l-dopa

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.

A Democratic organic farmer and high school teacher named Robert Paulson Jon Tester has won Montana. If Lieberman doesn’t count (if he ever did) that means that the Senate is now tied. Only VA, which looks good* remains to be seen.

Group hug, everyone.

*I’m using the word “good” here to mean “like it doesn’t encourage Imperialism, alienation from the world community, violence, hatred, war, xenophobia, paranoia, and fascism. You may define it differently.

Well, Rummy’s been fired. While the Prez was out, campaigning and telling everyone that Rummy would be there until the end of his Presidency, he had already interviewed his replacement. With friends like that, who needs enemies. And he’s got enemies.

Please be reasonable. There’s important work here that’s more than who gets to touch their genitals to someone else and get a tax break.

What the hell are you doing reading blogs? Go vote!

When I was in school, there were two things that I was told made America the best country in the world: we’d never waged a war on anyone aggressively (which was already easily debatable at the time, but still actually debatable and not a transparent lie) and you couldn’t be imprisoned without the due process of arrest, accusation, speedy trial, and conviction.

We were told that this is because the Constitution of the United States is a flexible but inviolable document subject to representative review and judicial interpretation that stemmed from that due process.

So, let’s take count:

• Unjust, unprovoked, and morally bankrupt war? You betcha.
• Lack of due process? Holy shit.

So, this is designed to get terrorists, right? And does it define what a terrorist is, and how we can make sure that we’ve got one when we do?

Well, we’re not allowed to know.

(posted also to Monkey Do, Monkey See.)

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman will soon be out of office; challenger Ned Lamont has unseated him as the Democratic nominee for State Senator.

Hopefully — ideally — this is representative of a sea change in the nation’s thinking about our seemingly perpetual war against Eurasia and thus trends towards a greater calling to task of those who have brought us into this thing we’re now stuck in. Fuck the bloodthirsty warmongers, in other words. And maybe let’s all move on.

On a personal note*, when I lived in Connecticut, I always despised good ol’ “Fox News Democrat” Joe; he always seemed like a mealy-mouthed suck-up, hopelessly behind the times and genuinely unconcerned with his constituents. He waged a pointless war against Mortal Kombat long after everyone had stopped playing it in favor of Street Fighter 2 (tiger uppercut!). And let’s face it, the guy looks like the dad from Alf.

~jeff

* On a even more personal note, you couldn’t pay me enough to live in Connecticut again. It’s not really as much a problem of a bad culture in Connecticut as much as the total lack of any kind of culture at all; aside from shopping malls, strip malls and chain restaurants, there’s nothing to do whatsoever in the state except sit in your condo and wonder if your hi-def plasma TV is large enough. The state is a case study of what fills a vacuum when nobody steps up and starts smallish local businesses; e.g. hello, Olive Garden. Massachusetts, where I’m currently living, has its own faults, certainly — but there’s genuinely cool places to go and hang out with friends, aspects of living which Connecticut largely stopped offering a while ago in favor of curbside drive-up Pizzatizer carry-out service at T.J. O’Pootertoot’s.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

by Mazen Kerbaj, a experimental musician from Beirut, recorded live as bombs dropped.

~jeff

Ah, Fox News; raising the level of discourse for us all, and proving that any time you invite one of the friendly folks from “God Hates Fags” onto your show, it’s sure to be rousing and intelligent time. God bless America*. Seriously, while screening this clip — and admittedly it’s hard to watch, I actually can’t get all the way through it — it’s like that scene where Darth Vader lifts the Emperor up and throws him down a handy nearby infinite shaft — certainly you’re rooting for Vader, but at the same time you know that he’s still a bad, bad dude.

It’s the kind of awful television that was so effectively described during Jon Stewart in his famous Crossfire appearance, shrill, useless, fake debate which sicks the soul as it weakens the spirit. We all have to rise above this kind of bait — it’s not real, and I can’t believe for a second it’s at all representative of any issues that the vast majority of us would genuinely entertain as relevant. It’s highly-energized gladiator spectacle recast as spirited discussion, and every night the media rolls it out for us, and far worse than that, every two or four years our politicians roll it out for us as well, hand-picking their ludicrously polarizing topics to distract us all with. But it’s not real; flag burning, gay marriage, these are not even related to the issues we need to be talking about. It’s somewhat entertaining to watch the tanned harpy fight the homophobic witch, but keep in mind, it’s not real.

~jeff

*It’s important to note when discussing our country that while you’re considering putting down $250K on that soulless 2 bdrm, 1 bthrm beige condo within a short driving distance to the local mall, farmhouses with 48 acre lots are selling for $140K in Canada. Shop around, is what I’m saying.

Well done flash animation — lots of good stuff hidden in the background, too. While the animation itself is really great — how do people do this kind of work in Flash? I can barely draw a rounded rectangle — I can’t help wish the writing drew a few more subtle parallels to Hitler.

~jeff