YELLOW STICKY NOTES

By Jeff Chiba Stearns

Yes we can

But no we won't. Really nobody expected Barak Obama to bring about the Kingdom of God, or even a Democracy of justice. That his supporters did, is just another of the straw men ambling down the yellow brick road from GOP headquarters. What we really wanted is somebody not actively trying to destroy our country in every possible way, but from day one we've been giggled at because he hadn't done in 24 hours what Jesus Christ hasn't done, lo these 2000 years and largely because his followers are Christians.

One of the things I have been hoping for is for an end to the persecution of gays in the military. It's a small thing in the greater picture of our corrupt, superstitious and furious country, but had somebody done something to block the summary discharge of Lieutenant Daniel Choi from the US Army because he prefers men to women, it might have been reassuring, at least, to those who hope for something of a saner, more secular America. Alas he has chosen not to "interfere." He has chosen to allow the crusaders one more victory in taking over our military.

It's only one of many stories, but the sad lack of Arabic translators in our service has something to do with the fact that we place such great value on their private sexual thoughts that we are willing to risk the lives of our soldiers and perhaps our nation by firing them and negating their years of study and service and indeed their valuable expertise. Choi was the 54th translator to be discharged for unclean thoughts.

I'm waiting for our allegedly Liberal Press to say something and perhaps for the "traditional values" side to be hypocritical and call them hypocrites, but so far, It's only the bloggers and the ever vigilant Daily Show that are willing to point out that our Christian friends in God's Army are allowing their superstitions to weaken us in yet one more way.

Religious bigotry doesn't require a beard or any kind of headgear to be the enemy of freedom, or does stupidity for that matter. Take Kim Hendron, a member of the Arkansas State Senate, and currently a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who told us recently that he believes in the traditional values of the Andy Griffith Show, not like "that Jew" Chuck Shumer. Now most of us remember that no, John Wayne never really was a soldier and Andy Griffith never really was a sheriff of that non-existent fantasy town that had no Jews or Catholics or Mexicans or folks of African descent, but Hendron isn't going to let any damned New York Jew tell him otherwise any more than the US Army of God is going to let any damned sodomite translate any damned Arabic messages even if we have to have New York blown up all over again. Of course, when his foot was extracted from his Arkanas blow hole, he had to admit that he did actually like maybe a couple of Jews like Jesus and Lieberman, neither of which it's likely he's ever listened to with much understanding.

So maybe if we want to get an idea of what's really going on here, we need to turn off our inner Arkansas and listen to some damned Jew like the one that told us to shut the hell up and be nice to each other a long time ago and the one on Comedy Central who seems brave enough to tell off the Army and Obama and our hate-based community that we've had enough of this. waterboarding may make them talk, said that Jew Jon Stewart, but it won't make them talk in English.

Shame on you Mr. President.

Ugly is as ugly thinks

This is still America, the discomfiture of the Republican Party notwithstanding, and so no triviality, no irrelevant, inconsequential or plainly idiotic dispute is going to go away without the final word being had by our ad hoc committee on the meaning of everything. The current committee heads seem to be Sarah Palin and Charlie, Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher.

As the swells slowly die down on that limitless sea of Who Gives A Shit, we can hear the voice of Mrs. Palin (perhaps all the way to Russia) telling us that:

“Our Constitution protects us all, not just those who agree with the far left.”

Saving the discussion of just what, to her, constitutes the "far left" for another paragraph, it might be worthwhile to wonder just what protection it offers from the superstition and bigotry of those who listen to psychotic monsters like Pastor "death to witches" Muthee. We won't get an answer from her, I'm afraid, but her feelings are clear. The Constitution protects her religious views against the "Liberal" onslaught.

It doesn't, of course -- and I have a hard time seeing the First Amendment as protecting someone's standing in a private, for profit beauty pageant, else we'd be hearing a lot of court cases from ladies with big noses, large bottoms and A cups, but that's the Procrustean bed Palin would like to strap the sad case of Carrie Prejean into, as poor a fit as it may be.

Does Sarah care who wins a contest designed to facilitate the commercial self-objectification of young women? I would guess that she is only interested in portraying her as a noble victim of people so un-American as to assert that the Constitution protects everyones rights, including the right to enter into a contract with another, regardless of race, creed, national origin or gender. That's being a farleftliberal, of course; the catchall term for anything that stands in the way of going back to the days when a real estate broker (we didn't have Realtors back then) could refuse to show you a house in a white neighborhood, a Jew couldn't book a hotel room in Palm Beach, schools, restaurants, public parks, drinking fountains train stations and city buses were segregated, marrying someone of the wrong race could land you in jail and non-missionary position sex was a crime -- and all was well with far right neanderthals like Sarah the moose killer and her Cave Christians. All was right with Sarah's Grizzly God.

No, “the liberal onslaught of malicious attacks” as Sarah growled from her wilderness den -- or in other words, the disgust with people like Prejean, Palin and the Plumber dude who want to have the law interfere with private and personal relationships and strip us of the right to determine just who our families are: the Liberal assault is what what we should be concerned about, or at least the losers who run and watch and participate in beauty pageants should be. It's a "onslaught!" We shouldn't notice that in fact nobody is censoring anyone and Sarah the Idiot is confusing equal protection under the law for all citizens with some kind of an outrageous affront to her primitive religious beliefs.

So it seems like Sarah's "far left" is actually the core of American values, at least the values the constitution was meant to be a means to facilitate. It seems like Sarah's center lies in a culture that died out with the "onslaught" of the Age of Enlightenment, if not with the disappearance of woolly mammoths. Far Left Liberals like me feel little more than sad, queasiness at the ugly programmed responses of would be beauty queens, and that's about it. Some may be outraged at her, some might hate her, but they are a subgroup as small as Palin's witch hunters. Most of us care more about how our representatives vote and how well our freedom is protected against its atavistic enemies, but ugly words make people ugly, and this is a beauty contest, isn't it?

Say no to drugs!

I guess I've been doing drugs all my life and I'll bet you have too. My thanks to the FDA for letting us all know. Take Oats for example, there's evidence that eating oat cereal helps keep your bad cholesterol low and that's something the health howlers everywhere have been telling us to do 24 hours a day for decades. Cheerios are, of course, made with oats and General Mills is happy to tell you they provide a good way to eat those oats that seem to be good for you. Our friends at the FDA however, you know those guys who always seem to have been looking the other way when the e-coli, melamine and rat turds got into our food supply aren't about to tolerate promoting a healthy diet without their permission.

Cheerios are drugs because they can help treat a medical condition according to the Food and Drug Administration. Of course if nobody told you that broccoli or spinach or exercise or a good night's sleep -- or oats -- were good for you, that would be all right with the Feds. Health benefits, no matter how credible can only be talked about with their approval it seems. So never mind what your mother or Sanjay Gupta or the Surgeon General tells you about a healthy diet and lifestyle, don't listen to those damned drug pushers, listen to the FDA.

Of course you can apparently sell almost any placebo or stimulant as a weight loss drug that has been proven not to work or in some cases to kill you. We can't go half an hour without some machine or pill or diet plan being shoved in our faces on TV, but fruits, grains and vegetables as part of a heart-healthy diet? DRUGS!!!!

Hey, last thing I want to do is be a druggie - so I'll have a double bacon cheeseburger with extra mayonnaise and a big Bucket O Super Sized Fries and a milk shake too of course -- it's all FDA approved!

84 AFGHAN GIRLS POISONED: ASSOCIATED PRESS HINTS AT "HYSTERIA"

Earlier today (Tuesday, May 12, 2009), the Associated Press released this story about an apparent poison gas attack on 84 Afghan school girls:

MUHMUD RAQI, Afghanistan — At least 84 Afghan girls were admitted to a hospital Tuesday for headaches and vomiting in the third apparent poison attack on a girls school in as many weeks, officials and doctors said.

The students were lining up outside their school in northeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday morning when a strange odor filled the yard, and one girl collapsed, said the school's principal, Mossena, who was herself in a hospital bed gasping for breath as she described the event.

(…)

At least 98 patients were admitted from Aftab Bachi school, including the principal, 11 teachers and two cleaners, said Khalid Enayat, the hospital's deputy director. He said about another 30 students were being monitored to see if they developed symptoms, although they were not admitted to the hospital.

Tuesday's apparent attack is the third alleged poisoning at a girls' school in less than three weeks. It comes one day after 61 schoolgirls and one teacher from a school in neighboring Parwan province were admitted to a hospital after complaining of sudden illness. They were irritable, confused and weeping, and several of the girls passed out.

Even more disturbing is how AP and its writers victimize the victims of these attacks with this hypothetical disclaimer:

But with no group claiming responsibility, the sicknesses could be a result of a group hysteria sparked by one student's illness. An education official for Parwan province said they had not found any evidence of an attack in Tuesday's incident. He said one student fell ill before the others and suggested that some of the illnesses could have been psychological.

Get it?  Young women have such delicate constitutions, you know. They subject themselves to flights of hysteria with the slightest provocation. Does the mere thought of having acid thrown in one’s face bring on a case of vapors and tremors? Does every odor followed by headache, nausea, and vomiting evoke The Mad Gasser of Mattoon?

When so-called authorities or experts can find no other explanation, the easiest solution is to blame the victim. Of course we are talking about a country where girls are kidnapped, schools are closed or burned, teachers are beheaded, and fear is rampant.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press wants to cast doubt on the credibility of the victims. Does this press account commit a fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias, or is there more subtext behind this story? Like shades of gender bias, for example?

Update (6:45 pm): The BBC and Deutsche Welle reported the same story without the reference to group hysteria.

He must be wrong -- he's Obama.

It seems to me that if one is dedicated to thwarting president Obama's health care reform before one knows what it is, then one has to admit that either he's out to thwart anything Obama does, or any kind of health care reform.

Multimillionaire Rick Scott is one of those people who can't wait to hear what the plan actually entails before putting on the Drum Major costume and strutting about the streets twirling his baton in ostentatious outrage and ornate opposition. He has put together a group he predictably calls Conservatives for Patient's Rights rather than a more honest "The I've Got Mine and F*ck You Club."

"Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care,"

says Scott as quoted in today's Washington Post. Of course since we don't know that Obama is actually talking about Government run health care, at least not in the same sense that Scott would like us to fear he is, the mendacity begins with the first words. Then too, he doesn't want you to ask Americans who have government run health care either. By all accounts our politicians have it pretty good and the VA system was a model of efficiency, at least until the privatization pirates attempted to board that ship. He doesn't want you to listen to countries with successful and popular health care plans, he wants you to listen to a carefully selected and edited group of Canadians and Brits and their anecdotal horror stories and so enter CRC Public Relations and another round of captious TV ads.

Did I mention that Scott made his money as CEO of a private hospital business?

Scott is contributing $5 million from his own piggy bank and has, according to WaPo, got $15 million more from other people who support the status quo most Americans feel is in need of reform. The funds will be put to good use by CRC Public Relations, the same firm that gave us the "swift Boat Veterans" campaign that convinced the weak minded and no-minded that John Kerry was not where he was, didn't do what he did and proved it with testimony from people who didn't know him and were never near him.

Did I mention that CEO Scott was ousted from Columbia/HCA, the largest private U.S. health-care company at the time, that pleaded guilty to fraud? He defends this by telling us that other private hospitals were committing fraud too. Think about that when the argument comes around to the part where private is always better than public.

If you took logic 101 in college, you probably remember it being called the Slippery Slope Fallacy, but Scott's target audience didn't go and doesn't remember and so Scott can employ the argument that any step toward reform will accelerate down hill without evidence. He can tell us he isn't necessarily opposed to Obama's plan, even before he knows what it is, but that

"The bottom line is that this is happening fast, and there is not much of a debate going on about what will happen if we go down this path"

but what he means by "debate" is to obfuscate -- and that's obvious. We have had decades of debate; decades of millions spent on sleazy ads and slimy lies and distractions and Scott thinks we need to continue the gravy train he's on as long as he can keep it going.

What are we going to do about Newt?

Just for the record, and in case you've forgotten, the forced resignations of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew had nothing to do with burglary, arson, bribery and extortion: it was all political, unlike the $50,000,000 investigation of Bill Clinton's sex life and a real estate deal in which he lost money. That was about law and principle, like ignoring Newt Gingrich's serial affairs and tax frauds while he accuses others was -- a matter of principle.

Welcome to Republican Bizarro World where everything is its opposite. Newt reminds us that calls by some Democrats for investigations into Bush administration torture and secret imprisonment without trial practices amounts to a partisan attack reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

"The degree that they’re putting specific people at risk for prosecution is unprecedented in modern America,”

he said to Chris Wallace, without any foundation in fact of any kind. Of course he hopes you won't remember how unprecedented it was to prosecute a president for a private consensual affair or for testifying falsely about something that wasn't a crime or related to one.

“They haven’t passed a law making water boarding illegal. They haven’t gone into any of these things and changed law,”

although since the US has already prosecuted people for water boarding as a war crime it would seem to indicate they didn't need to make it redundantly illegal. We also have to ask why, if it was legal, and publicizing it terrorizes the terrorists, Bush denied having done it.

No, Virginia, Theater of the Absurd didn't go out of fashion in the 1960's, it simply became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. What else would you call it but absurd if Bush didn't do anything illegal, because it's not illegal if he does it? What else would you call an argument stating that murder wasn't illegal because since the murderer got caught, nobody bothered to make what already was illegal, illegal again? And after all nobody, says Newt, ever put anybody at risk for prosecution like the Democrats are doing, just because they committed a crime -- or didn't which is the same thing you see, depending on whether it was done by a Republican or not.

And then, of course there's the danger of seeming to be "soft on terrorism" which of course nobody actually is unless we make it legal to torture through legislation or through precedent (and according to Ann, far more vicious.) By Newts logic, the US was soft on the Nazis and the Empire of Japan because we didn't torture them. It must have been coincidence that we weren't conquered.

Really, is it that they hope to wear us down or perhaps to erode logic so much that opposites will become the same and judgment will be simply a matter of doing what we can get away with? We have voted them out of office, but they still have the ability to scream endlessly in our ears.
History proves that there are always enough supporters to make any demagogue dangerous if we let it go on too long, so what do we do about them?

The most ____ president in history.

"Be warned - - Obama has started!!!!" screams the e-mail.

The boundary between hyperbole and hysteria may be blurry and undefined, but those who make a career of ferrying the lost souls across that murky river are calm, cool and professional and know just what they are doing: delivering us all to hell.

The smallest and most obscure incident will be elevated to a breathless diatribe against the pandaemon of targets in the Republican shooting gallery and so when, after a series of accidents, one fatal, involving Fort Campbell soldiers owning private firearms and living off-base, approximately 110 out of 29,000 of them were asked by a company commander for information about what kind of weapons they owned, with the objective of providing proper training in their use. The letter was rescinded almost immediately.

With blinding speed the letter was scanned and embedded in a bogus and highly irate letter about how "the most anti-firearm president in history" was trying to disarm our own military.

"The big hush, hush is not only to take away our missile defenses, but Obama is going to disarm the public as well. He is starting with the military and then the public. The country will then be totally defenseless."

How quickly we move from memo to madness. It goes on and on about Liberty and a "Free people" and how "something really nasty is blowing in the wind here." Indeed it is, or at least in the electronic wind and it smells Republican.

"It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days: the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington"

Do I need to point out that to be a coincidence, two events have to be true?

I could almost hear the thud of it arriving in my in-box -- or perhaps the thud was the sonic boom caused by the Commander of Charlie Company transmogrifying into maniacal Barak Obama.

Obama, formerly "the most far-left Liberal" in the Senate is now confounding the Liberal wing of his party with his decidedly not far-left Liberal views on many things, but no matter. Even if he proves not to put further gun control legislation on the table, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Rahm Immanuel are waiting, like cartridges in a magazine and any one of them can be the next "most ____ in history." Like Leggo Blocks, they're interchangeable.

Now I wonder with what blinding speed some troll will decide that I am very angry and therefore demented and from that go on to point out that all Democrats are not only hate filled, but deranged hate mongers; perhaps the most deranged in history. I'm counting the seconds.

SWASH ZONE WEEKEND FEATURE – FATHER AND DAUGHTER

Animator and Writer: Michael Dudok de Wit
Academy Award Winner, Best Short Animated Film, 2001.



For my three cephalopods: Jennifer, Jessica, and Samantha.

Just what it looks like

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

-Sigmund Freud (attributed)-

Sometimes not

"So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate."

said Rush the other day at the President's Club Dinner, to appreciative guests like Justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and other self-satisfied plutocrats who thought it was funny that Clear Channel has had to lay off 12% of its work force while Rush has a $400 million dollar contract with them. Business for Rush has never been better and he's never had a better time either with his 51,000 square foot Palm Beach palace on the ocean, his $54 million dollar private jet and his "populist" radio program where he can tell the boys down at the corner bar why the Liberals are out to get them and then fly off to have dinner with the other plutocrats smoking cigars and laughing their heads off at his jokes about homeless children sleeping under bridges.

That's right Doktor Freud, sometimes it's a cigar, sometimes it's not, but with Rush it's always a way of saying "I've got mine and f*ck you!"