Yet More Japanese Corporate Ingenuity

This time, they solve the retirement pension problem.

Home of the Pregnant Burrito

Also on the menu:

The Lactating Flan
The Menstruating Chimichanga
The Prematurely Ejaculating Churro

Letter to Another Aspiring Screenwriter

A college friend living out of Los Angeles recently asked me to help him sell a pair of screenplays he has written. Here was my response:

I'm pleased that you believe me to be capable of selling screenplays through my efforts. I kind of feel like the Michael Rappaport character in True Romance. Yeah, sure, I live out here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I can move a briefcase of cocaine, or a pair of screenplays.

Though if you have a briefcase of cocaine, feel free to send it. I don't know if I could sell it, and don't use it, but I could certainly move it up the noses of a lot of sexy chicks in exchange for gratifying my strong --- if dully conventional --- physical needs.

All I can offer is the same, hackneyed advice that everyone ever gives about the biz. Because it is true. And that is to make a list of agents and agencies and actors and producers and send them a copy and hope some of them get some flunky to read it. Really that's all that someone without writing credits can hope for.

All that connections and face-time really gets you is the ability to skip the flunky and get the script directly to the agent or star or producer or studio exec directly. In other words, to jump over a possible dead end. Then the script has to stand or fall on its merits.

There is another hackneyed bit of verbiage that gets thrown around the screenwriting world a lot here, and it is also true. If a great script were to be thrown out the window of a moving car on the 405, it would still get made and opened wide in two years.

There is a ravenous, insatiable, burning hunger in this town for great scripts. Great scripts are like the seed crystal that drops into a supersaturated solution, and immediately cause the other elements of a film to bond to them. Stars want to be in a great scripted film. Directors want to direct big stars. Producers want to make a movie with top directors and stars. Studios want to distribute a movie made by top producers, directors and stars. The audience duly lines up to go see The Prestige.

This is all true.

Those of us who are churning out words on paper, formatted with actions, characters and dialogue don't want to believe that this is true.

One, because we see films coming out to the theaters that fall far short of the "great script" standard.

And Two, because writing a great script is so fucking hard and we know we aren't doing it, and don't even really know if we want to do everything it takes to write one. Or if we can.

I mentioned True Romance up top. That was a great script. So was Pulp Fiction. For all his eventual excesses and indulgences, Tarantino has put down some strikingly fresh, original, smart, interesting stories down on paper. Stories that are informed and grounded in the time-tested principles of drama, yet break free of them in an exciting way. True Romance would have been made if it had been found under a bush in a lawn. So would Pulp Fiction.

I know that I'm not writing Pulp Fiction right now. I am, more or less admittedly, writing Stir of Echoes. But so what? It's only my second go at the form. By script six or seven I might be a bit closer to the mark I'm shooting for.

So, a neophyte screenwriter might wonder, how do all these sub-great scripts get made? And how, he might continue to wonder, could he get his bad Stir of Echoes clone turned into a film? This is where connections and favors and obligations and misjudgments and chance enter the picture. After all, the movie industry has to make movies. If there aren't enough great scripts to go around --- and there aren't --- other factors enter the selection process.

People that went to USC or NYU film school with decisionmakers prevail upon them to buy a script. TV writers have their agent push their feature film onto producers and execs for them. One decisionmaker buys a script he isn't in love with because he's making a marketing decision to capture a demographic he thinks will love it. Another decisionmaker has more money and power than taste. A third has a personal, political or social agenda he/she wants to push.

Sadly, you and I cannot count on those factors.

We simply haven't done the things in our life that would bend and tweak and push the system in our favor. We didn't know we were supposed to, for one thing. And we were busy doing other things for another.

So we just have to write a great script, send it into the world more or less through the usual channels, and see what happens. I've watched some people have what this industry calls success through this route. Typically, they've had one script get some buzz and interest, but nothing happen. Then a couple scripts get bought, but languish and expire afterwards. Then they pitch a ton of other scripts, get some rewrite jobs, and bang out a few more spec scripts. Then something gets made that disappears. Then, maybe, something gets made that people see and like. To be honest, the process looks an awful lot like work to me.

Alternatively, we could turn ourselves into a producer, and director, and craft services provider and make our films ourselves.

Believe me, I wish I had more to offer you than cliches and exhortations to work even harder for an uncertain reward, but I simply don't.

P.S. If you have not read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, I cannot recommend it more highly. Dude breaks it all down. Why we want to be creative, why we aren't, how we can be, and why we should.

O-Borg-Ma?

True. I can’t help myself from mutilating Obama’s name to make my silly writing points.

But seriously. Has anyone noticed that Obama has the uncanny habit of absorbing his former opponents into his organization?

Joe Biden, VP. Hilary, Secretary of State. Bill Richardson, Commerce Secretary. Republican-Picked, Surge-Supporting Robert Gates to stay on as Defence Secretary.

Indeed, say some progressives, Obama seems to prefer appointing people from the center and even center-right --- where the real challenges to his nomination came from, incidentally --- over the progressive and left elements who formed his earliest, loudest and most eager supporters.

Resistance, apparently, is not futile. It is rewarded.

Eliot Spitzer: Columnist

Disgraced former NY District Attorney and Governor Eliot Spitzer has published his first column for Slate, in which he astutely criticizes the form that the taxpayer-funded bailout has taken. Whatever you may think of Spitzer, it's clear that the man recognizes a good fucking when he sees one.

Burger Assault

A South Florida man was arrested and charged with domestic violence for repeatedly smashing a McDonald's cheeseburger into his girlfriend's face.

The original charges of attempted murder were dropped when police determined that he was not trying to make her actually eat it.

The Jolie Bible

A new, illustrated version of the Bible has been released, which includes glossy photos of Angelina Jolie, cruelly placed right next to the chapters that tell you not to masturbate.

Sarah Palin's Book Contract

The publishing industry is abuzz with speculation about Sarah Palin's memoir sales.

Insiders say that if Gov. Palin writes a book, she would get paid $7 million dollars. Furthermore, if she reads one, she'll get $8 million.

College Too Expensive for Most American Families Now

A report has come out that trends making higher education more expensive and household income lower makes puts college out of reach for most American high school graduates.

That's the bad news. The good news is that they've just released "Girls Gone Wild: The Burger King Breakroom Edition."

America's Moment of Clarity: 21 Days Clean

It feels strange to me that election day was only three weeks ago. Usually, for me, three weeks is hardly any time at all. I have dishes sitting in my sink that have been there longer than three weeks. I have unopened mail sitting on my table older than three weeks.

But in the case of Obama’s election, November 4th seems like a long time ago. Like months past. Maybe even like something that happened last year.

I don’t know how to explain this warping in my sense of time’s passing.

Maybe it’s because I’m able to breathe again. To relax, knowing that George W. Bush and his gang of crooks, thugs, idiots and con artists are finally getting the boot. And that a smart, competent, sane, decent person has been put in charge again.

It goes even deeper than that, too. I feel like the country I live in remembers what is right and important again. The last eight years have been surreal for me, like I have been put in some sort of Bizarro World version of America, where all our values and priorities had been turned upside down.

Since 2000, I’ve wanted my country back. And now I feel like I have it.

What’s more, it’s even better than when I lost it. Maybe not financially, right now. Or militarily. But psychologically. Emotionally. Dare I even say it? Spiritually.

If America were a person --- a filthy, street-living, meth-addicted person --- I would say that we have hit bottom, had a moment of clarity and are poised to make an even stronger comeback. Because this time we’ve realized that our meth --- all the immediately-gratifying, short-term-thinking, status-quo-preserving shit we’ve been sucking on for decades --- really isn’t good for us. That it might have served us in the past, helping us pull all-nighters on our way up, but has ultimately brought us down to our current bedraggled state.

America Looks Forward to Its Bright Future

Though it took a bad beating to get us here, we might finally be at a point where we seriously consider how we are going to live without getting back on that shit again.

Here’s some of what we’re purging:

1) Racism. Things are different in America now. I saw it in the coalition that Obama put together to work for him. I saw it in the way that America voted. I saw it in the way that the people who didn’t vote for him more or less shrugged and shut up when he won.

I feel that something has truly changed in this country between how it was just 22 days ago. Heavy tectonic plates that have been grinding against one another for decades finally slipped three Tuesdays ago and we’re in a new landscape now.

A specific, personal example: I do standup comedy. I had written and told some jokes that used racial issues. Not in a derogatory, stereotype-perpetrating way, but in a way that exploited racial tensions for their humorous energy. For instance, here’s one that got big laughs up to November 1st.

“A lot of whites think it’s hypocritical that white people can’t use the n-word, while blacks use it with each other all the time. But I don’t mind. Because white people have our own “n-word.” A word that we don’t mind using with one another, but that we get kind of uptight when we hear blacks and Mexicans call us. That word is “neighbor.””

Today, that joke --- and others like it --- is dead. Not because it’s offensive, but because the reality that supported it --- that of whites being reflexively nervous and afraid of darker skinned people --- simply doesn’t exist anymore in a country where the President is black. That battery is drained.

As much as I hate losing good jokes, this tectonic shift is a very big and awesome thing. Maybe the most big and awesome thing that has ever happened in this country.

2) Metastastized Financialization.

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, tells this story better than I can in this article about our current financial debacle, and the two decades of insanity that preceded it.

Since I’ve been aware of America’s economy, I’ve been struck and worried by the outsized prominence that financial services has taken. And had a sneaking suspicion that that sector’s activities were not necessarily providing proportionate value to investors, economies or societies. After all, if there is any subject that I am an expert in, it is failing to provide adequate service to those counting on me.

I’ve also noted with alarm that a great deal of our economic “growth” takes the form of successive bubbles. In my adult life, I’ve watched a broad stock bubble grow and pop, a more narrowly focused Dotcom bubble grow and pop, and a real estate bubble grow and pop. And can’t help but notice that efforts to stimulate the economy after one pop --- i.e. low interest rates --- generally give rise to the next bubble.

I’ve felt like at some point we’ve got to make reforms more substantive than simply inflating the next financial instrument-led bubble to rise out of a recession. At long last it looks like serious thinkers and policymakers are considering what those reforms might be.

3) Dependence on Foreign Oil.

This summer’s stratospheric gas-prices that turned already-suffering American consumers upside down and shook all the money out of our pockets --- while loathsome Oil Execs and Traders enjoyed record profits and bonuses --- finally made believers out of us all. I think Americans realize that we can’t be so dependent on foreign oil suppliers going forward. And that developing a domestic source of energy is at least as vital to American interests --- and worthy of sustained effort and funding --- as picking up some moon rocks, or toppling a petty Middle East dictator.

4) Crazy Christian Bullshit
Yeah, this is a tough drug for America to put down. And it looked like we were going to relapse, when we got a look at that big pretty hunk of Alaskan Ice. But we did resist, and on January 21st we will officially be 100% Creationism-Free at the top levels of government. I’m so proud.

We Are All Even More Fucked

I have deliberately stayed away from commenting on this economic and financial catastrophe because I do not possess a great deal --- fuck, let’s just say any --- expertise in the world of global finance. Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, monolines… for many years, these words were just chatter that my friends who worked in finance made to eachother while I tried to think of good fart jokes to tell and change the subject.*

But as I have watched Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson “handle” the crisis, I have decided that the financial catastrophe scenario is not really so much about the intricacies of the financial markets as it is about a couple of subjects that I can indeed claim a great deal of expertise in:

a) being over one’s head.
b) fucking up
c) trying desperately to hide a and b.

On Tuesday, Paulson announced that he wouldn’t be using the $700 billion taxpayers gave him to buy up dodgy mortgage backed securities after all.

Never mind that’s what he assured us, implored us, begged us to let him do that a scant two months ago. Now he is going to use that money to buy up bank stock to provide a capital injection, kind of like England did --- and critics of the whole toxic asset-purchase plan suggested in the first place. He has also let it slip that he’s considering other options as well.

In other words, dude is floundering.

This doesn’t look good for us.

In the long run, the US economy is made up of too many greedy, ravenous consumers and efficient, remorseless producers to really fail. I am confident that we will be prosperous, vulgar and insufferably arrogant again.

The only question is how long it will take us to get back there. Unfortunately, there is only one way to get there as soon as possible: do the right thing, at the right time, and with the right amount of firmness.

By that logic, there are many more ways to fuck up and delay our return to economic health.

We could do the wrong things. We could do the right things too late. We could even do the right things at the right time, but do them in a half-assed and unconvincing way. Economic actors hate uncertainty and risk, so if they don’t know how committed the government is to a course of action, then they aren’t going to move until that doubt is removed.

Right now, it looks like the lamest-possible-duck Bush team is failing in each of the three categories. By their own admission, they are doing the wrong things. They are wasting so much time doing these wrong things, that they are delaying doing the right things. And by reversing course and making changes, they are decreasing consumer and investor confidence.

Estimations of how long the credit/financial crisis and the economic slowdown would last are pretty much guesses in the first place. But every time the Government's "solution" has to shift like this, it’s safe to say that we can lengthen it out a bit more.

In other words, this Christmas, only the good little boys and girls will get coal in their stockings. Because that means they can have a few moments of warmth burning those coals in a converted coffee-can fireplace in front of the cardboard box they live in.

Next Christmas, they get nothing. Because they will have boiled and eaten their stockings to survive.

* Who am I kidding? All fart jokes are good.

Kudos to McCain

One has to admire the class that John McCain has shown in his concession speech and afterwards.

Though he seemed to lose his way in the campaign, once he no longer had any alternatives, options or possible actions he really seemed to shine as a person of grace and dignity.

I guess John McCain is just one of those people who is at his best when he has been put in a box.

Bag! Douche

Voting Day. And a Strange Compulsion

Since I will be out of town on Tuesday, I went to the County Registrar's Office in Norwalk to vote early.

After a one hour drive and a three hour wait, I finally got into a voting booth with a numbered ballot in front of me.

For just an instant, I had a powerful temptation to vote for John McCain. A temptation so strong that I actually envisioned myself filling in the numbered oval that corresponded to the McCain/Palin ticket.

This sudden compulsion unnerved me. I would never have imagined that a perverse thought could consume me so, even briefly. This strong and unexpected vision made me understand why people are tempted to have other people piss on them or fuck barnyard animals. A person can get a very real and illicit thrill from doing something that violates a deep, ingrained moral conviction. There is no arguing the fact that breaking a taboo is exciting.

Still, I didn't do it.

Vote for John McCain, that is.

I did let someone piss on me, though. And fucked a barnyard animal tonight. In fact, I sexually ravaged an entire petting zoo. Including a mohair goat, a Vietnamese potbelly pig, and an extremely well-hung Shetland pony. Then I had my exertion-spawned sweat hosed off by the urine of a homeless man who has been eating nothing but asparagus and B vitamins the last three days.

A man has to get his kicks where he can.

But vote Republican? Hey, I'm not some kind of sicko.

Obama's Slow Reveal

Though I fully intend to vote for Barrack Obama, I’m nothing at all like a True Believer.

For me, a vote for Barrack is a vote against John McCain and the Republican party. That is enough.

For some reason I don’t get a warm and tingly feeling in my tummy when I listen to Barrack speak. Never have. Even though so many of the people who I agree with and love and respect do get that feeling.

Truth be told, listening to him speak actually makes me like him less. He seems too good, too earnest, too squeaky-clean and upright and honorable to be true. I got a bit excited when I learned, early in the primary, that he smoked cigarettes. “Yes” I thought, “a flaw. Something dirty and stupid and self-destructive and weak. How he's more like me. Now I can relate.” Then he quit smoking.

Maybe I’m cynical, or simply too morally compromised myself to recognize a genuine idealist when I see one. But when I am listening to one of his speeches --- or attempting to read one of his books --- it just sounds too much like myself when I’m trying to impress an old lady.

And I think even the most fervent supporter should be able to admit --- even if only privately, in the secrecy of their own Prius with all the windows rolled up --- that if someone doesn’t get that tingle from Obama's words, then Obama doesn’t offer a whole lot else.

His resume, though impressive in its accomplishments, is thin. Let's just be honest and admit that.

If the Republicans have gotten traction out of any message, it is that we don’t know who this guy is. Because we don’t. He hasn’t been around for decades to become a known and familiar quality.

He spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2004, won the Senate Race in 2006 and didn't really get scrutinized until Spring of 2008.

What’s more, even as we have seen him, we still don’t know him. His policies are vague, amorphous promises to do everything good and nothing bad. His political philosophy is middle-of-the-road, let's-bridge-differences, can't-we-all-get-along blandness.

During his tightly-scripted campaign appearances, he hasn’t revealed much of psyche to us. Ever. Nothing seems to to jangle his nerves or dislodge that smile. Not once has emotion --- joy, frustration or anger --- get the better of his self-control in some sort of physical way. No tears. No pulsing veins in the temple. No spontaneous fist-pumps. Not when his old pastor stabbed him in the back. Not when he went to visit his “gravely ill” grandmother. Not when he accepted the freaking Democratic nomination for the President of the United States.

Compared to the incredible mass of tics and grimaces and eyerolls that McCain has become, this calm is reassuring. But still, Obama’s calm affability keeps his character hidden from us, as does his campaign's SuperGlue adherence the official campaign message.

That’s why, for me, the campaign is doubly important. Not only does it hopefully move a Democrat into the White House, but it gives us a real --- so far the only real --- insight into how Barrack Obama operates.

And I like what I see so far.

Like how he has tricked McCain and turned him into a whining crying little bitch-baby.

From Politico.com

Obama’s move to blanket multiple channels less than a week before the election was made possible by his decision to forgo participation in the public financing system for presidential campaigns.

The campaign spent between $4 million and $5 million to air the ad on NBC, CBS, Fox News and several other cable channels. 

McCain stayed within the public financing system, and has been limited to a budget of $85 million. In contrast, Obama raised $150 million in September alone.



Appearing Wednesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” McCain said the infomercial was “paid for with broken promises.” 

Obama “didn’t tell the American people the truth” when he claimed during the primary that he would negotiate in good faith on a course to public financing, he said.

I fucking love it. To somehow get the Republican party candidate to voluntarily give up the one advantage it perennially has --- the ability to raise lots of cash. That’s awesome.

And to see McCain reduced to whining about it to Larry King. Delicious. I thought Republicans were supposed to be the tough guys.

“Didn’t tell the American people the truth” McCain snivelled. Uh, John. He told us that he was going to do what he had to do to get elected. It’s possible that he didn’t tell you the truth about taking public financing. More fool you, sucker. So now you’re counting your pennies, while Obama is free to swamp your message. I love it.

It should be said that I don’t know for sure if Obama double-crossed McCain or not. And I don’t really care. Actually, I do care. I hope that he did double cross McCain. I hope he burned McCain like a match.

There’s a sports saying that goes “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” After watching Gore and Kerry take the high road to electoral defeat, I’m glad we have another Democrat that is trying to win, and willing to do everything that means. Including cheat. Especially cheat. After the dirty tricks that Republicans pull every four years with voter registration lists and robo-calls and character assassinations, a little Democratic cheating only means we're playing the same game.

Also, I want to see some dirt inside Obama, just so I’ll know he’s for real. A genuine goody-two-shoes is beyond my capacity to comprehend. But a fake goody-two-shoes exterior that hides a shrewd, calculating, ruthless interior? That I understand. And approve. In fact, it's starting to give me a warm tingly feeling in my stomach.

More Bad Economic News

I just saw a white guy standing in front of Home Depot.

more standup from the fbomber

Joe the Plumber has become a conservative icon. Because, apparently, there are many Republicans out there who find Sarah Palin to be a little too intelligent and sophisticated to really get behind.

Movie Review: Religulous

To my mind, Bill Maher is a national treasure. He’s one of the best comedians working today, and he is willing to use his considerable talents to fearlessly and loudly speak his mind. The fact that I agree with about 90% of his views --- he loses me at vegetarianism --- probably helps a lot. Not surprisingly, I loved Religulous.

For starters, the film is legitimately funny.

Maher starts at the physical site of Armeggedon and delves into organized religion’s heart of … well, not exactly darkness… more like silliness. A truck-stop church in a trailer. The Bible Land theme park. An anti-Zionist rabbi. A chubby Puerto Rican who claims to be Jesus Christ. An Israeli institute for creating Sabbath-law-circumventing gizmos. A fit, trim, very-well-groomed ex-gay. A creationism museum. An extraordinarily-full-of-shit Islamic rapper.

Though Maher goes into the project with a definite agenda, he is respectful enough to let the people he’s mocking do most of the work of making themselves look silly themselves. The resulting humor is more subtle than one might expect, mostly earned by the reactions and glances and tone of the interviews.

He also spends considerable time in thoughtful conversation with his family and others about the subject of faith, and belief. And whether people would or would not be better off without it.

It’s a lot of fun and definitely gives the viewer plenty to think about.

In the final two or three minutes, though, Mahar drops the levity. And the hammer.

The silly movie clips stop. The fun music ends. Shit gets serious. Maher matter-of-factly delivers the central message of the film in stark and electrifying terms. The three main monotheistic religions ---Christianity, Judaism, Islam --- all explicitly and rapturously predict and End of World cataclysm of destruction and death. For humanity to embrace these religions while simultaneously possessing the means to bring them about --- nukes and pollution --- endangers all our lives.

It’s a powerful ending to an entertaining and insightful… documentary? No. Comedy? Not really. Filmic essay? Yeah, that.

That said, I do have a problem with it. Two, actually.

First, I don’t think he goes far enough with his condemnation of organized religion. And, though I wouldn’t expect all religious foolishness to get equal time, the victims of his expose don’t get equal whacks from Maher’s mockery-stick. Second, I think Maher gives human nature too much credit, believing that chucking organized religion would fundamentally improve humanity’s chances of survival.

To make a gross and highly distorting generalization, Maher’s encounters and conversations with representatives of the three monotheistic religions can be summed up thusly.

1. Christianity has a Saying Stupid Shit problem.
2. Judaism has a Following Silly Rules problem.
3. Islam has a Killing People problem.

In reality, fundamentalist Christians and Jews do things much worse than spout off nonsense and create religious-law-loophole-defying devices. Though they don’t go for the kind of mass, frenzied blood-rallies that Muslims do over cartoons and books --- if you happen to cross them over something really important to them, they will gladly murder you for it in God’s loving name.

Just look at the abortion doctors gaffled in the U.S. or assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for examples of the Christian and Jewish faith taken to the deadly extreme. Though I understand his desire to keep things light, I wish that he’d taken the gloves off a little bit more with these lunatics.

Secondly, Maher’s solution --- or rather plea --- is for humanity to simply get over religion. He implies that with that silly, superstitious, violence-encouraging deadweight off our collective neck, we could use our rationality and logic to create a better, more livable, more sustainable world.

I wish.

Personally, I happen to think that the problem isn’t religion. It’s people.

Again, specifically, the problem is the three-quarters of humanity occupying the less-than-prime territory on the fbomber’s Heart-Brain Quadrant.

The Smart & Mean quartile is always going to try to run things, the Dumb & Mean quartile is going to obey them, the Sweet & Dumb crowd will look confused and the Nice & Smart set will gnash their teeth while watching impotently.

For some time now, the Smart & Mean group has used religion as mind-control to ensure a docile and obedient population. But religion is by no means the only possible method. Other belief-systems have worked just as well.

The godless Communists of the Soviet Union and China each wasted a substantial of their own population without having to pray over it. The Nazis combined nationalism, a weird racial superstition and a dash of Darwin to justify treating millions of people like animals to slaughter. Pol Pot’s massacres were inspired in part by the Greek Philosopher Plato’s belief that anyone over ten years old was already too tainted to help build an ideal society. In the fbomber’s adopted home of Los Angeles people regularly get killed for going into the wrong neighborhood --- without religion’s help.

Which I think proves that it’s the mean people and stupid people who have to go, not their imaginary friend, God.

What’s my solution to that problem?

It’s radical, but simple. Make a single, strategic purchase at a hardware store. Then wait.

The most irretrievably Mean & Stupid people among us historically do a pretty good job of taking themselves out of the population without any help --- through wars, suicide bombings and driving Ford F-150s drunk on Wild Turkey.

Lately, however, they’ve greatly accelerated their removal process even more. Not through violence, though. Through architecture.

Above all other thing, Mean & Dumb people love to all get together in big groups to be stupid assholes in front of one another. And indulge in frenzied, showy rituals of empty self-congratulation.

Go to any backwards, unlivable shithole in the world --- right now, I am specifically thinking of Houston, Texas --- and the biggest, most impressive buildings in town aren’t going to be the hospitals, libraries, universities and City Halls. You know, those drab, neglected places where actual service to the community and improvement of the mind happen.

No, the shiniest, most capacious structures in town are going to be places for the Mean and Stupid to get together in mass numbers for high-volume, emotionally-charged, intellectually-vacant exercises in tribal reinforcement. In the Western world, that means churches, and their new incarnation, Mega-Churches --- or their secular equivalent, sports stadiums.

In the Muslim world, the biggest enclosed gathering places are mosques capable of holding thousands of kneeling, ass-raising worshippers at a time.

In Israel, the religious fanatics have taken a different path. Instead of individual buildings, they’ve built a single wall for themselves around the entire city of Jerusalem and much of their country so they can hide from the other religious fanatics.

The Mean & Stupid pack into these structures on a regular basis to hoot and holler and parade their unthinking loyalty to tribe. The Smart & Mean show up --- in a more comfortable and expensive section, naturally --- to exercise leadership and cement “regular guy” credentials. Lastly, the Sweet & Dumb crowd tags along too, just to see what all the excitement is about.

Historically, the Nice & Smart crowd has distrusted these large rally-type settings and stayed away. And for good reason. They know that if you get enough amped-up retards in one place, someone --- probably someone wearing glasses and carrying a book --- is going to wind up getting hurt badly. Consequently the Smart & Nice crowd has sniffed disdainfully, and tried to disparage this kind of indoor herd migration. Maher’s movie is an example of this disparagement.

But I think this is the wrong idea.

Instead of being discouraged, all the dummies and assholes of the world should be encouraged --- nay, exhorted --- to fill these churches, stadiums, mosques, synagogues and gymnasiums as often as possible. And in as large numbers as the buildings can physically hold. And to yell and stamp and chant moronic slogans as much as their ignorant, hateful hearts desire.

Because buildings have walls. And walls have doors.

And the Smart & Nice people --- if they have followed my advice and gone to the hardware store --- have padlocks to put on those doors.

From the outside.

More fbomber stand-up

The Republicans believed that the Presidential debates would be "game-changers."

They were right, but unfortunately for McCain-Palin, the game changed to Street Basketball.

fbomber standup

This Presidential election has taken an ugly racial turn lately. John McCain has changed his campaign slogan to "America: Do You Really Want to 'Never Go Back?'"

Plumber? More like Joe the Stupid Lying Law-Breaking Asshole

First off, I’ll confess that I did not watch or listen to the entire third Presidential debate. I tried, but was too saddened and put off by McCain’s feverish and pathetic aggressiveness to finish.

Jesus. I haven’t seen a white guy go after a black guy so hard since the Kimbo Slice fight.* From what I did see, McCain never managed to land a punch like that pink-haired MMA dude did, though. As mad as McCain was, Obama shrugged off the old man’s palsied jabs with the confidence of a fighter who knows that he’s so far ahead on points that he only needs to avoid getting knocked out to win the fight.

Still. The entire spectacle of McCain grimacing and clenching his increasingly deformed jaw while compressing his wattle-y old turkey-neck --- viewed in High Def --- was so stomach-turning that I watched some Tivo’d segments of “CSI: Miami” with a friend instead. Meaning --- astoundingly --- that compared to John McCain, David Caruso was the lesser douchebag of the night.

I should have kept watching the debate though. Because it looks I missed the emergence of the next shining political star for the Republicans. The clear favorite to be the bottom half of the Sarah Palin for President ticket in 2012.

Apparently, the final Presidential debate was really a debut party for the arrogant loser full-of-shit cocksucker called “Joe the Plumber.” For those who also missed the unveiling of America’s future VP --- one even more intellectually unqualified and personally repugnant than Governor Moose-fucker herself --- here’s the story.

While out on the hustings in Toledo, Obama happened upon this unmarried 34-year old toilet-unplugger, who was in his yard playing football with his 13-year-old son.

Joe took this chance to go up to the next President of the United States and pour some of the steaming pile of ca-ca in his bald head out through his mouth --- starting with this accusation, phrased as a question:

"I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year. Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?"

The ever-gracious, ever-patient, almost painfully-earnest Obama proceeded to give Joe a very long, detailed, respectful answer to this question. An answer that visibly bounced off the dipshit Joe’s doughy, moronic, slit-eyed face as his weak brain grasped and fumbled for the next Fox-News-fed talking point he would poop out of his slack mouth-anus.

You could almost see him visibly relax when he finally got a firm mental hold of the next buzzword he was going to blindly excrete at the high-pressure jet of intelligence directed at him.

Twice that happened, with Joe’s contribution to the exchange being a look of stubborn, unsubdued, unashamed ignorance and the meager shit-pellets of a mumbled “American Dream” and “flat tax.” Shit-pellets that were so quickly swept away by the force of Obama’s considered, thoughtful, detailed hydrant-blast of information that they hardly left their stench of stupidity in the air.

Here, you can watch the hose-down for yourself:

Still, even those tiny, stinking little shit-pellets were enough to make Joe a hero to the Right. First over at Fox News, who raised this nobody to icon status as an entrepreneur emperiled by the socialistic schemes of Barack Obama. Then John McCain himself, who bandied Joe the Plumber’s name about in the debate, causing it to be mentioned two dozen times in total. Joe then went on some Fox News show himself. Katie Couric interviewed him. Fortune Magazine wrote an article entitled “McCain's best hope: Joe the plumber.”

The next logical step is for this guy to join the next Republican ticket. After all --- as a further investigation of Joe the Plumber proves --- he meets all the current requirements for a brilliant GOP career.

+++

1. He is a complete liar. For starters, his first name isn’t even Joe. It’s Sam. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. Wurzelbacher I can understand dropping. It’s a fucking bitch to pronounce. But Sam? What’s wrong with Sam? Why is this guy so determined to go by an alias? Clearly, he loves to lie so much, that he can't even say his OWN NAME with any honesty.

2. He is delusional. According to his boss, who Joe/Sam was supposedly going to buy this business from, the only time they discussed this potential transaction --- the one that Joe/Sam thought important enough to personally critique a United States Senator’s proposed tax plan over --- was SIX FUCKING YEARS AGO. DURING THEIR INITIAL JOB INTERVIEW. Since then, there have been no negotiations, no assessments, no discussion of transfer terms. In other word, when Joe/Sam said that he was “getting ready to buy” a business what he meant was that he was thinking about it. To himself.

Well, fuck-a-duck, Sammy. I’m thinking about importing a freight-container full of 18-year-old sex-slaves from Eastern Europe. Sometimes I think about it half a Kleenex box worth a day. That doesn’t mean that the next time Obama comes canvassing my block I’m going to harangue him to legalize prostitution and human trafficking statutes to better suit my fantasies.

3. He can’t fucking add up numbers. The business Sammy was thinking about buying --- a two-person outfit named Newell Plumbing and Heating Co. of Toledo --- only makes a net profit of somewhere between $100 - $200k per year.

Given what we’ve seen of Sam/Joe so far, even if he ever does buy the business --- a gargantuan “if” --- I think it’s safe to say that he’s not the kind of businessman who’s going to raise their revenue by 25-150% anytime soon. So the whole higher-taxes-over-$250k wouldn’t even apply to him.

4. He thinks that he does not need to abide by the law. Even though the county where he lives requires plumbers to be licensed, neither he or his employer possess this needed credential. The local plumbers union says that he applied for an apprenticeship in 2003, but “never completed the work.” So, apparently, Joe/Sam thinks that it is okay to flaunt local professional requirements, and to perform plumbing work that may or may not abide by the relevant building codes… because, well, he’s Joe/Sam, that’s why.

What’s more, he doesn’t seem to want to pay his hospital bills or tax bills. He’s had two liens taken out against him for $1100 apiece for nonpayment of those pesky little expenses he incurred and subsequently ignored.

5. He is --- let’s just say --- a bit insensitive to some obvious racial issues. Obama, instead of ignoring Joe/Sam like the ignorant little shit-stirrer that he is, paid him the respect of addressing his truculently phrased question as if it were an honest request for information. A request that he fulfilled with a deluge of facts, figures and philosophical justifications regarding his proposed tax plan.

Joe/Sam not only visibly hardened himself against hearing --- much less understanding and processing that answer --- but later characterized it as “a tap dance.” One that, he said, was “almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”

Sammy Davis Jr.? Tap dancing? Um, Sam/Joe, you do realize that you are talking about a black man here? Sammy Davis Jr. and tap dancing might not be the appropriate metaphor to use. Tap dancing in particular carries some subtle and historical negative racial connotations of minstrel and blackface shows.

Why not just go straight for a set of breakdance, rap and fried chicken references and be done with it, Joe/Sam? With a watermelon and malt liquor chaser while you're at it? Why hold back?

+++

So there we have it. Mean. Stupid. Dishonest. Criminal. Living in an ideologically-pure fantasy world. And despite all these shortcomings, breath-takingly arrogant. Even in the face of all his intellectual, legal and social deficits, this colossal jackass has the clanking, swinging balls to believe that he can legitimately engage in intellectual debate with someone who is so obviously and publicly his superior in every possible way.

Sound like anyone we know? Actually that’s a trick question. It sounds like every successful Republican Presidential candidate ever. Fuck VP. Fuck waiting until 2012. I'm shocked that the Republicans don’t ditch McCain and run Joe on the top slot right now.

----

* The fbomber hates to bandy ethnic generalizations around, but has to point out that this Presidential race has turned traditional racial stereotypes on their head.

In his quest to be President, Obama has conducted himself with stereotypical characteristics of older white males: He has been methodical, rational, organized and disciplined nearly to the point of dullness.

By contrast, John McCain has shown the characteristics that racists commonly apply to younger black men: Untrustworthiness. Poor impulse control. Aggressiveness. And a lifelong obsession with fucking blond women.

W the Movie

Here’s a link to the trailer of the new Oliver Stone joint, “W.” which apparently gives George W. Bush the biopic treatment he deserves --- contemptuous and mocking.

www.wthefilm.com

I heard Oliver Stone talking on Bill Maher's show about this movie. Crazed, loony liberal that he is, Stone said that he did not make shit up for this movie. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but that he didn't need to. The information and quotes on the public record about Bush were more dramatic and theatrical than he could have fabricated himself.

I believe that.

Stone also alluded to the fact that GWB is a mystery. I really believe that, too. Here we are, 8 years later and as much as we --- or at least, I --- like to belittle the man, I don't know anyone who has a real sense of what he's made out of or what makes him tick. I certainly don't.

It's easy to dismiss him with pejoratives that capture an element of his persona --- chimp, frat-boy, asshole, bully, etc... --- but he's more than just that one (or even all) of those things.

I just can't figure the guy out at all.

For instance... I don't even know if he's smart or dumb. Honestly.

I know it's easy to call him a moron for all the obvious, visible reasons he gives us. But, hold on, this is a guy who got to do pretty much every thing he ever wanted to do in his life by his 60th birthday. Without even starting to try until after he was 40. And who has manipulated supposedly brilliant guys like Tony Blair and Colin Powell and then flushed them away like used toilet paper afterwards. There's something sharp and pointed in there someplace, but I don't know what it is exactly.

In a similar manner, I can't really fathom what pleasure he has gotten out of the Presidency. Clinton clearly reveled in the pomp and attention and chance to be the biggest mover in the world's most powerful country. I don't sense that in W, though. It's like he's kind of going through the motions so much of the time... cramped and sulky and reluctant. And other times --- usually inappropriate --- he's loosey-goosey and near manic with high-spirited nicknames and jigs and personal teasing pokes at reporters and foreign dignitaries.

Also, is he a dickhead or not? Yeah, he mocked a woman about to get lethally injected. But he seems to be a genuinely loving and decent dad to his daughters.

Some other things I don't know for certain:

Is he really all that religious? Is he really not drinking? What happened with that “pretzel” passing out incident? Is he really so intellectually incurious as he appears? Does he really not follow events at all? What really motivated him to shoot for the highest office in the land? Of all the things he did the last 8 years, which did he really want and which were thrust on us by the scum-circle around him?

In short, just who is this guy that's been running the show since January of 2000?

I've read the books, I've watched the news, I've combed the blogs. And he's still a mystery to me even, as he's getting ready to pack his bags.

I think that's bizarre. This last eight years has been tumultuous and wrenching and exhilarating beyond any eight years I've ever lived through in my life. 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, the Bush Boom, the Financial Meltdown. The Bailout.

In other words, W and I have been been through some shit together.

Whether I agree or disagree with the decisions he's made. I should have a sense of some kind of understanding --- at least knowing at an emotional level --- why he's made the decisions he's made. Like some die-hard 1930's Republican might hate the New Deal, but at least understand why FDR was pushing it out there.

Or --- here’s a better analogy --- how some hippy might not like Nixon, but at least understand why a paranoid, fascist, rotten-hearted creep like him would do the things he did.

I honestly don’t have that with Bush.

Bush's intellectual and emotional core has been hidden behind multiple, light-proof, airtight seals and chambers --- the Republican Party aristocracy, the emotionally deformed Bush Family, the ultra-secretive White House lockdown, and his own impermeable smirking facade --- for so long, I've given up on ever glimpsing his psyche. What's more, I haven't read any credible accounts from people who have. For all his folksy informality, he's one of those sphinxes --- like the iconic Reagan --- who leave even their closest associates (never friends, these people never have real friends) scratching their heads about what's really behind the affable shell.

Maybe this film will help illuminate this psyche.

I kind of doubt it. This biographical information has been out there long enough and hasn't really shed any usable light yet. For whatever mysterious reasons, George W. Bush has been a complete, unalloyed, toxic, flaming, radioactive, crashing disaster of a Chief Executive. He's combined awful ideas with even worse executions. He's weakened or destroyed everyone who supported him and strengthened everyone who opposed him. Everything that he has touched has turned into liquid, poisonous shit. Everything that he has ignored has festered into oozing, gangrenous sores.

Clearly, as a President, he is the Very Worst Ever.

Frankly --- at this point --- I've kind of lost interest in finding out exactly why.

I guess there is a sort of taxonomic value to understanding the nature of the GWB beast. If we can identify what kind of creature it is, then we can better build defenses against future incarnations of it. Or better yet, learn to crush potential Georgies in their immature stage --- while they are running redneck states, crappy baseball teams and failing companies.

Other than that, what's the use of putting that proven loser under a microscope?

Focusing on his personal failings is beside the point.

As tempting as it is to pin everything that happens on his incompetent and deserving back, we are all to blame really.

George W Bush was a mistake that all of America made.

Some of us made it bigger and more passionately than others, but we all made it.

We all thought that America was inherently awesome enough that we could put someone who was clearly substandard in charge of it --- and then let him freely and obviously fuck things up --- without any serious consequences. That nation-wide mistake is the only explanation for why Bush didn't receive the kind of real resistance that would have made it impossible to continue doing his visible and blatant fucking up of this country, without pause or slowdown, to this very day.

I'm not just talking to the dumbasses who have ever applied a "W" bumper sticker to the back of their bloated and shoddily-constructed SUV. Though those people make a satisfying herd of scapegoats, they are so emotionally and mentally subnormal that we really couldn't expect anything more than jingoistic, moronic hate-echoes from them anyway.

I'm talking to the rest of us. “Oh well,” we shrugged, watching an election stolen, a stupid war started, the budget balanced wrecked, a city drowned, the Constitution shredded, and the economy metastasize into a giant Ponzi scheme ready to collape, “there’s always 2004-slash-2008.”

With that kind of stupidity, apathy, arrogance, entitlement and laziness so ingrained and widespread through this nation --- and yes, this writer --- clearly we were headed for some sort of disaster no matter who had been in charge all this time.

Bush just sped it up and made it more painful than it otherwise would have been. So while this movie all-so-deservedly kicks Bush while he is down, I hope it has the honesty to aim a few boots at the rest of us as well.

We've earned them.

Lazy, Half-Assed Blog Posting

I received an email from a Republican friend (yes, I have some) who said, in essence:

1. He thought McCain won the first Presidential Debate.
2. Sarah Palin is a joke.
3. Obama, who he respects as a person, reminds him of Carter, who he also respects as a person. But that Carter was crushed by world events, and he fears Obama would be too.
4. McCain reminds him of Reagan, and we need a Reagan more than a Carter in this dangerous world.
5. The fbomber is hilarious, and bound for great success as a standup comedian.

My response:

I thought McCain came out on top of the debate with Obama as well. He didn't look obviously overmatched by Obama's famed rhetorical brilliance.% McCain kept it simple, he hit the same emotional buttons over and over, he was aggressive and gave the impression of victory. Since I don't know the rules of debate, and these things are purely theater anyway, that seemed like enough to make up a victory for McCain. I was actually quite discouraged by the debate.

Later, though, analysis seemed to point out that the debates helped Obama in the places he needed it... independents and undecideds. Turns out, his campaign brains didn't want the debate to make raving Dems like me feel good at watching McCain's nose rubbed in shit. They wanted the fence-sitters to see that Obama could appear Presidential. Mission accomplished there.*

This made me realize that Obama and his strategists are really two or three steps ahead of me on this thing, effectively planning and cleanly executing the very delicate and complicated set of dance steps they've determined can win this election for him. That, more than anything else, has turned me slowly from a Obama tolerator to a reluctant yet ever-warming Obama supporter. If^ he could bring the same level of analysis, intelligence, preparation and execution into the office as he brought into the campaign, I would be happy with how he handled the job.

That's the place I'm at now. Intelligence, competence and seriousness are enough for me.+

By contrast, John McCain's behavior and decisions of this campaign radiate the qualities diametrically opposed to intelligence, competence and seriousness. He's not stupid, but clearly he doesn't put a lot of weight on analysis and investigation before he makes a decision. He certainly doesn't seem to have a solid, workable campaign plan that he's determined to follow. And his surprise pick of a controversial, unqualified nobody like Sarah Palin as a running mate shows that he doesn't really respect the consequences of this race beyond getting into the office.

So you think McCain is another "go with the gut" guy, like Bush II and your icon Reagan.** And Obama is another "in his head" guy like Carter, Bush I, Woodrow Wilson, et al.

Even if you are mistaken, and Obama turns out to be a combo head and gut guy --- like JFK and my icon, Clinton## --- I'm okay with a head guy.

I think that smart, principled, strategic thinking what we need right now --- even more than the ability to make great snap decisions.

We can't predict or prepare for theoretical, unforeseen events that might need an instantaneous response.

But we can analyze our present, real and pressing crisis. And choose someone with the skills and temperament to address it.

Our biggest current problem is that we are buried in a concentric circle of ruins --- economic, military, diplomatic ---- and first need to dig ourselves out.

Then we need to intelligently, strategically and competently reorder our house so that it doesn't collapse so completely again. In this scenario, I want to be headed up by someone who likes to take measurements and draw up blueprints, as opposed to someone who eyeballs where to throw up some walls. Or, worse yet, is determined to continue the same demolition activities that collapsed our home in the first place.

Thing is, whatever events transpire, whoever gets elected next is going to have to focus most of his attention on rebuilding anyway.

After all, being able to effectively respond to the kind of world events that get thrown our way depends on getting our ruins cleared away as cleanly and quickly as possible.

So even if one accepts your premise that President McCain would react more coolly and decisively (Reaganesquely?) in a crisis that occurs after January 20th^^ his reaction would be constrained by the economic, military and diplomatic wreckage George W. Bush created --- i.e. we're broke, our military is overstretched, everyone hates us.

Since McCain doesn't even pretend to have a plan to clear that rubble, that's where we would stay, no matter how putatively brilliant his response from the gut.

That's not acceptable to me.

---

% Funny how everyone, from pundits to the public, grades Republicans on the curve in debates. Like we automatically assume the Democrat is smarter and better at having, expressing and defending his or her ideas. All the Republican has to do is not be humiliated to be able to claim a victory.

It’s like Democrats are competing to beat real Olympics times, but Republicans only have to beat Special Olympics standards to get the medal. Which should effectively topple the fantasy that Republicans are the party that believes in rewarding individual merit and achievement. They have no problem with affirmative action, or the soft bigotry of low expectations --- as long as they give stupider, whiter, richer, more religiously fanatic people a leg up.

*Obama's measured, respectful, friendly performance was also smart for other, uglier reasons. As much as I would have loved to see a Democrat forcefully inflicting grievous injuries on a Republican, there is an optics issue to consider. I suspect that for many people in this nation, the sight of a younger, blacker man exhibiting anger towards an older, whiter man would create a sense of discomfort.

^ This is an enormous “if.” But since this Obama has succeeded at every other thing he’s had to do so far, it's no stretch to believe that he can pull this off, too. Obama seems to be the luckiest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. So lucky that it can’t be just luck. Nobody can be this lucky. He’s got to be good, too.

+The evil variety, as exemplified by Dick Cheney, does not count.

** The love for Reagan is one of those blind spots I have in relation to other guys my age, kind of like Fantasy Football, which I think is just taking watching sports and giving yourself homework.

I just don't fucking get what was so great about that guy. To me, everything he said sounded great. But he wore black shoe polish in his hair and more rouge than my Aunt Ezma. And everything he did was either stupid (Star Wars defense system) or destructive (cut taxes + raise spending) or mean (firing Air Traffic Controllers) or uselessly theatrical (invade Grenada) or some combination of those things.

Is simply saying the right things good enough to achieve Legend status? I guess so. He is known as "The Great Communicator" not "The Great Chief Executive." So also falls the fiction of Republicans being about substance rather than appearance.

As for his goading of the Soviet Union through insulting rhetoric and deficit spending to fatally blow their budget on weapons slightly before we blew ours... I will concede that the stupid, inflexible, vain, incurious, simple-minded, lazy, callous, naive, remote, self-absorbed Ronald Reagan was a broken clock that turned out to be right exactly one time. But that is as far as I will go.

## Peace. Prosperity. Sloppy, fat-girl blowjobs. Really, what's not to like?

^^ A supposition not borne out by his campaign behavior, by the way. Campaign off. Campaign on. Debate off. Debate on. Fly into DC. Fly out of DC. All over a fucking bill in Congress he didn't even contribute to. How many more pallets of Depends would he have gone through over something that actually needed his input?

Congress Finally Talks Back

The fbomber is glad to see that Congress has decided to grow a spine, and defy President Bush's wishes. He is, however, scratching his head about the timing.

Authorize the Iraq War without evidence of WMDs or aggressive action against the U.S.? You got it, George.

Pass the Patriot Act without even reading it? Okey-dokey, no problem.

Prevent another Great Depression? Fuck you, asshole.

McCain: Losing It?

As this campaign progresses, the fbomber continues to be more and more impressed by Barrack Obama's composure. Nothing seems to phase the man and ruffle his good natured cool.

Apparently, this is not only a reflection of his natural temperament but a deliberate campaign choice designed to highlight his capacity to function effectively under pressure. The fbomber has heard that his unofficial campaign mantra is "No Drama Obama."

This is in dramatic contrast to McCain, who has adopted the unofficial slogan of "Insane in the Membrane."

The fbomber is actually becoming worried about McCain. He's only seen one other person melt down so dramatically in the public eye.

Much like this other person, McCain has:

1) Abandoned his previous beliefs and morals.
2) Become BFFs with a snotty bitch.
3) Proven erratic and completely undependable about scheduled responsibilities.

Basically, the fbomber fears that McCain is a single head-shaving and beaver-shot away from pulling "a full Britney."

Fbomber's Social Laws:Part 1

Reading the print and online commentary about the Federal Wall Street Junk Buy-Up/Bailout has made the fbomber realize two hard facts about human beings.

1. The Fbomber's Competency/Certitude Inverse Correlative: The less able an individual is to successfully manage even the smallest aspects of his/her own life, the more sure he/she is of how to manage the biggest issues of the world.

AKA Blogger's Law, Politician's Postulate, Economist's Axiom, and Op-Ed Writer's Fundamental.

2. The Fbomber's Professional Wardrobe/Utility Paradox: The less valuable a service a profession provides, the better that profession dresses.

Brain surgeons save your life wearing pyjamas made out of green bedsheets. Investment bankers push around crap investments wearing $6,000 Brioni suits.

As proof of this law's accuracy, consider that this law predicts that hookers provide the maximum possibility utility to customers, as they perform their job completely naked. QED, homies.

Deepest Condolences?

The fbomber just learned that his weekend a missive went out from Georgetown University (the fbomber's alma mater) to "Greater New York–Area Alumni" impacted by last week's events in the financial sector, i.e. the Wall Street I-bankers who have been giving the school money. James M. Langley, the university's vice-president for "advancement" wrote:

In light of the extraordinary events that have rocked global financial markets this week, I write to express my deepest sympathy and concern for all members of the Georgetown University community impacted by the upheaval.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you as the crisis continues and details of remedial efforts are announced. I intend to spend the coming months learning how our friends have been impacted and provide whatever support the University can.

On behalf of President DeGioia and our entire Georgetown community, I extend my hopes for a swift recovery and a brighter future.

I'm ashamed. For all the old grey stone buildings on campus, this just shows how middle-class, gauche, arriviste and bourgeouis (sp?) Georgetown really is.

The true pimp elite aristocracy schools (do I even need to say the "I-word L-word?") know better than to even talk about money, in good times and --- especially --- in bad. These little economic hiccups are the sort of thing that are taken on the chin with a stiff upper lip and all that... anyway, it's something for the accountant people to worry about.

Not Georgetown, though. We have to say this kind of shit. In public.

Come on, guys. Pull it together. At least act like G-town is more than a glorified trade school to put out efficient white-collar servants for America's hereditary elite. Pretend.

After all, no matter how many earnest knowledge workers we can pump into the worlds of law, finance, medicine and politics we're never going to get the admission to the white-shoe world we crave with every ounce of our being if we keep betraying our Mick & Wop Papist working-class origins with this sort of rookie faux paus. Jesus.

If Not Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse When?

As of end of day Friday, the fbomber has heard 24 hours of a panicked chorus of dire, if vague, warnings about what kind of catastrophe awaits our global economic system if the American taxpayer does not pick up the tab for the bad home loan-based debt that appears to be the financial equivalent of the Ebola virus.

Against this frantic, unified squealing, the fbomber would like to send up a countervailing, solitary and equally frantic squeal of his own: "Don't do it!"

Don't allocate money for a bailout. Don't save these financial institutions. Don't prop up the rotten timbers of the global finance structure.

Let it all collapse.

The fbomber does not say this out of a disbelief of the worst case scenarios which have been trotted out for the last news cycle. He says it in a fervent hope and belief that the worst case scenarios are actually conservative, rosy-tinted, dream-wishes compared to the full extent of the inevitable disaster.

In short, the fbomber wishes for a complete descent into violent, senseless anarchy. Pronto.

He can't help it. As a product of the 80's, he was raised on a steady stream of post-apocalyptic narratives in his formative years. As it turned out, movies like Mad Max, Red Dawn, and The Terminator shaped his psychology in a profound way.

He's actually disappointed that it's 2008 and he has not yet once had to wear animal furs to survive, eat human flesh or drive a spike-studded dune buggy across the desert while being chased by a psychotic midget.

That is the violent, chaotic, brutal reality that his upbringing prepared him for --- not this boring business of going to work every day to do the same stupid job. Where's the glamor to that? The adrenaline rush? The opportunity to callously commit satisfyingly vicious acts of violence without fear of retribution? Unless you're working for the LAPD, nowhere.

The fbomber actually looks forward to a life of scrabbling for life's essentials amid the ruins of a once-functioning society.

After all, such a life looks to combine the most enjoyable aspects of camping, hunting, road-racing, mixed martial arts, scavenger hunts and trading food-scraps for sexual favors.

He has exciting plans to create his own society, a tribe which rewards indolence and cynicism with the same respect that our existing society heaps upon industry and competence.

Most of all, he eagerly anticipates being able to travel the 405 during daylight hours at a speed exceeding 5 miles per hour.

So, yeah. Fuck this "New Great Depression" talk. Let's think big here, folks, along the lines of "Next Dark Age" or better yet, "Pre-History 2.0." If he's not wearing a feral-cat loincloth and club-fighting another dude for chieftan status by next week, at the latest, he's going to be pissed.

CORRECTION: Republicans Even Worse than Previously Stated

CORRECTION
In an earlier, error-riddled post the fbomber predicted that Mitt Romney would be elected President of the United States, which obviously will not come to pass this year.

Even more egregiously, he claimed that Republicans possess three core competencies: Making money. Trolling for anonymous gay sex in public bathrooms. And making Democrats look repulsive.

As it turns out, the fbomber overestimated Republican capabilities. For starters, it appears that Republican men are awful at keeping their feverish lust for public bathroom cock out of the papers.

And saying that the Republicans are good at making money is a statement so vague as to become inaccurate. Because as recent events have shown, it does not contain a descriptor of exactly who the Republicans make money for.

As the last eight years have shown, that list of lucky parties is a very short one, noticeably NOT including the following groups:

The Poor - The Census Bureau reports Americans whose household income was in the lowest 20 percent saw their incomes drop 6 percent since 2000.

The Middle Class - According to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, the period 2000-2007 shows the lowest increase in median income (it’s actually a negative $324.00) of any of the four cycles of economic growth over the last four decades.

Stockholders, generally - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,587.60 on the day Bush took office. Today it's at 10,609.66. So it's more or less identical, not even taking inflation into account. So, considering brokerage fees and investment costs --- investors would have been better off burying their money in coffee cans in the back yard than investing in stocks.

Taxpayers, generally - Under George W Bush, we've added $4 trillion to our national debt, thanks to a combination of tax cuts and wars. This debt will generate interest which the taxpayers will have to pay.

Anyone earning, spending or saving U.S. dollars, generally - Between 2000 and 2008, the dollar weakened against the euro by 37 percent.

But not everyone has been a loser the last eight years.

Oil Companies, Defense Contractors and The Top 1 Percent of the wealthiest Americans seem to have made out okay. That last group, for instance, has seen its income increase by 50 percent since 2001.

Some might say that this failure in both absolute wealth creation and equitable wealth distribution proves the error of the "trickle down" theory of economics first propounded by Ronald Reagan's economic handlers nearly 30 years ago. Then again, the Republicans never specifically said what they intended to trickle down on the poor people, in the same way that R. Kelly never specifically mentioned what liquid he would be serving his 15-year-old girlfriends when he invited them up for "a drink."

OsamaWatch:2555 Days and Counting

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history, one that killed almost 3,000 Americans.

Though the fbomber knows how many distractions this nation has right now --- Look! A Presidential candidate with really curly hair! Wow! A chick Vice-Presidential candidate with sexy rimless glasses! --- he wonders if anyone, anywhere, in any official U.S. Government capacity is actively trying to catch the motherfucker who reportedly planned and directed that attack.

Here’s a refresher: His name is Osama Bin Laden. It’s understandable if you’ve forgotten the name, since the only time you hear the word “Osama” anymore is when Republicans deliberately mispronounce Barrack Obama’s name to make some childish, retarded, bullshit point that only childish, retarded, bullshit people can even understand.

Osama --- the real Osama --- is a Saudi national. He’s about 6 foot 5 inches, with a long stringy beard, livery-looking lips and big, soulful, puppy-dog eyes --- kind of like Paul McCartney’s if Paul McCartney were a fanatical killer motivated by a perverted interpretation of an already violent religion.

U.S. forces last spotted him in the hills of Tora Bora back in December of 2001 --- way back when we were actually winning the war in Afghanistan --- but he somehow slipped away. Various reports have him in the mountainous, wild, lawless Waziristan region of Pakistan* or maybe even dead.

I think it’s outrageous that it’s 2008 and we don’t even know for sure if he’s still breathing or not. And what’s more, nobody seems to care. Networks haven't broken into our regularly scheduled programming to tell us about the latest Osama sighting since I don't know when. The CIA unit tasked with finding him was disbanded in 2005.

Oddly, America --- a nation which remains fascinated beyond all reason with sluts and drug addicts who peaked a half-century ago ---seems to have lost interest completely in this mass murderer after only seven years.

Why are we letting this killer off the hook? Were his victims not blond or pretty enough to merit continued interest?

Shouldn’t the War on Terror include at least a couple of shots at those who actually commit acts of terror against us? If nothing else, those legitimate uses of force could at least act as a sort of fig leaf to cover whatever other bloody, expensive, misguided, illegal side-projects this nation chooses to lump into that category as well.

Don’t we want revenge? This is --- after all --- the nation which gave the world “Death Wish,” “Kill Bill” and, er, “Kill Bill II.” Don’t we want some payback? What's holding us back?

We certainly have no compunction about indulging in all our other baser instincts of lust, greed, jealousy, rage and violence --- usually in a single hour of FOX prime time programming --- so why are we drawing the line at a desire for retribution?

Personally, I don’t care if it’s seven years, seventeen or seventy. I want Osama caught. If he’s alive, I want him in an orange jumpsuit in Rikers Island, being sodomized in the showers. If he’s dead, I want him dug up and brought here for a ritual corpse defilement, also consisting of sodomization in a shower.

Finally, weren’t we --- as an angry and grieving nation --- promised that this asshole would be brought to justice? Shortly after the attacks, I seem to remember our President solemnly intoning on national television that Osama would be captured, “dead or alive.”**

Though Bush failed to keep most of his other promises --- especially his vow to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” --- I always kind of hoped that he would meet this one. After all, it didn’t really require any thought or work on his part. Just an order for one person to kill another person, his specialty.***

It looks like it’s not going to happen though. Bush has already been quoted as saying that “he doesn’t think about” Bin Laden.**** That’s too bad. Because after seven years of Bush not thinking about Bin Laden, the trail has grown colder than the underground crypt Dick Cheney goes into to hide from sunlight.

What a shame. I just wish that the Republicans had showed as much energy chasing Osama as they did the blue dress Bill Clinton jizzed on.

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* The fbomber finds it comical --- in a choking, sickening way --- that this country’s multi-billion dollar surveillance satellites, predator drones, communications-interceptions networks, information-processing hardware and intelligence agencies are apparently rendered useless by caves. Caves. How much more low-tech can you get than that? That’s like having your F-16 shot down by a flint-tipped spear.

** Perhaps when Bush said that, he had already decided on “dead” and chosen the world’s top assassin --- old age --- to carry out the hit.

*** Texas: 154 Executed while Governor
Iraq: 4155 U.S. Dead, 150,000 to 1 million Iraqi dead.
Afghanistan: 586 U.S. Dead, up to 14,000 Afghanis dead.

**** Luckily, he stopped there. If he had given a complete list of all the things that he does not think about, he would probably still be talking now, and I am --- frankly --- sick of his voice.

The fbomber Told You So, Part I

In this article, "5 Myths About Those Civic-Minded, Deeply Informed Voters", Washington Post writer Rick Shenkman confirms many of the fbomber's theories about American voters*, but without resorting to overbroad generalizations, scatological analogies, scurrilous accusations, gratuitous insults, misogynistic rantings, a gross distortion of facts or a graph drawn on the back of an index card.

Yeah, I know. Bor-ing!

To summarize (and chime in):

1. American voters are Dumb, Dumb, Dumb. (Where's Iraq? Who's Karl Marx? What war was the Battle of Bunker Hill fought in? Don't ask Americans. Ask wikipedians**)
2. Conservative voters are not necessarily more dumb than liberal voters. (The study did not measure Meanness levels.)
3. Even if you give American voters the facts, they will still draw the wrong conclusions. (This should come as no surprise, in a country where half the population still believes in Creationism, despite being forcibly exposed to Evolution countless times during their journey through the educational system)
4. Voters are as Dumb as ever, and maybe even Dumber, despite rising educational levels. (A cursory viewing of the "Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break" documentary series should explain why a college degree need not automatically result in higher intellectual achievements.)
5. Young people don't follow the news, really, at all. (Facebook Status Updates, apparently, do not count.)

So what? So --- the fbomber repeats --- attempts to reach American voters through their heads are going to fail to engage the broader electorate. If Darwinism can't penetrate our thick skulls after 100 years, do you think that Obamanomics has a chance in 7 weeks?

Democrats have got to generate stronger emotions from American guts.

And not just the positive, happy, warm, hopeful emotions I watched being created in Denver either. Those emotions are nice, but fbomber has far too often watched them get beat up and hand their lunch money over to the uglier emotions of greed, fear and hate inside the election booth.

The McCain strategy coalesced late and is disjointed, but it is very powerful. I'll call it the High-Low-Fear approach.

At the High end, McCain's biography and history makes a convincing case to Sweet and Dumb Swing voters that he won't do ALL the stupid things Bush did. That he's a Maverick. That he's Competent. That he's a Reformer. That he's a Lifelong Public Servant, and Oh Yeah, One More Thing, A War Hero.

At the Low end, McCain's concessions to the Hard Right on war and taxes--- plus his pick of Hockey Mom*** Sarah Palin --- energize the Mean half of the voting spectrum, both Smart and Dumb.

Underneath it all, like a steady, throbbing bass beat, the Fear message --- Obama is young, he is inexperienced, we don't know him, he's kind of different from most of us, he doesn't kick ass, he's naive, he's not ready, he can't execute, he can't protect us --- will depress and demotivate support for Obama across the board.

Democrats have got to generate some fear themselves. Fear that McCain is too Old, too Crazy, to Angry, and too Unhealthy for the job. Fear that he'll continue the Worst and Stupidest of the Republican policies. Fear that Sarah Palin might wind up in the Oval Office, and make us nostalgic for the last eight years when we only had someone pretending to be a redneck in the White House.

Democrats have to generate enough fear to make the Smartest and Nicest of the Dumb & Mean people doubt their allegiance to McCain, and stay home on Election Day. And to make the Sweet & Dumb Swing Voters of America so afraid of a McCain/Palin victory that they go vote for Obama. Or, at the very least, don't go vote for McCain. Or at the very, very least NOT go to vote against Obama.

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* The fbomber is not one of these self-hating Americans who believes that Americans are inherently stupider, greedier, meaner, lazier and more fearful than other nations. He is a self-hating American who believes that these elements are distributed more or less evenly throughout the entire human race. He does note, however, that American culture tends to glorify and actually revel in these characteristics more than any other nation he has seen. And that Americans, in fact, appear to willfully confuse these faults with virtues.

** Some might quibble that this characterization was based on measuring what someone knows, not their capability to learn and perform. So more accurately measures interests, not intelligence. A person uninterested in politics might score very low on this test, but be extremely informed and capable in other matters more relevant to daily life.

To which the fbomber responds: Nice try, dummy. Kicking ass in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City does not count as having "street smarts."

*** Living in Southern California, the fbomber is unfamiliar with this taxonomic classification and hasn't yet had it clearly defined for him yet. As best he can tell, it's just like a soccer mom, but a complete cunt.

GOPVPT&A2: The Update

No matter how cynical the fbomber gets, he can’t keep up with reality.

The fbomber knew that the Palin appointment would rouse the Mean and Stupid elements of the GOP, but had no idea that this one woman would be the spark that would re-ignite the capital C, capital W, Culture War. The War that has raged --- as best as he can tell --- since the dirty hippies had the nerve to suggest that America would be a cooler place if we didn’t subjugate Negroes, oppress women, legislate an Old Testament Judeo-Christian morality on everyone, kill innocent foreigners without reason and dress up in a dark gray suit every time we left the house.

Those filthy, bra-burning Commies somehow succeeded in corrupting our nation’s morals, causing America to fall from the Edenic peace and purity that existed in this Godly, Righteous nation before oral sex, the electric guitar and incense ruined everything.*

Stoked with the kind of rage that only comes from having freedom, fairness and scientific facts forced onto a mind that has no use for those things, America’s Meanest & Dumbest have burned with an unrelenting, unthinking, resentful fury for the last four decades.

Ever on the alert for a new power source, the Smart and Mean Republicans latched onto this rage early, riding and directing the Dumb & Mean crowd like that twisted dwarf Master rode the huge retard Blaster in “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.”

An interesting thing almost happened this election. Up until Wednesday, it looked like this year’s Smart and Mean twisted dwarf, John McCain, would be fighting in the Thunderdome solo. Despite a recent conversion to craven, servile televangelist bum-nuzzling,** McCain’s antipathy for the snake-handling set has always been obvious and reciprocated. Without someone that the Guns, God, Babies, Creationism and Hate-Faggots set could get excited about, McCain’s campaign looked ready to expire with the same sad, weak whimper McCain himself makes when he is unable to reach his bedpan in time.

Enter Sarah “Barracuda” Palin.

There was only one small hitch. Before the Republicans could present their model of Family Values and Good Old Fashioned Morality to the nation, they had to dispose of an inconvenient set of embarrassing facts called Her Life, all in a single toilet flush of a press release.

And what a deliciously white-trash set of facts it was, too. A pregnant teenage daughter.*** A drunk-driving husband.**** A power-abuse scandal involving a wife-beating state trooper brother-in-law.***** Close ties to an organization agitating for secession from the United States******. *******.

The only thing missing was clarification on whether the Alaska Governor’s mansion is a single or double-wide.

Despite these little foibles --- any one of which would have caused FOX News to launch a separate, outraged, channel if Obama had done them******** --- she has been received rapturously by her target audience.

Never so rapturously as when she delivered her speech Wednesday, a speech which reminded the fbomber of some bitchy, quarterback-fucking high school cheerleader putting the earnest valedictorian in his social place by reminding everyone how totally lame it is to be smart and care about learning and people and stuff. And that really cool people kick ass and shit. Also drill for oil and cut taxes, because, like, fuck you, nerd, you suck.

For the loyal Dumb & Mean Dog-mericans salivating at her every word, the message could not have been clearer: Attack.

It’s on. That's right, motherfuckers, it's on.*********

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* Oddly --- despite hearing repeated intimations that a prelapsarian bliss suffused America before these morals were corrupted --- the fbomber has never seen an old newspaper headline proclaiming “Everything Just Dandy!” Not even from the 1950’s.

** McCain’s reversals leave the fbomber unable to believe anything the man says. This is a far cry from his previous honesty, when McCain was “The Straight Talk Express.” As a matter of fact, the only straight talk the fbomber has heard from McCain recently is when he called his own wife a cunt.

That I do believe. She even looks scary. Like if JonBenet Ramsey caught that aging disease.

*** The fbomber loves the sense of outrage that Palin’s spokespeople generated about the Internet rumors that pegged the five-month-old Trig as her daughter’s. “How dare you,” they screamed “suggest anything so sordid as that Trig is the 17-year-old Bristol’s secret illegitimate love-child? Bristol’s secret illegitimate love child is ANOTHER BABY ALTOGETHER, one who hasn’t even been born yet, thank you very much. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

The fbomber is also gratified to see how classy Barrack Obama was, sternly telling his campaign that Palin’s family was “off-limits.”

The fbomber agrees with the move, but would have phrased it differently, something along the lines of “The fact that Governor Palin’s preachy, holier-than-though, abstinence-only-education, Traditional-Values, in-your-face, puritanical morality did not prevent her own daughter from being a raving, cock-hungry slut moaning in ecstasy as a horny hockey jock jammed his throbbing fuckstick balls-deep into her quivering, downy-haired, 16-year-old, unmarried cooter without any form of birth control is most definitely ‘off limits.’”

But hey, po-tay-toh, po-tah-to.

**** Dude is a professional snow-mobiler. Who has twice won a 2,000 mile snow-mobile race. 2,000 miles. The fbomber has to salute the pure American-ness of a soul who sees two thousand miles of pristine Arctic Wilderness, unspoiled by man, and thinks to himself that it looks like a great place for him and a hundred other rednecks to drive their snow-Harleys across at top speed.

Best of all, combined with his two other professions of commercial fisherman and oil-field worker, this means that this guy spends literally EVERY WAKING HOUR of his life despoiling the environment and basically raping Mother Nature in some way or the other. You have to respect that commitment.

***** Imagine the shock a family experiences when they learn that a rural cop turns out to be a violent bully. That would be nearly as surprising as marrying a stripper and discovering that she has cocaine and daddy issues.

****** Last I heard, ultra-nationalist elements in Russia were reconsidering the sale of Alaska to the U.S.. The Alaska Independence Party might want to look at some footage of Tblisi getting leveled by mortar fire before they strike off on their own. Or, on second thought, maybe not. Let them just go for it.

******* Adding all these things together, it’s clear that Alaska isn’t the Last Frontier anymore. It’s the New Confederacy.

******** Having grown up in a town of 400 souls, in the Deep Red state of Oklahoma, the fbomber is intimately familiar with how the deeply conflicted Fundamentalist Christian mind works. This mind --- consisting of its unstable mixture of natural, unsophisticated, vulgar impulses and indoctrinated, all-pervasive shame and guilt about those impulses --- is willing to overlook and forgive just about any perverse act, just so long as the person didn’t actually enjoy it.

In this way, both liberals and conservatives live by the motto of “If it feels good, Do It.” The conservatives simply add the extra steps of “Fight It, Hide It, Deny It, Regret It and Persecute It.”

********* Having long ago deserted the Culture Wars frontline to hide out in the safe fortress of Los Angeles, the fbomber remains ready to offer terms of a truce. We Godless, arrogant abortionists get New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles. You ignorant, hypocritical pigfuckers can have everything else. In other words, the status quo. Let's go ahead and make it official.

GOP VP T&A

When I looked at the picture of McCain standing next to a pouty-lipped brunette last week, for a second I thought that I was looking at his campaign’s “Bring Your Granddaughter to Work Day” photo op.

For a moment, I considered adding this chestnut-haired beauty to the gallery of Presidential-candidate-family-masturbation-fodder, to serve in rotation along with the 2000-vintage Gore girls, 2004-period Bush Twins and the circa-2008 Chelsea. Scanning the caption of the photo for a name to moan to myself while imagining my nutsack resting on those angular cheekbones, I saw that this was no mere familial bimbo. Not at all. This was The Bimbo, the Bimbo Who Would Be Veep, the Bimbo a Single 72-Year-Old, Stroke-Having, Tantrum-Throwing Heartbeat Away from the Presidency.

I immediately took myself to wikipedia, where I absorbed the pertinent facts about this Sarah Palin person. New Governor of Alaska. Former Mayor of some frozen shithole village of 6,000 backward souls. Mother of five, including a Downs Syndrome baby. Former High School Basketball star, Beauty Pageant winner, and Newscaster.

McCain had picked this hardbody, er, nobody for his VP? Where’s the experience? The gravitas? The credentials to contribute to his Presidency and --- if actuarial charts have any legitimacy --- finish it?

Like many Democrats, I initially saw this as a pathetic, desperate Hail Mary move to court the female vote. Surely, I thought, they can’t believe that this transparent ploy will work, can they? Just how stupid do they think American women are? Even in my most cynical, I don’t believe that American women are so dim-witted as to view all vaginas as interchangeable when it’s time to vote. American men, yes. But even then only for sexual purposes.

For a second I almost felt sorry for the Republicans, to see their once-mighty Presidential-electing machinery in such disrepair.

Then I remembered. The Republicans do not make stupid mistakes before an election. They wait until afterwards, when they can be sure that someone else will suffer the consequences.

Though picking Titsy McHotAss for the 2nd Banana spot might be a bold move, even a risky one, you can be sure that it was a well-thought-out, scenario-crunched, focus-grouped, strategic risky move.

Upon further thought, I realized that the Smart & Nice Quadrant Democrats were ridiculing the choice because they were looking at it intellectually and logically… with their heads. A perspective in which it was a profoundly wrong, even laughable, move.

Looking at the choice of BubbleLips McBedroomEyes from the perspective of the other three Quadrants --- Nice & Dumb, Dumb & Mean and Smart & Mean --- however, it’s a genius stroke on several levels.

For most people in this country, smarts don’t mean so much in making decisions, even --- no, especially --- voting decisions. It’s about the gut, the emotions, how someone feels. Do they like or dislike someone? Fear or identify with? Want to choke or want to fuck? On these questions --- especially that last one --- GlamourPuss McCamelToe lifts --- no, Space-Shuttle-booster-rockets… McCain’s campaign to a higher level.

1. She engorges a previously limp and flaccid campaign.

Let’s dispense with the tissue-thin fiction that this was anything like a substantive, experience-driven, qualifications-motivated pick. This is a casting based on image and identity, nothing else. Though I’m sure Sarah Palin is a nice woman, she has not done anything in her life that would qualify her for consideration for the office of Vice President of the United States of America.*

She’s cheesecake. T&A. Eye Candy. The Republican’s primary problem this election is fatigue. And Nipples McMonsVenus provides instant stimulation. After all, is anyone ever too tired for porn? Because that’s what this 40-something GILF** is. A political centerfold, chosen for the same reasons 19-year olds named Brandi get put into men’s magazines wearing (briefly) nurse outfits.

She is not pornography just on the superficial, physical level either, though that is why she will soak up TV coverage like a fresh Tampax. As she will be presented to us, Palin’s whole life is a graphic, visual, multi-page photo spread of all the fantasies that put the lead in the Conservative pencil. Rugged individualism, as expressed by the wilderness of Alaska. Shooting guns. Using an internal combustion engine outdoors. Going to church. Having babies. Lot and lots of babies.***

To a tired and demoralized population of Dumb & Mean Americans, these images will be like a Viagra IV drip, raising them from their inert state to a condition of turgid, inflamed readiness.

2. By use of the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” gambit, she will be the vehicle for the continuing attack on Barrack Obama’s readiness for office.

Get ready to see and hear a concerted, unified effort to equate and conflate her level of experience with Barrack Obama’s. In rough terms, this effort will equate her experience as mayor of Mayberry, Alaska to Obama’s Illinois state legislature. And her two years as Governor with his two years in the U.S. Senate.

Though this message is so egregiously bullshit that nobody should be able to entertain it --- much less repeat it --- without breaking into snickers of disbelief, it will get repeated many, many times. For the Dumb people who it is aimed at, this continuous debate and repetition will validate this equivalency. In this way, attacks that discredit Palin will have a kind of jiu-jitsu effect on weakening Obama with America’s more bovine Sweet & Dumb voters.

3. Palin gives the Right a chance to give Hillary Clinton a final, gratuitous, vicious kick in the pantsuit-crotch while she’s down.

One woman left the race. Another woman entered. It’s natural that people will compare the two. And even if it’s not, FOX News is going to be sure to do it anyway.

And in the comparison, Palin is going to be portrayed as the infinitely less threatening and more likable. Instead of elite universities and a law career, Palin went for a state school and being a prettyface news anchor. Instead of one kid who went to Stanford, Palin has had five, including one now joining the Army. And instead of a hideous coven of lesbian, feminist, communist, Nazi, flag-burning, blood-drinking, Bible-desecrating witches, Palin has gone to a regular Christian church.

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Judging from these criteria, LabiaLips McSugarClit is a brilliant addition to the campaign. It just makes me wonder how the Republican machine finds people like her, people who can match the required, retarded Republican ideology with whatever combination of skin tone, family history and genitalia needed for the role they will play.

After all, though Liberals often get accused of playing identity politics --- and putting people into undeserved positions based on race and gender quotas --- it’s really the Republicans who have truly mastered the art of this kind of appearance-based casting. Republicans found the one black judge in America who hates Affirmative Action worse than any white person alive, and put him on the Supreme Court. Republicans found the only black woman in the world who loves George W. Bush --- loves him to the point of calling him “my husband” by accident --- to put in charge of the National Security Agency, then State Department.****

They must have a talent scouting organization that makes Major League Baseball’s look like whoever’s been in charge of looking for Bin Ladin the last seven years.

I mean, come on. Just how many good-looking women politicians are there in the nation who just happen to love God, guns, family and the Oil Industry --- while hating taxes, the environment and abortion?

Just one. And they found her. If she doesn’t create a big bounce for McCain --- and not just the one in his pants, or as he probably calls them “dungarees” --- then I don’t know my America.

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* It is hardly an accomplishment to be deemed slightly less corrupt, incompetent and repugnant than the other Alaskan GOP politicians. That is, after all, a group that shows the predictable rampant criminality and dimwittedness that you would expect to see when you combine isolated rednecks, the Republican model of governance and oil revenues.

** The “G” stands for “Governor.”

***While pregnant with her 5th child, a test showed that her fetus had Downs Syndrome. Because of her opposition to abortion, she had the child anyway, and named him “Trig.”

It strikes the fbomber as cruel to name a child after an academic subject he will be too stupid to ever master. The fbomber wonders if the baby had been born paralyzed, she would have named him “PhysEd.”

**** One might even suspect that these wholly undeserved appointments serve auxiliary Republican goals of making Affirmative Action --- and black people in general --- look bad. After all, even the most impartial critics of Thomas’s surly, lazy, Scalia-parroting tenure in the Supreme Court can only with great generosity call it “undistinguished.”

As for Condoleezza Rice. Jesus. Though the fbomber is perpetually unemployed and lives on a boat, at least his record of failure does not include responsibility for American security before 9/11 and American diplomacy after it.