Hypocrisy. Live On C-SPAN

Washington is demanding a plan from the auto industry before they give them any money. I think that’s a good idea. Such a good idea that I think Washington should also create a plan for the economy. They agree to 700 billion dollars for Wall Street – to fix something that they clearly caused with their out of control greed – with no oversight, and a make things up as they go mentality. Yet they refuse to give 25 billion – which, like being in Las Vegas, is a number lacking any real significance when the numbers get this large – to the auto industry. I’m no fan of mismanagement. And I also don’t like greedy dumb people. But it seems hypocritical to demand something of one industry but not another. Especially when it’s something they themselves are incapable of. I’m beginning to feel insulted at how Washington spouts from a place of self righteousness, when we all know that they are clearly only feigning their outrage. They themselves helped create this spot the auto industry is in. The auto industry has been making crap cars for decades now. Just like the airline industry has had shitty service for decades now. Just like our internet service is worse than some third world countries. Just like our cell phone service drags behind the Sudan and Burkina Faso. Just like our best actors come from Australia and Europe. We pretty much suck at everything these days. Except sports marketing. Only now, thinks to technology, our enemies, hiding away in caves along the border of Pakistan, can see it for themselves on Youtube. We are the fat bully on the playground who push other kids around right up until the other kids push back. Rather than trying to humiliate the very people they play golf with when the cameras are off, they should work to help them restructure themselves. This is where Henry Ford invented the assembly line. We can’t afford to be unable to field automobiles in our own country. We need to take a cold shower and get to work. Forget the executive pay issue. Give them money with some very public strings attached. Make them accountable to create products worth purchasing. This isn’t rocket science…

Is Thanksgiving Necessary?

Let’s admit it: Thanksgiving is just plain dumb. It’s a holiday based around a feast put on by a bunch of confused yet gracious people who made us a lot of food, and introduced us to corn, right before we slaughtered them. It was basically a prelude to genocide. And Turkey? Come on. The only reason they ate turkey is there was nothing else available. Had they had the option of Mexican food or pizza, it’s a good bet that even Puritans would have chosen to go for the pizza. And, do we need to eat so much of it that we drug ourselves into a stupor? At a time when the entire world sees us as a nation or irresponsible dipshits, do we really want the requisite footage of our fat selves gorging as the world goes into the depression we’ve created? I think not. I think we should put this holiday back in the closet and leave it there.

For those who don’t know, Thanksgiving is a pagan holiday that was celebrated by native americans as a thanks to mother earth for the fall harvest. When the Pilgrims arrived in the “new” world, they arrived too late in the season to plant crops. So the native Americans shared their food with these strange visitors, what with their high heels and powdered wigs and witch huntings, and taught them how to survive in a harsh land. Then we slaughtered them all and gave the rest of them Smallpox. And we’ve been thankful ever since.

Congress Is Brutal When They Know They’re On TV

Congressmen – especially the Republican ones! – are total suck ups to big business – right up until they go against their free enterprise ideology. And have an audience. After the bailout – the one that turned out not to do anything, lack all oversight, and raise more questions than answers – senators from both parties lined up and waited a long time to stand in front of a microphone and congratulate themselves. You would have thought they had collectively saved an entire nursery full of babies from a burning building. Yet, now, after it all but killed John McCain’s candidacy and prevented only a handful of fuckwits on Wall Street from being put on the dole, ruined Iceland, and crashed economies throughout the world, they have all turned against it en masse. 

Now, because the government is printing what money they can’t borrow from the Chinese, every industry on earth is asking for a piece of the inflationary pie. The auto industry flew into the nation’s capital today on their corporate jets to beg for help. Congress, who has long worked hand in hand with the American auto industry and Big Oil to insure that American cars were the least marketable and least practical on the planet, kicked sand in their face. Because, hey, the cameras were on! It’s ironic that it’s the Democrats asking to help big business and the Republicans willing it to die. They call Democrats un-American, then actively work to crush three iconic car companies. They called the companies dinosaurs. (which they are). They say the unions and the health care benefits are dragging the companies down and can no longer compete (they can’t). They speak all kinds of truths. What they don’t mention is that much of it was their doing. When Detroit agreed to contracts with the unions, American cars made up 98% of all cars in the United States. Today that number stands at 43%. Thanks to trade agreements voted on, well, in congress.

So, in essence, they are blaming Detroit for doing exactly what they had to do. They couldn’t out-reliable the Japanese; they couldn’t out-competent the Germans; the only thing left was to make stupid inefficient city tanks that averaged (thanks to Reagan) two miles a gallon and made no sense at all. However, unlike what those in congress are saying, Detroit has not been asleep at the wheel. They know what they’re doing. They have merely been in cahoots with Washington and the oil industry. Like they have been for decades.

Washington likes to go on television and humiliate the very people they have worked so hard and so closely to help avoid being responsible. And they want us to believe that they are the stern parent reprimanding an out of control child. 

The auto industry is, and has been, operating on a flawed business model for decades. But let’s not pretend it’s anything new.

Anyone Who Thinks Obama Is Anti-War Hasn’t Been Listening

There was an article in The Huffington Post, which means it was probably a post rather than an article, in which it claimed that anti-war activists feel betrayed by Obama’s cabinet picks. Obama has never said anything that would indicate that he is anti-war. What he has said, and repeatedly, is that he is against stupid wars. Like Iraq. Attacking people who haven’t done anything he has repeatedly denounced. Yet he has made it very clear that he intends to continue the campaign against those who were behind 9/11. Like Afghanistan. And, if necessary, Pakistan. He believes soldiers should only be sent into combat if they have the requisite support, protection – and there is a strategy in place and a reason for their deployment. Open-ended combat based on misleading reasons for nefarious ends lead to ultimate defeat – from within as well as without. Obama will prosecute the war in Afghanistan. Which will mean some soldiers won’t be coming home, but rather shifted to a different theatre of combat. Those who see this as a “betrayal” have simply not been paying attention. And Afghanistan may ultimately prove a much more difficult war…

Is Obama Deja Vu All Over Again?

So I’m reading this book called Nixonland. And the parallels between what was going on in the country when Nixon was running for office and what is going on now is ridiculous. Nixon promised to get us out of Vietnam. Nixon ran on a mantle of “change.” Nixon was the candidate the country fell in love with. He could do no wrong. He was a media darling. He embodied the change the country so desperately needed after four years of an unjust and unnecessary war created by a crazy Texan. The country was desperate to move beyond divisive politics. Nixon promised to bring people together. Red was Blue and Blue was Red. 

(Insight I learned: there is no such thing in politics as coming together. Politics is all about polarization. All about amplifying differences. All about harnessing resentment in pursuit of power.)

Then Nixon got into office and almost right away began making things even worse, turning his no doubt hairy and sweaty back on every promise he ever made. When the press complained, he banished them. When people protested, he paid goons to beat them up. Whenever he was insulted, he turned the insults onto a group, pitting group against group. He accused those who wanted out of Vietnam, the ones he courted, as being dangerous and un-American. He agreed to withdraw the troops, unless he felt he was endangering them. The country wept with relief. Two days later he began bombing Cambodia, even though the troops were in no more danger. 

Do things change? Or do new people repeat the same stupid shit of the generation before? Your parents tell you not to put your hand on the skillet because it will burn you. So you put your hand on the skillet and it burns you. Your dad tells you crazy chicks are fun, until they throw a knife at your head. You smile. You nod. You date a crazy chick and…you get the idea. 

I don’t think Obama is Nixon. (And even if he was, McCain was a toolbox and Palin was an outrageous dumbotron) But there is a lesson to be learned. Whenever expectations run so high based on so little, they are certain to eventually come crashing down. Also, if people truly want to come together, they can’t look to politicians to do it. That dog just won’t hunt…

Dick Cheney Indicted For Torture. In Texas?

It seems Dick Cheney just likes to torture people. And he brought his lust for pain to the White House. Where he tortured millions with his very undisclosed presence. He will no doubt pardon himself somehow. Or rewrite the constitution to make torture illegal for people not named Dick Cheney. You see the word Dick Cheney and Torture and Indicted, and you naturally think about Guantanimo Bay or some other black site somewhere. You think of the War on Terror. You don’t automatically think of a private prison in South Texas, where prisoners are allowed to murder other prisoners while the guards stand by and watch. Or maybe you do. I don’t really know anything about you. And you don’t think about a morally bankrupt evildoer who sits on the board taking advantage of his morally bankrupt attorney general to obstruct justice in pursuit of private profit. (The very existence of private prisons should make your skin crawl. Also, isn’t it obvious that you don’t want Dick Cheney on a board of any business you don’t want to flounder in a sea of corporate malfeasance?)

It’s a good bet Dick Cheney will get away with it. He is the most powerful public criminal in the “civilized” world, even if he isn’t The Decider. (That would be Bush. Though even that is misleading. He should call himself the non-decider. He doesn’t make decisions. He ignores them, then goes and burns brush…) 

I don’t know how forgiving Obama is. So far he has shown a largesse when it comes to forgiveness. But some things should neither be forgiven nor forgotten. Nixon was forgiven. Ford was forgiven for the forgiving, but it took two decades of laying low and playing golf. I personally think that the ends don’t always justify the means, no matter how many people you get around you who will tell you it’s so. Torture doesn’t make us safer. It certainly doesn’t make our troops safer. And it’s really bad for public relations. It also makes our non-stop statements about “freedom” and “democracy” and “peace” seem more hollow than is acceptable even by the cynical. No. To move forward from the last eight years, this administration needs to feel some sort of reckoning. If the auto industry can get stomped to death by congress, then so should the people who enabled and helped realize their failure. Bush and Cheney should be punished. They should be beaten with soap wrapped in towels. They should be thrown into the ring with Hulk Hogan and a nest of pit vipers. They should be forced to room with Mike Tyson. Or sent to South Texas to waste away and endure the very treatment they so gleefully take joy in.

Newt Gingrich Announces Candidacy For Governor of Alabama In 1956

Yesterday, with a rousing speech, Newt Gingrich announced his pledge to work as “a voice of reason” in a sea of “radical agitators” and announced -to much perplexity- his intention of running for governor of Alabama. In 1956. Fifty two years ago. Charles Barkley, who has also announced his plans to run for governor of Alabama in 2012, had this to say: “He just plum crazy.”

Is he crazy? That’s the question a number of people in Washington who don’t know him are asking. Those who do know him are in response saying, “Of course. The man is plain nuts.” The GOP is not leaking anything, but Newt himself was all over the airwaves. “Communist agitators will not be tolerated within our schools!” Gingrich declared. “Women who want equal rights are violent fascists” who “are working to destroy our nation’s moral fabric.” He went on to denounce rock and roll as “the devil’s work” and claimed Elvis Presley to be “the anti-Christ.”

Mike Huckabee thinks the man is off his meds. “I don’t think a time machine has been invented yet. And until someone can prove to me one exists, I will stand by my contention that the man, like much of what is left of the GOP is operating from a playbook long out of print.

Hillary Will Always Have A Bill Problem

So she ran for President for almost two years and came up just short of the democratic nomination. Now it could be that she can’t even get the job as Secretary of State unless Bill agrees to stop hanging out with creeps who aren’t in government. Or our government anyway. What does it say about our society that Hillary could raise millions of dollars in her efforts to gain the crappiest job in the world and she can’t seem to get past Bill in order to be Secretary of State? What if she had beat Obama? She surely would have beat McCain. Or maybe not, depending on who he picked instead of Palin. Would she have had to concede against herself. “Unfortunately, on a day when a woman is elected to the highest office in the land, and history is made, that same woman has to forfeit. I simply can’t fill out the forms and not get in trouble. Sorry folks!” Or is it easier to be President than it is to be Secretary of State? Obama wouldn’t be able to leap the hurdles he’s laid out for others. Bill is both a blessing and a curse. A remorseful yet helpless horndog and politician nonpareil; he is the reason we know Hillary; the reason we pity her; the reason she isn’t the Vice President; and the reason she might not get the Secretary of State job. For good or ill, there’s no escaping the man. For years he’s basked in worldwide adulation thanks to his rabidly ill advised successor. But the primaries reminded us why we were so fed up with him eight long years ago – so fed up that his vice-president didn’t even want him to campaign for him. (This seems to be a recurring theme with our two term Presidents: if you can be elected for a second term, the bile on the other side builds up to such a mass that it finally explodes right around year six. And if you happen to be FDR, you get so sick of the job you make sure nobody else will have to suffer through more than two terms.) It does seem odd though, that this could be a hurtle now if it wasn’t two years ago when she announced her candidacy for President. I guess it’s a good thing she didn’t win!

This Clinton-Obama Thing Reminds Me Of Survivor 2

Remember the second season of Survivor? When Colby easily controlled the entire show, deftly maneuvering people to do his bidding? It was a no-brainer that he deserved the million dollar prize. He was extremely smart and capable. He only made one mistake. He trusted Tina. A woman who basically tagged along on his coattails the whole time. She was a big fan of Doritos. Almost remarkably so. Almost sadly so. At any rate, the alliances frayed at the end, and Colby had to choose who he would pit himself up against for the million dollar prize. He could have picked the two jerks he’d dragged along with him, specifically for their loathsomeness. But he didn’t. He picked Tina.

And she walked away with the money. He got second place and a spate of deodorant commercials or something. But I always wondered at what weird magic Tina worked on the guy who did all the work, to get him to shoot himself in the foot right before the finish line, and see her walk away with all the money. 

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton. Obama owes a lot of his unbelievable election to the millions of people who voted against Hillary in the primaries. I don’t know much about this guy, people thought, but at least he’s not Hillary. It was more complicated than that, of course; but I think we can all agree that their relationship was rather frosty. She went negative, and threw the kitchen sink at him and even went so far as to endorse his Republican opponent at one point. But Obama plowed on, mercilessly marching ever onward to an amazing election win. 

And now this Hillary thing. He has offered her the Secretary of State job. Along with Bill. And the Clinton closet of skeletons. She hasn’t even accepted yet, and already there are leaks all over the place. They have stark foreign policy differences. If she disagrees with him, it would probably mean Bill disagrees with him. And they would both furiously leak their displeasure to anyone with a microphone. If Obama is unflappable, the Clintons are almost always flappable. Their egos are easily hurt; they take names and they hold grudges for years for the most minor of slights.

A presidential administration is not a psychological experiment. I understand that Obama has been influenced by Team of Rivals, about Lincoln’s cabinet of rivals. But that didn’t go all that well. (I saw the new James Bond movie this weekend. Afterwards I walked around pretending to be a spy for half an hour. I’m sure I looked like a fool.) Some of this, I’m sure, has to do with keeping a rival from becoming an enemy. However, I feel there are better choices who aren’t named John Kerry out there. I say: keep looking!

Obama Adds Man In White Sheet To Cabinet

Barack Obama is taking the current book he is reading, Team Of Rivals, a little too much to heart. The book is about Abraham Lincoln and how he filled his cabinet with people who disagreed with him. A team of rivals. It began with Hillary Clinton, his bitter foe during the Democratic Primaries. Then he made John McCain Secretary of the Treasury. And now he has added a mysterious KKK member to his cabinet. “Obama likes to hear all sides of an issue,” sources say. “But this is a bit much.” No word on what the man’s responsibilities will be, but he is expected to speak up often in an indecipherable southern drawl and throw frequent fits of hate-fueled rage. How he managed to fill out the job application without being immediately sent to prison is a question many want to know. His hobbies, among other things, include: frequent cat murder. 

He first came to Obama’s notice when he showed up at his front door with a pitchfork and murder in his eyes. Instead of being shot in the head, as the Secret Service suggested, Obama invited him in for a club soda and a plate of flax seed.  

Barack Obama is the President-elect of the United States. He was born in Hawaii and lives in Chicago. No word on what book he will be reading next.

What Is The Clinton’s Roof Like? Does It Have Lots Of Leaks?

Compared to Obama’s campaign, one of the most disciplined and tight-lipped in history, Obama’s Transition Team is looking like Seattle in July. A constant drip drip drip. My guess is it’s not coming from the Chicago crew. My guess is it’s either Clinton’s team – no! not us! honest!- or it was deliberate by Obama. Either way, it’s starting to look like a mistake. Bill Richardson is a much better choice in my mind. He is a politician, but he’s not as oily. And Bill Clinton is the most undisciplined ex-President ever to be unleashed on the world stage. His ego is so far out of whack it’s just silly. He’s the Jerry Buss of ex-Presidents: a perverted old man surrounded by floozies. And Bill Clinton would not be quiet in his role of the husband of the Secretary of State. While I applaud Barack Obama for his ability to create a cabinet based on a book he is currently reading, for a highly disciplined man, working with the Clintons would be like working with a twin pair of Tasmanian Devils. They are cute in cartoon form; in reality they have lots of sharp teeth. And they like the taste of blood…

What If Obama Really Does Bring People Together?

It’s something the media hasn’t really focussed too much on, what with this question about the dog looming so large, but it’s not something to be ignored. Today’s meeting with John McCain would lead one to believe that Barack Obama has every intention – for the moment – of bringing diverging people and philosophies together to get things done. This would be terrible for the media if it actually came to pass. The media makes its money by catering to the partisans of either side. It creates conflict where none exists to keep people watching. It elevates the smallest of slights into giant irreparable breeches. If there was no conflict, if people did work together for the betterment of the country, Fox News would have to report that. “Today, people on Capitol Hill once again got along.” They would have to rename themselves Fox News Classic and rerun old scandals and divisive issues from days of yore. Keith Olberman and Bill O’Reilly might even co-anchor a show. Rush Limbaugh would just have to yell about the lack of rage wafting from Washington. 

It won’t happen, of course. Too much is at stake in this country for consensus to rear its beneficial head. There are too many resentments to harness, too many constituents to coddle, too many lobbyists to satisfy, for any long-term mutually beneficial progress to be made. If you don’t believe me, just ask someone in the media.

How To Not Handle A Recession

One problem I have with downturns like the one we are experiencing, and will probably continue to experience well into the next year, is that those at the very top make decisions for the short term – and with a very narrow view of the future – that make recessions several times worse than they need to be.

Shareholders want their money. And corporations need to meet their numbers, because shareholders demand a certain amount of profits regardless of the state of the economy. With sales down, this means that companies have to lay off staff. When this happens across the board, as it is today, thousands upon thousands of people are taken out of the economy. They go on unemployment and scrape by. Forget about going out and buying anything.

We are, whether we like it or not, an economy almost entirely based on our ability to go out and buy stuff we really don’t need. If we don’t have an income, we don’t buy anything. So sales spiral further down. Yet the shareholders still want their money. So more people are laid off. And companies lose their ability to handle their workloads and clients walk away and more people are laid off and nobody is buying anything and we find ourselves in a vicious cycle..,

What if shareholders looked at the situation differently? What if they thought to themselves: you know what? We’re in an extremely dire economic situation we’ve never seen before. Instead of demanding a profit that will break the back of the companies in my portfolio, I will instead revamp my expectations. That way my companies can stay competitive, so they don’t have to lay off staff, and more people can take an active participatory role in the economy. In the long run, my companies will have a leg up on the rest of the country and will be able to weather this storm better than a company that shoots itself in the foot out of greed.

Greed is what got us into this mess. Greed can also get us out. Because, wanting to hit a certain number at a dire time will in fact take away the ability to consistently compete in the long term. The greedy person would want to stay competitive. Hitting a number in the short term at the expense of your ability to compete long term is a losing strategy in the long run.

Palin Beginning To Act Like Crazy Bag Lady

Last week I wanted the media to leave Sarah Palin alone. They were pummeling her for hurting McCain even though he picked her. Now it’s a week later and the woman has not ceased to remind us daily why the McCain campaign kept such a tight lid on her. Far from redeeming herself, she is only adding to the national opinion that she is out of her league. Lately though, she has also seemed out of her head. Like yesterday, for example, when she spoke at a conference of Governors. Which she seemed to think was a campaign event. She seems not to know that the campaign was over. She spoke to the governors about Joe The Plumber and Tito The Builder. Without a teleprompter, she stumbled and stammered and blinked her eyes and stared with eyes like saucer into a dimension none of us can see. She claimed great respect for Obama and said she prayed for his success and that now was the time to stand united behind a new leader and that, unlike him, she didn’t just get to vote “present” all the time. 

She is, in short, in denial. The media is milking her stupidity for all the ratings they can get. She will no doubt be the future of a party that seems to be banking their entire future on Americans only getting dumber. The media has clearly also lost their minds. They have lost the pulse of the people. They are looking for the salacious in every situation; they have tabloided themselves; and Walter Kronkite – who isn’t dead – is nevertheless rolling over in his grave. 

Do us all a favor, media. Start seriousing(sic) yourselves before it’s too late…

Bush. As Competent As Ever

It could be that we are taking out too much bile on the current President. He is, after all, the same ignoramus he has always been. He might be a little more religious and he might have tacked more to the right, but the guy was never a very competent or capable person. He has a long track record of driving companies into the ground. Everything he has ever touched has turned to dust. He never showed so much as a hint of intellectual curiosity. He has always had a mean streak. He has lost every debate he has ever taken part in. Details have always, and will continue, to bore him. He wanted to be the commissioner of major league baseball, but major league baseball didn’t think he had the chops for it. He has always run from responsibility. He is pretty much what he has always been. 

Should we heap so much scorn on him? We did, after all, slightly less than half of us anyway, vote him into office. We did – more than half of us – re-elect the man. All he has done the last eight years is do all he ever has. The man has never showed any real promise. The truth is, he ran for office during a time of economic prosperity. And he promised outrageous tax cuts. And Gore was boring. And Clinton was receiving fellatio from fat groupies in the White House. So we took a chance and voted for the dumb guy. And the dumb guy acted like what he was: a dumb cruel bastard. Yet we’re blaming him for it. What we really should be doing is heaping scorn on ourselves. If you read the resume of someone, and find it filled with typos and a long history of failure, and you still hire the guy, you deserve what’s coming to you. 

550,000 Americans lost their jobs last week. 550,000 Americans won’t be going to the mall and buying stupid shit anytime soon. Which means more people will lose their jobs. The media will probably blame Bush for it. But it’s really the fault of all of us.

Crisis Created From Lack Of Oversight Leads To Bailout That Lacks Oversight

Today it was acknowledged that the people that got us into this financial hellbroth can’t get us out. They seem to spurn oversight; even when they are the ones doing the overseeing. The exact quote was inspiring: “The Bailout is a mess.” Never-mind that they forgot they were supposed to call it a “financial rescue package.” Apparently, the government is “divided” about how to proceed as well. Of course the government is divided! That’s the way the government was designed! To disagree on anything and everything. The Republicans want to bailout the financial industry by raising taxes on people making less than thirty thousand dollars a year and demanding that detroit make cars that average “no more than three miles a gallon.” The Democrats want the bailout money to pay for homeless people to move into trendy but empty condo-hotels in Miami. AIG is asking for a third bailout after a seventeen day “viagra and red bull fuck party” ran over-budget. The line of people asking for non-existent money from the government is long and varied: the auto industry, city and state governments, retired game show hosts, Dabney Colemen, Broadway shows, meteorologists, pundits, bankers, action stars, Jose Canseco, newspapers, insult comics, trained parrots, and that pregnant guy who is pregnant again… They all want government green. But it looks like China might be getting tired of funding our unparalleled ineptitude. 

It’s gotten so bad that George Bush went on television today to defend capitalism. He has clearly been watching too much Fox News. Or listening to fringe boob congressmen from Georgia. Capitalism doesn’t need to be defended. It’s the people who are practicing it in our financial institutions that need defending. They’re the ones that took our money. The money we earned creating their blackberry’s and ipods and bluetooth ear pieces and expensive suits; money earned writing the newspapers they try to make sense of; money earned building the cars they crash; money earned renting them the apartments they use for trysts with their tranny mistresses. The money we worked tirelessly to earn which they have worked so tirelessly to lose. And now they want more of our money to fix the banks they broke. So it’s not really surprising they can’t seem to figure out how to fix their own mess. Let’s see George Bush defend those dumb bastards.

It’s not all bad though. Clothes were over-ordered and are now under-sold. They’re now deeply discounted. Gas has gone down because demand has gone down because gas was too high and everybody stopped driving. Housing is cheap if you can afford it. American cars are cheap if you are can both get a loan and are dumb enough to want one. (anyone who wants an American car right now should be automatically disqualified from getting a loan.)

Detroit should not be bailed out. The bailout should go to the employees who will lose their jobs when the entire American auto industry goes belly up. And the car-related businesses that employ millions. But not the mismanagement at the top. The ones who had a choice between impractical gas guzzling toaster looking cars over low-emission high mileage ones and chose the former. They have seen the writing on the wall; and they have been ignoring it for over 36 years. They have now run smack dab into reality and they now want help from the very government they have paid so much to lobby for policies that helped them avoid it. Detroit has long been a corrupt city full of hard working mechanics and engineers run by fat useless greedy ass bags whose time should have come long ago. I say don’t let the malfunctioning car doors you create hit you in your big fat asses on the way out of the town and industry you have managed to kill. You deserve not our money, but our scorn.

Bush To Seek Asylum In The Old West

President George Bush, with his eight year long rule of criminal incompetence coming to an end, is seeking asylum from prosecution for war crimes in the Old West. According to sources close to the President, the secret service has been shopping around for a team of horses and a wagon, with which Bush intends to ride off into the “Wild West that exists in his feeble delusional mind.” Bush, who recently burned himself and sprained a finger attempting to light a match off the bottom of his boot, plans to live off the land and kill as many buffalo as he can. He is looking forward to prospecting for gold and getting into “pistol fights with evildoers.” No word on whether Dick Cheney plans on joining him…

Iran Ready To Talk To U.S. -If They Meet Preconditions

There was much controversy over Obama’s stance that he would talk to enemy leaders “without preconditions.” This is a stance Iran, for one, has been waiting for. Right up until they got it. Now they are the ones with a whole host of preconditions. Sort of ironic. That’s like John McCain finally getting his ten town halls and then up and canceling them. It is not in Iran’s interest to talk to us. Their entire country is branded on the idea that they don’t like the United States. If they started to agree with us on issues, then there would be no need for them to exist. By acting diplomatic, they would be seen by rogue failing governments everywhere as sellouts. They would be kicked out of the cliquish clan of despotic countries. They would no longer be invited on the yearly retreats to Somalia, where leaders gather to learn the latest advances in feudalism and genocide. They would be stripped of their free subscription to Corruption Digest, with articles like: How To Keep Freedom At Bay and Beheading Made Easy. 

None of that would do for a country that is famous for making Burma look like Nirvana. Iran only gets press for doing something illegal or paying people to blow themselves up. If they turn their backs on that legacy, they would have no identity in the international world. The United States called their bluff and now Iran is running scared.

Palin Still A Fool

Seeing Sarah Palin all over the news these last few days, and however many are to come, made me feel bad for John McCain. She’s the worst kind of bozo. One who isn’t aware of their limitations. Like George Bush, she has that same dangerous combination of confidence and ignorance. (There’s an annoying banner ad that claims she has an IQ of 118. If that’s true, then she is seriously underperforming.) The McCain camp was caught between letting her loose and showing the world what a bozo she was, and keeping her quiet and letting people assume she was a bozo.

Some people say that the Republicans are preparing her for a 2012 run. But I doubt it. If they seriously thought she was the future of the party, then they would send her to Future Of The Party School, so she could learn to speak in a syntax that people could understand and where they could teach her geography and international and national issues. No, I think this is more of Sarah Palin going rogue. She’s trying to dig her reputation out of the mud. But what she doesn’t seem to realize is, she’s only getting more and more mired in the muck. Worried people see her as unqualified, she is going on television every night and proving it. 

The media is also thinking about their own future as well. What good would it be for them if Palin went back to Alaska and disappeared? No, what the media seems to want, and what they keep bringing up, is the possibility of her running for the senate, so she can move to Washington and make all manner of crazy and inane comments that the media can cover for many years to come. Not to mention the spectacle of her driving McCain to insanity in front of one and all on CSPAN. It would be Christmas every day for the media then. Ratings would soar! And it would be a tragedy. Granted, as we have seen this election, most politicians are not all that bright. But that doesn’t mean you should promote the idea of someone already known to be a bozo to run for an office we all know she isn’t qualified for. 

Let’s all take a deep breath, let the election frenzy out of our system, and, if it’s absolutely necessary, check back in with this woman after she’s had a chance to read a few books.

Peru Tries To Undermine Obama Presidency With Creepy Dog

Peru, a country that eats guinea pigs for dinner, has offered the Obamas a dog that looks as if it has been taking a napalm bubble bath for the last six weeks. A Trojan Horse, offered up in the name of international relations. A terrible trap that Obama would be well-served to take a pass on. This could very well be the generated crisis Biden was referring to. If the President Elect walked into the White House with a giant pink 3rd degree burn on a leash, it would destroy all the goodwill that his historic election has accomplished. It would send the country, already teetering on the abyss, over the edge for all time. We would be well on our way to becoming the world’s largest Bermuda: a country nobody even thinks about unless they yearn to play golf or visit Elvis’s house. We can’t allow this to happen.

Mark Salter Should Have Run McCain’s Campaign

It could be argued that John McCain doesn’t exist. That he is a fictional character created by Mark Salter, the hero of five nov-memoirs. Nobody knows the John McCain that could have won the election, the one that is more myth than reality, than does Mark Salter. He has created the narrative that John McCain has been banking on his entire career. The honorable warrior who refuses to sacrifice his integrity for anyone. This is the John McCain people were looking for. And he was the one who didn’t show up. Instead, a be-crazed old man, ranted and railed and lied at rally after rally throughout the country; a personality that bore no resemblance to the McCain we have been trained to expect. The McCain of ‘08 resembled Captain Caveman. The reason for this is the creator of John McCain held no real power in the campaign of the real John McCain. Which is a shame. Because he is closer to John McCain than John McCain is. In a recent Newsweek article, it is very clear that Salter’s instincts were right on, in terms of what McCain should have been doing on the campaign trail. But he was overruled time and again by proteges of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. They of the ethos that says that there is no small resentment that can’t be exploited for political gain. That truth and substance and ideas are irrelevant. Salter knew better. He was overruled. He had a front row seat for the destruction of the image and legacy that he helped to create. As Sarah Palin, back in Alaska, says yes to interview after interview, as the two camps publicly attack one another over the dead wreckage of a campaign doomed from the start, it’s hard not to think about what could have been.

Obama Stole The Election

How did he do it? Well, the first thing he did was to get several million more votes than his opponent. But that wasn’t all he did. He also had such a successful convention that his opponent was made to panic and pick an unvetted moose hotdog chef from Alaska. But even that wasn’t enough for Obama. Leaving no stone unturned, he even went so far as to win all of his debates against his hapless and beleaguered opponent. He then stooped to explaining his plan for the country, rather than campaign the normal way of making up things about the opponent. He topped it all off by being more intelligent, more tuned in, more passionate, more disciplined, more emotionally balanced, more likable, more honest, more empathetic, and more credible than his opponent. The result is that the country is being held hostage by a person most of us voted for. Even people making more than 250 thousand dollars a year! Even small business owners! 

Republicans need to shut up and quit whining. You’re old. You’re intolerant. You lie. You cheat. And you steal. If you want to know why you lost, take a good long look in the mirror.

The Mistakes Of The Right Can Be Made On The Left

Barack Obama is moving into the White House with a lot of political power and good will and hope. He wouldn’t be the first. Lyndon B. Johnson moved into the White House under similar circumstances, as did George W. Both. Both tried to do too much. Both were eventually reviled. LBJ only got through one term before he threw in the towel. He was very effective as a President, twisted a lot of arms, and got a lot of things through. But between the war and civil strife, in only four years what started as a Great Society ended with the ushering in of eight years of Nixon criminality.

George Bush suffered the same thing, with the Iraq War, and the flaunting of the Constitution, and the response to nine eleven and Katrina and the last, an embrace of Socialism. (Should we blame Texas? What is it with those Texans?) JFK, who got the ball rolling, was very cautious when it came to civil rights legislation. He was in favor of baby steps. LBJ preferred the Big Bang style: everything at once. Clinton also overreached (it’s much easier to overreach as a Democrat; Republicans tend to whine more) on health care and gays in the military.

All of this I’m sure Obama knew years ago. Which is why I think he will be more cautious than the screaming liberals of the far left would like. (The far right will scream just because that’s what they’re paid to do: and because they’re racist: they can go home and fuck sheep.) He comes into office with a lot of goodwill and international political capital; but at the same time he has to be careful, as he is the first American (as America likes to define itself, as the great melting pot) to hold the title of President. Obama didn’t panic or take the advice of the left when they all went batshit after Palin was announced as McCain’s VeeP. And he won’t panic now. Which could be weird to a party that knows no other way to be.

We must let Obama be Obama: deliberative, conscientious, honest, tough (much tougher than his personality would lead you to think), and unflappable. We must trust in his judgment and stand behind him, even if he occasionally tacks to the center or further to the right from time to time. He is our President. And he knows what he’s doing; so let him do it.

Iraq Is Totally Vietnam

The people who got us into Iraq often scoffed whenever anyone suggested they were creating Vietnam all over again. They considered these people too cowed by the specter of Vietnam and too timid by half on the world stage. 

These people were right. Iraq is so totally Vietnam its silly. A country with a complicated ages-long religious and political mess. An insurgency fueled rather than dampened by aerial bombardment. A puppet army set up by the United States to do battle with people they didn’t harbor all that much resentment towards. A war based on lies in order to attack false demons. A leader (from Texas!) who routinely fed the country false hope for an impossible victory. An enemy that knew they could outlast our desire for war…the parallels run long and deep. 

How did we get out of Vietnam? It started with a change in strategy. It was called Vietnamization. Soldiers lived with the South Vietnamese to win over their hearts and minds. Which is exactly what we are now doing in Iraq. Violence went down. Soldiers went home. And a long dangerous false war came to an ugly end…

So what can the end of Vietnam tell us about what to expect in Iraq? There will be chaos. There will be corruption and civil war when we leave. In Vietnam, after the last soldier was evacuated, things got more violent and more ugly by the day. When we leave Iraq there will be a vacuum and it will fill with violent rage for the world to watch. 

About Afghanistan…its worse than Iraq. We are facing an enemy with a game plan that’s hard to refute. They figure they will engage us just enough to keep us there until we go broke. This is what happened to Russia. And it’s now happening to us. It would be a mistake to try and rebuild Afghanistan. We need to go after terrorists who would do us harm. But we don’t need to bog ourselves down in a failed country that has been at war its entire life. Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years now. What’s another 5 or 10? I would like to see us change our foreign policy by going to war based on consensus. Unilateral war is not sustainable. If a majority of countries believe we need to do something, it’s much easier to accomplish it. International public opinion, when it’s on your side, is much more sustainable. Compare the first Gulf War to the so-called wars in Iraq or Vietnam. It was easy to build a large coalition of willing countries for the first gulf war, because there was a strategic goal people could understand and get behind. It had a beginning and an end and it was over fast. Iraq and Vietnam had the backing of countries willing to do anything that would put the United States in their debt. Countries like Georgia and Mongolia for Iraq; counties like Managua for Vietnam. It had a false beginning and no discernible end. Hopefully we can finally learn from these types of mistakes finally. Bad wars make no sense, cost money, get people killed, and create the very people we think we are trying to destroy.

The Overlooked Reason Obama Won

In the aftermath of one of the most amazing Presidential campaigns in recent history, many have begun to try and figure out what Obama’s victory means. For some, it means the end of racism. For others, his win would not have been possible without racism. For some, he bought the election. For others, he won because of the economy. Or because McCain chose Sarah Palin. Or voters voted with their wallets. Or they voted to make a statement. All of these played a role. I don’t think Obama’s victory heralds an end to racism. And I don’t think his race helped him all that much. I think America voted for the person they thought had the best chance of helping us at a very pivotal moment. Regardless of ideology or religion or race, a majority of voters went with their gut and voted for the candidate they thought offered the best chance of improving the country. Obama won all over the place. He won the rich vote. He won the poor vote. He won with minorities. The man won. Plain and simple. He ran a brilliant campaign that struck a nerve with voters, and rode a massive wave of goodwill into an overwhelming victory. 

So let’s stop trying to diminish his achievement. He won. Pure and simple. By millions of votes. For one simple reason: he was the best candidate in the race and the best candidate we have seen in quite some time.

Obama Is Going To Drive The Media Nuts

One thing you can say about Obama, he plays his cards very close to his chest. The media and his closest advisors won’t know what he is considering until he makes a decision. Which means there won’t be a lot for the media to chew over and spin and criticize. He will absolutely drive both houses of congress nuts, as they won’t ever know quite what he’s up to. I’m not saying he will be secretive. But he won’t leak which way he is leaning on a particular issue. He has learned, and he is correct, that those around him will be compelled to argue for whatever side of an issue they think he is on. Knowing what your president wants to hear, especially if you respect him, makes it all too tempting to give it to him. However, if you don’t know what your President wants to hear, you are much more likely to give the President your true feelings. And that seems to be what Obama wants: his advisors actual thoughts on a topic. 

This is a complete reversal of the Bush administration, which told people what they were thinking and shunned those who didn’t agree with them. Obama welcomes the dissenting opinion. He seems quite capable of making decisions from a place beyond ideology. For a media that has grown over the last two years into an overly partisan group of blood hounds, digging around looking for dirt, an Obama administration could cause them a lot of pain.

“Message Suicide”

This is what Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod called McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in the latest issue of Newsweek. And indeed it was. In that moment he turned his chief strength into a liability. He through the mantle of experience out the window. And he threw his own criticism of Obama as a mere celebrity under the bus. After reading the article, and looking back at the world’s longest most media drenched campaign in world history, I truly believe that John McCain didn’t want to be President. Or his staff didn’t. Or someone somewhere had it in for him. There has never been a more self sabotaging campaign in modern memory. McCain is genetically wired against his own interests. He set traps for himself to later fall into. His ads said one thing, his staff said something else, his running mate something altogether different, and McCain himself seemed to have no clue what any of them was saying on his behalf. He would accuse Obama of socialism at a rally at 3 and then deny that he was a socialist to a reporter an hour later. Then the next day he would do it all over again. I truly believe I could have beaten McCain and become President. All I would have to do is not do anything. I could stand silent and just watch McCain defeat himself. Campaigning for President requires a discipline and consistency of message that is simply not in McCain’s DNA. He is at his best off the cuff, riding in his bus, cracking jokes and telling stories. Running the world is beyond his pay grade. 

He ran a lousy campaign. But it wasn’t all his doing. A lot of it had to do with appealing to the base that Karl Rove created for Bush. A group of angry intolerant nut balls that McCain has almost nothing in common with. It seems he and his closest advisors had grave misgivings about the direction their own campaign took when it went entirely negative. And they were horrified when their rallies grew more hostile and ugly. Instead of veterans, his crowds morphed into a My Cousin Earl casting session. 

A lot of stuff coming out isn’t all that surprising. McCain picked Palin on impulse. It’s better than drawing her name out of a hat, but not by much. It was a hail mary pass to the end zone thrown at a time when all he needed was a first down. It was Message Suicide. And the end of McCain’s credibility.

A Real Family In The White House

It’s a highly unusual sight. A family on the biggest stage in the world who convincingly seem to be in love with each other. It’s almost jarring to see people who truly love one another in politics. Most of our political families are dysfunctional wrecks. In each other’s company they tend to smile for the cameras and try to play the part, but it’s usually unconvincing. It’s also nice to see young children with huge grins on their faces seemingly take it all in stride. You have to go back 48 years to see young people in the White House. And these kids are bursting at the seems with charm. Their joy and enthusiasm is genuine and very refreshing. Hopefully, being in Washington won’t ruin their lives. It seems to have a unique ability to turn people into weird looking cartoons. Bad hair. Fake teeth. Strange clothing. Washington is the capital of off-putting looking people.

Leave Sarah Palin Alone

She’s a bozo. We all know that. And she lies. And she has a mean streak. And she is absolutely lousy at geography. However, the woman has been attacked enough of late. The attacks are misplaced. She might have campaigned to be on the McCain ticket, but she shouldn’t be faulted for that either. McCain, as he so graciously admitted in his confession speech, deserves all of the criticism. He chose her for tactical reasons. The fact that Obama is now the President can be linked in some ways to McCain’s choice of Palin. It made his age a greater liability than it would have been otherwise. But it was his choice. And that is where, if people feel it necessary, the attacks should be targeted. Let Palin go home. Stop asking her questions. She deserves to be nothing more than a trivia question on a future cocktail napkin. It’s time to forget her and move on.

Whew!

There’s a spring in my step today, even if I am in a “red” state. While I’m not convinced Georgia wasn’t flipped, it doesn’t matter. The United States – for a myriad of reasons – has validated its image worldwide. This really is the land of opportunity. The idea that has long attracted people to our shores for generations has become a reality. Seven years after a devastating blow, America has recovered its bearings. 

I fell to pieces when it happened. Snakes ran through my mind all night. Anything was possible. The youth might not have turned out. There could have been a Bradley effect. Any paranoid scenario that favored McCain found a place in my mind last night, despite the polls and the pundits and all I have seen and heard. It turned out to be exactly as it seemed. No contest at all. Not even close. With the highest percentage turnout in ninety years, the United States elected its first African American President. And I couldn’t be more proud of myself for pulling that lever and doing my part. It was a powerful moment. There was an electricity in the air as we all held our collective breath. Then: relief. And celebration. Cars honked. Revelers reveled. And joy was everywhere. It seems we are already coming together. 

Now that it’s over though, I can’t help but think: man, what a lousy job this guy signed up for. Somehow though, he seems perfectly comfortable with it. With hundreds of millions of people in the United States and throughout the world glued to their television, the man practically glided to the podium as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He owned the situation in a way that is simply astonishing. 

He promised to change the world. He already has.

Redistribution Of Wealth

This latest argument of the McCain campaign seems lacking. For one thing, we just redistributed a lot of wealth to Wall Street thanks to George Bush and years of underestimating mankind’s ability to take advantage of a situation. Greed finds a way. It’s not that Republicans think Obama is a Socialist. McCain himself in true Maverick fashion even admitted as much on Larry King. It’s that they don’t like where there tax money will be going. It’s the same argument we have every four or eight years. People want lower taxes and smaller government. Except when it comes to waging war or getting their way on domestic issues. All I know is that people are looking at their money, or what’s left of it, and what we have to show for it. We cut taxes during two wars, which we have been paying for on borrowed money from a country the right used to demonize for political gain. So called Fiscal Conservatives have been increasing the size of government 5% a year for the past eight years. The very thing they are supposed to be against. John McCain, who, in the primaries ran on the mantra “The True Conservative” could have won if he had laid out an agenda and explained to people just where Bush had gone wrong, and where he should have gone, and how he could take us there. Instead he chose to label his opponent one thing after another in order to feed the media narrative. But we are plugged into this election. We have been following it for two years now. We know when an opponent is shooting blanks. The kitchen sink approach doesn’t work. Especially if you call it that. You can’t say to the media, “We’re just going to throw all kinds of stuff at him.” It’s an admission of the emptiness of the claims. McCain would have been better served to stick to his True Conservative mantle. (Now, some will say that he isn’t a true conservative. This is true. But it’s also true that he doesn’t put his Country First.) Conservatives are starved for a Conservative candidate. But they don’t currently exist. Or they are too boring to get elected. Since 1992, the Liberals have been more conservative than the Conservatives. They either need to get back to their roots or change their names to the Psycho Party. They’ve driven the country so far off the road that a center right country could very well elect a Socialist Marxist Black White Radical Christian Muslim Black Panther Elitist Generated Crisis Inducing Wealth Redistributionist with no experience to be the next President. And they will do it because Obama used the Republicans time tested trump card against them. It’s the democrat who will be cutting taxes for most of the people in the country, taking away the Republican’s only idea.

So Long Partisan Media

Barack Obama, should he win, has campaigned hard on the strength of his promise to move past the politics of division. Which I think everyone not part of the media is ready for. It’s something both sides have campaigned on. George Bush was a Uniter, not a Divider. He was right. We are now united in thinking him a colossal mistake. Do the media, who have followed Obama almost religiously for two long years now, understand what that could mean to them? They’re very business model is founded on appealing to partisans. Fox News is watched not by people interested in the news, but rather by partisan’s who need their daily intake of liberal hate. The same is true for some of the shows on MSNBC. Not to mention Rush Limbaugh and The Drudge Report and Huffington Post. What will they all do if Obama makes good on his word? What if there’s no acrimony any more? What will the pundits of the left and the right do if people no longer want to hear them scream at one another? For a lot of people in the media, this could very well be their last day of work…but don’t bet on it. As long as the media has a say in politics, there will be bitter partisan divisions. That’s what sells. Choose a side and let the media enrage you against the other. If we do indeed move into a post-partisan world, media will be the next in line for a handout.

A Day Of Reckoning?

When our founders sat around drinking vast amounts of wine and brandy and whiskey and smoking endless amounts of tobacco creating our Constitution, they established one of the most effective systems to counteract the power hungry. Checks and Balances. They created a government that used this system to counteract any one branch of government going berzerk. It has always worked. Usually the checks and balances are relatively minor. Every once in a while though, one side bypasses the system or flat out ignores it. And the checks build up in frustration…

What we might be about to witness is the mother of all checks. A massive wave of corruption, malfeasance, and violent ineptitude swept into office eight years ago, and the system has been bottlenecked. Barack Obama could burst the dam and send the criminals who plundered our coffers scrambling in retreat. It will hopefully be a lesson for Republicans. It probably won’t, of course; Republicans wouldn’t be Republicans if they could learn from their mistakes. There is a price to be paid for ignoring the will of the people. The Obama administration would do well to learn this. The danger of overreach could herald in a whole new group of criminals eight years from now if we aren’t careful…

Get Ready To Be Disappointed

Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but whoever wins today, they won’t be able to do a tenth of what they have promised. Considering the mess we’re in, and the current insatiable media landscape, there’s a good chance that whoever wins will be colossally unpopular before they ever even take office. There’s simply no way that anyone can match the media’s tendency to overhype just about everything. With McCain, at least, like Bush, he would have the benefit of exceedingly low expectations. Obama has nowhere to go but down and McCain has nowhere to go but up. The entire globe seems to be looking to Obama to save them from all manner of American ills. But it won’t be easy or even possible to fix all of Bush’s and Cheney’s eight years of nefarious deeds. 

Part of me is glad that the economy has finally cratered. It hasn’t been a working model for decades now. And I am glad that most Baby Boomers are still alive to see what they have wrought on the very kids they have been so protective of. The reason we are dealing with so much debt on such a large scale is that most Americans can’t afford the most basic of things. Healthcare, Education, Technology – all of these things have been going up at the same degree that our paychecks have been stagnating or going down. Combine that with easy credit and you have a looming disaster. For eight years we’ve had a fake economy. We’ve given jobs to people to build things that nobody can afford to live in. We’ve given jobs to people to build cars that people can’t afford and don’t even want. This is a reckoning for many industries. The money they’ve spent to game the system so that they didn’t have to evolve themselves have now come back to kick me in the ass. The auto industry needs a bailout because they have been greedy and stupid for thirty years. The airline industry needs a bailout because they absolutely suck at every aspect of air travel. Banks need a bailout because they’ve been lying and cheating the system for years. Over the years my parents have stepped in to help me when I’ve gotten in over my head. And now it’s the other way around. For the next thirty years or so, I will be the one bailing them out.

Where is the economy going? It depends on who wins. I’m an optimist. So let’s assume Obama wins. Here is my guess on where the economy will change compared to the Bush administration:

 

Current Industries of Profit Under Bush:

Oil

Military

Mysterious Interrogation Prison Building

Nation Building

Eavesdropping technology

Airplane Shoes

Right Wing Attack Propaganda

Prescription Medication For Bizarre Diseases

Morally Bankrupt Constitutional Lawyers

Money Laundering

China Money For War Borrowing

 

Profit Industries Under Obama (one would think…)

Infrastructure

Energy Efficient Cars

Broadband Infrastructure

New Technologies

Green Industries

Economists

International Relations

Community Organizing For Would Be Politicians

Morally Non-Bankrupt Constitutional Lawyers De-Breaking The Constitution

Special Prosecutors

Secret Interrogator Prison Destruction

Generic Foods

Credit Card Addiction Therapists

Stem Cell Research

Canned Soup Buying

Right Wing Attack Propaganda

 

That’s what I have so far…One question though. The Pundits have been saying that in times of economic crisis, Democrats always do better. And Republicans are famously lousy at foreign policy. So just what exactly are they good at? It seems like the only thing they’re good at is getting into office. Once they get there they usually shit on the carpet.

Nixon? Warmonger. Criminal. (2 terms)

Ford? Accidental President. Good golfer. 

Reagan? Optimist? Yes. Hair gel? Yes. Good President? Only in revisionist history. Secret wars. Debt. Went nuts at the end. (2 terms)

Bush 41. Good War. Good Fisherman. Bad Debt. Bad economy. (one term)

Bush 43. Two Wars. One based on a lie. Colossal Debt. Bad economy. War criminal. Socialist. Environmental Destroyer. Global Disgrace. Liar. (2 terms)

 

The records clearly indicate that the Republican brand has not served us well these last forty years. And yet we keep forgetting that for some reason. Let’s not do that anymore!