day was warm and dense.

It’s cool now with a breeze so now a harbinger of inevitability.

Cold sweat down my neck and between my shoulders.

He brought me here for this.

To please me?

To make me happy?

Why does this matter to him?

Doesn’t he understand that I am afraid of this?

Here at the carnival and all I want is cotton candy and corn dogs and maybe a Ferris Wheel ride.

I had no intention of mounting one of these snarling mutes impaled by brass polls from deck to canopy.

It lumbers and wheezes, painted garish.

Portending violence.

He knows.

I know he knows.

He doesn’t want me to be thrilled.

He wants to witness my terror.

To absorb it.

To drink it.

He hands me the simple pink ticket and I have no choice.

My voice dries up and my will evaporates.

I walk through the gate and the grinding organ is breathing far too loud.

Its awful distortion hisses and confuses me.

I hate it.

I can’t stand it.

The deck rattles and sways under my shoes.

I rap my knuckles on its rump.  So hard it makes no sense and the thunk is hollow.

There is no choice but to mount the beast and hope for the best.

To be free of it as soon as I can.

I’m in a very busy department store and everyone understands but me.

No one looks at me.

No one sees me.

Sweat runs around my ears and past my throat.

There is no saddle and I can’t reach the stirrups.

Right from the start it feels on the verge, about to be out of control.

Nothing to do but to cling to the poll.

My hands wet.

Afraid for my grip.

If only I could be somebody else or someplace else.

He talks on his phone and laughs and I still can’t see his eyes when I come around.

He betrays not a single other thing.

Drinks for my friends.

I guess I’m naive.

It was obviously a mistake to open my head and heart and share my thoughts on something as profoundly controversial as the Israeli Palestinian conflict.  A mistake to speak out against war in general and this one in particular.

In hindsight it occurs to me that my biggest mistake was not only not taking a side but also lamenting the conspicuous horror and consummate savagery of it.  Sincerely and honestly despairing all the senseless death of men and women and children. So many, so completely innocent of everything, but still finding themselves between powers greater than their own and no where to run.

I guess it was a mistake to so earnestly, perhaps brazenly, reveal my own humanity and genuine empathy. I guess it was a mistake to instead of endorse the actions of one side or the other, to have  the audacity to wonder at its end.  To hope for a resolution.  It’s a mistake I can live with.  I’ll own that mistake every day with every fiber of my being.

For this I have been called an anti-Semite.  It breaks my heart, it really does.  Some are content to say so behind my back, but some who are so quick to judge have been valuable friends of mine for nearly a quarter century.  People whom I respect and without reservation can say I love.  People with integrity and in possession of hearts so honest and open as to be vulnerable to all the cruelties of life and other people.  People who I know feel the same about me for the same reasons.

Some of these people now judge me to be anti-Semitic because I didn’t pick a side.

Their side.

I imagine that if no one were to take a side, war would be impossible.   I’m a pacifist.  I am guilty of that and so be it.  But I absolutely bristle at the label of anti-Semite.  It is no different than the furious offense I would take to being called a racist or a homophobe.  It is beyond exasperating.  It is not in any way representative of how I’ve led my life and the choices I’ve made as the result of teachings by good, honest and thoughtful parents.

To be called any of these things is bad enough.

It is an anathema.

To be thought of as any of them is soul torturing.

I would ask any of you who actually know me, who know my heart, my actions and deeds as a fellow inhabitant of this planet to stop and think.  Just because I oppose not just your war but all war including the ones my country wages, all violence and cruelty, all man’s inhumanity to man, that doesn’t make me an anti-Semite.  That merely makes me a human being with a modicum of compassion for all the other human inhabitants of this tiny blue marble hanging in a universe too vast for any of us to comprehend.

I have maligned no one in particular, I haven’t discriminated against any individual or group.  I have never in my life consciously engaged in anything of the kind. What I have done is shine an obviously uncomfortable light on every single one of us.

“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” -Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

If I have offended anyone, it was not my intent but I nonetheless apologize.  I’m not sure whether it’s more painful to have inadvertently done so, or for any of you to assume I would do as much with malice or intent.

Drinks for my friends.

*In the interest of context this piece is intended to address a small number of reactions to the previous one on the same subject-simply scroll down to the previous blog*

I’m a little embarrassed.

I do hope you enjoy my etchings because of my unapologetic approach when taking on the big issues.  I just love the big cats.  I confess I’ve been hiding on this one.  My reluctance is informed by personal relationships and the deafening heat of the controversy lately.  The burning incandescence on social media alone singed me enough to back way off.

Maybe I owe you.  MaybeI feel an obligation.  I owe myself.  I struggled with objectivity and visceral anger.   I think I’ve been able to open the aperture  wide enough to allow the big picture.  Had to let lots of light in.  I understand this will chap a lot of asses, but I need to get it off my chest while my hand is steady enough to share my thoughts.

There is no question that the situation between Israel and Palestine is a tragedy beyond imagination for anyone not experiencing it firsthand.

A closed loop of violence leading to more violence. A zero sum game. A vicious cycle of carnage and destruction that is so profound, so utterly horrifying that most of us can not bare to look.

But still, there are those of us who can stare and revel and relish.

It is a vacuum of logic.  No matter what the more moderate rhetoric coming from either side asserts, the ultimate goal is the annihilation of the opposing side. Neither side will own satisfaction without the complete extinction of the other.  They’ve both said as much.  It’s insane.

And for what?

Centuries, sometimes millennia old religious myths. It’s gotta be one of  the dumbest, most ridiculous and pointless campaigns in human history.  What’s new?

Israel finds itself in the position of rolling tanks to a water balloon fight.  Because they can.  And they do.  Not even close to what any sane observer would call a measured response.  Are they guilty of human atrocity and war crimes?

You bet your ass they are.

Kinda like the US in Iraq.

Would Hamas take it upon themselves to engage in exactly the same level of human vivisection if they were wearing the same shoe of absolute military superiority and total economic dominance?

In a fucking heart beat.

Doth both very bad actors have blood on their hands?  The intentional blood of their own people on their hands?  Let me just say they are both so festooned with gore one would be hard pressed to tell them apart.  One might compare numbers but it occurs to me that’s like comparing dicks.

Is the US complicit?  Yes, we are guilty as hell.  We fucking fund it.

Is Palestine?  Absolute Islamic fundamentalist whack jobs.  Quite a bit like Christians.

Is the media culpable by only covering the very extreme edges and without humanity, fomenting polarization as rocket fuel for the inferno?

Absofuckinglutely.

To be clear, I’m not blaming anybody, I’m blaming everybody.

From the Hamas Charter:

“….. “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.”  -Wikiepedia

“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews [and kill them]; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!” -Wikepedia

“Every day, official Palestinian television calls Jews “rats” and “animals.” This is repugnant. On the official Facebook page of Palestinian schools, one sees photographs of Hitler, and cartoons that illustrate the hadith (statements attributed to the prophet Mohammed) saying that Muslims must kill the Jews before the Last Judgment (“Yom al-Din”).” -The Washington Institute

As for Israel:

” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982. 

“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

“One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” — Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

Am I supposed  to pick a dog in this hunt?

Explosive murderous hate based exclusively on bullshit undiluted Santa in the sky religious crap.

This cannot possibly end well because logic has no purchase.

The question is, how can it possibly end?

It certainly shows no sign.

Will there ever be a postmortem?

When are we, as a mere single species on this tiny blue marble, going to  gain some humility and grow the fuck up?

It is beyond absurd.  It is beyond disgusting.  There are no words.

A heartbreaking lack of reason.

Drinks for my friends.

Have you ever noticed how the blowhards who rail against raising the minimum wage, or even the mandate of one at all, are the same ones who who piss and moan about undocumented workers stealing their jobs?  Ever notice how they never blame the fat white business owners who would sooner drink from a bed pan than pay minimum wage to any skin color, the same ones who exploit these poor workers so as to bathe and shower and wipe their asses with the filthy lucre gleaned from such egregious slavery?

Ever notice?

Isn’t it just awesome that most babysitters command $10 an an hour while the minimum wage is $7.75?

Really awesome.

That head butts me with irony and ridiculousness.

I am blistered by hypocrisy.

Ever notice how they are the same ones who whine about the once powerful unions?  You know, the very entities that guaranteed they get a weekend and a vacation and maybe a pension?

Ever notice how they are from the poorest states?  You know, the red states that get way more than their share of government revenue in the form of social programs than they contribute in the form of tax dollars?

Real brave bunch we’ve got here.

Ever notice how absurdly Christian they are?

If you are willing and able to work a forty hour work week in this country you deserve adequate food, shelter and healthcare.  If they cannot or will not pay a living wage in this country then they do not deserve to do business in this country.  If they cannot recognize that the regions in this country that pay a more competitive wage are thriving and the ones that don’t are wallowing in atrophy, they must be idiots.

The majority of analysis supports the notion that a living wage raises all boats and trickle down economics sinks all but the yachts and the battleships.

You have to be a dumbass if you are still defending the “job creators”.

Their arguments are selfish and ludicrous.  If they don’t get this, if their business model is dependent on attainment and avarice, the erosion of the middle class and the further criminal concentration of wealth, then I invite them to piss up a goddamn rope.

I guess I just don’t understand where we are as a country if such a common sense idea like raising the minimum wage is even controversial for people who schlep and suffer the abuse of the indignant, when the idea is so frustratingly popular.  I guess I just don’t understand it when just about all of us at one time or another have worked those jobs and realize they are no walk in the damn park.  I guess I just don’t understand why these people don’t deserve to live off what they make for serving you your goddamn salad or your fucking hamburger.

I guess I just don’t understand it.

What I really don’t understand is all the dentally challenged mouth breathers that are more worried about winning the lottery someday and having to pay taxes on it than having to work some bullshit job at Walmart and qualify for government subsidies.  I worry that they don’t care that their employer refuses to pay you enough to live on or even the ability to buy their goddamn products without being on the government tit.

What I really don’t understand is the filthy rich, who will never want for anything but love and respect while they perpetuate this madness because their entire world is about excess and privilege and the twisted notion that they deserve it and the other people they suffer day to day do not.

It occurs to me that most of them are dumb as sticks and the rest of them are greedy pricks.

What a brave bunch.

Drinks for my friends.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What special brand of asshole shows up to protest child refugees from south American countries armed?

What particular kind of stupid is requisite here, to get up in the morning, get dressed, have some coffee, lock and load, looking forward to a day that will be about brandishing your rifle and carrying a moronic and likely misspelled sign depicting mere innocent children as evil and disease ridden infiltrators?

Diseases like Ebola, that don’t exist outside Africa.

Children that are the victims of our oppressive economic policies and our failed, utterly disastrous drug laws.

Who gets out of bed to terrorize children?

Confused and frightened children.  Children who can’t speak our language.

Children of parents just as confused and frightened as a direct result of American influence in their own hopelessly poor South American countries.

Parents so profoundly confused and frightened and obviously absent any other option that they are compelled to exercise the only option they see as viable.  The only option available.  To send them a thousand or more miles a way on a dangerous and arduous journey to the good old US of A.  How sad in the 21st century that is their best choice.

Just exactly what are you very special assholes worried about?  What are you afraid of?  When humans behave this way the only explanation is fear.  Occam’s razor.

Are these guiltless children gonna take your goddamn jobs?

Rick Perry and Sean Hannity need to take it upon themselves to patrol the border armed to the teeth and and fucking televise it?  I guess Ted Nugent wasn’t available.

You people.  Afraid of this.  So afraid you bring your goddamn guns to scare the already traumatized and horrified CHILDREN.  Rednecks.  Teabillies.  Willfully ignorant, deliberately under informed fucktards.  At what age did you lose your capacity for compassion?  At what time in your life did the callus on your soul grow so thick that you can’t recognize human suffering and desperation?

You call yourselves militia.

You’re no militia.  You are the disease.  You are the cancer and we can’t wait until you die of your own insidious malaise.

You are the same car full of dangerous clowns that showed up to defend the now infamous fraud Cliven Bundy.

Bring yer guns boys!

It’s on.

The same clowns that showed up to beat on Americans who dared to demand civil rights already afforded to them in the 60’s.

The same clowns who want to sue or impeach the president.

The same clowns whos biggest legitimate fear is that the American white male dominated society is on the wane.

The same clowns who really need to get over it.  You’re right.  It’s coming to an end and you all are now faced with the task of being equal.  No more unearned privilege.  No more automatic advantage.  You now are faced with the brutal reality of being the same as everyone else.  Equal.  Woe is you, you fucking abject cowards.  Maybe tomorrow you can get up, lock and load and scare the shit out of white people at Chipotle or Target with your stupid fucking guns.

Good for you.

In the meantime, keep eating crayons while fantasizing about lighting up some immigrant with your ridiculous goddamn boom stick.

Your desperation stinks.  And we are sick of the smell.

Drinks for my friends.

I am a woman. I gave birth. It was painful.  Excruciating.  Agony.  No one knows.  I do.

My child knows no one other purview until it gulps air outside of me. Until it leaves my womb it belongs to me and no one else. No other body, governmental or even judicial matters at all to me.

Not as far as I’m concerned anyway.

I really don’t care what you have to say.

I cannot stand five catholic men in black robes who would decide anything for me or the child in my body.  I loathe you for trying.  Your ignorance.  Your arrogance.  Your hubris.  When the day comes I want to relinquish control of my life, my child’s life, to the likes of you, I’ll let you know.  It will have a big fancy seal.  It will be on parchment.  Sheepskin.  You’ll know.  Champagne and caviar.

Until then, shut the fuck up.

We all know you think it’s your religious privilege.  We all know you think you’re somehow entitled to a voice here.  A heavy legislative hand.  A right.  But you are wrong.  You don’t.  You can’t.  You won’t.  You can’t tell me what contraception to use anymore than you can tell me what to do with my womb.  My body.  You stand there, collecting your filthy lucre from the dirtier angels of our filthiest nature and presume to define sin for me.

Fuck you.

You took a stand on the side of a company that wears its hypocrisy on its goddamn face.  They invest in and make money off of the manufacture of contraceptive products.  They willingly paid for the objectionable products for their employees for years.  Decades.  What changed besides Obamacare?  They say their mission is to prevent abortion but the only net gain from this will be more abortion.

By the way, they say the contraceptive products they won’t pay for kill babies.  Wrong.  Completely wrong.  What they do is prevent fertilization.  No beings.  No babies.  How did we get to a place where the Supreme Court is guilty of science denial while listening to and valuing the opinions of clerics and wizards?

Five Roman Catholic men who wear black robes to work.

In this process you would willingly consign me to a coat hanger.

I am a man and I do not accept this jurisprudence.  It is the antithesis of jurisprudence.

But I am a woman too.

It’s like your whole reason is to make sure it’s born.

After that, it’s nobodies business but mine.  Ironic how you grab responsibility before it’s born and surrender it completely the second after.  How do adult white men entertain the notion that they somehow get to champion the fetus and forgo the child?

Jackasses.

They are the last people.

Then, some sonafabitching congressman comes along to make my last stand.

To pretend to speak for me and all the unborn.

I am a woman and I have given birth and if I begin to understand that delivery might mean my death, I get to decide what to do.  If that child will be born inside out?  My problem.  If that child is born with whatever disability?  My problem.

Not yours.

Fuck off.

The same goes for my contraception.  Sometimes it’s to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  But 56% of the women in this country that avail themselves of contraceptive medication have it prescribed to them by doctors for reasons other than preventing pregnancy.  Sometimes it’s to prevent my spending days in bed writhing in the kind of pain that makes botulism or ebola look Fischer Price.  Sometimes it’s to reduce my risk of certain cancers.  Viruses.  You don’t know.  You can’t you bastards.  I am a woman and you are not.

I can not countenance five greasy old academic males deciding any of this shit.  It’s none of their business.

None at all.

I am a woman.

I would make each of you pregnant tomorrow morning if I could.

Or, I would visit the menstrual cycle upon each of you if I could.

Then we would see who the women are.

That would be awesome.

Bitches.

I am a man speaking for women.

Drinks for my friends.

Maybe the whole idea with all this new abortion legislation without exceptions for rape and incest etc. could be about the crusty old white conservative douchenozzles not being able to reproduce or even get laid any other way.

Right?

How else does it make sense?

If they can’t reproduce, they can’t propagate or indoctrinate. If they can’t rape their cousins, sisters, aunts or random children, they have no chance of winning elections long term.  See, otherwise they’re done getting laid.

Should we admire them for this?  Their only long term strategy?

“Is you is, or is you ain’t, my constituency?”

I mean they’ve alienated everyone else.

If men could get an abortion, not pregnant mind you, just an abortion, they would be free and absent controversy.  There would be abortion days at the mall.  Thursdays.  Don’t ask don’t tell.  Absolute privacy.  Provider/impregnator privilege.

We wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Same scenario with contraception.

These people aren’t pro life.  They are pro birth.  After the child is born, they can’t be bothered to give a mad fuck about it.  They vote against every single thing that could potentially benefit every single child they insist be born under far less than ideal circumstances.  No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, no unemployment benefits, no clean air, no clean water, no safe food, no education, no pension, no union, no nothing.

Once the child comes of age, incarcerate it for the prison industrial complex it or make it cannon fodder for the military industrial complex.

They adore capital punishment.

It is the apogee of hypocrisy.

A breathtakingly disingenuous intellectual ballet.

So I ask myself why.  Why are they so vehement?  Why are they so goddamn self righteously angry at women?  They are very angry.  Really pissed off.  But that’s not it.  What they are is afraid.  Afraid of women.  Afraid of slightly more than half the of the human population.  Fear is a great force multiplier.  They fear their power, their wisdom and ultimately their independence.  They understand that women afforded power will hasten their marginalization, their obsolescence, their extinction.

Because they have marginalized themselves.  Because they pursue obsolescence with abandon and because they actively romance extinction.

You can smell the desperation when they pass draconian laws, when they make it impossible for clinics that provide a myriad of other essential family health services to stay open.  When they murder doctors who merely seek to keep women from resorting to coat hangers in alleys.

They murder.

The hubris, it burns.

Here’s the deal.  Just because I’m pro choice doesn’t mean I’m pro abortion.  It’s none of my goddamn business.  I am somehow fortunate enough to possess a modicum of humility.  A whiff of intelligence and compassion.  Just enough of these things to understand, to realize, that it’s none of my fucking business at all unless I’m the father.  And then my say would be limited because I can’t know the import of what I would ask.  I would be secondary and I would understand that.

Nobody can know but the woman in question and I’m beyond convinced that this issue does not belong in our male dominated corridors of power.

This issue has no place in the hands of any men not irrevocably involved in the outcome.

The pride they approach this with disgusts me.  They presume to know better about something they can’t possibly have a clue about.  I know because I’m a man and I have no idea.

They are that spec of fecal matter at the back of my toilet bowl.  The one that appears between scrubbings.  That brown dot I’m constantly trying to dislodge with my ultra powerful racehorse urine stream.

It is my sincere hope to piss you fuckers off.

Drinks for my friends.

As you may or may not know, I like to pick fights with the willfully ignorant on facebook. It’s a hobby. I usually find myself punching down, but occasionally I discover an articulate, well informed whack job capable of civil and cogent discourse. I love that.

I totally salute all three of you.

Inevitably, when I confront them with facts and logic, the catapulting of invective ensues. I find myself at the receiving end of insults  entirely predictable.  Remarkably consistent.  They call me a “libtard”, and gasp, “socialist” and even worse, “communist”.

Every fucking time I ask them to define “socialist” or “communist”, the crickets begin to swang. Not one of these goofcocks actually has any idea what these “isms” actually are or what they mean.

It represents a profound ideological perversion and it’s disturbing. McCarthyism revisited.  Short attention span theater.  No room for history.

Guess what?  I must be a low down dirty dog socialist because I have enough common sense to realize that capitalism, without the necessary ballast of socialism, or regulation, ends up being fascism.  Thank dog for socialism.   Sorry, three more isms for your consumption and edification.

I can always count on the word socialism launching at the mere mention of Obama.  T minus three seconds and counting.  In the context of stratospheric stock market indexes, record CEO compensation, all time high worker productivity and the inertia of wages for the middle class, Obama is a pretty miserable goddamn socialist.

Republicans and teabillies alike are more than willing to ignore that without regulation, our food, air, water and energy would be killing us all far more often and far more egregiously.

They would have Christianity solve all that for us.

Dickheads.

It highlights the common malaise of intellectual laziness that is the paradigm for the right these days.  To them it’s the political equivalent of calling me a cocksucker.   I can almost feel the hot moist spittle of their vitriol.  They are as pissed as any self aware species courting guaranteed extinction should be.

Wrinkly old white dudes.

I’ve known plenty of them.

Nevermind that term is an actual slur on its own.  More troubling is the catalyst of polarization it manifests as.  The notion that conservatism and liberalism, two more isms, are at war is a distraction.  It makes it really easy to say that.

I’ve said it a hundred times.  Put 50  democrats in a room with 50 republicans and they will agree on at least 80% of the issues.  But, they will spend all their time arguing over the remaining 20%

Both parties are guilty, but I’m getting really tired of the false equivalency. Is that equivalency Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren  and Grayson on the left compared to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Sarah Palin on the right?  I doubt it. The right makes it so much worse by casually tossing these terms around and by embracing religion as a litmus test.  We all live with socialism.  It serves us.  You know, the fire department, the library, social security.  None of us aspire to or admire communism and it’s just ridiculous to accuse liberals of fascism when the right so ardently foments theocracy.

Drinks for my friends.

Sometimes I can hear a song for days, I can replay it in my head, in stereo, over and over for a week. After that I need a refresher. So I listen to that song on the world’s best stereo. I happen to own the world’s best stereo.

I can taste it.  I can see it. I smell it. It has texture.

I can touch it without touching it.

I assumed everyone was like this.

What’s up with these assholes who want to sport lethal firepower in the toy aisle at Target?  What makes a man think that’s cool?  I’m sure boys do.  You know they do it because they think it’s cool.  Boys that aren’t men and men that are boys.  What if I wandered into a Walmart with just road flares strapped to my legs brandishing a Zippo?  Would you be okay with that?  What if I promised it wasn’t dynamite, pointed out there were no fuses?

I mean I’m obviously unhinged.  Right?

If mall security isn’t all over me already, You’re dialing 911 and pissing your pants and leaving.

What if the communists go after the shopping centers first?  The open carrier will die in an explosion that melts his pea shooter into a stick skinnier than his dick.

Nope.

This is dumb.

Look.  I’m not anti gun.  The second amendment has clearly been misinterpreted but I’m not here to take your guns away and neither is anyone else.  It’s not happening and it’s not going to.

So grow up.  Don’t take your guns to town Wayne.

I’m not a fan of public displays of affection.  It occurs to me this is a public display of fear and panic.  Fear and panic should not be displayed publicly.  If you need to take a gun to the grocery store, you’re a dick and you shouldn’t be able to own a gun.  That should be the first question on the test.

DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO WEAR A SEMI AUTOMATIC RIFLE TO ANY LOCAL RETAIL STORE?

If the answer is yes……….

Drinks for my friends.

“The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.” -Horace Walpole.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

Congress refuses to help people out of the mess they made. Unemployment for 1.3 million families abruptly revoked from families who’d much rather have a goddamn job that pays more than $7.25 an hour. 4 or 9 million by the end of the year, depending on what you read. We spend how many times as much on defending, promoting and even subsidizing the most profitable industry in the history of humankind who, by the way, would have us believe it’s perfectly okay to drink flammable tap water?

West Virginians can’t drink their water but a poll reveals they don’t blame the company that poisoned it.

WTF?

I get no pleasure out of anything anymore. I don’t look forward to anything.

That’s not true.

25 songs I want to hear today.

Ode to Billy Joe (Bobby Gentry), Back in Black (AC/DC), Junebug Vs. Hurricane (Lucinda Williams), Shadowboxer (Fiona Apple), Sultans of Swing -live version (Dire Straits), Bloody Well Right (Supertramp), Funk 49 (Joe Walsh), Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon), Walk and Talk Like Angels (Toni Childs) She Talks To Angels (Black Crows) My Hero (Foo Fighters), Big Iron (Marty Robbins), Ice Cream Man (Van Halen), The Zoo (Scorpions), Barricuda (Heart), Wichita Lineman (Glenn Campbell), Boy Named Sue (Johnny Cash), Tommy the Cat (Primus), Life Without You (Stevie Ray Vaughn), Dragon Attack (Queen), When The Levy Breaks (Led Zeppelin), Imagine (John Lennon), I will Always Love You (Whitney Houston), Roll With The Changes (REO Speedwagon), Rock Candy (Montrose).

What this is, is a vulgar display of abject prowess.  A tragedy.  A mash up of unused ideas that weren’t going anywhere but sounded pretty good.

Bear with me.

There was this zaftig woman once with bleach blond hair who french kissed me in a glass elevator at the Tropicana in Vegas. It was awesome. I kissed her back. I saw it coming. She telegraphed all of it. I ended up in her room much later and told her to leave her bra on because it was white and her tits looked fantastic in it.  She had a great tan and her bikini lines were above the cups. She was very sweet and accommodating. I think her name was Tammy.  Wow.  She gave me her card and a warm damp towel.

I never had any contact with her again.

We as a country, insist on making stupid people famous.

I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of suicide. Really hard to prepare for. Afraid of all the solutions. Despite there seeming to be a good reason to do it every day, I’m resigned to the fact that I will probably die before I really want to anyway. Now I tell myself I shoulda ended it that day when the supreme court masturbated in public or that day a year or so ago, when congress forced it’s mottled penis in the ear of an innocent weeping kitten.

I have found that one thing women I’ve had anything to do with have in common is a beyond casual, often profound appreciation of quality bread products. Garlic knots. Toast points. Fresh, yeasty, aromatic loaves. With rosemary and garlic. In fact, I’ve never myself had sincere fondness for a woman who’d no less than swoon over a fragrant crusty loaf and the availability of various oils, tapenades and condiments for the dipping, immersion and unctuous slathering.

Chicks are sensual. So are cats. I find myself surrounded by estrogen and femininity.

The real problem is this.  We used to be the most powerful nation in the world.  We are still the mightiest and the wealthiest nation in the world.  By virtue of those things,  our corporations are the most dominant in the world.  And those corporations have left America behind.  It’s truly a global economy and America doesn’t matter nearly as much as she used to.  American companies have decided that. 

Oh boy.

Maybe I should become a luthier and a socialist.

I get up in the morning and regardless of the success of my sleep cycle there is juice. Tomato, apple, cran-grape, orange, Gatorade and often something flavored with blueberry and or citrus. We’re big on juice.  So we bought a juicer.  Now I make all kinds.  One day a week I buy a couple bags of good organic produce and grind it into liquid.

While I do this I look for and listen to records I’ve forgotten about.

I check my email. We’re still bombing Yemen and governor Christie is such an asshole that he’ll never even be elected dog catcher and Beyonce shows some thigh in a breathtaking seasonal frock while her sister beats up her husband in an elevator.

I think Jennifer Hudson was way hotter when she was “fat”.  She did that because bitches were jealous.

Maybe I should become a luthier and a socialist.

Who the fuck is Justin Beiber?

Why do you need more ID to vote in red states than to buy a gun or even liquor?

Why do people care more about who gets medicare/food stamps/unemployment/abortion than who gets a gun?

Why do most pro life people assume that if you’re pro choice, you’re pro abortion? Why can’t they understand that all it means is there is a modicum of humility and a great deal of common sense in our understanding that it’s just none of our goddamn business?

I contemplate the living room from different angles. I talk to myself. I talk to bathroom. Then I contemplate the bathroom. I conclude we need a hamper and shelves. I just like shelves. We don’t really need them. The toilet is pretty dirty. So is the sink.  We could use a hamper.

Maybe I should become a luthier and a socialist.

I contemplate the kitchen and how there is no such thing as too much counter space.

We bought a new broom. We needed one for the linoleum.

When I can longer decide if I’m insane or getting a real grip on things, when I just have no idea, when epiphanies begin to pop like those old instant flash bulbs on cheap cameras that leaked blue foam all over the smooth foil hemispheres they came nestled in……………..

When all else fails, I get in the shower and begin my ritual. I avoid it because it is my most introspective zone. It is here my future and past collide.  I shave and wash and scrub. Where did I go wrong? My torso is immense. Where do I go from here?  My legs seem to atrophy. I wonder if this is cancer. My mother grows more alone by the day. I spare no yoga when cleaning my trunk and my junk. Maybe this infection isn’t as bad as the last. My sciatica seems to be better because of my new shoes. I have a toothache and just got insurance.

I recenter the bath mat.

I’m a salesman.

It’s an excellent product.

It saves lives.

It’s cheaper than a cable or cell phone bill.

They just want to see the fucking brochure.

If I emerge from the shower and my youngest kitty is there to yell at me while not looking at me………   she just asks what into space.  I assume it will be a good day.

She cracks me up.

I take stock.

I have a family. There is love. They care about me and I care about them. They love me and I love them.

I count my blessings.

A very dear friend said to me not long ago in an airport lounge that she would obtain a bottle of pills and that would be it.  If it got bad, she meant.  If it got to be too much she meant.  She’d just take the whole bottle. She looked me in the eye when she said said it.

She saw me.

I saw her.

That blue foam goes cold just a minute after the bulb pops.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?” -The Bard

I just can’t stand it.

I think I still have potential.

Drinks for my friends.

It is not the intent of this author to condone, sponsor or foment violence of any kind on any animal or human.

Let’s say the republican approaches you with Benghazi on its lips.

Here’s what you do.

If the republican is male and you’re right handed, raise your left thumb and say “See my thumb?” Then ball up your right fist and hit them as hard as you can in the mouth. Then say “Gee, you’re dumb.”

Left handed people use the opposite hands respectively.

As the republican tries to get up, and if they are male, kick them hard enough in the torso so they land face up and ask them what the names of the four dead Americans they care so deeply about are.

As the republican gasps for air and looks at you with complete confusion, produce a world map without anything but borders, no text, and demand the republican show you where Benghazi is.

When the republican can’t, commence urinating on the republican.

Offer the republican a warm damp towel and a comfortable place to sit. Show some compassion for fucks sake. The republican probably isn’t evil, merely stupid, brainwashed or willfully ignorant.  Ask the republican why they are so much angrier with the administration than the people who actually killed the four Americans.

When two women are the scenario, there is the option to bitch slap the republican or move immediately to the interrogatory. Pissing flurry is also optional. Male democrats when confronting female republicans should definitely move directly to the interrogatory.

Do not clean the appliance with water when still connected to an electrical source.

Once the republican is comfortable, put on your warmest and most sincere face and remind them that there were thirteen such attacks under the last president.  60 dead.

Remind the republican that in one such attack under Reagan over two hundred marines perished. Remind the republican that under Reagan at least, fingers were pointed at the people who carried out the attack. Not Reagan.  Not the head of any intelligence agency. Nobody even questioned Bush despite the wars he and his administration lied to get us into, that ultimately cost 4,500+ lives.

Wars that actually opened the proverbial door for such virulent ant-American sentiment.

Wars that led to Benghazi!

Point out that in the last hour, more people have died in states where republican governors have refused to expand medicare/medicaid.

Just in the last hour.

Gently cover one of their hands with one of yours and explain, in a soft paternal voice, that they’ve been duped.  Describe in as much detail as necessary, that if the republican party had a single policy or issue to run on that Benghazi wouldn’t occupy a single rung on the ladder of contemporary political discourse.  Do your best to illustrate how championing Benghazi merely reveals how they have not a single other thing with which to gin up the base.

The rest of us it see it for what it is.

Abject desperation.

Hillary will run.

Obamacare is working and therefore a complete bust.  They got nothing there.  Folks be getting happier.

It’s been litigated in the court of public opinion and before congress about ten goddamn times already and even prominent republicans like Buck McKeon, chairman of the armed services committee said,  “I think I’ve pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn’t have done more than we did,”  And, “The Armed Services Committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operational chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts, e-mails, and other documents. We have no evidence that Department of State officials delayed the decision to deploy what few resources DoD had available to respond.”

Members of the families have contacted Nancy Pelosi asking that it not be revisited again.  Republicans cut funding for embassy security despite democratic warnings that it would jeopardize diplomats and personnel.

And if you happen across Darrell Issa on the sidewalk or in front of a nice cafe, feel free to vomit down the back of his shirt.  Try to get some on his actual head.  He’s been doing it to you for years and here’s where I believe in an eye for an eye, vomit for vomit.

No republicans were harmed in the writing of this blog.  The author is a pacifist and has not struck another human being in anger or self defense for nearly three decades and does not advocate any such violence no matter how incredibly fucking stupid the antagonist may be.  The author is joking and engaging in fantasy and wishful thinking.  The author does strongly recommend the usage of arguments and common sense provided.  The author does endorse the vituperative action of hawking a loogie upon the conclusion of the confrontation to underscore disgust and disdain for the idiocy of the republican.

This shit is breathtakingly ridiculous.

The republican preoccupation is morbid and vulgar.

The author of this blog is far more fearful of huge grasshoppers than any spider.

Drinks for my friends.

Mildred: Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

Johnny: Whadda you got?

-The Wild One 1953

I used to be young and idealistic.  Now I have no idea what to make of it.  It’s not even policy or ideology anymore.  It’s dogma fueled brinkmanship.  Or, it’s a board game, but not chess.  Whatever it was, it has devolved into Chutes and Ladders.  Tic Tac Toe.

Let’s talk a little about the contemporary republican party.

They are now absurd.  They get all air raid shrill on the very issues that are their demise.  It confuses me.  Social issues because they cannot get any traction politically?  Then political because there’s no traction socially?

Thrashing with no embarrassment in sight.

So now we have about thirty state legislatures presided over by republican governors swinging ham fisted haymakers at the voting rights of minorities, women and anyone likely to vote democrat.  There’s only one reason to do this.  The GOP is no longer capable of winning a fair election because they are courting extinction.  I’ve been saying it for years.  What you’re seeing is a last grasp.

There is no animal more dangerous than a wounded one.  There is no political party more formidable than one staring at its own departure.  And they’re starting to figure out it’s by their own device.

Everyday in this country we vigorously debate climate change and evolution simultaneously.  Abortion and the death penalty.  We actually debate whether or not our tap water being flammable is a bad thing.

Really.

What I’m fascinated by these days is the brokeback reaction by the GOP to all progress.  As in no fucking way to anything.  I’m not surprised, definitely disgusted but still fascinated.  Take marriage equality.  Yet another right wing bastion of dogmatic christian conservatism falters because of just how fucking bubble ignorant they have become.  Public opinion on this issue continues to burgeon opposite of their favor and their response is to foist unconstitutional legislation prohibiting it and every other attempt at decency.

And they keep losing.

Then there’s the ONE thing they always win.

Gun control.

Let’s talk a little about gun nuts.

We’re not talking about the normal, less than paranoid ones that just want to be able to own firearms.  To potentially protect themselves and loved ones against evildoers.  People who enjoy the visceral kick of an honest to god could kill a man, handheld appliance.  I’m a liberal who likes guns.  I grew up with them.

Who I mean is all that have visions of firing on our own army in the streets dancing in their heads.  Them that can’t but help themselves to civil war drama.   Jack asses thinking they would have a fat chance if it came to that today.  I mean the ones devoting their daydreaming hours to a race war.  This shit is really ringing my bell these days.  NRA Fire is on scene and everybody is wobbling clueless and afraid.

All the jiptards are imploding.

We can’t even talk about it.

We can’t or won’t even talk about mental health or serotonin drug history.  Whether people awaiting trial or those of us on a terrorist watch list should be eligible.  We are paralyzed on this issue because of a douchenozzle lobbyist named Wayne LaPierre.

Far longer than the last six years they’ve been marching in lockstep under threat of some democrat king taking their pea shooters.  Now it’s Obama.  And yet it hasn’t happened.  The American right is having a turbo charged, steroid fueled identity crisis.  Because the apocalypse has not occurred as forecast.

So this is what you get.  This is why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.  This is how Cliven Bundy is allowed any real estate in the cable news cycle; because the tea party wing of the GOP needs a hero and there just aren’t any.

Look around.

You tell me.

These are the very people who have been foisting the “takers vs, makers” bullshit on us for the years.  Cliven Bundy is the kind of guy they want us all to hate.  They champion a wealthy rancher for essentially not paying his taxes and using public property for personal profit because he doesn’t recognize the authority of the federal government.  He is, by their own definition, a “taker”.  A deadbeat sucking of the government teat.  Can you say shameless hypocrite?  Can you say disingenuous asshole wrapping himself in the flag of a government whos authority he chooses not to recognize?

Is it ironic that his strings are being pulled by the people who would love nothing more than for the federalies to fill him full of holes?  Does he understand the Koch brothers were involved in propagating his charade?

Despite a complete lack thereof, they found a reason to muster.  To gather.  To rattle muskets and sabers.

And then there’s the company misery like this attracts.  Richard Mack.  You can’t make these assholes up.  “We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front. If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.” -TeaParty Taliban Leader Richard Mack.

How does anyone, regardless of ideological bent, suffer such an amoral fucktard?

There are those in the false equivalency vortex who would argue that these jackwagons in the Nevada desert are no different than the Occupy movement because of their allegedly shared anti-government platform.  What these imbeciles just don’t get is the Occupy movement stakes its claim on the notion that big business and big government enjoy an appalling abundance of comity, collusion and cooperation as opposed to some form of antagonism on behalf of ordinary citizens.  There’s that and the fact that they show up unarmed because they’re quite aware that bristling with the latest high powered weaponry may likely result in someone getting their head blown off, a media blackout and then a full blown cover up.

See, they’re just smarter.

The feds back off.  Wisely.  Better no blood spilled.  The God, guns and liberty coalition declares victory.  They compare themselves to badgers defeating bears.  Grizzlies.  Badgers.  Sheezus.  What the fuck?

This is what they take away from all this?

Liberty they screech.  Liberty.  Is liberty not paying your fair share?  Is liberty using our land for your product and pocketing the profit?

I’m driving slowly by a freeway conflagration so hot it makes my forehead burn through tinted windows up and the air conditioning blasting.  I don’t see Jesus anywhere.

I wonder at this.  I puzzle over it.  What I conclude is that they’ve gotten dumb.  They used to be organized.  Unified.  Consistently on message.  They have lost their way.  Because they hate each other as much as the rest of us.  They eat their own.  They are dissolving.  It’s actuarial.  Inevitable.

The implosion will be televised.

That there is what I call a harbinger.

No matter what party you belong to, trust me when I tell you this means trouble for just about all of us.  The whole focus now is on being primaried as opposed to anything that means shit because of dramatic and shameless gerrymandering in every county south of north.  Citizens United.  Abrupt, unprecedented and glaring concentration of wealth.  Way too many roundheads fear someone with an even rounder head than their own constituents.

See, the GOP is the example, the paradigm for what is wrong with the whole system.  They just beat us to it by being stupider, but we’re all stupid.  What we need to do is heed their example.  They’ve given us a gift.  We need to look that gift very hard in the mouth.

Drinks for my friends.

Racism is alive and well in America.  But it’s not your father’s racism.  It’s yours.  It manifests differently.  Just as overt.  Just as insidious.  Just as evil and just as frustratingly ignorant.

The scourge of contemporary racism seems to be that we elected a black president and therefore it’s over.  As in, wow, the Kenyan without a birth certificate got elected what more do you want?  So now we are somehow post racial.  Um, okay….  Hate groups on the rise, particularly in the south.  Protesters waiving the confederate flag in front of the president’s house.  Brandishing signage with hilariously tragic spelling depicting him as a witch doctor, a bone through his nose, he and his wife as primates.  Terrible Ted Nugent says in public: “I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.”

We are so post racial.

I thought Bill Clinton was the first black president.

Here’s a bitter truth:  Not all republicans are racist but like it or not, most racists are republicans.

A colleague said to me the other day, “why can’t they just get over it?”  Because we have a bi-racial president?  Why can’t they just get over it?  Somehow in light of that, “they” should just forget hundreds of years of slavery, rape, cruelty, abuse, degradation, discrimination, segregation, exclusion, bias, torture, murder, persecution, exploitation and egregious debasement.  Why is it they just can’t get over being pissed upon and shat upon, imprisoned and disenfranchised?  All made possible with actual legislation.  Unconscionable legal charter and statute enacted and enforced by the white ruling class.  Why can’t they just wake up tomorrow and say they’re cool with white people?  Why do they have to act that way?  Why don’t they just surrender their identity and blend in?

Because we have an optically darker commander in chief, we should put this all behind us.  Because slavery ended over a hundred years ago.

The new racism is pretending it’s not there.  The new racism is people who do not know they are racist.

Or those who lack self awareness so completely.

Still, they go after it hard.  All of it.  Anybody not resembling the pasty white, smug, shit eating smirker they see in the mirror during the morning constitutional and shave.  Women’s health =”feminazis”.  Immigration =”wetbacks”.  Voting rights =”niggers”.  Saber rattling =”rag heads”.   They do this because they got their asses handed to them twice by a black president despite their best and most mendacious efforts.  They hate it.  They are threatened.  They are afraid and they know these are the issues that will rile up the base, the womenfolk and the kids.  They know these issues are toxic.  These are issues they gerrymandered, issues they manipulated, issues they fucked with in one way or another over and over.

But still, issues they can’t defend or reconcile under the antiseptic light of day.   And when the lamp clicks on at night, they scatter or obfuscate like amateur street performers caught cheating rubes and slobs and fools.

These are issues that will guarantee their demise but they can’t help themselves.  Because they hate and fear.  Because that’s what they are fed.  By the media and institutional indoctrination.  By fucking religion.  Dogma.  Jesus was white. Santa is white.  They are beginning to understand that they are actively courting extinction.  They see the inevitability of being caught in the trap they set.

There are no more racists in the world than there were before 2008 but they have boiled to the top.  They are furious and and desperate now.

I know them.

You know them.

We all do.

You all are pretty easy to spot.

You talk, you say it out loud, you give the examples of Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Muhammed Ali, etc. and you say, if these blacks could rise to the top then why can’t the rest of them?  Like they can’t because the rest of them are stupid, incapable somehow despite the inequity of advantage afforded them.  You say this like you believe they are not an exception even though it’s obvious you believe they are.  You say this with a straight face and it makes me furious because you will never know the obstacles they encounter everyday, much less what the average person of color is up against relative to your own experience.  You will never know and you pretend we’re all treated equally when you fucking know we’re not.  When you open your mouth to say this shit, I hate you for it.  Not because you don’t understand, but because you don’t even try.

You have friends who go to great lengths to explain you to each other. People who hope you mean well but lament your lack of understanding. People who are embarrassed by you but apologize to each other because of you. All these people are in your life and smile at you every day.  They want to like you, but they can’t.  They still offer you a friendly face and do their best to be civil to you.  But they hate the the things you say and do because it’s so painful to them that you refuse to understand because you don’t care enough to try.  They wish they could make you see them, and not merely what you think is their plight, what you think is their ascription to victimization.  Most of them have given up on ever hoping you can. Some of them even try to love you, to excuse you, because you see yourself as a real American and somehow a defender of liberty and the pursuit of happiness or what the fuck ever.  They bend over backwards to give you the benefit of the doubt.  They want to believe that you at least mean well.  They hope you’re noble in some way but they can’t stand the things that come out of your mouth, and they try really hard to afford you some yardage because they hope you’re sincere in some way that you never demonstrate.  You always let them down. You always disappoint.  Always.  They hope you are not what they see, but they see you nonetheless.  They hope the generosity and compassion you exhibit otherwise means you’re not that big of an asshole.

They are wrong. You are a fucking bigot.  A racist.  I pity you for it and so should they.

You are the new racist.

Same as the old one.

Because you hate yourself.  Because you’re so afraid of everyone else because you know they are the same as you.  Because you imagine you have the advantage and you cling with such fierce and angry desperation to the idea that you are somehow privileged.  Because you believe you are somehow entitled.  You’re not.  We see that.  We try not to hate you for it.  But it’s one hell of a stretch.  Goddamn you make it hard.

What we do hate, without reservation, is that you refuse to accept that we are all the same.  What we hate is that you know that if all people, regardless of race, creed or color, were afforded equal opportunity and evaluation, you know you would be forced to confront that truth.  What we really hate, is that you frantically engage in every possible activity to undermine that truth.  What we hate is that you hate yourself so much that you do it all so willingly, so ignorantly, so shamelessly, so blindly.

We hate that despite you knowing the truth, you still behave as though you don’t.

Drinks for my friends.

I find myself battling with the insouciant left more these days than with the ignorant right.

It bugs me.

It’s not that I don’t understand. Egregious acts against humanity every day. Business as usual. Drones. Corporate lawyers being appointed to the judiciary. No prosecution of the pigs at the financial industry trough. An all above posture on fracking and drilling and fossil fuel exploration along with token acknowledgements for clean energy like wind and solar. The TPP. I get it. I know.

I’m not an Obamabot or a democratic apologist.  They like to call me that.  Pretend I don’t know they’re greedy self serving bastards.  Most of them.  I’m aware of the corruption. The fuckery. The abject avarice and rampant mendacity. I know. I know.

What needs to be understood here is that this shit has been going on forever. The military industrial complex, corporate lobbyists, bullshit evangelical influence, good old boy horseshit…..it’s all been going on since long before Obama was even born. In America. In Hawaii.

What needs to be understood here is that he is one man. Not a king. But merely a president. A man who must labor under this massive construct, a system, a network, a cabal, far more than the sum of it’s parts and one that is far more of a convoluted behemoth than any lone commander in chief can aspire to suddenly and unilaterally reverse like a giant ship on a violently roiling sea.

He’s guilty. I’m pissed. Disappointed. Really wish he would have fought harder and been more resolute and goddamnit stronger, for the the things that are important to me. The the things I care about.  The things you cared about. I hoped for change along with the rest of you.

But I am not naive. I understand for example, that he was not going to ride in on a rainbow colored unicorn, delicately place flowers in gun barrels, change water into the beverage of choice and poof, we’ve got universal health care.  Single payer wasn’t going to fly.  It was a non starter.  It was the last time Hillary got her ass handed to her. As it was, it was a protracted affair that took the better part of a year. Even with a democratic house, a democratic senate and a democratic president, it was frustratingly arduous to watch. Long fought. Over wrought. And now we have the ACA. It’s the best we could have gotten. Now I have coverage when I need it most. Along with with millions of others. Millions of others who either couldn’t have ever afforded it or couldn’t ever have gotten it at any price.

Nice.

No pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, no random cancellations or rate hikes, preventive care covered, affordable, insurance companies accountable for care provided as a percentage of profits. There are flaws, but it doesn’t suck. A start. An increment. Vermont has adopted single payer with the help of ACA funding. See?

California will most likely be next.

So.

Here’s what chaps my ass about you people. You nattering nabobs of negativity on the left. Your reckless intent. You persist to subsume your cynical and callow whining into a movement that is both vital and fragile. You fail to understand or choose to ignore, the potential for good here. It’s actually a young movement with enormous possibility for the first time in a long time. You would destroy it from within. Opining childishly that he engages in all these nefarious things that all his predecessors have engaged in even more nefariously. Pissing and moaning that you didn’t get exactly what you want in exactly the way you wanted when it would have been stupid, stupid and naive to actually expect it to be delivered on the the silver platter with the crust off you somehow had the audacity to expect. You lefty wing nuts are literally as bad as, and as destructive as the goddamn tea party. In the meantime you jeopardize any possibility of moving forward by pissing all over beliefs, myths, facts, engaging in any action that would impede forward movement and yeah, hope for change.

In the public discourse now as we speak, are progressive topics. Topics like raising the minimum wage, gender and sexual identification equality, income inequality, concentration of wealth, equitable health care insurance, raising the minimum wage, social security and medicare……all of the progressive issues that have never been on the table before in this way or all at once. This is progress. This is big.  The makers vs. takers debate is being turned on it’s head.  We know that the one percent are the ones who really have their hands in our pockets and it’s on the table.  The president of the united states is talking about it. People, constituents,voters are waking up. And you and yours just want us to think it’s all a ruse.

I’m really tired of this false equivalency bullshit.  It’s intellectually lazy.  To posit that right and left, democrat and republican, liberal and conservative are somehow two sides of the same coin is an insidious malaise of lassitude that threatens not only the sanctity of the process but the potential for voter participation across the board.  It dissuades.  It discourages.

Nevermind.  There’s nothing you can do.

They’re all the same you wail. They’re all crooks and puppets. Well, no, not all of them. There is a difference and it is often profound. Whether it was Romney/Ryan or perish the thought, McCain/Palin, do you people really think the war in Iraq would have ended or the war in Afghanistan would be winding down?  McCain is already rolling in his grave and he doesn’t know he’s dead. Do you think there even would have been an attempt at Wall Street reform? With Romney, who openly endorsed the failure of the auto industry? What about don’t ask don’t tell? How about kicking banks out of student loans? For the first time in 30 years we’re actually negotiating with Iran and Syria is allowing the destruction of their WMD. Credit card reform and a brand new agency dedicated to keeping American consumers from getting ripped off. The fair sentencing act. Cut the deficit in half. It’s a long and impressive list, virtually none of which would have happened under a republican administration.

And where are on the right are the equivalents of Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Elijah Cummings etc?  Remember Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold?

MSNBC and FOX News are the same you snivel. Well, no they’re not. The both have an overt agenda but the similarities end there. FOX is indefatigably guilty of obfuscating, distorting, misrepresenting and outright lying to advance the score, but I challenge you to find any instances of MSNBC doing anything remotely similar.  They actually take pride in facts and truth.  They simply don’t need to make shit up.

Despite all of the above, the wingnut left pusillanimously insists on forsaking the good in the name of the unattainable perfect. That, really chaps my ass.

So have at it lefty wing nuts, throw your votes away on Nader ( a good man) or whomever the contemporary green party messiah is but do the rest of us a favor, grow up and shut up and allow the rest of us to work for change pragmatically within the existing jacked up structure as opposed your Monday morning quarterback, peanut gallery bleating and carping. We don’t want to hear it. Nobody wants to hear it. It accomplishes nothing. We don’t need you to tell us what a clusterfuck it is. We’re well aware, appropriately disgusted and simultaneously optimistic about the transformation we’re witnessing. Your sky may be falling but we can taste the progress.

It’s working.

The moral of the story is this: The hard left in American politics used to be vital and relevant. It served a purpose. As ballast, a counterweight to the extreme right, it served to exert a certain progressive gravity on the political center that was on a precipitous slide towards well, fascism, oligarchy and plutocracy. We needed it.  Hell, we used to need the hard right until it so willingly marginalized itself. What the hard left has become however, is shrill, unreasonable and irrelevant.  The new left has come to mirror the new right.  Just as irresponsible and reckless.  Just as unconcerned about actually effecting change. Beyond the new brand of vulgar vitriol and ugly invective, both sides of extremism have even begun to share language. “Obamabot” and “Kool Aid drinking democratic apologist”.  Accusations of “white guilt”.  Spooky. Why do they single out this president in particular? This president, who for any voter exercising his or her constitutional right to cast a ballot with eyes wide open knew it was for an essentially compassionate centrist and by far the lesser of two evils.

Why?

There’s an analog here. In much the same way that the election of the first optically biracial man to ascend to the presidency served as a catalyst to embolden and empower the particularly odious racist and bigots on the right, is it possible that catalyst has had a parallel effect on the extreme left?

Luke, I am your father.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve never driven it. I never want to. It would be like pulling the curtain all the way to the side.

Here’s the deal. My significant other. My girlfriend. With whom I’m raising two children. Of the ages of nine and twelve. They ride around in a melting caramel of a car over hill and dale each and every day. There is no radio or air conditioning. There is no power steering.

It burns gas at a rate so alarming that the horror really manifests only when one understands the amount of oil it must be quenched with. The automobile in question is a 1991 Lexus 400 LS. LS stands for Luxury Sedan. Yeah. My woman owns and operates this car. Tanklike in countenance. It has been melting at some certain rate since before the internet came into it’s own. The mechanic made it clear there is no practical way to staunch it’s bleeding of life sustaining lubricants.

Some day it will bleed out.

It’s a large vehicle and she is petite. She appears as a muppet behind the wheel. Elbows above her head.

I cannot describe to you the contents of this vehicle accurately because on any given day it’s diversity is so volatile. Always textbooks and notebooks and backpacks, pens, pencils. Fast food cups and wrappers and sauce packets and burger boxes. Sundries like toilet paper or paper towels or canned beans, jello and yogurt, juice containers, water bottles in various stages of empty, tissues and napkins, cleats and socks.

A perpetually blinking instrument panel.

The passenger seat always a shin deep sea of detritus, it snaps and crackles when I position my feet.  The back seat always hip deep in an ever changing ocean of flotsam and jetsam.

Every surface coated with sticky or oily or objectionable. Best to put your hands in your lap. I always feel like I’m riding in a petri dish.

The wind blows all days of the year in the car because it’s always too hot to operate without the windows down regardless of season. Napkins and styrofoam regularly hoovered out the windows by the constant vacuum. Receipts and candy wrappers, dust and mites, homework pages, fortunes from cookies, and sometimes paper currency, floating and pirouetting at eye level.

The sun hits the windshield when driving east in the morning or west in the afternoon and every eyeball in the cabin goes opaque because of the decades long assault by road debris.

Most interesting thing is the smell. It never smells like you might imagine.  Not at all organic and rotting. In fact, it often smells good. Usually of lotions, hair products, perfumes and creams. Candles. Lip balm. Pastries even. It smells like girls. Girls smell good. At least the ones I’m fond of.

The entire mix becomes a maelstrom as the vehicle approaches 75-80 mph, a feat accomplished easily with a stomping of the accelerator. It’s engine remains robust as it roars and lurches us all back and forth with authority and aplomb. Still very fast. Still plenty of V8 power.

It rolls and rolls, on and on. Indestructible. One automobile, indefatigable, under God with liberty and justice for all.

Whatever.

What amazes me is they sing and they sleep. They do homework and they eat. On tablets, phones and kindles. They conduct all manner of the life cycle in that ocean of a backseat, in the melting maroon automobile. Hot as blazes. Sun beating in. Increasing the size and weight of the atmosphere tenfold. For hours every day.  As they drive. While the car itself melts. Parts literally fall away. It drops the occasional pancreas or gallbladder and keeps on. Last time we had the brakes done, we had it’s appendix removed.

It’s a magical beast. It’s magical because I can’t believe it. It never fails. The girls sway back and forth with hair close behind across the backseat as mom steers through adversity and considerably less adept drivers. She does so expertly despite barely being able to see over the wheel or dashboard. She’s adept. I never really worry about them or myself in that car. It feels safe. Always. It’s no longer the original color of maroon. It’s now a sort of sun beaten burnt magenta. A rust hue, sort of sienna. Caramel. Melting. Impossibly slowly.

Wanna race?

Drinks for my friends.

Dracula loves nothing more than fucking with time and space.

Dracula wonders why for fuck’s sake can’t they raise the ratio of peanuts to popcorn in Cracker Jack’s.

Dracula would happily pay more for this.

The other night, staggering drunk, Dracula bounced down the hall to the way too bright toilet and fouled the bowl with his own disgusting waste that reeked afterward like a grassy fetid swamp. Pulling from a plastic bottle of store brand Listerine he felt somewhat redeemed. A little less consumed with self loathing, he then turned to right wing radio and masturbated until his dick began to wrinkle and mottle.

Dracula loves staring at dogs in the elevator. Dracula lives in a tall building where more often than not there are dogs staring up at him in the elevator.

Dracula shows up to smack you around a little.

Dracula will pay you handsomely for your collectibles.

For Trick or Treat, Dracula hands out chili cheese dogs with mayonnaise, mustard and onion.

Dracula smells himself and is confused.

Dracula can really only identify with immigrant grocers and superheroes.

Dracula contemplates at first and later laments the sebaceous cysts on his nut bag.

Dracula languishes in a puddle of urine.

Hundreds of years ago, Dracula glimpsed a freak at a carnival beyond a tent flap parted by stiff wind and he flushed with warmth and excitement. So thrilled was he with knowledge that he was not alone in the world. That there were other odd people in the world. Other people who clamored for respect and belonging in a world that so emphasized glamor and sensation. A world so firmly ensconced in storybook endings and caviar dreams. A society that had consistently discarded him because of who he was and because of his diminutive stature and penis and because he wore a rather ridiculous cape. Dracula always takes the long way home.

Drinks for my friends.

I just saw where Mike Huckabee suggested that the senseless murders in Newtown was of our own device by taking God out of our Schools.  What an asshole.

I’m pleasantly non plussed to see even a minority of the the media espousing the notion that mass shootings in this country are realistically, at least in part, the fault of our health care system as opposed to the all too typical hysteria of less than adequate gun control. I do believe that weapons policy in this country is far too lenient but I’m a firm proponent of the second amendment and confident that an elaborately  weaponised populace is  almost entirely beside the point.  I’m of the understanding that our neighbors to the north are similarly festooned with firearms but do not suffer near the frequency of tragedy as we do.  The corollary is therefore that our problem is sociological and/or cultural.  At the risk of serially contradicting myself, my conviction is that the NRA and asshats like Ted Nugent are a bunch of abject fuckheads but I understand completely that guns don’t kill people, people do.

We need to do something.  We should have done something a long time ago.  In terms of policy, the most efficacious I ever heard was advanced by Chris Rock who said that the best solution would be to make the goddamn bullets prohibitively exorbitant.  Think about it.  It makes profound sense.  Then, all the under endowed, radical right wing lunatics would be far less inclined to stockpile into arsenals guns they could never afford to actually use.  Of course we should ban any gun designed specifically to kill as many humans as possible in the shortest amount of time; ban high capacity clips and magazines etc., but I doubt that would do fuck all to mitigate what has become such chronic catastrophe.

It’s pretty obvious that there exists no chance of simply legislating ourselves out of this with regard to gun control.  Far more germane to the argument is the idea that we avail ourselves of more comprehensive mental health access and implementation.  A myriad of tragedies private, personal and public might then be averted.  Prohibition as panacea for anything as ubiquitous as firearms is as naive and wrong headed as prohibition of alcohol or marijuana.  Not only is it virtually impossible but the success of it would only result in advantage to the lawless or anyone of iniquitous intent.

Beyond and above it all is the pervasive malaise of violence seemingly unique to American society which manifests itself in video games, film and television.  We have created generations that would view the Zapruder film with perverse glee not only of a human life being extinguished but at the attendant gore.  The answer hardly lies in the subversion of our first amendment but in addressing what has emerged as a far too casual countenance of everything from war to random brutality in our own back yards.  I suspect the solution lies in somehow fomenting against the institutionalized culture of fear that I believe to be the impetus of it all.  If it bleeds it leads.  The media understands all too well that messages such as the terrorists are everywhere and hate us for our freedom guarantees paying asses in the seats.  Americans are willingly sick to feverish with fear of anyone or anything that is merely different.  We are complicit in consumption of the Kool Aid of bigotry, racism and reasonless hate just about every form of media and entertainment turns an avaricious profit from.

I realize what I’m pointing out here isn’t anything new.  Michael Moore rather artfully cast light on it in both “Fahrenheit 911” and “Bowling For Columbine”.  But it bears pointing out as loudly and with as much volume and velocity as we can muster because it sure as hell isn’t getting any better.

Drinks for my friends.

It really annoys me when I  dig behind my ear with an index knuckle and it smells like inexpensive cheese.  I scrub there with purpose.  I’m thorough.  I do public transportation and read.  I’ve already worked through all my Elmore Leonard and now struggle with John Updike because he was pompous as fuck.  I think Fitzgerald is next because I’m so mature now.

Nancy Pelosi needs to stop flashing that I just did too much blow grin.  She was ushering in all these new women legislators on the news and she looked like a poodle in the rain.  I hope she’s just excited.  It was kinda hard to watch.  I kept thinking she should breath more.  Stop laboring so hard between speaking, smiling and trying to be serious.  Barbara Boxer is way hotter and Feinstien is like a mother with her wisdom and patience. Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein.

I cannot escape estrogen in my own house.  If you count the cats, I’m outnumbered 5 to 1.  I’m the one. One is the loneliest number.

I don’t count the cats.

What had happened was, they lost their ass.  Because they showed us their ass.  David vs. Goliath.  Kinda.  Goliath had a lot of money but was challenged intellectually.  David had his house in order and was lethally organized.  David had a ground game.  David had enough more truth to offer.  Just enough.  Goliath had plenty of money but failed to use it wisely, listened to a bunch of clueless analysts.  Horses asses.  Yo Yo champions. Red Rover.  Red Rover.  C’mon over.

Salt & pepper calamari and the seared ahi appetizer that day.  The Pinot Grigio wasn’t as good as I remembered it so I moved on to the  Factory for Ritz Martinis and lost my eyesight to bright monochromatic visions before the election was done much later that evening.  I had every intention of taking the following day off.

I took the day off.

The very word entitelement.  They wield  it as an accusation.  Gobsmacked  and panicked over their old white burlesque losing teeth and dentures in a trapeze act not just for supremacy of political policy but social policy too.  The ideal that an old white fuck in a suit or stupid golf pants is entitled  to more.  More than young.  More than the really old.  More than Women.  More than minorities. The more money, the less women.  Fuck me.

Talk about left behind.

Grover Norquist cracks open a full fuel Zippo on a wet turd in hell while uttering the word “poopyhead”.

This where we are.

As a result of all this we now know better who we all are and where we all come from and what many of us believe and just how absolutely out of our goddamn minds we all are.

Bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, all a fresh layer of strata beneath the dirty vanilla dusting of post election topsoil.  Aging ethnosaurs.  Fossilizing.  Courting extinction.  Wandering grasslands with big stupid ponderous necks.  Adjusting to being marginalized herbivores.  Starting to see their place in history and archeology.

Sociology.

It’s crazy.  They are exorcising Karl with a “K” Rove.  They are molting.  FOX News didn’t melt down on election night.  They just showed us their ass.  They didn’t know shit.  Duh.

My advice to you.  Avoid sex with Republicans.  It will be anger sex.  Grudge Fucking.  Sorry.  I’m kidding.  Sort of.  They are silly.  But so are we.  It’s become a cartoon.  Republicans do appear to have anvil proof heads.  But we can’t afford to forget our own pictures are being painted by other than Sarah Hannity or Rush Ingraham.  We get chumped too.

Republicans desperately need to rediscover how to to talk to the American electorate responsibly and honestly about the fundamental tenets of your father’s GOP.  Back when the party was responsible and accountable as opposed to this wild boar social fuckery that NOBODY likes.  You guys lost everybody but white dudes wearing Dockers and it’s only gonna get worse.  There was a time I respected Republicans.  It was before I was born, and it wasn’t that goofecock Reagan.  His name was Eisenhower.

If Republicans can’t step up and pull something off, Democrats will become the giant bleeding vaginas all Republicans would flee department stores from.  We’ve got to get this under control and the only way to do it is to get Republicans to stop being such douche bags.  Please stop being so adroit at milking the bull semen out of Wall Street.  You fuckers embarrass me.  You’re so good at it.  Get your shit together.  Progressives merely want to stop the redistribution of wealth that’s been going on for decades because of BIG FUCKING GOVERNMENT.

COOPERATION, like on Sesame Street.

77 million voters sat this out?

Drinks for my friends.

I think the dumb people of America hate the smart people far more than the outnumbered smart people hate the dumb people.

I walk this planet and look up at really high buildings that have been there for decades.  Sometimes I worry that the really tall buildings will reverse the laws of gravity.  They’re so high and onerous.  Huge and technologically threatening. I now live and work in buildings with three elevators each.  People still look down in the elevator but now have smart phones to actually look at. Allegedly fresh produce everywhere.  Fresh bread on the shelves.  Freeways.  Cars.  Buses. Trains.  Airplanes.  Appliances.  But then. Sidewalks buckle hilariously, many Americans cling to God and guns and fear that Muslims may be living in their midst.

Still, it occurs to me there are smart folks.

And we’re ensconced in selecting a leader for our people.

The fulcrum of the sale never rests on reason but always reclines on romance.

It’s true.

It’s everyone’s problem everyday.  No one can escape it.  We buy according to emotional jackwagonry.  Whether it’s a saddle and bullets or a yellow goddamn Ferarri.  Outside of groceries and telecommunication bundling, we buy to feel better about ourselves.  We want to believe we’ve gotten the best deal and oh by the way isn’t it beautiful?  It’s gold plated with precious gems and very functional.

This is how we prosecute the election of a man who will be hugely consequential, far beyond just the face of America to the rest of the world.

And we are tied.  The starkest contrast between candidates in a decade, maybe a generation.  And we can’t figure it the fuck out.  Tied between a perpetually grinning used car salesman and a constitutional scholar.  A guy who’s religion requires  vestments in the form of magic underwear.  A man who championed the Vietnam war with zeal while earnestly avoiding participation therein by hiding in the folds of his bullshit cult/religion while galavanting around France on a bicycle in shirtsleeves and tie, spreading the good word of a fucking lunatic.  His god lives on a different planet you know.  Scientists don’t know anything about it.  I think his religion is fair game because anyone who believes in a Santa in the sky should be subject to scrutiny.  They all gush about faith. It’s always embarrassing.  Jesus Christ.  Pun intended.    I loathe religion.  I would abscond religion in politics in a second but at least I get to make fun of it.

Obama has Colin Powell and Bill Clinton and Romney has Meatloaf and Ted Nugent.

I can’t believe it’s a contest.

I’m no Obamabot or Obamanot or whatever.  I just can’t bring myself to care about that shit.  The idea that we’re either liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.  It’s an indicator of just where we are.  Banks and financial institutions have had no better friend than Obama.  Unemployment remains over seven point eight percent while the stock market has doubled and not one of the bastards that screwed us is even sweating indictment much less a club fed vacation.  What I am is progressive and cynical. You don’t know cynical until your forties.  That’s when you begin to understand that most American voters don’t give a mad fuck about truth and justice, but instead are dying to be sold something. To buy something to make them feel better.  All so willing to stand in line for the proverbial bill of goods both men have ready.  They both lie and I’m sick of that.  I can’t stand it so much that it makes me think about it and feel bad whenever I lie.

My cynicism is not merely informed but rocket fueled by the bellicose ferocity the entire Republican party has dedicated itself to.  One astonishingly slow and short term thinking goal.  The destruction of a sitting American President.  I have never witnessed such hatred.  They have pursued it with a velocity that goes beyond flirting with financial collapse to a whole new low of courting the dissolution of the American middle class with such casual ease and aplomb that I am terrified.  I’m confident these people don’t give a mad fuck about you.

And yes, race has reared it’s ugly head.  I overheard someone say something like “sometimes Obama acts like a black man and sometimes he acts like a nigger”.  What the fuck does that mean?  If anything like that has ever escaped your lips, then you my friend are a racist goddamn pig and your only excuse is we live in a society that just might countenance such a remark without you getting punched hard in the mouth on the spot.  Like right below and between the eyes, above the mouth but just below the bridge of the nose.

Romney lies more.  A lot more and that’s why I don’t like him.  He’s a seasoned obfuscater.  It bothers me how good he is at it.  He lies without any physical strain.  Like a rug.  Although when he gets called on it, he winces in a way that makes me think he shat himself.  I just don’t get this guy.  Everytime he’s in front of a camera he’s nervous and weird and saying something completely different than the last time I saw him.  All politicians are full of shit but this guy is a world champion sociopath hypocrite, with role reversals on everything from health care to war and women.  A most accomplished purveyor of both simple and elaborate falsehoods.  A shameless sweaty liar.

His latest ad in Ohio proselytizing that he had nothing but good intentions for the auto industry and Obama was and is hell bent on it’s destruction.  That as a result of the stimulus for the American auto industry, Jeep was sold to the Italians and now they plan to ship thousands of manufacturing jobs to China.  Grand Pooh Bahs of both companies issued statements effectively demonstrating Romney as blind shithouse drunk or lying.  The ad was a lie.  Nothing about it is true.  Mittens has demonstrated over and over that he is willing to say anything, anything at all, counter to what he said just the day before, to get elected.  Wouldn’t even answer questions about FEMA while pretending not to campaign in Ohio.  While pretending to load donated goods donated by Ohioans purchased by his own campaign staffers.  Willard Mittens Romney is the biggest fucking liar to ever run for president of the United States of America.

If he gets elected, which version are we gonna get?  The moderate who got elected in Massachusetts?  The one who invented Obamacare?  The self described  “severe conservative” who won the clown car contest of the Republican primary this year by being more disingenuous than any of the rest of the crazies?  The suddenly renewed moderate robot Romney who showed up in the last two debates?  Or the absolute dick that selected an absolute dick like Ryan to win over all those absolute neo-dick Republicans who weren’t buying in to his absolute dick, don’t raise taxes on the the severely dickish rich fucks who control our country?  Which one?

Seriously?  Who the fuck is this guy and have you ever seen ambition without conviction so naked?

Still, it’s a contest.  Dead even in the polls.

Paralysis of analysis doesn’t begin to explain it.  Why is this happening?  One guy doesn’t suck but the other one is a natural disaster who belongs to a cult that really does believe in magic underwear and that is the sum total of what he believes in as far as we are able to deduce based on what he says between Tuesday and Wednesday.  Obama isn’t the second coming but this guy Romney keeps changing wigs, tilting his head and smiling in the same creepy way while reversing every single reasonable position he’s ever taken on anything at all to do with compassion or common sense.  I’ve never struggled with this decision.  His only consistency is in saying what he thinks might just make him electable over and over again. Over and over again.  Whatever he has to say.

He runs on magic that doesn’t exist and half of us are line for a ticket.

It really sucks that we are in this place.  I am disgusted.  This polarization, this divide that exists only on paper and not in the real world is proof that the grand distraction is working.  We are mesmerized.  The whole thing is working all too well.  The plutocrats and oligarchs waltz through our intestines and dance on our fracturing skulls.  Distraction has become our satisfaction.  It is working all too well.  As long as we are at each others throats we will continue to lose ourselves and our identity as Americans, our identity as one America.  A singular country.  Pride without prejudice.

We are all the same and always have been.

Instead we battle each other with a violence that just doesn’t belong.  I talk to conservatives everyday and at conversation’s end discover that we agree on most of it.  There is no “there” there.  Most of us are reasonable people no matter which side we’re on.  Am I the only one that knows this?

I lament the absence of a viable third political party in America.  In particular, I am profoundly disappointed in the Republican party’s inability to produce any serious and rational candidates for president going all the way back to the last decent and honorable Republican president.  Dwight D. Eisenhower.  America so desperately needs a sane and reasonable Republican party but has gotten nothing but partisan, demagogging losers for the last twelve years.  The only third party to enter stage left is the abominable Tea Party.  Give me a fucking break.  Gutter slash Rovian politics that are more about the lowest common denominator than anything else.  Money.  Money.  Money.  They have too much and those that fall in line don’t have shit and never will if only because they dance with who the one brung them.  I can’t help but hate that there is now but one relatively sane man standing between us and bat shit crazy policies and the intended consequences; incumbent president Obama.

Having said all that, what is up with the overtly pernicious voter suppression effort at the behest of all the Republican secretaries of state and governors in the swing states?  People in Florida and Ohio waiting eight hours or more to vote early.  It’s constitutionally mandated that we’re all allowed to vote in national election isn’t it?  Can we get Rick Scott on the phone?  I want to ask him what the hell is he so afraid of.  Democrats are proactive.  They like to get it done and out of the way.  And they’re lazy-more likely to get shit done on their own time.  Many of them are frustrated poor and really need to vote on the weekends, like after church.  Godluvem. The people who wait in these lines with indefatigable determination are heroes. They can bring their kids if they have to.  Former Republican governor of Florida Charlie Crist calls bullshit on it.  He says it’s voter suppression.  All I know is I see the the lines on the TV and there aren’t many white faces. They are afraid of the general population.  Scared enough of the people to rig elections.  What more can I make clear to you?

If you are still confused, I would invite you to piss up a rope.

If Mitt gets elected, we so deserve it.

Drinks for my friends.

I gotta tell ya. What I really want to do is smash up a supermarket. I walk those long, peaceful aisles and I look at the glistening jars, the scrubbed and oily produce, and I have violence on my mind.  I’ve had this fantasy since I was a kid when we used to blow shit up all the time.  From baseball bats to sling shots, amateur bombs and sometimes shotguns.  A day of mayhem in a supermarket.  Show up early for pastries and juice.  Golf carts and liquor.  Afternoon sun lit sheen behind the arc of relish under fluorescents violenced by a hard swung axe.

A gallon jar of mustard exploding in golden rays of a twilight sun through thirty foot storefront windows facing west.  Huge jars of maraschino cherries slammed onto a bleach white aisle floor, glistening in the low glow of a sun settling below our hemisphere.

Admit it, if you could attack an empty Safeway with your buddies on a Saturday afternoon with a hillbilly arsenal along with a no host bar you’d be there in a heartbeat.  I sure as fuck would.

You know what’s sad?

That this election is thus far completely divorced from intellectual honesty.  There is not even mere resemblance to intellectual integrity.  The debate over who should lead our country and therefore, arguably, lead the free world by example, if not through sheer force of might and too often furious violence, is being waged on a field of rhetorical symbolism as opposed to intellectual responsibility.

I am proud of my President because of the position he’s taken.  I see the the issue of same sex marriage, of gay rights, as fundamentally in and of the context of civil rights.  I am absolutely certain that sexual orientation, gender preference, what sex you desire to fuck upon maturity, is inherent.  Nobody actually decides to be gay.  That’s as profoundly absurd as someone deciding at the age of  five or seven to want to get sexy with the first grade teacher with the huge knockers.  I don’t remember that decision.  It decided me.  It hurled itself upon me in ever greater heaps until I was thirty, maybe thirty five.  I had no choice and I’m still firmly in it’s grip. It’s sex, stupid.  It’s primal and carnal and meant to be.

No different than discrimination against women, minorities, the handicapped or anyone else actually born the way they are.  Born the way they are.  A matter somehow consigned to clueless, misinformed, ignorant and the indoctrinated of intolerance these days.  Always fueled by the inflamed.  Always fueled by religious indignation.

So in light of that, if you feel differently, with all sincerity and conviction, I say fuck you and your God.  Because that’s most of the impetus.  Religious intolerance.  I am absolutely sick of your shit and history will judge you to be abject fools.  Get the fuck out of my living room, get off my fucking TV, get out of my fucking life you goddamn mindless, drooling Christian heretics.  Hypocrites.  Tolerance my ass.  You people trade in judgment and hearsay.  All you motherfuckers should be taxed the same as the rest of us if for no other reason than you’re completely full of shit and you never, ever, fail to seize any opportunity to proselytize politically.  And you do so by threatening everyone within reach of your bullshit vitriol with the specter of some idolized and ridiculously cherished Santa Clause for grown ups.

I admit it’s completely genius.  If only because it works.  People are way dumber than I ever would have thought.

Look, whatever gets you through the night. No matter how stupid it means you are.

So please, by all means, keep it to yourself and shut the fuck up otherwise.

I’m a humanist.  I believe in humanity.  I understand that some people are good and some people are bad and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Santa or the Heat Miser.

“God is not some celestial party chairman” -Mario Cuomo

I will not apologize for my view that Mitt Romney is an an absolute idiot on so many more levels than just his belief in magic underwear and the fact that he gives all of his charitable contributions to a religious organization that maintained that blacks had no chance of divine holiness until the late sixties.  A religious organization that afforded copious filthy lucre toward African American males in California to subtract the right of Gay Americans to marry and enjoy the same rights as Heterosexuals in California, America.  They absolutely preyed upon a bias they knew to be nascent yet efflorescent.  These bastards decided to afford themselves multiple wives.  All decent men understand the fantasy as well as they understand the basic fact that it objectifies fully half of us.  And this dickhead who would be king tells us that The Gays don’t deserve to be treated the same as everyone else.  Not the same as you and me.  Less than.  Not the same.  Sick and shamelessly opportunistic.  The Mormons did that.  Mitt Romney says that.

He’s fucktard incarnate and if you vote for him you’re a soldier of spectacular stupid.

I will not apologize for that.  Mitt Romney is a colossal asshole.  He doesn’t belong here and that’s what I’m getting at.  All he has is this ginned up culture war.  This novocain, antibiotic resistant virus of a politician who has no position on anything except what’s convenient today.  This man who is intellectually bereft of any thoughtful notion or action, wants to lead you.  To pretend to inspire you.  And his stock in trade is to confuse you with this nonsense because he’s got nothing.

His own party spits a pubic hair off their collective lip before they invoke his candidacy.

This should be about the economy and if it were to genuinely be about just that, Willard Mittens Romney would taste his own blood on the playground of politics because he’s got nothing.  He’s an emptier suit than George W. Bush ever thought about trying on. They all stand around and entertain this badinage, but he is a phony.  A charlatan.  A used car salesman who fiscally rapes and pillages and seeks to wear it as an economic badge of honor while hiding from everything he’s ever done. I can’t stand it.

Can we just please focus on what matters instead of Guy Smiley delivering the commencement address at godweird Liberty University?  Can we please get beyond Obama’s princely conduct of making public that he has no object against same sex marriage?  It should be a given.  Evolved people want to know what happens next. I hold these truths to be self evident because the only time my 77 year old mother ever uses the word “fuck” is when the word “republican” is in the same sentence.

Stop.

Focus.

We don’t get better until we do better.

Drinks for my friends.

I really don’t understand.  We have a president that has been asleep at the demographic for years.  He’s accomplished much but betrayed us handily.  The war on drugs.  In as much as it is a betrayal of African Americans as it is a betrayal of all Americans.  This tragic bullshit in the gulf and the painfully obvious consequences that will keep on giving.  Stocking his cabinet with the same fuckers financial that steered this huge boat into the berg.

And then there’s the alternative and this really chaps my ass.  The douche nozzle that is Willard Mittens Romney.  Guy Smiley.  Presumptive nominee.  Jackwagon extraodanaire.

Let me ask you something.  Honestly.  Do you really want this any way the wind blows, disingenuous, ridiculously wealthy blowhard running your shit?  This prickly pear cactus makes $20+ million a year and pays a lower, much lower percentage of that in taxes than you or I.  What sane, rational dumbass could possibly entertain the notion that this magic underwear wearing billionaire could possibly have his best interest in mind?

Nevermind heart.

How did we get here?  How is this even a conversation, much less a contest?

I want the pizza with the hot dog crust.  I hear Pizza Hut is behind some cheeseburger crust in Asia somewhere.  I saw a commercial and it looked to me delicious, notwithstanding the rather obvious calorically  cholesterol issues.  Who thinks about that shit when inhaling hot slices of cheesy goodness?  I like hot dogs.  I believe there should always be cheese on a hot dog.  And always onions.  Always onions.  Always mayonnaise and mustard.  Always.  It’s just not a hot dog without mayonnaise, mustard, onions and cheese.

I know a wine.  Ode to Turley Zin.  I got a call.  A fine zinfandel that is all cedar smoke, plum and voluptuous dry berries.  Then there’s that mouth feel thing.  The weight of it.  The fruit and the smoke. One bottle for now and one for later.  All I’ve ever tasted has been worth the price.  The woman is a genius.  It’s a hard bottle to find.  I afforded it.

Lavender mustard.  I don’t know yet.

There’s little doubt in my mind that this election is Obama’s to lose.

Polls are beginning to lean like trees in heavy weather in his favor.  The housewives and girlfriends.  The Latinos.  Kinda like those neat rows of trees in black & white footage from nuclear bomb tests back in the day before women dared speak their minds about their very own wombs while mankind had discovered how to destroy itself.

The flip top heads on television caution us to be vigilant and prepared, it’s gonna be close they say, but I just don’t see it.

Unless Americans are fucking idiots.

Like there’s no evidence of that.

Ted Nugent endorses Romney with an excoriating screed at an NRA convention.  Really awful stuff.  The Secret Service engages in lukewarm pursuit.  Whatever.  It speaks volumes for the Republican party that a hapless presumptive nominee like Guy Smiley would ever deign to seek the nod from such an insipid, ignoble dickbrain.  Terrible Ted was a decent guitar slinger in his day before being absolutely  eclipsed by a fertile and far more talented field of innovative pickers, pluckers, strummers and tappers.  I am merely appalled at his words.  I don’t anticipate losing any sleep over his intentions.  It’s an ironic beauty of the first amendment that allows shitstains like The Motor City Madman to open his mouth and remove all doubt.  It speaks volumes about camp Romney that they think an endorsement by this brand of “patriot” is somehow cool.

Fuck the NRA.

Volumes.

So yeah, it’s Obama’s to lose.

Here’s one tragedy that doesn’t seem to count for shit either way.

Ted Nugent and Barack Obama agree on one thing.  The prison industrial complex.  Both believe that their ardent supporters should go to prison for smoking pot.  Ted Nugent proudly proclaims he’s never used drugs and hates anyone who does, and loathes anyone who doesn’t own a gun with which to shoot defenseless animals.  Barack Obama admits using drugs and is rapidly outmatching the previous administration in the war thereon. More medical marijuana clinics busted, hassled and harassed than under Dick-in-Bush.  All this after an explicit promise not to pursue such innocuous matters.

Ted Nugent is an idiot of stratospheric jingoistic ignorance.  Our President is calm, cool and reasonable.

Why?

What the fuck?

What people don’t understand is that it’s not just big pharma that is threatened and vested in current policy but it’s big oil as well.  From efficacious treatment of pain management to plastics and textiles, owned and controlled by the pharmaceutical and petroleum cabals.  From sea to shining sea.  The dashboard of a Chevy Volt or your milk carton or your ice cube tray could be made from hemp you fools.  Our fear is fierce.

Both betray their followers; Nugent discards everyone who ever smoked a blunt and listened to his mediocre guitar playing and Obama,  with far more egregious cowardice, betrays his very own people who are disproportionately profiled, persecuted, prosecuted, imprisoned, vilified, and ultimately ruined by the profoundly absurd war on drugs.  America incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on earth and the most gargantuan sum to be had is the non-violent drug offenders.

Let me tell you a story.

A little over 20 years ago, I was in my hometown on vacation.  I found myself in the midst of an epic bender early one morning on a stretch of flat, straight blacktop between the town I grew up in and the the big city closest, traveling at a rate of speed that would have made a NASCAR amateur giggle.  I wasn’t driving, but we were fucked up.  Drunk and smoking dope like chimneys. Going so goddamn fast we didn’t know we were being chased by the cops from the town we’d just left.  After cresting the hill and slowing down into the town the three of us had grown up in, there were five or six police cruisers waiting for us, red lights angrily spraying the sagebrush and asphalt predawn.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Booked on felony possession in a state with draconian mandatory sentencing.  Remember, this was over twenty years ago.  All I had was my record company ID and a thimble full of shake in the bottom of one of those little Zip-Lock bags you buy  silver hoops in. They finger printed me and allowed me a phone call.  I had to tell my parents I’d been arrested for possession of a controlled substance.  It would make the hometown paper the next day.  They gave me an orange jumpsuit and plastic slippers.

My mother bailed me out after the banks opened.  The DA was a friend of the family.  It turned out okay.  I’m here to write about it.

Last weekend I had to renew my doctor recommended medical marijuana thingy.  I did that.  Then I went across the street to a place across the street from a recording studio I worked at for the better part of a decade and legally purchased an eight of Larry OG.

Having said all that, why would you still want this sycophantic, wankering, lying sociopath, used car salesman, clown car pilot as your president?

I’ll be voting for the sane guy, even though he’s kind of a dick.

Drinks for my friends

Mayonnaise  is the most perfect condiment ever.  In the post apocalyptic future where vegetables are rare and hamburgers hard to come by, I will lament the absence of mayonnaise.  I covet that sauce so much that I hoard packets of it whenever I find them.  I suspect foil envelopes linger in the pockets of winter coats I haven’t yet worn this season.  I suspect they will probably be fresh and palatable next season and exciting like money discovered in unlikely places.

What do you say when a child asks for a sip of your wine or beer or cocktail?  You won’t like it.  You won’t understand that the part of the drink that bites is what we like because of the promise of an effervescent numbness. An end to the days events.  It frees you to say what you want.  Not what you think you think but always what you want to say.

I abuse cheese as a substance more than booze.

I lie, it’s a close second.

When I die I want to be incinerated.  I hope there’s a party.  I hope I can at least fill a room.

I’ve been thinking about this murder in Sanford Florida.  This self appointed protector.  George Zimmerman.  This would be neighborhood watch captain,  SUV warrior of the burb protecting the community from a 140 pound kid sporting a bag of Skittles and some brand of tea that’s yet to be infamous.  I had no idea about this retarded law.  MSNBC throws up a map where this insanity is the rule state by state .  I begin to understand the strange fear of certain cousins and uncles and various bigots and roundheads.  Dozens of states with the same crazy law.  This thing is walk in the park obvious.  An asshole with eyes too close together, committed first degree murder in Florida and that is that.  It was premeditated. It is murder.  George Zimmerman pursued and provoked and without that, no matter how the confrontation evolved, there would be one less dead black teenager in Florida, in America, today.  I would love to believe that Trayvon felt threatened enough by this dickhead Zimmerman that he acted under the proviso of the “Stand Your Ground ” law on his own and smacked the snot out of him before the asshole whipped out his big iron and gunned the defenseless adolescent down.  But I doubt that’s how it played out.  It is clear that Zimmerman pursued and provoked despite the clear instruction of the 911 operator.  Despite common sense or reason.  It is painfully obvious that Trayvon Martin was not engaged in any criminal activity.  He wasn’t carrying a crowbar, a hammer or even a baseball bat.  He was not armed and there was nothing to indicate he was involved in anything illegal.  Zimmerman was packing a Nine Millimeter and aching to experience what effect it would have on a “fucking coon” first hand.   I believe in capital punishment about as much as I agree with abortion, so fry the bastard or pair him up for life with a bull hung cellie named Bubba or maybe Darth.

Self defense my ass.

They drug tested the corpse but hardly questioned the murderer.

I always, always use the handicap stall.  I don’t hesitate at all in a public restroom.  I head for the big room. The wide open spaces.  The expansive veranda.  I haven’t seen a handicapped person in a public bathroom since 1966. The year after I was born.  My dad was changing me in the men’s room sink of a casino and some war veteran rolled in and emptied his bag.  I just happened to remember.  I have no fear of the handicapped.

I heard Trayvon’s mother say rather magnanimously that this wasn’t a black and white issue, but a right or wrong issue.

She is only half right because this is stanky racism.

Geraldo Rivera would instruct us all that the real culprit here is the blatantly irresponsible wearing of a hoodie by a dark skinned male.  Douchebag.  Like the woman dressed in a low cut top or a short skirt was asking for it.  Asking to be raped.   Frothy Santorum and Salamander Gingrich would have us believe that the President’s statement that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon, is an attempt to somehow foment a nonexistent racial imperative that otherwise wouldn’t exist.  Shameless fucking blowhards.  A glistening example of why I loathe these opportunistic fuckers.  How do they sleep?

Just today, the proud leaders of Sanford commit to a low arching campaign of impugning a normal teenager’s character.  Because they are stupid.

It’s not necessary to dwell on the facts and particulars.  There was no investigation to begin with.  At it’s best it’s a hate crime.  No investigation needed.  There was none to begin with.  What we have here is a vigilante misanthrope, a racist fucktard who might just be so dumb that he fails to get the fuck out of Dodge and actually gets arrested a few days from now after the local geniuses involved figure out that they have no choice but to arrest him.  I bet that’s how plays it out. If not, the powers that be of Sanford are realistically close to being chased out with torches and pitchforks.

Or maybe not.  It did transpire in the Dirty South.

That poor kid.  Random.  Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.   An innocent kid against a jacked up pretend neighborhood watch bigot with a hard on to matter in some desperate way.  Fire them all.  Everyone who had anything to do with it.  The sheriff, the mayor, the city manager.  Put this human puke in jail for the rest of his miserable life.  Official inquiries and investigations will only cloud what actually happened here.  It’s fucking Florida.  They can’t, won’t or are incapable of investigating jay walking.  If ever I’ve seen a reason to rush to justice, this is it.

I feel the sympathy and the outrage.  I’m horrified by the false sympathy and  manufactured outrage.  This is America.  This year of our lord, 2012.  Sometimes it looks like we haven’t learned a goddamn thing. Thank God I’m an atheist.

Goodnight Uncle Larry.  May you rest in peace.

Drinks for my friends.