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.

An Afghanistan Analogy

 

Public opinion is split on Afghanistan: slightly over half the population thinks it’s a bad idea to send more troops to Afghanistan; the rest were on Twitter posting pictures of themselves puking in a trashcan and never finished the survey. A select few – who I like to call the No Fucking Ways – actually believe the following: 1) That we are in a “war” against something or somebody 2) That we can “win” this war 3) That John Wayne could fly – and 4) That democrats want to turn tail and quit like a bunch of pansies… Unfortunately this group is either in Congress or on Fox News.

It’s not going to happen. The Afghans will never have Starbucks and malls and millions of mindless drones that go to work and go home and watch television and drink beer and watch football. It’s not going to happen.

Don’t believe me? Well I’m going to prove it with this here analogy:

Let’s say – and this could totally happen, and I frankly would encourage it – a big and mighty superpower, like China or the old scary Russia or, considering the current state of affairs, Estonia – demanded that we turn Rush Limbaugh over to an International tribunal of intellectuals for crimes against the global good. But we refused, claiming he was a United States citizen and the U.S. didn’t turn over it’s citizens – even Texans! – no matter how flatulent they were. Then, let’s say China bombed Texas and invaded it. Then let’s say they tried to instill Communism on Texans and make it illegal to hunt rattlesnakes or execute innocent people. Then let’s say, if they refused to cooperate, they were rounded up and forced to live in Oklahoma and watch Sooner games.

Wouldn’t work, would it? Shit no it wouldn’t! Sunburned would-be cowboys in wife-beaters – driving pick up trucks and wielding shotguns and swinging lariats – would come out of the woodwork to fight back – Republicans and Democrats alike! – banding together to fight against an occupation by communists. (Rush Limbaugh, for his part, would be safely ensconced in Idaho – a state long partial to bigots and hypocrites and potatoes.) Patriots from other states would sneak across the border with molotov cocktails and propaganda (Sarah Palin memoir); weapons from the United States that were smuggled into Mexico to fight U.S. drug enforcement agents would be smuggled back; insurgencies of all stripes – both big and small – would crop up everywhere – most of whom, if cornered in a bar, would freely admit to a palpable loathing of the man who started the whole thing.

Well, that’s Afghanistan: it’s Texas without the TEXAS-SIZE FLY SWATTERS! No amount of money and lives and political careers and fiercely lobbied privatized mercenary forces and torture chambers is going to turn the Middle East into Las Vegas. After all, that’s what Las Vegas is for.

Changes everything, doesn’t it? Probably not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be building a bunker. With the No Fucking Ways in charge of things, it might just be too little too late.

 

Beware The False Profit

 

Wall Street – the epicenter of what is now being called The Great Recession (even though it’s a depression) – that worldwide phenomenon best summed up with Holy Shit! – is patting itself on the back and giving itself outlandish tax-payer supplied bonuses. Why? Because our economy is overly reliant on the stock market as an indicator of the economy’s health. Which is a travesty. Because it’s not really an indicator of economic health. Nobody is economically healthy right now. But the dow is over 10,000 points anyway. Why? Because corporations are making money, which is good news for investors and shareholders. Shareholders, for those of you who don’t know, is a term used to describe an extremely heavy group of naked sweaty gentlemen – and by heavy I don’t mean deep or profound, but grossly overweight – who meet once a week high above New York and make phone calls to different corporations letting them know that, despite the economy, they fully expect – not the same profit they got last year, but more. This starts a relentless cycle of short-term stupidity that drags the economy down further and adds to the unemployment line. Companies, who are expected to give the shareholders their money, have to lay off their workforce to cut down on overhead, and thus increase profit. Which does two things: one, it adds more people without income to the large group of people who aren’t going to buy anything that costs more than 99 cents. And two, it makes these companies incapable of sustaining themselves: they lose the manpower and ability to meet their obligations – and their output suffers. Then the whole thing starts all over again. An endless loop of corporate nihilism: Sales plummet. Workers get laid off. And shareholders demand ever more money while the government spends billions paying for protracted unemployment.

Further compounding the problem is who is getting laid off. Companies are more likely to lay off ten just out of school workers than one useless chickenhawk who does nothing but play golf with the boss once a week and fondle interns. There seems to be two types of workers in corporate America: those who actually do work, and those who don’t do any work but are very adept at office politics. Which is fine for short recessions. But for a prolonged recession, like this one, you end up with a whole host of companies across the landscape filled with overpriced perverts who don’t know how to do anything but tell fond yet tedious “stories” about the old days.

Profits are good. But sustainable profits are better. Shareholders and those whose souls they own, would do best to understand this. Because, if this thing keeps going the way it is, these companies will eventually cannibalize themselves; they will shrink and shrink and then nobody will profit – not even the shareholders. That’s right fat guys – that means you.

 

Note: I’m no economist, so this could be totally wrong. But I doubt it. I’ve seen it first hand in two recessions now and it boggles my mind. But feel free to set me straight…

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

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.

That Guy In That Infomercial With Christie Brinkley Is A Birther

Chuck Norris, the bearded shill on late night network television and former Mike Huckabee roadie, has joined the Birther movement. Despite what congress and Hawaii and, well, Coulter and O’Reilly, say, Chuck Norris has thrown his shoulder hair – (See Return Of The Dragon) into the fray. Like other so-called humans, he distanced himself from the movement by claiming he believed that Obama was a citizen…then discarded this belief by demanding to see the proof that’s there for all to see…

It’s a shoddy and dangerous business. The people who deeply believe that Obama is not a citizen – who believe it in their very marrow – are complete idiots. It’s the others, the rating’s and attention seekers, that fan the flames of these beasts, who are the biggest problem. They know – off the record – that the Birther movement is a sideshow and a joke. But they goad and prod these people into ever higher flights of rage. It only takes one nutjob to bring a country to its knees. It’s happened before. It can happen again. My guess is Chuck Norris just wants to sell that ab thing he is always going on about. Or  he wants a new television show. Just as Lou Dobbs wants more teeth bleach. But where will they be if one of these gas huffers go off? 

Were Obama really to be from another country – and forget for a moment that the Clintons were more than a little eager for such information were it true – you can bet they left no stone unturned – congress has already claimed that he is a citizen. So, then, to get him out of office, he would have to be impeached by a democratic congress. Whereupon Joe Biden would be President. And the economy would still suck and rednecks would still be perpetually smoking meth and unemployable and the country would still be in need of a major overhaul and so on and so on and so on. The woman – from Delaware no less – who screamed that she “wanted her country back,” still wouldn’t have it. No. She will never have her country back. Or whatever it was she was talking about. She seemed pretty old and people rarely vote a complete subnormal into office more than once every forty years. Besides: it’s like when you’re a kid: once you break a toy you don’t get a new one. So even though she feels like her country was taken from her, we won’t be giving it back. 

Tempers are flaring. The economy is reeling. People are not happy. And, like true lemmings, they’re not blaming the state of the country on the people who got them into this mess, but the people who inherited it. The GOP is right there with them though, goading them on. Not all of them. Some rational Republicans look out at their base and feel nothing but horror. But the rest would be perfectly happy if Bo or Luke Duke (or better yet, David) ran for President.

This is a tw0-party system. But one party is hell-bent on ignoring the obvious and is seeking a path to self-destruction. The democrats invariably make mistakes. If the Republicans were smart they would work to get themselves into position to take advantage when the pendulum swings back their way. They could do this, not by courting snake swallowers and horse buggerers, but by courting people who are fed up with the Democrats but also have a brain in their head. That’s the independents and the conservatives and plenty of other people.

Otherwise we’re going to have a one-party system that calls the shots for no small amount of time. And that really is un-American.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paper Newspapers Committed Suicide Long Ago

All this business about how newspapers need a bailout and revenues being down and how are they going to survive is about a multi-billion dollars short and a decade late. I’m no business man. I don’t have an MBA, got an F in economics, and can barely balance the checkbook I no longer use. But even I could see the writing on the wall. We’ll just give our paper away for free online and charge for the paper version! This is the business plan the papers went with. The result is, of course, obvious: why pay for what you can get for free? This was a question I would ask myself time and time again as I read all the free newspapers I could get my laptop on from around the world. 

The Sunday New York Times is now six dollars. It’s thinner than Angelina Jolie with less ink and more typos. And it’s probably the best of the bunch. It’s all over. Even my 70 year old father reads the newspaper online. He doesn’t like it, but he does it. 

So spare me all the shock and hand wringing. This was all by design. Any fool could see it. Or could they? Could it be that those at the very top were in such deep denial that they refused to look at what was right under their face the whole time? The newspapers had their chance to charge money for online content, but didn’t. Instead they let you register for free. Then they tried to charge for “premium content.” But by then it was already too late. There’s no going back once you give something away. 

Now the papers are floundering. And, if they want to see why, all they have to do is look at themselves in the mirror.

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.