Skuby Dooby Do

I'm glad it's a long way to New Jersey but Bill Skuby, who owns Skuby & Co. Lifestyle Clothing in Spring Lake, N.J should be happy too.  I think I felt something snap in my head when I looked at the ABC News web page this morning and saw the thing he has in his store window.  Quite frankly I'm not sure I'd be able to restrain myself.  It's not that I actually advocate an act of violence against him or his property and I certainly don't want the Government to deprive him of the right to be a stupid, ugly, bigoted, ignorant and anti-American bastard ( no insult to involuntary bastards intended here.)  I'm all for the right to sedition.

But I'm only human and a picture of the President of the United States dressed as a semi-naked witch doctor taped to a tombstone and a bold face title with OBAMA CARE in which the letter C is a hammer and sickle, makes me have bad thoughts; very bad thoughts. Why is it that the two legged vermin who insist we worship a flag like some religious icon, that we swoon in an ecstasy of Chauvinistic self-praise at every mention of our often ugly history can condone the kind of disrespect that makes the world laugh contemptuously at our delusional stupidity and willful ignorance.

 

No, Skuby, the health care plan drafted by Republicans in conjunction with the health care corporations has less to do with Communism than you do with sanity or honesty for that matter. Switzerland, the holy land of Capitalism and Conservatism has a similar one and arguably the best health care and healthiest population anywhere and they spend a hell of a lot less then we do.  You're an idiot, Skuby Doo.  You're an idiot not only for putting a disgusting picture of the President on a tombstone but more of an idiot for telling us:

"if Mitt Romney had the same plan as the president; his picture would be in the window."  

You're worse than an idiot, you're a liar, because Slippery Mitt did have that plan until he decided to sell his withered soul to the Devil and run for President. Did you forget?  And no, you're not a racist and if there's racism now, it's Obama's fault, he says.

"This is America, isn't it?Aren't we able to say and do pretty much what we want to do?"

 Asks the scummy Mr. Skuby. I really wish that were true, but then we'd have to condone tarring and feathering and probably worse and if this idiot isn't one of those dumb Limbaugh loving lizard brained bastards who wanted to put people in jail for criticizing W, I'd be very surprised.  You should be thankful we can't do pretty much what we want to do to you.  Damned thankful if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.

So, I'm glad people are shunning your store and I truly hope you'll go broke and be unable to file for bankruptcy protection because of the Republican "reforms" and that you'll lose your health insurance and be unable to replace it because of the interrupted coverage.  I hope your kid needs an operation and runs up a quarter million dollar medical bill you can't pay and so you'll lose everything and wind up on the street with a tin can so I can go by and piss in it.Why don't you ask the Koch Brothers for a handout?

Ann Coulter -- Liberal

I've been told for decades that the culture of victimhood is a Liberal thing; that the lazy slackers of America simply pretend to be victims when they could simply get a job instead of mooching the "hard earned" dollars of hard working Americans.

I think I agree and that's why when Ann Coulter stunk up Ottawa today by claiming she's the victim of hate crimes by a University of Ottawa today. You see, the university’s vice-president of academic affairs and provost François Houle sent her an e-mail encouraging her to brush up on what’s considered acceptable in Canada whose laws about free speech may be unfamiliar to her. You have to admit that's just as egregious as lynchings, firebombings, painting swastikas on Synagogues and dragging some gay kid to death behind a truck. It's hate speech if I ever heard it and according to time honored righty dogma, claiming to be a victim makes Ann a liberal.

"You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.”

said the e-mail and who could disagree that its message is in every way a conservative one: Learn the law and obey it. Ann is a Liberal, no doubt about it and even though the e-mail was obviously inspired by her previous performance in London, Ontario, it's a hate crime directed at consrvatives and what could be more liberal than that? At the University of Western Ontario, she attacked gay rights activists, the mainstream media, Barack Obama's administration and told a Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying. Republicans have all been highly critical of any American criticizing the president or the government while abroad -- any Liberal American, that is -- so I'm expecting we'll hear them all chime in soon.

Yes, cautioning someone whose actions have bordered on the criminal to be careful while in Canada is a hate crime if ever there was one and it's just like a liberal to ask for special rights for a minority group: psychotic blond transvestites. I think it's fitting to quote one of her most often used phrases, because it says it all: "Liberals go wah -- they go wah, wah,wah."

And nobody gives a shit.

A NOTE OF THANKS FROM CANADA

Not that we deserve a note of thanks … considering the Fox News smugly sarcastic "new clear" bomb that offended our neighbors, sullied our reputation, and reinforced our Ugly American image in the eyes of the world.

But sometimes our voices do carry. Voices like our esteemed Captain Fogg and your peevish Octopus who have spoken out against our number one national export - Yankee dumbness. Today, I received this heartwarming note of thanks from friends in Canada who read our blog:

Give [ ... ] a big Canadian hug from us. We (our country) have been in this war going on seven years and maintain peacekeeping missions in long-forgotten places of conflict for decades without any fanfare. That is the Canadian way and why we are known as the ‘gentle and caring nation' by most countries. All of my American friends were outraged by the Fox news-comedy hour segment and fully know that our brave soldiers and their families are doing their all to help the good people of Afghanistan take-out the insurgents while working side by side with our US allies.

Not all Yankees fully comprehend the depth of hurt caused by Fox News. It seems our country is too preoccupied with itself to see how the rest of the world sees us.  Today's Sunday editorial from the OTTAWA CITIZEN explains far better than I possibly can (reproduced in full):

Talking aboot our American cousins

by JANICE KENNEDY

Excruciating, wasn’t it? That Fox News program clip we all watched last week with the guffawing buffoons parading their ignorance? That clip about Canada, the “ridiculous” country with the effete, inactive military and the policemen in red jackets riding horses?

Not that I generally watch Fox News, understand. (Why would I? I don’t consider myself a) a redneck, b) a right-wing fanatic, or c) dumb.) But, like the rest of Canada, I did see this morsel of televised moronism. And all I could think was, yikes, how embarrassing. Do they have any clue how dim-witted they sound?

Judging by their knowledge vacuum, you might conclude that the Fox characters (who also dismissed Mexico as the land of the siesta) were merely simpletons who had crawled out of some backcountry swamp. But that’s the terrible thing. Extreme and tacky, they were nonetheless not unique. In fact, they summed up a chunk of the prevailing American mindset.

Profound American ignorance about Canada is neither new (“I don’t even know what street Canada is on,” said Al Capone) nor confined to Fox. Nor is it the exclusive purview of the right wing or the uneducated. It’s simply an absence in the culture, an empty space where knowledge should be.  And not only about Canada.

When American commentators or comics need a punchline, no matter what their political orientation, they dig into their big bag of international clichés and come up with ready tags for everyone from the Mexicans (siestas), to the French (baguettes and retreating armies), to Canadians — frozen yokels who say “aboot” and are borrrrring. (Unless the bag of clichés belongs to Rush Limbaugh and company. Then we’re Soviet Canuckistan, buncha socialists.)

Besides the recent Fox embarrassment, we’ve also been treated lately to conservative Matthew Vadum’s American Spectator blog, which says Natasha Richardson may have been killed by Canada’s “socialist, government-run healthcare system — similar to the kind that President Obama wants to ram down the throats of Americans.”

At the time of the Iraq invasion, Conan O’Brien noted that “the prime minister of Canada said he’d like to help, but he’s pretty sure that last time he checked, Canada had no army.” Jon Stewart, having been to Canada, has “always gotten the impression that I could take the country over in about two days.” See? It comes from all sides. Nor should we overlook the touching earnestness of Britney Spears, who gushed that one of the coolest things about being famous was the travelling. “I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.”

On TV last week, there was a curiously telling line on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, which includes the running gag of a character with a Canadian past (i.e., endless comic fodder involving hickness, maple syrup, Mounties and snow). When one of her reminiscences makes even sex up here seem boring, another character wails, “Canada … Why? Why do we let you be a country?”

Interesting choice of words, right? Not to get all Freudian or anything, but the joke does reveal something about the American soul — its Americentric worldview, its Manifest Destiny belief that the U.S. is the sun around which all other nations orbit. Or are permitted to orbit.

Only a fool would deny that our superpowerful American cousins are anything other than mighty and crucial to the future of the planet. But the sun? Americans too often are blinded by their own rays, and that’s where the problem lies.

When you can’t see beyond yourselves, you assume there’s not much out there worth seeing anyway. You rely for your knowledge on hoary and absurd stereotypes, recklessly uninformed opinion and gut prejudices based on nothing more substantial than wisps of misunderstood information.

That is ignorance. And that, my American friends, is the core constituent of your collective worldview.

(All you Americans who actually know things about both Canada and the rest of the world? Yes, I know you exist. But you’re a minuscule minority, and your perspective is not what gets airtime, at home or abroad.)

To those of us who live reasonably decent lives without the benefit of citizenship that is starred, striped and stamped with bald eagles, it’s all a bit alarming. Here we have the gigantor of nations, an incredible global hulk capable of alarming rampages, and it doesn’t seem to care what’s out there, and what might get trampled.

I can’t speak for other nations, but I can speak as a Canadian reduced to Made-inAmerica stereotype. Would it help to point out to Americans that a lot of us hate winter? That real socialists would laugh themselves silly at the notion that Canada is socialist? That most Canadians don’t buy real maple syrup because it’s too darned expensive? That health care here may be flawed but does actually work? That many Canadians don’t give a hoot about hockey? That we actually have a fairly lively culture up here in the hinterland? That not one 9/11 hijacker crossed over from Canada? Oh, and that 116 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan?

It would not. That’s because Americans, hubristically, just don’t want to know.

Introducing a segment on the public-radio program This American Life, writer-broadcaster Sarah Vowell once observed, “Like most Americans, I don’t particularly care about Canada.”  Or any place else, apparently. That’s the American tragic flaw in a nutshell.

One final word from 8pus:  Ahh hope mahh fella Ahhmerikans finally get the point.