Saturday, April 09, 2011
Ta-Daah!
I'll say this for the middle-class and working poor who nonetheless support the Republicans and the Tea Party -- they're amazing contortionists. They can get fucked in the ass and give a reach-around at the same time.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Comedian Almighty
One day God sat down and said, "Y'know what would be a hoot? Take a biological imperative and cast it as a sin. Ha! I kill Me! Let's see...which one? Eating? Nah. Too many kinds of food, I'd never keep up. Those bald monkeys will eat anything that doesn't eat them first. Evacuating bowels? Meh. Too stinky. Wait! I've got it. Sex! They're hardwired to want it -- hell, they can't even stop thinking about it. And every time they pair up, I double down. Perfect! Well...better get cracking. Them Philistines ain't gonna guilt-trip themselves.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
You Can't Have an Idiocracy Without Idiots
Somebody voted this guy in, twice, and it wasn't just the richest one percent. As long as the very people whose jobs and kids are being sent overseas can be convinced to vote for more of the same, there's work to be done in America.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Ah, 2007 -- We Hardly Knew Ye...
It was a year of worst-case scenarios, diminished expectations, celebrity train wrecks, and the ironic triumph of church over state in the midst of what Rolling Stone called the “GOP's Best Gay Sex Year Ever."This year the White House discovered something even more fun than a Republican controlled congress that bows down – a Democratic controlled congress that bends over. It became clear that Bush will be allowed to retire quietly to Crawford, without ever once having had to break a sweat, over anything. If we can just find our way to a new administration without new invasion & occupation combo platter in the Middle East, we can count ourselves lucky.
The mainstream media made an art form out of whistling past the graveyard in 2007. But, really, how can journalists be expected to fuss over nine billion dollars a month slipping into the Black Hole of Mesopotamia when there’s a pretty white girl still missing in Aruba?
With teen pregnancy rates on the rise for the first time in fourteen years, 2007 was a banner year for abstinence-only sex education. Jamie Lynn Spears is the poster child.
Homeowners were shocked – shocked! – to learn that their adjustable rate mortgages are, in fact, adjustable.
And it’s a good thing this whole “climate change” thing is just a tree hugging liberal conspiracy theory, or we’d really be in trouble. We’re only a couple of Katrinas away from joining the Third World.
So – the best part about putting 2007 in the rear view mirror? We’re that much closer to November, 2008.
Happy New Year.
Illustration by Lollygaggin
Saturday, November 17, 2007
A Message from Karl Rove to Left Wing Bloggers
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to preach to the choir is insignificant next to the power of making stupid people vote against their own interests."
Monday, September 17, 2007
Q and A
Well, that depends on the question, doesn’t it?
If the question is “how can the west and the Arab world co-exist with minimal suicide bombings?”, then war is not the answer. If the question is “how can the White House take hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and hand it over to their business partners -- and get away with it?”, then war is the answer.
Once you consider that the function and purpose of this war has always, only, and ever been a strategy for looting the US Treasury, you almost begin to admire the brazen audacity of it. Those who call the Iraq war a blundering quagmire are totally missing the point. It is, perhaps, the most brilliantly conceived, impeccably executed, and astonishingly successful criminal conspiracy of modern times. At the very least, it is a money-laundering operation on a scale and scope that makes everything the mafia has ever done look like juvenile delinquency.
The pipelines were going to flow, one way or another -- a guaranteed win-win situation. Rose petals in Baghdad greeting Operation Iraqi Freedom? No? Too bad. It would have been Wal-marts, Burger Kings and oil contracts all around. Instead, our soldiers are mired in an intractable insurgency and a sectarian bloodbath. Jackpot! Six years of two billion dollar a week profit taking, with no end in sight.
Are the architects of this enterprise worried they might one day find themselves strung up by their heels like Mussolini? Not likely. Their worst critics in the mainstream media might go so far as to call them bungling trigger-happy cowboy ideologues, but you have to look deep left before you find anyone seriously accusing them of being treasonous profiteers. In Washington, impeachment is “off the table”.
It’s the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Nobody can quite wrap their mind around the notion that this administration knew exactly what they were doing and achieved exactly what they set out to do – make their clients and investors rich.
It’s hard to grasp that when they say “things are going well in Iraq” -- that’s not spin, that’s an understatement. Check Halliburton’s quarterly earnings. Things are going extremely well in Iraq.
And they’ll get away with it. After January 2009, while the new administration takes the heat for whatever unfolds in the Middle East, they’ll lay low, count their money, analyze the wiretapped data, start planning some moves. Once the memories of these years have faded, maybe once the budget is balanced, maybe even a surplus built up, they’ll come back and steal it again. That’s just what rapacious greedheads do. And you can’t argue with success.
Can anything be done? Sure.
Option One: Well, of course…get involved. Much of the infrastructure of American democracy is still intact. We can still write, speak, organize, campaign. And, allegedly, vote. Check candidates voting records, check their contributors. Ignore appeals to emotion and remember the words of Samuel Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. Vote out those who fail, watch the performance of those you vote in. Repeat as needed.
Option Two: An All New Season of American Idol begins January 2008 on FOX. Check local listings.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Early Exit Corruption
Early exit polls show that a surprising number of voters think “corruption” is a major issue in this election. White house spokesman Tony Snow commented: “This administration has never concerned itself with how the American people think. And, thanks to electronic voting machines, we don’t concern ourselves with how the American people vote, either.”
Saturday, October 14, 2006
A Wound By Any Other Name Would Bleed As Free
"Violence In Iraq"
"Bloodshed In Iraq"
We're sick of hearing these phrases
The media should call it by its real name
"Freedom Slaughter"
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The Teflon Mind
Here’s an odd little slice of life story.
This is the kind of story that lots of people like to hear -- some because it reminds them of something, and some just so they can say “Sounds like somebody has a little too much free time on their hands…”
OK. Fair enough. Maybe so. Now, on with the story.
When I was a kid, naturally I loved watching TV. I think for quite a stretch I was banned from watching TV on weeknights, so Friday nights were almost holy for me. I’d zip myself up in a sleeping bag and watch TV till I couldn’t keep my eyelids up any longer. Then I’d just lay there and listen -- eventually, flags would wave just beyond my eyelids, anthems would play, and then I'd wake up to this test pattern with an Indian in the middle.
This was in the three-networks-and-a-local, pre-remote control days, by the way. I really don’t remember much about whatever junk was on the tube on Friday nights in the mid 60’s. “The Munsters” may have been involved, and they weren’t re-runs, either.
But I do have one incredibly vivid memory of something I saw one night. I was maybe eight or nine years old, and the memory of it seared itself into my brain so fully, so clearly, that ever after, and to this day, I can recall this thing as if I were watching it on a TV screen right now.
I wish I could say it was something like the Nixon-Kennedy debate, or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or the Apollo moon landing. Afraid not.
What got stuck in my brain was just a short scene from a cheesy low budget science fiction movie. Not the whole movie, mind you, just this one scene. The movie had something to do with some astronaut guy stranded on some harsh distant planet. Even at the time, I knew it was cheesy and low budget, possibly because even at age eight or nine, I could tell that the guy’s “spacesuit” looked suspiciously like a surplus US Air Force flight suit, and his “space helmet” looked a lot like an Air Force flight helmet.
In this one particular scene, the astronaut guy happened upon a pool of water on this hostile planet. And in the pool of water was some kind of plant life with seed pods that he could eat.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing, that’s all I remembered. I didn’t remember anything else from that movie, and I certainly didn’t remember the movie’s title. But I remembered that one scene so vividly; it just stuck to my brain like it was glued there.
And for the next forty years, I kind of scouted for this scene from this movie again, maybe just to make sure I hadn't imagined it in the first place. Any time I was channel surfing and I came across an old movie that had anything to do with any kind of astronaut on any kind of foreign planet, I’d watch the damn thing -- waiting to see if maybe this was the one.
Years after the original “Planet of the Apes” had achieved retro-cult status, I watched that movie again. I barely remembered “Planet of the Apes”, so for a brief moment at the beginning, when the astronauts had crash landed on a “foreign planet”, I was sure this was it. But it wasn’t.
Years of casual late night TV watching rolled by – now I could watch TV even on school nights, if I wanted to, you see. So I always kept an eye out for this mystery movie.
I never spotted it, yet I could never seem to forget it, either.
Then it finally happened. Within a few days of my forty-eighth birthday, I was flipping through the satellite movie channels, and I landed on a cheesy vintage sci-fi movie about some astronaut-like guy in a cheesy vintage Air Force flight suit, struggling to survive on a hostile alien planet. And he found a pool of water, and….well, you know.
The point of the story being – isn’t it strange how the mind works?
I couldn’t tell you a single thing about, say, my bedroom when I was eight or nine years old. The bed frame, any posters on the wall, the chest of drawers – I must have had all those things, but I remember nothing about them. I don’t remember who my teacher was that year. I couldn’t tell you who my best friend was. I can’t recall the face of my beloved babysitter without a photograph in my hand. But for forty years I remembered that little scene from that totally forgettable old movie.
Why?
And wouldn’t it be nice if we had a little more control over that sort of thing? The ability to pick and choose which memories stick, and which ones slide off of our brains like they were made of Teflon. Oh, well.
The movie, by the way, was “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” – made in 1964.
Hell yes, I taped it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058530/
This is the kind of story that lots of people like to hear -- some because it reminds them of something, and some just so they can say “Sounds like somebody has a little too much free time on their hands…”
OK. Fair enough. Maybe so. Now, on with the story.
When I was a kid, naturally I loved watching TV. I think for quite a stretch I was banned from watching TV on weeknights, so Friday nights were almost holy for me. I’d zip myself up in a sleeping bag and watch TV till I couldn’t keep my eyelids up any longer. Then I’d just lay there and listen -- eventually, flags would wave just beyond my eyelids, anthems would play, and then I'd wake up to this test pattern with an Indian in the middle.
This was in the three-networks-and-a-local, pre-remote control days, by the way. I really don’t remember much about whatever junk was on the tube on Friday nights in the mid 60’s. “The Munsters” may have been involved, and they weren’t re-runs, either.
But I do have one incredibly vivid memory of something I saw one night. I was maybe eight or nine years old, and the memory of it seared itself into my brain so fully, so clearly, that ever after, and to this day, I can recall this thing as if I were watching it on a TV screen right now.
I wish I could say it was something like the Nixon-Kennedy debate, or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or the Apollo moon landing. Afraid not.
What got stuck in my brain was just a short scene from a cheesy low budget science fiction movie. Not the whole movie, mind you, just this one scene. The movie had something to do with some astronaut guy stranded on some harsh distant planet. Even at the time, I knew it was cheesy and low budget, possibly because even at age eight or nine, I could tell that the guy’s “spacesuit” looked suspiciously like a surplus US Air Force flight suit, and his “space helmet” looked a lot like an Air Force flight helmet.
In this one particular scene, the astronaut guy happened upon a pool of water on this hostile planet. And in the pool of water was some kind of plant life with seed pods that he could eat.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing, that’s all I remembered. I didn’t remember anything else from that movie, and I certainly didn’t remember the movie’s title. But I remembered that one scene so vividly; it just stuck to my brain like it was glued there.
And for the next forty years, I kind of scouted for this scene from this movie again, maybe just to make sure I hadn't imagined it in the first place. Any time I was channel surfing and I came across an old movie that had anything to do with any kind of astronaut on any kind of foreign planet, I’d watch the damn thing -- waiting to see if maybe this was the one.
Years after the original “Planet of the Apes” had achieved retro-cult status, I watched that movie again. I barely remembered “Planet of the Apes”, so for a brief moment at the beginning, when the astronauts had crash landed on a “foreign planet”, I was sure this was it. But it wasn’t.
Years of casual late night TV watching rolled by – now I could watch TV even on school nights, if I wanted to, you see. So I always kept an eye out for this mystery movie.
I never spotted it, yet I could never seem to forget it, either.
Then it finally happened. Within a few days of my forty-eighth birthday, I was flipping through the satellite movie channels, and I landed on a cheesy vintage sci-fi movie about some astronaut-like guy in a cheesy vintage Air Force flight suit, struggling to survive on a hostile alien planet. And he found a pool of water, and….well, you know.
The point of the story being – isn’t it strange how the mind works?
I couldn’t tell you a single thing about, say, my bedroom when I was eight or nine years old. The bed frame, any posters on the wall, the chest of drawers – I must have had all those things, but I remember nothing about them. I don’t remember who my teacher was that year. I couldn’t tell you who my best friend was. I can’t recall the face of my beloved babysitter without a photograph in my hand. But for forty years I remembered that little scene from that totally forgettable old movie.
Why?
And wouldn’t it be nice if we had a little more control over that sort of thing? The ability to pick and choose which memories stick, and which ones slide off of our brains like they were made of Teflon. Oh, well.
The movie, by the way, was “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” – made in 1964.
Hell yes, I taped it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058530/
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Comes a Time...
There’s nothing new about the neo-cons. History is full of genuinely wrong and greedy men seizing and holding power by means of fear, division, nationalism and claims of divine counsel. However high these men may rise, they have always fallen, and they always will.
There will come a time, possibly in our lifetime, when the sound of the words “conservative republican” will have the same foul resonance in the American psyche as the words “slave merchant” or “robber baron” have today.
The right wing will ultimately lose because they are ultimately wrong. History will judge them harshly, as may God.
There will come a time, possibly in our lifetime, when the sound of the words “conservative republican” will have the same foul resonance in the American psyche as the words “slave merchant” or “robber baron” have today.
The right wing will ultimately lose because they are ultimately wrong. History will judge them harshly, as may God.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Friday, October 21, 2005
A Thousand Moments of Clarity
More and more Republicans seem to be waking up from a five year drunk. They’re squinting outside through the curtains at a car they don’t recognize sprawled across the front lawn, with the doors open and the headlights still on and the remnants of some kind of garden fencing wrapped around the left front tire. Just wait till they find that dead hooker in the bathtub.
Yep. It’s Morning After in America.
Recovery specialists will tell you that an alcoholic can watch a whole lot of life slip away, and still rationalize how it’s being lived. Marriage, career, family, friends, home, health – all lost and gone, maybe forever, but it’s never their fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault. One thing that tends to bring a person into recovery, the experts say, is when they realize, for certain, that if they don’t change they will die. That one shining moment of clarity, when suddenly they can see exactly where this train is going, and exactly who is stoking the engine.
For some Republicans, it was Katrina. Having the whole world get a good whiff of America’s third world underbelly was bad enough, but the shameful spectacle of Bush’s dingbat crony Michael Brown assigning the blame to just about everyone and everything short of Ted Kennedy’s driving was a bit much, even for the faithful.
Then Bush nominated Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court.
Watching “conservative icon” Ann Coulter on TV saying, “She is simply unqualified for the job, it’s stunning that he would nominate her. I’m running scared now,” was like watching a lost weekend survivor, pouring the last of the vodka down the sink, muttering “Oh my god, what have I done…”
Maybe it’s just as well that team Bush is charging ahead, staying the course. Those recovery specialists will also tell you that once an alcoholic has turned the corner, it almost bodes well for their continued sobriety if there is nothing behind them but scorched earth. If they can say “Hey, I never cashed in my kid’s Tiger bonds, I never drank fingernail polish, I was never even indicted – I don’t see how a little cocktail after a hard day would hurt…” then their recovery is at risk.
But if they see nothing in the rear view mirror but the near total wreckage of American democracy, maybe they’ll keep working those steps.
Let’s take it one Republican at a time.
Yep. It’s Morning After in America.
Recovery specialists will tell you that an alcoholic can watch a whole lot of life slip away, and still rationalize how it’s being lived. Marriage, career, family, friends, home, health – all lost and gone, maybe forever, but it’s never their fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault. One thing that tends to bring a person into recovery, the experts say, is when they realize, for certain, that if they don’t change they will die. That one shining moment of clarity, when suddenly they can see exactly where this train is going, and exactly who is stoking the engine.
For some Republicans, it was Katrina. Having the whole world get a good whiff of America’s third world underbelly was bad enough, but the shameful spectacle of Bush’s dingbat crony Michael Brown assigning the blame to just about everyone and everything short of Ted Kennedy’s driving was a bit much, even for the faithful.
Then Bush nominated Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court.
Watching “conservative icon” Ann Coulter on TV saying, “She is simply unqualified for the job, it’s stunning that he would nominate her. I’m running scared now,” was like watching a lost weekend survivor, pouring the last of the vodka down the sink, muttering “Oh my god, what have I done…”
Maybe it’s just as well that team Bush is charging ahead, staying the course. Those recovery specialists will also tell you that once an alcoholic has turned the corner, it almost bodes well for their continued sobriety if there is nothing behind them but scorched earth. If they can say “Hey, I never cashed in my kid’s Tiger bonds, I never drank fingernail polish, I was never even indicted – I don’t see how a little cocktail after a hard day would hurt…” then their recovery is at risk.
But if they see nothing in the rear view mirror but the near total wreckage of American democracy, maybe they’ll keep working those steps.
Let’s take it one Republican at a time.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Bush Nominates Nicaraguan Housekeeper As Supreme Court Justice
“She’s more than qualified. And just wait ‘til you taste her quesadillas,” Bush says.
President George W. Bush has nominated Maria Conchita Anjelita Rodriguez, who for the last 13 years has been employed as a housekeeper at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas, to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, raising eyebrows on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Many along the beltway have questioned, among other things, Mrs. Rodriguez’s immigration status, a concern the president dismissed as “a non-issue”. “I have spoken this morning with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Done and done. Bienveni
dos a los Estados Unidos,” the president said. Questions were also raised regarding Mrs. Rodriquez’s apparent lack of English language skills, concerns the president characterized as “elitist”. “I barely speak English, and I’m president,” Bush responded. “Next question.”
The president similarly dismissed other concerns, such as Mrs. Rodriguez’s complete lack of formal education. “There are more important things at stake than whether or not somebody has got a bunch of fancy book learnin,” the president said. “Maria is a God-fearing Christian who considers abortion to be murder and the very existence of homosexuality morally repugnant in every way. Now that’s a Supreme Court nominee we can all get behind. My only concern is who’s gonna take care of Barney, our dog. Barney won’t hardly mind nobody else but Maria.”
President George W. Bush has nominated Maria Conchita Anjelita Rodriguez, who for the last 13 years has been employed as a housekeeper at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas, to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, raising eyebrows on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Many along the beltway have questioned, among other things, Mrs. Rodriguez’s immigration status, a concern the president dismissed as “a non-issue”. “I have spoken this morning with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Done and done. Bienveni
dos a los Estados Unidos,” the president said. Questions were also raised regarding Mrs. Rodriquez’s apparent lack of English language skills, concerns the president characterized as “elitist”. “I barely speak English, and I’m president,” Bush responded. “Next question.”The president similarly dismissed other concerns, such as Mrs. Rodriguez’s complete lack of formal education. “There are more important things at stake than whether or not somebody has got a bunch of fancy book learnin,” the president said. “Maria is a God-fearing Christian who considers abortion to be murder and the very existence of homosexuality morally repugnant in every way. Now that’s a Supreme Court nominee we can all get behind. My only concern is who’s gonna take care of Barney, our dog. Barney won’t hardly mind nobody else but Maria.”
Bush also praised Mrs. Rodriquez’s unwavering loyalty to the Bush family. “Maria has been with us for so long, she’s practically a second mom to our daughters,” he said. “And her chili rellenos, I’m tellin’ ya – the best in all of Texas.”
Ann Coulter's Head Explodes
Eyewitnessess Stunned, Thrilled
Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter’s head spontaneously combusted on live national television Friday, authorities said.
Appearing via satellite on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher”, Coulter was struggling to put into words her reaction to president George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Meirs as U.S. Supreme Court justice. “I just…I can’t….Ahhhhhhh!” Coulter was quoted as saying.
Her head then exploded.
HBO associate producer Janine Foster, who was overseeing Coulter’s live satellite hook-up from Washington D.C., commented “I’ve never seen anything like it. She was just sitting there, yammering away, looking for all the world like that crazy eyed runaway bride chick, and then all of a sudden – boom! Her head was gone. Nothing left but a clump of blonde hair on top of the telepromter.” Ms. Foster added, “Dark roots, by the way.”
Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter’s head spontaneously combusted on live national television Friday, authorities said.
Appearing via satellite on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher”, Coulter was struggling to put into words her reaction to president George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Meirs as U.S. Supreme Court justice. “I just…I can’t….Ahhhhhhh!” Coulter was quoted as saying.
Her head then exploded.
HBO associate producer Janine Foster, who was overseeing Coulter’s live satellite hook-up from Washington D.C., commented “I’ve never seen anything like it. She was just sitting there, yammering away, looking for all the world like that crazy eyed runaway bride chick, and then all of a sudden – boom! Her head was gone. Nothing left but a clump of blonde hair on top of the telepromter.” Ms. Foster added, “Dark roots, by the way.”
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Three More Years...
Three more years of this -- three more years of the wheels coming off the wagon.Three more years of watching this ham-fisted money grab of an administration get desperate and start clinging to it’s filthy power more ferociously. Three more years of watching this half-bright alcoholic rich man’s son every day on CNN -- shrugging and smirking like a frat-boy with a six pack. Three more years of reading headlines beginning with the words "Bush Defends..." Three more years of listening to the president of the United States of America talk like a NASCAR driver.
Yew Betcha,
L4
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Saturday, August 27, 2005
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