WhutsHappening

Wake Up, Assholes, We Actually Have to "Change" Too

Last week Obama addressed the country with his first ideas for the new world, “CHANGE!” and all the other great exclamation trumpeting the arrival of America’s best liberal poster boy since Kennedy. He presented ideas of corporate responsibility. He presented ideas of creating a sustainable economy with exploration of new fuels to create a new fuel infrastructure but the one thing I wanted to hear him say is the one thing he could not because saying it would destroy every business wisdom that has been preached to us since the Depression. I have a simple idea for what America needs to do but with our bourgeois hatred for getting our own hands clean this would never fly for corporate America. Our problem isn’t necessarily corporate irresponsibility, though that is certainly a symptom. Our problem is our corporations; moreover, our problem is that our country, once the great provider of all that was good and new in this backwards old world, has become a middle man and, well, it’s always very easy to cut out the middle man.

The middle man does not provide goods, he provides a service. Like anybody knows if they’ve ever tried to sell their own house, their own car, or even something as small as an Xbox, it may take a bit more hassle but normally the buyer and the seller are better off without the middle man. The thing is, we’re also the buyers, though, so we’re 2 sides of the equation – the two weakest sides. Without the product we’re nothing. A producer can survive without a middle man; a middle man cannot survive without a producer. The middle man is like a remora or a leach, the food can survive without him but he can’t survive without the food, simple Darwinian economics, man. But how did this whole flawed middle man system come about and what kind of idiots would train a whole age group to aspire towards being little more than snake-oil salesmen without the gumption to make their own snake-oil? People who realized that when you’re smart, you can make a lot of money as a salesman – provided, that is, that not everybody else wants to be one too. If that happens, the ship is sunk.

I was fortunate enough to have grown up alongside people considered by the great judge to be the best and brightest, young Americans who would excel at almost anything they would do. Most of my high school friends are in finance (read: making money off buying and selling other people’s products) or real estate (read: making money off buying and selling other people’s homes or land). Some are DJ’s but while that is a product, there is a question as to how effective and necessary such a thing is; art will always be a commodity and unless you’re big enough to be reproduced in high enough numbers to be cheap enough that the masses can buy you, you may be obsolete in a world that no longer throws as lavish of parties. Most of my college friends have gone into real estate. Some are in the military and a few have gone into engineering or electronics but the general adage that has been pounded into my generation is that if you want to be somebody, you have to sell something. Not make something – sell it. We’ve become so enthralled with fast-talking Italians in designer suits wearing Rolexes and bragging to their buddies at the martini bars about how they closed 80 deals this past month and in all of them came out on top that we stopped thinking about what the fuck we’re selling. And even more, how sustainable it is to continue selling these things. Arthur Miller was wrong; the salesman never died; he’s alive and well in every little kid who watches BOILER ROOM with a tightened fist going white because watching Vin Diesel sell fake stock is beautiful. But that little bastard misses the whole point. Or maybe he just gets it inherently, subconsciously, and has too limited a view way to comprehend what it really means. Wake up kid. BOILER ROOM is America. And it ends poorly.

We’ve been paying so much attention to the shine we forgot to worry about what we were shining and just now, as we’re getting called on it, we’ve realized that we were selling nothing. Just semantics, numbers without hard material to back them up. America went off the gold standard a long time ago; so too has our way of doing business and it will be interesting to see how this whole thing turns out when we realize we went from being a bunch of producers with real products to a bunch of talkers holding an empty sack when the very producers we set up decide to go elsewhere to sell their products for a better cut.

Look at these goddamned banks. What the fuck is a bank? It used to be a simple tool, a facilitator of the greater society. Now it’s trying to paint itself AS the society and what these bastards will never admit is that they’ve made what should be a social institution into a goddamn industry. That would be like milk cartons becoming a drink. Think about it – milk cartons were invented to hold milk. That’s their whole purpose. But let’s just say one day the milk cartons began to feel so self-important they began bulking themselves up and fancying themselves and trying to make themselves seem more amazing, more individual than they really are. Someone needs to tell them that the milk is what’s important and they’re just an afterthought. Because without the milk, they’re fucking nothing.

So what’s the solution? Let’s start by castrating all these assholes who have the audacity to demand their $50 million dollar jets and $10 million dollar bonuses after laying off 500 people who all made about $50 k a year. These corporate criminals are like rapists, looking for any opportunity to dip their proboscis into the innocent just because they like how it feels going in and more importantly they like proving that they can. It makes them feel like men. More often than not, they know their position is tenuous. They’re smart enough to know they’re selling bullshit without anything to back it up. That’s why they demand so much money up front – because if anybody figured out they didn’t have any real product behind them but an uncanny and soulless ability to spin words and peddle pink elephants, they’d be out. Like is happening now and yet still these assholes have managed to bamboozle us into letting them keep their ivory towers, all grinning at us because they know we’re fucked but they’ll be okay; that while we suffer for their lies, they thrive. Is it comical to anybody else that we let these assholes run around waving the “free-market economy flag” and then they turn to the government when things get bad? They’re like that kid who makes more than enough to support himself, brags about how his parents can’t tell him what to do, but then spends it all on blow and expensive nights at Teddy’s so he has to borrow money from Daddy. Only in this case, Daddy is funded by that bastard’s less fortunate younger siblings who have to work all day to keep from losing the farm.

Next stop, bring back all the call centers from India and all the factories from China. If any goddamn bleeding heart says that’ll crush their economies I’d tell them to take a long hard look at their own company. Yes, I saw SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and life’s tough in India but times are tough here too. Everyday I find a new article about Mexicans living in tunnels because they can’t find work and I read about some new middle-class murder suicide by somebody in the Valley because they’ve completely let their family down buying into an “American dream” that was never real in the first place. We need to get back to making things, to building a strong exporting economy. Our strongest export now is culture and art, movies, and even that’s weakening as people elsewhere catch on to the scheme.

So now we’re producing it hear and sure, it’ll make shit cost a little more but that’s what we need. There has to be a serious cost-benefit analysis undertaken where we figure out that having less shit of higher quality is much better than having more junk that may give our kids lead poisoning and will definitely break within a year. We have to realize that our computers may cost a little more but at least when we have a question we won’t have to wrestle with somebody looking up English words in the dictionary while trying to help us with a product they’ve never seen. Plus it’ll bring jobs back to the U.S., money back in our pockets, and create a future surplus. Sure it’ll mean getting our hands dirty again, less bastards in fine Gucci linens and more men and women in foreman’s gear. It’ll also mean a return to the pride we used to take in hard work, the American way, all that.

Finally, we need to start moving towards building infrastructure instead of immediate wealth. There was once a time when people understood building something that benefited a society and getting wealthy off that. The railroads, a newspaper, a city, something that served a long-term purpose. Nobody wants to do that anymore. Everybody looks for the short-term now – God forbid a company takes a short-term hit for a long-term gain, the board of trustees and stock-owners will eat them alive. At the same time, when a company lies or covers things up or makes things good for the short-term, almost always at the detriment of the long term, it punches the stock up a few points and they get lauded by the pundits. Serves the bastards right that it should come back around to bite them in the ass – maybe then investors will realize that the short-term straightjackets they put on publicly-traded companies are stifling long-term growth and ruining everything. And while there are still real estate developers who are honestly trying to build infratructure, it’s about a half and half split as to why they’re building it. Some build things because they serve a purpose, the right reason and the best way to ensure profits. The rest build just to make money and as we’ve seen, building for the purpose of profit without thinking if it’s something anybody needs is backfiring on us and leaving overpriced homes and office spaces empty, real estate companies scrambling to give out handies in bathroom stalls to senators in exchange for taxpayer money because their free-market policies, well, just didn’t work.

So where does that leave us? What’s next for the American public to do – not Obama, us. He can create policies and reprimands for the companies that are fucking everything up but we’re gonna need to do some serious thinking, a paradigm-shift to use everybody’s favorite silent-G buzzword, and adopt a new view of our role as members of the great state and our roles as producers, consumers, and investors.

First, it is not our right to consume to our heart’s content, and certainly not to consume disproportionately to our production. Some may say that’s being communist, that consuming is good but it isn’t when what we’re consuming comes from elsewhere. If anything, it’s the most un-American thing to do because it’s actually putting our money into the coffers of other countries, none of whom are us. The only Americans we’re helping are the middlemen, the slimy bastards who skim their money off the top while peddling another country’s products, similar to a coke-dealer or a smuggler of Thai hookers. Consuming can be addictive, a drug that satisfies in the short term and in the long-term leaves us empty. That movie, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, is like TRAFFIC but in pink with a goddamned designer lace dress wrapped around it. It’s not funny, it’s hideous and it’s that attitude of never-ending consumption that has labeled us the overweight gold-chain-draped South Beach papi of the world. It’s also what has caused everybody to overextend themselves for German automobiles, Italian bags, Scottish booze, and Chinese electronics. These aren’t inherently bad – but eventually, when we’re sending all of our money over there it’s emptying our banks over here and while those banks keep touting themselves as great institutions with massive overhead and absurd fanfare they’ll be investing less of the money that’s already dwindling out of them.

These purchases do show something, though – people still desire quality. And people can obviously make themselves afford it. So if you can afford a G for a bag, you should be able to spend that same amount for a computer which can help you at their job, your education, your home management, whatever. So maybe instead of Dell farming out their customer service to Mumbai, they can bring it back home here and price their computers a bit higher. Yes, it will cost us more, in the short-term. But in the long-term, it will lead to more jobs here so more money flowing into our local infrastructure and, through basic trickle-down economics, this will improve our whole economy. So the lesson is this – over-consumption is bad. Healthy consumption of necessities and a few frivolities is good, but only if it is mostly American-made goods. Not American-mediated. American-made.

Might doesn’t make right. Just because you’re in charge of a company doesn’t mean you can boost your own salary at the pain of all those below you – and even more, when your company runs out of money, use the taxpayers to cover your salary. Take a fucking paycut and move the factory from China to Flint, Michigan. Then maybe you’ll be able to sleep at night without two packets of Zanex and a big black bodyguard whose job it is to protect you from your disenfranchised workers and an increasingly-impoverished American public. Teach your kids this  - the Elephantine Business philosophy of “if it’s not illegal, it’s okay” is akin to business nihilism and in the end can only lead to what we’ve got now. Teach them that to be rich and “successful” are not the same thing – and even more importantly, getting the most points isn’t everything and sometimes can be worse than getting less because your overabundance which makes your life ust a little better makes the lives of thousands much worse. Teach them that in real life winning isn’t measured in who has the most points but also who plays with the most fairness. This may not be true but the only way we’ll be able to improve our society is by embracing this ideal – otherwise, it’s the way of the Romans, the most successful society to fall victim to its own decadence, depravity and self-importance, for us. And teach them that the middle man is expendable – if you want to be valuable to society, make something, something real and something valuable to society. And make it because it will serve a good purpose, not just because it will make you rich. And teach them the value of getting your hands dirty – that’s what America was founded on.

The greatest thing about America is that we can always re-invent ourselves. We can always become better, always fix our wrongs, and we have enough minds and hearts here to actually try and figure out what we need to do. We’ve recovered from many financial disasters before. Everybody remembers the Depression – well maybe not remembers but has heard about it – and watched the WIZARD OF OZ, the great analogy for how we rusted when we first forgot about industry and lost our heart, boasted our strength when we were really becoming cowardly because of our comfort, left farming because it was brainless and, to us, unimportant, and eventually found our way back by following the hard strength of gold. In the 70’s, a slowed economy coupled with double-digit inflation coined the term Stagflation. It was the result of years of prosperity (leading to complacency and corruption as regulations loosened) and, for the first time, the oil companies wielding their power. The 80’s had a Republican named Ronald Reagan, another regular cowboy whose policies of creating tax loopholes for the wealthy including capital gains fucked over the average American. While unemployment dropped, the economy grew even slower than in the 70’s, our national debt and trade deficits ballooned, and the number of people below the poverty line increased for the whole of the 80’s. What did it take to fix all the financial issues of the 70’s and 80’s which specifically affected the lower and middle-class “Average” Americans? A smart Democrat who actually cared about his people and wanted to use the government as a tool for improving the lives of his constituents, not as a piggy bank to hook up his friends from neighborhood cotillions and deb balls.

So it’s time to rally. It’s time to sacrifice some of our bad habits, our lack of willingness to get our hands dirty and our disdain for the word “moderation”. Let’s show that America is something more than a bunch of assholes who fill up the emptiness in our lives with expensive goods as the foreign producers laugh at how well we funded their economies. We’re the laughing joke of the business world. Let’s try, once again, to show that we do have what it takes to be the best goddamned country in the world. America!

The Revolt of the Guard

“History which keeps alive the memory of people’s resistance suggests new definitions of power.  By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power.  Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.

            However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful.  In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and policed, teachers and ministers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communication workers, garbage men and firemen.  These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into the alliance with the elite.  They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes.  If they stop obeying, the system fails.

            That will happen, I think, only the when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica-expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us…”

            Let us imagine, the prospect-for the first time in the nations history-of a population united for fundamental change.  Would the elite turn as so often as before, to its ultimate weapon-foreign intervention-to unite the people with the Establishment, in war?  It tried to do that in 1991, with the war against Iraq.  But as June Jordan said, it was “a hit the same way crack is, and it doesn’t last long.”

 

Howard Zinn

 

There are too many quotable lines from Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, but I was reading these particular closing statements of his work the Day Barrack Obama was elected president.  I am fanciful and hopeful enough to believe in the serendipity of the moment.  I, along with 50-80 million other Americans “Imagine the prospect-for the first time in the nations History-of a population united for fundamental change.”

 

We have witnessed fundamental change, no doubt.  Even the booers and hissers at McCain’s concession speech must have felt it mixed in with their sense of loss, and their confusion at whether or not this new, dark-skinned leader really is “too risky” whatever that means.  The shining faces at Barrack acceptance speech felt it to their core, manifesting as tears, and cries of “Yes we can” and hugs.  What hope for all the “The People” represented in Zinn’s History, whom I followed chronologically through their diaries and quotes while at the same time watching a 48-year old (and all the other players is this grand, but sweetly true drama) change that History forever.  Truly, for the first time in my short life and the recent past, a President that is of the people.

 

What Joy for the children who will soon, we hope so dearly, be cared for no matter their parents econmic status.  What relief for Students, we hope, who will find a path other than the military to pay for part of their immense cost of education.  What a vision, we hope, for all who are disillusioned with the fearsome cry of absolute capitalism and human worth based solely on profitability.  We believe, the faces in the crowd believe, that something is going to change.  History already has.

 

For me that is the most exciting prospect of this man and this moment: that large segments of the conservative elitist group consider Obama at least rhetorically radical.   Zinn’s testimonials and stories are from the organizers of the past, the dissidents and rebels.  Starting with the Natives of Hispaniola who were the original Slaves of the Americas, right through to the African-Americans who were free but not equal only one generation ago, we know throughout history that equality, much less survival, only comes with organized resistance against the status quo.  Yet for so long change has been unaffected, because Democrat or Republican, our leadership has rarely been of the people, much less truly reflective of the needs of the lower 99% of the population.  How can change come when those in power are so good at making us afraid of change?

 

I love that Obama is called a socialist.  I even love that he has friends like Bill Ayers!  I do, I love it.  I am so much more comfortable with a leader whose associates have a history of attacking the elitist bloc in an attempt to gain rights for the people.  Bill Ayers, as far as I am informed by The Weatherman Underground Documentary, was fighting against the illegal and completely fabricated war in Vietnam, where millions upon millions of innocent people were being maimed and murdered daily, and a government did its best to shut its eyes and ears to the voice of the people.  It was through radical protest that the American people were able to end that horror, thought it took almost a decade.

 

Aspects of socialism are already in our society, and reflect the best of our nation, not the worst.  A library is socialist, National Public Radio could be considered socialist, Churches are a form of socialism, as are scholarships.  Pure capitalism is nothing other than an even more disproportionate distribution of wealth, beyond the 1% ownership of 30% of the wealth currently.  It was the communists and socialists in the 20’s and 30’s that helped organize workers, and even into the sixties, during the civil rights movement.  Do I think Obama aspires to be like Russia, or Cuba?  Of course not.  America’s history of continually advancing freedoms, combined with a generally informed public, allow us to take this moment in time to evolve from whence we came.  And it just so happens we have the first leader in Modern History with the inclination, and insight, to do incite an evolution.  From his first statement as President Elect, Obama spoke to all of us, including “those who’s vote he was yet to earn” and told us this was the beginning, not the end, and it would be a hard road, but we would see change.  What hope, we hope, for the future.

 

Will our country be flipped on its head, will farms be returned to tenants and poor, will we socialize and beauracracize all business in the attempt to “spread the wealth”?  Will we suddenly become the next Venezuela, and watch our system go from the ownership of the elite to mass, true, communism?  I think not.   But what we hope to see is a balancing force, a lever for the moneyless to regain some of the privilege of those families and mini-empires that reaped early and have never let go.  Our “economic crisis” has shown, though it should be to no surprise, that profit will not regulate itself.  So does that mean that competition should be wiped out, and we should reward the lazy?  My friend Chris and I traded the following Myspace comments:

 

WJB

Are you really voting Republican mang! AH!!! PLEASE read The peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn, or just look at the last 8 years of right-wing fascism, brah. Come on!!! I love ya, but that corporate job is warping your young mind. SHOOTS!!!!

Dane Bn at 2:01pm November 3

i think your boy william here is sadly mistaken as to the future of our country under the direction of obama.

Chris Cs at 6:15pm November 3

I will read the book, but I am not a fan of either party or either candidate. Here is food for thought: If you study really really hard and get an A in math. Then your kid brother jacks around, doesn't go to class and sleeps in everyday and gets a C. Would you split the difference with the teacher so he can get a B if you take a B?

 

 

No, I wouldn’t want to share my A; that would be giving something that there is a finite amount of.  I would however, share my leftover lunch with him.  And that, my friends, is the point.  There is enough for everyone!  Obama believes that there is enough, Biden believes there is enough, and so do a record 66 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Presidential_Election) people in the US!  Hallelujah!  The upper 1% will not be missing anything they need by providing the basics to the disadvantaged.  The beauty of this Day, is we actually have a chance for change.  The proper players are in the proper places, the pendulum has swung, and now is the time to use the combination of discontent with the status quo, this epic moment in the history of the physical planet, and the leadership of the type of revolutionary that comes along once in a Century.

 

Howard says it best, and in this day of history, consider this:

 

“The society’s levers of powers would have to be taken away  from those whose drives have led to the present state—the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators.  We would need—by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country-to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most.  We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces.  Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force—children, old people,“handicapped” people.  Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods.  Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation…

…People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible.  Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination.  New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.”

            An amazing idea, one that we must be able to dream about just as we dreamt about equality for different sexes an races forty years ago.  I think it is safe to say, other than the passing of prop 8 in Cali, hope has won out over fear and we can, for a moment, relax with the knowledge that we have a leader with some of the same ideals of progress that we, the common people, keep dearest to our hearts.

Obama Wins! But so does (h)8

God Bless! Obama is in the White House! The old man who’s forgetting what a maverick really is and the crazy broad from backwoods will only ever visit the white house on a guided tour with a group of vacationers from Kansas City in khaki shorts, fupas, and high socks! When I heard the news I couldn’t help but laugh and then cry a few drops. It was like a massive worry I didn’t need was lifted off my shoulders.

 

But at the same time Tuesday night while we won a decisive battle, I discovered that the war is still far from over.

 

Prop 8 passed. It’s a proposition in California that had banned the Gays’ right to marriage, just recently rewarded by the CA Supreme court a few months ago. Same-sex nuptials were expected to pour $684 million into the state economy between now and 2011, generating $64M in state taxes and $9M in fees for county taxes. Oh and 2,200 jobs. Doesn’t this sound like something we need desperately? Our state coffers are in hell, unemployment is 2^nd in the union and everybody’s broke. Nope. Apparently the idea of a man and a man getting married is too offensive to allow in exchange for these benefits.

 

This morning there was a gay man holding a No on 8 sign in front of my apartment. A fat Mexican woman and her slightly-less-fat late-teen daughter were walking out of the polls on the other side of the street. He asked them if they voted and they said they voted Yes. Their religion forbids it, of course. It says marriage is a man and a woman and they should have 12 kids to populate the world with broke-ass children who don’t get enough attention to feel any desire to make something of themselves. I wonder if this woman saw the irony inherent in the fact that liberal civil liberties have been extended to somebody she knows yet she denies those to a man because she dare judge his lifestyle. Or maybe she was simply retarded enough to believe that by voting no her child would be taught to go out and become a lesbo or a flaming homo.

 

Seriously, what kind of crap is that? Shameless campaigning taking advantage of the less educated and misinformed’s fear for their children;s well-being. What’s even better is the fact that these people are so offended that their kid knows about gays.

 

Wake up you fucking conservatives! Gays are here. Your child will learn about it! Why don’t you want your children to learn about gay marriage? Admit it, it’s because you’re a prejudiced asshole who believes all gays are lesser people, just barely one sliver above a demon and directed straight for hell.

 

Shut the fuck up with all this “Sanctity of Marriage” bullshit. What part of the bible says that gays can’t marry? Is that anywhere near the part I remember about how people can’t divorce? That’s right, did you forget that divorce is a sin. Do we ban that or look down upon it? Run commercials about how teachers are explaining what divorce means? No, of course not because that affects the non-gays. In the end, this is just a bit of prejudiced legislation. The fault really lies with the anti-8 commercials. They should have said “Listen, if you vote for 8 you’re really just a prejudiced little fuck no better than a white-supremacist.” Maybe teach your kids about homosexuality so when they discover the kids in their class have been adopted by all-male or all-female couples, they can understand that. And maybe they won’t grow up to be as prejudiced pricks as you.

 

I’ve known a few gays in my day. They’ve all been good people and I’m proud to call them my friends. And I just feel sorry that they have to experience such hatred and ignorance. I had thought maybe we had gotten past this. I guess not.

 

Either way, the elections are done. We’ll get back to travel and good debaucherous vibrations, empty depravity while journeying this fine globe. But I had to get this out of my system. Again, congratulations, we have a black man as well as one of the smartest men in the country in the captain’s chair. But there’s still a long way to go.

The Last Presidential Debate to Decide the Future of Humanity

Tonight was the final debate of the series of Presidential discussions that will set up possibly one of the most important elections of U.S. history. For those of you who think politics don’t matter, who hate to learn about the issues or read the newspaper or simply don’t care, WAKE THE FUCK UP! The United States is just another empire, like the many that have come before us and the many that will come after us if we let our country continue to degrade into this distorted bastardization of what was once called a Republic.

it's time for us to make a choice. I wanted to try and be impartial but I can’t. I love this country too much. So if you don’t want to do the research and are simply looking for someone to give you the short answer, here it is – John McCain is another step towards our country’s eventual demise; Obama is the only hope to preserve our country for a bit longer, though I have to admit he has quite a tough job ahead of him.

That being said, if you want to read on and get some more info let’s look at the debate.

McCain reminded me of that crazy old uncle who says that basketball was great back before all those damned blackies started doing those big slam dunks and whoops and whatnot. He seemed to cement once and for all my opinion of what the Republican party has become: the party of the selfish and the wealthy.

He did have one good zinger at the beginning, the “If Senator Obama wanted to run against George Bush, he should’ve run 4 years ago.” He giggled after saying it like a baby giggling after a fart. He then proceeded to show us, over an hour and a half of healthy discourse, how he was no different.

My favorite was McCain’s buddy “Joe Plumber”. He starts off as a poor small business owner who supposedly Obama’s health care and tax laws would hurt. When Obama explained how small business owners would go relatively unharmed by his plans, McCain said how now Joe was rich and Obama wanted to spread his wealth. Or maybe McCain meant that Joe would be rich. And only when that happens would McCain help you. He would make sure you didn’t pay to support the country’s infrastructure or government. He would make sure Joe’s money is his and fuck everybody else. The thing these assholes never take into account is that isn’t how a successful society works. But McCain doesn’t understand that because him and his elitist cronies don’t have to deal with such things. These rich old fucks don’t understand that the cutbacks in government spending will hurt them. Maybe not directly. They can send their kids to private schools. They can build big walls and fences to keep out the people their policies fuck over. The richest people in Tijuana don’t care that their city is an embarrassment, a living, breathing trash heap full of corrupt cops, little kids selling Chicklets at 1 in the morning to college kids, and thieves with nothing to lose. There is no middle class – just the haves and the pieces of shit, nothing in between. McCain wants to turn the US into Mexico.

But oh, he does want to do something that affects those people at the bottom. He wants to take away abortions, most of which are undertaken by young mothers, usually from low economic backgrounds. So when all these kids from the ghetto with no future and no means are populating the world, droves of unwanted children, what do you think will happen? Let's just move on to another topic.

Health care – McCain proposes 5 thousand dollars for every family to buy their own insurance. Who the fuck can get a family insured for 5 g’s a year? Obama says that the big businesses should be forced to pay. The biggest problem with this country – BIG. BUSINESS. Specifically today’s big business, the one without regard to the little man – or even the middle man. Obama wants them to be accountable for something  - crazy idea, huh? And McCain is fighting this idea of makingThe funny thing is that it’s not McCain’s fault. He’s like one of those old people who don’t really know how to use e-mail, has never Googled anything, and has to call his grandkids to figure out how to text message. He has no fucking idea what’s going on in the real world. This old coot needs to get back to his job selling Quaker Oats and let somebody with some actual vision, intelligence, and life left in him try and fix the quagmire that McCain’s party’s policies of deregulation and “American Dream” Favoritism (that is, being disgustingly rich and powerful and fuck everybody else, because might makes right) has left for the real America to deal with.

And McCain and Palin’s policies of “Drill Baby Drill” is just like the old Vietnam adage of putting a band-aid on a broken spine. It’ll sustain us until he’s dead and then we’re fucked, more of the old Republican “self first, fuck everybody else”. We have 3% of the world's oil reserves and use 25% of it supply. How the fuck will us destroying our shores offset that?

Probably one of my favorite points was when Bob asked what each candidate thought about the other’s running mate as a possible president. I couldn’t help but laugh at what must have been going through Obama’s head. “What would happen if that backwoods idiot with the Great Northern accent and the knowing winks to the American people became President? Our country will literally be run straight into the shitter. There’s no hope for anything resembling a future. Imagine a dystopian America, a mixture of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and Vietnam from FULL METAL JACKET. But at least abortions will be illegal again, right?" I also loved his point about how the policies of Sarah Palin, champion of special needs parents, would actually fuck them since most of said parents are supported greatly by government social programs, the bane of every republican’s existence.

C’mon people. Let’s be smart. I love this country. I truly do. And I’ve never been as afraid as I am now. Please. Just listen to reason people. McCain is a good guy, he’s just out of touch with reality, an old man who has been bamboozled past any redeeming value he once might have had. Please. Don’t let our great democracy die. For fuck’s sake I’ve never begged you for anything. But I’m begging you now. Look into this guy. Look into who the real terrorists are. And let tonight’s debate be your true guide – McCain is a liar, a confused old man who gets everything wrong with a running mate spawned in the deepest depths of hell and disguised as a religious woman to deceive the true believers. Obama has the right plan and the right advisors. Even Barry Goldwater, McCain’s role model, had said many times before he didn’t agree with the Arizona asshole or his way of thinking. Put that in your pipes Goldwater conservatives.

Please vote. And vote to actually save this country. Even if you’re rich and it might mean a little sacrifice – downgrade to 2 vacation homes from 3. Trust me, you won’t miss that third house in Aspen when your kids can actually take pride in being in the first empire that saved itself in the middle of its crumble. Fuck, when your kids can actually take pride in being an American again.

"Where you Stay?" Politics as Usual?

Oh me oh my, a good old American election year. So dependably full of fluff and mud and the illusion of representative government. After having lived in the high-desert country of Kawaihae without internet or cable for 4 months, the shock and idiocy that we recognize as a "campaign" is frightening. As someone with the unique advantage of being outside the mainstream media for a while, I felt it necessary to comment on the goings on that I have recently become acquainted with. My first, and probably favorite bit of our mainstream society, something that is at the same time hilarious and deeply frightening, is FOX news.

Lord help us. If we remember correctly, it was FOX back in 2000 that was the first to announce that Bush, not Gore, won the election. What really happened there? WE do not know because all three branches of the government decided it wasn't worth the time to find out, but I am 'radical' enought to believe that those Florida votes were not handled correctly, and yes, Bush winning was a fraud from the very start. Now Fox, which still decries "We report, you decide" with a straight face, is doing its best to aggrandize lil' Miss Palin, explain to the American people that Barrack HUSSEIN Obama is realy a terrorist, and carry on self-proclaimed spinless dish of right-spun headlines. Do you watch FOX? Do you have any friends or family that believe it is real news? PLEASE get them to read or watch Outfoxed, an amazing look at arguably the greatest corporate-right-wing propoganda machine in the 'free' world. I went on a network news binge after the most recent VP and Pres debates, and was astounded to find the shit that FOX would put out there as fact. My personal favorite, which of course the greatest source of real news on TV THE Daily Show did not miss, was the post debate polls that showed Palin and McCain winning 82% to 18%. HAHAHHAHAAH. Seriously. The only people that would believe the cultish drivel that comes out of that network are the poeple that ONLY WATCH FOX. The good news is that is probably the same 25% of Americans that still think Bush is doing a great job, and are never going to open their minds to reality anyway. As part of my network news coverage binge, I also went on websites of FOX and tried to log into thier blogs. I was unsuccessful, either because my computer was tweaking, or the blogs don't even really work, or have some filtering process (you have to log in with an email address, and nowadays it is not unrealistic for Conservative propoganda machines to screen thoughts from outsiders to make sure they are rank and file; just think about any Bush townhall meeting or letter to O'Reilly.) I will not get started on the abusive FAS Egomaniac in a suit that is O'Reilly, because he is an excercise in innanity and buried insecurity and Mommy/Daddy issues that deserves his own piece. On the bright side, online a found a site called newshounds, whose tagline is "We watch FOX so you don't have to." Good stuff, cause I go crazy watching those freaky fox puppets talk. I thought Dennis Miller was a Libertarian, and even smart! I was heartened by MSNBC, and things like 'Countdown with Keith Olberman', who seems to find Fox's rants as hilariously disconcerting as many of us. It was, to me, the closest thing to intelligent reporting that I have seen on TV. Headline News is almost in the middle, it seemed like some of the reports were, believe it or not, IMPARTIAL, but then Glenn Beck came on and ruined it with his BS about the PBS mediator writing a book about black politics and being pro-Obama. People!!! Both campaigns agreed about having her as a mediator and KNEW about the book. She'd been writing it for a YEAR, and it was already available for pre-order. But Mr. Beck stretched it as far as could, pretending like it was a surprise. How do these people sleep at night? I do not know.
CNN has never given me any reason to suspect them. Are they left-leaning, and I just can't see it cause I am a liberal just like the conservatives can't tell they're being duped. Maybe, but I am libertarian enough to not put up with fluff. I know Pelosi can get a little detatched from reality; who knows if she has ever actually run a business or been poor. I know that Clinton was an infedelious fucker who lied in court. Should it have been an impeachable publicly displayed circus: fuck no. Talk about partisan madness magnified by a littte bit of scandilous rich-white-and-bored sexual madness, I can't believe that is how the 90's ended: the greatest President of our generation talking about a blowjob in front of the Senate. But at least Bill was smart, and wasn't a fascist biblical literalist with a little club of idiots with an agenda who started what will be the longest American war in history. Let's impeach the "Shock and Awe" retard that got us into this mess. Gotta feed the Military Economic Machine though, right. Ah, I guess we are a company of tradition, aren't we. Goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War, really. But it really has always been about money, right? Our founding fathers were the richest men in the United States, or affiliated with them, so why would the Right-Wing operate any other way? I don't deny Democratic special interests, but teachers and union-members are not corrupt, greedy misogonists, or at least not on the order of the Richest 1-5% that the Republican party (and yes, to some degree those Dems too) seem to hold so dear.

The second scary reality I have come across is conservative talk radio. I am going to find out exactly how many people listen to this stuff, but if it is more than a couple million, be afraid. The current topic in the Right wing echo chamber know as Michael Medved and Hugh Hewwit is a dirt-searching campaign to use some of Obama's past relationships to infer (in a subtly racist/religiousist color) that he is some sort of terrorist. Obama has been friends and political allies with the likes of Bill Ayers, radicals who fought against both the war in Vietnam and the corrupt war-mongering polital system in general-even bombing the Pentagon as part of the Weather Underground. The most striking thing that happens when listening the these fear-mongers, is though they are disclosing that Obama has "Palled around with radicals" to try and help McCain close the HUGE lead that Obama has, it actually makes libertarian liberals like me believe more that Obama is capable of change than before. As the right winger play more and more soundbites from these people talking about overthrowing the system of destruction and greed that has led us, well, to the current economic and international disaster, it gives me more hope for real change in the future. The Republican uber-freemarket deregulatory philosophy is basically what led to the first S&L crisis in the early 80's, as well as the subprime mortgage mess that is still unraveling. The basic Republican philosophy is that you only need a small middle class to form a buffer between those in Poverty, and those that do not actually have to work to survive. Further, they Rebublicans (especially the current administration) and their AM squawkers foment a much more frightening political philosophy than the socialist tendencies of the left: fascism. Defined by a militant, nationalistic goverment with a very small psuedo-elected elite, and based on building up fear against a scapegoat-enemy (in this case the 'War on Terror" which is still the greatest nonsense , fear-inducing idea of my generation: that by creating more war and terror, we will reduce terror and war) and a scapegoat (which is at times 'the terrorists', at times the next country we want to invade, and at times anyone promoting pacifism and cooperation). But the radioheads show how small-minded and warped thier thinking is when they play 'radical' ideas like "America is the greatest promotor of war and terror in the world" and then scoff at the speakers as "Un-American". If there is any question that we are the most effective modern murderers of civilians, just read up on Vietnam and our Iraq invasion. A die-hard Republican will never admit that the US has done any military wrong, or that there is any other way to handle things than by subjugation and bombing of whomever we decide to invade in order to secure their resources or expand our range of influence. The reality of course is much different. PLEASE!!! get yourself to read The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn before you get old an set in your ways, or even if you already are. We all know the history we learned in school was misrepresentative and selective, so try this little sample of the People's history. Our whole history reads like a modern Roman or British Empire epic, complete with psychotic power centers and elitist philosphy. Yes, we were at one time a bastion of freedom and rebel ideas, but for the past two centuries we have been the system that the we were once fighting against. The tables have turned, but it is taking a long time to figure out we are on the wrong side again. The AM radio guys are worse than FOXNEWS (they are actually produced and funded by FOX anyway) about screening callers and making sure no one really gets to talk about how stupid they are. Masters they are at timing breaks and interrupting callers to make sure that they appear to be somewhat intellectual messiahs, defending the rights of the right wing and attacking anything populace oriented. The two or three times I have called I get no answer at all. Nowadays I just listen in for 5 or 10 minutes and then I can guess that whole rest of the show. Fucking capitalistic fucks will take marching orders from the mighty dollar any day, whether it be the 24 minutes of commercials per hour, or the book they are trying to promote. They probably believe what they say now, but there is no denying that at some point thier motives were influenced but the dream of massive wealth. There is more to this world. I am not a believer in outright communism or socialism, but this capitalist system is broken, and it is OK to look at other forms of government with an open mind! Communism is not a bad word, any more than the Plutocracy we are in. We already dealt with McCarthyism a generation ago, and I think even Republicans can agree that witchhunting was a pretty embarrasing for our 'free' Nation then. It still is now, Mike and Hugh, it still is now.

The reality is, what we are saturated with every day in the mainstream media is not a liberal slant as FOX would like us to think. IT is quite simply an edited and carefully filtered sample of reality as told by the four major companies that own all Media in the US. There is no doubt that this country truly is great, and free, exeplified by the fact that I can write and post this blog addressing some of our errant ways. Though China just hosted the Olympics and is the fastest growing economy in the world, thier internet is still monitored by government watchdogs (as ours is) but also immediately censored. The main difference between the two politcal controls, is that in the US, we are distracted by consumerism and pop-culture (have you watched MTV these days-what happened to MUSIC Videos and subversive culture. If you are Hills watcher, which I just watched for the first time, GET A FUCKING LIFE FOR GODS SAKE!!!) while in China they are still figuring that out, so they muzzle you, or steal your home if you are getting in the way of the government-industrial complex.

For the most part, what we are missing as a society is an educated public who have any sense of what is going on in the world, much less the true history that led us here. Only you can change that. Only you can make yourself NOT ignorant. You don't have to be a historian, but it wouldn't hurt to turn off MTV for 30 minutes, and read a book, or turn off FOX for an hour, and listen to OPB. The shit is hitting the fan right now, in the Middle East and at home, because we assumed that the Government was our buddy, and would always watch out for us. The reality is, our job is to watch the Government, and watch our for ourselves. So, I challenge you, go online, go to Wikipedia or OPB or anything not corporately sponsored, and learn. One final idea for all you that already have an open mind: Google or Youtube Zeitgeist. That is what opening your mind is really about. Shoots, WJB

Great Quotes from Sarah Palin

This chick is an idiot of biblical proportions. As Becca said, she's like Tina Fey if somebody buried her in the Pet Sematary. Any second this broad'll come around with a scalpel and kil the old man in the room.

Irregardless, this loony has a way with words that rivals W's. Here's a rundown of some of my favorite Palin quotes from last night before I decided to get violently wasted in honor of the fact that somebody as stupid as her could be elevated to a possible national post of government.

"The barometer there is going to be resounding"

"The America workforce is entrenched"

Regular references to "Joe sixpack and hockey moms everywhere" - alcoholics and ladies who showed up in droves to protest Palin's nomination in AK.

"I'm not gonna answer the questions. I'm gonna talk straight to the people." Because the answers haven't been written on my cue cards by my handlers. Just like Bush. I won't answer what you want, I'll tell you what I want to tell you.

"Government, you're not always the solution, you're the problem." Says the governor and future VP. Self-loathing, just what we need.

"I'm not one to attribute every activity of man to the environment."

"The chant is drill baby drill."

"Nuculer" about a hundred times.

"Diplomacy is laying out clear goals and objectives and having your allies back you up." Neither of which are included in Palin's foreign policy.

"Me and John McCain are a team of Mavericks." Like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson.

"America is a nation of exceptionalism."

Almost makes you want to hum the "Star Spangled Banner", doesn't it? Or maybe move to France.

VP Throwdown Round 2: Biden Our Time or Why Elect Somebody Who's Actually Qualified?

“Be bold – and mighty forces will come to your aid.” - Almost Famous

Continued from VP Bout 1: We Were Just Cleaning Our Wolf-hunting Guns When a Holy War Broke Out

A little over a week ago I threw down a fun ditty of Sarah Palin, the crazy redneck with less brains than bullets and a mean streak to rival Cruella de Ville. I decided to hold off on lambasting Biden until we got closer to the VP debate, to air tomorrow night and God Bless! What a slaughter it’ll be. So anyway this week it’s Biden’s turn. I’ve looked up everything I could about this bastard, tried to find his skeletons and his weaknesses. Let’s lay it on as heavy for him as we did for Palin, show the conservative bastards that I can be fair and honest, and try to fight allegations from foolish legacies that I spread baseless propaganda.

Here we go, Biden didn’t go to Vietnam. He was too busy going to law school. He almost got kicked out for plagiarizing, keeping himself in by saying he misunderstood the rules of citation. He wasn’t a model student by any means but he did make it through. When that was over with and his number came up, he was passed over in the Vietnam draft because of childhood asthma. Lousy hippie!

He’s been married twice. The asshole’s first wife (and daughter) died in a car accident shortly after he became a Delaware Senator while Christmas shopping. His two sons, also in the car, made a full recovery, although the slacker did admit to going through the motions in the Senate in the following years. In fact, the selfish fucker even implemented a rule stating that if his boys called he was to be taken out of any meeting, no matter how important.

He’s been in the Senate most of his life and therefore his worth is somewhere around the low six figures. Oh yeah, and he’s never drank booze because of a family history with alcoholism.

Seriously, this is fucking impossible. The guy’s a Goddamned saint.

He won his first election with a rag-tag campaign team and defeated J. Caleb Boggs, a man hand-picked by the last worst Republican president, Richard M. Nixon. Biden didn’t use tricks or swiftboating. He had nothing but his wits, a beautiful family, charisma, and a message of change based on extricating a country from a pointless war, saving the environment, and civil rights. Sound familiar?

Tragedy befell his family and for several years Biden was ineffective, if not completely mentally absent. It wasn’t until he found a new wife, set up on a blind date by his brother, that Biden renewed his fire for government, for making the world a better place and making himself a better man. They’ve been married for over 30 years and have a daughter.

In ’87 the 14-year Senator was elected Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. That year he took on a sexist, racist conservative just a few clicks away from being a full-fledged KKK member, Robert Bork. This crazy bastard, who did everything from trying to overturn Roe v Wade to trying to give the President nearly regal powers, was about to become a member of the Supreme Court and Biden made sure that didn’t happen. He didn’t attack the man based on groundless exaggerations and fudging from radicals – instead he kept his cool, attacked it logically and soundly, and won.

He helped create and championed the Violent Control and Law Enforcement Act which created extra funding for law-enforcement, enacted harsh laws against assault weapons, rape, hate crimes, and everything else that had contributed to the tough streets of many American cities in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Next time you walk through Times Square, you should thank the man for allowing you to do so without being mugged, raped, and stuffed down a sewer. That same year he also threw together the Violence Against Women Act which, among other things, provided government funding for a wide array of sexual assault and domestic violence victims. If it wasn’t for him, there would still be women getting beaten by their husbands and boyfriends who wouldn’t have the money to press charges, much less get therapy for themselves and their children, no doubt fucked up in the head because of everything they’d seen, heard, and felt.

He headed up the International Drug Control Caucus which and created the U.S. Drug Czar. Oh great, another bastard who’s gonna preach to us about how smoking weed leads us to becoming crackheads and jerking off strangers for enough to fill our meth pipes. No wait, his main agenda is against date-rape drugs and XTC, the magic pill that kills more brain cells with each use than acid and which does little more than make us want to suck on pacifiers and hang out with those weird NY derelicts from KIDS. Pill drugs, by the way, are replacing good old-fashioned weed and coke amongst young kids as their drugs of choice, growing at alarming rates. Damn shame.

He promoted college aid and loan programs so assholes like me could attend university with 4000 spoiled children who had gotten everything on a silver platter. In fact this man’s whole goal in life seems to be to create some sense of equality between the people born into shitty or average situations and the lazy fucks who pop out of golden crotches.

Okay, so he’s a good man, trying to make the world better for those who haven’t been lucky enough to have been born independently wealthy and those others who haven’t wanted to put themselves and the American soulless quest for the almighty buck ahead of everything else. What the fuck does he know about our big problems – our global reputation as a bully and a hypocrite; our current problems with the environment; our economy; and of course our un-ending suckling at the dicks of the Oil-trading Arabs on the other side of the world.

He became a member of the US Foreign Relations Committee in ’97 and chaired the thing from 2001 to 2003. His policies are based on actually visiting and talking to the countries and mixing military action with negotiation. He voted against the first Iraq war. He voted for our most recent one, though. He made the asinine pronouncement that Saddam was a threat and that military action would be a good path to take AFTER exhausting diplomatic efforts. Bush of course said no to that and sprinted in guns blazing. Now that Iraq has been plunged into sectarian violence that has only accentuated the differences between the three tribes, Biden has suggested the only course that would make sense – create 3 separate and autonomous religious nations of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. He’s the best of both worlds – for the bloodthirsty hawks, he’s down for some warmongering but only after exhausting the pacifists’ negotiation strategies. Beyond just this war, though, the man has more experience with foreign policy than anybody else running for Pres or VP.

He’s against drilling in the Arctic and all for federal funding for alternative energy exploration, a major step towards oil independence and a big middle finger to the shady lobbyists for big oil. He championed the Sense of the Senate Resolution to send the US to the table in global climate discussions. Hell, he even was a sponsor on the Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, a bill holding to a strict set of caps and restrictions on emissions and other environmental crud, a Senate act that’s been heralded by everybody from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club to the Union of Concerned Scientists as one of the most real actions that has been made yet by the US government to combat global warming.

Finally let’s talk about the hot-button issue, the economy. I’d like to say he has some great solution, some cure-all to save us from ourselves but he doesn’t. The only thing that’s evident about his economic policy is that he wants to put more money and opportunity back into the hands of America’s growing lower class and shrinking middle class. He wants the government to be strategic with its money and spend more on social programs, education, and other infrastructure-builders. And since his Presidential running mate Obama is certainly being heralded as the candidate with the most palatable and clear vision about what to do with the economy Biden doesn’t need to pretend he’s the expert in finance. McCain as of a week ago said our economy was fundamentally sound and hell, Palin doesn’t seem to know anything about the economy and somehow has run both her small town and her large state deep into debt and earmarks. At least Biden’s strong when it comes to our foreign policy, our environment, and fighting drugs and crime, a crazy Delawarian fighting to save us from a Clockwork Orange future with Obama then freed up to tackle the big issues.

So as I’m closing up, I just wanted to point out real quickly I know he has flaws. He has once or twice been called out for plagiarizing famous speeches and texts, though on the plus side at least he can read which puts him ahead of our current president. He supported the 2nd Iraq war (though he voted to go in only after exhausting all diplomacy) and continued to support government funding for it (though he also wanted it to have a more stringent plan and an actual goal, not some abstract “let’s force democracy [a political ideal more radical than any that has ever preceded it] onto a country that was formed in the modern era and not leave until they follow that doctrine, though we technically don’t know what that would actually look like”). And while he says high health care and energy costs are the major concerns to the finances of big corporations (not the lack of self-control, the lopsided distribution of salaries, or the current American trend towards immediate gains instead of long-term stability, as I believe) that’s okay because he has a President who counters all of those. He’ll let Obama make the economic policies. He’ll let Obama take point on our actions regarding the war and certainly Obama will give the speeches. But he can help Obama in the arenas in which the presidential hopeful is lacking – the experience from a lifetime of Senatorial Service (over 35 years), the know-how to get bills and acts passed, the worldliness of a man who has presided over our foreign relations committee (note: except for 3 of the 8 Bush years and we know how well our Commander in Chief did during those), the insight to understand we need to look after the average American because, well, he is the average American, and a vision for an America that is again equal, balanced, well-respected and well–regarded. He’s a perfect complement to Obama not because he’s white and Obama’s black or because he’s old and Obama’s young. Maybe the GOP needs to resort to that backwoods voodoo nominations (Old Man + Young Woman=Good Idea) but not somebody who’s actually serious about change. We don’t need some flash in the pan with no idea how to do anything, no experience governing more than a couple million people, and nothing more substantial to give the people of America than maybe a boner ten years ago. We need somebody who will get stuff done quietly, correctly, and with good humor.

So let’s go down the line, one last trip to see who our two shotgun candidates really are.

Palin's a neo-celebrity. Biden hangs with celebrities.

Biden has 30+ years in National and International Politics; Palin has 16 years of political experience, though 6 of those was on a city council and another 4 was as a mayor of a city with a population under 8,000 people. So technically she has 6 years of experience lording over an American state that most people have never visited.

Biden believes in global warming and has already championed two Senate bills to combat it; Palin thinks it’s hogwash and her environmental policy is centered on being able to shoot majestic animals.

Biden’s economic policies have always been grounded in sound financing and aid to the less fortunate and the average American; Palin likes to pass the buck and firmly believes in the sound policy of lowering taxes and then borrowing or asking for more money from others.

Biden believes in diplomacy and having healthy foreign relations; Palin thinks we’re in a holy war. In fact she’s so ignorant of foreign policy she thinks Alaska’s proximity to Russia qualifies her as a worldly leader. Yeah, and since I live in L.A. I’m qualified to affect policy in Mexico.

Biden wants to fight crime and help women who’ve been sexually assaulted; Palin has no idea what crime is as she’s coming from Alaska (send that broad to Baltimore for a few weeks and make her walk up Broadway after dark, then see what she knows about it) but her few policies have been to charge rape victims for their rape kits and medical help and going forward she’d like to outlaw abortions so that these girls would then have to spend more money taking the kid to term, crying the whole time about how some asshole psychotic has left his seed in her belly.

Seriously, let’s use half a brain here. This chick is awful. She’s one of the dumbest, most crooked (per capita, that is) politicos to ever seek a high office. She’s not just unqualified; she’s DANGEROUSLY unqualified. I wouldn’t let this broad run my PTA much less my country and while she has certainly added some “glamour” and media attention to the stodgy old man as he flip flops on everything he had once believed in, thinking for a second of electing somebody into the white house because he’s got a hot VP with no substance is even worse than the legendary “I elected him because he seems like a guy I’d like to have a beer with.” Let’s think about this people. He may not be as flashy, nor as attention-grabbing and he’s certainly not as young. But let’s look at what used to be the most important thing in politics – whether Joe Biden is actually qualified to take this country in a good direction. The decision should be easy. Hopefully after he trounces that backwoods pig in lipstick tomorrow even the racists and the selfish conservatives will realize that an Obama/Biden White House is really the only choice. Otherwise, we can consider the US a boxcar full of selfish idiots going off the rails on the ignorant train.

VP Bout 1: We Were Just Cleaning Our Wolf-hunting Guns When a Holy War Broke Out

The battle royale has just finished, a political juggernaut of nearly 2 dozen white men, 1 white woman, and a black man that has drawn more attention from every inch of the media than any before because, well the stakes are just higher. The last two we laid back, let what may happen happen and our suburban complacency has led us to a time of financial strife, joblessness, an international reputation as the drunk idiot at the cotillion and a national debt nearing the economy of the whole continent of Africa. And let’s not even talk about the war effort – just thinking abut the how unnecessary it is coupled with the fact that our presidents’ friends basically used the damned thing as an ATM where you never need a receipt because you’re not accountable makes me want to take a shit on the White House lawn. No my friends, we’re in a deep sticky trench and while I’d like to think the lines between good and evil are easily visible, I’ve come to one great truth – everybody’s evil and everybody’s good. The only question is the ratio.

I’d like to think most people have pretty developed thoughts about Obama (less experience, great passion, actually might be naïve enough to try and change things, based in logic, understands the idea of our government using its money to help us instead of to try and prop up another country that will never give us oil because despite “liberating” them we’ve also destroyed them) and McCain (old, one of the few Nam vets who didn’t go crazy with internal demons, has been around a long time working on veterans affairs and in the last few years has flip-flopped on nearly everything he once said just to win back the favor of the GOP). But what about the seconds-in-command? With Cheney elevating the Vice Presidency to its strongest position in years (c’mon, do you think W really had the smarts to make all his friends that much richer while fucking everybody else over and somehow get out unscathed?) the catbird seat is more important than ever. But what’s the real deal with these two? And really what’s the better combo – the young charismatic black man with the longtime Senator from one of the smallest states in the union or the old “experienced” white guy with the former beauty queen and city councillor from one of the least populous states in the union?

Let’s start with Palin because not since Cheney shot his friend in the face has any VP been Googled as much for the wrong things. Let’s get past the fact that she was once a beauty queen (can’t hate somebody for being beautiful, especially in a country as superficial as America, land of the low-carb diet and plastic surgery) or the fact that an uber-conservative’s teenage unwed daughter is getting baby gifts from Jamie Lynne Spears (and while I respect the class that Obama showed in telling everybody to stay away from private lives, we all know that if he had a pregnant unwed underage black daughter it would have  draped off the masts of the Republican swiftboats). Who the fuck is Sarah Palin?

She began her political career as the mayor of Wasilla, a small Alaskan city where she began her career as a sportscaster and a glorified member of the PTA board. She started off by firing everybody she could who didn’t pledge allegiance to her. The city grew. She built their education system, their public works and all while cutting income taxes – although maybe she got the extra money to do that by having the police, whose head she handpicked after firing the previous one for not agreeing to do her bidding, charge girls for their rape kits? No, that wouldn't account for all of it. Maybe it was paid for by some of the $20 million dollars of debt she left behind in the 6500 person city, or $3000 a citizen. She  pulled in tens of millions of earmarks (where’d they go?) for the small Hamlet, though I’m not quite sure how – certainly by her tits, er, wits, and however she made it happen, it drew some complaints from an idealistic Senator named John McCain back when he was still bucking the establishment. At least everything was on the up and up, though. She was a God-fearing, ethical politician, talked to anybody who would listen about how much she hated political corruption and, admittedly, she was one of the only Republicans who wasn’t talking hypocritically about how much money the government wastes on schools and public affairs while throwing pork to their friends left and right. Democrats do pork, too, but not at the same numbers as Republicans and the center of their political ideologie isn’t cutting taxes because of Government waste on social programs.

The moose-hunting cougar hit the mayoral term limits after losing a battle for Lieutenant Gov so new Governor Murkowski gave her a cushy seat as an ethics chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Again she showed her strength, a model American by resigning because of Republican corruption, then accused two top people on the commission, Randy Ruedrich and Gregg Renkes, one for using resources for Republican causes and sucking from the balls of the oil companies (Randy) and the other for improper relations to a coal vendor (Renkes). Hell, she’s an ethical woman, somebody who takes government improprieties seriously – God bless, maybe she’s alright after all, huh?

For her service to the state she’s rewarded with the Governorship and immediately she’s reforming, making things better, returning overpriced jets and such, a truly responsible fiscal woman every bear hunter, skier, and fishmonger in Alaska would like to bend over an oak desk in the Governor’s Mansion.

Enter the Bridge to Nowhere. Palin started off her career deriding pork barrel spending, running out everybody who was higher-ranking than her (including a one-time ally, Ted Stevens) for being corrupt and self-serving. She made loud declarations that Alaska should be more self-sufficient, using that as the excuse for increased oil drilling and pipeline placement. But once she's run all of her competitors out of town, she becomes the politico in the Captain's chair. And it comes to pass that small-town-Tina-Fey-with-a-shotgun has hidden nearly 500 million dollars in an omnibus congressional bill to build two bridges, one to a 50-person island (with a regional airport, though) and the second to connect Anchorage more directly to a small city called Wasilla.

Shocking! She’d said from day one that she hated pork barrel spending, claimed all this populist “put the community before you” bullshit and then once the power’s in her hands all bets are off.  Eventually she admitted it wasn’t the best expenditure of money based on the AK citizenry's disapproval stemming from “misrepresentation” of the actual project. So which bridge goes – the one to a regional airport or the bridge to her hometown (which was actually estimated as twice as expensive as the other)? Let’s just say that the bridge to the airport was replaced by a road, the bridge to Wasilla went through, and Alaska won’t return any of the money regardless. In fact, Mrs. Nomoreearmarksorfederalfunding has requested almost three quarters of a billion dollars a year for the last few years, the largest amount of any state despite the fact that their revenues doubled. Why? Because she refuses to have income tax. So apparently her idea of fiscal responsibility is lowering taxes while asking other people for money. Hell, we already owe the Chinese a couple trillion from a previous yokel's similar policies – what’s another 4 years of borrowing?

It turns out her stewardship’s chock full of painful indiscretions – firing people who won’t bend to her whims (i.e. won’t fuck over her brother-in-law while he’s divorcing her sister) or using her power to drag her family out of investigations (wasn’t her husband indicted? What happened to that?). But instead of muckraking, let’s just find out where she stands on the issues or else we could be here all day.

Her policy on the environment amounts to backwoods savagery and “don’t ruin my fun” selfishness. She’s all for hunting wolves from helicopters because of their threat to the moose population. But wolves have always been a threat to the moose population. Of course she wants more moose so she can hunt them – hell, moose-hunting is like tennis to these freaks. And while moose numbers have been dropping, it’s not due to predators, it’s not even due to those antler-hunting NRA fans. It’s due to the growth of cars, cities, and all the encroachment of people on the last open ranges. So society is the cause of nature’s downfalls, not the natural processes of predators and prey that has lasted for hundreds of thousands of years.

Along the same lines are her thoughts on global warming. She refuses to believe it’s our fault. It’s just nature doing it’s thing and since there aren’t any animals to shoot with laser-scopes from on high, Palin doesn’t want to step in. A little over a month ago she said "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. ... I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made."

Oh wait, this just in, she DID just recently mention that she didn’t disagree; she now thinks that "maybe man had a contribution to the environment". Why was that? Oh yeah, she became a running mate to a man who has made loud claims that he’s all about fixing Global Warming (though his policies on action after election are vague at best – topic for another post). A little political doublespeak never hurt any Politician’s runs at the White House. Lie to the people, become the leader of the free world, ride out your incompetence on Air Force 2.

And can anybody not notice the overwhelming anti-Palin rally during her speech, peopled by local Alaskans, protesting her idea to take Polar Bears off the endangered list? Of course she wants them off the list so she can take up her gun and go out and bag a nice white fur rug for the oval office. Plus admitting they’re endangered, a fact attributed to their shrinking habitat, would be a telling acknowledgement of Global Warming. Basically all of Palin’s environmental actions seem to be aimed at the prospect of killing one graceful Alaskan animal or another. Somebody needs to give this broad a sniper rifle and set her and her brethren free in Afghanistan, hunting for the great white Bin Laden. C’mon, Palin, you know your panties get wet at the prospect of the greatest game – human! War! Conquest!

No, that’s not for fun, according to her. That’s a mission from God.

Newsflash, Barracuda: The only people on a mission from God are the Blues Brothers. Our war in Iraq is a mission from Blackwater, Halliburton, and OPEC. God has nothing to do with it or else he would have smoted the camel-jockeys off the planet with a plague, per all the crazy literalist conservatives who somehow propelled the village idiot to 8 years in the White House and think everything written in the bible is undisputed truth.

So where do we go from here? Talk about her policy on raped girls not being able to get abortions “even if it was her own daughter”. What better gift from God than to bring into the world a “miracle” created by some derelict with a weapon shoving his dirty dick into an innocent girl’s crotch? That’s a couple tens of thousands of dollars in therapy the government will probably have to pay for that kid after he or she realizes her father was some depraved lunatic with no respect for old-fashioned non-forced entry. Let's not even get into the fact that children born into adverse situations, as rape very well is, have a higher statistical chance of growing up to be criminals, which would require more jails, more police, and then more therapy. Really good fiscal policy. Though since she presided over the only police department in the country that charged girls for their rape kits, maybe that's how she'll solve our budget crisis - let's rape the girls and then rape their wallets. Why not just stone them like Palin's misogynist friends in the middle East?

Maybe we’ll talk about her ignorance about national and global issues. She looked a little confused when Charlie Gibson brought up the “Bush Doctrine” but she was quick to show she would take a hard-line on terrorism and terrorist threats, God Bless. She had the intense vacant stare and the words of somebody with no fucking idea what W did wrong but agreed with his idea of cowboying into any country we didn’t fully understand or trying to solve an ideological issue of conflicting cultures and worldviews with steel, storming armies of mercenaries, and lots and lots of explosives. All backed by this God whose commandment "Love my neighbor like myself" became "Kill the Muslims", an atavistic crusade for a complacent country. This is another holy war and our army is fighting for our souls in heaven, sure enough. It's just more beautiful, jingoist rhetoric to inspire more people on the other side of the world to put us at the top of their list of jihad.

Certainly let’s not bring up the fact that when it comes to experience, she makes Obama look like Robert Byrd. Or maybe the insult to women everywhere, the idea espoused by the shady ear-whisperers who told McCain that, since Palin has a vagina, she’s automatically going to garner the Hillary woman-vote.

In the end, I guess what we all have to realize is that Palin is no better than anybody before. Maybe a better shot than Cheney – she probably would have hit her friend in the heart, and along the way to the hospital bagged a few wolves and a polar bear for good measure. But she’s just more of the same. A history of croneyism. Of preaching “responsibility” for everybody else while eschewing the fact that the rules apply to her and her brood. Of old-fashioned ignorant conservative worldviews just a click past science-as-voodoo and way short of the few redeeming policies of McCain that show him as a man who is able to actually look at things as they really are and pitch ideas that have all the old wrinkleds turning their turkey-gizzard necks in disgust.

Sarah Palin just wants to kill things, plain and simple. Kill the environment. Kill the animals, kill the foreigners, kill the wallet, kill the budget, kill logical common sensical worldviews. Kill them all and let God sort ‘em out.

How could this crazy ex-Beauty Queen actually serve her country best? How about putting her to work as a drill sergeant. Let her teach our youths how to take lives and hate people different from them. But no, that wouldn’t work. We can’t have a country full of professionally-trained gun-wielding neo-cons getting deep into debt. No, there’s only one solution – make sure Canada is keeping this wack-job as far away from the rest of us as is possible while still letting her fly a starred and striped flag. Send her home to Alaska and hope and prey this great white hunter never ventures below British Columbia again.

(Don’t worry Conservatives – I’m gonna try to find some dirt on good ol’ Mr. Biden when this is continued. Though I doubt I’ll find anything showing he’s as incompetent for the position of second-in-command of the free world as this gun-wielding backwoods crook).

Why America Will Never "Win" the Iraq War

In WH's new effort to ad some depth to our debauchery, this is the first political ditty for all your filthy little bastards. It's about the important issue of our war in Iraq. It was written a few years ago but has some good points to fire some angry bastards up.

All this talk about the war is becoming like a night of drunken sex. Should we pull out and let the mess get all over the place? Or should we just keep on fucking the little country that couldn't hoping that at some point we can plant our seed inside that will hopefully grow into a respectable keep-a-brotha baby? Because let's face it, we'll never win this fucking war, if only because the broad definition of winning this war seems to be basically making these people like us. And that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

What? The hell you say, that's baseless propaganda, defeatist dialogue from an obvious communist. What the fuck are you talking about? And why do you keep muttering "Feudalist Europe" over and over?

That's right, Feudalist Europe. Right now Iraq is like Europe during the first millennium. Europe was made up of warring city-states, each with its own agenda and its own reason why they were right and their neighbors were wrong. Education was almost non-existent except for the children of the rich and this ignorance fueled the fires of zealotry. What did it take to unite these warring cities? A King, usually rising to power at the point of a sword – which is basically a nice way of saying Dictator. It is a true comedy that for the first 300 years of recorded humanity we called them kingdoms and admired the beauty and romanticism of royalty, yet for the last 300 years we've called them dictatorships and regard them with great disdain and social stigma.

Feudalist Europe would not have been able to unite under a Democracy – soon civil disagreements would have provoked a return to warring between cities because their lack of comprehensive education as well as their passionate religious fanaticism (people who can't even read their own names could quote scripture). It took a dictator to conquer and unite all the cities under threat of punishment by death or extreme torture. If you think today's dictators have abused human rights, you'd develop a serious complex if you knew what European royalty did to the subjects who disobeyed them. But it was that fear that united them.

Fast-forward to present day. Europe and the West, after 1000 years of societal development, several big explosions of enlightenment and new ideas, numerous voyages made for global cultural understanding, and several successful internal revolutions fueled by the leading minds of sociological experimenters, have become the happy, democracy-loving people we are today. Iraq and most of the Middle-Eastern countries, however, have not yet.

Socio-culturally, they are more similar to first millennium Europeans than present-day Europeans. They are made up of separate city-states, lead by different War-lords professing their belief in Allah and Mohammed as their only complete truth. They lack the extensive access to education so liberally afforded the Western peoples. Xenophobia, mysogynism and a high level of intolerance for people of different religions and cultures permeates everything. And inter-neighborhood killing and battle are still considered completely reasonable actions as dispute resolution. Just like it wouldn't have worked for the Feudalist Europeans, Democracy will not work for the middle-easterners. At least not now. We would have to fast-forward their society through a thousand years of aggressive cultural and political experimentation and adaptation. And this will not be accomplished by invading their country and trying to bomb them into being like us over a few stressful, confused years.

When will the US realize that not everybody is like us? When will we realize that just because something works well in our Western culture, it may not necessarily work in every culture? I guess that answer lies in the greatest problem facing our great country today, that of our egocentric vision of the world. We believe that we are the greatest country ever; that our shit doesn't stink and that everybody should be doing what we're doing and strive to impose our ideals on everybody else, the annoying self-help guru running a 24-7 infomercial for the rest of the world. The only catch is, if you don't buy our shit, we'll fucking kill you. Period.

As a country we have to realize that there are other cultures outside of our own and that they have different beliefs and cultural mores that they hold on to. Sure we may win an absurd amount of gold medals, the world's economy may be tied to our dollar, and our culture is probably our biggest commodity. But this isn't about us. It's about Iraq.

Was  Saddam Hussein a bad man? Yes. Did he subject dissenters to unspeakable tortures and horrors? Absolutely. But was Iraq better while he was in power? 100 Percent. Because back then at least their was order and discipline – it stemmed from fear, the same point of origin for the original settling of the Western states. Iraq is still in that Feudal age. Deposing him is like deposing the King of England around 900 AD. And now they have descended back into what that society had previously been – warring city states, their houses crumbling around them and little hope for rebuilding the infrastructure it had taken for granted under the vile King, uhh, Dictator. Democracy will not be forced upon these people in just a few years of destruction and chaos, just as it wouldn't have worked in 1st Millenium Europe. Just read a fucking history book to view the glaring similarities in cultural design (including the intense religious fanaticism embraced by the Europeans – Crusades, anybody?). So I must draw two conclusions; either:

A. The Bush Presidency is made up of egocentric "me first, manifest destiny" croneys who like to do things without thinking them through because that is how they've lived their whole lives; the only difference is, in their personal lives they always had their daddies or their daddies' friends to help get them out of any bad situations in which they may have gotten tangled up. In this war, they've stretched our Armed Forces to near the breaking point, plunged our country into tens of trillions of dollars in debt, and alienated the rest of the world, though they're either too stupid to see that or too proud and dishonest to admit they're dead wrong.

B.The Bush Presidency is one of the most intelligent political machines ever. They knew that deposing Saddam Hussein would plunge the country into chaos, re-commencing the ages-old Sectarian violence and strife which has plagued that culture for so many centuries. Once Iraq falls back into the old ways, other countries would also fall back into the old ways of disorder and religious intra-war. This would cause civil war after civil war in the middle East, eventually creating a region of the world so weak from constantly battling internal insurgencies that it has all but conquered itself. At that point, the US moves in, pushes over the already-toppled "Republics", and turns the Middle-East into a new US colony "to help rebuild its infrastructure". And we have the audacity to scold Russia for invading Georgia?

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter that much. With our Military stretched so thin and devoid of most of the pride it had possessed even 50 years ago, we will be an easy target for China in ten years. Add to that the fact that we've borrowed several trillion from the growing Asian country to fund a war in a country smaller and with less political power than Texas and we're just setting ourselves up to be annexed by the newest Chinese Dynasty.

Let's all start practicing Mandarin and brushing up on our chop stick use now so we're ready when the time comes.