l-dopa

This guy is the worst. His special brand of jingoistic, fear-based pandering will earn him a special place in hell. If he could get out a single goddamn sentence without invoking 9/11, I would up and faint with shock. He’s outright repugnant, and I’d actually rather we elect, oh, why not a donkey wearing a diaper than give this horrible crust of a man any more attention than he’s already been given.

In closing, if Rudy Giuliani loves 9/11 so much, why doesn’t he marry 9/11. Then he could cheat on it.

~Jeff

No, but seriously, Mitt Romney once strapped his poor dog to the fucking roof of his car, and drove for 12 hours, and the dog was so terribly, gut-wrenchingly afraid that it pooped itself the whole time, and Mitt Romney thought that was a super-duper, a-ok thing to do.

I wouldn’t put a guy like that in charge of a car wash drive-thru, never mind an ideologically divided country teetering on the edge of complete social collapse. Why are we even pretending this douche is a viable candidate?

~Jeff

As Fake Steve points out, Ron Paul is a pretty decent candidate, except for his freakin’ crazy nut-job radical pro-life anti-abortion stance, or as FSJ says so eloquently, “you gotta lets the ladies control their lady parts.” Seriously, this is a show-stopper, a deal-breaker, game over right there, and I don’t understand for the life of me how Ron Paul’s incredibly vocal supposedly progressive core constituency of 23-year-old male Internet addicts can overlook this honkingly awful and horribly antiquated area of his platform.

Seriously, it’s 2008 — even the most hard core pro-life zealot would have to agree that this country already had this conversation, and there are other important conversations we desperately need to have. Let’s move on to the more pressing matters at hand.

~Jeff

Man, this guy sucks — only slightly less than Mitt or Rudy.

Gobama!

~Jeff

It’s just barely possible that you think that the administration of Bush the Younger got the short stick, that they’re just sticking up for unpopular views. But there has to be a point when you say, “No, they’re actively lying.” If you’re still under the impression that the Bush administration has the interests of the American people at heart, then I’d really like to sit you down and say, “Look, I understand. You want to believe that someone we very nearly elected could be this bad. You want to believe that there are two sides to this issue. You want to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who is in a very difficult position of leadership in a time of anexiety. But he’s a horrible man who’s done worse things to this country than Nixon, who admitted to cheating at democracy. He’s led us to war with a specious argument designed to conflate our fear of an enemy with someone who isn’t a credible threat so that he and a couple dozen friends of his can steal from the American people. He actively hates us. He wants us to fuel his slavering greed and uses the language of God to rally bigots and confuse those who peacefully follow the religion he claims to represent. If we won’t die for him, he wants us to die as an example to others.”

Pretty hyperbolic, right? Well, it turns out, the Bush administration has not only suppressed information that will stop future Katrinas, but also information that will save the lives of all those but the very rich, who have other options. The Bush regime wants us to die in pestilence and filth because it means that they’ll be able to sell us bug spray and toilet paper. I say this because the administration in its corrupt, baby-murdering wisdom has consistently suppressed so much as discussion of embryonic stem cell research while denying the clear facts that abstinence sex education is completely ineffective.

Naturally, the administration’s response to the frustrated rage of the country’s most senior doctor is to accuse him of political ineffectiveness:

White House spokesman Tony Fratto rejected Dr Carmona’s criticism, and said he was given authority to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans. “It’s disappointing to us if he failed to use his position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation,” Mr Fratto said.

They may be the worst government this country has ever had. They’re feudalist Industrialists whose interests are in short-term profit fueled by the blood of Americans. America is, to them, a resource to be used up while they move on to other countries in their supernational corporate men-of-war. Take back your country. Vote your conscience. Make it so that electoral cheating isn’t enough. Send Cheney and Bush the jail. Let the world see that we can be a good neighbor again. Let’s apologize for voting enough votes that these horrible sociopaths could cheat the rest of the way into office. Let’s regain the strength of alliances other than those coerced. Let’s drop the Imperialist notions that cost us so much and foment hate among those who would be tense partners at worst.

Thank you, 3/4 of Massachusetts representative Legislature who voted to not eliminate civil rights to a substantial minority. Thank you for such a decisive victory showing that we’re a civilized people and that we can tolerate people who are different whether or not we like them. Thank you for showing love and support for your friends and family members. Thank you for being decent human beings and allowing people to do what they want without government interference. Thank you for voting your conscience instead of your religious affiliation. Thank you for voting your religious conviction of decency to other humans. Thank you for recognizing that people love each other and it makes us all better people to recognize that in each other. Thank you for recognizing distinction as that which makes us different, not that which makes us less.

I love you, People of Massachusetts. Wanna get married?

For a long time, I thought Sir Alec Guinness was dead. So when I found out that he’d actually died, I was kind of surprised. Maybe you’ve had that kind of experience.

So when court today, finally, decided that it’s not OK to imprison people without charging them, trying them with evidence shown to a jury of peers, and convicting them of a crime, I thought, “Oh! That’s funny! I thought that decision was already made 200 years ago!”

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”

“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

Jerry Falwell
1933-2007
a eulogy

Jerry Falwell was a big man. Not big of heart, not big of mind, but a big man anyway. His corpulence could only be compared in volume to that of his homophobia, contempt of women, and capacity to ignore the core tenets of the faith he claimed to hold dear. His love of prostitutes, politics, and money put him in line with the great corruptors of society while his media outlet and university gave him access to the greatest number of hungry minds and souls. Truly, he can be considered one of the worst individuals in American society through the 20th century. If he was right, and fortunately, he wasn’t, he is now sharing Hell with J. Edgar Hoover, Alan Dulles, Joseph McCarthy, and Richard Nixon in a special place for those whose thirst for power makes them consume all around them, body, soul, and leftovers.

(Jerry Falwell’s Hit Parade, by Slate.)

Once again, it looks like only Dennis Kucinich has the balls to take on the Military Industrial Complex in any serious way. I’d love to see Dean or Gore get up behind this. Obama, I’m looking at you. I’m not expecting much from Hillary. She’s made it pretty clear that she’s about as Left a candidate as McCain.

Ford pardoned Nixon and it polluted the political landscape for decades. Let’s show these supernational purveyors of oil and blood the door and make sure they remember it.

OK: Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are unelectable, and their presence on any ticket in 2008 will drive the country right into the highly-electable President John McCain’s hands. This pains me greatly to say, but it’s true; outside of the fictional universe of “24″, America is not ready for an partially African-American president with a scary name, and Hilary Clinton is wholly despised by nearly all potential Republican swing voters and vaguely disliked by many Democrats as well.

And as cool as Obama is (I mean, c’mon: he smokes!), and as, um, perfectly acceptable a president as Hilary probably would be*, these are not the candidates to put up right now. This is not the time. Hatred of the current administration only gets the voter so far, but time and time again, it’s been proven that the real problem getting your guy elected is voter apathy. Voters need to either really like their candidate or really hate the other guy, and I’m afraid too many mid-western voters would really hate the idea of President Obama or Madame President Clinton. I’m deathly afraid the Democrats might be getting a little too cocky, under the misconception that the American people hate Bush just that much.

Because — ok — here’s the thing: I need the Democrats to win this one. I FUCKING NEED IT. I need to feel good about my country again. I need this stupid fucking war to be over, and maybe we don’t start a brand new war for, say, four to eight years. I need to stop seeing pictures like this. I’m all for progressive directions in policy and politics, I’m all for breaking the boring hegemony of the White Christian United States President** — but this seems to me to be a very dangerous time, and we’ve got to get the car out of the ditch before we get to drive down that particular road.

~jeff

*…can you feel the Hilary excitement? Catch it. Catch the fucking fever. But, seriously, any opportunity to see Bill again, I’m all for. He’s like America’s favorite fun uncle — a little drunk, a little horny, but everyone has a a good time when he’s around. Hey, can we elect him again, maybe? Under a pseudonym if we need to, perhaps something clever, like “Crill Blinton”.

**in fact, don’t tell anyone, but I voted for Nader in 2000, solely to show support for the idea of a viable third-party candidate; and irresponsibly promiscous lefty voters like me may have, in fact, gotten us into this mess… so what do I know, about anything, really.

Well, Dubya’s at it again. Whenever given the choice, he’ll opt for corporate warfare over human welfare, and his primary method is to silence all opposition irrespective of its rightness. His certainty is sure indication of his contempt for the truth.

In this case, he wants to eliminate public broadcasting. That’s right, the people who brought you Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and the Electric Company, because they teach people to read, must go. This follows his attack on NASA where the administration changed the mandate of NASA so that it is officially no longer concerned with the health of the Earth. It follows his attack on the US school system — terrible though it is — by slashing funding to the poorest districts.

The Republican goal in this country is to eliminate all thought. If you’re anything but a corporate-funded billionaire, it’s in your interest to stop these people. If you are a corporate-funded billionaire, well, hi there, thanks for reading our blog, and could I have a million dollars? It’s only .05% of what you’ve got and I’ve got some causes I’d like to fund.

Fortunately, there’s something, however small, that we can do. MoveOn is having a petition signing so you can show your disapproval to your congressfolk.

(If this works, maybe NPR could grow a second testicle and give us some punchier news. I’m lucky enough to get some Pacifica Radio programming where I live. If you don’t know what they are, check it out.)

Has anyone else been following the Litvinenko story with as great interest as I have?

And did those same individuals enjoy Casino Royale as much as I did?

It seems that Daniel Craig, who played James Bond in the recent incarnation of Casino Royale (the highest grossing Bond film yet) and a Vatican assassin in Elizabeth, is on the list for playing Alexander Litvinenko in a movie based on the assassinated spy’s book, Blowing Up Russia.

I’m looking forward to that one, yes I am.

Apparently, it takes a hoax to get people really saying what they feel. And what they feel is that the Nazis were pretty right on with that concentration camp thing, and the yellow stars, and the tattooing. These are, apparently, good American things to do, as long as they’re pointed toward non-Americans, like Muslims.

This article mentions a Gallup Poll that says that 39% of Americans feel that American citizens should carry identification that says whether or not they’re Muslim. Now, I have my doubts about Gallup, but that means that either they’re telling the truth, or that’s the truth that a large, opinion-making body wants us to believe.

Don’t believe that it can’t happen again, happen here, happen because of something you think or your friends think. Don’t destroy the tatters of America that the Neocons have left us to fight over.

Remember, the Nazis lost the war.

Whew.

So, I’m thinking, “Robert Gates? Don’t I know that name?

Oh, yeah!

A quick refresher for those who haven’t thought about this for 20 years:

The Iran-Contra Affair was a conspiracy where Ronald Reagan used the CIA to illegally sell weapons to Iran, our enemy and enemy of our then-ally at war, Iraq, in exchange for American hostages who were never received, and to give the money to the Contras, a group of guerrillas and cocaine traffickers trying to overthrow the democratically elected Leftist Sandanista government while the US government pushed its “Just Say No” drug campaign.

Gates was Director of Central Intelligence at the time. He was either involved and escaped prosecution or was unaware of what his agency was doing.