Back To “Reality”

After a long vacation – some might call it a minor meltdown – I’m back to my old tricks. The last two months had so much bad news, so much sensationalism, so little corrective journalism, that my head literally exploded. Luckily I’m on COBRA, so they were able to put it back together. I’ve come to realize that our health-care is great! It’s the System that’s fucked…

Anyway, this whole December 25th foiled attack – don’t know if you’ve heard about it? – pointed out a truth that every media outlet has ignored. Al Quaida can’t really do anything. In eight years all they’ve managed to do is move where the non-working explosives were located. It is – rather – how we respond that makes Al Quaida successful. They send one miserable bastard to set his nuts on fire and we’ll spend a trillion dollars not finding the person who sent him to do it. If you met an Al Quaida operative without knowing who they were, your first instinct would be to get him to eat something and see a dentist. I’m not talking about the millions of people who now relate to them as a result of our colossal overseas fuckery this last decade – or the two or three master criminals who were taught by the CIA and educated in American schools who spend their days in the lap of luxury downloading iphone apps. I’m talking about the knuckle dragging hayseeds who are called upon to blow themselves up.

Cheney came out of his cave to criticize Obama – a man who gave a speech about war while receiving a prize for peace – for not mentioning war enough. Clearly his cave doesn’t get cable. Which reminds me, Cheney is sort of like Bin Laden (or Puxatony Phil) – you only see him when he comes out to make a false statement. But you can’t blame Obama for the outrageous intelligence failures that allowed a Nigerian with no luggage to buy a one-way ticket to Detroit with cash and try to blow up an airplane. Intelligence failures are the norm. If they weren’t “classified” we would be able to see that our intelligence agencies are collectively the greatest group of hapless dumbasses in the history of the world. Their failures are so consistent and so resoundingly incomprehensible that it would be ruinous to ever bring them to light. No matter who is in office. Whether it be a timid bleeding heart tree hugging environment caring liberal or a war mongering subnormal non-linguist nose-picking conservative – that guy still gets on the plane and still tries to incinerate his junk.

But enough about how our media has morphed into a corporately run collection of salacious ratings obsessed truth slanting helmet headed liars. Let’s talk about our culture and how messed up it is. I was coming home from holiday (I said holiday instead of vacation to make you wonder where I’m from! Ha!) and a five year old told his brother to “step back from my johnson yo!” His father told him “not to be so rated x; keep it rated r.” to which his kindergarden aged son replied, as if his father was the toddler, “dad, rated x is so much worse than rated r; it’s like 20 times worse.”  Next we find Gilbert Arenas suspended from the NBA for keeping a collection of firearms in his locker in the Wizards locker-room. It’s rare to find a place outside of Texas that would look fondly at an employee stowing firearms in his office. Arenas though, made the incomprehensibly stupid even worse by jokingly shooting off his fingers at fellow Wizards – a.k.a. Bullets – during warmups before a game. Haha! Get it! And last year we saw a couple of culture whores try to drag our highest office into the “reality” mire that our country has become by crashing a state dinner.

Our country is teetering over a mighty chasm of debt and all we want to do is get on television or do something stupid so we can Twit about it. We might want to take a long look at the messages we’re giving ourselves before we cross over into the grim dimness from which there is no going back. Once we’re too dumb to know we’re dumb we’re doomed.

Happy New Year!

As The Media Turns – The Obama Edition

We all knew over a year ago, when Obama was being touted as our nation’s savior, that it would come to this. None of us – not one – truly believed he would be able to fix all of the problems he inherited and follow through on his promises – in only a year! And yet here we are, a year later, and the guy can’t wake up in the morning without someone going on television and listing all the ways he did it wrong. Politicians – who are not human beings – stretch the truth alarmingly as a matter of course; they absolutely shred it when they’re campaigning. We all know this; we even have learned to expect it. It’s the system we sit back and allow them to operate in. We knew – even as he said it – even as he meant it and wanted it to be – that Obama wouldn’t be able to meet his desired goal of getting us out of Iraq by this August. We just liked the sound of it and knew for a fact the other guy would have us engaged in trench warfare around the globe within two weeks of his inauguration.

Obama is getting shredded in the news no matter what he does. The media no longer plays it objectively. It’s all or nothing and now Obama is slowly being dismantled by a relentless media that is highly frustrated at their inability to procure pictures of Tiger Woods’ penis.

The man has made some mistakes. Like listening to the CIA. A group of ivy league dingbats who have no single positive accomplishment to their name since their very inception. Like listening to General McChrystal – a thoroughly corrupt international assassination machine who is now tapped with winning the hearts and minds of people who want us to stop killing newlyweds and schoolchildren: something he can’t even do with his own troops.

Afghanistan is blowing up. Pakistan is in turmoil. We’ll make Yemen a lot worse starting tomorrow. Obama is doing a fine job of hurting himself the more he listens to his pool of so-called “experts” – the professional liars and stooges who call the shots in the corporately fucked Washington of 2010.

He doesn’t need the media to do it for him.

Dick Cheney Tortures Still…

Not since Torquemada has a hunchbacked evil bastard caused so many so much pain so consistently. Forget stabbing friends in the back; he’ll just up and shoot them in the face. (There have been plenty of evil bastards, of course; but they all had better posture.) Anyway, today a court in Italy found 23 CIA agents guilty of kidnapping stemming from their practice of Extraordinary Rendition of people the United States were suspicious of. They were sentenced to prison. Not that they will actually go to prison, as they have asylum here in the United States – which is THE place to live these days for those who answered the demands of the Bush Junta. Kidnapping was the least of their crimes. That was just the first step. Next these people who simply vanished from the sovereign countries in which they lived would find themselves in various “sites” around the world, where a whole host of nefarious deeds would be done to them in an effort to extract information from them. Sort of like the infamous scene in Marathon Man, where Dick Cheney is drilling holes in Dustin Hoffman’s teeth. He played a Nazi in that movie – and the parallels between that Dick Cheney and the real one are striking. But I digress. Mark Twain knew a hundred years ago what I know and what any sentient being knows: torture doesn’t work. Unless your goal is to thoroughly break someone’s psyche and ruin them as people, that is; if your goal is to actually get information from someone, it’s not remotely effective. Unless you want a whole bunch of made up bullshit. I know myself. And I know I wouldn’t even have to be tortured to make up all sorts of ill deeds if I thought it would make the pain go away. It’s no wonder that there was such a rash of false warnings about shopping malls being targeted. Either it was based off false information extracted from innocent people or it was ginned up fear from an administration that ran on lies and bullying.

Dick Cheney likes to go on and on about how torturing people is great and a wonderful way to foil plots and catch bad guys. When pressed for any sort of evidence, he instantly retreats to the tired old theory that to divulge such a thing would make us weaker or some nonsense. What I’m sure it does is make our soldiers – not prisoners of war – but targets of revenge. If we can’t honor our own propaganda, how can we expect others to? Exactly.

The most frustrating aspects of the behavior of the Bush administration is that they did all of the things they did even despite the fact that it defied any sort of logic or reason or research or knowledge of human behavior. We make the same mistakes over and over again expecting a different outcome: which is the definition of  - well, so much for that. Each new generation does something that has been done before – and failed before – but like Mickey Rooney – they try again anyway – because they’re better! Or different! And then: whoops! I married my mom again!!!

I can’t help but think that if Al Gore had been just a little less boring, this country wouldn’t be trillions of dollars in the hole funding quagmires oceans away in a desert among groups and fiefdoms and cultures we seem hopeless to understand. We wouldn’t be apologizing for torture while denying we ever did it; and we wouldn’t be closing a prison that isn’t closing anytime soon. Instead, 0ur money would be safely ensconced with treasury secretary Bernie Madoff on Capitol Hill near the Green House.

Where The Innocent Are Tortured and The Guilty Write Memoirs

Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America. Where you’re innocent until brutally beaten into guilt. Where, if you won’t admit the crime you haven’t committed, you will when we Rendition you to a country that will get it out of you one way or another. If, despite all of that, you are still found innocent, there will be no recourse for you. No way to make those that caused you great body and psychic harm pay for their mistake. Because, heck, if every innocent person the United States tortured sued for damages, it would fill up our courts from coast to coast! It would take up lots of paper and time that the government simply can’t afford.

Sorry innocent tortured people. But the closest you can come to justice is shooting out your television screen when you see my (Dick Cheney! I’m selling a book!) ugly twisted soul on television lying up a storm about anything and everything and shitting in everyone’s coffee during my book tour. Or shooting out your television screen whenever you see George Bush is headlining – of all things – a seminar on motivation! (George and I both highly recommend shooting out your televisions. That way you’ll have to buy a new one – which will stimulate the economy!)

(For your daily dose of seriously depressing doom, go here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/03/arar)

You don’t think I didn’t have this all figured out, did you? Did you really think I would order all these innocent people tortured if I wasn’t sure there was no way I could ever be punished for it? I may be a lot of things, but one thing I definitely am is one hell of a good war criminal. So good in fact that I’m still a fine and upstanding citizen, immune from prosecution, and allowed to practice my free speech on anyone and everyone. Instead of being locked up for all the bad things I like to do, I go on Meet The Press so I can call the President a fairy. That Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme? My idea. I met that guy at a cocktail party and told him I would torture him if he didn’t become a criminal. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; and, in my case, although I have always been corrupt, it’s so gloriously true! Unless you’re a Canadian. Those fools admit their wrongdoing and make reparations! What a laugh those guys are! If I could I’d extremely rendition that whole country to Syria!

Have you heard about the Arar case? It’s a case study in my lack of any moral bearings whatsoever. And the power I wielded in the White House and the Justice Department – and what I could do with it. Some Canadian software engineer named Arar had the misfortune to go through New York on his way home to Canada from vacation. And that’s when we nabbed him. But he wouldn’t confess to his evil-doing: he kept going on about being innocent and whatnot, so – realizing if we sent him to Syria they would torture him – we put a bag over his head and – next thing he knows – he’s in a Syrian prison along with a whole bunch of questions for them to ask! Where he is repeatedly tortured. He confessed of course. Finally. To something he didn’t do, just so they would stop beating him with cables. On and on and on it went. Various painful forms of torture. Day in and day out – for over a year.  Finally, the Syrians concluded that he was actually innocent. Oh well. Omelettes and broken eggs and all that. Now he’s all pissy about the whole thing. He even sued John Ashcroft – which is fine with me: that guy is a dithering pansy anyway. But, unlike Canada, which actually admitted to their wrongdoing, looked into the matter and published a weighty document detailing how wrong they – and the United States – were, groveled for his forgiveness and gave him 11.5 million Canadian dollars.

As Arar could tell you, the United States doesn’t play like that. Nope. I made sure of that, you see. I’m untouchable, frankly. The way it works is, we just deny it ever happened. After all, the United States doesn’t torture! Ha! Ask me a question and “I don’t recall” the answer. Pretty simple really. You’ve got evidence you say? Well, what is the definition of evidence anyway? You see, when you have a lot of power you can do tricky things like decide what evidence is; and the very meaning of words themselves. If it’s something we don’t want it to be, we’ll just change it. And, if you want to testify in front of a grand jury about all of the punishments the Syrians conducted on you at the request of the United States, well, good luck getting into the country!

Okay, enough about how great my power is. I have a memoir to make up and some paper shredding to do. I also have to celebrate how timid and cowardly this administration is when it comes to my rampant criminality. They protect me at every turn!

Cheers!

Dick

 

The Right – Doubling Down On Denial

In New York right now, the GOP is engaging in some public internecine warfare. The vote comes tomorrow and the GOP is urging its base to choose the more “conservative” of the two. In the automated phone calls that voters are subjected to, the following snippet can be heard:

Blah Blah Blah. Liberals suck – or something like that; and then: “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like thrift, personal responsibility, and family? Let’s tell the liberals, enough is enough.” – these calls went out in order to talk Republicans into not voting for the moderate one – i.e. not a dipshit – in favor of the hard-liner – i.e. demagogue fool.

You might not know this, and I didn’t either, but apparently one of the conservative values is Thrift. Who knew the Republicans were so concerned about saving money? They quadrupled the size of government; they spent a trillion dollars in Iraq; and they seem to be made up almost entirely of extremely rich bigots. And it’s been a long long time since an elected Republican showed much concern for thrift. I doubt there are too many Republicans eating Ramen soup to save money. Another conservative value? Personal Responsibility. This doesn’t seem to hold water either. In fact, right now the two individuals personally responsible for the current state of this country are in deeper denial than Pete Rose. Neither Dick Cheney nor George Bush have taken responsibility for a single misstep on anything. Not torture. Not the economy. Or making a huge leap towards socialism by buying into our country’s largest – and most incompetent – banks. Instead of taking responsibility, they choose to “not recall” what they did. Family. The conservatives claim this value to be firmly within their grasp. Yet it’s the Obamas who seem to be actually living this value conservatives hold so dear. We’ve seen a parade of Republicans fall on their family-value faces over the last year: whether it’s a governor hiking the Appalachian Trail in South America or a Senator going out of his way to find employment for his mistress’ boyfriend.

There comes a time when people wake up and realize that actions really do speak louder than words. You can claim something great in your mission statement  (you can bet Bernie Madoff didn’t have Ponzi Scheme anywhere in his mission statement); but if you can’t back it up, it’s time to change your tune. It’s time to rebrand yourself and start anew. For the Republicans, they can go one of two ways. They can either double-down on their current tactics of hypocrisy and latent racism – “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like largesse, cronyism and white supremacy?” – or they can come up with an actual viable alternative to what the democrats are doing. This is a two-party system we have. Republicans might want to at least try and make a play for being the second one.

The only way they are going to do that is communicate honestly on a platform that people can actually believe. Personally, I’m not holding my breath.

Should We Give Taxes A New Name?

You say the word “tax” these days, you end up in a dark alley with a letter opener sticking out of your belly. It’s un-American to use such a word. In this year – 2009 for those keeping count… – the highest tax rate is 35%, which is for anyone who earns more than $372,950. Let’s contrast that with 1945: I’m not suggesting the earning power is the same – but for the sake of this argument it doesn’t matter – as there is no tax rate over 35% in 2009 – but in 1945, if you made 0ver $200,000, your tax rate was 94%. Which meant that you could keep a whopping 6% of your income! Granted, at the time we had a war to pay for – but still…that’s a decent chunk of change.

(for those of you who are into numbers, you can find what I referenced here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-200901021.pdf

Now, we’ll just work our way forward in time:

The history books tell us that the 50’s were booming. The war was over. Soldiers were home after kicking some real Axis of evil ass. And one of the most popular songs of the era was about a lollipop. In 1955, those who made over $200,000 paid 91% taxes – but that wasn’t the highest tax bracket; ,moving forward to 1970, anyone earning more than $100,000 paid 70%. Not bad! In 1980 – ditto. —-Then things started changing as a greasy haired simpleton was now at the helm; a former California governor who once acted opposite a monkey named Bonzo. In 1982, the highest tax rate goes down to 50%; but you only had to make $42,5o0 to be in the highest tax bracket. It was the beginning of the deterioration of the middle-class. But let’s keep going. By 1988, at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term, the highest tax rate was merely 28% for anyone earning more than 113,300. Reagan was the inventor and greatest proponent of Voodoo Economics, the theory of which seems to be that the less you pay in taxes, the more taxes the government gets. Or something like that. Something that is simply not possible. The government spends more and takes in less was at the very heart of the Reagan way. No wonder then that in 1989 people were so fed up with taxes, and barely having to pay them, that George Bush the 1st had to go on record as promising “no new taxes.” A promise he couldn’t keep. As, well, what kind of government can spend money without having any? By 1991, the tax rate had to go back up to 31% for those making more than $41,075 to help make up for all the money the government wasn’t taking in the previous six years. It cost him re-election: despite a quick and relatively painless Gulf War 1, the tanking economy cost him his job. Clinton – because he was a liberal and not at all conservative – raised taxes back up to 39.6% for those making more than $140,000, paying down the deficit and balancing the budget – an act that the Republicans admired so much they shut down congress. It stayed at that rate for both of his terms. George Bush the 2nd, who is closer in both spirit and stupidity to Ronald Reagan than his father, managed to get it back down to 35% – which is where it stands today.

To even imply a tax on anything is to risk being drawn and quartered by a mad band of Glenn Beck supporters with muppets and pick axes. But we’ve got a stimulus package to pay for, two wars to fund, a health-care overhaul that could turn out to be many things – free not being one of them – as well as a host of other problems finally catching up us. We’re paying for the last 27 years of irresponsible tax policy. While it’s nice not to have to pay as much in taxes as The Greatest Generation did (just one more thing they did better than the Baby Boomers. They paid 90% in taxes and sang about lollipops!), there’s something to be said for paying for what we take. We want better education, better health-care, better infrastructure, social security, Medicare – and a whole host of other things, we just don’t want to pay for it. The Republicans would have us cut taxes even further. They seem to believe that the less you pay in taxes, the more that money trickles down. (Actually I don’t think they believe this at all; I think it’s just a faux theory they came up with to explain the reckless hacking they planned to do to the national treasury. That money – as they well knew – didn’t trickle down: it trickled into fuck pads and silicone breasts and three hundred foot yachts and stomach staples and anything else they felt like spending their money on.)

It’s clearly time for us to raise taxes. We’ve got an almost two trillion dollar deficit for this year alone. That 4.6% difference in taxes at the highest level is nothing to sneeze at: in 2000, after all, we had a budget surplus. Maybe the problem  is the word itself. Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. It hurts saying that word. What if the word was changed to – and we’ll take a page from Bush for this one (he’s not using it) – Freedom Surcharge. We could call taxes taxes and then add a Freedom Surcharge of, let’s say, 4.6 percent. It would be a lot harder for the crooks at the highest ranks of the corporate latter to complain about paying for our Freedom.

If you love America, you should be willing to keep it in business. Even if you’re Republican. Even if it means paying what you owe.

Old Man Hiding In Bunker Slings Accusations At President

Dick Cheney, the former vice-President, who spent an eight year period hidden away in a bunker, ordering tortures from a safe distance, only going out rarely, most notably to shoot someone in the face, is now accusing Obama of being “afraid” – to send 40,000 men and women to an untamed Middle East hinterland filled to overflowing with AK-47 wielding citizens who don’t appreciate being their fiefdoms being occupied by foreigners. What he sees as “dithering” might be – gasp! – thinking something through! Imagine that! A President who values human life! Had George Bush been a ditherer and not hopelessly handicapped by ignorance, we might not find ourselves in two ongoing wars…against…something or someone that has cost us trillions of dollars that could have paid for healthcare or gone towards the creation of an island off the coast of New York – let’s call it Fat Cat Island – where Wall Street derivative traders could be allowed to consume one another on live television – like Survivor, only with bankers. There are all sorts of things that money could have been better utilized for.

Afghanistan isn’t the hopeless quagmire Iraq was and is. It’s worse. It’s been breaking empires for centuries. It broke the British and the Soviet Union – and it’s slowly breaking us as well. Obama is merely trying to make some sort of sense out of it. All this talk of “victory” coming from the military is nothing more than a group of people at the very top of a corporation suggesting something that will help their bottom line. Bombing things is good business. It’s one of the few evergreen industries we have these days.

Obama – hopefully – is looking to find strategies that actually make sense. Sending weapons to Pakistan and hoping they use them to bomb the right people isn’t a good one: they’ll just hoard them and wait for an opportunity to use them against India or something. Better to help them build infrastructure and improve security in exchange for them taking action against a group of people that have worn out their welcome even in the country that created them.

But I don’t know anything. Unfortunately neither do the people who are supposed to. I don’t know what Dick Cheney’s problem is – but he’s absolutely completely wrong about everything. In fact, he’s going to write a memoir filled with all sorts of wrong things he’s done that he thinks were correct. I’m just glad the guy doesn’t like me the way he does his country – because he almost single-handedly wrecked it. He was no doubt the kind of kid you wouldn’t allow to borrow your toys. He’d almost certainly break them and then shoot you in the face if you complained about it. He needs therapy; not a book tour. This is the guy who assured the nation that the Taliban “was finished” – eight years ago. Which makes you wonder why they’re surging right now and why the same one eyed mystery man is still strolling the caves of the Khyber Pass safe and sound. This is the guy who turned war into a for-profit industry; this is the guy who is on the board of a for-profit prison that tortured its prisoners. He oozes corruption out of every pore. And you can bet his breath smells like a dead skunk stuck in a chimney for six months. He stands for everything loathsome and deplorable about the potential of man; the fact that he has been successful in his life is an ugly insult to all that is inspiring and just.

BOOGIE MAN

He is the great Boogie Man;

He is why kids keep their lights on;

He is the reason people

aren’t always nice

to their neighbors -

(that guy could be like Dick Cheney!)

He is a muse for the misformed -

and a beacon

to all who hope one day to grow up

and destroy everything.

His presence is usually presaged by a cold front.

Trees blow on windless days.

Thunder rumbles under a clear blue sky.

He is the boogie man;

the dark cancerous pimple

on the ass of the American Dream.

And he should shut up.

 

 

The Worst Defense Lawyer In The World (One Hopes)

Normally I like to unleash my bile and vitriol at the stupidities I see in today’s media and political discourse. But not today. No. Today is about the person who simply HAS to be the worst actual real defense lawyer in the world. And I wouldn’t have known a thing about him if I hadn’t stopped channel surfing because I thought I saw Randy Quaid…

It looked like Anderson Cooper was interviewing Randy Quaid. And Randy Quaid was wearing a cowboy hat. I thought maybe it might have something to do with that bizarre hotel story in Marfa where he skipped out on his bill and got arrested. But no. This wasn’t a character actor playing up some goofy Texas stereotype. It was a real person more than living up to it. He was, specifically a defense attorney in Texas named David Martin. And, if you’ve retained his services you are in all likelihood either in prison or dead. The interview begins with him apologizing “for checking cows.” He is wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat. It only gets worse from there.

He was being interviewed about the innocent man executed in Texas for setting his house on fire and killing his children. It’s a story that has been in the news lately because the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has gotten involved – going so far as to stall any investigation into the possibility of Texas being the first state to openly be able to claim the murder of an innocent man – by kicking person after person off the commission created to investigate the case.

The executed man was Cameron Todd Willingham. He was no role model. But neither are lots of people. He might not have been guilty either. His “lawyer” was David Martin. And he was not on television to defend his client – but to attack him. Relentlessly. And he declared even the possibility of his innocence to be “hogwash”  and “absurd.” Absurd seems to be a big word for him – as he used it frequently as a rejoinder for everything. David Martin – worst defense lawyer in the world – is quoted in the New Yorker as saying that “98% of the time my clients are guilty as sin.” Which is all fine and good. This is America and I am a fan of freedom of speech and personal opinion. But I’m also a fan of justice. And, as expert after expert after expert have come forward and made abundantly clear – an innocent man, who tragically lost his three children in a fire, lost his freedom and his life – thanks, in part, to the WORLD’S WORST DEFENSE LAWYER and a crap sandwich of “evidence” bordering on the criminally ignorant. (For example, two details that led to Cameron Todd Willingham’s demise: he had an Iron Maiden poster in his house (he was 20 years old at the time the house burned), which the prosecution drummed up to mean that – rather than being a fan of heavy metal –  he was obsessed with violence; Also, he had a tattoo of a skull on his arm. Bad taste perhaps; but not indication of mass murder…

At one point in what is an entertaining (Nobody can stereotype the Texan like a Texan) and bizarre interview, the defense lawyer claimed that he knew his client was guilty because he and another lawyer got some lighter fluid and burned a piece of carpet and…it looked just like the burned carpet in the house! (My guess is it was black and charred and burned looking.) My next guess is that this guy is a stone cold idiot – a supreme embodiment of both inexcusable confidence and willful ignorance. (sort of like a certain ex-President who liked to wear cowboy boots and bomb stuff.) Now, I love Texas; my family is from there. But Texans are so full of their own propaganda that it’s flat out dangerous. They strut and amble the world over, causing all manner of havoc and mayhem everywhere they go. (I was once in Rome and asked my tour guide which tourists drove him the craziest. I was sure it would be America. But he said, no, he loved Americans. In fact he loved all of the people he has met; everyone, that is, but people from the “country” of Texas. He said they were loud and abusive and acted superior even though they dressed like fools with giant hair and were always drunk.)

I could go on and on about what a high-class boob this guy is – but no amount of words can do the guy justice – and there’s no point in satirizing that which is already a satire and a tragedy. So, without further ado:

watch the interview here:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5cFKpjRnXE

read the story here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann/

I was glad to discover that I am not alone when it comes to thinking this guy is a jackass and an assessory to murder. And, of course, terrible at his job. Going on national television, as the clients’ defense attorney, to attest to his own clients’ guilt seems to go against the whole confidentiality and attorney-client privelege thing. I didn’t even know he was the defense attorney until half-way through when Anderson named him as such; the way he was talking and acting defensive I figured he was a prosecuting attorney. But I was wrong. Also, if you think 98% of your clients are “guilty as sin,” wouldn’t that limit your ability and motivation to prove otherwise? I mean, if you think about it, that sort of mentality grants you the ability to throw in the towel, not try at all, and only screw up 2% of the time. (Statistics actually show that in reality only about half of defendants are guilty of their crime (according to the New Yorker article) – which, now that I think about it, totally sucks.) You get what you pay for – and in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham – who had no money, he got a know nothing. In this country you are only as innocent as what you can afford. Which means half the people in jail are stuck there until they are rich enough to get out.

The gist of the articles below is that David Martin hurt his client by trashing him on national television. I don’t know about anyone else who watched the interview, but it seems to me he mainly trashed himself. And only gave more ammunition to the growing belief that a great injustice was done in this case. And a man is dead as a result.

Here’s what people who actually know what they’re talking about say:

An actual defense attorney defends his profession and stomps David Martin here: http://gamso-forthedefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/selling-out-client-part-iii.html

and here: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2009/10/david-martin-willinghams-trial-lawyer-speaks-up.html

and here: http://rantsofapublicdefender.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-you-cant-say-anything-nice.html

and here: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/10/17/never-smear-your-own-client-not-even-in-death.aspx

and here: http://brownandlittlelaw.com/blog1/2009/10/17/shameful/

and here (this was the lawyer who had the misfortune of trying to fix all the crap this moron got wrong): http://www.wacocriminallawblog.com/

Anything You Can Do I Can Root Against

The Republicans are so upset with being out of power – having lost their toy – that they cheer anything that goes against Obama. Even if it goes against their own country. To see Republicans jumping up and down with glee that the U.S. didn’t get the 2016 Olympics was – to take a phrase out of their playbook – somewhat un-American. It’s one thing to disagree on policy – which they would do if they understood it; it’s one thing to disagree on their philosophy – which they would do if they had one; it’s something else altogether to simply cheer against something that would have benefitted a country starved for income – simply because someone from the other side worked to make it happen.

No, Chicago didn’t get the Olympics; Rio did. Yes, Obama flew to Denmark to lobby on behalf of his country. No, it didn’t work; and no, it’s not something to celebrate. It is – in fact really dumb – especially from a party who has eyes on the White House in 2016. What if a Republican were in office in 2016? Why, he or she would host an Olympics! Horrors!

Perhaps, underneath it all, the giddiness that greeted America’s most recent setback revealed an underlying insecurity: perhaps the GOP knows they don’t have a shot at 2016…maybe they look to their left and right and see someone like themselves – a complete fool – and they think, fuck it – might as well boo.

Yet Another Dick Post

It’s been awhile since I’ve had anything negative to say about Dick Cheney. Like a week or something. But the recently released findings from the EU on the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, reminds me all over again just how shit-ass terrible the Bush administration was when it came to foreign policy. (Which brings up – yet again – the question of just what is it they were good at? The answer to which is: misinformation and wedge issues and transparent corruption; other than that – nothing.) Dick Cheney – like torture and lying and fearmongering and face-shooting- has always been a fan of Georgia. It was one of his pet projects to get them into NATO – so that they could check the Red Menace from marching! Not that there is much menace these days. No. In fact, back before we up and squandered it, the only power even capable of any marching was the United States. But so much for that. Russia is more interested in no longer being in an economic hell-hole.

“We are all Georgians now” – John McCain

The findings show that it was the Georgians who started the war with Russia. With weapons and training we gave them. Then turned to the West looking for help – playing the victim. The Russian response was overwhelming and uncalled for. But – it must be said – they did not start it. You would be hard-pressed to find a western publication that didn’t side itself on the side of Georgia.

“For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable…”  - Sarah Palin

It’s not for nothing that the Right (wrong) was so quick to come to the aid (verbally) of Georgia. They had no choice. Their hands were just as dirty. The attack couldn’t have occurred if we weren’t plying them with weapons. And now we’ve got one more reminder of just how inept the 8 year Bush junta really was on just about everything.

“After your nation won its freedom in the Rose Revolution, America came to the aid of this courageous young democracy. We are doing so again as you work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory, and an illegitimate, unilateral attempt to change your country’s borders by force that has been universally condemned by the free world. America is fully committed to Georgia’s membership action plan for NATO and to its eventual membership in the alliance. Now it is the responsibility of the free world to rally to the side of Georgia,” – Dick Cheney

Vintage Cheney. Full of certainty. And dead wrong as usual. His words ring hollow now. They rang hollow then, of course; but now they’re downright embarrassing. It’s hard to think of a single thing – other than keeping us safe from attack, which isn’t nothing and probably had more to do with Homeland Security than anything coming out of the Cheney lair- and combatting AIDS in Africa, which was George Bush’s doing and for which he must be given some credit – that the Bush administration didn’t bungle, distort, break, ruin, ignore, destroy, or otherwise make in some way worse. The media may be having a field day with Obama and all the stuff on his plate – and wonder whether or not he’s tough enough to play politics globally – but perhaps it’s time to step back and gain some perspective. Compared to the Bush administration, this is a President that people actually respect. Compared to The Decider, this is a guy who can tie his own shoes. Compared to an administration working actively against the nation’s interest, we’ve got an imperfect one that has made great strides in picking us up off the ground.

It’s good to remember how much worse things were when Bush was President – especially when you see the mass of hysteria tossed up on television on a daily basis. It’s hard to keep a hold on some sort of reality in such circumstances. When you have people like Glenn Beck announcing that Vancouver lost a billion dollars hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics – an event that has yet to even transpire – you know that reality is not only beside the point, but not even an afterthought. It takes diligence and curiosity to try and unravel the threads of truth when those entrusted with that job aren’t even trying.

Okay…

Addendum:

Now, to be fair, right or left, we still seem to have Georgia’s back. We’re still helping their army. And we might still be arming them. Once these things get rolling, it’s hard to stop them. But perhaps the EU report might make them rethink whether or not Georgia has the right temperament to be an ongoing pet project moving forward.

Confessions Of A Confused Health-Care Protestor

It’s the weekend. Finally. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, in my case – what with me being retired and all. (To me every day is the weekend.) But the weekend is better because there’s less traffic and more people to rile up. And rile them up I will! I plan to go out and protest big government as is my right as a citizen of the Republic of Texas or America or whatever.

I plan to compare Obama to Hannibal Lector for one thing. I found a picture of Anthony Hopkins in that mask on the Internet. I will walk around with that for a while. Then, once that is done, I plan to drive all over town and run over people’s pets. Which has nothing really to do with the health-care “debate,” but so what? It’s a form of expression and I’m fed up with my government telling me what to do. Then I’m going to go stand outside a grocery store with a machine gun over my shoulder for no reason at all.

The truth is – and here I will have to make a sad confession – having had someone read the new health-care bill to me – and then having someone else tell the two of us what it was trying to say – well, it doesn’t sound all that bad. And that sort of sucks. Because it goes against my instincts of disliking everything the government does. For one thing, I found out that my Medicare is actually a government run program. And here I was three weeks ago with a sign telling the government to stay away from my Medicare! This knowledge is certainly something I would rather just not know. In principal I’d really like to not have Medicare. But holy bird blossoms! If I didn’t have that I’d lose everything I had paying for getting all those pain pills removed from my stomach each month. No. I need that Medicare. I’m about the least healthy a person can be and not be attached to a machine.

And my social security. Apparently the government has something to do with that too. And, now that we’re on this subject, is seems they also pay me my unemployment benefits. And have done so for about twenty years now…Shit: just about everything I have right now is paid for by the government now that I think about it -except for the pornos, my fighting roosters and the machine gun. Which stinks! Because, by God, I hate the government. Or I’m supposed to. It’s all so confusing. It makes me want to sniff magic markers just thinking about it.

I did go to that rally last Saturday in Washington put on by those health-care folks who put me on the bus and gave me the sign and bought me meals (I had the drinks stuck in my boots) and gave me money and told me what to say and whatnot. They had all sorts of signs to choose from. They looked hand-made, but when you got really close were actually manufactured. Sort of like those sweepstakes you get in the mail that look like your name is handwritten on but is really ink. I could choose between Obama as Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein. (No Hannibal Lector though!) I chose Stalin because he had a thicker mustache. Obama is a handsome man (I can admit it) but even he looks silly in a Hitler mustache.

People kept asking me what I was protesting – and I just didn’t have an answer for them. I’m what you would call at a crossroads with all this unfortunate knowledge I wish I’d never got wind of. Luckily though, with my braided mustache and long fingernails and missing eye, I just have to stare at someone without saying anything for them to back off and go about their business. I couldn’t remember what that nice looking woman on the bus told me to say. I was drunk as a loon for one thing. And the words she used were all kinds of fancy sounding. And her blue eyes were the kind a person could get lost in. But that’s another sad song in the story of my life: she was clearly revolted by me.

The protest wasn’t all that big as what it looked like on the news. It was only about ten people in all truth. Or nine. Because I got kicked out of the protest for a reason I’ll get to shortly. The rest of the crowd were reporters and Cigna employees. When I saw the news I was shocked that I was part of such a large protest: it looked like a band of millions were there. But no. You can’t trust the television anymore. Or your own eye. Must be some trick the camera can do or something.

Chuck Norris was there. He was signing autographs and trying to hand them out to people. But even protestors like to avoid people shoving paper into their hands. He’s short, is Chuck Norris. And he dressed like a fool – in all black for crying out loud. Like some Hollywood dandy. But anyway, they have this huge – well, I thought it was a water trough – what they call a Mall there; but it isn’t anything like what we call a mall in Texas: I guess it’s just one more thing I don’t like about the government: they can’t even name things right. Instead of a mall it’s a really long trough of water. And I was really thirsty…

I was thirsty because of the Cialis. On the bus they had all sorts of pharmaceutical reps giving out pills like candy – all the while reminding us that Obama would take it all away. We got muscle relaxants and pain pills and anxiety pills and valium…and Cialis. Which I’d never tried so I up and took one on the bus. But it didn’t do anything really except make me thirsty and turn my face red…

So by the time I got off the bus – between the Cialis and the hooch I’d been swilling from the flasks in my boots – I had worked up a mean thirst. So I went to that mall and began to drink; which, as would be made very clear to me, you aren’t supposed to do. For one thing, the water is not like any water I’ve ever tasted. It tastes sort of like recycled spit. And for another if you do drink out of the trough the cops will grab you and harass you. Especially if you have a picket sign comparing the President to Stalin. The whole scene was wrong the minute I got off the bus. Protesting the government for reasons you don’t understand is best done from afar if you ask me. The cop kept referring to me as “one of those teabaggers…” Cops. They wear a uniform and they think they can attack your sexuality. I would later find out that we were actually called that! And it also explained why that guy on the bus kept saying that his “lifestyle” was his own business and what he did in the bedroom and in the bathroom of dance clubs was nobody’s business but his own and whoever the lucky recipient was. But that also is another story that hasn’t got anything to do with anything. But it does explain why some outrageous queen was protesting liberals.

I was eventually let go by the cops – so long as I promised to get back on the bus. Which I was glad to do: it had a bathroom and air conditioning and there wasn’t a soul on it but me and that Public Relations lady from the health insurance company and the cute pharmaceutical reps and me.

I’ll admit it. I did let my mind wander to unsavory places; all kinds of fantasies availed themselves to my mind in that bus with those women. And I learned that Cialis does have its charms. But I will tell you this: it’s not to be taken unless you’re ready for it. Those women thought I was the vilest thing on earth, what with my long fingernails and missing eye and a tent popping out of my lap.

Which is all a very long way of saying that this weekend I am going to protest – my way – this weekend – against big government; even though it appears I owe my very life to it. Because I’m an American and I guess that’s just the way it works.

ACORN Tapes Reveal Lots Of Lousy Acting

Having watched the videos, it appears to me that the employees involved, using extremely poor judgment, went along with a couple of lousy actors trying to be right-wing Borat’s. Pretending to be a pimp and a hooker – while succeeding more at looking outrageous and goofy – they asked questions as the cameras rolled; and employees went along. I’m sure ACORN is guilty of all manner of infractions – just as they are guilty of doing all manner of good deeds – but this seems like a contrived controversy that in steadier times would be shelved as a non-story. But these aren’t steady times. And straight news no longer exists. I’m sure the raw footage would reveal employees asking questions and the “actors” telling them just to play along with their little skit…bad judgment on one side; bad taste on the right; and bad acting throughout…

Judge Determines Hawaii To Be Part Of The United States

- Columbus, Georgia

In a not really all that landmark of a decision, U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land determined that the state of Hawaii is indeed part of the United States. “Hawaii is a state in the union of the United States of America; and, as such, it can’t also be part of the Republic of Kenya, a country in East Africa,” the judge ruled. “Nor does it specialize in making sandwiches, in case you are thinking about arguing such a thing in the future. While at one point Hawaii was part of the Sandwich islands, it did not make sandwiches. Case dismissed and holy fuck,” the judge continued, hitting his gavel and exiting the courtroom.

The ruling comes at the end of a trial prosecuted by Orly Taitz – a dentist – in the case of Captain Connie Rhodes, who refused deployment to Iraq, arguing that Barack Obama, the President, could not possibly be as American citizen, being as that he was born in Kenya, which she described as “a string of Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean.”

White Supremacy Isn’t What It Used To Be

To be a white supremacist these days is to spend most of your time depressed. I look around at my fellow supremacists and, well, it’s just no fun at all. We’re overweight, dumb as bricks, and we all love smoking that meth! Our teeth are falling out; we’re illiterate, and our trucks sit in our front yards – out of gas. The only thing to be proud of these days is how well represented we are in the House of Dipshits. These people know that if they don’t further our cause of being really good at being white – and we’re really good at having white skin (except for the tattoos) – then we will vote them out of office. And then what will they do? Where we live – out here in our militia groups and fortresses – there’s no jobs once you lose the one on Capitol Hill. So those guys will do whatever we tell them to: or else they’ll have to come back here and live with us. And who wants that? I don’t. Hell no. I look around at my fellow supremacists, and I can’t help but notice that we’ve fallen a hell of a long way down from our peak of supremacy. It used to be we knew how to operate our opposable thumbs. Now I look at those things and wonder just how they operate. I go over to talk to a fellow supremacist and all he can do is sniff gas fumes out of his truck. It’s a crying shame is what it is. The other night I decided – just for shits and giggles – to get out my old Klan outfit. And damn if the thing didn’t absolutely shred itself to pieces trying to surround my more corpulent frame. The truth is we’re about as supreme as a strung out armadillo lying on my lunch plate. And it scares the high holy creeping hell out of us. A couple of weeks ago at a town hall, two supremacists got into a heated argument – each claiming to be the most supreme supremacist. So they got into a fight and one of them ate off the other one’s finger. Which is exactly the kind of stupid shit that drags our supremacy into the mire. If you get mad at another supremacist you’re supposed to set ‘em on far – not eat off a dern finger.

So I quit. I’m turning in my ceremonial chrome-plated John Rocker doll and taking my ass back to school.

Rush Limbaugh Apologizes For Eating Intern

Rush Limbaugh apologized today for accidentally eating one of his interns in a fit of “rabid all-consuming hunger.” The 400 pound talk-show host, best known for his right wing racist demagoguery, swallowed whole one Jenny Porthow, an intern working towards a journalism degree at the University of Texas.

“He can unhinge his jaws just like a big snake,” claimed audio engineer Bud Peterson. “It’s a hideous sight. One time – when Tiger Woods won the British Open – he got so angry he ate his mic stand.”

The pill popping radio host has been putting on an alarming amount of weight lately; but this was out of the norm even for him. “It’s definitely an alarming trend to say the least. If I were his doctor I would be very concerned. I would also stay the fuck away from the guy,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The intern’s devouring also provides a vital clue as to the whereabouts of another intern, Josh Taylor, who was last seen walking into the sound booth to give Rush his afternoon snack of sixteen klonopin, fifty five vicotin, three quarts of motor oil and a platter of two hundred chicken wings.

For his part, Rush Limbaugh is fine – and was on the radio today accusing Obama of Jimmy Hoffa’s murder. No criminal files have been charged against the morbidly obese talk-show host. Developing…

Obama Not The Right Messenger For The Right

Obama is storming the airwaves next weekend to sell healthcare reform. And it won’t help at all. For one thing, the demographic that is on the fence about health-care reform – for one reason or another – doesn’t like the guy. He’s too polished. Or he’s too liberal. Or he’s too black. And they have shut him out. They also don’t tend to get up Sunday morning and watch a news show. Unless it’s Fox – and right before a football game. Even if they did do such a thing, they would no doubt skip it for the reasons mentioned above. Some people won’t believe any amount of common sense or truth -even if it’s in their best interests – if it doesn’t come from a narrow group of people they can trust.

It’s time for Plan B. It’s time for Obama to get his message out through people this demographic can trust. Obama will overwhelmingly sell healthcare if he can get the following people in his corner and they are willing to spread the word:

1. Hank Williams, Jr (Hank Williams Jr. is a country singer of the Monday Night Football song, among nothing else)

2. Chuck Norris (he sells abdominal exercise machines on late night television.)

3. Waylon Jennings (is dead)

4. David Duke

5. Richard Petty

6. Jesse James

7. Anyone in the WWF

For some people, a well-spoken President coherently laying out why he feels health-care needs to be reformed and why is besides the point. To them, the man scares the hell out of them. Plain and simple. They are best simply ignored.

Obama Uses Fire Extinguisher To Put Out Fire

The hits just keep on coming. In what is yet another example of an administration out of control, Barack Obama used a (tax-payer funded) fire extinguisher to extinguish a fire. The fire was discovered in a little-used bedroom in the West Wing, used most recently last November by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“Without asking anyone, President Obama used a fire extinguisher to extinguish a fire. Now, I ask you, who is going to replace that fire extinguisher? Who is going to keep this rogue fascist Black Panther in check?” Rush Limbaugh wailed in his talk show this morning.

“When he took over the Presidency, he promised change. And he’s given it to us alright. The economy is a wreck. He’s trying to turn our kids into Obama Youth. And he’s putting out fires without even talking to congress. This racist demagogue is out of control!” Screamed Glenn Beck, who became so irate he forgot to breathe and fainted on set.

In Houston, the Political Action Committee: Citizens Against The Free Use Of Fire Extinguishers was created, and its members compared Obama to the devil himself. “His very presence probably created that fire – what with him being the devil and all,” one protester said from atop his horse. “We can’t afford this President. Between Death Panels and Fire Extinguishers, he’s bankrupting this country!”

The White House, taking valuable time away from several key meetings on health care, issued the following statement. “The President smelled smoke. Investigated the source of the smoke. Found a fire. And used a fire extinguisher – the sole purpose of which is to extinguish fires – to extinguish the fire. His action saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages were the fire to have been allowed to continue.”

This is just another sordid tale in a Presidency steeped in failure. And it sets a new precedent in Presidential hubris.

Obama Calls Kanye An “Assalope”

He like so totally did! He was like, “This is off the record, right?” And I’m like “yeah!” And then he said, “that Kanye is a jackass. He’s also an assalope.” And, you know, he’s like the President! So, like, how do I not tell everyone, right? Sure, I took an oath and I’m a journalist for a well-respected news program and all, but come on! This is really juicy stuff! And I can always have someone come out and apologize later. That’s how it works these days. Fuck protocol and all that old person stuff! Of course, my, like, journalistic integrity is like totally shot. You’d have to be a fool to trust me any more. I will so totally tweet anything anyone tells me if it will get me more followers! I’m awful like that! Lol! It’s true! The weird thing is, I like wasn’t even the person interviewing the President. Even weirder is I’m not some dumbass tweener. I’m a grown man who should absolutely know better. In a perfect world, my career would be fucked. Off the record is supposed to be, well, off the record – which, these days the record includes Twitter and Facebook and Linked In and Myspace and Adult FriendFinder and Furries and Assballoon – and all of those important sites I belong to.

Hmmm. Rahm Emanuel just called to tell me I’m a dipshit – on the record. Oh boy!

Is Obama A Socialist Nazi?

The Republicans have been quick to label Obama with all manner of things. He’s a Socialist, a Marxist, a Black Panther, a Kenyan, a too-white racist, and a Nazi. (It’s only a matter of time before they accuse him of being a Republican. But he isn’t: he’s said time and time again that he doesn’t favor illegal wars or torture.) The irony is that – as has been the case lately – he’s been labelled these things for stuff that, well, doesn’t sound so bad. Which makes me wonder just how bad they might be. I received a lovely piece of propaganda in Texas last week with a picture of Obama on the cover wearing a Hitler mustache. And it got me thinking…did Hitler advocate healthcare for everyone in his country? When it comes to Hitler, I’ve only heard horrible, dark, evil things…but shit, maybe the guy had a good idea once in a while. The GOP is making it out like Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, wanting people to be healthy and not die unnecessarily.

More recently, when Obama gave his speech to school-children, a number of (southern bozo) parents took their kids out of school, lest they be subjected to Obama’s “socialist agenda!”…of staying in school and studying hard. Hmmm. That doesn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, that staying in school and studying hard. If that’s Socialism, then I’d certainly welcome it. It sure beats not being Socialist and dropping out of school and smoking crack. The next thing you know they’ll claim Obama is a Communist because he wants you to brush your teeth. I remember another President, actually in the school, staring incomprehensibly at a tome called My Pet Goat; his finger moving right to left, his lips moving, trying to make sense of the big words and comical illustrations- and nobody accused him of trying to indoctrinate our youth.

Some of this silliness is based in fear. But most of it is straight up ignorance and intolerance. If the other 43 white guys who have held that office suggested our kids stay in school and apply themselves intellectually, I doubt even the relentlessly dumb of our country would take offense. But this is a black guy! He must be up to no good! He wants our kids to stay in school and study hard so they can graduate and hack us to pieces in our sleep! Or something like that. I can’t pretend to know what goes through the mind of these hoopleheads.

This is a guy with a lot on his plate; and he clearly doesn’t have a huge appetite. He can’t afford to spend valuable time placating a rabid group of world-class fruit loops when he has an economy to repair, two wars to end honorably, an empty treasury, failing infrastructure, bankrupt cities, rising oceans, and a generation of celebrity obsessed narcissists with no real skills or abilities to deal with. So, to that end, I will hereforth put an end to several falsehoods you will soon see plastered in the media:

Barack Obama is really Jimmy Hoffa: Not True

Barack Obama sleeps upside down inside a giant jar of Jello: Not True

Barack Obama’s favorite dish is poached Puff Adder: Not True

Barack Obama is the President already! : True

Shut up and deal with it, bigotsphere

Joe Wilson Issues Non-Apology And The Wheels Of Power Continue On

Joe Wilson yesterday apologized for screaming out “You Lie” during President Obama’s speech to congress – while reiterating that he thinks the President is a liar. In other words, he didn’t apologize. Rahm demanded the apology and Obama accepted it and Wilson never really gave it. 

Today he’s playing the victim and asking for money. I think what he did was horrible. But I would give him money if he would promise to use it for barbituates or some sort of medicine that paralyzes the vocal cords. But he won’t. He’ll use it for secret blowjobs and blow.

Just another day in Washington. 

But it did serve as yet another wake up call to the old hands in the Republican party: they can see the present of their party, and it isn’t pretty: it’s a who’s who of loonies: Sarah Palin, Joe The Plumber, and now Joe the Spontaneous Outburst. Bob Dole is rolling over in his grave – and he’s not even dead. 

The democrats don’t have all the answers, and they make plenty of mistakes; unfortunately their opposition sniffs glue and revels in nihilism and White Lightning. When Republicans rumble about the new administration, I remind them who they offered up on their end – and they hang their heads in shame. Even they couldn’t bring themselves to pull the lever for Old Man Crank Pot and Sexy Librarian Syntax Murderess.

We used to have a two-party system. Now we have a one-party system balanced by a collection of hyper-active ether sucking raccoons: they make lots of noise and upend things and eat the stuffing out of their chairs, but that’s all they seem capable of.

What is annoying is the fact that Obama seems to believe that he has to deal with these people as actual grown ups. He asks for mature political discourse – but the other side is too busy following Kid Rock or being rushed to the hospital to have a grape removed from their nostril or their stomach pumped from eating too much paste.

It’s got to be exhausting relentlessly pretending the other side isn’t a farce.

Thanks To Joe Wilson, Doofuses Worldwide Breathe Sigh Of Relief

It was a good day for morons. Thanks to Joe Wilson, as of last night arguably the world’s most famous moron, dumb people throughout the world were free to act in ways both obscene and confusing without fear of rebuke.

“Oops! The Skittles I fed Fido made him sick!”

“No worry. It’s not like you yelled out “You Lie!” during a Presidential speech to congress…”

A person – even one routinely given to acts both outrageous and incomprehensible – could work tirelessly for days and not approach the level of famous imbecility Joe Wilson managed in two hapless seconds on September 9, 2009. It’s only been a day. Yet the repercussions will be felt in the Wilson household for some time to come. His name will never be forgotten for those who witnessed the outburst. The blogosphere – hey! that’s where I am! – and social networking web-sites had a field day with the world’s most famous outburst. “You Lie!” will show up on t-shirts and in video spoofs on Youtube. It will be yelled for laughs at dinner tables and boardrooms and classrooms throughout the country. Joe Wilson dolls with pull-strings will be made where the only thing he says, no matter how many times you pull the string, is “You Lie!” over and over again. He’s a joke. So much so that even shows that prey on celebrity fools like Dancing With The Stars will turn him down. Saturday Night Live is no doubt scrounging up a skit in which Joe Wilson repeatedly shouts “You Lie” in various silly situations. Joe Wilson’s Spontaneous Outburst Gin will hit shelves just in time for the holidays. 

In a single stroke, Joe Wilson single-handedly made stoogery his own. And fools around the world can only shake their heads and squeeze their horn noses in admiration.

Obama Addresses One Side of Congress And A Carefully Selected Group Of 3rd Graders On Health-Care Reform

It was a sad sight. The President of the United States addresses congress – and gets treated like a substitute teacher in a Hoboken, New Jersey Middle School. In the hallowed halls of congress, men in suits and bad hair and the minimum required blood alcohol count of .16, showed the rest of the country that it’s entirely possible to get your hands on the levers of power without sacrificing poor manners, intolerance, and a 3rd grade reading level. But, unlike 3rd graders, it’s perfectly acceptable to arrange secret trysts on your Blackberry while the President speaks. Or hold up signs in a desperate attempt at television time. (Signs like “What Bill?” could be seen; as well as “I love you, Larry King!” and “FOX rules!”) 

Last night was a watershed moment: 9/9/09 – the night one of our elected leaders dragged political discussion to the level of professional wrestling. Joe Wilson, the drunken hillbilly from South Carolina with a clip on tie- (South Carolina, ironically, is the well-known home to a lying Republican governor) -who screamed out “You Lie!” midway through the speech – will go down in history as a pioneer of anti-decorum. In front of millions of people – a national and international audience – he urinated in the proverbial fruit punch of our politics. In other countries – like, say, Texas – it’s not unusual for elected leaders to act like howler monkeys on acid. In Washington, however, it’s been a long established protocol to be polite when the world is watching. Protests historically only go so far as refusing to stand up or clap. Now, thanks to a new generation of GOP leaders – juvenile delinquents and sociopaths and sub-normals of every stripe no longer have to rule out congress as a career path. “Why do I have to go to school, mom? I can always become a house Republican…”

Joe Wilson’s “regrettable” accusation was ironic for a slew of reasons. A 5-term house Republican, Wilson has been lied to countless times by a President of his own party. About war and torture and the economy and education and taxes and weapons of mass destruction. Yet those lies were okay, apparently, as they were his kind of lies. 

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his political “instincts” kicked in: he knew he had to put out an insincere apology as soon as possible. And he did. It is understood on both sides of the aisle that, whenever your true beliefs become public – especially if they are either controversial or ugly – an insincere statement of contrition – usually spoken by a congressmen’s “spokesman” – must be released to the media, at which point the whole matter is understood to be forgotten.

And this has been a banner year for unfortunate comments. Usually racial: a governor makes a joke about applying for a hunting license for the President; another “kiddingly” compares the President to a monkey. Another unknowing satirist accuses the President of racism. The comments are many and frequent. And they all revealed an ugly inner truth about our refusing to evolve national psyche. Sometimes, though, you have to say, “Fuck damage control! That guy’s a jackass!” Us regular folks can’t apologize away our jackassery. So why can members of government? People who are supposed to have higher values and morals than us degenerate commoners? I think they should be held accountable. If I “jokingly” compared a work colleague to a monkey, he or she would be well within their rights to “humorously” beat the shit out of me.

If a certain congressmen decides to lower the standards of our political discourse, I think the response should be at the same low level as the infraction: rather than accepting the apology of a reckless nabob meth-head, congress should deal with him in his own rudimentary language; he should be dealt with just as he would be in any bar in his home state of South Carolina. He should be taken out into the parking lot where people can take turns kicking his ribs in, before being run over by his own monster truck. 

It will never happen, of course. Democrats wouldn’t be democrats if they acted like that. But it would damn sure work. Both sides would think twice about acting like hormonal badgers; and maybe we’d see some actual progress in Washington for a change.

Health-Care Reform: Behind The Scenes On Capital Hill

The following document is deep background. Very sensitive material. Getting it took a lot of work, several brown bags of unmarked bills and threats of immediate violence to small men in cheap suits. It was all worth it. It is nothing less than the real-time negotiations on health-care reform that are taking place in Washington as we speak…

(Conversation in progress)

Unknown Democrat: well, what if we went ahead and took that off the table too…

Unknown Republican: Yeah…no. That’s not going to do it.

Unknown Democrat: Okay, so speaking hypothetically, what if we took the public option away, took the co-ops away, increased the costs of medicine, increased insurance rates and lowered the capital gains tax again as a freebie? Would that bring some of your people to the table.

Unknown Republican: I doubt it. We hate you. We think you all smell like a vomit filled New York City subway. 

Unknown Democrat (whining): But, but…we promised we could do this…

Unknown Republican: And you can you cowardly dipshit. You don’t need our help. Use your almighty super-majority. You could outlaw religion if you wanted to.

Unknown Democrat: We’re scared. And it’s not that super of a supermajority. Those Blue dog democrats are just Republicans with gay friends. They’re worse than you guys.

Unknown Republican: Here’s a Kleenex. Pull yourself together. 

Unknown Democrat: Obama wants to get this thing through. He now says that it’s not essential that there be a public option. Except when asked on television. So that’s dead. He doesn’t care all that much about co-ops either. He wants to sign something. Anything. It could be a huge pile of blank pages…

Unknown Republican: Yeah, we won’t do that. We aren’t signing a damn thing.

Unknown Democrat: What if we vacated ten of our senate seats and let you rape us every night for a month?

Unknown Republican: Well…hmmm…could we fill those seats with lobbyists from the oil industry?

Unknown Democrat: Sure!

Unknown Republican: Nope.

Unknown Democrat: Well, what do you want?

Unknown Republican: For starters, you can announce that Wall Street banks need another round of bailouts. Then you send that money to us. Nobody will know. It worked before. Then, eliminate taxes in their entirety. Pardon Manuel Noriega. Bomb Russia and North Korea. Sell Vermont to Iran. Make Rush Limbaugh speaker of the house. He can take Kennedy’s seat. And arrest T. Boone Pickens, that miserable traitor, and shove a wind turbine up his ass. Then, maybe, we’ll at least consider negotiating with you elitist bastards. 

Unknown Democrat: Okay. If we do all of that – and I’ve written it all down – then we can see if we can come to some sort of consensus on health-care reform?

Unknown Republican: Who said anything about health-care reform? No. That’s just what it will cost you if you don’t want us to make you look like a party of effete wimpy pencil pushing fairies for the next three years before Chuck Norris becomes President.

Unknown Democrat: Well, that doesn’t sound too bad…no more wedgies?

Unknown Republican: We’ll see. You’ve got a nice mouth…

(transmission abruptly ends…)

Neo-Nazis Don’t Get The Obama-Hitler Connection

The Aryan Nation is confused. They’re watching the news and seeing all the townhalls, in which Obama is being compared to Hitler, and they just aren’t seeing it. 

“Hitler and Obama ain’t got nothin’ in common,” says Bubba Portnoy, Chief Executive Officer of the Aryan Nation of Bayou Teche, Louisiana. “Why, they ain’t even the same color! It’s an outrage!” What is even more purplexing and unacceptable was the townhall yesterday, where an outraged voter compared a Jewish congressman to a Nazi. “How in hell can a Jew be a Nazi?” Portnoy asks, as he absentmindedly carves a swastika onto his forearm. “That don’t make no damn sense at all if you ask me.” At 450 pounds, with an IQ that is “off the charts” at “almost 9o,” Bubba Portnoy is the foremost expert in all things neo-nazi. At least he is here, at Angola penitentiary. “If I weren’t locked up, I’d probably have my own show on Fox. I’d be a Nazi pundit. Don’t nobody know as much as me. I’ve even written a book about it.” He hands me his book, which is written on a roll of toilet paper in blood. “It’s my only copy,” he says warily. I ask him if Obama could be a secret nazi. He screams and tries to bite into my deck, but a prison guard calmly tazers him. 

“How dare you!” he finally says. “Obama is the enemy of all things everything! I hate him. Just as I hate…” – here he lists off an impressive number of ethnicities and religions and – for some reason – animal species. “Hating is my job. I don’t know what kind of tw0-bit bigot would dare compare Obama to one of the greatest haters ever. Let me out of here and I’ll set those extremists straight!”

Its tempting.

Favre To Step Down As White House Health Care Communications Czar And Return To The NFL

After weeks of waffling on what exactly is in the health care plan, Brett Favre is resigning his communication duties and returning to the NFL. Or so it seems. “Yes, I am. No…Maybe,” Favre said, looking confused, in response to his own statement on the matter at his press conference that he called and then cancelled and then called and then cancelled and then called and then cancelled. His time with the White House was marred by many flips and flops and reversals of course. Interns and staffers learned early on to stop listening whenever Favre made any decisions about health care reform, knowing he would inevitably turn around and say the exact opposite in a matter of minutes.

“What I like to do is, I like to just float contradictory statements out into the air and just sort of see how they are being received. If people don’t like something I say I can always retract it and blame the media for jumping to conclusions.”

“Will there be a public option in the health care bill,” an irate journalist from the Atlanta Journal asks. He shows no sign of bothering to record the answer. The response is typical Favre: ”Yes? Or no. It’s possible. But we will make that decision. Or we won’t…”

It has gotten so bad that Favre is no longer even believed by his own family, including the dog. His wife explains. “If Brett is asked if he plans on being home for dinner, the answer is almost invariably a five minute long extremely tortured back and forth self monologue spoken aloud. Should I? I will! No…I mean… It gets old. I’m glad he’s returning to the NFL. He was bringing the entire country to its knees. His tenure as a civil servant was a colossal failure. And it might cost Obama his job.”

Rumors that Obama offered him the use of Airforce One if he would just get the fuck out of Washington already can neither be confirmed or denied. But to those that know Favre, it would make all the sense in the world.

You Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists

This healthcare thing is a mess. And worse, it’s looking like Obama is going to cave in to the Republicans. He seems to have this consensus thing. This whole bringing people together thing. But it’s not going to work. You can’t negotiate with a group of people willing to lie and torture and murder for profit and expect them to have empathy for the health of people they can’t even begin to relate to.

No. The only thing Obama is doing by letting the public option fall by the wayside – if it happens – is lose respect in the eyes of the people who have no intention of coming to the table anyway – and piss off all the people that voted for him. In his desire to work with Republicans he’s driving away his own party. Who, it should be noted, have the votes and the power to affect change for the next year and a half without one vote from the GOP. 

The democrats should just say fuck it and do what they want. They are going to be criticized no matter what they do, so they might as well do something. There’s more to this debate than left vs. wrong: the fact of the matter is, as it has been for a long time now, this country is flat out owned by corporations. Someone from Big Pharma probably called Obama and told him he had to drop the public option or be evicted. No change is possible through mere politicians, because the system is such that politicians can’t even become politicians without being on the hook to somebody. Every last one of the 435 fat bastards in congress owe their careers to someone pulling their strings behind the scenes. The money to buy the advertising. The money to send out pamphlets full of lies – it all comes from people who have money to throw around: and we all know the only people in our present economy who have money to throw away are criminals. Thus, if we follow the trail, it looks like this: Big rich criminals fund the careers of greedy fat congressional criminals who pretend to run the country as proxies. They talk about reform and change and bright shining beacons of freedom – then, behind closed doors, they call up their benefactors to make sure they understand exactly how they are supposed to vote on what. 

And, if the phone call doesn’t work, the master corporate criminals resort to Plan B: Public Relations Scullduggery. This is where the corporations wrangle up a bunch of their pawns, dress them up, tell them what to say, and drop them in front of some cameras (the cameras are there because they own the cameras and can put them wherever they want) and tell them to act like a regular angry mob of middle America dumbasses. Which they do. Screaming and drooling and calling attention to themselves and drawing attention away from the thing their controllers want left alone. 

This isn’t Big Brother. This is Brave New World. A world in which we’ve sold ourselves to a group of master white collar criminals voluntarily. Animals don’t act very smart when they’re scared. Humans are animals. And we’ve given away our rights in exchange for chronic corporate buggering.

Communication Breakdown Part II – The Obama Version

Part of the reason that this healthcare debate has gone egg-shaped, as they say across the pond, is the party in power is simply not getting their message out in a clear way. Instead you get a whole hose of messages and corrections and misunderstandings – this from the group in charge. The other side is lying through their teeth – but they’re doing it much more successfully. They are unified in their bullshit. And relentless in embracing it. John Kerry and what happened to him in 2004 should have taught democrats the power of owning the narrative. Which they didn’t do, figuring that truth would win the day. The truth is irrelevant if it can be drowned and beaten to death.

Obama’s op-ed in the New York Times yesterday was well and good – only it wasn’t. For one thing, dumb people don’t read the Sunday New York Times -which costs six dollars and doesn’t have any coupons. Far better for him to have written an op-ed in the Atlanta Constitution or the Houston Chronicle. In the New York Times, he’s preaching to the choir.

The main reason for the op-ed was to set the record straight on healthcare. But he didn’t get around to doing that until the third paragraph. Nobody reads anymore. The first paragraph, instead of talking about how lousy our healthcare is, which everyone agrees about, and then trying to put a face on it, he should have come out in the first sentence with: all of the following is pure made up bullshit. He did it. He just should have done it a lot sooner. Most of these loonies want to be angry and crazy: they’re not actively seeking reality. In essence, it was a blow at an enemy nowhere in sight. 

The democrats are all over the board about what exactly is or will be in the healthcare plan. Some say in has a public option. Some say it doesn’t. Its a mystery as to what exactly will be going into it. And it’s an even bigger mystery – sort of – as to how what gets in there gets in there. Because, one thing is for sure, it’s not playing out for everyone to see on CSPAN. It’s playing out behind closed doors, with lobbyists furiously wrangling, and on the airwaves, with 57 million in advertising for and against the plan. 

If this thing goes down in flames, the left will accuse Sarah Palin of scuttling it. But come on, that gives her too much credit. No way some Facebook screed brings down healthcare: what will scuttle it is the democrats inability to come forward with a sense of unity or any sort of cohesive message. And without that focus, well…the loonies win. And once again shoot us all in the foot, including themselves.

Republicans Are Not Conservative

The Grand Old Party like to call themselves conservatives. It’s testament to the theory that, if you say something enough times, enough idiots will start to believe it. Every time a Republican finds himself in office, the economy falls to pieces. Nixon. Reagan. Bush. Bush Jr . They expand government, blow up countries, start secret wars, and fuck all manner of things up constantly. 

But they have one hell of a propaganda machine. They’ve managed to convince people that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a bumbling fool hell bent on war. He broke California and out-Nixoned Nixon. He cut taxes and ignored everything in favor of having a sunny disposition. His entire Presidency was about lying to our faces and saying everything was hunky dory. People love to be lied to; especially if it’s good news. 

Right now we’re dealing with the legacy left behind by a worldview in which the people who created the worldview got ridiculously rich and everyone else was out of luck. 

People have really short attention spans. Or they don’t pay attention. Because, in a mere six months, it’s as if this entire mess was created the minute Obama was in office. Both sides bear blame on this crisis. And guess what: so do we. We were the ones who believed the incredible crap that came out of the mouths of congress and politicians. And now we’re blaming the current collection of losers and greedheads for the thirty year long delusion we freely chose to take part in. 

But now the blinders are off. Everything is fucked. And we’re all acting out our anxieties and fears in different ways. Just like we always have. In the 70’s – after Watergate – an entire generation threw up its arms and went inside their shag-carpeted apartments to have orgies and ingest as many downers as possible. In the 80’s, the stupor was over. Everyone woke up out of their hibernation and decided, well, fuck it, join the fray. Cocaine. Money. And mullets. Everyone had fun. Taxes were down. And our President was an actor. 

It was a twelve year long ponzi scheme. The economy fell apart. So a democrat was brought in to fix the mess. And he did fix it, paying down the deficit. Then he got a blowjob and was impeached. 

And so it goes, back and forth, on and off the wagon. With the democrats we get practicality and empathy. With the Republicans we get an all you can eat buffet in which nobody pays the tab. 

The democrats inherited a government three times the size of the one they left to George Bush the Mentally Impaired. Along with a massive deficit and a greatest hits collection of all things immoral and wrong. 

It’s the democrats who are the conservatives. And they aren’t even that conservative. Better yet, there are no conservatives. Well, maybe in Canada. I say Republicans can no longer use this word. It’s obscene when they do. The only word I can think of that suits them is racist or criminal. They’re looking unwieldy and confused these days. It’s time for them to change things up. Maybe try some honesty. Call themselves the Grand Criminal Party. Just own outright sin and make it their own. It’s worth a shot.

New Poll Shows 58% Of Republicans To Be Morons.

In a rare piece of good news for the Republican party, only 58% of Republicans are dumb enough to believe Obama wasn’t born in the United States. It’s a much lower percentage than they could have hoped for. The poll was considered by more than a few top Republicans, who will say, over drinks and off the record, that the entire party has become festooned with the bottom of the intellectual barrel, to be a small glimmer of hope for a party in retreat. They would have been happy to learn that only 80% of the party were knuckle dragging glue sniffers. This was very welcome news and sent several Washington insiders to area brothels for well-deserved celebratory handjobs. 

The poll also showed a decidedly regional bent as well. The dumber the part of America was, the more likely it was to be both Republican and delusional. 93% of Republicans in the Northeast and Northwest believe that Obama was born in Hawaii. In the South, however the number shrank considerably. Even among democrats and independents, only 47% of those polled believed the President to be an American citizen. A surprising number, considering how vast and considerable is the evidence proving them all decisively wrong. 

The North-South division of delusion is further proof that the whole Birther phenomenon has nothing to do with citizenship. The Birther conspiracy is nothing more than an outlet for racism. Show me a Birther who isn’t a fat dumb white person and you can prove me wrong…

I couldn’t be President. Not now. It’s too much hassle, number one. And number two, my birth certificate – from Arkansas – is only a credit card looking thing I keep in my wallet. Lou Dobbs would not be pleased with me. That fat boob would yap about it through both terms of my administration. Unless he took me up on my offer of making him ambassador to the Aleutian Islands. I think he would be perfect for it. I’d even let the government build him a highly overpriced three billion dollar shack to live in using tax payer money. He could make sure that the island chain only got its allotted eight days of sun a year. Then I’d switch things up on him and open up the area for aerial bombing practice. 

If I were a Republican today I would turn my card in. I’d look at all the stuff I’d bought with my money that didn’t trickle anywhere but into toys for myself, and count my blessings. Because the immediate past, the present, and the future is bleak for a group that began transforming itself with Nixon’s southern strategy from fans of small government and civil liberty into an angry pulsing wound of civil rights stomping jesus freak inbred porcine nihilists. A dim highly guilty collection of fat white globe raping hillbillies. They spent eight years in power slaughtering horses, turning the ocean into a sewer, exporting fear worldwide, swindling the treasury, torturing anyone with a tan or a strange name, unleashing a virus of loopholes into any policy they touched, listening to our phone calls, going through our mail, peering into colons, and disappearing anyone they didn’t like. Then, desperate to hold onto power, they cynically tried to get us to vote for an old crank-case and a sexy but illiterate librarian fantasy. 

It didn’t work though. They lost. They don’t like it. And they’re trying to blame their mess on those who are trying to clean it up and make sense of it. While their strategy of publicly embarrassing themselves isn’t working, it is still highly annoying. Like a boxer who dances around the whole time talking trash but never throws a punch. It’s all a big charade. We know the cards they hold yet they continue to bluff anyway. 

The good news is that, while this is distracting and amusing to the media – and confusing to the rest of the civilized world – the majority of people still think the Republicans are a group of sub-normals. So it won’t win them any votes. And that’s one problem they will have to come to terms with, before Nixon’s southern legacy devours the GOP in an orgy of assault weapons, crystal meth and sweet tea.

I’ve Decided To Hate The White Man

It’s not going to be easy to do, what with me being white and all, but I’ve decided to hate the white man. At least the ones I’ve been seeing lately. The ones who call Obama racist against “the white man.” People like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs. People who actually use the term “the white man” to describe themselves. Fat pasty racists who spew hate for ratings and accuse other people of being the prejudiced ones. If you watch video of Rush on his radio show, the amount of flying spit is nauseating. The man literally spews when he talks. Between that and the flop sweat – he works himself into a lather – that radio booth is probably ground zero for some new form of virus that seems to be spreading through the Republican party. Maybe it’s Swine Flu. Maybe Rush Limbaugh started Swine Flu in Mexico on one of his frequent pill pilgrimages. He’s got something and people would be well served to avoid it.

What all this Crazy boils down to is fear and frustration. Outnumbered in congress, a party in tatters, and a President from the other side of the aisle who doesn’t embarrass himself on a daily basis. They’ve got nothing to legitimately complain about and nobody to blame but themselves for the things that they can complain about. Wars and a cratering economy all happened on their watch. The truth is killing them. So they accuse Obama of being an illegal alien. Or being a racist. Or they make fun of his blue jeans. Their arsenal is lacking in quality ammunition.

They aren’t the only ones who don’t know how to handle their frustration. Buggery is on the rise in the south. Horse sex is spiking in South Carolina. For some people it’s a form of stress relief. For others its a trigger for projectile vomiting. Looking out the window to see Trigger getting raped by your neighbor is not a sight you ever want to see. To see it twice…

Yep. Crazy is everywhere these days. From Birthers to Buggerers, the GOP doesn’t have a lot to be proud of. Answering to constituents who donate their fingernail clippings to your election campaign can’t exactly fill one with pride. There’s no rule that says Crazy can’t pull the lever. Catering to Crazy, though, seems to be all the Republicans can do. And it’s a poor strategy for long-term success. Better to just sit back and wait for the democrats to overreach, so the pendulum can swing back. And when it does make sure “the white man” isn’t allowed near a microphone or camera.

Abandon All Hope

Hope makes us stupid. Every time we get hopeful we create some new unholy mess. I think it might be better to just assume the absolute worst at all times. That way you can’t be disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Every day something “unexpected” happens on Wall Street. Consumer confidence, which is lousy, somehow manages to be “lower than expected.” A lot of this hope comes from greed, of course. People want to make money. But they can’t make money if they can’t convince other people to spend it. So they toss some hope around. Now is the perfect time to get into the market! Or buy that house! Or turn in your clunker for some cash! Or send in your parents gold heirlooms to be melted down for a check!

Wall Street will take some of their bailout money and pay some assweed economist to say that the economy has finally “turned a corner.” They will say these things because they want you to buy something stupid again so that they can speculate on it and make some money. I say screw that. Forget letting them talk us out of our stupor. I would rather never buy another piece of stupid crap again if it meant some fat ass greedhead in New York has to go out looking for work instead of profiting from mine.

Make no mistake: I love to consume. I have all manner of crap lying around my apartment that I neither need nor use. If it has no redeeming value, I want it. But not if that money is just going to get pilfered from the economy and disappear into the solid gold wine cellar of some investment banker in the Hamptons. I went nuts after the dot-com bubble burst when George Bush told me it was patriotic to go shopping. But that money just up and disappeared into the ether; into the bank accounts of a herd of surprisingly similar looking fat bald guys in suits. My money went into the system so that the banks could loan it to investors in order for them to buy up toxic crap. It it caused cancer or killed people on contact or had no value to anyone at all ever, the banks would scoop it up, divide it into tranches, and sell it to investors as a can’t lose opportunity. 

Like an out of control adolescent who can’t stop gambling online, the entirety of the banking system had to go to dad and ask to be bailed out. And, like any 21st century pushover parent, dad agreed, once he got permission from China, handing them billions of dollars of theoretical money, printed up just for them. And what did they do? What any good junkie, they took the money and squirreled it away to spend on their next fix. They certainly aren’t lending it out. And they certainly aren’t willing or can’t explain where it went. The banking system, in short, the entirety of it, is the bad guy in a Die Hard movie. Maybe that’s why they all shave their heads. It’s all a big swindle, bilking the country of almost a third of its wealth. The other third is giving soldiers and civilians cancer in the form of exploded ordinance in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yet despite it all, they’re all still neck deep in denial. They still manage to muster up hope that they can do it again. Don’t let them. Keep your money in your pillow. Or make them sign a non-fucking idiot agreement, in which they agree in writing not to loan your money to a Wall Street algorithm. But whatever you do, don’t give them hope.

Why Is George Bush So Concerned With His Legacy?

It seems odd that George Bush would be worried about his legacy. For one thing, he doesn’t have one. And what he does have isn’t worth protecting. Torture. War. Inaction. Lies. Coverups. Illegal wiretapping. Leaks. Secret prisons. Hurricane response apathy. An outsourced military. Economic Sabotage. None of these are things a person should want to protect or justify. Yet…when George Bush does show up in the press, it’s usually through a third person making some statement or another about the President “working on his legacy.” As if the guy is just like any other ex-President. Why? What for? You don’t see Charles Taylor waxing on and on about his legacy. What is there to protect? 

Maybe he doesn’t know what he never had. Maybe he sees himself in a way that only he can. Because the guy doesn’t seem to have a care in the world. Of course that could be the drugs. A lot of guys, criminals, they end up spending their days hopped up on anti-anxiety medications. Guys like O.J. Simpson, who, while alive, seem to be inhabitants of some far off planet located behind their eyeballs. George Bush could be popping valium like tic tacs. But I doubt it. Sociopaths and fanatics have some missing things in their brains that allow them to not suffer a shred of remorse. The “civilized” world is sliding ever downward into the red by the day; the world that Bush administration policies worked so hard to break. What little legacy the man has is all bad. The best thing that could be said of him is he could ride a mean mountain bike. 

What could be, and this is certainly possible, is he just wanted to get all of the bad ideas our nation could hope to come up with, and get them out of the way in an eight year span. “Here’s a terrible idea. Let’s implement it at once so that future generations will know just what a truly horrible idea it is.” Maybe the guy was just doing us all a favor.

And now I am going to flip upside down and argue against myself…

George Bush wasn’t that bad a guy. He’s just a simple good old boy with a heart of ash. Dumb as a post, sure; but not evil. He just trusted the smart people around him and “decided” on their ideas. And it’s not like Iraq is the first country we’ve illegally occupied. There’s quite a long list (in no particular order and not counting repeats). Haiti. Cuba. Chile. Argentina. Nicaragua. Honduras. Dominican Republic. China. El Salvador. Korea. Laos. Libya. The Philippines. Somalia. Vietnam. Cambodia. Colombia. Liberia. Pakistan. Lebanon. Yugoslavia. Bosnia. Mexico. Panama. Granada. Some others. And, well, this country too. We’ve tortured and lied and murdered massively before. Just not at such a technologically savvy time. Had James K. Polk been President now, his legacy would be a pile of rubble too. No. George Bush isn’t all that bad. He’s way up there, of course; but he’s not the boogie man we like to think he is.

Yeah. No. Can’t do it. The guy’s a hateful dim-witted human pile of excrement. He should be dropped into a hole somewhere along with his shameful legacy.

GOP Gives Birther To A Movement

When your political base is made up of the crazy and the disenfranchised and an army of Jesus freaks, you’re courting trouble. The Republicans have sought a group of people who are less credible as sentient beings by the hour. It used to be a bunch of greedy business people running around. Now it’s just flat out losers and hoopleheads. Like this Birther movement. It’s a terrible name for an even worse group of people. It’s gotten a lot of play as of late because of its foundations in the bizarre, mixed with a heavy dose of denial and no small amount of racism. There are conspiracy theorists. And then there are these bozos, who are getting a lot more attention than most fringe movements. Like that group in Ohio that believes the world will come to an end in 1986. You never see them on television. But this isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a disproven non-conspiracy theory. A disproven non-conspiracy theory crapped out by disgruntled unemployable ragemongers. In otherwords, voting Republicans. You can’t very well write them off as goofballs. After all, they are the future of the Republican party. And they can vote you out of office.

This is, after all, a President who fought through one of the toughest primaries in recent memory. He had to go through the Clintons, and the GOP and, well, the FBI and CIA and Secret Service, and all manner of other checks and balances to get to the office Obama now holds. It makes no sense to attack something so easily disproven. But, perhaps, for these people, the veracity of their rage isn’t as important as having an outlet for it. Its as flimsy as an argument can be. The level of disbelief or delusion involved precludes all but the completely unserious.

It’s like looking at your family and realizing, well, crap, all of the kids are eating the paint off the walls. Maybe something needs to be done. A good start, I think, would be a nice note on GOP stationary. Something official with an elephant on it, saying thanks for being on our side, but we don’t want you anymore. Please kindly move along. Because what’s the point to having a club or group of people if it’s only comprised of people you don’t really want? That’s where the GOP finds itself these days. If you were in the GOP and you looked to the left and right of you, there’s a good chance that at least one of the people on either side would be drooling or eating their belt. Sometimes you just have to throw in the towel and start over again. It looks like now might be a good time.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Secret President Scorned

Dick Cheney is not happy with George Bush for not pardoning Scooter. He commuted his sentence, but didn’t give him a full pardon. And now, here we are, two years later, and Cheney, who ran the show until he no longer did, can no longer hold his tongue. 

At least that’s how it seems. But with Dick Cheney, anytime something looks straightforward, it probably isn’t. Every time Cheney defends some repugnant policy or decision, Bush looks better. Silently holed up in Dallas, trying to raise money to put together a “library,” he’s letting Cheney put his foot in his mouth every week. Cheney is acting like he is the ex-President defending his legacy. Or the loyal vice-President standing up and taking the hits so W. can avoid them. Either way the guy just needs to shut up and go away. Unless his conscience won’t let him. Unless he has a lot to hide. Unless he knows what can be dug up and wants to do all he can to make sure it stays buried. Which makes you wonder what W. really did know. Because he is acting like an ex-President without a worry in the world. Or is he? The guy is so incredibly dim it’s all a big guess as to how in charge and how much of a “decider” he ever really was. He was surrounded by guys fully entrenched in intrigue and how power works in Washington, having been tutored under Nixon and Reagan; under Watergate and Iran-Contra. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Rove. And Poppy Bush. Just how much of a puppet was Bush? And how long will it take us to forget what a ridiculous travesty his Presidency was? It will happen, of course. Like Reagan, the Republicans will find a way to canonize all of his subnormal fumblings and turn him into some kind of reactionary genius. And maybe Cheney’s public fight with Bush is just the first step in the process. Only time will tell. If, in 8 years, we’ve got a guy named Jeb walking around Washington we will know they succeeded.

Birthers – Racists By Another Name

Since the charge is absolutely baseless, and being openly racist won’t get you anywhere, we have the so-called Birthers. People like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh (who is also openly racist) and Liz Cheney –  as well as some surprisingly mainstream voices. Plus the wingnuts, like the lady in Delaware who carries her birth certificate with her in a zip-log bag. All of them are white. And all of them are 100% certain that their charges are baseless. But they can’t very well go on television and scream that our President is African American. Because we’re well aware of that. And more than a little proud. So we have to put up with pure lunacy. The lunacy is so bad that it’s gotten them more than their fifteen minutes of fame unfortunately. When you see them talking this nonsense, now you’ll know what they’re really trying to say.

Some Secrets Should Stay Secrets

I’m all for transparency. But lately there has been a lot of leftovers from the previous administration that the Obama administration has decided should just as well stay buried. And a lot of people are crying foul. Which is silly. There’s no reason to ever yell such a thing unless you are an umpire and are working a game. Yet some people – grown men and women – will actually yell such a thing.

Anyway, let’s just take a moment to think about what we do know about the assbags who set fire to this country: They tortured people in secret jails around the world. They killed people. They lied to congress, the American people, and the entire world. They sold the country to China. Dick Cheney went so far as to shoot some guy in the face. They listened to our conversations. They rounded up people and stuck them in jails without cause. 

These are facts. So if this administration saw things that they would just as soon people not know about, I’m willing to agree with them. Because, let’s face, it’s got to be grim awful terrible stuff… Idi Amin isn’t dead and is living in the basement of the White House setting suspicious people on fire. Osama Bin Laden is on the CIA payroll. Dick Cheney collects fingers and eats them at dinner. Whatever it is, it’s something that would set us back even further in our goal of proving to the world that we aren’t a nations of dim gizmo toting psychopaths. Lurking beneath the slime of the previous administration is something uglier still. And I personally have no desire to know what it is.

I DIDN’T MEAN WHAT I MEANT…

Politicians have become such vulgar hacks these days that they routinely say horrible things, knowing that it’s expected of them and they can just apologize. Politicians are talking back things that they truly believe and meant to say whenever the heat is on them. “Yesterday when I said that Obama wasn’t born in this country, what I meant to say was that I don’t agree with his policies.” “The other day I used the N word. It was an accident and was never designed to be taken in a derogatory way…” Politicians let their insides out every day, usually in front of a camera or a hot microphone, and then compound the problem by telling an obvious lie. Michelle Bachman does it almost hourly. She’s so absurd and outrageous that she’s mostly treated like a congressional mascot. Someone to listen to and watch for the show. Minnesota has the right idea when it comes to politics. You know the people are crooks and liars, so they might as well be entertaining. A wrester. A comedian. A right wing lunatic. Whatever. Makes no difference so long as its fun. The rest of the country could learn from them. Then we could end the whole charade that these people are actual civil servants trying to do the right thing. It’s a PR spin that no longer works. They’re bought and paid for. They’re like athletes. Besuited entertainers with bad hair and belt buckles that point to the floor. 435 people paid to keep the foundation of our country from obvious collapse – pointing fingers at shadows; shaking their fists in mock outrage; working hard not to mess up their hair or make-up.

Ramble ramble reeble flue.

Lou Dobbs: White Teeth. Black Heart.

In case you haven’t heard, crazy has reared its head again. Or taken a ride into the absurd. Obama, now, somehow, despite all odds, in the president of the United States, even though he is a citizen of Kenya. If you don’t believe me, you can see the proof here. 

http://www.opensalon.com/blog/kerry_lauerman/2009/07/20/birthers_gone_wild_he_is_a_citzen_of_kenya   

That’s somebody’s mom. And she should probably be tranquilized. Check out the roar of approval in the room, though, when the woman starts her slide into loopytown. Anyway, as these people have it, and we can add Lou Dobbs, with his overly white teeth and senile old man personality to the mix, Obama should be removed from office because he isn’t an American citizen. And somehow, because it’s all a big conspiracy, this is being overlooked. The Clintons overlooked it. John McCain overlooked it. Congress overlooked it. Rush Limbaugh overlooked it. The state of Hawaii overlooked it when they announced his birth – knowing, as they did, that he was supposed to be President when he grew up… It’s so absurd, and there’s so much proof to the contrary, that it seems to me that there are plenty of things about Obama for these nutjobs to latch onto. This one is a nonstarter. Yet you won’t see any Republicans correcting these people. Because they are the only ones left who vote for them. Nutjobs are a critical element to the Republicans current overall political strategy. It’s why Michael Steele is their spokesman. It’s why Sarah Palin is considered a front-runner to run for President in 2012. The GOP needs stark raging gas sniffers to vote for them. Bill Clinton had his brother Roger. Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy. The Republicans have their entire base. Crazies, each and every one of them. Even rich people have run screaming from the party.

The whole birth-gate flap is just silly. So it’s surprising that so-called “legitimate” people are latching onto it. Liz Cheney might be a politician, but even for a politician this is a particularly bizarre form of nuzzling the base. And Lou Dobbs. His whole show is about how nothing makes him happy. He has a voice on CNN most likely because they are afraid of him. They’ve no doubt been trying to let him go for years. Nobody wants to tell a senile old man he doesn’t have a job anymore. He might bite them with his bionic teeth. The guy’s a mess and hard to listen to no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. He’s the embarrassing uncle who gets fed in the kitchen on Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s a ratings thing. A way to get noticed in a world that has passed him by. My guess is he will be “on assignment” for awhile; followed soon by being “on vacation.” Then, well, he’ll just be gone. Stuffed into the CNN prop closet somewhere, to be replaced by Mel Gibson’s dad…

Obama has a lot of qualities and opinions that drive Republicans mad. For very valid reasons. Not being born in this country just isn’t one of them.

Cheney Knows: Lots Of People Don’t Like Dick

So does Obama. Normally, Vice Presidents disappear the minute they leave office. Unless they make a documentary or something. Unlike Presidents, they don’t get Secret Service details following them around the rest of their days. They get six months and that’s it… 

Not this time. Because Dick Cheney knows more about what he’s responsible than anyone else. He looks in the mirror and it’s probably not hard for him to picture just how much satisfaction it would bring to someone to wring his neck or force fire ants down his throat. So he asked Obama for an extension on his security. And Obama, being the nice guy, and knowing himself how much fun it would be to clobber the old geezer, granted the request. It’s an irony that the rules of secret service are changing. It used to be a fact that ex Presidents got security for the rest of their lives. Unless something changes, George Bush won’t get that perk. Which is too bad, because he’s way up there on the list of the world’s most hated. My guess is Obama will have to grant an extension to him as well. The last thing you want is to have open season on previous heads of state. Even dickheads of state. Even face shooting assbags need protection these days. More than most. Because there are a lot of out of work vigilantes out there who’d like nothing more than to take hammer and tongs to King George the Terrible and the Dark Lord of the Undisclosed Location. And who could fault the person who did? And that’s the problem. Better to keep these two safe from having to deal with the possibility of punishing someone for meting out a just punishment on a couple of clueless sadists. Like keeping Madoff in his own padded room. It’s a mess better avoided…

Congress gets more and more like the WWF every day. Screaming epithets into microphones. Hurling abuse. Spit flying. It’s only a matter of time before things turn South Korean and the fists fly… Or maybe not. In fact, my guess is, once the cameras are off, and there are no constituents within earshot, both sides of the aisle start square dancing and snorting crack. It’s in both parties best interest, at least in the minds of the people in Washington, to joust back and forth in a tightly orchestrated dance of ineptitude. To do anything at all is to garner too much attention, resulting in a backlash from the other side. Better to lay low in an out of the way beach resort with lobbyists until things calm down a bit.

There’s Nobody To Like Or Believe Anymore

That’s it in a nutshell. It’s one side against another. And they’re both lying. We tend to go for the one who is less the obvious criminal. Obama was swept into office in a massive wave of rage at the criminal junta we voted into office possibly once. Obama was everything we wanted in a politician. So long as he allowed us to project want we wanted onto him. Which he did. 

And now…what? There’s nothing of any particular good coming out of any branch of government these days. It’s an orgy of corrupted aspirations, willful neglect, and paid ignorance. State governments are breaking by the day. No money. No confidence. And no logical way out. Unless we hike taxes up to 138% for the next fifty years, we’re going to be one big I.O.U to the world for decades. 

Walter Cronkite passed away. He’s the last talking head on the television who didn’t say exactly what his boss told him to. He was called The Most Trusted Man In America for that reason. Now we just have a sliding scale of people just making shit up as they see fit. To know what’s going on is to have access to the people who tell you what they want you to say. To dig any deeper is to not have a job. The media owes it’s existence to corporations who owe it’s profits to laws made in Washington. The corporations bought Washington and they tell the media what to say. Anything outside of that system is rogue. 

Nowadays, if you were the most trusted man in America, you wouldn’t be allowed to deliver the news at all. You’d spend your whole time asking people to make sure what you were saying is factual and angrily ripping up patently false stories given to you by your editor. It just wouldn’t work. And so much for that. No, best to just go with the side you think is doing the least amount of lying or who is lying for a higher cause. It’s the way we do it now. Or we toss out everything we don’t know – which is everything – and just pick whoever is taller. George W. is the only guy who beat out a taller person for President. The second time. The first time he swiped it. It’s not a bad way to look at things really. Shorter people – like smaller dogs – tend to be quick to anger. Don’t want some insecure pug-like figure pacing around the oval office. Nope. All the policy speak and rallies and money and orations and it comes down to which guy you think has the ability to lose his shit . To react to a crisis by setting the office on fire. 

So now the honeymoon is over. It’s been five months and the new guy hasn’t fixed everything yet. We’re upside down as a country. Several trillion dollars in debt to China for letting us bomb Iraq and Afghanistan for seven years. And, we’re willing to help out so long as our taxes don’t go up and we get healthcare reform and get jobs and the government stays out of the way. Wall Street has a whole new form of toxicity to make money on, now that they know we have their back…If it weren’t all real, we could just shake all the pieces off the board and start over again with a new banker…

Health-Care Made Easy And Other Gibberish.

Health-care is expensive. That’s something you see in the news. And I believe it to be true. Not much that you read is true. Most of it is trumped up editorial brainswill. But I know that if it costs four hundred dollars to go to the doctor, fill out some forms and shake some dude’s hand, with no actual doctoring going on, then something is wrong. Baby boomers – a notoriously unhealthy swath of decadent bastards who never met a bad idea they couldn’t adopt and make their own are getting older. Despite the facelifts and bypass surgeries and liposuction, they are aging nevertheless. And they are notoriously unhealthy people, in both heart and soul. A lot of them are in congress now complaining about the cost of healthcare. They scream on cable news shows, their faces beet red from an ill-advised combination of gin, high-blood pressure and viagra, about the terrifying expense that health-care reform will cost the “tax payer.” And, by “tax payer”, they mean the out of shape fat cat who pays for them to go skiing every Christmas, not the recently furloughed factory worker who has spent his whole life breathing in cancerous air to build shitty American cars.

One way to cut down on the cost of health-care is simple. Get healthy. In Mississippi, as it is widely known, the average weight has ballooned up so six hundred pounds. Ticking time bombs of racist lard waiting to explode. Deep fried lethargy. And now these people – who to be fair can be found throughout the country drinking PBR’s for breakfast – can no longer stand up without a live-in nurse to forklift them up. I say they’re screwed. There should be an Asshole Clause that excludes deliberate hedonists from weighing down the system. If you don’t have a condition and you can’t see your feet, tax payers – even super rich ones – shouldn’t have to foot the tab for your life of gluttony. That should cut out a few hundred billion a year right there. 

Republicans, or the G.O.P. – that shrinking party of bigots and criminals – a party that has strayed so far from their roots they might as well be on diprivan – are shrieking about how much money the democrats are spending. But they’re faking it. It’s all a show for the cameras. Because they surely know it happened on their watch. And they also know the money we’re spending is all theoretical. We’ve been broke for years. We’re all Chinese. Bush sold us out years ago, but nevermind. States are out of money. Cities are falling apart. And entire generations only know how to send text messages and pirate things off the Internet. So it’s all a big joke really. When economists say we’re almost out of this recession don’t believe them. How can we be? We don’t do anything. Sure we twitter cool articles to each other. We can take a picture of a cat and make it look like he’s breakdancing. But what will that get us? It’ll turn us into South Canada is what. A country that people think about as a case study in self-destruction.

Hard Liners Take Hard Line In Iran

Maybe it was what we witnessed in the United States, where we elected, for the first time in our history, an African-American to the office of President. Maybe that’s why we got so enthused by the election in Iran. What happened in the election in Iran? Apparently, the same thing that goes on in every election there. The difference: the perception. Iran has been, for thirty years now, run by a theocracy of fundamentalist hard-liners. And that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the people who want reform have cellphones and twitter accounts. An isolationist government running smack day into the 21st century gizmo-gasm culture. We see images of countless thousands of marchers openly protesting a sham election. The difference: the images. In the old days you could jail the journalists and smash their cameras and nobody in the outside world could see for themselves the bones and brains that were also smashed. No more. Everyone has a camera. Two or three images – in two or three seconds – can cause a shift in global consciousness. Holy crap! The Iranian government is mean! 

But it changes nothing. Iran is still run by maniacs. Iran still hates the west. Iran still blames everything on The Great Satan, even if The Great Satan stands mute. The bearded holocaust denier will still be President, and still serve as a beacon for those who seek the destruction of the west. Same old same old. The Iranians might have had a march of mourning. But this time, the rest of the world got to join in.

Nut Job Nation And The Death Of Satire

For people who like to poke fun of people, this is no time to live. People just up and make asses of themselves these days. There’s no need for someone to point it out. Today’s newspapers are beginning to resemble The Onion. Only it’s all real. Yes, a man did get bitten by a rattlesnake attempting to pet it. Yes, a man was caught at LAX with 16 songbirds hidden in his pants. Yes, Oklahoma is taking federal money and complaining about the conditions placed on it. Yes, a hedge fund manager who bilked money from investors did accuse Obama of abuse of power. Yes, Rush Limbaugh did accuse Obama of starting Swine Flu. Yes, Texas did talk about seceding from the union. Yes, in each and every case, these were grown men and women. In some of the cases they were grown men and women that other grown men and women voted into office under the assumption that they weren’t windbag dumbshits. And maybe, compared to those that did the voting, they weren’t. But what does that say for the rest of us? 

Personally, I think we’re all stupid. Or at least more so than we used to be. Or our heads are occupied with things that don’t lead to being able to accomplish anything. We might not know how to do our jobs, but we know that, according to a quiz on Facebook, we should live in New York because we like to eat hot dogs. 

Pardon my cynicism. But I made the mistake of visiting a “third world” country a few weeks ago, only to learn that they were better at just about everything we hold dear. Internet? They had us beat. Cell phones? Cars? Food? Better. Better. And better. They also seem to be better informed about us than we are about ourselves, what with being better at speaking our language and more informed about our past and all. Man, did they grill me though! Asking me all sorts of questions about domestic policy and war and credit card debt and George Bush and…well, all I could tell them is LeBron James is a really good basketball player and…hey! Brad Pitt is ours! We’re not all bad! Lay off! But it did put me in my place. Made me realize what a big tent empty propaganda machine we’ve become, coasting on our successes now sixty seven in our past. I contend that the last thing we did of any import was the movie Ghostbusters. Before that it was coming in at the end and helping defeat Nazism. 

That was a while ago though. And if we keep our noses buried in Iphone apps and reality television, it will be a while yet before we do it again. The good news is, with the exception of China, we’ve so thoroughly destroyed the finances of every country on the planet, that nobody but us – or China – is in any shape to take our place on top of the pop culture mountain. So yay! We’ve still got that.

Our Tortured Media

It should come as no shock that, once again, the media is making a mountain out of a mountain now that they are allowed to. In other words, six years after the entire world knew America was in the torture business, it is now front page news. Usually the articles are editorials talking about how “it should be investigated!” (it already has – by lawyers worldwide and for years) and quotes about how “we don’t do that!” and just all around shock and outrage. Even though we’ve known about it for years. The media just didn’t want to get in the doghouse with the Bush administration. So they skirted the edges of the topic and dropped ominous hints on the periphery, but – with few exceptions – left the subject alone.

Alas, it’s a new day. And a new administration. The rules have changed and editors are taking advantage of the fact. Along with the steroid scandal we all knew about and the shitty cars we’ve knowingly driven for years, torture has been known, then ignored. The next outrage will no doubt also be something well known and obvious: prime time television sucks! Sarah Palin is a moron! Our kids are stupid! 

The media- and by media I am referring to broadcast and newspapers – the traditional stomping grounds of what was once “journalism.” I’m not talking about tweeting or sidewalk chalk writing or any other confounding fad of useless time consumption. These grey headed dinosaurs are losing their shirts, which is to say billions of dollars, and they are doing anything and everything to right their ships. But the problem is, they all grabbed money from companies that never had any and are no longer able to give them any. Advertising has disappeared because the products that were advertising in newspapers either don’t exist anymore, suck, or offer something nobody is buying. (Like penis enlargement powder. It was a gamble when the stock market was soaring. In a recession it’s not something the desperate feel they can currently afford.) And the corporations that bought up all the newspapers as investments no longer feel like funding them now that they’re deeply in the red. Even though it was there short-term profit mindset that drove them into the red in the first place. Like any bad company that deserves to fail, these corporations forced the hand of newspapers, giving them budgets that forced papers to let go the people who make sure things are spelled right, aren’t pure fabrications, and have some bearing on some fact at some point somewhere. Instead they used spellcheck and hired interns and porn bloggers. 

Desperation fuels insanity. Like huge forty foot font headlines screaming that the Bush administration was a pit of criminal dickwads. No! It can’t be! If newspapers and television news want to remain relevant, or aspire to actually become relevant once again, they would do well to hire investigative reporters, pay them in actual money, and have them run around looking for actual news. Actual news is not a nut job with eight tiny little babies. That’s a sociological effect of a culture that worships pure inanity. Actual news is digging up proof Dick Cheney had a torture chamber under the vice presidential lair. Not that we’ve water-boarded countless innocent people in various secret prisons around the world and that many of them had no relevant information and quite a few languished and died once this knowledge was finally realized. It’s horrible. It’s wrong. And highly ineffective. But, sadly, it’s nothing we didn’t already know. It’s time for the media to tell us something we don’t.

What I Think About Everything! by Dick Cheney

Hey folks! As you might have noticed, I have all sorts of opinions these days. You may be wondering if I am off my medications. The truth is I’ve always had plenty of opinions on just about everything…only I’ve always had someone who was paid by the government to care what I had to say. No matter what I said, they would invariably say “That’s a great idea, Dick!” Or something like that. Nowadays, dang it, I don’t have such people hovering about. So I do the next best thing. I call up some editor and give them an earful. But even that is beginning to change. So that’s why I decided to write a book. Not a memoir, but a book of my opinions. Opinions about anything and everything. Here is a random sampling:

Pet frogs that ignore you should be stomped to death.

If you live in a cold climate, just wait!

Wild Mustangs aren’t so wild once they’re turned into soap.

Fuck Mexico.

Fuck France.

If you criticize me, do me a favor and raise your hand so I know whose car to blow up.

Fuck Obama.

You should be allowed to charge as much as you want on a credit card.

The Daily Show should come on less than daily.

Fox News blows. Especially if you’re in the GOP and play hard to get.

War. It’s good for lots of things!

I’ve got more opinions than just these. This is just a small sample. These opinions take up pages and pages and pages and pages. And they’re such good opinions that they are what I like to believe are facts. You need to buy my book. Because I have lots and lots to say and I need an outlet!

AIG Execs Save Economy By Returning Bonuses

There is something so simplistic by all the attention being paid these unwarranted bonuses. Do they deserve the money? No. They’re really greedy and stupid people. They probably can’t tie their own shoes. Nevertheless, the 165 million dollars their bonuses added up to, minus the thirty million returned due to death threats, are but a pittance compared to the trillion dollars in bailout funds floating around. 

Yet these bonuses are taking up days and days and days in congress, as one congressman after another gets on the microphone and yells at some guy who has only been on the job four months. You have to ask yourself why. And the answer that your brain comes up with is alarming. They’re doing it because they don’t know what else to do. They don’t want to go on record trying to help. They don’t want to attack each other. So they latch onto this lint hair of a problem and don’t let go. 

Meanwhile the economy is tanking. Banks are holding onto their money tighter than Ty Cobb. Nobody’s lending. Nobody’s spending. And people are getting laid off by the hundreds of thousands. Right now, both sides of congress are doing all they can to wage a populist battle against greedheads and making it all but impossible that any actions Obama might make trying to get us out of this mess are either made impossible or turned into an epic slog. 

And when it all goes further south, they will all turn and look at Obama as if the whole thing was his fault. He’s a socialist with a wife who refuses to wear shirts with sleeves! He’s more interested in March Madness than doing anything about the economy! He’s too cool for Washington’s sewer level fighting style!

The media and congress all have us looking at the little bitty things while the big things go undone…

Taking AIG’S Lead, Bernie Madoff Changes Name

Bernie Madoff, in an effort to avoid prison, is taking AIG’s lead, and is starting proceedings to change his name. “It’s this Bernie Madoff guy that’s in all the trouble. Me? I’m Frank Ludoff…” In jail for money laundering and massive fraud, the chances of his ruse working or slim. But then so are the chances of running a 65 billion dollar ponzi scheme for thirteen years…developing…

AIG Playing With Fire

There are greedheads. And there are buffoons. And there are criminal sociopaths. But what AIG has done, considering their history and all they have done before and all that has happened since last September, defies any logical explanation. First they come begging for help after helping unleash a cancer on the global economy. So we gave them billions of taxpayer dollars. Which they used to go on a junket and got facials. They were hauled in front of congress and publicly lambasted for it. Then the CEO of Merrill Lynch comes under fire for using taxpayer money to give out bonuses. Much was written about how colossally dumb it was for him to do it. You would think AIG would have seen the writing on the wall and chose a wiser course for themselves. But no. They take 165 million dollars of tax payer money and give it out as a reward to its executives for being absolutely lousy at their jobs. Sort of like finding out you are paying money to the inventor of the Ebola virus…

It says something about how corrupted our culture is at the very top that they simply have absolutely no way of acting like normal rational human beings. They have done things – with our money – their way for so long that they can’t bring themselves to show a lick of remorse or act the slightest bit humbled by the destruction that their greed unleashed. Like someone breaking a vase and then getting mad when you ask them to clean it up.

What I don’t understand is this: we have infused countless billions in capital in AIG to keep them from falling apart. You would think that they would want to do everything they could – passing out checks at golf tournaments don’t count – to repair their reputation and work their way back towards solvency. Instead, they are doing all they can and more to assure themselves that nobody will ever trust them or want to do business with them or ever give one penny to them again. (You know you’re doing bad when a republican senator suggests you commit suicide)

AIG claims that the bonuses – which are being given to the very ass clowns in the very division that is at the very epicenter of Wall Street’s demise – are “necessary” in order to “retain talent.” This makes no sense to me. These are clearly people who lack talent, unless one considers bankrupting your company talent. 170 billion dollars has been given to this company. The most ever. And, to repay the favor, they have decided to send bags of excrement to their benefactors. Thanks for the help, now sit down and watch helplessly as I burn your house down.

Technically I own 80% of this company. So do you. But I don’t feel like I’ve made such a good investment. In fact, I want my money back.

Stimulating Nothing

If you listen to Republicans, all this spending Obama is proposing is outrageous. He is a socialist and the harbinger of the end of free enterprise. The democrats promote their package as a massive, but necessary, boost to the economy. Neither is correct. The truth is, our situation is such a mess that tripling the amount of the stimulus would barely fix what we’ve done to ourselves and the rest of the world. It’s ugly. It’s an economic virus that we’ve unleashed throughout the world. Other countries have already stepped to the plate and stimulated their economy. We will dither and grandstand and flail about in order to pour a cup of water in the ocean. 

We know this. Our leaders think we don’t. And I think that’s why there’s not a lot of confidence in the market right now. Washington -on both sides-isn’t showing any signs of knowing what to do. Our system of checks and balances – combined with 24/7 news coverage-make us not the most nimble of countries in times of crisis. Six months after this thing- and by thing, I mean the bedrock from whence the entire global economy relies-started to go, we’re still waiting for the starter gun to go off. Politicians go on television and make speeches for one viewpoint or another, accomplishing nothing and getting us nowhere. 

This stimulus bill will make it through congress over the protesting bodies of lots of brainwashed Republicans. But it’s not enough. It won’t do enough. And that’s the pathetic sad truth nobody wants to acknowledge.

So what if we spend a little money?

I don’t care how big this stimulus thing ends up being. For one thing, it appears to be more than merely a handout. When George Bush inherited a surplus – before 9/11 – he did what all Republicans do. He immediately squandered it. He gave everyone 300 bucks. Then, in September of this year, long after he had spent more deficit money than any President since such things have been recorded – he gave 700 billion dollars to three bald guys in New York, who then promptly disappeared. 

Our economy is a mess. Bush went on television and assured the nation that the best thing we could do, given the situation, is shit our pants. Talk about not being able to inspire. The man was a walking panic button. So people locked themselves in their homes and curled up into fetal balls and rocked back and forth…

Enter Obama. He’s been in office a month. He’s inherited the biggest pile of decaying stink in over 70 years. So he decided that he needed to stimulate the economy. But, rather than simply give money away to pigfuckers on Wall Street, he decided to create a pro-active stimulus package. Sure he’s spending money. Lots of it. Oodles of it. Millions and millions of zeros are involved. But it’s actually going towards something. And it is for this that the Republicans are pissed. In their world, a stimulus package means that they pay less taxes and have more money to spend on whores and colonoscopies. Obama wants the money to go into things that create things and add jobs and make things easier and more efficient. This is unacceptable to the right. It goes against the formula that they have relied on for decades. Cut people’s taxes and who gives a shit if you know what your doing. That’s their game plan and they’ve been working off of it forever. Well, guess what? That has come to a screeching halt. Those days are over. We all have our eyes open now. And we can see what’s going on. And it’s pissing them off. They need to either come up with an alternative solution (talk radio shows are not solutions; just noise.) or shut up and go home and count all the money they’ve stolen over the years.

Baby Boomers Faced With Prospect Of Having To Finally Grow Up

Much like the cartoon character that can float in space so long as he doesn’t look down, the generation that came after The Greatest Generation, the so-called Baby Boomers, along with the rest of us, have just looked down. And now gravity is exerting its laws on all of us. The days of doing and getting and behaving however we want are over. Luxuries like fat injected into lips and removed from hips are over. It’s time to spend money on things that have some sort of value aside from self-esteem. Gizmos and doodads and ski chalets are nice – so long as you can afford them. And this generation has long known that it has been driving the country into debt. Yet they chose to ignore it and drive the car further into the mud. Generation X and Y and Millenials and Echo Boomers and whatever other term we apply to a grouping of people of similar ages in the future, will have to look at the many many many zeros on the national debt that it has been saddled with. 

This is nothing new. This is nothing to pretend to be shocked by. It just is. Unfortunately for baby boomers, the reckoning is coming a dozen years earlier than expected. The American Dream, as it has been called, has always had the word Dream in it. Dreams are things that happen to you until you wake up and see where you really are. And right now we are in a huge mess!

So how did it come to this? Everyone has a theory. And their theory usually involves pointing the finger somewhere else. But I think it comes from the current American Soul. It comes from that desire instilled in us all to matter. To succeed. To drive the nice car. To wear the nice watch. To have the deluxe apartment in the sky. To move on up. To keep up. No matter what. Even if it means lying and making money from it. Our very nature has been corrupted. Wall Street bankers knowingly misled investors so they could reline their pool in the back of their castles in Germany. Mortgage lenders knowingly lent to people unprepared to pay back their loans. And average Americans raised to finally get the house of their dreams signed on the dotted line. 

Unfortunately, people around the world are paying for our consumptive culture. Our very foundation is built on consumption. Shopping is in our DNA. The big TV. The boat. The beach house. We consume 25% of the world’s resources. We use the most gas. We make the most waste. We buy the most crap. And we get the most boob jobs. 

So how do we fix it?

Well, for one thing, we’re going to have to raise taxes. The uber rich may not like it. But they’re the ones who profited off this world-wide mess, fuck ‘em. We have trillions of dollars in debt. And we will soon have trillions and trillions more with Medicaid and Social Security. Someone will have to pay for it. And it might as well be the fucking bozos who are behind every travesty of the last fifty years. Those rascally baby boomers who sold their free spirited 60’s soul and joined the squares with a vengeance. The ones who invented and made Viagra the biggest sponsor of Major League Baseball and Nascar. The ones who spent the seventies lying on their shag carpets downing barbituates and having orgies. The ones who invented cocaine fueled modern-day greed in the 80’s. The ones who made Walker, Texas Ranger a hit television show in the 90’s, and the ones who created and profited off reality television in the ’00’s. 

It’s time for them to be humbled a bit. The rest of us have long known we’d eventually have to tighten our belts and get to work. That time has come. Now we just have to figure out how the fuck to do it.

This is no way to bailout anything

I like Obama. I think he’s very smart. But, because of the way politics works, he is surrounded by a bunch of extremely smart ass eating greedheads. They have been lining their pockets for years on end from the very people who have chased so much risk to line their pockets with cash bonuses for basically buying up crap and selling it as gold while knowing it was crap. Wall Street culture is as corrupt as a culture can be. They are a breed incapable of behaving in a manner the rest of the planet can understand. They go to the dentist in a rented jet. They get their haircuts in Florence, Italy. They don’t know how to get us out of this mess because their brains are no longer capable of behaving rationally. They want all the money they had back. All the imaginary money that only existed on paper. They want their shallow fuckball lives back. And if that means they use our hard-earned money to do it, so be it. If they have to break the very back of the country to keep their Hamptons house, they will do it. It’s in their nature. They can’t help it.

The problem is worldwide and huge. Congress is grandstanding over a massive stimulus package that is roughly nine hundred trillion dollars less than the amount of toxic waste banks have been using our money to buy up with such gusto. No amount of money – even nonexistent money! – can fix this mess. Banks aren’t lending because they don’t have any money. People aren’t paying their mortgages, because they no longer have jobs and couldn’t afford the houses they were talked into buying. 

This is a reckoning. Over-bloated home prices are going down rapidly. Who knows? One day they might make it all the way down to what they are actually worth. Washington and Wall Street and banks and corporations are now frantically shaking down the entire population looking for loose change. 

Building a bridge here and there won’t make up for the oceans of people who are wandering the streets in confusion, unable to pay their rent, keep their insurance, pay for their kids to go to school, and wondering where all those decades of hard earned savings went. It’s better than a kick in the head, but it won’t come close to fixing the damage that a long entrenched culture of excess and greed has wrought on each and every one of us. Not by a country mile.

This whole bailout thing is just theatre.

I Don’t Care What Some Greedhead Makes

The media wants to create a class war. You can’t turn on the television or read the newspaper without some new fat cat’s face on the front page for one thing or another: CEO gets seaweed facial! Executive takes family skiing! It’s all designed to piss people off. Like all the people that have lost their jobs.

Let me just say that I don’t give a crap what some New York pasty faced fat ass gets paid. I just don’t want him or her to be a moron. That’s all. You can pilot a three hundred foot yacht around the man-made lake in your backyard for all I care. Just don’t be lousy at your job. It’s not too much to ask. Or it shouldn’t be. But it is. These people at the top – they aren’t all that smart. That’s the big secret that’s recently been unveiled. It was probably there to see all along. We just didn’t want to look. (Sort of like professional baseball. Everyone knew the players were juiced. Everyone. Every ass last one of us. But now that there is more and more proof to the fact, we’re all up in arms. Fuck us. We’re hypocrites. We can put up with all sorts of ass-baggery until it’s rubbed in our face. Then we turn around and attack…) 

The media isn’t remotely innocent in any of this. Of the 800,000,000,000,000,000 jobs lost every hour, a good quarter of them can be directly blamed on the media’s habit of blowing everything to such a high pitched sensational whine that rational people have no choice but to run around screaming, kicking their pets, and stocking up on weapons. We are collectively talking ourselves into a massive depression. We are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom. Companies lay off people so they can have a “better than expected quarterly return” so that there stock will rise. Then all those laid off people go home and lay on their floor and cry for months. Or they do something else. What they don’t do is run out and by a 61″ plasma television. So sales plummet. And the people in the suits in New York release more human ballast to stay afloat. They “restructure” and “reorganize” and “seal their fate if they don’t get tax payer relief.” The reason for all this, of course, is The Shareholders. Who are the shareholders, you ask? They are a group of extremely sweaty fat people with bad hair and zipper scars on their chests, who sit around a big table in a conference room in Manhattan and demand the same profits they get when the economy is singing. So what if sales are down – I want my money! The leader of this group – and this is just a guess on my part – is Tommy Chong. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only plausible conclusion based on the choices that have been made by major corporations throughout the country these last three or four months. I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it.

Don’t blame some greedhead for being rich. Don’t blame that guy who makes polo shirts for selling them for four hundred times more than they are worth. That’s the American Way. Blame the rat eating lunatic who ignores his company’s health because he’s chasing silicone down Hollywood Boulevard instead of paying attention. And the desperate editors who refuse to publish anything that won’t start a riot of fear.

They’re Doing It Again

It’s what they do, these Republicans. Derelict, adrift, out of ideas, and out of office – they pester and annoy and trivialize and attack. They are “no” bodies. They tell you your ideas suck, but offer up none of their own, excepting lowering taxes on the very jackals that unleashed the global financial virus the world is now experiencing. John McCain did it during the campaign: he complained about Obama getting a slide projector for a Chicago Museum. They nitpick the picayune so that what is truly important is overlooked. And they have the gall to act like this whole mess didn’t transpire on their watch. They are the waiter that forgets your order and gets mad at you for reminding them of it. They are the guy at the meeting that shoots down all the ideas and tells everyone you don’t know what you’re doing and never comes up with anything or even pretends to. They deserve nothing but our scorn and perhaps a few years of hard labor.

GOP Resorts To Public Poop Throwing

There’s a point in many relationships – bad ones that never should have been entered into – when things go from bad to ugly. The GOP was bad during the campaign, tossing off lies and innuendos and relentlessly attacking with falsehoods. It backfired. It backfired to such an extent that many of the people who had been doing it distanced themselves from themselves. John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee – even Newt Gingrich! – and anyone else with aspirations beyond public disdain are working hard to get away from a national party that had gone ugly early and lost resoundingly. 

Most people when they reach a point when their tactics spectacularly backfire, change course. Not the RNC. Now, as they seek to taint the President-elect with the Blogo scandal, releasing a video in which they connect the two with no evidence at all, other than a tape recording in which the scandal-plagued governor refers to Obama as a motherfucker – hardly a term of endearment that – have publicly lost their shit. They’ve snapped. They’re the guy who shows up to work wearing a diaper eating a dead squirrel and laughing. No longer lacking any sense of a moral compass, they have tacked sharply towards the insane. Publicly despised, they seek immortal infamy. In four years if they nominated the world’s largest tomato, it would not surprise. Rather than seek a way to return to public discourse they’ve chosen to be the guy who shows up to the office party covered in their own feces. It’s sad. But it’s not deserving of sympathy. Or news coverage.

His Brother’s Lame Duck Body Still Warm, Brother Jeb Seeks His Oval Office

Jeb Bush. You know, they like to tell us, he is the smart one. As if that was a hard thing to be. He was the governor of Florida before the guy they secretly think is gay was. The Florida governor is a basically ceremonial post unless one’s dumb mean older brother is running for President and your family dynamic has instilled in you to lie, cheat and steal in pursuit of family interests. Well, with Obama already further to the center than the left would like, Jeb feels the right is already being undermined. So he is suggesting they set up their own government separate from well, the real one. This is, after all a center right nation, as they now like to say. Right now, in the current GOP administration, the government is so far to the right it tipped the scale years ago. The center-right is so far to the left they can’t even see it. Their sense of balance is so awry that the outlawing of torture seems like an intolerably liberal concept. Good old Jeb seems to know his brother has forever ruined his chances for being the next Decider. So he is suggesting setting up a different government. One in which he could rule. You know. Sort of like secession. The last time we had two governments we had a thing called a Civil War. Now, I don’t think Jeb really even thinks that’s a good idea. I don’t even think he’s that smart. I think his brother is so dumb and stubborn we see his brother as smart because we never hear or see him. I think that what we’re seeing is the result of the ever growing power of the current state of news. These days you can’t just hold a press conference and get on the news. You have to say or do something outrageous. If you act reasonably nobody will notice. If you say you are running for office and want to make the news, you have to take out a flaming torch and set fire to a cauldron of screaming monkeys. You have to announce your plans to run for office and then actually run for miles on end. You have to take off all your clothes and tow a barge with your junk.

So now we have Newt Gingrich accusing the nation of becoming “violently fascist” for voting against an ever more demented old man and a Mean Girl. And you have Jeb Bush saying he wants to start his own country. In order to get noticed you have to say things that would send normal people to the nut house. If normal people said what GOP politicians are always spouting off, at the very least, they would be put on a secret unknown and unprovable government watch list. Their phones would be tapped; their bank accounts would freeze; their pets would have microphones implanted in their fur; their neighbors would wear suits and sunglasses and talk into their sleeves; their mail would be suspiciously mangled; and they’d never be able to get or keep a job. In the GOP though, you become a shiny beacon of bullshit on a hill of lies and they compare you to Reagan.

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.

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.

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.

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.