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?
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, September 26, 2008
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."
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."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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:
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.
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.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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."
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."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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.
---
* 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.
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.
---
* 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.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
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.
---
* 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.
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.
---
* 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.
Friday, September 05, 2008
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.*********
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* 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.
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.*********
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* 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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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.
-
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.
-
* 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.
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.
-
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.
-
* 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.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Obama Can't Win, But McCain Just Might Lose
For most of his adult life, the fbomber has been in an emotional state that could best be described as “bitter, caustic, life-sapping, despairing cynicism” in regards to matters of politics.
Generally, this stance of expecting the absolute worst foreseeable disaster --- immediately followed by an even more terrible and unforeseeable catastrophe --- has paid off.
Because of this pessimistic mindset, despite all the twists and turns this great nation has made as it determinedly burrows ever deeper into the shit, the fbomber has often been surprised --- but rarely disappointed.
After all, the fbomber believes that no matter how gross and systemic the American people’s flaws may be, they will at least be consistent. No matter what, they will always let him down.
But lately, the fbomber has felt the tiny flutterings of a long-lost and presumed-dead emotion inside the empty, dusty ribcage that once housed his live and beating heart. That emotion? Hope.
This emotion was most recently felt while listening to Barack Obama speaking on National Public Radio. Though congenitally immune from Obamamania*, the fbomber noted that at the very least Obama does not sound like an intolerable prick when he speaks. To the contrary, in fact. He actually sounds smart, thoughtful and even --- dare I say it? --- cool.** It shows how expectations have fallen when someone becomes giddily excited at the prospect of a President who is, at minimum, not a total tool. But there it is.
This fluttering grew into a veritable flapping when the fbomber considered that Obama might actually have a chance to get elected this year. Though the fbomber firmly believes that the Democrats can never win an election, he knows that from time to time the Republicans can lose one. And that this year might be one of those times.
Political Party is Not a Choice
The fbomber believes that political party affiliation is not a product of intellectual choice, or a product of environment, or indoctrination or any other exogenous factor. It is an internally generated expression of the way that people view the world. And that the way people view the world is a result of hard-wired psychological tendencies.
Think about it. Could any of you reading conceivably vote for the other party? According to my theory, about 75% of people reading this could not. That's because you just ARE Liberal/Democratic or Conservative/Republican because of the way your brain works from birth.
The fbomber did not come up with this theory on his own. He read something like it in a book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff. Then he perverted and twisted it to fit his own misanthropic mindset, aided in large part by his complete lack of training in psychology, sociology, statistics or anything else, for that matter.
To the fbomber, the division between Republicans and Democrats is a function of where they fall on one specific, particular line of attitude. This line measures how they view their relations between themselves and other people.
At one end, someone sees himself as part of a community, with a strong and complex web of responsibilities to everyone in that community. At the other end of the line, someone sees himself as essentially autonomous, in competition with every other person and with no responsibilities towards them --- unless that person explicitly chooses to take on those responsibilities.
These two mindsets have been described in various ways:
Left vs. Right
Hippy vs. Nazi
Magnanimous vs. Selfish
Community vs. Individual
We vs. Me
Pussy vs. Dick
Share vs. Hoard
Nurturing Family vs. Strict Family
Mommy vs. Daddy
For the purposes of this essay, the fbomber will call this line the Nice vs. Mean line.
Assuming a bell-curve distribution, very few people will fall at the extreme ends of this line. Most will be in the center, with half nicer than average, and half meaner. Because of its let’s-share-the-wealth, lets-help-one-another, let’s-get-along, your-hair-looks-very-nice values, the Democratic party is the natural home of the nicer half.
Conversely, due to its leave-me-alone, this-money-is-mine, fuck-the-world, do-what-I-tell-you, look-how-big-my-gun-is values, the Republican party is the natural home of the meaner half.
At the same time, there is another line measuring intelligence, also split into the smarter-than-average and dumber-than-average halves.
So we can draw up a graph to represent the total electorate.
Republicans naturally make up the Smart & Mean, and Dumb & Mean quarters. And they are locked in there tighter than Mark Foley's eyeballs onto an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
The Smart & Mean quadrant ARE the Republican party, the rich, white shareholder and CEO class. The Dumb & Mean quadrant --- the Rednecks, the Evangelicals, the NASCAR fans, the Chickenhawks supporting a war they won't fight --- are equally locked in. They are the Smart & Mean people’s loyal foot-soldiers, held in thrall to the prospect of becoming like the Smart & Mean guys some lucky day if they do enough dirty work to earn that promotion.
Democrats naturally get the Smart & Nice quadrant. The well-educated, the artists, the creatives, the wordy, egghead types. The bourgeouis bohemians. The latte liberals. The Jews. The Volvo drivers. The women. The students. Hollywood.
The Nice & Stupid quadrant? They should be Democrats. But they are not.
Those are the Swing Voters.
How else could you describe the kind of person that looks at Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush or Obama vs. McCain and says “I don’t know… I can’t make up my mind… they both seem a lot alike to me”?
These are the people too stupid to realize the difference between a failed cokehead oil executive and a Nobel Prize winner. Or too nice to come out and admit that one of the candidates is a huge asshole and the other is --- at worst --- a medium-sized asshole.
Why Republicans Win, Unless They Lose
In a normal election, the Republicans handily win because they have their half of the electorate and can trick enough Nice & Stupid voters come in at over 50.1% And in normal circumstances, it is easy. For starters, the Smart & Mean people have the most money, plus the rabid shock troops of the Dumb & Mean (aka the Fox News audience) to do it with.
Most of all, the people they are targeting, are --- after all --- Nice & Stupid. Stupid enough to believe that giving the top .001% of the economic elite tax breaks will pump up their Wal-Mart cashier paychecks. Stupid enough to believe that John Kerry is backed by Al Queda. Nice enough to want to stop sweet innocent blastocysts and coma victims from being murdered by those evil, evil doctors.
Here’s the kicker. The Republicans don’t even have to convince the Nice & Stupid crowd to vote Republican. That’s a bonus, but all they really have to do to win is to confuse them enough to keep them from voting at all. That’s what the Swift-Boating and other dirty, last-minute personal attacks are good for. To get the Nice & Stupid crew to throw their hands up and say “Gosh almighty! They’re BOTH awful! Is ‘Idol on?’”
On the other hand, the Democrats can never win an election outright, because the Democrat’s natural, guaranteed constituency is only 25% of the electorate and they have to split their other 25% with the Republicans.
Why This Year is Different
To win, the Democrats have to get all the Nice & Smart voters, hold onto the Nice & Dumb voters and hope that something prevents the Smart & Mean and Dumb & Mean people from voting Republican in maximum numbers.
Well, that could be happening this year.
Assuming the Smart & Nice crowd maxes out support for Obama and the Democrats, three fatigue factors should keep the other three quadrants from turning out in support of McCain and the Republicans.
1. Failure Fatigue.
As pointed out elsewhere, the Republican’s policies have been such an abject failure that even the stupidest person cannot sign up for more of them. This should minimize Republican poaching of the Stupid & Nice quadrant.
2. Gluttony Fatigue
After eight years of unrestrained bingeing, the Smart & Mean quadrant should be well and truly glutted with undeserved riches at this point. Glutted, apparently, to the point of immobility this election.
The tax cuts have given the richest Americans an extra couple hundreds of billions into their already-bulging pockets over the last seven years. An orgy of spending increases and misguided policy choices by the Republican-controlled government has handed the well-connected Smart & Mean crowd --- think defense contractors and energy companies --- yet more trillions of U.S. citizens’ cash.
After all this engorgement, these folks just don’t have the hunger for power that they did back in 1999 and 2000. They are ready to take a bit of a nap to digest their meal, like a boa constrictor just back from a good grazing session at the local pre-school. Consequently, they look to be sitting out this political fight and holing up in Palm Beach, La Jolla and Jackson Hole with their trophy wives and ungrateful children for a couple of years.
And why shouldn’t they kick back? After all, they’ve already done the fun part. They ran into a clean, well-stocked store in 2001 and proceeded to ransack and loot it for the last seven years. Now the shelves are all bare and there are broken dreams all over the floor. It’s time for them to go home and let the suckers who work for minimum wage come in and sweep up, repair the damage, and restock the shelves in preparation for 2012 or 2016’s smash-and-grab raid.
Proof of the Smart & Meanie’s absence this year can be seen in the inept and bumbling McCain campaign. Where are Rove and the other evil ninjas? Where are W’s “Rangers” ponying up $250k apiece for the campaign? Not in McCain’s bus, that’s for sure. The true, stone-cold pimps have made themselves scarce this go-round, putting the B-team in charge, with obvious results.
3. Hatred Fatigue.
Just since 2000, the Dumb & Mean quadrant has engaged in a ferocious and endless campaign of slavering, foaming, raging hatred at a dizzying variety of targets, including, but not limited to:
Bill Clinton
Blow Jobs
Hilary Clinton
International Law
Al Gore
Reality
Gays
Liberals
The French
Habeas Corpus
Islam
Immigrants
Brown-skinned people, generally
Education
Hilary Clinton
The U.N.
Charles Darwin
Federal Judges
Dan Rather
The Geneva Convention
Science
Doctors
Separation of Church and State
John Kerry
The Truth
Hilary Clinton
The U.S. Constitution
American Cities
Hilary Clinton
Though the Dumb & Mean’s capacity for hatred is endless, apparently it is not tireless.
Like a vicious, retarded, pit bull who has been throwing itself frenziedly against the bars of its cage in a prolonged tantrum of pure, senseless rage for weeks, these idiot fuckers appear to be spent at last. They now lay on the floor, panting and covered with their own stinking slobber, stupefied by exhaustion. So they’re neutralized for a while at least.
So to sum it up --- if anything could be called summing it up after 1,700 words --- yeah, despite my pessimistic, humanity-hating, leanings I believe that Obama does actually have a shot. Not a lock, like some people are saying. But a shot.
After all, the fbomber only knows two sure things about politics.
1. Democrats can only win the Presidency after the Republicans royally shit the bed.
2. Republicans always, always, always shit the bed.
---
*I have tried. Really.
** Even the most vitriolic Obama Hater-ade slinger has to acknowledge that the man is fucking unflappable under pressure. He’s calmly, cold-bloodedly, and precisely sprinted a high-wire from Illinois State Rep to Democratic Presidential candidate --- under intense fire from all sides --- without a stumble, misstep or loss of composure. Cucumber doesn’t even touch it. Other side of pillow isn’t even close. Ice is feverish by comparison. Dude is cooler than the lakes of liquid ammonia on Saturn’s moon, Titan. That’s 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, sucka.
Generally, this stance of expecting the absolute worst foreseeable disaster --- immediately followed by an even more terrible and unforeseeable catastrophe --- has paid off.
Because of this pessimistic mindset, despite all the twists and turns this great nation has made as it determinedly burrows ever deeper into the shit, the fbomber has often been surprised --- but rarely disappointed.
After all, the fbomber believes that no matter how gross and systemic the American people’s flaws may be, they will at least be consistent. No matter what, they will always let him down.
But lately, the fbomber has felt the tiny flutterings of a long-lost and presumed-dead emotion inside the empty, dusty ribcage that once housed his live and beating heart. That emotion? Hope.
This emotion was most recently felt while listening to Barack Obama speaking on National Public Radio. Though congenitally immune from Obamamania*, the fbomber noted that at the very least Obama does not sound like an intolerable prick when he speaks. To the contrary, in fact. He actually sounds smart, thoughtful and even --- dare I say it? --- cool.** It shows how expectations have fallen when someone becomes giddily excited at the prospect of a President who is, at minimum, not a total tool. But there it is.
This fluttering grew into a veritable flapping when the fbomber considered that Obama might actually have a chance to get elected this year. Though the fbomber firmly believes that the Democrats can never win an election, he knows that from time to time the Republicans can lose one. And that this year might be one of those times.
Political Party is Not a Choice
The fbomber believes that political party affiliation is not a product of intellectual choice, or a product of environment, or indoctrination or any other exogenous factor. It is an internally generated expression of the way that people view the world. And that the way people view the world is a result of hard-wired psychological tendencies.
Think about it. Could any of you reading conceivably vote for the other party? According to my theory, about 75% of people reading this could not. That's because you just ARE Liberal/Democratic or Conservative/Republican because of the way your brain works from birth.
The fbomber did not come up with this theory on his own. He read something like it in a book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff. Then he perverted and twisted it to fit his own misanthropic mindset, aided in large part by his complete lack of training in psychology, sociology, statistics or anything else, for that matter.
To the fbomber, the division between Republicans and Democrats is a function of where they fall on one specific, particular line of attitude. This line measures how they view their relations between themselves and other people.
At one end, someone sees himself as part of a community, with a strong and complex web of responsibilities to everyone in that community. At the other end of the line, someone sees himself as essentially autonomous, in competition with every other person and with no responsibilities towards them --- unless that person explicitly chooses to take on those responsibilities.
These two mindsets have been described in various ways:
Left vs. Right
Hippy vs. Nazi
Magnanimous vs. Selfish
Community vs. Individual
We vs. Me
Pussy vs. Dick
Share vs. Hoard
Nurturing Family vs. Strict Family
Mommy vs. Daddy
For the purposes of this essay, the fbomber will call this line the Nice vs. Mean line.
Assuming a bell-curve distribution, very few people will fall at the extreme ends of this line. Most will be in the center, with half nicer than average, and half meaner. Because of its let’s-share-the-wealth, lets-help-one-another, let’s-get-along, your-hair-looks-very-nice values, the Democratic party is the natural home of the nicer half.
Conversely, due to its leave-me-alone, this-money-is-mine, fuck-the-world, do-what-I-tell-you, look-how-big-my-gun-is values, the Republican party is the natural home of the meaner half.
At the same time, there is another line measuring intelligence, also split into the smarter-than-average and dumber-than-average halves.
So we can draw up a graph to represent the total electorate.
Republicans naturally make up the Smart & Mean, and Dumb & Mean quarters. And they are locked in there tighter than Mark Foley's eyeballs onto an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
The Smart & Mean quadrant ARE the Republican party, the rich, white shareholder and CEO class. The Dumb & Mean quadrant --- the Rednecks, the Evangelicals, the NASCAR fans, the Chickenhawks supporting a war they won't fight --- are equally locked in. They are the Smart & Mean people’s loyal foot-soldiers, held in thrall to the prospect of becoming like the Smart & Mean guys some lucky day if they do enough dirty work to earn that promotion.
Democrats naturally get the Smart & Nice quadrant. The well-educated, the artists, the creatives, the wordy, egghead types. The bourgeouis bohemians. The latte liberals. The Jews. The Volvo drivers. The women. The students. Hollywood.
The Nice & Stupid quadrant? They should be Democrats. But they are not.
Those are the Swing Voters.
How else could you describe the kind of person that looks at Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush or Obama vs. McCain and says “I don’t know… I can’t make up my mind… they both seem a lot alike to me”?
These are the people too stupid to realize the difference between a failed cokehead oil executive and a Nobel Prize winner. Or too nice to come out and admit that one of the candidates is a huge asshole and the other is --- at worst --- a medium-sized asshole.
Why Republicans Win, Unless They Lose
In a normal election, the Republicans handily win because they have their half of the electorate and can trick enough Nice & Stupid voters come in at over 50.1% And in normal circumstances, it is easy. For starters, the Smart & Mean people have the most money, plus the rabid shock troops of the Dumb & Mean (aka the Fox News audience) to do it with.
Most of all, the people they are targeting, are --- after all --- Nice & Stupid. Stupid enough to believe that giving the top .001% of the economic elite tax breaks will pump up their Wal-Mart cashier paychecks. Stupid enough to believe that John Kerry is backed by Al Queda. Nice enough to want to stop sweet innocent blastocysts and coma victims from being murdered by those evil, evil doctors.
Here’s the kicker. The Republicans don’t even have to convince the Nice & Stupid crowd to vote Republican. That’s a bonus, but all they really have to do to win is to confuse them enough to keep them from voting at all. That’s what the Swift-Boating and other dirty, last-minute personal attacks are good for. To get the Nice & Stupid crew to throw their hands up and say “Gosh almighty! They’re BOTH awful! Is ‘Idol on?’”
On the other hand, the Democrats can never win an election outright, because the Democrat’s natural, guaranteed constituency is only 25% of the electorate and they have to split their other 25% with the Republicans.
Why This Year is Different
To win, the Democrats have to get all the Nice & Smart voters, hold onto the Nice & Dumb voters and hope that something prevents the Smart & Mean and Dumb & Mean people from voting Republican in maximum numbers.
Well, that could be happening this year.
Assuming the Smart & Nice crowd maxes out support for Obama and the Democrats, three fatigue factors should keep the other three quadrants from turning out in support of McCain and the Republicans.
1. Failure Fatigue.
As pointed out elsewhere, the Republican’s policies have been such an abject failure that even the stupidest person cannot sign up for more of them. This should minimize Republican poaching of the Stupid & Nice quadrant.
2. Gluttony Fatigue
After eight years of unrestrained bingeing, the Smart & Mean quadrant should be well and truly glutted with undeserved riches at this point. Glutted, apparently, to the point of immobility this election.
The tax cuts have given the richest Americans an extra couple hundreds of billions into their already-bulging pockets over the last seven years. An orgy of spending increases and misguided policy choices by the Republican-controlled government has handed the well-connected Smart & Mean crowd --- think defense contractors and energy companies --- yet more trillions of U.S. citizens’ cash.
After all this engorgement, these folks just don’t have the hunger for power that they did back in 1999 and 2000. They are ready to take a bit of a nap to digest their meal, like a boa constrictor just back from a good grazing session at the local pre-school. Consequently, they look to be sitting out this political fight and holing up in Palm Beach, La Jolla and Jackson Hole with their trophy wives and ungrateful children for a couple of years.
And why shouldn’t they kick back? After all, they’ve already done the fun part. They ran into a clean, well-stocked store in 2001 and proceeded to ransack and loot it for the last seven years. Now the shelves are all bare and there are broken dreams all over the floor. It’s time for them to go home and let the suckers who work for minimum wage come in and sweep up, repair the damage, and restock the shelves in preparation for 2012 or 2016’s smash-and-grab raid.
Proof of the Smart & Meanie’s absence this year can be seen in the inept and bumbling McCain campaign. Where are Rove and the other evil ninjas? Where are W’s “Rangers” ponying up $250k apiece for the campaign? Not in McCain’s bus, that’s for sure. The true, stone-cold pimps have made themselves scarce this go-round, putting the B-team in charge, with obvious results.
3. Hatred Fatigue.
Just since 2000, the Dumb & Mean quadrant has engaged in a ferocious and endless campaign of slavering, foaming, raging hatred at a dizzying variety of targets, including, but not limited to:
Bill Clinton
Blow Jobs
Hilary Clinton
International Law
Al Gore
Reality
Gays
Liberals
The French
Habeas Corpus
Islam
Immigrants
Brown-skinned people, generally
Education
Hilary Clinton
The U.N.
Charles Darwin
Federal Judges
Dan Rather
The Geneva Convention
Science
Doctors
Separation of Church and State
John Kerry
The Truth
Hilary Clinton
The U.S. Constitution
American Cities
Hilary Clinton
Though the Dumb & Mean’s capacity for hatred is endless, apparently it is not tireless.
Like a vicious, retarded, pit bull who has been throwing itself frenziedly against the bars of its cage in a prolonged tantrum of pure, senseless rage for weeks, these idiot fuckers appear to be spent at last. They now lay on the floor, panting and covered with their own stinking slobber, stupefied by exhaustion. So they’re neutralized for a while at least.
So to sum it up --- if anything could be called summing it up after 1,700 words --- yeah, despite my pessimistic, humanity-hating, leanings I believe that Obama does actually have a shot. Not a lock, like some people are saying. But a shot.
After all, the fbomber only knows two sure things about politics.
1. Democrats can only win the Presidency after the Republicans royally shit the bed.
2. Republicans always, always, always shit the bed.
---
*I have tried. Really.
** Even the most vitriolic Obama Hater-ade slinger has to acknowledge that the man is fucking unflappable under pressure. He’s calmly, cold-bloodedly, and precisely sprinted a high-wire from Illinois State Rep to Democratic Presidential candidate --- under intense fire from all sides --- without a stumble, misstep or loss of composure. Cucumber doesn’t even touch it. Other side of pillow isn’t even close. Ice is feverish by comparison. Dude is cooler than the lakes of liquid ammonia on Saturn’s moon, Titan. That’s 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, sucka.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Goodbye - Finally - To All That
No matter who* is elected this November, the fbomber is gratified to see that some of the worst elements of the Bush-Cheney Era will at long last be left behind, consigned to the same dustbin of history where America’s manufacturing base, international goodwill and military capacity now decompose.
Looking at America’s current economic and military disaster, many might view the last seven years as a complete debacle. But the fbomber --- ever a toilet-half-flushed kind of person --- prefers to find the positive aspects of this period of unfettered Republican rule.
To the fbomber, the years between 2000-2008 are valuable as a sort of social experiment in what happens when conservatives are allowed to exert their influence on this country, with Washington D.C. serving as a cross between a laboratory and the adult-less island in “Lord of the Flies.”
The ensuing disaster appears to have made an impression on even the most dull-witted and complacent members of America’s clueless citizenry. Just as even the stupidest cows eventually learn to avoid touching the electric fence, it looks like America’s cow-people are learning to avoid some specific, telltale signs of the most harmful strand of conservatism.
If the two remaining candidates of Barrack Obama and John McCain are any indicator of the preferences of the majority of voting Americans, both Democrat and Republican, the following elements of Republicanism are --- at least temporarily --- out of favor.
1. Crazy Christianity.
Unlike Bush, who practically billed himself as Yahweh’s running mate, neither John McCain nor Barrack Obama falls into creationist, speaking-in-tongues, praying-out-loud-at-Cracker-Barrel camp. And for that, we can all be grateful to the deity of our choice. Because - in my experience - any time someone is “born again,” the second birthing tends to result in massive brain damage.
Hopefully, this means that God has lost interest in interfering in U.S. political races and will now concentrate on the things He is best at: earthquakes, hurricanes and killing babies with malaria.
2. Corporate Executives Writing Legislation Affecting Their Industry.
In 2001, Cheney secretly invited the heads of America’s biggest oil companies to come set America’s energy policy. A policy that unsurprisingly included lots of subsidies and tax breaks, but little conservation or environmental regulation. Over the next seven years, America consumers paid record prices for gasoline while these oil companies posted record profits and air, water and land pollution increased.
In an equally shocking development, Bush’s decision to place Lindsey Lohan in charge of America’s strategic pharmaceutical-grade cocaine stockpile didn’t turn out well either.
3. A Foreign Policy Based on the Philosophy of the Cobra Kai Karate School.
4. Teetotaling.
George W. Bush has effectively ruined Presidential aspirations for sober people, forever. At this point, I think America might finally realize that if someone is compulsively driven to drink and drug themselves to the brink of death three times a week, they probably have a design flaw too severe to fix by just laying off the sauce. Tough luck there, Robert Downey Jr.
5. Visibly Evil People in the White House.
Unless the malignant spirit inhabiting Dick Cheney’s body can pass from host to host like the demon in “Fallen,” it seems unlikely that we will ever have anyone quite as malevolently destructive in the Executive Branch ever again. Though, again, in the spirit of looking for the positive side of things, I will point out that Cheney’s insatiable thirst for fresh blood has virtually eliminated metropolitan D.C.’s population of stray cats.
6. Incompetence + Arrogance.
Obama may be arrogant, but at least he is able to do things, and even do some of them exceptionally well. McCain is clearly incompetent**, but is at least humble about it, cheerfully admitting that he knows nothing about a confusing little subject called economics as he makes his bid to head up the largest economy in the world.
7. Stubbornness In the Face of Contradictory Facts.
Both Obama and McCain have flip-flopped, backtracked, reversed course and changed their message as events, goals and circumstances warranted. Compared to President One-Track-Mind, this is a Very Good Thing.
8. Republicanism Itself.
In 2001, the Republicans had everything that they could possibly want:
Complete control over the Legislative and Executive Branches.
A healthy economy.
A balanced budget.
A legitimately scary, dark-skinned enemy to whip up fear about.
A gay male hooker in the White House Press Corps.
The ball was finally, indubitably, irrefutably in their court to do with whatever they wanted. And they did, starting wars, ignoring civil rights, mocking international law, reducing taxes, increasing spending, and every other thing on their eight-years-in-the-writing To Do List.
Seven years later, we’re mired in two losing wars, our national honor has been lost, the deficit is enormous, the jobless rate is rising, the dollar is worthless, gasoline and food prices are spiraling upward, and vast portions of our economy are rotting, smoldering carcasses.
The experiment is over. The results are in. Republicans suck. Not just in the relative privacy of airport restrooms either. Every place. In every way. Morally. Ethically. Economically. Fiscally. Administratively. Personally. Militarily. Spiritually. Even physically. Just try to imagine a nude GOP convention, if you ever want to semi-permanently quash your sex drive.
Even the Republicans finally realize how repugnant they are, like a drunkard slowly coming to consciousness and realizing that the bad smell that's been giving him nightmares is coming from his own soiled underwear. That’s why they nominated someone who has --- superficially and sporadically --- butted heads with the Republican Party during his political career.
Again, this is a Very Good Thing. Let’s enjoy this repugnance while it lasts. Which if history is any indicator, should be about three years, maybe seven.
-----
*Of course it’s going to be McCain. Quit kidding yourself. He’s white, and this is a nation that didn’t even like Muhammad Ali until he couldn’t freaking talk anymore.
** Someone much more cynical and disrespectful than the fbomber might say that McCain was by his own admission a horrible student, obviously a substandard pilot, and no great shakes as a Senator. This person might go on to make the argument that McCain’s high water mark of personal achievement was as a captive prisoner in a losing war. But the fbomber would not go that far.
Looking at America’s current economic and military disaster, many might view the last seven years as a complete debacle. But the fbomber --- ever a toilet-half-flushed kind of person --- prefers to find the positive aspects of this period of unfettered Republican rule.
To the fbomber, the years between 2000-2008 are valuable as a sort of social experiment in what happens when conservatives are allowed to exert their influence on this country, with Washington D.C. serving as a cross between a laboratory and the adult-less island in “Lord of the Flies.”
The ensuing disaster appears to have made an impression on even the most dull-witted and complacent members of America’s clueless citizenry. Just as even the stupidest cows eventually learn to avoid touching the electric fence, it looks like America’s cow-people are learning to avoid some specific, telltale signs of the most harmful strand of conservatism.
If the two remaining candidates of Barrack Obama and John McCain are any indicator of the preferences of the majority of voting Americans, both Democrat and Republican, the following elements of Republicanism are --- at least temporarily --- out of favor.
1. Crazy Christianity.
Unlike Bush, who practically billed himself as Yahweh’s running mate, neither John McCain nor Barrack Obama falls into creationist, speaking-in-tongues, praying-out-loud-at-Cracker-Barrel camp. And for that, we can all be grateful to the deity of our choice. Because - in my experience - any time someone is “born again,” the second birthing tends to result in massive brain damage.
Hopefully, this means that God has lost interest in interfering in U.S. political races and will now concentrate on the things He is best at: earthquakes, hurricanes and killing babies with malaria.
2. Corporate Executives Writing Legislation Affecting Their Industry.
In 2001, Cheney secretly invited the heads of America’s biggest oil companies to come set America’s energy policy. A policy that unsurprisingly included lots of subsidies and tax breaks, but little conservation or environmental regulation. Over the next seven years, America consumers paid record prices for gasoline while these oil companies posted record profits and air, water and land pollution increased.
In an equally shocking development, Bush’s decision to place Lindsey Lohan in charge of America’s strategic pharmaceutical-grade cocaine stockpile didn’t turn out well either.
3. A Foreign Policy Based on the Philosophy of the Cobra Kai Karate School.
4. Teetotaling.
George W. Bush has effectively ruined Presidential aspirations for sober people, forever. At this point, I think America might finally realize that if someone is compulsively driven to drink and drug themselves to the brink of death three times a week, they probably have a design flaw too severe to fix by just laying off the sauce. Tough luck there, Robert Downey Jr.
5. Visibly Evil People in the White House.
Unless the malignant spirit inhabiting Dick Cheney’s body can pass from host to host like the demon in “Fallen,” it seems unlikely that we will ever have anyone quite as malevolently destructive in the Executive Branch ever again. Though, again, in the spirit of looking for the positive side of things, I will point out that Cheney’s insatiable thirst for fresh blood has virtually eliminated metropolitan D.C.’s population of stray cats.
6. Incompetence + Arrogance.
Obama may be arrogant, but at least he is able to do things, and even do some of them exceptionally well. McCain is clearly incompetent**, but is at least humble about it, cheerfully admitting that he knows nothing about a confusing little subject called economics as he makes his bid to head up the largest economy in the world.
7. Stubbornness In the Face of Contradictory Facts.
Both Obama and McCain have flip-flopped, backtracked, reversed course and changed their message as events, goals and circumstances warranted. Compared to President One-Track-Mind, this is a Very Good Thing.
8. Republicanism Itself.
In 2001, the Republicans had everything that they could possibly want:
Complete control over the Legislative and Executive Branches.
A healthy economy.
A balanced budget.
A legitimately scary, dark-skinned enemy to whip up fear about.
A gay male hooker in the White House Press Corps.
The ball was finally, indubitably, irrefutably in their court to do with whatever they wanted. And they did, starting wars, ignoring civil rights, mocking international law, reducing taxes, increasing spending, and every other thing on their eight-years-in-the-writing To Do List.
Seven years later, we’re mired in two losing wars, our national honor has been lost, the deficit is enormous, the jobless rate is rising, the dollar is worthless, gasoline and food prices are spiraling upward, and vast portions of our economy are rotting, smoldering carcasses.
The experiment is over. The results are in. Republicans suck. Not just in the relative privacy of airport restrooms either. Every place. In every way. Morally. Ethically. Economically. Fiscally. Administratively. Personally. Militarily. Spiritually. Even physically. Just try to imagine a nude GOP convention, if you ever want to semi-permanently quash your sex drive.
Even the Republicans finally realize how repugnant they are, like a drunkard slowly coming to consciousness and realizing that the bad smell that's been giving him nightmares is coming from his own soiled underwear. That’s why they nominated someone who has --- superficially and sporadically --- butted heads with the Republican Party during his political career.
Again, this is a Very Good Thing. Let’s enjoy this repugnance while it lasts. Which if history is any indicator, should be about three years, maybe seven.
-----
*Of course it’s going to be McCain. Quit kidding yourself. He’s white, and this is a nation that didn’t even like Muhammad Ali until he couldn’t freaking talk anymore.
** Someone much more cynical and disrespectful than the fbomber might say that McCain was by his own admission a horrible student, obviously a substandard pilot, and no great shakes as a Senator. This person might go on to make the argument that McCain’s high water mark of personal achievement was as a captive prisoner in a losing war. But the fbomber would not go that far.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
O-Bob-ma?
There's been something catching my eye about the ubiquitous (in certain parts of L.A. at least) posters of Obama.
Something about Obama's faraway gaze, his prominent cheekbones, the tilt of his head.
It all seemed familiar to me, like I had seen something like it before.
I've figured it out now.
I spent the mid-nineties trying to purge my brain of its college education in a runaway teen/aging hippy locus neighborhood called Ocean Beach in San Diego.
If there was one thing that stoned skaters and pathetic former flower children can agree on, it is the genius of Mr. Robert Marley, Reggae Superstar. Consequently, just about every house in the neighborhood had a poster of the musical legend on one of its filthy, smoke-cured walls.
Usually, this one right here:
Compare to the current favorite wall decoration of 2008's starry-eyed dreamers, flipped to match head tilt:
Uncanny, no? But brilliant in a way, too. After all, Bob Marley is a figure who rose to prominence during Obama's youth and has become a lasting inspiration for multiple following generations due to his talent and ideals.
I suppose that John McCain will now have to fight back with a campaign poster that echoes an iconic figure from his formative era.
May I suggest this guy?
Something about Obama's faraway gaze, his prominent cheekbones, the tilt of his head.
It all seemed familiar to me, like I had seen something like it before.
I've figured it out now.
I spent the mid-nineties trying to purge my brain of its college education in a runaway teen/aging hippy locus neighborhood called Ocean Beach in San Diego.
If there was one thing that stoned skaters and pathetic former flower children can agree on, it is the genius of Mr. Robert Marley, Reggae Superstar. Consequently, just about every house in the neighborhood had a poster of the musical legend on one of its filthy, smoke-cured walls.
Usually, this one right here:
Compare to the current favorite wall decoration of 2008's starry-eyed dreamers, flipped to match head tilt:
Uncanny, no? But brilliant in a way, too. After all, Bob Marley is a figure who rose to prominence during Obama's youth and has become a lasting inspiration for multiple following generations due to his talent and ideals.
I suppose that John McCain will now have to fight back with a campaign poster that echoes an iconic figure from his formative era.
May I suggest this guy?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Obama elitist? I think not.
Obama recently made the mistake of treating Americans like they are adults, capable of hearing the truth, and said that decades of politicians refusing to address the economic issues affecting postindustrial communities had made the rural Pennsylvanians “bitter.”
Hillary and McCain’s campaigns immediately seized upon this statement to wax indignant about how Obama is “elitist,” “arrogant” and “condescending” to the average Americans. As if either one of those two fakers has come within body-odor-sniffing distance of an average American in the last 36 months without a full phalanx of cameramen on hand to capture the event for CNN.
Now I’m by no means an Obama supporter, but I would at least like to see the guy get criticized for the right things. And being “elitist” about rural Americans isn’t one of them.
I know that because I am myself a true and unrepentant elitist.
This might seem counterintuitive, considering that I don’t work and I live on a filthy boat. But I believe that cements my true elitism credentials.
Any condescending dick can feel superior while staring at the glittering city lights from his penthouse apartment after a hard day of hedge fund managing. But anyone that can simultaneously preserve an unbridled contempt for America’s rural working class while having to use a public shower has truly earned his stuck-up stripes.
Speaking as such an individual, I would never say that I think that rural Pennsylvanians are “bitter.”
First off, I’d say that I never actually bother to think about them at all. And that when I do, it is with a mixture of repugnance, contempt and the kind of fleeting pity that I feel watching a cockroach get flushed down a toilet.
I drove through that state once, and saw these rural areas in question --- a region that I would characterize as Arkansas, plus heavy industry, minus heavy industry.
To my mind, any ambulatory adult who would willingly choose to inhabit such a dreary, interminable, monotonous shit-plain of ticky-tacky houses, shuttered factories and Applebee’s-infested strip malls deserves whatever heaping helping of misery their life hands them. Case closed.
But in my more charitable moments, I find their adherence to a hardscrabble blue-collar ethic long after the blue-collar jobs have been shipped to Asian sweatshops pathetically touching. Kind of like the delusions of Texans who sincerely believe, to the tips of their ostrich-skin boots, that they are real live cowboys while commuting to their job at the Dr. Pepper bottling plant.
If pressed, I would say that I wish that these rural Pennsylvanians would develop the intellectual capacity to stop electing the fascistic plutocrats who chant the voters’ favorite superstition platitudes to them as a soporific to facilitate the plutocrats’ systematic pauperization of the American middle class for corporate profit.
Alternatively, I wish that these individuals would develop the courage to leave the soul-killing patch of sooty, quasi-urbanized slum-rot that their family has festered in a full generation after the economic viability of the region has vanished. Just leave and disperse throughout the nation, like a fart spreading into a room until you can’t smell it anymore.
But if they can’t do either, I simply wish that they would die.
Die as quickly as possible and in a way that highlights the cretinous values that these losers have created for themselves in the absence of intellectual, spiritual, artistic or social attainments.
I wish their sons would break their backs copying moves they watched on backyardwrestling.com. I wish their daughters would catch the AIDS that an abstinence-only sex education never taught them to prevent. I wish the fathers’ hearts would explode from the daily intake of pure hog offal, honeycombed with visible crystals of sodium nitrate, that those voracious garbage-eaters refer to as “Scrapple.”
What’s more, I wish that all these calamities would all happen on the same day.
I wish the mom would have to load her suffering brood into the gargantuan, gas-guzzling SUV that the family’s obesity, bad taste and unreturned loyalty to American auto manufacturers inspired them to buy. And on the way to the hospital --- which, by the way, only practices the strange, backward kind of medicine which a curriculum of Intelligent Design permits --- that family’s stupendous fat-weight would cause the tires, purchased cheaply at the local Wal-Mart, to burst at their Chinese-slave-labor-created seams. And their hideous car would overturn and strew the entire family’s bloated, lifeless corpses across that state’s poorly-maintained highways.
Lastly, I wish that I would happen to be driving my well-designed, reliable imported car through Pennsylvania on this very same day, perhaps shuttling between music festivals and book-reading events in the state’s two habitable urban oases of Philadelphia and Pittsburg.
As I drive past the roadside carnage, I would slow down for an instant to toss the tepid dregs of that day’s third half-caff soy latte on their fat, ugly, pathetic carcasses.
Then I would accelerate briskly, leaving their rotting corpses in my dust like so much blubbery road-kill, an NPR podcast of “Fresh Air” blasting out all four open windows.
---
There? See the difference? That’s what true elitism looks like. I didn't use the word "bitter" once. Give Obama a break.
Hillary and McCain’s campaigns immediately seized upon this statement to wax indignant about how Obama is “elitist,” “arrogant” and “condescending” to the average Americans. As if either one of those two fakers has come within body-odor-sniffing distance of an average American in the last 36 months without a full phalanx of cameramen on hand to capture the event for CNN.
Now I’m by no means an Obama supporter, but I would at least like to see the guy get criticized for the right things. And being “elitist” about rural Americans isn’t one of them.
I know that because I am myself a true and unrepentant elitist.
This might seem counterintuitive, considering that I don’t work and I live on a filthy boat. But I believe that cements my true elitism credentials.
Any condescending dick can feel superior while staring at the glittering city lights from his penthouse apartment after a hard day of hedge fund managing. But anyone that can simultaneously preserve an unbridled contempt for America’s rural working class while having to use a public shower has truly earned his stuck-up stripes.
Speaking as such an individual, I would never say that I think that rural Pennsylvanians are “bitter.”
First off, I’d say that I never actually bother to think about them at all. And that when I do, it is with a mixture of repugnance, contempt and the kind of fleeting pity that I feel watching a cockroach get flushed down a toilet.
I drove through that state once, and saw these rural areas in question --- a region that I would characterize as Arkansas, plus heavy industry, minus heavy industry.
To my mind, any ambulatory adult who would willingly choose to inhabit such a dreary, interminable, monotonous shit-plain of ticky-tacky houses, shuttered factories and Applebee’s-infested strip malls deserves whatever heaping helping of misery their life hands them. Case closed.
But in my more charitable moments, I find their adherence to a hardscrabble blue-collar ethic long after the blue-collar jobs have been shipped to Asian sweatshops pathetically touching. Kind of like the delusions of Texans who sincerely believe, to the tips of their ostrich-skin boots, that they are real live cowboys while commuting to their job at the Dr. Pepper bottling plant.
If pressed, I would say that I wish that these rural Pennsylvanians would develop the intellectual capacity to stop electing the fascistic plutocrats who chant the voters’ favorite superstition platitudes to them as a soporific to facilitate the plutocrats’ systematic pauperization of the American middle class for corporate profit.
Alternatively, I wish that these individuals would develop the courage to leave the soul-killing patch of sooty, quasi-urbanized slum-rot that their family has festered in a full generation after the economic viability of the region has vanished. Just leave and disperse throughout the nation, like a fart spreading into a room until you can’t smell it anymore.
But if they can’t do either, I simply wish that they would die.
Die as quickly as possible and in a way that highlights the cretinous values that these losers have created for themselves in the absence of intellectual, spiritual, artistic or social attainments.
I wish their sons would break their backs copying moves they watched on backyardwrestling.com. I wish their daughters would catch the AIDS that an abstinence-only sex education never taught them to prevent. I wish the fathers’ hearts would explode from the daily intake of pure hog offal, honeycombed with visible crystals of sodium nitrate, that those voracious garbage-eaters refer to as “Scrapple.”
What’s more, I wish that all these calamities would all happen on the same day.
I wish the mom would have to load her suffering brood into the gargantuan, gas-guzzling SUV that the family’s obesity, bad taste and unreturned loyalty to American auto manufacturers inspired them to buy. And on the way to the hospital --- which, by the way, only practices the strange, backward kind of medicine which a curriculum of Intelligent Design permits --- that family’s stupendous fat-weight would cause the tires, purchased cheaply at the local Wal-Mart, to burst at their Chinese-slave-labor-created seams. And their hideous car would overturn and strew the entire family’s bloated, lifeless corpses across that state’s poorly-maintained highways.
Lastly, I wish that I would happen to be driving my well-designed, reliable imported car through Pennsylvania on this very same day, perhaps shuttling between music festivals and book-reading events in the state’s two habitable urban oases of Philadelphia and Pittsburg.
As I drive past the roadside carnage, I would slow down for an instant to toss the tepid dregs of that day’s third half-caff soy latte on their fat, ugly, pathetic carcasses.
Then I would accelerate briskly, leaving their rotting corpses in my dust like so much blubbery road-kill, an NPR podcast of “Fresh Air” blasting out all four open windows.
---
There? See the difference? That’s what true elitism looks like. I didn't use the word "bitter" once. Give Obama a break.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Spitzer Stupid? No, just horny. There is a difference.
Let the moral tsk-tsking begin.
Oh my god! Some guy wanted to fuck someone besides his wife! And took steps to do just that, to fuck some younger, hotter, sexier woman. How horrible! Clearly this person is not capable of having a position of power or trust. Because God knows, nobody who ever meets their responsibilities and does what they are supposed to do professionally would ever fuck a prostitute.
Only lowlife fuckups would do that.
Oh wait, these prostitutes cost $4,000-plus. That's kind of steep for the average low-life fuckup. So I'm betting that there were some pretty highly accomplished johns calling the Emperor's VIP Club. Furthermore, I'm betting that they were all married.
After all, if a single guy is willing to drop $4k to bust a load, he's going to make it a lot more fun than some sort of scurrying little tryst in the Mayflower Hotel.
My take on this? First, you know that it was a Democrat getting busted because the hooker was female.
Second. This doesn't bother me that much about Eliot. If anything, I feel sorry for him.
I know, and any man who is honest will know what it's like to fuck the same fucking person over and over and over. It's a deadening, depressing, dream-killing, miserable kind of torture. First, sheer repetition takes the thing that you used to love doing and turns it into a fucking chore that you can frankly take or leave after about round, oh, 300 or so.
I mean, honestly, as much as you might love steak, you're going to get sick of it if that's all that you're ever allowed to eat. And let's not forget, to mix bovine metaphors here, that women are like milk to a man's wine... spoiling into chunky curds (typically on the ass and thighs) over the course of time's inexorable march.
Secondly --- and here's the real ironic twist that proves again what a perversely evil genius God is --- the less you actually want to fuck that same, aging person over and over THE MORE FUCKING WORK IT TAKES TO ACTUALLY DO IT.
Yeah, do you think that you're the only one that's bored with the same bits of sweat-soaked genitalia? Think again! So is she! Bored bored bored. Bored pissless! Also, long, long past the point of being impressed by you anymore. You know how she used to think that you were funny and smart and sexy. Well, she's heard all your fucking stories by now, twenty times plus. She's seen you walk around the house looking for the keys IN YOUR GODDAMNED HAND, Mr. Genius. Also washed about a thousand pairs of your underwear with skid marks in the seat that look like they were drawn in with a brown magic marker.
And don't forget that she's squeezed a couple of human beings out of that same vagina, too, acts that not only stretched it well past its optimal penile-rubbing dimensions but also instantaneously moved you from center stage in her set of priorities to somewhere up by the concession stand.
To recap: She's tired, she's sick of you, she's a MOM now. And you're coming at her with that dick of yours? It's all she can do to avoid throwing that hot cup of chamomille tea by the bedstand on your cock to make it go away. So to get in that only marginally desirable pussy you are going to have to beg and cajole and butter her up more than you EVER did when she was young and hot and genuinely fuckable.
How's that for hilarious? Let's really amp the fun up. You, being the wine to her milk, are actually more desirable than ever. Sure, you've lost some physical allure, but have more than compensated by your gravitas, stature, demeanor and other fancy words for MONEY. Yeah, you're rich and powerful and have hot young little gold-diggers and advancement-seekers in short skirts giving you sultry glances all the ding-dong day! Who are a thousand, million times hotter than this mother of your children, the one who is trying to feign sleep to get out of giving you a simple, basic, ordinary missionary-style fuck right now.
And we act surprised, shocked, when some married guy with something on the ball runs screaming and erect into the nearest brothel?
I mean, fuck, when you've got to get that dick into something besides the old, flabby, disinterested, enormous, dry, contemptuous vagina you are married to, hookers are about the safest bet going. Personally, I'm more of a massage parlor man, but that could just be because I don't have 4 grand lying around in my "bust a nut" account.
I mean, what the fuck else is Eliot Spitzer supposed to do? Have an affair? No, he doesn't want to have another relationship. He just wants to get fucking fucked again for once in his life. Also, he doesn't want people to think he's copycatting Giuliani. Fuck an intern? No, everyone knows what that leads to. Get a Real Doll? Those things develop hygiene problems over time and use. Sheep? Get real. He lives in New York, not Wyoming. Show self restraint? Go golfing? Channel that energy into home repair projects. Fuck that. Some of us want to actually LIVE while we are alive.
No. A hooker is the only way to go. Clean. Attachment free. Safe. Or so Eliot thought. He was almost right too.
Turns out he was just a peripheral casualty in the IRS's quest to squeeze their full due out of this prostitution ring. The Feds weren't even after the johns the whole time, just the money.
Poor bastard.
Oh my god! Some guy wanted to fuck someone besides his wife! And took steps to do just that, to fuck some younger, hotter, sexier woman. How horrible! Clearly this person is not capable of having a position of power or trust. Because God knows, nobody who ever meets their responsibilities and does what they are supposed to do professionally would ever fuck a prostitute.
Only lowlife fuckups would do that.
Oh wait, these prostitutes cost $4,000-plus. That's kind of steep for the average low-life fuckup. So I'm betting that there were some pretty highly accomplished johns calling the Emperor's VIP Club. Furthermore, I'm betting that they were all married.
After all, if a single guy is willing to drop $4k to bust a load, he's going to make it a lot more fun than some sort of scurrying little tryst in the Mayflower Hotel.
My take on this? First, you know that it was a Democrat getting busted because the hooker was female.
Second. This doesn't bother me that much about Eliot. If anything, I feel sorry for him.
I know, and any man who is honest will know what it's like to fuck the same fucking person over and over and over. It's a deadening, depressing, dream-killing, miserable kind of torture. First, sheer repetition takes the thing that you used to love doing and turns it into a fucking chore that you can frankly take or leave after about round, oh, 300 or so.
I mean, honestly, as much as you might love steak, you're going to get sick of it if that's all that you're ever allowed to eat. And let's not forget, to mix bovine metaphors here, that women are like milk to a man's wine... spoiling into chunky curds (typically on the ass and thighs) over the course of time's inexorable march.
Secondly --- and here's the real ironic twist that proves again what a perversely evil genius God is --- the less you actually want to fuck that same, aging person over and over THE MORE FUCKING WORK IT TAKES TO ACTUALLY DO IT.
Yeah, do you think that you're the only one that's bored with the same bits of sweat-soaked genitalia? Think again! So is she! Bored bored bored. Bored pissless! Also, long, long past the point of being impressed by you anymore. You know how she used to think that you were funny and smart and sexy. Well, she's heard all your fucking stories by now, twenty times plus. She's seen you walk around the house looking for the keys IN YOUR GODDAMNED HAND, Mr. Genius. Also washed about a thousand pairs of your underwear with skid marks in the seat that look like they were drawn in with a brown magic marker.
And don't forget that she's squeezed a couple of human beings out of that same vagina, too, acts that not only stretched it well past its optimal penile-rubbing dimensions but also instantaneously moved you from center stage in her set of priorities to somewhere up by the concession stand.
To recap: She's tired, she's sick of you, she's a MOM now. And you're coming at her with that dick of yours? It's all she can do to avoid throwing that hot cup of chamomille tea by the bedstand on your cock to make it go away. So to get in that only marginally desirable pussy you are going to have to beg and cajole and butter her up more than you EVER did when she was young and hot and genuinely fuckable.
How's that for hilarious? Let's really amp the fun up. You, being the wine to her milk, are actually more desirable than ever. Sure, you've lost some physical allure, but have more than compensated by your gravitas, stature, demeanor and other fancy words for MONEY. Yeah, you're rich and powerful and have hot young little gold-diggers and advancement-seekers in short skirts giving you sultry glances all the ding-dong day! Who are a thousand, million times hotter than this mother of your children, the one who is trying to feign sleep to get out of giving you a simple, basic, ordinary missionary-style fuck right now.
And we act surprised, shocked, when some married guy with something on the ball runs screaming and erect into the nearest brothel?
I mean, fuck, when you've got to get that dick into something besides the old, flabby, disinterested, enormous, dry, contemptuous vagina you are married to, hookers are about the safest bet going. Personally, I'm more of a massage parlor man, but that could just be because I don't have 4 grand lying around in my "bust a nut" account.
I mean, what the fuck else is Eliot Spitzer supposed to do? Have an affair? No, he doesn't want to have another relationship. He just wants to get fucking fucked again for once in his life. Also, he doesn't want people to think he's copycatting Giuliani. Fuck an intern? No, everyone knows what that leads to. Get a Real Doll? Those things develop hygiene problems over time and use. Sheep? Get real. He lives in New York, not Wyoming. Show self restraint? Go golfing? Channel that energy into home repair projects. Fuck that. Some of us want to actually LIVE while we are alive.
No. A hooker is the only way to go. Clean. Attachment free. Safe. Or so Eliot thought. He was almost right too.
Turns out he was just a peripheral casualty in the IRS's quest to squeeze their full due out of this prostitution ring. The Feds weren't even after the johns the whole time, just the money.
Poor bastard.
Friday, February 08, 2008
I Heart Flip Floppers
Much has been made lately about candidates' inconstancy of opinions. Ex-candidate Romney, Hilary and McCain have all been lambasted for changing their mind about this or that, accused of not having the courage to stand behind their convictions and even called the dreaded "F" (Flip-Flop) word.
I couldn't be happier.
After 7 years with a president who hasn't changed in mind on ANYTHING, I welcome a wishy-washy, spineless, flapping in the wind, flip-flopper into office.
Convictions are overrated. Look at recent history:
Bill Clinton --- wishy-washy as a sock in a laundromat. Result --- peace, prosperity, budget sanity, love of world.
GW Bush --- resolute, determined, steadfast. Result --- deficits, war, death, hatred from all corners of globe.
I hope the next president can't choose between cheerios and fruit loops without running it past a focus group.
I couldn't be happier.
After 7 years with a president who hasn't changed in mind on ANYTHING, I welcome a wishy-washy, spineless, flapping in the wind, flip-flopper into office.
Convictions are overrated. Look at recent history:
Bill Clinton --- wishy-washy as a sock in a laundromat. Result --- peace, prosperity, budget sanity, love of world.
GW Bush --- resolute, determined, steadfast. Result --- deficits, war, death, hatred from all corners of globe.
I hope the next president can't choose between cheerios and fruit loops without running it past a focus group.
Monday, January 28, 2008
A Final Dem-Fucking?
So Bush had his final State of the Union Address and used it to talk more fear and panic about the economy. Not enough to "expand" the stimulus package like the Democrats say they would like. Because, gosh-darnit, $150 billion pissed away, I mean "rebated" is just exactly the right amount.
But still panicky.
Why all the hubbub? Yeah, it doesn't look particularly good for us right now. But not significantly worse than a month ago, when it was all sunshine and cookies talk from the administration. And this is not a guy who has let reality ever force him to admit anything he didn't want to admit before.
And it's not like he, or anyone who advises him gives a fuck about the people suffering in the economic downturn. The top 1% is doing just fine, thanks, and in fact will use this little downturn to pick up some valuable assets on the cheap.
And he's not running for reelection.
And I think I know what it is. It's those tax cuts. He, or rather his puppetmasters, want those tax cuts to go permanent. Never mind that they've been an economic disaster for everyone but corporations. They're expiring now, and it's his job to stop that.
Screaming about a recession is the easiest way to do it. Nobody thinks it's a good idea to raise taxes during a recession. Even if doing so is necessary to get back into some sort of rational, realistic, balanced-ish budget.
It's like exercise, I guess. Something that is normally good, and necessary, but might need to be skipped when someone is down with the flu or otherwise really sick.
So get ready to hear a lot of squealing and whining about how these tax cuts are about to sunset, and how our economy will be devastated if that happens. And watch our pussy Democratic Congress fall all over themselves to pass legislation to keep them cut for a while longer, maybe even permanently, to avoid having an ad run against them someday saying that they (cue ominous music) "raised taxes during a recession." I've got no doubt that he's capable. This is, after all, not something inconsequential like running the country or delivering services to U.S. taxpayers. This is important. It's helping rich people get and stay richer. Something he, and any Republican, can do in their sleep.
Half a million Iraqi dead, 3,000 U.S. dead. Record Debt.
If Bush can only destroy our ability to ever dig ourselves out of the fiscal hole he's plowed us into, then his legacy will be complete.
But still panicky.
Why all the hubbub? Yeah, it doesn't look particularly good for us right now. But not significantly worse than a month ago, when it was all sunshine and cookies talk from the administration. And this is not a guy who has let reality ever force him to admit anything he didn't want to admit before.
And it's not like he, or anyone who advises him gives a fuck about the people suffering in the economic downturn. The top 1% is doing just fine, thanks, and in fact will use this little downturn to pick up some valuable assets on the cheap.
And he's not running for reelection.
And I think I know what it is. It's those tax cuts. He, or rather his puppetmasters, want those tax cuts to go permanent. Never mind that they've been an economic disaster for everyone but corporations. They're expiring now, and it's his job to stop that.
Screaming about a recession is the easiest way to do it. Nobody thinks it's a good idea to raise taxes during a recession. Even if doing so is necessary to get back into some sort of rational, realistic, balanced-ish budget.
It's like exercise, I guess. Something that is normally good, and necessary, but might need to be skipped when someone is down with the flu or otherwise really sick.
So get ready to hear a lot of squealing and whining about how these tax cuts are about to sunset, and how our economy will be devastated if that happens. And watch our pussy Democratic Congress fall all over themselves to pass legislation to keep them cut for a while longer, maybe even permanently, to avoid having an ad run against them someday saying that they (cue ominous music) "raised taxes during a recession." I've got no doubt that he's capable. This is, after all, not something inconsequential like running the country or delivering services to U.S. taxpayers. This is important. It's helping rich people get and stay richer. Something he, and any Republican, can do in their sleep.
Half a million Iraqi dead, 3,000 U.S. dead. Record Debt.
If Bush can only destroy our ability to ever dig ourselves out of the fiscal hole he's plowed us into, then his legacy will be complete.
Friday, January 25, 2008
More Hatred and Contempt (and economics)
Dadburn those pesky Democrats! Since Preznit Shit-for-Brains caught recession panic and threw away whatever wispy pretendings of fiscal responsibility out of his mumblings (his actions and decisions long ago ceased to contain any) Senator's Reid and Dodd would like to get some tangible national benefits out of the debt-fattening orgy of tax cuts and public spending on the way. So would like to put some infrastructure projects in the mix, the sorts of things that would actually be built here in the USA, employing USA citizens and increase our GDP going forward. Not so fast, say the Republicans.
I find this interesting, and illustrative, in much the same way that falling face first into a pile cat shit interestingly illustrates exactly what what Mr. Whiskers has been eating lately.
The lesson, so far as I get it, is that the Republicans --- addicted as they are to both tax cuts and runaway spending --- have no perceptible problem running our country into greater and greater debt levels, as long as they can state with 100% confidence that no tangible benefit to American citizens is ever produced. Things that go boom, yes. Cash shipments that vanish somewhere in Mesopotamia, sure. Subsidies to companies which pillage our national resources and pollute our environment, hell yeah. Bridges and roads, not so much.
I hate them. I hate them. I hate them more and more every day.
I find this interesting, and illustrative, in much the same way that falling face first into a pile cat shit interestingly illustrates exactly what what Mr. Whiskers has been eating lately.
The lesson, so far as I get it, is that the Republicans --- addicted as they are to both tax cuts and runaway spending --- have no perceptible problem running our country into greater and greater debt levels, as long as they can state with 100% confidence that no tangible benefit to American citizens is ever produced. Things that go boom, yes. Cash shipments that vanish somewhere in Mesopotamia, sure. Subsidies to companies which pillage our national resources and pollute our environment, hell yeah. Bridges and roads, not so much.
I hate them. I hate them. I hate them more and more every day.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
I'm more filled with hate and contempt every day (special economics issue!)
So, apparently as of just last week we are in deep economic shit.
Never mind that every governmental and financial institution nitwit that's been put in front of a camera, microphone or stenographer-slash-journalist the last three years has been assuring us that nope, no looming recession, nothing to worry about with this economy, no sirreebob, just more solid growth for us!
Never mind the facts that ---
A. our investment banks are losing billions because people took out home loans based on income numbers which they pulled from the LOTTO ticket they bought that morning.
B. that foreigners take dollar bills from us and apply them directly to their dirty assholes now, without bothering to stick them in the cash tills because frankly it's not worth the effort these days.
C. that our government spends trillion more than it collects and borrows the difference from a country we periodically lecture and demonize about human rights.
D. That we spend billions of that on weapons and illegal war which in turn result not in further economic growth for our nation but big explosions and increased hatred directed at ourselves.
E. That we as a nation buy way, way more shit from abroad, especially flammable black goo, than other people buy from us. Not least because we (or rather our corporate decisionmakers) have been systematically dismantling our manufacturing plants and shipping them abroad to countries where they won't be bothered with pesky unions, environmental regulations or people who want to earn more than $3 an hour.
F. That we, as individual dipshits, spend more money than we make so we have credit card balances as big or bigger than our savings accounts.
--- these nitwits said, and that message was dutifully passed on to the passive consumers of America.
Only now apparently, we're allowed, no, commanded to start worrying about the economy because it's apparently on a waterslide, greased with melted pigfat, leading straight to a bubbling cauldron of liquified bat guano.
And the only thing that can save us is, according George W. Bush and his dancing monkey Ben Bernanke, tax cuts for businesses, plus $600 cash in hand for everyone to go on out and spend, spend, spend.
But hey! Is giving everyone $600 going to fix A through F? No, it's not. In fact, it's going to make some of those things worse. We'll go further into governmental debt, for one thing, as we both forgo tax income and start handing out those sweet $600 checks.
But who's saying that? Who's calling bullshit on this whole charade? Who's saying "You know what, Georgie? You can keep that $600 bones. Spend it on creating an alternative energy source that would help us avoid both trade deficits and future resource wars, homey. Or enforcing financial regulations that will prevent future greed-and-lie-fuelled market meltdowns. Put it into training people to become employable in the new economy. Buy all our soldiers in Iraq an airline ticket home, business class."
Nobody. Only the fbomber. And who cares what that grumpy fucker says anyway?
Never mind that every governmental and financial institution nitwit that's been put in front of a camera, microphone or stenographer-slash-journalist the last three years has been assuring us that nope, no looming recession, nothing to worry about with this economy, no sirreebob, just more solid growth for us!
Never mind the facts that ---
A. our investment banks are losing billions because people took out home loans based on income numbers which they pulled from the LOTTO ticket they bought that morning.
B. that foreigners take dollar bills from us and apply them directly to their dirty assholes now, without bothering to stick them in the cash tills because frankly it's not worth the effort these days.
C. that our government spends trillion more than it collects and borrows the difference from a country we periodically lecture and demonize about human rights.
D. That we spend billions of that on weapons and illegal war which in turn result not in further economic growth for our nation but big explosions and increased hatred directed at ourselves.
E. That we as a nation buy way, way more shit from abroad, especially flammable black goo, than other people buy from us. Not least because we (or rather our corporate decisionmakers) have been systematically dismantling our manufacturing plants and shipping them abroad to countries where they won't be bothered with pesky unions, environmental regulations or people who want to earn more than $3 an hour.
F. That we, as individual dipshits, spend more money than we make so we have credit card balances as big or bigger than our savings accounts.
--- these nitwits said, and that message was dutifully passed on to the passive consumers of America.
Only now apparently, we're allowed, no, commanded to start worrying about the economy because it's apparently on a waterslide, greased with melted pigfat, leading straight to a bubbling cauldron of liquified bat guano.
And the only thing that can save us is, according George W. Bush and his dancing monkey Ben Bernanke, tax cuts for businesses, plus $600 cash in hand for everyone to go on out and spend, spend, spend.
But hey! Is giving everyone $600 going to fix A through F? No, it's not. In fact, it's going to make some of those things worse. We'll go further into governmental debt, for one thing, as we both forgo tax income and start handing out those sweet $600 checks.
But who's saying that? Who's calling bullshit on this whole charade? Who's saying "You know what, Georgie? You can keep that $600 bones. Spend it on creating an alternative energy source that would help us avoid both trade deficits and future resource wars, homey. Or enforcing financial regulations that will prevent future greed-and-lie-fuelled market meltdowns. Put it into training people to become employable in the new economy. Buy all our soldiers in Iraq an airline ticket home, business class."
Nobody. Only the fbomber. And who cares what that grumpy fucker says anyway?
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