A Thousand Laxatives

Enpon?

2012-01-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Perhaps not, but with the revelation of questionable accounting practices just weeks after the stock went public, the SEC may soon decide that Groupon's got some 'splainin' to do.

We remember Enron. We may not want to. We may not have given it much thought since, oh, say, 2004 or so. But we remember it.

I won't rehash it in it's woeful entirety here. Read Kurt Eichenwald's exceptionally researched chronicle Conspiracy of Lies for a play-by-play of how a misanthropic little shit named Andrew Fastow bilked thousands of people out of billions of dollars using an accounting trick, a method called “mark-to-market,” that, I have to admit, even today I'm still completely incredulous was ever legal. And how his boss, CEO Jeffrey Skilling acted like he had no idea what was going on right under his nose. And how his boss, chairman of the board Kenneth Lay, openly lied to his employees over and over again about the company's health while secretly selling off his shares and then a few years later escaped prosecution and being chased by angry mobs with torches and pitchforks through the streets of Houston by simply having a heart attack and dying. It's a fascinating story of corporate malfeasance that brought down Arthur Andersen, rendered Merrill Lynch stark naked before the SEC, and reached so far throughout the entire American business community that, naturally, no one outside of the of Enron and the aforementioned financial firms was ever taken to task for any of it.

Or, if reading a 700-plus-page book is not convenient for you at the moment, check out a 100-minute movie called Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Based on a book co-authored by Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, who had the temerity to question Enron's godlike status in corporate America back in '01 with an article entitled “Is Enron Overpriced?”, the film, while nowhere near as comprehensive as Eichenwald's book, does give a worthwhile overview of the pondscum in expensive suits who remorselessly destroyed countless lives and shut down electrical grids and shut off dialysis machines throughout California in 2000 while sitting in their air-conditioned skyscraper in Houston, laughing about it and saying, “Fuck em.”

And this all has what to do with Groupon? I'm getting to it.

Like zillions of other bloggers, I caught this evening's segment of 60 Minutes on Groupon and its wunderkind founder/CEO Andrew Mason. It's laudable that he took a clever idea and turned it into a company that employs 10,000 people right here in the U.S., and then turned that into an IPO worth billions. I'm not too proud to say I'm envious of such ingenuity and productivity in a market without a tangible product, and while I'm a bit skeptical of the company's continued success given its seemingly unsustainable business model, I do wish Mr. Mason and his minions well.

But towards the end of the segment, Lesley Stahl changed gears a bit and noted that the company's accounting practices might be viewed by some as a bit suspicious. How else to explain reporting a $60 million revenue in 2010 that, in fact, covered up an actual $420 million loss?

How further to explain such financial reporting in the year prior to Groupon's explosive IPO, when a company's past and potential revenues are absolutely critical elements in determining how the open market will value the newly-issued stock (quite highly, as it turned out, on day one, but not quite as much in the weeks since).

And finally, how to make it clear to investors that such creative accounting is not a harbinger of things to come, only instead of masking a $60 million loss, some disciples of Fastow, Michael Milken or the like might decide they can get away with masking a loss of $60 billion by reporting outsize revenue, profits and growth? After all, it's not like there's anyone in Washington actually protecting the public against such malfeasance and, let's face it, outright fraud. Congressional Republicans will be blocking every nominee for the top post at the newly established (and as yet unnamed) federal consumer protection agency until they can place someone with the impeccable credentials of a Michael Brown. Or until they can make everyone, including the White House, forget that such an agency was ever meant to exist in the first place.

In the world of high finance and crony capitalism, $60 million is not really that much money. Heck, $420 million isn't even that much money. But we've still yet to become so jaded by the endless barrage of corporate fraud anecdotes that we wouldn't consider a $60 billion gain or a $420 billion loss to be pretty darn cataclysmic. Heck, we even managed to balk when Bernie Ebbers initially said he “misplaced” $7.5 billion of WorldCom's money, and that he later had to revise that number upward to roughly $11 billion because of an “oversight.” Or maybe that was just because he threw his wife a birthday party at which giant Statue-of-David ice sculptures pissed high-end French champagne and paid for it out of the company's petty cash account. It's not that we can't forgive a little fraud now and then, but we are concerned about how one specifically misuses the embezzled funds.

Mr. Mason, the latest CEO to be dubbed a maverick and a renegade because he appears to have a sense of humor and doesn't wear a tie to the office, simply claimed that there was no intent. He and his executives were not seeking to do evil with their accounting practices. They are simply young and somewhat naïve, and they made some mistakes in the company's favor, mistakes from which they will surely learn, mistakes they will be careful not to make in the future. Or so we are left to hope.

I admit, an awful lot of people enjoy saving $10 here and $30 there when trying out local businesses and, more with recent developments in Groupon's offerings, saving quite a bit more when traveling to exotic locales. I myself have tried a nearby bakery and have gotten an oil change and a shiatsu massage.

But knowing what I now know, I wonder if these welcome little local savings might someday lead, through a sequence and confluence of events, to another $800 billion national bailout. I wouldn't enjoy that. Things are already pretty tight for me. The job creators aren't creating enough jobs, even with all the tax savings and regulatory variances they received during the Bush years, to ensure that even an old, fat, crusty, technologically-challenged slacker with a journalism degree can find one. So no, such savings would not, in my estimation, be worth enduring billions more in malfeasance an fraud.

Enpon?

No, not yet. And perhaps not ever. But Andy Fastow gets out of prison in 2014. And he may decide to bring his next great idea in financial wizardry to Andrew Mason's door. This time, let's maybe keep our eyes open.

But I repeat myself

2011-04-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Clinton left office with a surplus, not a deficit.

Bush started two wars and never even suggested how to pay for them, nor did he include line items for anything related to them in the budget.

Bush’s unbudgeted wars and his substantial tax cuts on the top 10 percent of income earners eliminated the surplus from the Clinton years and started us down the road to the largest deficits in history.

Obama inherited more than 75 percent of the current national debt, along with the two unbudgeted wars, which he had to add to the debt; a banking crisis that grew out of greed and lax regulation; an employment crisis; and a floundering middle class.

One could certainly argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to mitigate any of these crises, but if you think Obama’s policies created any of these crises, you are a fool.

The poor and middle classes did nothing to instigate these crises, but they are being forced to pay for them.

If you subscribe to tea party rhetoric, you are a willfully myopic fool and should be stripped of your right to vote.

Illegal emigration

2011-04-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

Let’s cut the crap. “If we raise taxes on the rich we’ll lose jobs in this country, and this country desperately needs jobs!” Well, the second part is true. But “we’ll lose jobs in this country” is like saying, in 2011, if we do such-and-so, “we’ll increase the cancer rate!”

The jobs are gone. So-called American companies, which benefit from American infrastructure, defense, etc., began sending jobs overseas en masse a decade or more ago. And since 2002, the tax environment in the U.S. for the rich has been extremely friendly, with enormous breaks for income, capital gains, dividends, etc., not to mention corporate tax breaks six ways from Sunday. Yet all those entitled corporate bastards can do is whine about how their taxes are too high and they can’t create jobs. They’ve created plenty of jobs in India, China, Malaysia, South America, and so on. How is it they’re allowed to continue being American companies?

We need to make emigration illegal. Not people emigrating—if you can afford it these days, I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you packed up and headed somewhere else. Then again, if you can afford it, you’re probably among those who are living higher than ever off the hog right now and wouldn’t dream of abandoning the golden goose (pretend I also worked something in there about a winged horse and the cat that swallowed the canary). No, we need to stop allowing jobs to emigrate. Build a wall around the borders, etc. Not a physical wall, but a digital one. Try and relocate jobs to India, and guess what? Your data won’t be able to follow. No employee data, no sales and marketing data, no production data and, worst of all, no data on executive perks. If even one dollar of next year’s bonus depends on revenue generated from overseas operations, you can kiss all that money goodbye.

For what it’s worth, this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition contained a cover headline warning of the hidden costs of taxing the rich. I’d give more details, but I can’t gain access, as I refuse to pay for a subscription to a once-great publication that should now be retitled Murdoch’s Daily Masturbatory Fantasies.

I can imagine, though, that the “hidden” costs are pretty much the same as the alleged outward costs, with a bit more ominous language thrown in. One thing we’ll probably never hear about are the myriad glaring benefits to making profitable corporations and the rich pay their fair share of the tax burden.

One thing’s certain, though. If our corporate-owned, pussywhipped government would actually make the aforementioned emigration illegal, we’d have so many more jobs than we need, we’d actually welcome all the border jumpers just to fill all the extra vacancies. And that’s not to mention the beaucoup bucks in additional tax revenue.

But it won’t happen. Why? Because this is America, exceptional America, the greatest country in the history of the world. And anyone who suggests otherwise is guilty of giving aid and comfort to our enemies. Enemies like Communist China, where American companies save more than $1 trillion per year by eliminating U.S.-based jobs and employing their near-starving workers at less than a dollar a day. Enemies like Saudi Arabia, where we send hundreds of billions in oil revenues each year so they can fund their citizens to immigrate into this country legally, learn how to fly planes, hijack them and crash them into government buildings and skyscrapers. Enemies like President Obama, who, after being born in Kenya and educated in Indonesian madrases and manipulating his way into the Senate and then the White House and then agreeing to attack Libya because loudmouthed Republican politicians demanded that he do it until he did it at which point they retroactively decided it was a horrible idea.

Enemies like that.

Stop illegal emigration now.

Things I learned last week

2010-09-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Things I learned last week:

-Driving in Southern California the other day, I found myself behind many an automobile sporting a bumper sticker that identified its driver as a Republican, or at least as being of a right-wing political persuasion. No problem. Free speech and all. However, I was quite surprised to learn that Californians have a direct say in Nevada politics. No, not because there are lobbyists in Carson City representing the Golden State. Rather, because so many of these bumper stickers called for us to “Dump Harry Reid,” “Fire Harry Reid,” “Kill Harry Reid” (not so much a political one there), “Waterboard Harry Reid,” and so on. Perhaps, though, this out-of-state activism is perfectly acceptable. Back home in Nevada, I’ve chanced to find myself behind Republican motorists as well, and their understanding of California politics is even more enlightening. While I was under the foolish impression that only voters in California’s 8th Congressional District could vote for said district’s U.S. representative, I’ve seen more than a few stickers calling for the firing, ouster, decapitation, etc., of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. My, the things you learn when sharing the road with those who’ve chosen never to learn anything.

-Apparently, our Mongolian Sikh atheist president is once again trying to deny any ties, past or present, to the Fiji-based Greek Orthodox synagogue he attended as a young Baha’i Mormon in the Principality of Andorra. Thus spake Zarathustra.

-Former President Jimmy Carter headed back to North Korea, this time to negotiate the release of an American teacher working in South Korea who unwittingly wandered across the border. I’m sincerely very glad he was successful at preventing the poor man from having to spend eight years in a prison that would likely cause Hannibal Lecter a permanent loss of appetite. But once again, I have to call into question my own education. I admit, I learned a rather limited amount about post-WWII far east geography during school days. But I’m still pretty sure there’s a fairly noticeable buffer between the two countries. So now I venture to learn, before another week goes by: Is there somewhere in the northernmost part of South Korea where one can trip over a tree root or a poorly disguised land mine and somehow go flying clear across the DMZ?

-I learned about something called “Beck University.” Sadly, my initial assumptions were proven faulty when it turned out that “Beck University” is a symbolic lesson plan, to be imparted entirely on Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News, neither of which I ever view (unless you count the snippets of each that occasionally air on “The Daily Show” and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” to help the host of each program make a larger point). You see, when I first heard of “Beck University,” what immediately sprung to mind was Beck Hansen, and I thought, with great hope and anticipation, that we could all finally take an intensive and insightful course designed to help us understand the meaning of the words to the song “Loser.” Sigh! Another dream dashed in this age of the ever-declining value of an education.

-I did, however, learn, via Glenn Beck, a few things about the historic Civil Rights Movement in America, things of which I’d heretofore been completely ignorant:

1. White conservatives must reclaim the movement as their own.

2. Blacks do not “own” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

3. The U.S.A. was founded as a nation in which individual freedom trumps all, as long as you strictly adhere to a moral code established and enforced by white conservatives.

4. If you hold a large gathering on the same date, and at the same location, when and where a truly historic rally took place 47 years ago, and you are so ignorant of history that you did not know ahead of time that this was the anniversary of said historic rally, then the only possible explanation for your choosing the date at random is “Divine Providence.”

5. No matter what they may say in their own defense, and no matter how pure their hearts or noble their intentions, progressives are immoral, racist, tyrannical, anti-religion, anti-freedom, pro-slavery Nazi terrorists whose sole reason for existence is to destroy America and all it stands for.

-There is absolutely nothing more interesting, more compelling, more epoch-shatteringly fascinating to the American news media than the upcoming season’s lineup of “Dancing With the Stars.”

And on top of everything else, her voice is unbearably grating....

2010-05-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Bay Buchanan was on CNN Monday night bemoaning Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as not being “the best and the brightest.” Now I realize that understanding irony is not among Buchanan’s basic capabilities (I’m not sure using her opposable thumb was among her basic capabilities until age 50 or so), but the rest of us should really take note of the worst and the dumbest among today’s TV punditocracy espousing an opinion on who is or is not the best and the brightest.

Her last comment before they cut her off was, “She’s no Antonin Scalia!”

Assuming there’s not another Antonin Scalia to whom she’d be referring in this context, I think I’m safe in assuming that this was the same pathetic relic (quite possibly from the mid-19th century) who, in his dissent to Bowers v. Hardwicke (2003), which overturned a state’s right to make sodomy a felony, decried the ruling as undermining the court’s role in providing the country with “moral leadership.” Amazingly, at the age of about 170, and after having served as a judge since at least 1987 (presumably, prior to his appointment, he lived in a cave, under a rock, wearing earplugs and blinders), he was completely unaware that the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret the U.S. Constitution as it applies to modern laws.

So in response to the latest of Ms. Buchanan’s stellar career of always being reactionary, hopelessly stupid, wrongheaded, and just plain wrong, I’ll simply say, “Let’s thank heaven for small favors!”

Now if Scalia would just retire or (forgive me for being terribly politically incorrect) croak, and if Clarence Thomas would find a more appropriate place than the federal bench to sit forever perched with his thumb up his ass, Obama could appoint a couple more judges with some passing familiarity with the aforementioned Constitution.

But I’m not counting on anything.

Random musings

2010-04-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

-After watching CNN’s report on the allegedly violent culture of the “Church” of Scientology a couple weeks back, I have to ask: Given all the legal experts they’ve got working for them, how much longer is the “church” going to continue with a legal strategy that seems to amount to “I know you are, but what am I!”?

-We can argue and argue and argue until we’re both red and blue in the face about the merits, flaws, goals, obstacles, members, exclusions, helps, hindrances, and exotic pineapple recipes of the tea party movement. But when all is said (and said....and said....and said) and done, can we try to keep one tiny little fact (oh no, the “F” word!) in mind? The movement, regardless of all the hue and cry about the independence of its loose, nationwide amalgamation of organizations, disorganizations, micromovements and bowel movements, gets the lion’s share (controlling interest?) of its funding (working capital?) from News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News.

-Newt, you’re a bloviator, a hypocrite and an idiot. And no matter what you say or do, you’re old news, a relic from the days when you started your whole party down this destructive path. Now shut the hell up.

-Just something to try. Go into any word processor, close your eyes and gently push down on your keyboard with both hands. The on-screen result will probably be something pretty close to the name of that Icelandic volcano that’s flinging ash all over Europe and destroying the continent’s airline industry.

-I have this bad habit of reading the reader feedback message boards whenever I read a political news story online. And after more than a year of catching the same thread mixed in with all the other commentary from the left, the right, and, occasionally, the sane, I really have to ask: Just how stupid does a person have to be in order to rave about how smart and savvy Sarah Palin is? Allowing that negative numbers are mathematically impossible, is there a gradient that low on the I.Q. scale? I don’t know if they’re doing it just to flabbergast liberals; and if so, kudos on the rousing success of such a move. But the woman has to be the stupidest lump of clay in the public spotlight since Anna Nicole Smith bought it a few years back.

-An open call to the U.S. insurance industry: It’s time for Flo from Progressive and Gordon the GEICO Gecko to declare their love for one another, have a lavish interspecies wedding (he’s male, she’s female, so the wingnuts shouldn’t have a problem with it), and ride off together into the sunset. Many of us have reached our thresholds. Some (I won’t cite names) are bordering on homicidal. The idiot box periodically needs to switch out its resident idiots. We as a society declare the right to make that demand, and to have it heeded by those in media and advertising who take so, so much and give so, so little in return. The Energizer Bunny went. So did the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Seriously, guys. It’s time.

-I’ll finish up with a slightly longer one. And I hate to do it, but I have to bring up Caribou Barbie again.

Now I wouldn’t dare suggest that we should expect citizen Palin to be any better a political strategist than Governor Palin or national candidate Palin, but a great many of her followers, detractors, and even those who wonder why a braying jackass wearing lipstick and heels keeps getting invited to speak at Republican conclaves have suggested that Ms. Palin has a future on the national political stage. And if she herself considers this even a possibility, it might behoove* her to pull back a bit in her aggressiveness at alienating virtually everyone who voted for Obama in 2008.

One of Ms. Palin’s more frequently-used soundbites (at least used frequently enough that she no longer has to read it off her forearm) seems to be a variation on “How’s that whole hopey-changey thing working out for you?” I offer a few observations here:

1) Regardless of her opinion of any particular high-profile invoker of such concepts as “hope” and “change,” when a person or group are in a depressed long-term socioeconomic state, aren’t the very concepts themselves universally good things, and isn’t the denigration of said concepts pretty darn insulting to everyone, regardless of political affiliation?
2) Aggressive “Don’t you just hate Obama and all his supporters?” rhetoric may play well to a conservative base, but mathematically, any candidate is going to need the ballot box support of a lot more than just a conservative base in order to win in 2012; in fact, since Obama received roughly 53 percent of the popular vote in ’08, those who numbered among his supporters then certainly outnumber those who voted for anyone else in the same election.
3) Since you’re going to need at least some of the voters who supported him then to vote for you in 2012 in order to win the popular vote, maybe it’s not such a great strategy to insult all the people who bought into the ideas of “hope” and “change” and would still like to realize them, if not under Obama, then certainly under whomever replaces him in the Oval Office. If you make all 53 percent of the 2008 voters who opted for Obama think you view their “hope” for “change” as nothing but fodder for a bully pulpit soundbite, the response, even from those who might otherwise have considered shifting their loyalties to you and your team next time out, just might come back to soundbite you in the jackass.

(* - I did catch the bad-pun potential of saying that something might “behoove” a “jackass.” I’ve been taught that every once in a while it’s a good idea to let an opportunity pass. I sincerely meant for this to be that once in a while, but given the inclusion of this parenthetical, I guess it’ll have to wait until next time.)

Announcement from Toyota

2010-02-24T12:05:00.001-08:00

The Toyota Motor Corporation has officially named G.I. Fuktitupa as its Executive Vice President in charge of Public Apologies.

Mr. Fuktitupa has already put out a press release announcing he will appear before both the Japanese parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives some time in the next two weeks to apologize for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the international slave trade.

Industry analysts speculate that the company may still have to answer for failures in the navigation system and brake pedal of that boat that hit that iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1912.

The difference is clear

2010-01-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

Gather round, gentle souls, and lend me your ears, as I relay the story of a great divide.......

There was a time.......not so very long ago.......when people could come together.......when they could work together towards a common goal.......when they could share ideas and often disagree and even engage in spirited but productive debate, the end result of which would be to pass laws and instigate actions that would ultimately make the country, and even the wider world, a better, freer and more just place for all who inhabit them.

Yea, there were indeed two opposing sides, and these sides each had their own set of principles and goals and ideals. But in the end the two sides could come together to do things like battle tyranny, overcome economic turmoil, spur innovation, create a dialogue with other nations, even reserve parcels of land as beacons of nature and respite for all creatures and forces of nature and the perpetual benefit of all citizens.

But then all at once came a great cataclysm! We stood in hushed awe as a retired second-rate movie actor stood up and said, “Government is the problem.” And he spoke of government’s real obligation being to enforce morality and decency. And he spoke out on behalf of those who proclaimed that AIDS was God’s punishment for the abomination of homosexuality. And he created the lasting, impenetrable illusion of economic prosperity.

And he was hailed as a hero throughout the free world.

And as a result, I contend, today the natural distinctions between the two opposing sides could not be any clearer. They are simply these:

The Democrats, in their present incarnation, have good ideas. They want to make sure all the people are well-fed, well-educated, and healthy. They want to maintain the freedoms we’ve had for 230+ years (okay, admittedly, some of us haven’t had them quite that long) while ensuring that all citizens pay their fair share, both financially and through active participation in the process of governing, so that this grand experiment in democracy can thrive and continue to lead the world in pursuing liberty and justice for all.

And these same Democrats prove with every opportunity that comes their way that they are completely, totally, hopelessly incompetent at bringing their ideas to fruition. No matter how large a majority they secure, no matter how much political power and influence they obtain, they manage, without fail, to honor some ironclad guarantee that their good ideas will never, ever evolve into the laws that govern our land. Never. Ever.

If their wonderful ideas to promote and pursue liberty and justice were an inflated balloon, and that balloon were located at the North Pole, and the only threat to that balloon was a pin, and that were located at the South Pole, then even if there were no means of transport and no natural forces that could ever possibly connect the pin and the balloon, the Democratic Party would move heaven and earth to ensure that our glorious balloon and our demonic pin would meet, somehow, somewhere, so that the balloon would have absolutely no chance, no possibility whatsoever, of remaining intact.

The Republicans, in their present incarnation, have horrible, destructive ideas. They want to manipulate all social, political and economic engines that drive the entire human race and all man-made, and even some natural, forces that make up the planet Earth and its myriad of ecosystems. They want to ensure a wholesale tyrannical conquest of our land and our rights, and complete eradication of all those lovely freedoms that have represented our national spirit lo these past 2 1/3 centuries, by a conspiracy of conscience-free aristocrats and demagogues whose only understanding of America is that the very rich should just keep getting that much richer and the rest should be forever beholden to them, and that freedom is whatever rich, white men say it is and can change at any time, without warning and without any dissent, according to the vicissitudes of their needs and desires, or merely according to their whims.

The Republicans want to cut taxes to the bare minimum, but only for those who already have so much money that they can buy and sell ordinary, hard-working people for their own amusement. They want to cut government to the point where its entire array of functions consists of: 1) making laws dictate by, and for the benefit of, those same obscenely wealthy individuals; 2) having the world’s most powerful military operation, in which young and hearty progeny of the ordinary hard-working people go all over the world enforcing the will of those same obscenely wealthy individuals; 3) collecting taxes from the ordinary, hard-working people to fund the aforementioned military operation; and 4) building roads and median strips.

And these same Republicans prove with every opportunity that comes their way that they are absolutely brilliant at bringing their ideas to fruition. By mercilessly bullying anyone who disagrees with them. By passing laws of communication and commerce that ensure that the nation’s airwaves are reserved almost entirely for those who agree with them and carry out their efforts to bully those who disagree with them. By launching obscenely expensive wars that make the world safe for no one and nothing but bring great financial and ideological benefit to themselves and their disciples. By deliberately interpreting the most sacred texts of the world’s dominant religions solely for their own benefit, when it’s clear by their actions that they only believe the words that appear in those texts to the extent that they can interpret them to their own benefit. By letting the spawn of Satan rule the entire nation and all of its allies with an iron fist for eight years while disingenuously giving him the title of “Vice President.”

They apply their ingenious methods every time, and in spite of the fact that so many people claim to see through their machinations and manipulations, these ingenious methods seem to work for them every time, no matter what.

And so there you have it. Polar opposites. A clear difference. Isn’t it good to know the two opposing sides aren’t identical after all?

Getting past Palin

2009-11-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

Now that Sarah Palin has the all-time bestselling book among adult illiterates and inbred marginal Yale grads (assuming the latter isn’t a subset of the former), 400-and-something pages in which she ostensibly blames everyone she’s ever met for everything that’s ever gone wrong in her life (hasn’t she ever heard of bitching to a therapist and blaming her parents for it all?), can we possibly get back to shit that matters to those of us who can tell their ass from a hole in the ground? (This just in: Palin has publicly assailed her ghost writer Lynn Vincent for unfairly portraying her as someone with a predilection towards casting blame.)

-Depending on the congressional district in which you reside, by now you may have seen one or more commercials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacking your representative and the federal government for putting forth a health care reform plan that WILL, make no mistake, directly cause rabid mutant orangutans to break in to your home and feast on the heads of your living children. The USCC is, of course, only doing this because it is an organization made up of patriotic Americans whose sole aim is to look out for the little guy who, unlike said patriotic Americans, has to pay the taxes for which the government bills him or her.

-It’s simple. 90 percent tax on all financial services industry bonuses in excess of one million dollars per person. Period. They recovered because the government lent them money. Now the rest of us need to recover. The people giveth, and the people can taketh away in order to giveth to others. That’s not socialism, nor is it capitalism. It’s democracy. You don’t like it? Go trade derivatives and credit default swaps in China.

-Afghanistan, all in or all out. Either we send enough troops to decimate al Qaeda and the Taliban, permanently, and we run the country as a protectorate until our experts are sure it can be run internally without supporting, or being supported by, terrorist activity; or we call it a loss, get the hell out and let the Taliban run roughshod over anyone who ever dared oppose it. This half-assed, “they can keep holding phony elections and let Karzai pretend there’s an actual government” approach is nothing but a recipe for McCain’s prospect of a latter-day Hundred Years War.

-Can Burger King actually believe that its current, long-running campaign, using the creepiest-looking corporate mascot in U.S. advertising history, is actually attracting any new business at all? Piece of advice from Joe Nobody here: If your ad agency insists on using the creative team that did the rewrites on the last three “Nightmare on Elm Street” sequels, just fire them and go back to “Have it your way” until you can pull together some new talent.

-Re: Pelosi’s regrettable “Are you serious?” response: Yes, it’s true, politicians get flustered. Rumor has it that even former President Bush was occasionally unprepared with a wise and coherent answer to a question. But that’s just a rumor started by the elitist liberal intelligentsia that control the U.S. media in their entirety. In any case, no, nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about health care. Nor is there an article on building interstate highways, a clause on granting broadcasting licenses, nor a single word about standardized testing. You say you’re still a strict constructionist? A luddite? An abject moron? Should we amend the Constitution with each and every technological and economic development? Are you serious?

-Last but least: This morning’s CNN news crawl included the item “Economy not as strong as believed.” Putting aside the repugnant use of the passive voice in news (the official CNN style guide strikes again), we should clarify the lack of attribution. Apart from a small handful of economists who are paid to look at the economy through rose-colored graphics, no one actually believed it.

Saving welfare

2009-02-12T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'd like to make a suggestion. It may sound a bit bizarre at first, but please, hear me out.

I think we need to increase, dramatically perhaps, the amount of money we give out each month to welfare cheats.

You know, those beneficiaries of the free money system in the U.S. who fabricate children living with them or who operate as three or four people with six or eight addresses and collect benefit checks for each name at each address.

Why would I even think of proposing such a radical idea, ever, but especially at this point in time, when our debt is soaring and our reserves are drying up? Well, it’s tough to admit it about such heinous individuals, but we may lose them.

If we don’t start doling out big money, and I mean fast, our best welfare cheats may leave the American system and go register for benefits with Canada, or the U.K., or Sweden, or some other generous federal government.

These are talented people, cleverly devising ways to cheat the system that pays them for doing nothing and relies on their talent to keep the system working. And think of all the employees of the federal welfare system who would be out of work if not for these talented individuals and their ability to create jobs where none would otherwise exist.

Perhaps we could give them each a bonus. Every welfare recipient receives his/her salary, but the ones who work extra long and extra hard at creating and maintaining additional identities should get a little something extra at the end of the year for their creativity and initiative.

We need to hurry, though, or before we know it, all the good people in the system will be gone, off to other, more foresighted countries, and our talent pool will dry up for generations. And then how will we feel about all the jobs we’ve lost, and all this extra tax revenue we’ll be stuck with?

Random post-election thoughts

2008-11-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

An open reminder to “actor” Stephen Baldwin: While no one really expects Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina to follow through on his commitment to drown himself if Obama won the electoral votes of his state’s neighbor to the north, those of us who appreciate good acting, or competent acting, or, indeed, acting in any form that resembles acting, are fully expecting you to make good on your “threat” to leave the country if “cultural terrorist” Barack Obama won the election.

Well, Mr. Baldwin, he not only won, but he won by a huge margin in both the popular vote and the electoral college, and lots of other Democrats beat Republican opponents, and now the Democrats control the White House and both houses of the U.S. Congress.

I and several of my fellow cinephiles are ready to pony up for you and a life partner or good friend to travel, and first-class at that, to any other country on earth save Canada (where it would be far too easy for you to commute to “acting” jobs in the U.S., but where you would likely be miserable anyway since most of their social and economic policies are far to the left of this country’s), contingent on your written agreement never to return and never to appear in another film with even a slight chance of ever being released or marketed in the United States. Think about it, Stephen. Free first-class tickets, complete with champagne and fawning flight attendants, and all you have to do is find another career. Hell, this time you might choose something at which you display at least a minimum of competence.

********************

There is babble in some circles that (still-)Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska (thank heaven) may try and shore up her credentials on the national stage by running for the U.S. Senate from her home state should Ted Stevens win re-election and then proceed to see his worthless, corrupt, decrepit ass booted the hell out of the august body. I think it’s an excellent idea, as well as prime opportunity for her test out her understanding of the role of the Vice President. If I recall correctly, Senator Palin would be unique in her self-imposed obligation to submit to the will of Vice President Joseph Biden, since her definition of role of Vice President includes his being in charge of the U.S. Senate and having the power to influence legislation and policy in said body. I eagerly anticipate Ms. Palin’s readiness and willingness, come Jan. 20, to defer unconditionally to the Vice President of the United States, Democrat Joseph Biden.

********************

Speaking of the Vice President-elect, I have an item that may serve to bring a modicum of comfort and even joy to the many humorists and pseudo-humorists concerned that their livelihoods and/or creative processes may be under threat by the fact that they no longer have powerful, hypocritical Republicans to beat up on anymore. While the hypocrisies of these men and women, coupled with their respective levels of discomfort with the English language, will no doubt be missed, fear not. For while President-elect Obama is noted for his rhetorical skill and grace, Mr. Biden will almost assuredly be speaking in public a great deal over the next four to eight years. And in 35 years in the Senate, he has rarely shortchanged your community when it comes to rhetorical fodder. Sure, he’s no George Bush – who, apart from his running mate’s opponent, is? – but there are millions of words in the language for him to misuse, and a seemingly infinite array of facts for him to mangle. So sleep soundly, intrepid seekers of the guffaw and the belly laugh. Thy cup still runneth over.

How it works

2008-10-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

Just a very brief lesson today:

When we take hundreds of billions in taxpayers’ money and redistribute it to Wall Street investment banks, that’s bold, decisive action in response to a major financial crisis.

However, when we take any money at all from the investment bankers and other multimillionaires and billionaires who benefit significantly from the bailout and redistribute it to the taxpayers to help them have better schools, nutrition and health care, that’s socialism.

You now have a much better understanding of how economics works.

Let's get this man a flight schedule!

2008-10-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

From an online news source:

Actor STEPHEN BALDWIN has found inspiration in LINDSAY LOHAN's father MICHAEL - challenging U.S. presidential candidate BARACK OBAMA to a fighting match in the boxing ring.

Baldwin reportedly sat ringside in support of Lohan during a recent training session in preparation for his charity face-off with a computer company millionaire in an upcoming slug-match next month (24Nov08).

An outspoken supporter of opposing candidate John MCCain, the actor has vowed to leave the U.S. if Democrat Obama is elected into office in November (08).

And he's taking his cue from Lohan in yet another rant against the Illinois senator.
Baldwin tells the New York Daily News: "I'd like to knock some good sense into Barack. I wouldn't hurt him. But if he wins the election, he'll hurt me. He's a cultural terrorist."

The following is a small sampling of theatrical and direct-to-video films in which Baldwin has appeared over the last 15 years:

Under the Hula Moon (1995)
Fled (1996)
Bio Dome (1996)
Half Baked (1998)
One Tough Cop (1998)
The Sex Monster (1999) (DTV)
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)
Dead Awake (2001) (DTV)
Deadrockstar (2002) (DTV)
Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice (2002) (DTV)
Six: The Mark Unleashed (2004) (DTV)

Now, uh, explain to me if you would please, Stephen, who is the cultural terrorist?

Of course, given how little talent Mr. Baldwin has ever exhibited in his chosen field, which he was able to choose because of the success of his far more talented eldest brother, I suspect that there are many Americans who, like myself, would be only too happy to kick in to buy this erstwhile hack a ticket to any foreign country, contingent on his signature on an agreement stating that, once in his new homeland, he will never again appear in a film that will have any hope of being distributed in this country.

The Conservative Lexicon (!!!!highly classified!!!!)

2008-08-25T12:39:00.001-07:00

Dear Fellow Conservative Voter and Thinker:

The following is a ready-reference glossary that all conservatives should keep handy as a way of dealing with all the obfuscation that the left will attempt to propagate during this election season.
The list of terms is not in recognized alphabetical order, but we all know that alphabetical order is merely a matter of opinion, which liberals try to enforce as fact, while those of us not bogged down in the notion of “objective reality” do not feel constrained to such nonsense.

Use your glossary wisely, and feel free to forward it to fellow conservatives, but take care that it not fall into the wrong, which is to say left (both opposites of “right”), hands.

Activist judge – any member of the federal bench who strikes down an ultraconservative law or upholds a law favored by liberals

Liberal – a Republican who speaks out against Christian theocracy in the U.S.

Much too liberal – a Republican or independent who speaks out against Christian theocracy in the U.S. and doesn’t favor eliminating the estate tax

Communist – a Democrat, or an independent who generally votes for Democratic candidates

Terrorist sympathizer – anyone, but usually a Democrat, who thinks that preserving the Constitution is more important to the nation’s survival than giving George W. Bush and his cabinet unfettered power to “fight terrorism”

America hater – anyone who disagrees with the philopsophy, “We’re right, they’re wrong, and we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert the rest of them to Christianity!”

Holy Bible – the word of God, as given directly to man by God; the absolute truth about everything, in spite of its many different versions, translations and inherent contradictions; the irrefutable word of God, as long as it is interpreted by televangelists or fundamentalist Christian politicians, and with certain inconvenient exceptions

“Love thy neighbor” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” – examples of inconvenient exceptions to the definition of the Holy Bible as the absolute truth about everything and the irrefutable word of God

Heretic – a Catholic who votes for a pro-choice candidate

Anti-Christ – a Catholic who runs as a pro-choice candidate

Allies – Catholics, when we need them

Usurpers – Catholics, when we don’t need them

Big Tent Philosophy – the idea that the Republican party is open to all Americans of any race, creed or ideology, as long as they agree that the country should be run by, and that all laws should be made by, white, Christian men

Illegal immigrants – (non-election year definition): inexpensive agricultural and custodial labor

(election year definition): the underlying cause of all economic, social, educational, governmental and criminal crises the country faces or has ever faced

Minutemen – (definition prior to 2001): the gainfully employed civilians who, when the Continental Army called upon them during the fight for independence against the British monarchy, were ready to form a militia and do combat at a moment’s notice
(definition since 2001): the unemployed civilians who, despite the fact that no one has called upon them for anything, are ready to sit in lawn chairs 12 hours a day and call the INS on their cell phones at a moment’s notice

War on Drugs – prior to 2001, our method of spending billions of tax dollars with nothing to show for it

War on Terror – since 2001, our method of spending billions of tax dollars with nothing to show for it

Tax-and-spend – how to describe Democrats who want to waste our hard-earned tax dollars on giving all Americans a good education and access to adequate health care

Patriotic – how to describe Republicans who wisely want to spend our hard-earned tax dollars invading and occupying Iraq in order protect America against terrorists from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia

Human life – American fertilized eggs and American stem cells that will eventually be discarded

Collateral damage – fully developed Iraqi civilians killed by ammunition meant to kill insurgents

Sanctity of marriage – phrase with no actual meaning, but good for “family values” sound bites, and a convenient anagram for “Gays mar fit creation.”

Liberal media – American media organizations that don’t employ Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, Bay Buchanan, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, William Kristol, Grover Norquist, Neil Cavuto, Bernard Goldberg, John Stossel, Laura Schlesinger, Tucker Carlson, Fred Barnes, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Mary Matalin, Dick Morris, Brit Hume, John Gibson, Bill Hemmer, Armstrong Williams, Michael Medved, David Horowitz, Dennis Prager, Robert Novak, Karen Czarnecki, David Frum, Tony Snow, George Will, Andrew Sullivan, Larry Kudlow, Mike Gallagher, Kate O’Beirne, Blanquita Cullum, Cliff Kincaid,….

Sex – 1) an act engaged in by two people, a man and a woman, for the purposes of reproduction, thereby propagating the human species, and for no other reason; 2) an immoral, character-disintergrating sin when committed by two consenting adults when one of them happens to be a Democratic politician; 3) a forgivable indiscretion when committed by a Catholic priest or a conservative Republican politician with underage boys.

Accountability – 1) condition antithetical to Democrats’ existence, in spite of the fact that everything that is wrong with this country is their fault; 2) condition demonstrated by Republicans leaders with the following statements: “I take full responsibility for that. Now let’s move on and talk about something important, like terrorists and why they’re going to kill your children if you don’t re-elect me and my conservative colleagues!”

Hello, He Lied

2008-07-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

We see it in every campaign. A little distortion of the opponent's record, a little manipulation of the statistics and poll results, a little demonization of an innocuous stance or, more often these days, an innocuous off-the-cuff comment.

But the 2000 and 2004 presidential races, under the guidance of Karl Rove, cleared the way for an ever-expanding snow boulder to make its way down the slippery slope: the bald faced lie.

In the 2000 Republican primary race, it was the Bush campaign's intimation that John McCain had a child with a *GASP* non-white woman (BTW, heads up, Senator Obama – I hear they have actual documented evidence that you've done the same thing). Played very well in South Carolina, which, as a state, is today finally seeing its reputation catch up to that of the U.S., circa 1965.

In the 2000 election, it was the same campaign trying to make Al Gore look like a cheating husband who lied under oath to the U.S. Congress and now continued to lie every time he opened his mouth. Gore's now-legendary misstatement about the advent of the Internet notwithstanding, his real crime was having been Bill Clinton's veep. (Just as an aside, can anyone recall Bush's year 2000 promise to restore honor and dignity to the White House without wanting to laugh and vomit simultaneously?)

In 2004, the unapologetic-lie-as-political-art-form reached its pinnacle with what we now casually call “swiftboating.” A heroic war veteran, a volunteer, no less, finds himself on the defensive against a bunch of tough-talking cowards who hid behind family connections to prevent themselves from ever having to go into harm's way. Why? Because he spoke out against the war he fought and the unnecessary war we're still fighting while the same cowards told lie upon lie to keep the latter war going strong and to continue enriching their cronies.

And, with apologies to Bread, if you're wondering what this song is leading to, I give you the apparent strategy of the 2008 Republican presidential campaign: truncate one of the opponent's policy goals to make it flat out untrue, have everyone in the party hammer the idea into everyone's head until it becomes widely accepted as fact, and then use it to cut down the opponent and make him sound like the enemy of capitalism, economic growth and plain common sense.

It goes like this.

After the shellac job McCain endured from the Bush campaign in 2000, back when Ben Stein was praising Dubya to the heavens for being “a decent, honest man,” you'd think the senator would seek to rise above the strategy of the bald faced lie. But alas, he's a politician, and he's a Republican, and naturally he just can't help himself. But we can.

We can show him that we don't believe it just because the right-wing smear machine pummels us with it on television and radio 386,597 times a day. We can go to his oh-so-democratic town hall meetings and call him and his party on their favorite lie.

When called on, we can simply ask, over and over, “Senator McCain, Senator Obama has said he wants to eliminate the upper class tax cuts President Bush introduced, and his puppet congress approved, in 2001, and he wants highly profitable corporations and the wealthiest 2 percent of individuals to start paying a little more of their fair share. Why, then, do you and nearly every Republican politician who can get airtime insist and telling the bald faced lie that, if he's elected, Senator Obama will raise everyone's taxes?”

I borrowed the title of today's entry from producer Lynda Obst's book about surviving and thriving in the Hollywood studio system. I never read the book, but from the time I first heard the title, I thought it was spot-on perfect to describe not Hollywood, but Washington in the new millennium. (It also went a long way in describing a lot of people I worked with, and for, at the time, but that's grist for a different mill.)

I don't truly believe that, if Obama wins the November election and the Dems hang on to both houses of Congress, honor and dignity, or even a consistent nod to honesty and straightforwardness, will make their way to ol' number 1600. But if not a mad rush to the best of our better angels, how about at least a determined charge away from the opposite end of the spectrum?

At noon next January 20, we will have endured eight solid years of contempt, corruption, polarization and outright lies from those entrusted to be the leaders of The United States of America and all of its citizens. Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, Lott, DeLay and especially Cheney have all demonstrated time and again how capable they were of pure, venal hatred for all Americans, but especially those who disagreed with their method of democracy via propaganda-flooded tyranny.

We're stuck with the current administration until then, but it's time for anyone who may be involved with either of the two potential incoming administrations to just stop it.

Stop the contempt for anyone who speaks a disagreeable truth. Stop the blatant corruption that comes from lobbyists, perhaps the world's most self-interested individuals short of dictators, being top advisors on how to con the most votes and then serve the entire populace in a way that primarily serves their own interests. Stop the cynical polarization of 300 million people who all have to face the same collective obstacles.

And, to Senator McCain and his supporters, stop trumpeting from the mountaintops that Barack Obama wants to raise everyone's taxes. You know it's not true, even if there are plenty of voters willing to believe it. I promise there will be no glory in winning this election using any of Karl Rove's tactics. I, for one, will promise only to hate you and all you stand for throughout every minute of your administration. I will never hesitate to let you know how much I hate you, and I will never cease to do so. And I have a feeling I'm not alone.

I don't want to hate the next president, whoever he turns out to be. I want to support as many of his decisions as I'm able, in good conscience, to do so. And if it becomes necessary to declare war on a foreign nation that truly threatens our national security, I want to feel that it's a necessary action and that I can support the war and its aims. I want to support ideas that will revive the economy, reinforce our security and, ultimately, reunite us as citizens of a country we can cherish and be proud of, no matter our different ideas and ideals.

But for this to happen, we have to get beyond the fog of the worst president and worst administration in our country's history, and the candidates have to abandon the tactics that put them in power.

In simplest terms, to all sides: Just stop the lies.

Why Is This Okay?

2008-06-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

I remember someone asking why.

“Why,” a classmate queried our teacher in 4th or 5th grade, “is it so important that we know how to do math?” I liked math, and I was good at it. My classmate, probably not so much. But there were other subjects – natural science springs to mind – that left me equally puzzled and uninterested.

So why did it matter if my classmate ever mastered how to convert fractions into decimals, or if I could ever remember the difference between nimbus and cumulus clouds, or if someone else with an aversion to literature ever read Ivanhoe? Was it really going to have any sort of an impact on our lives in the long run?

Sometimes, when the teacher wasn't terminally frustrated at having to field such questions and/or educate kids who asked them, he or she would attempt an answer. We were never satisfied, but in the end, the state insisted we fill our heads with things like arithmetic and biology and grammar and American history, even if we could foresee no worthwhile objective to it.

Today, of course, while I never actually use much of what I learned in those first 13 grades, I'm grateful that it all helped shape my mind into a vessel with the capacity to store knowledge I do use, process information and occasionally, albeit too rarely, apply critical reasoning and analysis.

And while I still couldn't proffer a satisfactory answer to any of my or my classmates' counterparts in today's public schools, I'm comfortable with the fact that I got several A's in math, social studies and English (even if I never did finish Great Expectations) and at least eked out passing grades in bio, chem and Spanish.

These days, since we have so little else to bicker about in this country, we seem to be at constant odds over how best to educate the current generation of eager minds, kids ever eager to learn the answer to the timeless question, “Why do we have to know this crap?” Should we, as adults, encourage our tax-supported schools to try and teach critical thinking, or should they stick to raising standardized test scores? Are the three Rs still paramount, or do we need to prepare them for a more complex world? Should Darwin be the only theory we discuss in science classes regarding the evolution of the human race, or should we include other purely scientific gems such as intelligent design, healing through crystals, performing magic spells and excelling at Quidditch?

One thing we all seem to share is a desire to build children's minds and improve their bases of knowledge. But it doesn't ultimately work on everyone. Clearly there are clergy, politicians, college professors, the department head at my last job, even doctors and lawyers who haven't really benefited from the fundamentals of American education. And then there are the geniuses in advertising.

During at least one of my protracted spates of unemployment in journalism and mass media over the years since college, my parents have inquired, “Why not go into advertising? There seems to be a lot of demand for creative and intelligent people in that field.” Much like the put-upon teachers of yore, I could never really come up with an answer they found satisfactory. I'd talk about creative integrity and selling out and whatnot, but in the end I still wasn't earning a living, or I was working for Dad in aircraft parts distribution instead of in the field for which I'd (allegedly) been educated.

I've had viable opportunities to denigrate the advertising field in the past. “Head On. Apply directly to the forehead.” Political propaganda that turns indefensible lies into generally accepted truths. The posters for the film Two Weeks' Notice, which inexplicably left out the requisite apostrophe after the “s” in “Weeks.” All commercials for local car dealerships and ambulance chaser law firms.

But now, finally, I have my silver bullet, the ad campaign to end all ad campaigns, as well as any future concern that I might not be able to defend my decision never to consider working in advertising, and, finally, all arguments over whether we need those pesky rudiments of edjamakyshun.

And while I am truly grateful to the people at whatever illiterate and acalculeal agency came up with this gem, as well as the overpaid folks (whatever they make) at Embarq who approved it, I have to ask, Why is it acceptable to run such an ad in public and say to all those who question the value of an education, “Yes, it's possible to be a complete ignoramus and still be staggeringly successful in the field of advertising!”?

The offending campaign is, as mentioned, for Embarq, a Kansas-based media company that competes here in Las Vegas and in several other cities to provide local customers with phone, cable TV and internet services. Their chief regional competitor is Cox Communications, a company for which I also have no love.

But so proud are the Embarqers of their fine, fine home phone service network that they boast, on TV commercials and billboards around town: “41 times fewer dropped calls than Cox. That's right. 41.”

Now I'll be the first to admit that this town is a cultural wasteland. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas attracts the top talent in absolutely no academic field apart from hotel management. Five hundred times as many people use the local library to borrow DVDs and play computer games as to check out actual books. And the editor of the Review-Journal hasn't had an intelligent thought since he determined that using toilet paper beat the alternative.

But one of the larger billboards is on Las Vegas Boulevard, a.k.a. “The Strip,” which is the single largest tourist destination in the country. Millions of people come from all over the map every year to visit the fabled locale. So do we have to advertise to the world just how dumb we are?

“41 times fewer dropped calls.” A real feat of engineering, I must say, especially when you consider it's achieved by engineers working for a company with no grasp of basic arithmetic.

Let's say in a given day, Cox connects, just as an arbitrary number, 100,000 calls from local phone numbers. And of these, 5,000 are prematurely disconnected due to technical problems, or “dropped.”

Based on Embarq's oh-so-impressive claim, on any given day, no matter how many calls they connect, they drop one time fewer calls. So on this technically charmed day they've dropped zero calls. And then – hold on to your hat! – they drop an additional 200,000 fewer calls!!!!! So on the day in question, in comparison to Cox's 5,000 dropped calls, Embarq has dropped negative 200,000 calls!!!!! Forty-one times fewer dropped calls!!!!! That's not just impressive, it's supernatural!!!!!

Basic arithmetic, friends. You can't have 41 times fewer anything than someone else. You can't even have 1.00001 times fewer anything. Once you reach the sacred number one in this equation, which is the same as 100 percent, and you subtract it from the total, you have reached, amazingly enough, ZERO!!!!!

From what I understand about the cutthroat advertising industry, before they launch a campaign, they devote thousands of personnel hours to statistical and focus group research, they have all-night creative brainstorming sessions, they test all manner of slogans, graphics, promotional ideas and commercial actors. They pretty much don't jump in naked and swim with the sharks.

So how, I mean how in the hell, did Embarq and their ad agency, after all their preliminary work on this campaign, finally arrive at a copy line as all together flat out brain dead as “41 times fewer dropped calls?”

It's not just the stupidity, stupid. It's the message it sends about education, about public perception, about a trillion-dollar industry that doesn't actually produce anything substantive and values looks above talent and cool above competent. And because said industry paves the way for countless cultural trends throughout western civilization, it sends a pretty sad message about where we are and where we're headed.

If we keep going down this path, someday soon we might find that the median IQ in our society is roughly 41 times lower than that of other nations.

How to Vote (pt. 2)

2008-06-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

I want an elitist to be President. And if you're smart, so do you.

And if you're not smart, you're probably part of the reason we have our current President. You might've thought, “Here's a cool, down-to-earth guy, the kind of guy who speaks to me on my level, the kind of guy I'd like to sit down with and have a burger and a beer.” I don't drink beer – just never acquired a taste – but I have had a lot of burgers in my day with a lot of people. And a lot of them were nice people. Good people. Smart people. People with good ideas and valuable insights. But I can't say I'd ever want to see any of them elected president (or, alternatively, see them in a position to steal a presidential election from the person the voters elected).

And now, for seven years, five months, we've had a president who isn't an intellectual or academic elitist. Who isn't an ivory tower snob. Who isn't even that smart.

I guess it's good to have a leader who doesn't make you feel inferior, who gives you the chance to say to yourself, “I may screw things up a lot, but he's the leader of the free world, and he and his administration screw things up a lot worse and a lot more often, so I can feel better about myself.”

I'm kidding. It's not good. Frankly, it sucks. I want a president who's smarter than I am. A lot smarter. Someone who can take on problems I can't even conceive of and either solve them or at least treat the symptoms to an effective degree long before they have any adverse effects on my insignificant little life.

I know Hillary – sorry, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY – is out of the running (for now), but she’s largely to blame for the professed (disingenuously, from most circles) desire for a leader as poorly read, poorly informed, self-centered, ethnocentric and alcoholic as the rest of us.

Should Barack Obama have called rural small-town denizens “bitter” for their ionic bonds with guns and religion? Probably not. It was condescending and demeaning, and it pigeonholed a diverse populace by defining it exclusively by the stereotypes with which it’s most typically associated. And exceptions noted, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Should we all try to deny that the fear of the unknown engendered by such an enormous segment of the voting public at large is pretty much the reason we got four more years of the worst leader in modern history? (Some still insist on saying President Bush was “re-elected” in 2004, but I maintain it’s impossible to be re-elected to a position when you were never elected to it in the first place.)

True, the current administration also pandered endlessly to that segment’s love of large phallic symbols that can inflict great damage (also not an unreasonable explanation for the explosion in sales of Hummers outside of the military, which is pretty much the only environment in which such vehicles are justified), as well as its need to have all of us believe the myths its members have had ingrained into them almost since birth and to further insist, the flood of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that it’s what the founders wanted.

But cynical, weathered pols have pandered to these interests since some guy named “John Smith” took a room with a dark-skinned native teenager in pre-colonial Virginia half a millennium ago (and even with that black mark on his record he still got elected and never faced impeachment, although one wonders if that would’ve been the case had the Jamestown Post run headlines like “SMITH FACES POKEY FOR POKING POCA”). It still doesn’t account for the Republicans’ entire margin of victory in 2004.

No, by all accounts (i.e., polls of questionable accuracy), in spite of President Bush's already plummeting ratings 20 months into the War on Common Sen….uh, Terrorism, Karl Rove’s scorched-earth strategy of “Scare the facts right outta them hicks!” was what did it. Groups with names like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, launched by fatuous chickenhawks who never served a day, propagating a series of disgusting lies about a brave veteran candidate daring to run against our chickenhawk sitting president and VP, made it seem as though opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion meant a person was in favor of terrorists torturing and murdering our children in the village square. Their barrage of TV ads was meant not only to make us all forget the way the administration lied its way into a war with a country it just really had a hard-on to invade, but to make us believe that now that we were there, we were suicidal anti-Americans if we were foolish enough to elect a candidate who didn't want to stay there until the entire countryside was littered with the corpses of three generations of insurgents and their offspring (a strategy, by the way, that John McCain also seems eager to pursue).

And so, not too surprisingly, we got four more years of a leadership that never heard the expression, “When you're already in a hole, quit digging.” Or they've heard it but, much like news from the real world that doesn't jibe with their own masturbatory fantasy about how great a job they're doing, chose to pretend it didn't exist.

Fact is, if you're not in denial so deep you'll probably implode soon, you have to allow that things are pretty bad now. I won't belabor the discreet details, but the economy, the environment, foreign affairs, even the general public mood are all in bad shape. Maybe you voted for Bush in '04 because you genuinely believed he'd keep us safer. Maybe you learned something. But Bush and Cheney and their minions haven't. They never learn anything. Why? Because they know better. Or because they were right all along, and we mere voters just don't see it yet. Or because the President never, ever reads a newspaper or other current news publication, and all his briefings are filtered and censored to ensure he has no earthly idea how bad things are.

In other words, a completely different, but far more insidious, form of elitism. The elitism that says, “I don't have to face the harsh realities that have resulted from my endless flights of ego and other fancy.” The elitism that at one time denigrated opposing viewpoints and now just discounts them completely. The elitism that replaces “....of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this Earth” with “I'm the decider.” The elitism that by default grants “decider” power to the person with whom more people wanted to have a beer and a burger.

And all this elitism comes courtesy of a leader who would never, because he could never, aspire to intellectual elitist. Because he's simply not that smart.

Barack Obama worked hard throughout school and eventually earned a J.D. From Harvard Law School without having a well-connected family to pull any strings. He's worked in Chicago's inner city and studied the problems faced by the working class, and he's studied and appears eager to continue studying the economic and social problems facing all Americans (save for those whose biggest problems is getting those evil labor unions and commie tax legislators off their backs long enough to pick out a new yacht). And he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

John McCain was admitted to, and graduated from, the U.S. Naval Academy, feats that demonstrate exceptional academic, athletic and leadership prowess. He fought in a war and endured five years in a Vietnamese POW camp. He adhered to his principles in crafting legislation and fighting for support, even when it meant taking on his own party's very powerful interests. And he was elected four times to the U.S. Senate.

I support Obama over McCain for the presidency because I think he has better ideas on how to improve the economic and social problems facing the nation. Because he supports a woman's right to choose while McCain opposes it. Because he believes in equal rights for all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation, while McCain favors some limits on those rights based upon one's sexual orientation. And because I think Obama will make a better leader in the current national and global environments.

I don't want to have a beer and a burger with either man. Nor with the current occupant of the White House. And neither should any voter. We should want whoever becomes President to have his beers and burgers and cocktails and state dinners with domestic and foreign leaders and people with good, workable ideas on how to tackle and possibly even solve our macro problems, which in turn should lead to a better climate for most of us to tackle our individual problems. We should want the candidate who doesn't become President to go back to the senate and work just as hard and harder to legislate and implement the aforementioned ideas. And while I won't speak for anyone else, I want the current occupant of the White House and all his cronies to stand up in front of Congress and answer for all the lies they've told and all the abuses of power they've committed, to serve time in federal prison, and then to go back home and live out the rest of their years before they head for an eternity in the deepest level of hell.

Let's review what we have so far:

From part 1, think for yourself when you make your voting decisions.

From part 2, we'll likely survive the most egregious electoral mistake we as a nation have ever made, but let's learn from the mistake and never make it again.

And stay tuned for part 3.

Sydney Pollack R.I.P.

2008-05-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

No politics today, just my own brief salute to Sydney Pollack, 1934-2008, R.I.P. I thought he made a few good movies, a few overrated movies (I think I'm in the small minority on They Shoot Horses, Don't They?), and one genuine classic. I laughed out loud at Tootsie more often and more emphatically than at any other movie I've seen since. Definitely one of my top 30 of all time (out of just over 2,200). The scene between Pollack himself as agent George Fields and Dustin Hoffman as struggling actor Michael Dorsey bickering about Michael's career up to that point, mostly fighting with directors and playing vegetables on stage (not brain dead humans, mind you, but actual tomatoes, cucumbers and “an endive salad that knocked the critics on their ass!”), gives us five of the funniest minutes of dialogue ever filmed.

Most of all, though, I salute him for the person he was. Obviously everyone talks favorably about someone right after they die, and colleagues such as Sally Field, Robert Redford and Tom Cruise didn't hesitate to add their kind words. I haven't known many people personally who worked with Pollack, but the small handful who did offered equal, if not greater, praise for the decent, humane person they met. And that, to me, is the best, and perhaps only valid, reason to celebrate a person's life, regardless of their accomplishments.

How to Vote (part 1)

2008-04-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Here, once again this seemingly endless election season, is a hapless plea to all those capable of doing so to think for themselves. Listen to friends if it seems socially prudent, to the media if you must, and to the TV and radio bloviation generation if you've been constipated for quite some time and really need help clearing out your system (as always, I offer an alternative in the form of a thousand laxatives). But in the end, decide who you're going to vote for based upon two things, and only two things:

1) Given the current domestic and international environments that currently prevail and how I and/or people whose opinions I trust anticipate those environs will develop and change during the next four years, do I believe this person will make a good leader of the United States?

2) Given that this person will have an extraordinary amount of power, to influence national legislation, to issue short-term executive orders that can have a dramatic effect on my life and the lives of those around me, and to appoint federal court and Supreme Court judges who can interpret the U.S. Constitution in ways that can have a dramatic and indefinite effect on my life and the lives of those around me, do I agree with this person's stances on various issues that I deem important, and can I trust this person to adhere to his/her stances and act accordingly?

Much as you may be tempted, you're going to want to avoid following the media blitz of jumping on every regrettable comment or misstatement (or deliberate misinterpretation thereof) made by any of the candidates. Regardless of their respective strengths and weaknesses, the three front runners are irrefutably human, and when pontificating in public 20-30 times a week for a year and a half, any human is going to make a gaffe, and likely several.

While I can't confirm this for certain, I'd be comfortable making the following assumptions:

-John McCain does not actually want to keep 130,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq continuously through the year 2103;

-Hillary Clinton does not believe she faced the same magnitude of danger during her visit to Bosnia as a commissioned soldier;

-Barack Obama does not agree with every statement the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has ever uttered (I'd be inclined to believe no one agrees with everything ever said by the spiritual leader of his/her church, synagogue, stake, mosque, etc., and I'd be far more worried about anyone who does so than I would about some inconsequential, hate-spewing bloviator who reaches a couple thousand Chicagoans from a local pulpit once a week);

-Michelle Obama, having reached legal adulthood in 1982, has not hated or been ashamed of the United States every moment, or even a majority of the moments, of the last 26 years.

Try to keep this somewhere at the forefront of your mind: all humans are irredeemably imperfect. Jesus Christ, at least to Christians, was as close to perfect as a human ever came, and he ain't on the ticket this year. And if he were, you know darn well the media and the Democratic surrogates would be all over him for his frequent interaction with a known prostitute, while the Republican mouthpieces would lambast him as not conservative enough because, while he was a religious conservative and staunchly pro-Israel, he was also reportedly a liberal when it came to social welfare (and he well may be the last person who honestly achieved this dichotomy).

Of course, were the aforementioned savior to return to earth tomorrow, it would still take too long for the 38 state legislatures to ratify an amendment to the Constitution allowing someone who is not a natural born citizen of the United States to run for president. And then there's the whole issue of his being Middle Eastern, which means you know damn well he'd be profiled every time he tried to board a plane, a pretty glaring inconvenience when you're trying to campaign across roughly three-and-a-half million square miles. Still, the prospect seems unlikely; launching a grass roots presidential campaign this late in the game would be almost as crazy as telling people you're Jesus Christ himself.

So that leaves McCain, Clinton and Obama, as well as a handful of third-party sacrificial lambs whom the press will give the opportunity to make statements for their respective causes.

Now as always, there will be those who will point out the flaws in my argument, the most glaring of which is the inherent paradox: if you tell me to think for myself, and I do so because I followed your advice, then which am I actually doing? For you, I offer the obvious out: Vote for Obama. Because I said so. Baa-a-a-a-a!!!

{to be continued}

{like it or not}

{and don’t blame me – it takes more than one neglected blog to change a system that would drive M.C. Escher into an asylum}

The grand design of Ben "The Collaborator" Stein

2008-03-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot to write about, rant about, piss and moan about this past week.

Schadenfreude once again became the hot political stance as those angry, righteous frauds who got cheated out of their much-deserved, illegally-obtained billions by that smug wharf rat Spitzer could wish upon him the deepest level of hell (is that the first or the ninth, I keep forgetting?) for having sex with a prostitute and getting caught. For shame, Eliot, for shame! You've sullied the good name of the New York State Office of the Governor! This is Albany! We don't cotton to that sort of corruption in, well, uh, oh, never mind! Just resign or we'll impeach you for getting caught doing something illegal that none of us have ever gotten caught doing! And swallow your own face while you're at it!

Then there's oil up over $110 a barrel. None of us who lived and drove through the last 19 oil crunches of the past 30 years has any right to complain. But hey, we're Americans! To complain self-righteously about problems we pretty much created with our own arrogance and gluttony is our birthrite, dammit! Love it or leave it, you tree-hugging, Prius-driving pansies!

But that's all over the place now. In less than a week's time, it's gone from cutting-edge to passe to write, rant, piss and moan about those topics. And you can call me a lot things, from a loony liberal to a tree hugger to an anti-Christian to a terrorist sympathizer to a spoiled suburbanite to a nerd to a geek to a slacker to a rambler who unconsciously channels the discarded lyrics from Beck's "Loser" and what was my point again?

Oh, yeah. You can't call me passe. Well, all right, you can, but no one reads this damn thing anyway, so it's unlikely anyone knows I'm here to be called passe.

But my point (finally!) is that today I came upon a topic that hasn't been covered to the point of being smothered, and it's yet another in the annals of my favorite issue that I wish weren't so ubiquitous as to be anyone's favorite issue: Stupidity.

I came upon today's topic in an even more roundabout than usual way. I logged on to the Internet Movie Database homepage this morning, which had a link to New York Times article about Orlando Sentinel film critic Roger Moore (his real name). Moore, a proud liberal member of the always inaccurately classified media, last week found himself shut out of a local film screening of a new documentary entitled Expelled, subtitled "Intelligence Not Allowed." The screening, like others around the country, was intended for local clergy, but Moore found himself with what was probably a mistaken invite. The film's distributor, Motive Marketing, had rescinded the invite before the screening, but Moore had already accepted, so he went anyway, probably spouting pointless sanctimony to no one in particular just to fit in, and wound up screening the film. (Actually he denies posing as a clergyman, so it was probably just an oversight, perhaps his hosts conteding with an obstructed view looking that far down their noses.)

Expelled purports to be a documentary about the shameless suppression of intelligent design and its proponents by the elitist, leftist intellectuals who control public education in this country. Moore panned the film and went so far as to compare its narrator to a Holocaust denier.

The narrator/interviewer is noted commentator - speechwriter - lawyer - humorist - game show host Ben Stein. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to equate Stein with Holocaust deniers, but he may well be the most self-loathing Jew of any public figure short of Krusty the Clown. He's a conservative Christian wingnut-sympathizer, and while he certainly wouldn't deny the Holocaust happened, he seems ever eager to drink the right wing's Kool-Aid, which in this case would most likely be Vichy water.

(Note: I've just been alerted by the Nevada State OSHA that if I mix any more metaphors in today's entry I'll be fined for operating without a valid hazardous materials license.)

Now I understand that stupidity abounds in the activities and positions of the radical Christian right, so much so that you might wonder why it's any better fodder for my first posting in six weeks than Spitzer's dalliances or oil price gouging or any other outrage du jour. But this one also contained the rare element of real irony, to the point where it made me laugh out loud.

Stein, while always openly and proudly aligned with the right, is known for his deadpan wit. He is labeled a humorist almost as often as he is a lawyer, commentator or Nixon speechwriter. And I can attest to the fact that, at various times in the past, he has made me laugh. But when Ben Stein is touting the incomparable joys of freedom, family values and right-wing America, he is invariably 100 percent serious.

In 2000, he appeared on a TV panel of well-known comedians and humor writers discussing the contest between Bush and Gore. The moderator asked several questions, and the panelists, for the most part, responded as expected, with tongues generally resting in cheeks. However, in his response to one question, Stein found no opening for humor.

“What,” asked the moderator, “is the biggest advantage each candidate has in this race?” Stein cited that Gore had already been vice-president for eight years. And Bush? “George W. Bush's biggest advantage is that he's a decent, honest man!” Perhaps it's not so scary in the context of the time, after Bush had gone into recovery but before he'd occupied the White House. But after having witnessed some of Stein's more recent comments on Bush, on the War in Iraq, on the “war on Christmas,” on liberals, on the '08 presidential race, on his general worldview, I honestly believe Stein still believes George W. Bush is a decent, honest man. Martin Lawrence has demonstrated that there's a point where a humorist can go well past comedy into the realm of certifiable mental defectiveness. If Stein still believes in President Bush's unimpeachable decency and veracity, I think he qualifies.

Back to present day. The aforementioned irony came in the Times article when Stein explained why he chose to participate in Expelled: “'there's just a lot of people who don't believe that big science and Darwinism should have a stranglehold on academic life, and they have been waiting for a voice.'”

Big science? You mean, like “big oil,” “big pharma” and “big health care?” An unofficial cartel of extremely powerful and moneyed corporate interests seeking inordinate control of the domestic and international puppet strings of economics, politics, reportage and even individual thought through the use of lobbyists and other influence peddlers, corporate-controlled media and myriad other methods of manipulating the general public? That's the image you have and seek to propagate of the world scientific community and its stalwart adherence to theories such as evolution that can be supported using the scientific method, its unwavering insistence on educating people using FACTS and EVIDENCE? That's what you see as an unreasonable “stranglehold on academic life?”

Ben, Ben, Ben. You're treading dangerously close to being a punchline on The Simpsons. Trust me, an Ivy League educated lawyer and nationally recognized commentator should not ASPIRE to have Homer cite him as an expert when he defends his beliefs, be it that no one remembers what team Babe Ruth played for, or that the waffle affixed to the ceiling with maple syrup is his deity (“Mmmm....sacrelicious.”). And you also might want to avoid demonizing those with opposing viewpoints with anachronistic pop culture references such as the title of a 1984 new wave album by Laurie Anderson.

Lest someone of your supreme intellect and accompanying arrogance be confused by this, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolutionary Biology in explaning the origins of the species homo sapien, which you and your ilk so condescendingly refer to as "Darwinism," is supported by a century and a half of that annoying evidence, whose validity has been subjected to that equally annoying scientific method. Whereas your Theory of Intelligent Design is supported by 15 or so years of evangelical revisionism whose validity has been subjected to bloviating right wing talk show hosts who prove the validity of their every point by quadrupling the decibel level and comparing their more subdued opponents to Adolf Hitler.

And, for the record, "Big Science" has for centuries pretty much flat out rejected as proof of a theory the ability to locate holes in an opposing theory, no matter what some quack in the biology department at Lehigh trumpets at the top of his own voice. Gaps in the fossil record and biologists' inability to explain beyond a shadow of a doubt how DNA proteins clustered the way they did do not scientifically prove the existence of an intelligent designer. Those high-minded bastards, with their government grants and electron microscopes and their unfair stranglehold on academia, long ago ensured it would be more far complicated than that to untangle their well-woven web of liberal dogma, university sanctioned bureaucracy, and those pesky, intractable facts.

Random thought for the day

2008-02-01T17:42:00.000-08:00

Because today I saw this sign on a truck for roughly 17,394th time, let’s clear something up.

The sign, “STAY BACK 200 FEET. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BROKEN WINDSHIELDS”, is meaningless. Every state in the union, and I’m pretty sure the District, has a law pertaining to “secured loads.” That means that, if you’re carrying something, anything, in a pickup, and an item of size sufficient to fly off and damage the windshield of a following vehicle does so, it’s a traffic violation. In addition, the owner of the load AND the driver of the truck are responsible. No matter what the sign says. No matter how belligerent the driver is. No matter what. Same concept as a “NO TRESPASSING” sign on your property not giving you the right to shoot an unarmed intruder. Something called the law.

That said, if you’re the driver of the unfortunate vehicle with the newly shattered windshield or, more to the point, of the vehicle following too closely that is the potential victim of a shattering, keep this in mind: odds are the trucking company has one or more lawyers on retainer. Even if you are 100 percent in the right, they have the means to drag things out and cause you a great deal of aggravation. If you have better things to do with your time than fight a protracted legal battle with people who are of such limited intelligence that they think a sign indemnifies them against action when they’re clearly breaking the law, you might want to keep your distance. Maybe not 200 feet – that’s 2/3 of a football field – but think about allowing 15 to 30, just for your own peace of mind.

Random thought for the day

2008-01-26T11:49:00.000-08:00

From the “If they were in the business of making sense, this wouldn’t be an issue to begin with” files:

Sears, Roebuck and Co. distributes some high-quality products under its various house brand names: Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools, etc. And to ensure the company maintains the reputation it has held for so many years, it hires the least competent people imaginable to sell and provide customer service for these high-quality products. Jay Leno, long before he became a multi-million-dollar network talk show host, made an entire cottage industry out of making fun of Sears’ recruits from its endless stacks of rejected applications to toll collection school.

And a few years ago, in order to secure its place at the very bottom of the retail barrel, Sears bought, and now manages, the Kmart chain for the real estate. Maybe their long-term vision for 2008 involves buying Countrywide for its mortgage division’s accounts receivable.

A few evenings ago I was sitting at a friend’s kitchen table while she was lamenting the idiots in Sears’ customer service department and the way they’d treated her during her more than 30 minutes on the phone with them trying to explain her problem and why they were responsible for repairing it.

If I had the forum – by which I don’t mean a blog read by approximately six-and-a-half people each week – I’d warn everyone that if they transact business in any way with Sears, they’re doomed to prolonged aggravation, either in the purchasing process or, more likely, on the back end. Or else I’d just remind all those possessors of poor long-term memories how the company screwed millions of automotive repair customers out of literally billions of dollars in the early 1990s by installing parts they knew were bad and charging for services they never performed.

For now, I’ll simply tell my friend and the other 5.5 people who read this week’s entry: Buy Sears stock (NYSE: SHLD) at your own risk. And buy what Sears has in stock at risk to your own sanity.

Let's cut the crap

2008-01-23T11:57:00.000-08:00

It would be funny if it weren’t so frightening.

The Associated Press ran an article this morning informing us that two nonprofit journalism organizations collaborated on a study which yielded the following result: The Bush Administration issued 935 false statements concerning the security threats posed by Iraq in the two years following the 9/11 attacks.

Nine hundred and thirty-five false statements?

In an article reporting on a study exposing the ongoing bullshit propagated by the administration, the premise, indeed the banner headline, is utter and irrefutable bullshit.

Note to the Associated Press: The study does not, or at least should not, conclude that the Bush Administration issued 935 false statements.

Note to the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism: Check the methodology of your study. It should not have concluded that the Bush Administration issued 935 false statements.

Wake up, academics. Wake up, mass media. Wake up, America!

The Bush Administration did not issue 935 false statements concerning the security threats posed by Iraq in the two years following the 9/11 attacks.

THEY LIED!!!!!!!!!!!

How far are we going to mitigate our own dear English language, to what degree are we going to equivocate anything and everything we actually mean, all in the interests of not being mistaken for people with actual positions on the issues, opinions on the events, THOUGHTS IN THEIR HEADS?

*****

Some years back, George Carlin did a bit where he traced the evolution of military language from WWII to the present day. (What follows is a paraphrasing of Carlin’s remarks.)

In the 1940s, soldiers who returned from the unimaginable horrors of war and proceeded to lose what was left of their minds were described as suffering from “shell shock.”

In the 1960s, soldiers who faced an identical experience were described as suffering from “combat fatigue.”

Today, soldiers, and apparently anyone else who witnesses someone stepping on a bug, is said to be a victim of “post-traumatic stress disorder.”

And maybe, just maybe, if we’d continued all along to call it what it really is, instead of dumbing it down for the “let’s not say anything that might be offensive to anyone now or ever” crowd, we might have done something about it. In the extreme, we might have even been more reluctant to send our boys off to experience the horrors of war.

*****

Our goals in the current circumstance seem to be even a bit more craven.

Reporters and editors don’t want to risk making clear and unequivocal statements about the ever-rising tide of shit we’re drowning in, lest they be dubbed by the never-subtle right wing bloviators (who themselves are nothing but mouthpieces for the bullshit artists in question) as “liberal.”

Politicians don’t want to risk calling a water fowl with webbed feet who quacks “a duck” for fear of losing a single vote from the all-powerful water fowl political sensitivity lobby.

And everyone in the center and to their left is more concerned with “bridging the gap” and reuniting a divided populace than with saying what needs to be said.

That President Bush and Emperor Cheney should be impeached.

That they should be held accountable for the nearly a trillion dollars of our money they wasted.

That they should be held responsible for the thousands of lives that were lost on their greedy, self-serving, misguided and flat out stupid invasion of a country that they KNEW posed no imminent threat to America.

Not because they issued 935 false statements.

But because they told 935 outright lies.

THEY LIED!!!!!!!

Say it, shout it, out loud.

THEY LIED!!!!!!!

Over and over and over again, THEY LIED!!!!!!!

They knew what the facts were, they knew what the truth was, and because the facts and the truth wouldn’t give them the outcome they wanted in order to galvanize their political power and line their pockets, THEY LIED!!!!!!!

Say it again.

THEY LIED!!!!!!!

Feels good to finally say what we mean, doesn’t it?

Bill Kristol to provide neocon agitprop to the one remaining media outlet that hasn't yet given it a forum

2008-01-15T13:58:00.000-08:00

“Stupid is as stupid does.”

It may be one of the most oft-quoted movie lines to come out of the 1990s. And no, it isn’t a genuine classic. Neither are others among the decade’s co-leaders: “I amuse you? I make you laugh?”; “I’m king of the worrrrrlllllld!!!!”; and perhaps the most regrettable of all, “Show me the money!”

(I know, I know, what about the superior Gump-ism, “Life is like a box of chocolates,” and the heart-tuggers at the end of Jerry Maguire, “You complete me” and “You had me at hello?” Well, the fetal filmgoers who found these lines original were exactly the audience Hollywood was shooting for with these jackpot hitters at the box office and the Oscars, people of all ages who either weren’t alive for or simply don’t remember anything significant that happened in this world before Reagan took the oath of office. None of these lines was original to the film in question. Hell, “You complete me” was lifted straight out of a Joni Mitchell song from 1974!)

In 2003, our president -- yes, all of ours, and it’s time for all of us to start accepting our collective responsibility for him, whether you voted for him or not -- ordered our armed forces to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was developing even more sophisticated and dangerous ones with the help of a starving African nation, and because Iraq was in bed with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, and because the White House and Congress had irrefutable intelligence that Iraq sponsored terrorism and we had to fight them there so that we wouldn’t have to fight them here, and because the sun rose that morning and set that night, and on and on.

Those who thought these defenses were utter bullshit then have since welcomed to the fold all those who eventually arrived at the same conclusion. But then there are those who continue to argue that our freedom, our democracy, indeed our entire “way of life” is at stake.

I read a book recently entitled Common Ground, a very reader-friendly but still effective collaboration by liberal stalwart Bob Beckel and conservative commentator Cal Thomas. The book is a combination “how we got here” and “what do we do about it?” guide for the shouted-down majority of Americans who lean more toward the middle than toward either extreme of the American political spectrum.

Only one chapter of the book is explicitly written by the two men separately (assuming the whole wasn’t ghosted by a third party with the two pretty much acting as advisers), the explanation for which is that the chapter’s subject is the one polarizing on which the two men could not find common ground: the war in Iraq.

Beckel authored the bulk of the chapter, which consists of many of the commonly touted arguments that paint the 2003 invasion as self-serving, egregious or flat out stupid and the war without end that’s followed it as a fiasco wrapped in a farce drowning in a quagmire.

The last two pages, however, are Thomas’ rebuttal, a bitter, full-throated defense of the invasion, including the argument once again that Saddam had the WMDs and just cleverly hid them before the U.N. inspectors arrived on the scene; an explanation for why we need to have a strong military presence in the Middle East lest we allow jihadist activities and the islamofascist virus to mushroom until takes over the entire world and then infects our very shores; and finally, as always, an attack on those who disagree because they don’t accept that we are on the side of the angels and don’t see the plain-as-dirt threat to our freedom, our democracy, indeed our entire way of life check your citizenships at the door you America-hating wusses blah blah blah....

Cal Thomas, for anyone who isn’t aware and might be shocked by this factoid, is best known for the commentary he provides for the Fox News Channel.

Apparently, though, William Kristol, one of his high-profile comrades in arms in defending the decision to forever keep our desert-deployed comrades at arms, recently accepted employment with another media outlet known for its distorted, bloviating haranguing of anyone who doesn’t view Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh as the modern day equivalent of the three wise men. You know the media powerhouse I’m talking about. The one the Bush acolytes eagerly read every day with gusto and hang on its every proclamation, the one that causes heartland Nascar devotees to froth at the mouth over its unimpeachable assailing of terrorist-caressing ACLU supporters, the publication that makes The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard look like whiny campaign brochures for public education, welfare cheats and Al Gore.

I’m talking, naturally, about The New York Times.

Times Public Editor (fronting for all the private ones, I guess) Clark Hoyt wrote an opinion piece in last Sunday’s edition that, at first glance, seems to give a “tsk, tsk” to all those who wrote in and expressed unprecedented outrage at the paper’s decision to give its open conservative columnist slot, vacated by the right wing but still far more open-minded (and, if I might, talented) William Safire in 2005, to the nightmare bloviator whose father Irving began to spread the neocon ebola some decades back with his launch of The Weekly Standard.

But while Hoyt might have wished to give the impression up front that he sought to make nice with the right and with his editorial overlords who decided to pay Mr. Kristol ever-deflating dollars to spew his pro-war, anti-intellectual, anti-reason opinions with support provided in the form of an endless litany of facts manufactured by Fox News, a full perusal of the piece gives a far different impression.

So what does all or any of this have to do with the quote at the top of the post? Mr. Kristol, like Mr. Thomas, still firmly believes in the war in Iraq, mainly that it was an action absolutely necessary to protect the U.S. and democracy in general from islamofascism and other threatening neocon neologisms, and he further believes that the U.S. Armed Forces must remain a substantial presence in Iraq for as long as it takes in order to restore peace and order to the country and give our intelligence community a “Big Brother”-like view of all potential terrorist activities there and throughout the Arabian Peninsula. In other words, until hell (with all its Judeo-Christian infidels) and paradise (with all its former virgins pleasuring its islamofascist martyrs) freeze over.

Do people like Messrs Kristol and Thomas really, honestly believe that our presence in Iraq is doing anything to curb, much less halt, terrorist activity? The only argument the neocons have been able to make that hasn’t been laughed off the stage by everyone else on the political spectrum is that we haven’t had any more domestic attacks since 9/11 (unless you count Rudy’s ongoing attack on our senses about 9/11). Reality check-plus-reminder here, folks: those terror-martyr-brainwash victims were almost all products of Saudi Arabia madrases, and their benefactor was born and spent most of his days in Afghanistan. But neocons are notorious for refusing to let facts get in the way of a good rant. They’re also notorious for waving the flag and cheering while other people (and other people’s children) camp out in the desert and wait to be blown up or fired upon.

And as the evidence mounts, day after day, year after year, nearly five years since the immortal “Mission Accomplished” banner proudly flew on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the stalwart neocon brigade continues to fly squarely in the face of said evidence by repeatedly insisting at the tops of their lungs, and in print, that we have to defeat them there so we won’t have to fight them here.

And to date, of the more than 3,700 U.S. troops who have given their lives for that sentiment, not a single one has been either a neocon bloviator or one of their offspring. So maybe we should tinker with ol’ Forrest’s pearl of wisdom.

Stupid is as stupid forces someone else to do?

Welcome to the New York Times editorial page, Mr. Kristol. I look forward to following your work as you continue to uphold Jayson Blair’s fine traditions of honesty, integrity and, most of all, practical, insightful and well-analyzed commentary on what is truly best for our great nation.

In memory of a thinking man

2007-12-07T21:42:00.000-08:00

Wasn’t planning on posting this week, but then fate intervened. I was indulging in my too-wild-for-Vegas lifestyle by spending part of my Friday evening watching a rerun of The Daily Show from earlier in ’07, and who should Jon’s guest be but Dennis Miller?

Anybody remember Dennis Miller? In the late 80s he did the news on Saturday Night Live. In the 90s he was a successful stand-up comedian who, for a while, had his own weekly show on HBO where he’d riff on whatever was in the news or the gossip columns or just at the forefront of popular culture. He was best known for opening each show with a trademarked Dennis Miller “Rant,” during which he would, at quite a rapid pace, interweave scathing social commentary with pop culture subreferences present and past, some so obscure they required regular viewing of PBS in prime time during the summer of 1975 and an encyclopedic knowledge and total dialogue recall of the entire pre-Superman II filmography of Richard Lester.

Then, on September 11, 2001, 9/11 happened. It happened to all of us, liberal and conservative, urban and rural, rich and poor, etc. Most of us had opinions about the events, their tragic toll, the terrorists, Islamic extremism, the politics surrounding it all, and many of us felt free to express these opinions, in spite of the efforts of the Bush Administration and their wingnut cronies to silence everyone who didn’t tow their line by calling us everything from un-American to terrorist supporters to neo-Nazis to – oh, how could they?! – liberals!

But very few of us were, or are, well-known comedians/social commentators with (at the time, at least) periodic HBO specials (his series had been cancelled due to, depending upon whose version you believe, poor ratings or Miller’s personal disgust with the corporate media). But Dennis was among the elite who had a following, a narrow one perhaps, but generally a well-educated one.

So in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and all their social, political and cultural impact, Dennis Miller did exactly what one would expect of a social commentator who prides himself, and whose audience generally prides itself, on intellect and reason: He became a hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool right-wing extremist and George W. Bush acolyte.

I once proudly counted myself among those who followed and routinely enjoyed the Friday –night Dennis Miller “Rants” back in the Halcyon (Prozac?) days of the 1990s. I laughed at his original takes on high-profile news items and pop culture nuggets, and I congratulated myself on occasionally “getting” his obscure subreferences. But then, in 2002 I believe, I caught his HBO special entitled The Raw Feed, in which, labelling it comedy, he basically praised to the mountaintops the gung-ho, take-no-prisoners, “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” response the neocon chickenhawks had to the attacks, and in which he proceeded to eviscerate anyone who disagreed with this approach. I gaped openmouthed for about 20 minutes and then shut off my TV and wept just a little inside.

Both liberals and conservatives were able to claim throughout the last century their respective shares of intellectual voices, ideologues who nonetheless prided themselves on reasoned, if impassioned, arguments, commentary, even diatribes in which they laid out their beliefs and proceeded to give some sort of context, be it historical, social, spiritual, or what have you, for those beliefs. These people would present documented evidence from sources generally recognized to be reliable, and they would thereupon build their cases. Sometimes they would even acknowledge the legitimacy of the opposing side and the arguments to be made for it, but they would always see that their point of view on the respective topic triumphed, always using the context they created and the evidence at hand to clearly and rationally explain to all open-minded listeners and readers why their side was in the right.

The right had LaFollette, Dulles, Safire, Friedman, Buckley and their ilk. Liberals could turn to Stevenson, Galbraith, Buchwald, Jack Anderson and the like. And both sides at various points could claim Norman Mailer, may he rest in whatever he regards as peace. At times throughout their respective careers, all of these partisan commentators had to accept that events, the public mood or even fate proved them wrong, or at the very least marginalized their arguments, if only for the moment. Sometimes they swung back with the ever popular “Well, just wait, you’ll see!” stance; sometimes they licked their wounds for a day or two and moved on to another topic of current or imminent importance.

In the 21st century, with our infotainment-on-demand appetites and our ever dwindling attention spans, we no longer have commentators. We’ve replaced them with bloviators, stand-up comics masquerading as the voices of rage for the new generation (whatever generation we’re awarding that title to this week, by whatever arbitrary moniker we’ve chosen to paste on it). I don’t need to name them – at least three probably sprung to your mind while you were reading the last sentence. In the 90s they had their own radio shows and occasional cable TV specials. Today they have their own radio and TV networks!

And then there’s our ol’ pal Dennis. Pre-9/11, I could at least say of the man, when he was a comedy writer, that’s what he was. When he was a politically- and socially- charged stand-up, that was his m.o. And when he opted to engage in outright punditry, at least you knew where he was coming from.

But when he woke up on Wednesday, September 12, 2001, after I imagine giving some serious thought all the previous day and night to how he wanted to approach this colossal, earth-shaking event, this potential paradigm shift for all time, he obviously made one decision: I am so incensed and so full of rage and hatred for an enemy I can’t see or kill or see killed, that the only way I can wrap my head around this is to abandon all clarity and reason and past conviction and become an unabashed right-wing extremist, throwing all my intellect and pop-culture influence behind President Bush and Shadow President Rove and Emperor Cheney and the neoconservative movement and all of its public icons and use my gifts of wit, broad knowledge and insight to join them in demonizing any and all who would dare dissent or represent in elected office or the public sphere those dissenting voices.

Many times over the last six-plus years I’ve said to myself or anyone who would listen that Miller is a loser. What else could you call a reasonable intellectual who overnight abandons reason and turns his support to a massive wave of anti-intellectualism?

Sure, he lost an enormous share of his following, only to have it replaced by a much smaller group that never really comprehended his substance but could always rally around his soundbites. Hell, he couldn’t even sustain a color commentary post in the broadcast booth on Monday Night Football.

But is Dennis Miller a loser? He still gets published, still gets a pundit seat here and there, still gets asked to guest on The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart respectfully laughs hysterically at his still-frenetic subreferencing while making oh-so-insightful and potent comments about Nancy Pelosi’s looks, Harry Reid’s soporific timbre and Al Gore’s verbosity. Stewart has to be sitting there wondering how this one time truly original voice for common sense’s rage against nonsense became so unhinged. But Miller is still there, still in the public eye, if not exactly a mechanical rabbit for the celebrity gossip greyhounds.

So no, I don’t really consider Dennis Miller a loser. To those of us who would have continued to listen to his rants and other tirades against the degeneration of reason and practicality in favor of countless bloviating ringmasters battling to see who can shout the loudest in order to reach a big top growing ever more catatonic, he’s something much worse than a loser.

He’s a loss.

2007-11-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

The front page banner story of NDN, The National Daily News, Wed., Nov. 28, 2007:

Connecticut woman listed as missing

Secalappsaw, Ct. – Traycye Peterson, 33, a housewife pregnant with her third child, has been reported missing after more than 48 hours have passed with no signs of her at her home, her children’s school, or any of the several other locales where she can usually be found in this idyllic small town 35 miles from Manhattan.

Her husband Screw, a partner in the New York investment firm of Cavendish, Burnham, Whitley and Peterson, is said to be distraught with grief over the possibility that something might have happened to his beautiful wife of six years. He is sitting with his children, Lyndzi, 5, and Claetonn, 3, and has not been available for comment.

Peterson has been interviewed by police, but he is not considered a suspect in his wife’s disappearance. Lt. Edward Threapleton, spokesperson for the Secalappsaw Police Dept., tells NDN that it is department policy to take disappearances with the utmost seriousness, and the Secalappsaw P.D. is putting the full resources of its missing persons unit into locating Traycye Peterson.

This is not the first time that local officials have expressed concern for Ms. Peterson and her whereabouts. Three years ago, she was absent from two consecutive P.T.A. meetings and did not phone ahead, and earlier this year she failed to attend a tennis brunch at the home of her good friends, Albert and Cassandra Beckwith, also of Secalappsaw, and was later found cycling along a nature trail some 15 miles away. In addition, Ms. Peterson arrived nearly 45 minutes to a dinner party celebrating her and Mr. Peterson’s fifth anniversary last year. (Note: refer to NDN’s online archives for our in-depth coverage of each of these incidents.)

Ms. Peterson was diagnosed 22 months ago with Rustible-Gelphig Syndrome, an increasingly common condition usually afflicting Caucasian women whose diets consist of modest intake of almost exclusively high-priced organic foods. The primary symptom of RGS is a tendency to arrive inexplicably late or not at all for social functions and other public gatherings.

Dr. Wilson Thorndyke, M.D., Ph. D., chairman of the psychiatry department at Chandler-Townsend University, recently received a $16.4 million grant from the federal government to run an ongoing study of 12 women in suburban Connecticut believed to suffer from RGS. Dr. Thorndyke says he and his team of esteemed medical, mental health and social researchers, technicians and student interns are determined to uncover the root causes of RGS within the next two to three years.

Ms. Peterson’s mother, Evelyn Maxwell-Pierce, 59, of Greenwich, said that she first became concerned for her daughter’s health after her late arrival at the anniversary party, but that she does not for a moment believe that, even if suffering from RGS, her daughter would disappear for two days and leave herself and her son-in-law and grandchildren to worry for her well-being. “Traycye had a rebellious streak as a teenager,” Maxwell-Pierce noted, “but as an adult, and especially as a mother, she’s always been the most responsible and reliable woman. I don’t for a moment want to believe the worst is possible, but right now my heart aches, just aches, for Screw and those adorable grandchildren of mine.”

The partners at Mr. Peterson’s firm have already offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of Traycye Peterson. Senior partner Wilton Cavendish II remarked that “After two days, it’s not enough simply that the local police are searching for Screw’s lovely bride. This reward is intended to mobilize the community at large, and possibly the entire New York metropolitan area, to try and find this devoted wife and mother. Disappearances of such women have become far too common in recent years, as evidenced by the extensive news coverage of such incidents. These heinous acts must be halted at once!”

*****

Also in today’s nationwide crime blotter:

Rolonda Wilkins, 24, of Brooklyn, N.Y., found dead after a brutal knife attack; Murray Jackson, 87, and Edith Jackson, 85, of the Kensington section of Philadelphia, killed in a home invasion; Cristina Chang, 40, an unmarried secretary in Baltimore, raped and murdered; Tom Stipes, 47, a divorced insurance salesman in Springfield, Mo., shot and killed in a street mugging; Diana Lopez, 29, of Chicago, beaten and left to die in an alley; Francisco Lopez-Cochal, 4, her son, missing and presumed dead; DeShawn Kingsley, 18, of Memphis, listed as missing after missing 19 consecutive dialysis appointments; Raphael Calderon, 38, of North Miami, Fla., unemployed, found dead of a gunshot wound in a vacant lot; Loretta Smith, age unknown, mother of three, waitress and part-time law student, of Los Angeles, listed as missing five days after failing to appear for her California state bar exam; Patricia Miller, 20, of Oakland, Calif., unemployed and pregnant, suicide by hanging.

*****

For additional coverage of the Traycye Peterson disappearance, refer to the following:

-additional comments from friends and community members in Secalappsaw, p. 3
-map of Secalappsaw, highlighting all the locales regularly frequented by Ms. Peterson, p. 6
-feature story on Rustible-Gelphig Syndrome and its devastating effects, p. B-22 – B-25
-transcript of the Secalappsaw police report on Traycye Peterson’s disappearance, p. 26
-cross reference of coverage of breaking developments in this story by our network news partners, p. C-1

In case anyone cares....

2007-11-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this, welcome to a very lonely corner of cyberspace.

I've been sidelined by the latest collection of viruses and spyware that are going around. If any hackers stumble upon this site, please, take what is obviously an extraordinary aptitude for computer engineering and use it to make yourself some money!

If anyone cares (and judging by the tally of visitors to this site, no one does), I finished Arrowsmith last week, and I highly recommend it to anyone who struggles with the establishment on a regular basis, be it at a job, in your social life, or in any of the myriad of bureaucratic nightmares we all face on a regular basis (my current one is with Webroot, the company that manufactures Spy Sweeper, the useless anti-spyware software I use, and their customer service dept. is even more useless).

And, like it matters, our fearless leader has once again this week chided Democratic politicians for wanting to spend way too much of our hard-earned money on things like health care and the environment. Not vital interests like a quarter-billion-dollar bridge to serve 50 people living on an island in Alaska, or close to a trillion (can anyone even imagine how much money that is?) on a war that has only made the world less safe and the U.S. more reviled. No, useless crap like the environment and health care.

Merry Christmas Shopping Season!

2007-10-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

I’m almost exactly in the middle of reading Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for some time, but since it’s long, it’s a classic, and it’s from the early 20th century (copyright 1925, I believe) I needed to push myself to start on it. I never read anything by Lewis before, though I had an English teacher in high school who raved about him as a master satirist of middle America.

After having attempted several authors labeled “satirists” from that era, I approach them very reluctantly nowadays. To me, satire has to be either funny, scathing or both. I took a course in satire in college. We read Voltaire, Vonnegut, Swift, Nathanael West. The first three were both funny and scathing, while West was just vicious. That, to me, is satire. Stories full of subtle, irreverent digs at everyday life may be called satire, but to me they’re usually just dull.

I tried Babbitt, one of Lewis’ more famous works (even though Arrowsmith was his Pulitzer Prize) one summer during high school, and either I didn’t get it, or I just didn’t care. Either way, I was bored.

Perhaps I’m more mature (doubt it), more worldly (even more dubious), or just better able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to America in all its glory and, more often, its folly. But I’m loving Arrowsmith! Lewis is indeed scathing, and the last chapter I read I laughed out loud three times. I’m pretty jaded, so it takes some doing to make me laugh out loud. Three times in a single chapter of a book written eighty years ago is pretty phenomenal.

As much as I’m enjoying the book, I don’t know if I’m going to rush out to the library and check out Babbitt or Elmer Gantry. Maybe Dodsworth one of these days, and even less likely Main Street, since it’s apparently more of the same of life in the quasi-bustling metropolis of Zenith that failed to grab my interest in Babbitt (yes, it came two years earlier), but given that Lewis’ bibliography is a lot longer than I’d ever realized, I can see giving at least one or two others a try, eventually.

Still, after the current one, I may have to indulge in a couple of what I call “mind candy mysteries,” books that are quick and easy reads without a lot of literary substance. I’d say I probably read four to six of those for every piece of real “literature” I tackle.

***********************************************

In other news (that was news?), the Sunday New York Times Magazine has an interesting feature on the current state of decline of the radical Christian right. I’d like to believe it offers hope to those of us interested in resuscitating our democratic republic here, but nothing seems to energize the right wingnuts like hearing that they’re starting to lose some of their power. In any case, here it is, in relatively easy-to-read format: The Evangelical Crackup

Random thought for the day

2007-10-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

We were in a restaurant last week to celebrate my birthday (none of your business which one), and it had a fairly extensive wine list for a relatively inexpensive place. Probably not a full-time sommelier, but we all make sacrifices.

My folks inquired about a couple of the California wines. The waiter described the merlot as having a lush bouquet, a hint of entirely natural cinnamon aroma but not too aggressive, and a tri-berry and tamarind palate with a slightly nutty aftertaste.

The chardonnay, he explained, was slightly oakie but at the same time fragrant with lilac and yellow rose, with the taste highlighted by a minuet of green apple, d’anjou pear and vanilla.

And the house white was a full-bodied chablis with an aura of summer breeze and just a hint of jasmine and orchid, giving way to a field of ripe pluot and the finest of early pomegranite extraction.

Now as a once-and-I-hope-future writer I’m all for the most colorful of hyperbole. But the verses of wine song I’ve sat through in my time probably number in the high triple digits by now, and it ultimately leaves me with this question: When was the last time you heard someone describe a wine, any wine, as smelling or tasting like anything resembling grapes?

English muffins, too, I suppose

2007-10-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

From the "completely and utterly besides the point" files:

Bad week on the sexual politics front if your surname is Thomas.

After Justice Clarence Thomas, in all his grand judicial hubris, announced to Steve Kroft and the world at large on Sunday's "60 Minutes" that none of the once hotly debated sexual exchanges between himself and Anita Hill ever actually happened (a point he made at some length in his new memoir, as well), and that the whole nomination imbroglio was, in fact, over abortion, Professor Hill struck back in a civil, mature and even respectful manner in an editorial in the New York Times. After lying dormant for 16 years, the battle resurfaced, and Hill once again made Thomas look like a petulant dimwit. Of course, he rarely needs assistance in this department if you pay any attention to the bases he cites for his Supreme Court voting decisions (has he even read a copy of that parchment Rep. Madison began circulating 220 years ago?). But since few people probably do pay much mind to such trivialities, we can all take solace in the fact that the battle royale has returned to its rightful place in the public sphere and will likely soon return to the tabloid headlines as well.

N.Y. Knicks coach and former NBA All-Star Isiah Thomas, whose supportive mother's inspiring story of courage, faith and commitment to doing right by people was once the subject of a highly praised telemovie, was ruled liable for sexual harrassment of a former employee and for creating a sexually hostile work environment yesterday. Team MSG, owner of the The Knickerbockers organization, was ordered to pay Anucha Browne Sanders approx. $11.6 million in actual and punitive damages for Thomas' seeming rebuke of all his mother stood for in raising Isiah and his siblings. Way to go, Coach!

Edjamakayshun in America

2007-10-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

"Childrens do learn." - Pres.* George W. Bush

Adultses can, too. Even presidentses. Just not this one. Ever.

What do you think, too much time spent on the Internets?

The debate, today, as I see it

2007-09-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberals want to destroy America from the inside! love your country or leave it, you liberal scumbags! liberals want to give new age counseling to genocidal terrorists and let them vent their frustrations by killing innocent Americans! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberals want to outlaw Christianity and force us to burn our Bibles while they force feed our children commie-atheist-pagan dogma! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! left-wing organizations like Media Matters want to distort all the truth we tell in the fair and balanced media to make it look like lies so that they can continue to impose their radical agenda for secularizing all facets of American life and selling our most cherished institutions to a Venezuelan dictator who funnels money to a Greek immigrant billionaire bent on putting all of Washington in his pocket! they want to install a homosexual pedophile in the White House and outlaw Christmas! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-Uh, excuse me. Actually, nothing you’ve said thus far is based in truth or fact. We’d really like to put an end to the partisan name-calling and elevate the debate, so that all Americans, regardless of their political or spiritual ideologies, can benefit from the freedom and opportunity this country proposes to offer.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you’re the ones who do all the name calling! you’re the ones who keep the debate in the gutter! you’re the ones who try to restrict people’s freedom and opportunity! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you hate America so much that you want to open the borders and let illegal immigrants flood the country so you can raise our taxes beyond all conception and give the immigrants free money so they can take over our businesses and our institutions and turn our beautiful land into a polyglot Socialist empire! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-We want this country to continue to be open to those who want to immigrate and work hard and learn the language in a reasonable amount of time, just like our ancestors were able to do. We think it would be a mistake to close our borders and cease to welcome new culture and new ideas simply because of the actions of a small percentage of those who enter illegally and subvert the rules, although we do acknowledge that in many of those cases, they do so because they are trying to escape crushing poverty and threats to their lives. We do not favor giving welfare or other entitlements to able-bodied adults, although we believe that educating their children in our language and culture will only benefit this country.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you liberals dominate all the media and try to brainwash our good Christian children with your lies in order to make them hate America and turn gay and turn their backs on Jesus and sell out our way of life to evil Arabs and evil communists and evil Muslims who want to kill us all but you don’t mind if they kill us all because you want to kill our children before they’re even born and before they grow past clumps of cells! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you own Hollywood and you make your liberal propaganda movies that glorify oral sex and violence against good Christians because Hollywood is all a bunch of liberal secular Jews who hate Jesus and want to ostracize good people like Mel Gibson who tell the truth about gays and liberals and Jews and Muslims! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-You know that we support the ideals of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom for all religions but prohibits the establishment of a state religion or the domination of the public sphere by the religion chosen by the majority. And we disagree that our nation’s laws, and the laws of our individual states, should be based upon the dogma and the established prejudices espoused by the majority religion. We believe all people, including homosexuals and even those who despise the tenets of Judeo-Christian worship and culture, should have the right to make their voices heard and to do so without fear of institutional reprisals such as the loss of their jobs or homes or the institution of autocratic modes of surveillance designed primarily to disenfranchise and/or silence them.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you liberals want to force our children to learn your so-called science when you can’t prove theories like evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt but you insist that if we want to call our beliefs science that we have to prove them beyond a shadow of a doubt and when we want to teach children in our public schools that our taxes pay for that there are other scientific theories that contradict your liberal theories you get your activist judges to rule that we can’t even talk about God or Jesus or the Bible in our public schools that our taxes pay for and then you won’t let us have vouchers to take our children out of those public schools and send them to private schools where they’ll learn the things that we want them to learn! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-No respectable scientist believes that all scientific theories must be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. We simply feel that if we’re going to teach impressionable children that something is scientific fact or viable scientific theory, there should be some scientific evidence to support the fact or theory in question. Spiritual beliefs, as well as conjecture based upon unauthenticated biblical prophecy, while perfectly acceptable in a house of worship, are not objective, nor are they subject to objective peer review and statistical analysis, and so we simply cannot justify calling them science for the purposes of preparing children to live in the real world and to think pragmatically. You can educate your children with regard to your spiritual beliefs any way you like, and to any degree you like, in your churches, and no one will condemn or attempt to undermine your efforts. But the public schools are public, paid for by everyone’s taxes, and they need to present the facts and other undistorted information to everyone’s children so those children can grow up to function in a society where everyone can agree about the basic facts and information.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you call us racists and force affirmative action down our throats when it’s obviously not helping minorities at all and is just your way of perpetuating racism by making the so-called beneficiaries beholden to the system that you liberals control! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! we need to wipe out affirmative action just like we need to wipe out all entitlement programs and social security and immigration and Head Start because they’re all failures because they don’t work exactly the way they were supposedly meant to work when they were designed! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-We concede that in our zeal to try and make up for some of the inequities faced by minorities, especially African-Americans, in this country since its founding, we may have created a system that’s quite a bit more paternalistic than we’d intended. However, that doesn’t render the entire system worthless, and a lot of people, as well as a country that has always claimed to be the “land of opportunity,” have benefited from the affirmative action programs, just like a lot of people have benefited from entitlement programs and social security and Head Start. The programs may not have worked exactly the way they were envisioned, and indeed few bureaucratic programs of such magnitude ever do, but they have done a lot more good than harm, and we simply don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps instead of taking an all-or-nothing stance, our two sides could work together on a compromise program that allows more flexibility, works more efficiently and, in the long run, is more effective at providing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you don’t want compromise! you just want more and more and more government handouts courtesy of our ever-rising taxes which you just steal from hard-working capitalists and give to lazy welfare cases who do nothing but sponge off the system and have babies they can’t afford and get the government to pay them for raising those babies to be crooks and drunkards, or else they get the government to pay for their abortions! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! and then you make an honest, hard-working Christian existence impossible for honest, hard-working Christians because you pass laws to force us to share our neighborhood with homosexuals and hedonists while you tell us we can’t smoke anywhere or pray anywhere or share our neighborhoods with other honest, hard-working Christians! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-Why does sharing your neighborhood with other Christians preclude you from welcoming other honest and hard-working people into the fold in addition to those who share your beliefs? Must we all live exclusively with those who share our spiritual beliefs? Is that the way to make this country a “melting pot?” Isn’t gentrification exactly what you accuse immigrant groups of seeking when you argue that they don’t want to be part of America?

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! the founding fathers founded America as a CHRISTIAN NATION, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be forever! but you liberals want to make it okay to hate Christians and make it illegal to talk about Jesus and Christianity while encouraging people to glorify Allah and Joseph Smith and Satan and all those other false deities because you liberals hate Christians and by extension you hate the Great CHRISTIAN NATION of America! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-There it is, then. You honestly believe this is a Christian nation, and that all laws should be based upon Christian dogma? What about the provisions in the Constitution, which was meant by the founders to be the law of the land, that prohibit establishing an official state religion or requiring a religious test to become the nation’s leader? Do you deny these elements of the Constitution? Where, exactly, is it written, that the United States of America was established to be, or is meant to be, a Christian nation? Isn’t that just a specious claim you employ in order to justify basing all of our laws on Christian dogma, which in fact blatantly violates the Constitution?

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! our laws ARE based on the Bible, and the ones that aren’t SHOULD BE, because the Bible is the absolute truth as handed down by God Almighty, and no blasphemous secular propaganda can override God’s truth! but you just want to suppress that truth, or destroy it entirely, because it makes you anti-Christians feel more comfortable pursuing your evil, hedonistic, Satanic lifestyles in violation of all decency and morality! God wants us to glorify His sanctity and sanctify His glory everywhere and in all things, but in the hedonistic environment you so desperately want to protect, you feel so threatened by the truth that you don’t want to face it anywhere for any reason! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-Why can’t Christians worship in their homes and houses of worship, display their religious symbols on their persons and personal property, and discuss their religious beliefs and obligations freely among their families, friends and fellow Christians, and members of all other religious denominations can feel free to do the same? Why do Christians insist that all public and private spheres be aggressively Christian and that all public arenas be adorned with Christian symbols and language? Are Christians so insecure that not only are they the only religion that must be reminded of their religious identity everywhere they go, public and private, but that they must remind everyone else of their Christian religious identity in all walks of public life? Does a nativity scene in a town square make you feel more Christian? Does it make America more Christian? Conversely, does not having a nativity scene in the town square make you feel less Christian? No one is suggesting you can’t display anything you like at your churches and in your homes, but you always complain of being so embattled because we want to keep the public sphere equally welcoming to all.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you lying liberals just keep telling all your liberal lies to perpetuate your lying liberal agenda! that’s why you tell your lies about our conservative politicians who are trying to pass laws to make this country decent and moral! you tell your liberal lies and then use your liberal media to make our honest and decent leaders look like they’ve done something wrong! you’re all a bunch of self-aggrandizing hypocrites, and you just want this country run by laws promoting hedonism and homosexuality and secularism and liberalism! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-The mass media in this country are owned and operated, by and large, by a very small number of very wealthy corporate leaders. These are people who believe in, and benefit greatly from, capitalism and its ideals. We would have preferred a broader spectrum of mass media operators presenting news and information from a variety of different perspectives, but your demands for less and less regulation have left the mass media a corporate monolith. It doesn’t seem that left-leaning to us, but if you want it changed, why not apply to those same corporate leaders. They’re clearly capitalists, in many cases Republicans, and they seem to be far more interested in money than in ideology, so if you can convince them that allowing a hard-right ideology to dominate the content they distribute would be in their financial interests, you can probably eliminate the liberal media you so loudly decry. But first you’ll probably have to convince them it exists in the first place and that it harms their bottom line.

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! lib....

-And we’ve explained quite reasonably why we promote secularism. As for your contention that there is a homosexual agenda, or one promoting hedonism, do you have any evidence to back this claim, other than the seemingly uniform desire of homosexuals to be treated like anyone else and the desire of most Americans to keep free even that expression they find repugnant? We contend that children, even teenagers who are taught the right values and have those values reinforced by the example of their families and community will eschew the so-called hedonism you allege that we promote. Now if we could only get your leaders and prominent politicians to eschew the same hedonism and adhere to the “values” you so stridently claim to champion. As for the unconscionable hypocrisy of which you forever accuse us, tell us again, how many conservative politicians have been arrested and, yes, convicted of lewd sexual misconduct and even more egregious sex-related violations of the law since President Bush and all those hardcore family values conservatives swept into office in 2000?

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! you want to undermine all of our value-based laws using your activist judges because you HATE our values! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-What is an activist judge? Someone who strikes down a statute or lower court ruling because he/she interprets that it’s a violation of the U.S. Constitution? And we don’t hate your values. We agree with some and disagree with others, but we’d like you to acknowledge that they are your values. We’d like to give individuals the opportunity to make up their own minds when it comes to values rather than having your values enforced upon everyone by law. The question remains, though, do you hate our values because they don’t always align with yours?

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! if you really believe in any values, then you still have a lot to answer for when it comes to Clinton, with all the shenanigans he pulled, and all his immoral conduct! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-How do we have anything more to answer for when it comes to Clinton? Clinton is not our entire party, and while we admire him and think he did a GREAT JOB as president, not everything he does reflects our party’s values and not everything our party values reflects him. He’s a man, a human, and capable of flaws and mistakes. But that’s not even the issue. Clinton has answered for more than any other politician in history, thanks to your endless desire for eight years to have the president not run the country but rather sweat it out before a star chamber whose every proclaimed value turned out to be a lie. Clinton has answered for enough flaws, mistakes, missteps and shortcomings to cover any three presidents, dating back to the misjudgments everyone makes as a teenager, and yet today, all these years after he left office, you’re still trying to pin things on him. But when it comes to the litany of flaws, mistakes, missteps, shortcomings and flat-out criminal acts committed by our current leader, whose drug- and alcohol-riddled past we’re not even allowed to make passing mention of, you all cough and stammer and then hurried force the conversation back around to everything Clinton did wrong and the Democrats have ever done wrong. Why not just face it already, when it comes to moral superiority, you don’t have a toe to stand on, much less a leg, so let’s stop spending all our time placing blame and start working to try and fix the damn problems!

liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!
liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal! liberal!

-Look, our stance is basically this: We want to make laws to include everyone, to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and equally, to prevent one group or class from using the law to wield undue power and influence over other citizens and over the government. We want good, law-abiding people of all faiths and all stripes to be able to live their lives freely, to pursue happiness as they define it as long as it doesn’t bring harm to others, and to be comfortable in their own skin without fear of ostracism by particular institutions with which they have to interact on a regular basis, or by society at large. We want people to be able to find homes, attend schools, do their jobs and transact business without feeling like they’re unwelcome because of who they are or what they believe.

We are as stalwart as you are in our desire to protect this nation and the freedoms it affords, and we acknowledge that sometimes that requires military action. But we think such action should be a last resort, not an option to be chosen whenever things don’t go our way in the global community. We don’t advocate hatred in any form, and if you think that tolerance and acceptance means we have to tolerate and accept your hatred of people who don’t conform to your fundamental beliefs, then no, we will neither tolerate nor accept you as an equal player in any conversation regarding freedom or justice, because you are woefully misguided on both counts.

We have no desire, none, to prevent you from believing what you wish or worshipping how you wish or living according to your beliefs. Your family and your property are your business until you choose to make either a part of the public arena, by sending your children to public school or by opting to participate in the open market. Then there will be rules by which you’ll have to abide, and no, you don’t get to decide what those rules are and then insist that God wants it that way. We have no clear and convincing evidence that God speaks through any of you, and until we do, we’ll continue to think for ourselves and to encourage everyone, everywhere to do the same.

My Brilliant Career

2007-09-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

I began as an archaeologist, but I never dug it.

From there I became a surveyor in the Rockies, but I never measured up.

I left the quarry for something more concrete.

I tried tort law briefly, but it didn’t suit me.
And at bankruptcy law I was worthless.

Was a journalist for a few years, but by thirty I was through.

Selling imported china wasn’t my cup of tea, and being a diamond dealer was too damn hard.

I just wasn’t cut out to be a garment worker; ditto a copy clerk.

I started to write poetry, but I was soon barred; then I wrote some music, but I was immediately banned.

My foray into ceramics was half-baked at best, and soon went to pot.

Graphic design wasn’t much of a draw, and my time in mass-produced fashion came to a rapid clothes.
And it’s nearly impossible for a sculptor to carve out a living.

Being an actuary didn’t add up, and counseling gambling addicts was no better.

Carpentry was dull, and woodworking left me bored.
After one day in building demolition they told me to hit the bricks.
And street paving made me feel like a complete retarred.

I took a crack at chiropractic, but I couldn’t adjust.
I couldn’t get my head around neurology, and gerentology got old real fast.
Phrenology was too bumpy, and proctology a pain in the ass.

I wanted to be an economist, but there wasn’t much demand.
I was flat broke when I began trading stocks, and when I was done somehow I was broker.
There was no future in commodities trading, but then, I was only marginal at best.

In cartography I was certainly no legend.
And as for petroleum wildcatting, well….

I worked briefly in a fruit and vegetable processing plant, and you can figure this one out for yourself.

Firefighting fizzled, pest control bugged me, and selling vacuum cleaners just sucked wind.

Putting on trade shows was too conventional, but astronomy was just out there.

I had so many problems with milking viral cows, it was just
wan thing on top of an udder.

Raising geese brought me down, and elevator repair was hardly a lift.

I took a booth at a tiny flea market, but that was a little bizarre.

And I managed a grain processing plant, but you know that was run of the mill.

As an engraver I made no impression, and as a trade rep I never acquired any import.
In software engineering I never got with the program, and that really bugged me.

Believe it or not, I even trained to be a Benedictine monk, but I really had no chants.

Days at the sperm bank were too long and hard.
And the armor museum could only give me the knight shift.

So after all that, what am I today?
An architect.
Why?
I had no choice. I was drafted.