A plurality of Americans seem to think Obama is the worst president since World War II. I suspect a similar plurality couldn't tell you the combatants in that war or name the presidents we've had during or since, but according to a Quinnipiac poll he's the worst and we'd have been better off with Romney.
The horror.
Yes, he has no leadership qualities because the Republicans have had a stranglehold on the Government and have effectively opposed every appointment, ever action and have mobilized the worlds largest and most effective lie machine in human history to undo and to demonize what little he was able to accomplish.
The collapse of Iraq is Obama's fault, the civil war in Syria happened because of Barack Obama, because he either he did or did not intervene and never mind that the Republicans threatened and attempted to impeach him for both courses. Are we the most uninformed, the most misinformed, the most ignorant crop of Americans since WWII? Res ipsa loquitur. We certainly are and of all the civilized, educated countries we're the only one still serious about believing iron age superstition and forcing others to believe it. Huge numbers of Americans believe that Obama started the recession that began in 2001. No one seems to remember the nearly 1000 documented lies that fomented the disastrous 2 billion dollar attack on Iraq or the effect of paying for it with tax cuts and no-bid contracts for friends of the Administration. No, Obama is the worst because the Republicans paid to make it so, because the Republicans packed the Supreme Court with incompetent religious fanatics and invade our homes and our consciousness with all day and all night slander, fabrications and distortions.
The horror is that we brought this on ourselves and the truth is that we are the worst Americans since WWII with a contempt for justice and a contempt for the truth and we will hang on to our prejudice and superstition and delusion and greed like a drowning man clutching an anchor. The horror is that our system of government depends on a kind of citizen we're reduced to a minority and the ability of the insurgents to incapacitate the reasonable, the educated and well balanced increases every day. The very technology we once thought would spread enlightenment has spread lies and lies so palatible that we gobble them up like a starving dog gobbling shit. It's over. We failed. It's our fault and the only desperate hope I cling to is that when America fails it doesn't take the world with it.
Showing posts with label End Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label End Times. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Liberal Nazis don't want you to know this!
Lots of things are happening in the world that Cable News disciples
don't seem to notice or know about. Lots of crazy stuff is swept under
the racist team owner, missing airplane, sunken ferry rug every day.
It's a revelation.
I read today about another one of those wonderful preachers who seem to have a handle on our real problems -- the kind of stuff we need to read more of. I'm talking about Brother Dean Samuel who showed up a a screening of a film about 1998 Miss World Pageant winner and rape survivor Linor Abargil last month, wearing a T-shirt saying "You Whore." It's her fault for being raped, he says, she should have stayed home.
He's right. That neighbor across the street who leaves his garage door open is just inviting me to steal his Ferrari and it's his own damned fault if I do. Don't you just love Christianity? Do what thou wilt is the law - for men of course. Hey, don't argue, God's a man, or two men and a bird, but don't ask. The answer gets kind of weird.
And then there's that moral and righteous Newt Gingrich who got all Puritan on us when Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down, cheating on his wife while Newt was doing the same thing? I'm glad I didn't get distracted by the Missing Plane and got to read how "Liberal Nazis" forced Condoleeza to cancel her commencement speech at Rutgers. He blamed an "elite Media" for this horror: "an elite media that would have been screaming if right-wing groups had done this to a Somali woman and an African-American woman." 'This' meaning calling her to task for helping to falsify information about Iraq, ignore information about al Qaeda and justify a war that killed hundreds of thousands, helped punish critics, destroyed a country that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11 and bankrupted our economy. Thanks Newt, you're a realpiece of Patriot. Who else could conflate opposites and accuse others of your own sins with a straight face?
There's so much going on with those damned Liberal Nazis elsewhere we need to know about. Take the outrage perpetrated on a California school district superintendent, Mohammad Z. Islam who wanted 8th graders to research the Holocaust to see it if ever happened or the Jews actually made the whole thing up for money. Those Liberals didn't want us to know about this so we couldn't offer Mr. Islam our support for his freedom of speech!
If you only watched commercial, for-profit news (other than Fox) you'd probably never know that the people of Oklahoma have no blood on their hands for the grizzly execution that took 43 minutes to kill Clayton Lockett, bound to a table and zapped with a cattle prod so they could continue to pump agonizing chemicals into his groin. It's true - he didn't bleed. Damn bleeding heart liberals anyway -- too busy telling us we're not a Christian Nation to help hold the guy down.
And again, are the Liberals trying to keep you from hearing Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court tell us we need a new constitution to protect us from "gays and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg?" The same judge who bravely asserted that "Buddha didn't create us so the first amendment only applies to Christians?" Liberals don't want you to know the truth. Not like Fox News who aren't afraid to tell you that people who want to take prayer out of state supported schools are like Hitler.
No all this stuff that makes me proud to be an American and I had to find it on the web because the liberals don't want us to know!
I read today about another one of those wonderful preachers who seem to have a handle on our real problems -- the kind of stuff we need to read more of. I'm talking about Brother Dean Samuel who showed up a a screening of a film about 1998 Miss World Pageant winner and rape survivor Linor Abargil last month, wearing a T-shirt saying "You Whore." It's her fault for being raped, he says, she should have stayed home.
He's right. That neighbor across the street who leaves his garage door open is just inviting me to steal his Ferrari and it's his own damned fault if I do. Don't you just love Christianity? Do what thou wilt is the law - for men of course. Hey, don't argue, God's a man, or two men and a bird, but don't ask. The answer gets kind of weird.
And then there's that moral and righteous Newt Gingrich who got all Puritan on us when Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down, cheating on his wife while Newt was doing the same thing? I'm glad I didn't get distracted by the Missing Plane and got to read how "Liberal Nazis" forced Condoleeza to cancel her commencement speech at Rutgers. He blamed an "elite Media" for this horror: "an elite media that would have been screaming if right-wing groups had done this to a Somali woman and an African-American woman." 'This' meaning calling her to task for helping to falsify information about Iraq, ignore information about al Qaeda and justify a war that killed hundreds of thousands, helped punish critics, destroyed a country that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11 and bankrupted our economy. Thanks Newt, you're a real
There's so much going on with those damned Liberal Nazis elsewhere we need to know about. Take the outrage perpetrated on a California school district superintendent, Mohammad Z. Islam who wanted 8th graders to research the Holocaust to see it if ever happened or the Jews actually made the whole thing up for money. Those Liberals didn't want us to know about this so we couldn't offer Mr. Islam our support for his freedom of speech!
If you only watched commercial, for-profit news (other than Fox) you'd probably never know that the people of Oklahoma have no blood on their hands for the grizzly execution that took 43 minutes to kill Clayton Lockett, bound to a table and zapped with a cattle prod so they could continue to pump agonizing chemicals into his groin. It's true - he didn't bleed. Damn bleeding heart liberals anyway -- too busy telling us we're not a Christian Nation to help hold the guy down.
And again, are the Liberals trying to keep you from hearing Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court tell us we need a new constitution to protect us from "gays and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg?" The same judge who bravely asserted that "Buddha didn't create us so the first amendment only applies to Christians?" Liberals don't want you to know the truth. Not like Fox News who aren't afraid to tell you that people who want to take prayer out of state supported schools are like Hitler.
No all this stuff that makes me proud to be an American and I had to find it on the web because the liberals don't want us to know!
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Signs, portents and frames of reference
It is the best of times, it's the worst of times and if you're like Glen Beck; if you're like nearly every blathering godsmitten idiot in the last few thousand years, it is always the end of times. There are always signs, always comets, always wars and rumors thereof -- earthquakes, storms, floods and droughts. There are always famines and pestilences, always cause to go to the mountaintop to await or dress in purple and take poison for the magic trip to the mother ship. If Jesus said the end times would be during the lives of his followers, it's no contradiction. There are always plenty of editors, redactors and other verbal shell-game operators to redefine and revise the prophecy to suit the game.
Someone smart once said that if we live only in the moment, there is no difference between falling and flying and if we've read Einstein we know that truth is a matter of the frame of reference you occupy. If your idea of "the world" is the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire, the end of it means one thing. If you mean the Universe, a mid 20th century concept of something incomprehensibly larger, the importance of things like coveting your neighbors' ass or eating a Philly cheese steak becomes hard to see or justify as is the importance of anything that concerns a peculiar, transitory trick of chemistry on an infinitesimal dust mote we call life.
But the Grand Wazir of Beckistan said yesterday on his radio show that the Book of Mormon is "really a calendar" and perhaps like the Mayan Calendar, accurately predicts the end of all things. It's a level of rank stupidity that, like the size of the universe itself, utterly defies any attempt at analogy. He told his staff a long time ago, he said yesterday, that if he mentioned that book, it meant "we are at the end." It's the "Story of America" he said, but a story of things that never happened, cities that never were and people who aren't who it says they are and a story written by a charlatan with a demonstrated history of fraud.
But of course although each Plank length of time (tP) the smallest possible interval according to quantum mechanics, is the end of something, it's not likely the end of anything we would notice -- like the end of Glen Beck. It's not likely the end of the US government nor either political party, nor is it yet the moment of the "within 24 hour" predicted whistleblower he talked about earlier this week to an audience whose memory of world begins anew every morning
In a frame of reference where such a length is significant, not only are falling and flying indistinguishable, beginnings and ends are a bit meaningless in a frame that includes weeks and days and hours and indeed, human events. In the frame of reference where the stupid dwell, where anyone would credit anything Beck might utter, a report of cannibalism, although at least as old as the Neanderthalers, is so unique as to mean impending cosmic calamity. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible (only harder to read with a straight face) and many other religious texts inhabit a frame of reference so at odds with the physical universe and its properties and dimensions that talking animals magic fruit and other things and events that never existed abound, can be and always are used to frighten us to the profit of prophets.
"We are living in Biblical Times" Beck tells us; a statement hard to decipher since the last ravings of the Christian versions end sometime in the late first century, but of course there we have another blurry, woozy, foggy and crepuscular magic frame of reference where nothing really has much to do with anything outside of it; where nothing is true and all things are true and words have power. No offense intended to individual Mormons, but the book in question is hardly a calendar unless it be for a universe that never existed, inconsistent with the observable universe and inconsistent internally -- just like the Bible and Quir'an and others which speak of imminent calamities and events and places that are pure fiction.
Pure fiction, just like Becks mysterious 'whistle-blower.' Predictions of the impossible based on things with no significance selected for the purpose. Concepts like the end of time are far beyond science at the moment. We don't know when life will end, but the end of stupidity might just be as far off. There are signs.
Someone smart once said that if we live only in the moment, there is no difference between falling and flying and if we've read Einstein we know that truth is a matter of the frame of reference you occupy. If your idea of "the world" is the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire, the end of it means one thing. If you mean the Universe, a mid 20th century concept of something incomprehensibly larger, the importance of things like coveting your neighbors' ass or eating a Philly cheese steak becomes hard to see or justify as is the importance of anything that concerns a peculiar, transitory trick of chemistry on an infinitesimal dust mote we call life.
But the Grand Wazir of Beckistan said yesterday on his radio show that the Book of Mormon is "really a calendar" and perhaps like the Mayan Calendar, accurately predicts the end of all things. It's a level of rank stupidity that, like the size of the universe itself, utterly defies any attempt at analogy. He told his staff a long time ago, he said yesterday, that if he mentioned that book, it meant "we are at the end." It's the "Story of America" he said, but a story of things that never happened, cities that never were and people who aren't who it says they are and a story written by a charlatan with a demonstrated history of fraud.
But of course although each Plank length of time (tP) the smallest possible interval according to quantum mechanics, is the end of something, it's not likely the end of anything we would notice -- like the end of Glen Beck. It's not likely the end of the US government nor either political party, nor is it yet the moment of the "within 24 hour" predicted whistleblower he talked about earlier this week to an audience whose memory of world begins anew every morning
In a frame of reference where such a length is significant, not only are falling and flying indistinguishable, beginnings and ends are a bit meaningless in a frame that includes weeks and days and hours and indeed, human events. In the frame of reference where the stupid dwell, where anyone would credit anything Beck might utter, a report of cannibalism, although at least as old as the Neanderthalers, is so unique as to mean impending cosmic calamity. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible (only harder to read with a straight face) and many other religious texts inhabit a frame of reference so at odds with the physical universe and its properties and dimensions that talking animals magic fruit and other things and events that never existed abound, can be and always are used to frighten us to the profit of prophets.
"We are living in Biblical Times" Beck tells us; a statement hard to decipher since the last ravings of the Christian versions end sometime in the late first century, but of course there we have another blurry, woozy, foggy and crepuscular magic frame of reference where nothing really has much to do with anything outside of it; where nothing is true and all things are true and words have power. No offense intended to individual Mormons, but the book in question is hardly a calendar unless it be for a universe that never existed, inconsistent with the observable universe and inconsistent internally -- just like the Bible and Quir'an and others which speak of imminent calamities and events and places that are pure fiction.
Pure fiction, just like Becks mysterious 'whistle-blower.' Predictions of the impossible based on things with no significance selected for the purpose. Concepts like the end of time are far beyond science at the moment. We don't know when life will end, but the end of stupidity might just be as far off. There are signs.
Friday, December 21, 2012
End of the World!
CQ CQ CQ de KI4GTH CQ CQ CQ K
Over and over with my old Bencher iambic paddles, I kept calling CQ only to hear the hiss of interstellar noise and distant lightning crashes. Dahdidahdit dahdahdidah: CQ CQ CQ on 40 and 20 and 18 meters. . . and never a response. Not a blip on the panadapter, not a trace on the waterfall. I'm the last man on Earth, or at least the last one with a radio.
Slowly I notice that the noise sounds a lot like wind in the palm trees and mangroves and the beeping of the timer on the coffee pot down in the kitchen where my wife is making breakfast has woken me up.
The History Channel has been running apocalyptic nonsense for the last 48 hours non stop. Mayans, Hopi, John of Patmos and Nostradumbass. End times without end. Now maybe it'll stop and they'll have to dredge up more old legends and manuscripts and reports of signs and portents like they've been swooning over with every forest fire, earthquake, food shortage flood and epidemic -- like the ones that have been occurring since a billion years before anyone or any thing took notice.
Of course it's only 66 outside and it's been very rainy for December. . . (queue the doomsday music please. . .)
Over and over with my old Bencher iambic paddles, I kept calling CQ only to hear the hiss of interstellar noise and distant lightning crashes. Dahdidahdit dahdahdidah: CQ CQ CQ on 40 and 20 and 18 meters. . . and never a response. Not a blip on the panadapter, not a trace on the waterfall. I'm the last man on Earth, or at least the last one with a radio.
Slowly I notice that the noise sounds a lot like wind in the palm trees and mangroves and the beeping of the timer on the coffee pot down in the kitchen where my wife is making breakfast has woken me up.
The History Channel has been running apocalyptic nonsense for the last 48 hours non stop. Mayans, Hopi, John of Patmos and Nostradumbass. End times without end. Now maybe it'll stop and they'll have to dredge up more old legends and manuscripts and reports of signs and portents like they've been swooning over with every forest fire, earthquake, food shortage flood and epidemic -- like the ones that have been occurring since a billion years before anyone or any thing took notice.
Of course it's only 66 outside and it's been very rainy for December. . . (queue the doomsday music please. . .)
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Burn more gas for Jesus
It's hard to believe these people actually exist and
harder to believe they've managed to worm their way into positions of
respect and influence in America -- but that's the kind of country we
are, babbling about the bible, scrawling godblather on the walls,
rolling on the floor making gargling noises, respecting and electing
people who can't stop using God's names as toilet paper while shilling
for the oil cartel.
Take the American Family Association, which in the right wing tradition has named itself innocuously with insidious intent; wrapping itself in God, Gospel and flag and having little to do with the American Family other than to deceive them and exploit their superstitions.
Take Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis for the AFA who, ostensibly in the interests of American families and their health and welfare, insists that the air isn't getting worse, the ice caps aren't melting at an ever accelerating rate and if we try to reduce our use of petroleum and coal, God will feel like a spoiled kid with a birthday present he doesn't like and probably, if we're lucky, sulk off to his room. If we're not lucky of course, he'll send us more Katrinas and Sandys and earthquakes and floods and fires to burn us, our families and cuddly kittens to death -- amen. So much for analyzing that issue, Bryan. So much for the ironically titled "Conservatives" who see such vermin as allies and use their ravings to justify their rape and pillage of our liberty and our planet.
“You know, God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them”
said Fisher, who thinks you're stupid enough to think that some supreme being speaks through crooks and liars like him and hopes you'll go right out and buy an even bigger truck or two just to put a smile on God's face. Yes, Oil is God's little surprise and he'll just cry if you don't dig it up, burn it all as quickly as possible and poison us all by doing it. If we don't do our part to end life on earth, how will all their twaddle about end times seem when it doesn't happen?
But of course, God doesn't give a shit what we do and we go on taking such people seriously and electing them and their representatives to public office and we go on railing and screeching at people who disagree and unfortunately none of them or us will be here in a hundred years or a thousand to defend ourselves when historians argue about how we let things get so bad -- how we let a rich and prosperous and free country turn into what I'm afraid it will become.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie
Indications are that the Mayans were right and that 2012 is indeed
the end of an era, not because of some change in politics or religion
and not because of anything cosmic or tectonic, but because a piece of
America as we knew it has died. An America, exuberant in itself, proud,
forward looking, confident. Hostess bakeries died this week and not
because of mismanagement but because of what America has become:
timorous, ashamed of what it loves and afraid of being provincial. Our
sweet land of phony authenticity. Of thee I sing.
The
Twinkie, the Ho-Ho, the Snowball are gone now, along with the
Oldsmobile and the Mercury; with Buddy Holly and the independent
hamburger stand. You can't buy a Hostess cupcake any more for much the
same reason you can't find anything like Hopper's Nighthawks any more.
Your cupcakes have to be 'artisinal,' gluten free, in season, free range
and come from a 'cupcakery' just as that cup of Joe is now an
'Americano' and served (artisinally) by a 'Barista.' You're not à la mode
enough though, unless you order something that sounds like Mississippi
camp-meeting glossolalia and costs forty bucks for a "venti." Good God,
don't ask for a "large." America's rites of self detestation and the
industries that thrive on it the way a tapeworm thrives on weakening
it's host have us all scrambling for the plastic, made in Taiwan,
European panache that we attribute to lands that we otherwise pretend
to loathe because, of course, they're 'authentic' and we're not.
American means fake and we flee from it toward an imported synthetic
authenticity.
The Authenticity industry with it's vast smoking factories churning out the local and seasonal and artisinal synthetic-reality products we crave and the flim-flam pseudo-scientist diet doctors selling us low 'carb' gluten free and without fructose and for heaven's sake, not 'processed' foods: we zumba and carb-count our way to South Beach to be fleeced. In an age most noteworthy for the triumph of scientific method over superstition and fallacious conjecture, we have come more to trust 'alternative' information that comes from movie actors, comedians and people who get rich by insisting, contrary to all evidence, that gluten is poison, that miracle berries and magic beans will let you live forever, that cooking your food is bad and the fructose you get from corn is full of bad and fattening juju unlike the identical Furanose Sugars found in (organically grown, artisinally picked, local and seasonal ) strawberries.
Studies show. . . I cringe when I see that and nearly always it means that tendentious conjecture based on selected facts might fool you into thinking. . . It nearly always means that there was no real study. Large scale, double blind and randomized scientific studies that are repeatable and published in peer-reviewed journals don't have a chance against diet doctors, Oprah-backed pundits or miracle food and fake science purveyors, not in a country trained to favor faith over fact, trained to celebrate the notions of celebrities and mistrust scientists; trained to patronize diet doctors who tell us that studies show.
Twinkies have anti-oxidant "preservatives" which everyone knows are bad because studies show. They contain things like gluten and fructose that everyone knows are bad because studies show. Twinkies may be authentic, but they're authentic American and that doesn't count. We long for something Tuscan, even if we're not sure where that is -- something from Tuscany where it's all artisinal. Hostess Snowballs -- they didn't stand a snowball's chance in the new America. Maybe if you called them gluten free Palle di Neve or Boules de Neige and opened chic little sidewalk places in Boca Raton and Park Slope and South Beach and had them served by Ballistas for ten bucks each. . .
Ah well, one can only dream now of temps perdue. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
The Authenticity industry with it's vast smoking factories churning out the local and seasonal and artisinal synthetic-reality products we crave and the flim-flam pseudo-scientist diet doctors selling us low 'carb' gluten free and without fructose and for heaven's sake, not 'processed' foods: we zumba and carb-count our way to South Beach to be fleeced. In an age most noteworthy for the triumph of scientific method over superstition and fallacious conjecture, we have come more to trust 'alternative' information that comes from movie actors, comedians and people who get rich by insisting, contrary to all evidence, that gluten is poison, that miracle berries and magic beans will let you live forever, that cooking your food is bad and the fructose you get from corn is full of bad and fattening juju unlike the identical Furanose Sugars found in (organically grown, artisinally picked, local and seasonal ) strawberries.
Studies show. . . I cringe when I see that and nearly always it means that tendentious conjecture based on selected facts might fool you into thinking. . . It nearly always means that there was no real study. Large scale, double blind and randomized scientific studies that are repeatable and published in peer-reviewed journals don't have a chance against diet doctors, Oprah-backed pundits or miracle food and fake science purveyors, not in a country trained to favor faith over fact, trained to celebrate the notions of celebrities and mistrust scientists; trained to patronize diet doctors who tell us that studies show.
Twinkies have anti-oxidant "preservatives" which everyone knows are bad because studies show. They contain things like gluten and fructose that everyone knows are bad because studies show. Twinkies may be authentic, but they're authentic American and that doesn't count. We long for something Tuscan, even if we're not sure where that is -- something from Tuscany where it's all artisinal. Hostess Snowballs -- they didn't stand a snowball's chance in the new America. Maybe if you called them gluten free Palle di Neve or Boules de Neige and opened chic little sidewalk places in Boca Raton and Park Slope and South Beach and had them served by Ballistas for ten bucks each. . .
Ah well, one can only dream now of temps perdue. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
Monday, November 5, 2012
It's all over but the eschatology
There's a point beyond which I can no longer pretend to be an
open-minded or fair-minded person disposed to find reason in others'
opinions, or at least to try to be tolerant of them. I think I reached
it today, shortly after a flurry of last minute political calls from (
supposedly illegal) robots delivering diatribes from Ann Coulter, Allen
West and the NRA. Gungrabber Obama? War Hero West? Seriously? Am I listed as Hatch, Booby in the phone book?
In another venue I joked today about inventing a Taserphone that one could use to zap annoying, if not felonious and even treasonous callers like these, but honestly that's only an attempt to cover up, to add mirth to the boiling volcanic eruption of rage that's been keeping me up nights; has been filling my dreams with violence and wondering if I really have enough ammunition in the house. I also joked about watching the election returns from my boat so that if things go all to hell, I could be in international waters within half an hour and in the Bahamas in three. But that would not be to protect me, it would be to protect others from a large, rude, green hulk stomping toward Washington in an uncontrollable rage.
But really, the level of criminal indecency to which the Republican Party has descended should sponsor far more rage than even this half mad writer can feel. If it had come all at once rather than incrementally over a period of years, I'm sure there truly would have been blood in the streets. Had we not had a multi-billion dollar industry soothing and rationalizing and reinterpreting the rape of reason and the murder of truth and the deportation of ethics, Republicans would have had to flee the country for their lives a decade ago, if not sooner. But as it is, stories like this one about an Arizona non-profit laundering eleven million for the GOP which may be a true drop in the bottomless bucket of corporate money, offshore money and other somewhat less than sanitary money being used for things like starving public education, sure, but perhaps the straw that broke this old back. As God knows, and has the GOP has stressed, an educated public is a "brainwashed" public, an 'elitist' and snobbish public less likely to buy into the raging idiocy they sell. So education is another beast the Tea Terrorists, the bar room brown shirts and the ruthless pirates of industry need to starve.
Will all these crimes ever be punished? Not likely, no matter which candidate wins and if someone is prosecuted, their soulless, corpse eating associates will manage to make it seem all political and public opinion will turn against that damned liberal press all the more.
I'm
not ready to say "you can't win" or that it's all lost, but I'm afraid
it's none the less true. Our debt problem isn't going to be repaired no
matter who wins. Obama or the Mutt, even if all spending were to
cease, it may take a lifetime for the debt to go away, unless it's
through massive inflation we haven't seen the likes of in our own
history. Think Zimbabwe, think Weimar Republic, think third world
America. My biggest worry isn't about the post-prosperous America, it's
about the post-Liberal America; an oligarchy of entities deriving their
power not from the consent of the governed, but of global financial
interests, of religious demagogues and corporate feudal lords.
So no, I'll likely watch the circus from the local Democratic headquarters, at least until it gets late, but win or lose, the difference is, I fear only in the nearness to the abyss toward which we're inexorably headed and no, I'll probably not push those throttles forward and head for West End, no matter who wins Tuesday night, but I'm sure as hell not going down without a fight or go gentle into any Goddamned Republican night.
In another venue I joked today about inventing a Taserphone that one could use to zap annoying, if not felonious and even treasonous callers like these, but honestly that's only an attempt to cover up, to add mirth to the boiling volcanic eruption of rage that's been keeping me up nights; has been filling my dreams with violence and wondering if I really have enough ammunition in the house. I also joked about watching the election returns from my boat so that if things go all to hell, I could be in international waters within half an hour and in the Bahamas in three. But that would not be to protect me, it would be to protect others from a large, rude, green hulk stomping toward Washington in an uncontrollable rage.
But really, the level of criminal indecency to which the Republican Party has descended should sponsor far more rage than even this half mad writer can feel. If it had come all at once rather than incrementally over a period of years, I'm sure there truly would have been blood in the streets. Had we not had a multi-billion dollar industry soothing and rationalizing and reinterpreting the rape of reason and the murder of truth and the deportation of ethics, Republicans would have had to flee the country for their lives a decade ago, if not sooner. But as it is, stories like this one about an Arizona non-profit laundering eleven million for the GOP which may be a true drop in the bottomless bucket of corporate money, offshore money and other somewhat less than sanitary money being used for things like starving public education, sure, but perhaps the straw that broke this old back. As God knows, and has the GOP has stressed, an educated public is a "brainwashed" public, an 'elitist' and snobbish public less likely to buy into the raging idiocy they sell. So education is another beast the Tea Terrorists, the bar room brown shirts and the ruthless pirates of industry need to starve.
Will all these crimes ever be punished? Not likely, no matter which candidate wins and if someone is prosecuted, their soulless, corpse eating associates will manage to make it seem all political and public opinion will turn against that damned liberal press all the more.
So no, I'll likely watch the circus from the local Democratic headquarters, at least until it gets late, but win or lose, the difference is, I fear only in the nearness to the abyss toward which we're inexorably headed and no, I'll probably not push those throttles forward and head for West End, no matter who wins Tuesday night, but I'm sure as hell not going down without a fight or go gentle into any Goddamned Republican night.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
It was the end of times, it was the beginning of times
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Monday, October 15, 2012
Ablow the man down
So, another Monday morning in this best of all possible countries; this greatest there ever was since the Big Bang and greatest there will ever be until Jesus comes back. And what do I read in the news this proud American morning?
Mark Sanford, as though he hadn't disgraced himself enough as Governor of South Carolina, calls President Obama a spear chucker. Don't tempt me, Mark.
The American Family Association, that Far Right group of Freaky Fundies masquerading as an American Family Association tells it's cult members to keep their kids out of school for an Oct 30
anti-bullying event, “Mix It Up For Lunch Day,” they insist, is
Imagine trying to tell kids it isn't the Christian thing to do to beat up gay kids or torment them to the point of suicide. What would Jesus do, after all?
And on Fox & Friends some alleged psychiatrist aptly named Ablow declared that Vice President Biden was probably demented based on what he saw in the 'debate' with Lyin' Ryan.
I read this morning at Raw Story that
Good to know that such people are considered sane in Florida and perhaps that explains why according to my local paper 81% of this county's inmates plan to vote for Mitt the Shit and Lyin' Ryan. So the hell with the Supreme Court ruling against killing the insane, We don't need no damn government and we're gonna do the Christian thing anyway. Jesus is going to need a man like Prince John Ferguson when it comes time to shove the Jews into the lake of fire after the Rapture.
My current issue of Newsweek has a lurid cover story proving that heaven is real because some guy who went into a coma from meningitis says he went to heaven and met beautiful women there. Another straight to the recycling bin issue.
So perhaps we have to put dementia in the differential diagnosis of our national psyche and definitely we have to be grateful there isn't a YHWH to blow America to kingdom come or to wherever Sodom wound up, because if this is the best of all possible countries, no god worth his apocalypse would stand for our sad, demented, ugly and hate filled planet. Or perhaps I'm wrong about that and perhaps that's what the newly discovered comet 2012 S1 (ISON) due to fill the sky in about a year is all about. If it doesn't blow us all to hell, perhaps the fundies and righties and all the other dimwitted, demented friends of the Fox will dress in purple robes and tennis shoes and take the Cyanide Express to the Mother Ship. Even in the worst of times, there's always hope.
Mark Sanford, as though he hadn't disgraced himself enough as Governor of South Carolina, calls President Obama a spear chucker. Don't tempt me, Mark.
The American Family Association, that Far Right group of Freaky Fundies masquerading as an American Family Association tells it's cult members to keep their kids out of school for an Oct 30
anti-bullying event, “Mix It Up For Lunch Day,” they insist, is
"just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda."
Imagine trying to tell kids it isn't the Christian thing to do to beat up gay kids or torment them to the point of suicide. What would Jesus do, after all?
And on Fox & Friends some alleged psychiatrist aptly named Ablow declared that Vice President Biden was probably demented based on what he saw in the 'debate' with Lyin' Ryan.
“I did not evaluate Joe Biden, but if someone said to me, we want you to do what’s really required. You have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis. You have to say bizarre laughter, interrupting. If this were your dad or your grandfather, wouldn’t you say if you brought him to me, Keith, tell me, is he suffering with dementia? Because he can’t seem to listen, he’s laughing inappropriately.”I did not evaluate, so I know the problem. How very Fox. Is this what they call an Ablow job? to tell the truth, Ryan makes me laugh at him too and I just can't listen to the goddamn lies and sedition from the foreign owned Fascist propaganda organization any more, nor do I think laughter is what is really needed here as a national response to the Idiot's Crusade. Bring back the laughing stock!
I read this morning at Raw Story that
"A Florida judge has ruled that a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the “Prince of God” and is convinced that he will be resurrected to sit for eternity at God’s right hand is sane and can put to death next week."
Good to know that such people are considered sane in Florida and perhaps that explains why according to my local paper 81% of this county's inmates plan to vote for Mitt the Shit and Lyin' Ryan. So the hell with the Supreme Court ruling against killing the insane, We don't need no damn government and we're gonna do the Christian thing anyway. Jesus is going to need a man like Prince John Ferguson when it comes time to shove the Jews into the lake of fire after the Rapture.
My current issue of Newsweek has a lurid cover story proving that heaven is real because some guy who went into a coma from meningitis says he went to heaven and met beautiful women there. Another straight to the recycling bin issue.
So perhaps we have to put dementia in the differential diagnosis of our national psyche and definitely we have to be grateful there isn't a YHWH to blow America to kingdom come or to wherever Sodom wound up, because if this is the best of all possible countries, no god worth his apocalypse would stand for our sad, demented, ugly and hate filled planet. Or perhaps I'm wrong about that and perhaps that's what the newly discovered comet 2012 S1 (ISON) due to fill the sky in about a year is all about. If it doesn't blow us all to hell, perhaps the fundies and righties and all the other dimwitted, demented friends of the Fox will dress in purple robes and tennis shoes and take the Cyanide Express to the Mother Ship. Even in the worst of times, there's always hope.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Reality Show
Oh who cares whether Ryan or Biden "won" this TV spectacle? Vice presidents don't count, unless you think about Cheney, and although Romney is a sock puppet with the strong arm of the radical authoritarians making his lips move, I don't see him being led around by Ryan as another Darth Cheney. Who cares anyway? It's not as though the public has become smarter or has learned from experience. These things are only a game and never, ever does a President resemble in office what he tried to resemble on camera and the platform they sell at the convention is rarely more than a facade. There's a difference between dealing with the world as it is and dealing with the tableaux, the passion plays, the street theater, the Potemkin Village we take for reality.
So CNN says his supporters think Ryan expressed himself better. I don't know. I have better things to do with my time, but assuming he did, does anyone think that getting the angry rabble to cheer is the indicator of suitability to administrate a Democracy -- even a pretend Democracy like ours? Obama's haters were quick to syllogize at us in 2008 that he gave good speeches and Hitler gave good speeches, and therefore Obama is another Hitler. Who cares what such people think?
So the Romney/Ryan thing gives rousing speeches, albeit captious and dishonest ones. So the real truth is not quite as rousing, easily summed up to the satisfaction of one's enemies, or blamed on 'Libtards.' Who gives a shit?
I had a conversation with someone last night. An engineer, a very nice guy, a very devout Baptist and fellow Radio Amateur about the peculiar state of the ionosphere. We're supposed to be near a sunspot peak and yet HF propagation is generally poor, without the Summer openings on 10 and 6 meters we've waited years for. I joked about writing my congressman. He quipped about killing all the lawyers because, as he said, "they'll only blame it on Global Warming and George Bush." He wasn't smiling.
So easily is scientific consensus and massive data dismissed and so easily the destruction of the US economy according to the 30 year experiment with trickle down, debt-doesn't-matter and wars-pay-for-themselves-when-we-cut-taxes agenda as given us by the Republicans. Truth doesn't matter, so how can these 'debates' mean anything?
Really -- why should I listen to these things? I already know who has built a three ring circus around the argumentum ad captandum argument, learned to enrage the public with lies and profit from the rage they ignited. No, I'm not going to tell you that Romney will exterminate minorities or that Ryan is a Nazi who wants to put Grandma in a camp, but the people who pull their strings have perfected the same rhetoric, the technique and the ability to harness tribal enmity, bigotry, superstition and self-pity. They know how to make you passionately believe things that are self-contradictory, follow policies that always and dramatically fail and they know how to get their way. So sure, Romney won and Ryan won and whether or not they're elected, George W. Bush and Global Warming have sealed our fate, or at least made it unlikely that anything will ever be the same.
So CNN says his supporters think Ryan expressed himself better. I don't know. I have better things to do with my time, but assuming he did, does anyone think that getting the angry rabble to cheer is the indicator of suitability to administrate a Democracy -- even a pretend Democracy like ours? Obama's haters were quick to syllogize at us in 2008 that he gave good speeches and Hitler gave good speeches, and therefore Obama is another Hitler. Who cares what such people think?
So the Romney/Ryan thing gives rousing speeches, albeit captious and dishonest ones. So the real truth is not quite as rousing, easily summed up to the satisfaction of one's enemies, or blamed on 'Libtards.' Who gives a shit?
I had a conversation with someone last night. An engineer, a very nice guy, a very devout Baptist and fellow Radio Amateur about the peculiar state of the ionosphere. We're supposed to be near a sunspot peak and yet HF propagation is generally poor, without the Summer openings on 10 and 6 meters we've waited years for. I joked about writing my congressman. He quipped about killing all the lawyers because, as he said, "they'll only blame it on Global Warming and George Bush." He wasn't smiling.
So easily is scientific consensus and massive data dismissed and so easily the destruction of the US economy according to the 30 year experiment with trickle down, debt-doesn't-matter and wars-pay-for-themselves-when-we-cut-taxes agenda as given us by the Republicans. Truth doesn't matter, so how can these 'debates' mean anything?
Really -- why should I listen to these things? I already know who has built a three ring circus around the argumentum ad captandum argument, learned to enrage the public with lies and profit from the rage they ignited. No, I'm not going to tell you that Romney will exterminate minorities or that Ryan is a Nazi who wants to put Grandma in a camp, but the people who pull their strings have perfected the same rhetoric, the technique and the ability to harness tribal enmity, bigotry, superstition and self-pity. They know how to make you passionately believe things that are self-contradictory, follow policies that always and dramatically fail and they know how to get their way. So sure, Romney won and Ryan won and whether or not they're elected, George W. Bush and Global Warming have sealed our fate, or at least made it unlikely that anything will ever be the same.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The eye of the idiot
"For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet."
On August 28, 1963, a year short of 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King told us he had a dream. I wonder if anyone still does.
Watching and listening to the madness growling and the lies howling across the country, I have mostly nightmares. If "America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned" it's now intent on defaulting on any promise it has ever made to anyone but the corporate robber barons, the rabid Christianist insurgents and the anarchists.
We have a self described Anarchist group of US military personnel, a militia plotting to overthrow the government by violence, some members of which are now on trial for murder. We have the most popular cable news network inventing calumnies against our elected government and some of our wealthiest citizens and businesses spending billions on so distorting the truth that we can't remember how we got here and are eager to repeat everything we did to cause the two largest economic catastrophes in the last hundred years. We have widespread attempts at voter suppression.
No, you can't get to the truth easily these days, but you can bet that if the Republicans are screaming about all the things the demon Democrats and the Beast Obama have done, are doing and are about to do at any minute, you can be sure the truth is that the Republicans have done the same or are engaged in doing it or plotting it. Yesterday I received a thick envelope in the mail, ostensibly from John McCain but certainly written by others. Designed in every way to generate a sense of emergency, it insisted that I take the opportunity and use the express mail envelope (postage not included) to mail $2000, or maybe a little less if I want to risk an accusation of Marxism, as AN EMERGENCY DONATION to "stop the billion dollar Obama fundraising Juggernaut."
Whether or not Jesus cares enough to weep any more, I do. I do at least when the growing rage allows it. Yes, yes, I know. You poor victims of truth, justice and common decency will tell me as you've been doing since you turned the most prosperous nation on earth into the largest debtor with a cynical smile on your face -- you'll tell me I'm simply wrong and generally stupid because I'm angry at the "legitimate rape of America."
It's the logic of liars, the argument of the evil and if God has forsaken us, or left us behind, which may be a better translation, we're still too stupid to know it. We're legitimately stupid enough to see God's will in our own evil that we nod together like hollow bobble heads and agree with the Robertsonians that God saved the Republican convention from getting wet but if an asteroid fails to fall on the Democratic convention, it will mean nothing.
But in a way, that's true. This is America and meaning is in the eye of the idiot.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Bring out the Bibles, bring out the guns, Jesus is coming to town
The headline in yesterday's paper summarizing the President's State of the Union message is 3/8 of an inch tall. The headline just under it, reading RICK SANTORUM RALLIES IN STUART is in bold face type and is much bigger. Welcome to the monkey house.
Santorum was here on Florida's Treasure Coast Tuesday, holding forth at the Community Christian Academy to parents and grade school students, a horror of which some are particularly proud. It's an "up-close look at politics in action," said school officials.
That live action, these politics, included a prayer by the 'Reverend' Dan Holland, affiliated with the school and the pastor of Community Baptist Church in Stuart, Florida.
Santorum's ever predictable message was about "family Values" "fiscal responsibility" and "ridding the White House of Barack Obama." One can take the last of the three as the real message since my idea of family values does not include veiled calls to armed crusade and lying about the economy.
An all-white group of 350 heard him say:
They heard him howl about That Commie, apologist, freedom hating Obama bailing out Wall Street from the excesses and crimes the Republicans encouraged them in instead of using "free market forces" which would as any legitimate economist would likely tell you have brought that "greatest country in the history of the Universe" down to the level of Haiti. Still, the problem of galloping poverty isn't lack of resources, said Santorum, contradicting himself,
Perhaps he could have explained to me why the Republican's promise to provide jobs instead of food stamps while it's 'not the government's problem' isn't honest or consistent -- or how unlettered country folk with bibles and guns are going to help in the new anarchistic utopia he offers them -- but trying to present Rick Santorum as a rational candidate with any further agenda than dismantling all the rules that keep markets free, creating a new Christian aristocracy and most of all, hanging up that "White's Only" sign over the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a scam and a con and a farrago of flim-flam as great as any in the history of the world.
People like me can wonder how dismantling our entire economic system, refusing to pay the bills, can be called Conservatism, or any of the other radical, ultra-Chauvinistic, Denialist and dishonest rhetoric that smells more like Attila's unwashed hordes, but the blue-hair church ladies, their God smitten and brainwashed children and the rest of the angry Community Christian Academics don't seem to care. There's just something wrong out there and they don't know what it is and the sick Mr. Rick and his sanctimonious rabble are at hand to point out the enemies and heretics for the burning.
Santorum was here on Florida's Treasure Coast Tuesday, holding forth at the Community Christian Academy to parents and grade school students, a horror of which some are particularly proud. It's an "up-close look at politics in action," said school officials.
That live action, these politics, included a prayer by the 'Reverend' Dan Holland, affiliated with the school and the pastor of Community Baptist Church in Stuart, Florida.
"I like what he said in the South Carolina rally, where he said ' I come from a place where they have a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other'"Rick Santorum doesn't need a script, because he really isn't saying much and with such an audience, it doesn't matter whether he makes sense or mangles facts or makes them up. Rick speaks from the pulpit and anything said Ex Cathedra will not be questioned by this crowd. Besides, it's precisely what they want to hear: Barack Obama is the worst president this country has ever had, who hates capitalism, wants to take away what God wants you to keep to yourself and is destroying our natural order of things. Don't forget this is a religion that demands that women be subservient, hints that black people should stay in their place and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would vote for anything that hated Democrats.
Santorum's ever predictable message was about "family Values" "fiscal responsibility" and "ridding the White House of Barack Obama." One can take the last of the three as the real message since my idea of family values does not include veiled calls to armed crusade and lying about the economy.
An all-white group of 350 heard him say:
"we have to have a candidate who stands proudly, consistently, aggressively, forcefully for the values that made this country the greatest country in the history of the world."Presumably that greatness was attained with Bibles and guns and anyone suggesting that we are in any way sinners, transgressors or less than perfect instruments of God's Christian ambitions, can go straight to Hell along with that apologist Obama.
They heard him howl about That Commie, apologist, freedom hating Obama bailing out Wall Street from the excesses and crimes the Republicans encouraged them in instead of using "free market forces" which would as any legitimate economist would likely tell you have brought that "greatest country in the history of the Universe" down to the level of Haiti. Still, the problem of galloping poverty isn't lack of resources, said Santorum, contradicting himself,
"the problem is in the home, the problem is in the churches, the problem is in the community. The people living in these woods are not the federal government's problem. . ."Let's use poverty, disease and misery to fill the pews, because a just society is a commie, secular humanist Christ-hating society.
Perhaps he could have explained to me why the Republican's promise to provide jobs instead of food stamps while it's 'not the government's problem' isn't honest or consistent -- or how unlettered country folk with bibles and guns are going to help in the new anarchistic utopia he offers them -- but trying to present Rick Santorum as a rational candidate with any further agenda than dismantling all the rules that keep markets free, creating a new Christian aristocracy and most of all, hanging up that "White's Only" sign over the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a scam and a con and a farrago of flim-flam as great as any in the history of the world.
People like me can wonder how dismantling our entire economic system, refusing to pay the bills, can be called Conservatism, or any of the other radical, ultra-Chauvinistic, Denialist and dishonest rhetoric that smells more like Attila's unwashed hordes, but the blue-hair church ladies, their God smitten and brainwashed children and the rest of the angry Community Christian Academics don't seem to care. There's just something wrong out there and they don't know what it is and the sick Mr. Rick and his sanctimonious rabble are at hand to point out the enemies and heretics for the burning.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Fear and Loathing in 2012
the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.
-Plato-
-Plato-
At a New Year's Day Yacht Club brunch yesterday, I suggested to a newly thin friend worried about overeating at the bulging buffet, that we declare January 1st as a National Who Gives a Shit day. We need a break from all this fear and loathing and self flagellation.
For my part, I'm chronically worried about things far more dire than gaining a few pounds; things like a Napoleonic Republican in the White House again, the deliberate collapse of the world economy for the benefit of a few oligarchs, plutocrats and other assorted brigands -- and of course the coming Zombie Apocalypse, the Mayan Catastrophe and the end of an error prophesied on all those bumper stickers.
Of course there are many other things to be depressed about and most of them, unlike that Zombie thing, can't readily be dealt with by stockpiling ammunition. But we need a break from all the apocalyptic insanity, the hate commercials all over the TV with Mike Huckabee howling last night about how Romney's health care plan was "stuffed down our throats" ( by a large majority of voters) even though Obama was elected largely on the promise of health care reform. We need a break from having our basic fundamental liberties torn from us by small minded big mouth authoritarian radicals like Vaneta Becker, the Republican State Senator from Indiana who wants to make it illegal to sing our National Anthem "inappropriately," the constitution and all that freedom we're told isn't free, be damned -- at least in Indiana.
Oh say can you see, our boot on your face -- would that be inappropriate? Now which third world countries can we invade to protect her freedom to sanctify the trappings and rituals of Chauvinistic self worship while rebelling against any government power other than the power to crush the people?
No, I'm afraid National Who Gives a Shit Day barely made it past those chocolate truffles I couldn't resist last night and all those Happy New Year wishes have already turned to ashes with my first glimpse of today's news. It's the same old madness we had two days ago, the same inconsistent, persistent, self-negating rhetoric, the same greedy, angry, irrational revenge-seeking of the idiot mob. Who can worry about brain eating zombies or rampaging Jesus with a flame thrower or Kenyan Kommunists stuffing civilization down our throats when that great slithering thing we call the media are stuffing insanity into every orifice; howling like some Lovecraftian horror from every high place, importuning us from every telephone, billboard and car bumper that obedience is freedom and civilization is tyranny - that prosperity comes from doing what always leads to catastrophe.
For those of us not about to die, or at least not to die immediately, it's January 2nd and I give a shit. I'm fed up with being told that rational discord with marauding barbarians will lead to understanding and progress, that authoritarians will become tolerant of freedom if only we show them respect and exercise patient restraint and all the ancient evils mankind has perpetuated and treasured and nurtured will somehow wither away if we're polite and sincere.
If it is true that fighting monsters brings the risk of becoming one, it is also true that not fighting them, being quiet and polite and respectful toward mad moralizers and authoritarians and fear mongers and every snark-snarling witless witling posing as a philosopher carries the bigger risk. It's time to stop pretending we're on some fence between one reasonable place and another. We're not.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Turkey in the Straw
What does the Iowa Straw Poll really mean as an indicator of who might actually be the chosen Candidate to bring about the "end of an error?" I really don't know, but it proves that the extremist barn dance is still the thing in Iowa. I'm referring of course to the the fact that, although the lineup (or the menagerie if you prefer) included all sorts of wild things, the Minnesota Gobbler herself came in first. Here's the list as published in the Huffington Post:
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.): 4,823 votes
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): 4,671 votes
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty: 2,293 votes
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): 1,657 votes
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain: 1,456 votes
Texas Governor Rick Perry: 718 votes
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney: 567 votes
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: 385 votes
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman: 69 votes
U.S. Rep Thad McCotter (R-Mich.): 35 votes
Neither Romney, Gingrich or Huntsman campaigned actively and Rick Perry had announced his candidacy only shortly after the barnyard gates were closed. All of them were thus at a disadvantage, but you'll notice that Ron Paul was only a half step and a do-si-do behind Bachmann. Perhaps Iowan Tea Tipplers think her 'holy roller two-step' dance gives her that ol' show-time religion shamanship the straight-talking Dr. Paul lacks.
Who knows? But it seems Rick Pawlenty is adding 'former candidate' to ' former governor' on his resume. He announced on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour this morning that he was scraping the muck off his boots and going home.
Once again, I have no idea what all this means and who will be the great Republican Hope come next year. I do suspect that if he or she wins, the much wished for end of an error will be the beginning of a disaster.
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.): 4,823 votes
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): 4,671 votes
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty: 2,293 votes
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): 1,657 votes
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain: 1,456 votes
Texas Governor Rick Perry: 718 votes
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney: 567 votes
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: 385 votes
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman: 69 votes
U.S. Rep Thad McCotter (R-Mich.): 35 votes
Neither Romney, Gingrich or Huntsman campaigned actively and Rick Perry had announced his candidacy only shortly after the barnyard gates were closed. All of them were thus at a disadvantage, but you'll notice that Ron Paul was only a half step and a do-si-do behind Bachmann. Perhaps Iowan Tea Tipplers think her 'holy roller two-step' dance gives her that ol' show-time religion shamanship the straight-talking Dr. Paul lacks.
Who knows? But it seems Rick Pawlenty is adding 'former candidate' to ' former governor' on his resume. He announced on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour this morning that he was scraping the muck off his boots and going home.
Once again, I have no idea what all this means and who will be the great Republican Hope come next year. I do suspect that if he or she wins, the much wished for end of an error will be the beginning of a disaster.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Queen of the Damned
And, in few words, I dare say; that of all the Studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtain'd, than this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue, which makes so great a noise in the World. But I spend words in vain; for the evil is now so inveterate, that it is hard to know whom to blame, or where to begin to reform.
(Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society, 1667)
_____________
When I got my copy of Newsweek yesterday; the cover showing Michelle Bachmann looking upward as though reading a celestial teleprompter, I fired off a letter similar to the one I wrote when Sarah Palin became the cover girl not long ago. "Indecency or obscenity can be di
fficult to define" I said, "but I recognize it when I see it."
Somehow, her supporters saw it differently, condemning the wide-eyed lunatic pose as having been selected by the "liberals" to make her look crazy, but scanning the web for other photos, I found it hard to find one where she doesn't look like a two year old who has just, to her great surprise, soiled her diaper -- but that of course, is only my opinion. No offense to incontinent toddlers is intended.
Her stance on "the evils of Government" as the headline blares, is harder to see as being other than obscene unless it's the indecent dishonesty behind her rhetoric that pushes your particular buttons.
I have to wonder: if Democracy is so inherently bad, what kind of government would she then prefer? If G
overnment itself is the enemy of freedom, who or what could be the ally? I have to wonder if the government is really broken or is she trying to break it to prove her point?
Making big noises in Kansas about an oppressive government that makes tyrannical rules about what kind of light bulbs to use and destroys our freedom by inspecting meat, she certainly begs the question of why she nonetheless promotes a "faith based" government that tells us what kind of sex we can have and with whom; promotes poisoning the well if someone can get rich doing it, which encourages us to pray rather than to fix our problems and to be a nation of individuals who owe nothing to anyone.
Then there's also the question of the deceit involved in taking government subsidies under false pretenses and using one of them illegally to fund prayer sessions in the guise of psychotherapy. Really, if we can't call her crazy, what other excuse can we make for her? Ignorant? Malicious? Greedy?
It's a two tier government she dreams about, with one set of rules for 98% of us that exist to preserve and increase the capital and the power of Corporations, Plutocrats and Theocrats. Of course no one with any understanding of Capitalism and what makes it expand would recommend policies that shrink the numbers of people whose spending makes Capitalism work while the one-percenters send capital and jobs abroad, but what made you think the Teabaggers are Capitalists in the first place? The kind of Randian, take the money and run Utopia these people claim to envision is Feudal as well as futile and self-destructive. The rabble-rousing and specious rhetoric smells more of the Brown Shirts and Bolsheviks than Tom Paine or Tom Jefferson.
Of course those who follow the Tea Party Queen like the mice of Hamlin, should be intelligent enough to realize that not only do we not have an oppressive, confiscatory tax situation, but that very low marginal rates inevitably produce bubbles and busts as they did in the 1920's and at the end of the last decade. They should recall that the years of low debt and high prosperity were the years of high marginal tax rates. They should be smart enough to see that all that extra cash in already deep pockets does not create US jobs, but inflates the market and makes hedge funds flourish - but only for a while. They should be, but they're either too ignorant or too stupefied by the pied pipers of the radical right. But like the Shadow, Bachmann knows what rage lies in the hearts of men. Unlike the Shadow, she's hell bent on making a buck for her backers out of it.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Listen up, you Teabagger bastards
For between true Science and erroneous doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle.
-Thomas Hobbes-
________________________________
-Thomas Hobbes-
________________________________
“the credibility of the United States is now surrounded by uncertainty.”Said Fareed Zakaria on AC360. I don't think so. That the reigns of power have been grabbed by a malicious minority for whom the successful defense of a failed and disastrous economic theory seems damned certain. That even a very large majority of voters have become so removed from participation in decision making is so certain that the Tea Party inmates now dance with idiot glee on the site soon to become the grave of our country. For after all, has that 3% taken off the adjusted gross in excess of $250,000 not been the reason we all did so well during the Bush administration? Wasn't it the reason that private sector job growth was at 0.0% for 8 years?
What remains quite certain in my mind is that the stated objectives of the hostage takers are not to be taken at face value, yet, even if we do, the premise behind it all is a lie and smells accordingly. The real but hidden objective of course is a feudal society out of the sick dreams of Ayn Rand, where a handful of powerful people are unimpeded in their greed and everyone else is destined ( and designed) to serve them while subsisting on their crumbs and leavings. But, these scams, these lies, these frauds are still the fundamental props of that Tea Party scheme, a scheme shown to fail even more quickly than Communism does -- and we're allowing our erstwhile democracy to fall like Jericho to a mob walking in circles and blowing loud on a horn.
"The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches" -Joseph Conrad-
Upper bracket tax cuts do not create jobs or prosperity except for a very, very few individuals and that prosperity comes with a crushing burden on the rest of the populace. While the fake Libertarians rhapsodize about not ever asking what they can do for their country, Mexico sits there demonstrating what it's like when a handful with all the money are absolved from responsibility and often even from the law.
A healthy Capitalistic system, a system that fosters job growth requires discretionary money flowing through the hands of consumers and the "agreement" we now seem to have had forced upon us takes it away while granting favors to a privileged class who spend proportionately less on consumer goods, thus weakening the economy. We've had thirty years of the continuous failure of this long con, although, thanks to the ownership of the 24 hour propaganda system by that privileged plutocratic class, we've forgotten.
The rich man will not hire people to build anything while most of the country can't afford to buy them and as a shark requires moving water to survive, a capitalist economy requires moving money.
Tax cuts do not pay for themselves with increased revenues. much less do they pay for the longest and most expensive wars in American history. We have now had three wars in three decades, all sold as self-funding and the lion's share of our debt is attributable to our having to borrow the funds from abroad to pay corporations who do not pay taxes rather than paying for it. The war that pays for itself in booty is a stinking lie. How much more proof will it take?
Tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs, nor boost the economy, nor boost revenue. Only a small fraction of the extra cash in deep pockets makes its way back into the economy and nearly all of the cash from entitlements and paychecks of middle and working class families does -- and quickly. For each Porsche or Ferrari or yacht bought with that extra tax bonus, for every stash of Krugerrands or condo in Marbella, 10 families, maybe 100 families would have bought cars and washing machines and refrigerators and school supplies and some might have bought hamburger instead of cat food. Their money returns to the economy instantly. Yet every day we hear lying voices shouting about "job destroying taxes;" shouting so loud that we forget that our most prosperous and fully employed years featured high marginal rates. With marginal rates of 90% CEO's and business owners took less in salary and plowed back more into their businesses, boosting growth. Now they suck the business dry and bitch about having to pay minimum wage to workers who can't afford to go to the doctor. And of course the huge debt for WW II was paid down quickly and the Dollar was strong and the tiny pre-war middle class expanded enormously.
Somehow, judging actions by their results has given way to endless repetition of doctrine, taken on faith.
Marginal rates below 50% seem to precede recessions. Don't believe me, look it up and the biggest debt increases have been under Republicans for a very long time -- most spectacularly under the misrule of Bush and Cheney and don't tell me you were against it at the time, you weren't.
“Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter” -Dick Cheney-
This isn't Obama's recession, it belongs to all of us and Obama's biggest "spending spree" was in his first year, operating under a budget and tax scheme passed by Bush. It's as if Congress bought the yacht under Bush and because Obama had to make the payments, pay for the dockage, maintenance and fuel, he's the spendthrift.
The biggest increase of the debt ceiling in the average American's lifetime was under Reagan, the second under Bush, 200% and 90% respectively. Both presidents created recessions. Clinton raised the debt ceiling 44% and raised taxes and we had record high employment and the longest period of expansion and prosperity - ever. Funny how you told us his success was because of Reagan and Bush the First, but on the day of his inauguration, it was "Obama's recession."
26% under Obama so he can pay "the troops" and keep our contractual obligations -- and the reeking, ignorant unwashed rabble take to the streets and storm Congress screaming about impeachment and the biggest spending president ever since the beginning of time.
"Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign"
-Pope-
-Pope-
But you won't learn, you won't be honest, you won't stop protecting your fantasy, even if you have to go down with the ship you're scuttling. So keep giggling, keep your nose in the air -- keep talking about tax and spend Democrats and bleeding heart Liberals. You'll bleed too and there will be no one to help, no one to care.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Apocalypse tomorrow
What you gonna do
When Death come creepin' in your room?
O my Lord what shall I do?
Gonna run, gonna hide,
Gonna fall on bended knee
O my Lord what shall I do?
Mance Lipscomb -Run sinner, run-
The clock is ti
cking folks. What are you going to do? Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I don't think so. You need to be prepared for anything. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control thinks you're remiss if you haven't prepared for the Zombies who may well be roaming the streets after Saturday evening's apocalypse, looking for brains. (It you're a Teabagger, you can stop reading now. You won't have a problem there.) The CDC link will take you to a list of recommended supplies:
In addition, I would certainly include firearms, at least one of which should be a sh
otgun ( and lots of shells) and always remember to aim for the head.
For those of you who are sure you're actually going to be raptured, I'd suggest you wear sky blue clothing since many of us will be down here with shotguns and itchy trigger fingers and not only Ted Nugent. Don't be an easy target. Don't dress like a duck or a zombie.
Here are a few tips:
UPDATE: Your Weekend Weather Forecast:
When Death come creepin' in your room?
O my Lord what shall I do?
Gonna run, gonna hide,
Gonna fall on bended knee
O my Lord what shall I do?
Mance Lipscomb -Run sinner, run-
_______________
The clock is ti
cking folks. What are you going to do? Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I don't think so. You need to be prepared for anything. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control thinks you're remiss if you haven't prepared for the Zombies who may well be roaming the streets after Saturday evening's apocalypse, looking for brains. (It you're a Teabagger, you can stop reading now. You won't have a problem there.) The CDC link will take you to a list of recommended supplies: "So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored). . . . for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page."
In addition, I would certainly include firearms, at least one of which should be a sh
otgun ( and lots of shells) and always remember to aim for the head.For those of you who are sure you're actually going to be raptured, I'd suggest you wear sky blue clothing since many of us will be down here with shotguns and itchy trigger fingers and not only Ted Nugent. Don't be an easy target. Don't dress like a duck or a zombie.
Here are a few tips:
1) Refrain from drinking liquids after 3:00 PM, there are no rest stops along the way
and God doesn't like to pull over.
2) Say goodbye to us sinners before leaving the atmosphere. In Space, no one can
hear you scream.
3) Bring a firearm. There will lots of traffic and that means road rage.
4) And behave yourself -- don't make God stop the car and come back there!
UPDATE: Your Weekend Weather Forecast:
Thursday, May 19, 2011
T minus 48 hours and raving
Dies iræ ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !
Well the End is neigh and a Day neigher than it was yesterday, but the proof is certain, says Harold Camping, even though he formerly had 'proof' 1994 was the big one; the Dies Irae, the End time.
But he has proof that God is allowing us to have gay pride parades and same sex marriage as a set up for the fall and the proof is in something called the Book of Jude, which I'd never heard of, my Bible ending somewhere around the book of Daniel or so and being in various Semitic dialects, not Greek. Anyway Camping says God all gaybashing mighty explains it in Jude 7 which is funny because although the Bible has at least two names for God ( and two versions of the stories to go with them) Jude isn't one of them. The real Tanach doesn't tell us that the elder Yahweh or the somewhat later Elohim wrote it either. That was Moses, it supposes -- nor did the prophets claim to actually be God, but that's a long road I won't go down today, you'll be pleased to hear.
But seriously -- it's important now in these last days before John the Revelator's ( also not God) psychotic episodes come true, to be familiar with the words of God, speaking through Jude and Camping (the least godlike of all) of course, so I looked it up to see just who this fellow was, but although I did find a site that explains it all, I had to stop reading the explanation when the writer accused Theologians ( as to be distinguished from believers) of incompetence.
I certainly can read English, but I can't claim to be an authority on this questionable early second century book, since I can't read Greek, so score one for The Bible Study Page. I'll even overlook the gaseous certainty that whoever the author claimed to be, he must then be, and the ubiquitous practice of naming anonymous religious texts for long dead prophets. I'm just not in an argumentative mood.
So I'll have to believe them when they say that God himself guarantees that Jude, like James, the Upright, was the brother of Jesus, but as the English language was more than a thousand years away in the future and out of respect for Mrs. Christ, or Miriam as poor old impotent Joseph ( who none the less made other kids with her) called her, let's call them Jehudi and Jacov just like their mother did. Not nice to contradict Jewish mothers, I can tell you -- I mean you want to talk about days of wrath?
So then -- just what does Jude 7 give us as the WORD OF GOD that can't be attributed to Jehudi son of Miriam or some other writer in another country?
Anyway, since neither Lot nor his daughters were blasted to hell for incest, I think we can dismiss the sex thing entirely, OK? If Mrs. Lot was fossilized for looking over her shoulder, but Lot gets off for free (yes, that's a double entendre - aren't I wicked?) the whole God-hates-perverts thing came right out of Jude's ass and into Camping's mouth.
As far as I can gather from Bereshit, or Genesis, Gay Pride wasn't the problem with the cities of the plain at all, and as far as we know, ancient Greece wasn't blown to hell by a firestorm like Gomorrah, nor was Egypt whose kings made Oedipus look like a prude, but who am I to argue and point out contradictions?
Like the Wrong Reverend Phelps, Camping believes "God hates fags" and is going to kill most of us for allowing them to live in peace like other people, just like he killed the Sodomites and Gomorrans for their gay pride parades and same sex marriages. And he'll find proof somewhere whether it makes sense or not, and since none of his followers are really quite sane, it doesn't matter.
The real proof of Camping's high fecal content will come at the International Date Line ( no, not the phone sex number) on 6:00 PM Saturday when nothing at all happens and the Repo men will begin to pick up all those vans, The leases on the billboards will expire, his followers will stand around like fools looking at them and wonder how they're going to get their property back and the 18 million dollars Camping has raised will likely disappear into various "good works." Perhaps he'll rapture himself to Marbella or Monte Carlo.
Anyway, Even though there are two sets of commandments given in two slightly different settings by Gods with two different names in the Bible, it's obvious to me that God doesn't like having words put in his mouth and for those who believe Jesus was Divine ( no, not the Drag Queen) I think Jesus didn't think much of you putting hate speech or damnation in there either. Of course in my personal religion, God not only speaks through our mouths, he speaks only through our mouths and thus nobody can be certain of what he's all about. Certainly for those like me who escaped out the back door during those weekend religious study classes and actually read it in its entirety, Psalm 77:19 comes to mind.
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !
Well the End is neigh and a Day neigher than it was yesterday, but the proof is certain, says Harold Camping, even though he formerly had 'proof' 1994 was the big one; the Dies Irae, the End time.
But he has proof that God is allowing us to have gay pride parades and same sex marriage as a set up for the fall and the proof is in something called the Book of Jude, which I'd never heard of, my Bible ending somewhere around the book of Daniel or so and being in various Semitic dialects, not Greek. Anyway Camping says God all gaybashing mighty explains it in Jude 7 which is funny because although the Bible has at least two names for God ( and two versions of the stories to go with them) Jude isn't one of them. The real Tanach doesn't tell us that the elder Yahweh or the somewhat later Elohim wrote it either. That was Moses, it supposes -- nor did the prophets claim to actually be God, but that's a long road I won't go down today, you'll be pleased to hear.
But seriously -- it's important now in these last days before John the Revelator's ( also not God) psychotic episodes come true, to be familiar with the words of God, speaking through Jude and Camping (the least godlike of all) of course, so I looked it up to see just who this fellow was, but although I did find a site that explains it all, I had to stop reading the explanation when the writer accused Theologians ( as to be distinguished from believers) of incompetence.
" This subject is under constant dispute by many theologians. The trouble with them is they can't read English."Stunning and in the interest of brevity I could quit right here -- but I won't.
I certainly can read English, but I can't claim to be an authority on this questionable early second century book, since I can't read Greek, so score one for The Bible Study Page. I'll even overlook the gaseous certainty that whoever the author claimed to be, he must then be, and the ubiquitous practice of naming anonymous religious texts for long dead prophets. I'm just not in an argumentative mood.
So I'll have to believe them when they say that God himself guarantees that Jude, like James, the Upright, was the brother of Jesus, but as the English language was more than a thousand years away in the future and out of respect for Mrs. Christ, or Miriam as poor old impotent Joseph ( who none the less made other kids with her) called her, let's call them Jehudi and Jacov just like their mother did. Not nice to contradict Jewish mothers, I can tell you -- I mean you want to talk about days of wrath?
So then -- just what does Jude 7 give us as the WORD OF GOD that can't be attributed to Jehudi son of Miriam or some other writer in another country?
"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."Well I guess Jehudi would know, being the half brother of the son of God or maybe the full brother - who the hell knows, but it's funny that neither of the real Gods, Yahweh and the Elohim mentioned this a thousand years and a half earlier and what they did mention didn't need some adopted son to relay the message. I thought it mentioned something about inhospitable treatment of strangers, and condoned tossing your virgin daughter to a crowd to be gang raped, but as the book was likely written quite a long time after these cities disappeared, who the hell could possibly know?
Anyway, since neither Lot nor his daughters were blasted to hell for incest, I think we can dismiss the sex thing entirely, OK? If Mrs. Lot was fossilized for looking over her shoulder, but Lot gets off for free (yes, that's a double entendre - aren't I wicked?) the whole God-hates-perverts thing came right out of Jude's ass and into Camping's mouth.
As far as I can gather from Bereshit, or Genesis, Gay Pride wasn't the problem with the cities of the plain at all, and as far as we know, ancient Greece wasn't blown to hell by a firestorm like Gomorrah, nor was Egypt whose kings made Oedipus look like a prude, but who am I to argue and point out contradictions?
Like the Wrong Reverend Phelps, Camping believes "God hates fags" and is going to kill most of us for allowing them to live in peace like other people, just like he killed the Sodomites and Gomorrans for their gay pride parades and same sex marriages. And he'll find proof somewhere whether it makes sense or not, and since none of his followers are really quite sane, it doesn't matter.
The real proof of Camping's high fecal content will come at the International Date Line ( no, not the phone sex number) on 6:00 PM Saturday when nothing at all happens and the Repo men will begin to pick up all those vans, The leases on the billboards will expire, his followers will stand around like fools looking at them and wonder how they're going to get their property back and the 18 million dollars Camping has raised will likely disappear into various "good works." Perhaps he'll rapture himself to Marbella or Monte Carlo.
Anyway, Even though there are two sets of commandments given in two slightly different settings by Gods with two different names in the Bible, it's obvious to me that God doesn't like having words put in his mouth and for those who believe Jesus was Divine ( no, not the Drag Queen) I think Jesus didn't think much of you putting hate speech or damnation in there either. Of course in my personal religion, God not only speaks through our mouths, he speaks only through our mouths and thus nobody can be certain of what he's all about. Certainly for those like me who escaped out the back door during those weekend religious study classes and actually read it in its entirety, Psalm 77:19 comes to mind.
"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. "Like the Poet said: nobody knows where God is going or where he has been and his wake is long lost in the waves, so stop pretending you know.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Slow Train Coming
By Capt. Fogg
One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.
It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Walker's plan to take over municipal governments ( duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.
Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law and the Walker plan:
It'll never happen? It's Liberal hyperbole? Think a State Government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by Gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.
I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.
One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.
It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Walker's plan to take over municipal governments ( duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.
Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law and the Walker plan:
"would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so,"I have no doubt that's just what the Tea-Shirts would like and little doubt that they will be able to reconcile that with their flimsy facade of Constitutional reverence.
"Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need."That's not tyranny, that's not the kind of shredding of the constitution the baggery would love to attribute to the President: at least not to the Tea-drunk masses longing to break free of any remaining bonds of civilization.
It'll never happen? It's Liberal hyperbole? Think a State Government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by Gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.
I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.
Monday, January 10, 2011
I'm digital
I've decided to go digital; to give up the kind of thinking that goes along with gelatinous biological brains and let my thoughts be the product of magnetic patterns on spinning discs and the movement of charges across doped semiconductor junctions. It's amazing how clear things become without the hormones. It's remarkable how far you can see when the emotional soup is gone. I've decided I don't give a damn any more and why should I? You can't squeeze tears from monocrystalline silicon.
So if I see the pathetic end of the United States of America as anything but an increasingly irrelevant, ever petulant and narcissistic giant with little left but monstrous weapons and antiquated mythology as a claim to dignity, it doesn't bother me. Just look at Shanghai and then look at Detroit and tell me how our unending gobbling about rights and duties and liberals and conservatives aren't just aftershocks from an argument settled elsewhere a while ago. The world isn't going in our direction and our direction isn't going anywhere. All our concepts, whether they're from the danger-free and packed in cotton safety state side or the every man his own alpha ape, armed and dangerous fantasy camp, are already irrelevant. We obsess, we make ourselves impotent arguing about making happy meals illegal and whether we should have public education. In the fastest growing and largest country on earth, they shoot you for drunk driving and they're financing our consumerist binge drinking.
The greatest cities, the longest bridges, biggest dams and buildings - the fastest growing economies: they're all elsewhere and in countries with little respect for our ideas of personal liberty and where our individualism is seen as childish and antisocial and obstructionist. Sure, we'll go on yammering about mama grizzlys like this was the 9th century, and small town values and dietary fads, mysterious toxins and quack medicine. We'll still mistrust any new technology and talk to the spirits in pieces of quartz and call on their undetectable energy. We'll still wrap ourselves with bright pieces of red, white and blue and strut about like peacocks, booming about being the best, the biggest, the bravest, the most important -- and if we continue to subvert, dominate, steal and kill on our long downhill road to penury and oblivion, it will still be all about freedom and saving the world. They can ride from Beijing to Shanghai at 300mph in air conditioned comfort in the time it takes us to be x-rayed and manhandled in our decaying airports. I can't even take a 60 mph train to Chicago from here, or go there at all if it snows.
We quibble about our divine right to drive a Hummer or our divine duty to drive a Prius -- they build the biggest hydroelectric plant on the planet even if it means wiping out 5000 years worth of archaeology and displacing millions. They buy more Chevrolets then we do. They're building moon landers and aiming at Mars. We can't afford to go to the doctor.
No, when Haiti begins to look down and laugh at us while we bellow about smaller government and trickling wealth and creeping socialism, there won't be much left but our bloated delusion of relevance. It won't end with a bang or whimper but with the antic, puppet show grotesqueries of Beck and the nasal bleating of Palin. But it will end.
Will we hear the laughter eventually? Of course I won't notice or care if we do or don't. I'm digital.
So if I see the pathetic end of the United States of America as anything but an increasingly irrelevant, ever petulant and narcissistic giant with little left but monstrous weapons and antiquated mythology as a claim to dignity, it doesn't bother me. Just look at Shanghai and then look at Detroit and tell me how our unending gobbling about rights and duties and liberals and conservatives aren't just aftershocks from an argument settled elsewhere a while ago. The world isn't going in our direction and our direction isn't going anywhere. All our concepts, whether they're from the danger-free and packed in cotton safety state side or the every man his own alpha ape, armed and dangerous fantasy camp, are already irrelevant. We obsess, we make ourselves impotent arguing about making happy meals illegal and whether we should have public education. In the fastest growing and largest country on earth, they shoot you for drunk driving and they're financing our consumerist binge drinking.
The greatest cities, the longest bridges, biggest dams and buildings - the fastest growing economies: they're all elsewhere and in countries with little respect for our ideas of personal liberty and where our individualism is seen as childish and antisocial and obstructionist. Sure, we'll go on yammering about mama grizzlys like this was the 9th century, and small town values and dietary fads, mysterious toxins and quack medicine. We'll still mistrust any new technology and talk to the spirits in pieces of quartz and call on their undetectable energy. We'll still wrap ourselves with bright pieces of red, white and blue and strut about like peacocks, booming about being the best, the biggest, the bravest, the most important -- and if we continue to subvert, dominate, steal and kill on our long downhill road to penury and oblivion, it will still be all about freedom and saving the world. They can ride from Beijing to Shanghai at 300mph in air conditioned comfort in the time it takes us to be x-rayed and manhandled in our decaying airports. I can't even take a 60 mph train to Chicago from here, or go there at all if it snows.
We quibble about our divine right to drive a Hummer or our divine duty to drive a Prius -- they build the biggest hydroelectric plant on the planet even if it means wiping out 5000 years worth of archaeology and displacing millions. They buy more Chevrolets then we do. They're building moon landers and aiming at Mars. We can't afford to go to the doctor.
No, when Haiti begins to look down and laugh at us while we bellow about smaller government and trickling wealth and creeping socialism, there won't be much left but our bloated delusion of relevance. It won't end with a bang or whimper but with the antic, puppet show grotesqueries of Beck and the nasal bleating of Palin. But it will end.
Will we hear the laughter eventually? Of course I won't notice or care if we do or don't. I'm digital.
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