Max Blumenthal -- A Fox In The Cluckhouse!
Max Blumenthal of The Nation infiltrated the College Republican National Convention and delivers a fine report of all the beer swillin' going on by the finest toothless skulls that Red State America has to offer. Here are some rather choice morsels:By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. "The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."
Translation: "Let some dirty lib'brah hippie welfare leech go and die ovah dare so mah wiggah ass kin keep sippin' Hillybilly nectar ri'chere on da plantation!"
Oh, and the clucks get more frantic:
And besides, being a College Republican is so much more fun than counterinsurgency warfare. Bray recounted the pride he and his buddies had felt walking through the center of campus last fall waving a giant American flag, wearing cowboy boots and hats with the letters B-U-S-H painted on their bare chests. "We're the big guys," he said. "We're the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit."
Yeah ... except the one thing that really matters: ENLISTING!
One more for the road here:
When 25-year-old candidate Mike Davidson emerged in the center of the room, the party fell to a hush. "Does everybody know why we're here today?" Davidson asked his supporters, who had huddled around him.
"Beer!" someone shouted. The crowd exploded with laughter.
There's only thing in the world that can describe these drunken clucks from the "Gung Ho But Sure Won't Go" brigade...
No matter how much beer they imbibe, no matter how important they pontificate on how important (read: useless) they delude themselves into being, the bottom line is their PersonalLord&Savior George W. Bush asked for an "ownership society" and since Republicans owns the White House, Congress, & Senate, it's time for the GOP -- the party of war, Christian Morals, and personal reponsibility -- to practice what it preaches by claiming ownership of their little society they've made for themselves, including their neighbor "Terra" upon which they waged war with. This war won't fight itself, you know, and as they taught us last November, you don't switch boats mid-stream. So, sign those enlistment papers for Jesus (yeah, remember Him?), beat your beer-cans into M4A1 Carbines, and go join those troops you claim to support so much whenever the War Preachers & War Pundits are around.
Time to stop surfing that keyboard and start surfin' the Iraqi sands, chickenshits!
If you don't ... just wonder what we liberals might be thinking; what loony conspiracy theory we might be concocting in the Godless, America-hating, Jesus-bashin', tin-hat wearin' heads of ours? It's enough to keep Karl Rove and the Bush Administration awake at night. It worried Rush Limbaugh so much, it's why he was popping all those pills just to cope with it all. They think we liberals are up to something when we're really not (read: we're lying like hell) and are in no position to put anything into action because we lack power in Washington (read: we own it all and want yours, too!) to do so. I mean, *bshah* we're the spineless left, remember? Therefore, it makes sense that enlisting would set back the vast liberal left-wing agenda back a few notches and keep us from re-implanting our spines. That's a good thing, right?*spins propeller on tin hat*
|
The GOP Is On The Brink Of A Meltdown
This is just fuckin' awesome. Seriously awesome. Hot off the heels of Dick Durbin telling the truth and then tucking his tail between his legs in sheer fright of Mayor Daley and the rightwing noise machine, the Republicans in Washington are having a complete and utter thermonuclear meltdown. The first one to go nuclear is none other than Fat-Ass Karl Rove:
Karl Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11 and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their actions.
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.
After that, President Bush himself agreed with it via mouthpeice Clueless McClellan who is caught yet again lying through his Gannon-lovin' teeth:
Q: So will the President ask Karl Rove to apologize?
MR. McCLELLAN: Of course not, Jessica
...
Q Can I ask it in this way, Scott? Then if this is an issue, is this an expression in some manner that the White House is concerned that with the popularity of the war diminishing, the anti-war liberalism is beginning to take hold so the President and Karl are confronting it directly?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, he was speaking to the New York Conservative Party, and he was talking about different philosophies -- the conservative philosophy and the liberal philosophy and how we're approaching different priorities for the American people. That's all it is.
Next on board was The Republicans in the House, courtesy of their fellow propagandist L. Brent Bozell III - the son of the speechwriter for Sen. Joe McCarthy:
While our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line each day to defend our safety and to protect our freedoms, I am sure the least they expect is the backing and the support of their leaders at home," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Republican Conference.
"To the contrary," Pryce added, "what we've seen from Democrat leaders is a growing pattern of jumping at any chance to point the finger at our own troops, bending over backwards to promote the interests of terror-camp detainees while dragging our military's honored reputation through the mud."
...
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who joined Pryce at the press conference, told Cybercast News Service that it "is just inconceivable and truly incorrigible that in the midst of the war, that the Democratic leaders would be conducting guerrilla warfare on American troops."
He also labeled the Pelosi/Waxman proposal for an independent commission "simply another example of some Democrat leaders trusting the words of terrorists over the proven decency of U.S. troops.
"The American taxpayer is already providing accommodations for detainees, who are currently more comfortable than most of our men and women in uniform," Wilson added.
And adding the little bow tie on the package are the following talking points from RNC Chairman Ken "On The Down Low" Mehlman so they're all just full of piss and vinegar and bringing on the slime. While Democrats on the hill and among the liberal Blogosphere are calling for Bush to fire Karl Rove -- a call that does have merit -- all of them are missing a very kick-ass oppotunity to turn the GOP's slime machines against their own feeders. Michael Glitz over at AmericaBlog comes close to hitting a bullseye:
Rove's comments -- backed up 100% by George Bush -- didn't just attack Democrats. Rove and Bush attacked and demonized any American who dares to disagree with them or just thinks they're doing a lousy job. 57% of Americans think Bush is doing a terrible job in Iraq. George Bush says that makes them traitors. Half of all Americans who voted in the last election didn't vote for George Bush. He says that makes them traitors. Anyone who thinks torture is a bad idea? Traitor.
Look at the last few days. George Bush's numbers are collapsing. He couldn't get a "Fridays Off" law passed in Congress and the American people are increasingly worried about our troops in Iraq (maybe because they still aren't properly equipped?). So what does Bush do? First he attacks gays. Then he pushes the flag burning amendment. And today he attacks the majority of Americans who think he's doing a lousy job and calls them traitors.
It's very simple: George Bush has had almost four years to hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden. He's failed miserably. Since George Bush is too weak to attack Bin Laden, he's attacking Americans.
No, Micheal. Bush and the GOP just isn't attacking America ... THEY'RE HATING AMERICA!
Think about it: You know, it really must be nice for all these GOP hacks to be able to sit around on their big fat rich fuckin' asses, gathering around their think tanks and their keyboards and brainstorm all these silly notions of what they think are the beliefs of the Democratic Party, eh? How is it that with a major league War On Terror going on, a deficit going deeper and deeper into the red, between 7-10 troops dying everyday in Iraq, more and more pages of the DSM surfacing every day, Afghanistan slowly turning back to Taliban rule, and our military rapidly becoming hollow due to low recruiting quotas, somehow these GOP hacks are wonks are finding enough time in the day to huddle together (or laying back on the pristine White House furniture sipping wine and flipping through a porno magazine) and asking one another, "Gee, I sure wish we knew what's going on in the noggins of those liberals over there?!? They have got to be concocting something -- I just know it!! What do you all think?!?"
Do you get my drift?
Seriously, it really must be nice and convenient -- nay, a fucking luxury -- to honestly have time in the day to devote to quality Republican Christian thought that consists of, "What in the hell are those damn tree-huggin' liberals are thinking about on in that Godless head of theirs" when that is time that they could be using on actually being an effective and productive administration that could CARE FUCKIN' LESS WHAT THE LIBERALS THINK by simply being pre-occupied with delivering results like say instructing their think tanks, cheerleaders, and War Preachers to have recruiting drives, ending the torture going on in Gitmo, having Porter Goss bag Osama since he knows where he's at, shutting down the insurgency in Iraq, addressing the economy, and figuring out how to get all those American jobs back. Right? Of course!
But they can't do that. Why? Because it would take something they clearly don't have -- COMPETENCY -- and being competent by delivering results would infringe on all the time they require on getting together and figuring out what us crazy liberals are up to. Don't you get the real punchline here? They're simply too xenophobic for their own good and they were hoping to high hell that we'd never catch it but we're are and it's driving 'em batshit with conspiracy theories, hence all the slime!
The gig is up. Slowly and surely. We waking up from the lull and demanding answers, demanding results, and not just by words but by tangible proof. Proof they don't have. Why? Again, that would take time and competency. The latter is something they don't have time to develope and the former is something they always seem to have too goddamned much of when it comes to wondering what we liberals might be up to. I think ol' Driftglass backs me up on this for he accurately points out:
Their whole psychological infrastructure is cobbled together out of half-baked conservative bumper-sticker ideology, gun lust, socially illiterate hatred of “welfare cheats” and other largely fictional or apocryphal lazy people (read: niggers and other swarthy folk) who want to leech off of them while they work harder and harder for less and less. Despite a lot of bluster about Freedom and Individuality they are, at heart, happiest when they are conforming to the wishes of the Strong Man; when they know exactly their place in the hierarchy.
Security and Enforced Orderliness is their idea Heaven and Doubt is their Hell, which is why they swarm like mayflies towards simple-minded sloganeering instead of actual, y’know, thinking…and why many of them fall madly in love with Fundamentalism. It’s this anti-Faustian bargain where they get the perfect peace of mind that comes from absolute, swaggering certainty that they are completely right about every single thing. And thrown in at no extra charge, they get Paradise after they die, with the promise that they’ll get to see my sorry ass screaming in agony in a lake of fire on Basic Cable for all eternity.
...
This is the ancient, unbridgeable and eternally hostile schism between their template for humanity and ours. This is, I believe, why sometimes we fundamentally cannot understand each other; because we are running two radically different and incompatible O/S's. Our O/S thrives best when saturated in pure, clean Reality, and theirs rust and rots and flies apart at the seams when the lies that insulate it are peeled away ... The sheer weight of simple things like time and gravity and causality itself are our natural and incorruptable allies. They are merciless, and recognize no Geneva Convention niceties when meting out justice to arrant fools who try to fuck with them.
Not only are they scared shitless of being wrong, they know they're wrong. Worse yet, they know that we know they're fucking wrong, too, and managed to convince 57% of Americans of that fact as a bonus ... and the Republicans are hating all our asses for it. Just like they HATED our asses for knowing they were wrong to fuck with Terri Schaivo, hence all the slime. Just like they HATED our asses for knowing they were wrong to fuck with the Filibuster, hence all the slime. Just like they HATE us now for knowing they were wrong the fuck with Social Security, hence all the slime. Simply put the Republicans are using "Liberals" as a convenient proxy to distract people from discovering the real object of their hate: Americans! The proof is self-evident because whenever you see such a sudden, concerted, and massive slimefest of "liberals" on the part of the GOP, sit back and let the slime fly because the truth of the matter is they are communicating more about themselves than the individuals or groups they're sliming. They're tellings us all just how close they are to implosion. And if some of the Democrats in Washington pick up on this and cram it right back down the GOP's craw, it'll really chaffe the asses of the Republican party into hating America even more!
How should they go about doing this?
All a Democrat on the hill needs to do is walk up to the podium with a copy of this article from the New Jersey Star-Ledger and say:
"Mr. Wilson claimed that we Democrats believe terrorists over troops. He therefore owes Brig. Gen. Donald Alston and Gen. George W. Casey a sincere appology for calling them terrorists because I believe them. Whether or not that appology comes, I sincerely hope that the next time these two Generals report to Donald Rumsfeld, they include a Xerox of their extended middle fingers in their report as even more intel that I can agree with, too. I yield the rest of my time, Mr. Speaker."
The key here is to force-feed them their own bullshit. Serve it up with a side of crow and a knowing smile!
|
Fuck Sen. Durbin With Karl Rove's Dick And Blame It On Ann Coulter!!
The other night, I walked into the other part of the house to grab a Coke. My mothers working on a latchhook while watching The Misery Network. No, not FNC or C-SPAN - this misery network. As always on this channel, they play some movie where a woman in trying to escape her asshole husband and the pair of soupbones he uses to beat the shit out of her with. I walked in at the point in the movie where the wife is backed up against a wall with a big ass iron skillet clutched between her small hands while the big burly brute of a husband is glaring at her through bloodshot eyes. One of his hands (which are the size of a Daisy canned ham, no less) is held up in front of his face. The goddamn channel had me glued...
"Take it easy, dear," he hisses.
"Y-y-you stay away," the wife whimpers.
"Put the pan down, honey," he says with a forlorn face.
"No! You'll beat me some more," the wife says through her bloddy, swollen lips.
"Not if you put down the pan, I won't," he growls.
"Liar!", the wife kvetches, "You've always done it before!"
"It'll be different this time, I swear! Not put down the damn pan!"
"DON'T YOU DARE TAKE ONE MORE STEP!", she screams, raising the pan as if she were Wade Boggs.
"Darling, you know that would be the unchristian thing to do," the husband says.
The wife whimpers.
"And you know that you are to submit to your husband as The Bible says," he continues.
At this point, just to get a response out of my mother, I exclaim, "Go on and bash her brains in. Just bash 'em right the fuck in! Do it for Jesus!" Of course, that doesn't register a response on my mother for she had grown used to sarcasm a long time ago. Anyway, the husband suddenly rushes in, the shaken wife drops the pan in fright, and the husband proceeds to palm her head like a Harlem Globetrotter and slings her around the kitchen like Moloch from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance while screaming, "I DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU, BABY, BUT YOU'RE MAKING ME DO IT!!" It cuts to a comercial break and releases me from its venus flytrap of drama. Thankfully, too, for I knew where it was going next -- the wife would live to see another day and while her husband it out there saving souls for Christ and baptizing babies, she would arrive at the elementary school the pick up the kids and some playground monitor will notice the bruises, contusions, and lacerations, and mention that she needs to seek help (help that the wife will refuse because "I wuv him so much") and all that goddamned jazz. I recognized the chick playing the wife but I couldn't place her. Good actress, though. Uglier than a mud fence in the rain (that's not counting the makeup used to make her look even uglier from the beating she took), but good actress. I intended to look her up once I got back to my PC.
I hit the bathroom, took a piss, grabbed my Coke off the coffee table, and headed back to my cellar to do just that and I realize that the actress had the face of a man. Chiseled. Like Shemp Howard of The Stooges. As soon as I launched my browser, I became overwhelmed by a sense of Deja Vu for on my screen was the picture of the battered bitch along with the following article:A week after comparing interrogation at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to the methods of Nazis and other repressive regimes, Sen. Dick Durbin apologized on the Senate floor.
"I am t-t-t-terribly sorry that s-s-s-OW, IT HURTS! Um, s-s-sorry that I s-s-spoke out of t-t-t-turn, mah-mah-master Bush," the useless Illinois fuckwad blubbered through a mask of running mascara and cracked lips. "T-t-to pay for my s-s-sins, I w-w-will now crawl b-back into m-m-my spider hole s-s-so nobody will n-n-no I'm here *sniff*."
His apology drew praise from Republicans.
"Insolence bastard knows his place now in the Kingdom Of The Bush-God!!," said Reichstag press secretary Scotty McDumbkopf. "If blaspheme of this nature continues, we'll be given no choice but the slay those in the name of God. Move along now, citizen."
What a goddamned idiot. What a total fuckhead. Dick Durbin had absolutely nothing to appologize for but the Democratic party continues to be the most worthless and useless jackasses to ever set foot in Washington each time they eat their own after believing the spin from the C.A.R.P (that's "Corporate American Republican Press" for all you playing the home game).
Assholes!
Time and time again, the CARP in this country turns on the spotlights to single out a single Democrat that shows any sense of having a spine, it sounds the "BLASPHEME" sirens erected in the halls, and other Democratic shitheads like Mayor Daley immediately remove the contraband spinal collumn from their fellow brethren so that the Republican Guard doesn't have to. What the fuck?!?
Is it really hopeless for these bootlickers in the DNC?!? Seriously, if Democrats keep on appologizing for telling the truth and keep refusing to back their own up when it happens, then it is clear that the DNC resembles to a T the typical battered wife of a totalitarian marriage with a militant, power-hungry, abusive husband. Seeing the Democratic Party in action right now is like watching the Lifetime Movie Network on any given night. Dead goddamn serious. We're talking an uncanny resemblence here. Liberals and Progressives are quickly coming to the conclusion that they don't have a political party period and it's needless mea culpas from Dick Durbin that drive that truth home.
Time to up the ante and put the pressure on 'em: The next time a Democrat in Washington eats their own, we registered Democrat voters DNC should seriously consider filing suit in a court of law charging them all with "taxation without representation" and then use the money from winning the cocksucker to start a real political party -- one that does not fall for the Republican Noise Machine's trap constantly, one that does not eat their own, one that has a spine made of actual bone and tissue instead of goo and cartilege, one that WANTS to be in the majority again someday, one that will field a Presidential candidate worth the gas (and the 18-hour long wait in line) to vote for, and one that will fight tooth and nail to do so without backing down from a single solitary sonofbitch, especially from SOBs like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
|
Backing Up Durbin -- Professional Asshole Style
Back before I turned TBT into a leftwing blog, I accorded myself with the title "Professional Asshole". Now, of course, being an asshole is natural to some but it does take a fine deft art in being a Professional Asshole. Takes time, patience, persistance, lots of work watching other Professional Assholes in action in order hone ones skills, etc. But the two most important skills one can learn to becoming an irrepressible "Professional Asshole" is to (1) give your enemies enough rope to hang themselves with so that you laugh manically about it and (2) subject oneself to sin every once in a while; a specific sin -- the sin of "turning back to ones own vomit".
Tonight, I did just that by going back to my old haunt -- the NvNews.Net political forums. For those unfamiliar with these forums, at one time, it was a safe haven of decent civilized debate. That all ceased to be November 2000 when the entire forum became a bastion of the most ridiculous, cranky, selfish, American fucksticks that can organize on a single corner of the Intarweb second to FreeRepublic. In fact, most of the liberals that got banned or otherwise ousted (such as yours truly) now refer to the NvNews.Net's political form as "Freeper Lite" because no matter how much the wingnuts over there try, they always come just a hair short of living up to the brainless glory of FreeperVille.
Anyway, I went "back to my own vomit" earlier tonight because with the recent GOP slime-fest of Sen. Dick Durbin for pulling a "Dean" (e.g. telling the truth), I knew those lunatics over there would be puking up a storm and I needed a few cheap laughs. Lo and behold, I catch this thread that aimed to please in my starvation for typical Republican hilarity. One of the staffers there -- Ed "Saturnotako" Piotrosky -- broadcasted about being a constituent of Sen. Durbin and rattled off a letter to him. At the end, I took a keen notice of this little tidbit:I don't know if it will allow people from outside Illinois to contact him, but you can find a form here. Let your voices be known that we will not tolerate this crap from our elected officials!
http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm
I read this part and I must confess that, after a about hundred prayers, 45 or so "Hail Mary"s, and dropping a few million dollars of my hard earned money into the coffers of the Religious Right, it still didn't stop that satanic "Professional Asshole" part of me to do some old-fashioned "America-hating" by clicking the link Ed provided to contact Sen. Durbin. So, with a swig of some vodka, I got down to work. The following is what I just sent to Sen. Durbin:Mr. Durbin,
I'm Jason Sizemore, the operator of a liberal political "blog" entitled "TBT: The Brutal Truth". Although, I'm not a constituent of yours, I want to say that a friend of Rep. John Conyers is a friend of mine.
I write to you today to bring attention to a letter you've recieved recently from one of your constitutents - a gentleman named Edward Piotroski of Naperville. I was able to read his letter to you because Mr. Piotroski - under the alias "Saturnotaku" - posted it on a webforum which he is a staff member of. That same letter can be viewed here.
As a former moderator of this same webforum, I can assure you that Mr. Piotroski wouldn't vote for you if you were the last person on Earth for he is a staunch Republican like most of the registered users there. By reading his other posts on this webforum, it'll be self-evident as fact. Therefore, you need not concern yourself with his obvious partisanship. I sure as hell wouldn't if I were you.
Thank You
Now, considering that we are currently in a gray area on whether or not bloggers are journalists (we might as well be journalists -- bloggers are embarrassing the mainstream media every single day), lets go ahead and err on the side of life -- erm, I mean caution, and say that it would be journalistically unethical for me to report only "negative" stuff about Ed Piotroski and that I should report "good" stuff about him. I would've done just that ... but unfortunately Mr. Durbin's contact form limited me to only 10,000 characters and I had to prioritize, keeping my message pithy in order to increase the likelihood of Sen. Durbin of reading it. Senators don't read long-winded messages -- they're too busy. A staight and to-the-point message is always best. I am not, however, constrained by any limitations here so I could go ahead and report "good" stuff about Ed Piotroski here like, for example, his fine taste in music groups like Styx, Queen, and Yes and that as long as you stay on those topics, a meaningful dialogue can be had with him but if you ever switch over to politics with him, it would only be a matter of seconds before he'd get on his "Liberals hate America" kick, forcing you to entertain the idea of giving him a good smack upside the head with the remote chance that doing so would knock the record back into its fuckin' groove ............... but fuck it! I don't have time nor the inclination for that shit, folks. I'm a dirty, liberal hippie that has a country to hate, the Taliborn-Again to ream, and a war to undermine, remember?
No rest for the wicked here!
UPDATE: In the off chance that a huge lovefest erupts in my HaloScan from NvNews/FreeperVille visitors, I've instructed my man Disco to check their vehicles for anything that's pro-Bush. If he finds anything that is pro-Bush, you won't be banned from my HaloScan. Instead you risk the likelihood of recruitment applications from the U.S. Armed Forces being placed under your windshield wiper where your reaction to them could be video taped and passed on to Crooks & Liars for everyone's enjoyment. Hey, don't bitch at me -- Jesus' General gave me the idea after he owned those ProtestWarrior fuckwits (and may the good Jesus bless that man!)
|
"Ashes, Ashes" (Or "How Jerry Fucking Garcia Would Blog About The Last 5 Years If He Were Alive")
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
Dizzy with eternity,
Paint it with a skin of sky, brush in some clouds and sea
Call it home for you and me.
A peaceful place or so it looks from space
A closer look reveals the human race.
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face.
But afraid, we lay our home unto waste.
There’s a fear down here we can’t forget
Hasn’t got a name just yet
Always awake, always around
Singin' ashes to ashes all fall down.
Now watch as the ball revolves and the nighttime calls
And again the hunt begins and again the bloodwind calls
By and by again, the morning sun will rise
But the darkness never goes from some men’s eyes.
It strolls the sidewalks and it rolls the streets
It's taking turf, dividing up the meat.
A nightmare; A spook, piece of heat,
It's you and me,
You and me...
Click, flashblade in ghetto night
Rudie’s looking for a fight
Rat cat alley roll them bones
Need that cash to feed that jones
And the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.
Commissars and pin-striped bosses role the dice
Anyway they fall guess who gets to pay the price.
Money green or proletarian gray,
Selling guns instead of food today.
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
While the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.
Shipping powders back and forth
Singing black goes south while white comes north
And the whole world full of petty wars
Singing I got mine and you got yours
And the current fashions set the pace
Lose your step, fall out of grace.
And the radical he rants in rage,
Singing someone forgot to turn the page
And the rich man in his summer home
Singing just leave well enough alone
But his pants are down, his cover’s blown
And the politicians are throwing stones
So the kids they dance they shake their bones
Cause it’s all too clear we’re on our own
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down...
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It’s dizzying, the possibilities.
Ashes, ashes all fall down
Ashes, ashes all fall down Grateful Dead
"Throwing Stones (Ashes Ashes)"
1987
|
Misadventures In Religious Capitalism
Leave it to the braindead supply-side wonks at the Heritage Foundation to truck out this glowing tripe of bullshit involving the economics of stem-cell reasearch, courtesy of The Moonie Times. First off, the article starts off with a fallacy:In real life, money follows results.
Correction, ditto-head. The proper way to introduce this article would have been to say, "In the arena of Capitalism, money follows results." Using "real life" is pretty disengenous considering the 99% of the American electorate isn't a Wall Street guru with deep coffers to toss around willy nilly, therefore, it has no real bearing on their "real life". So, exactly who are you trying to attract as an audience with your article -- ordinary Joes and Janes or likeminded Wall Street mavens? The distinction must be made because "money following results" might be a sediment of defining "real life" to Wall Street mavens who worship money as opposed to ordinary Joe and Jane Tax-Payer whose defination of "real life" could something totally opposite and not even involve money at all. So, with that said, it appears the intended audience for this article is prodominately aimed at impressing more Wall Street money-slingers and other Heritage Foundation wonks but with the secret hope of bullshiting ordinary Joe and Jane. It's more or less preaching to the choir because to open article with the line "In real life, money follows results" is to take a very arrogant liberty by assuming everyone in this country is a worshipper of Capitalism, which couldn't be father from the truth.When an inventor creates a useful product, investors find him, market the product and sell it. There's no need for the federal government to get involved.
Then explain this mystery for us, my dear Heritage Hack? This product was being used to swindle countless investors out of money and the only time a prototype was shown to the public was at last year's E3 convention. That's right -- last year's E3 convention. My sources (one of which is a freelance writer for the gaming industry living in Silicon Valley) tell me that this product didn't show up at this past E3 convention. Was it real or was it vaporware? Were the investors robbed of their money by Kyle Bennett winning a judgement in court by exposing the crooked inventor's checkered past (most likely your excuse because your kind always hates lawsuits) or were they robbed by foolishly trusting a crooked inventor (which is my position)? If the later is true, then shouldn't the Federal Government step in and punish the crooked inventor for robbing people therefore sending a clear message to investors on Wall Street not to do business with this crook or other crooks like Ken Lay? Despite serious ethical misgivings, some in Congress want taxpayers to spend money on it. But, at a recent panel at the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Kelly Hollowell, a molecular and cellular pharmacologist, noted that, despite widespread media hype over embryonic stem-cell research, it hasn't attracted significant private investment.
How can it attract significant private investment when crooks within Washington like Sen. Rick Santorum accepts hefty contributions from private stem-cell researchers only for him to turn around and vote "Nay" on every peice of pro-stemcell research legislation because there's something in the legislation that pisses off the Christian Right -- an entire class of people who'd rather die of a fucking bed sore like Christopher "Superman" Reeve than give a nod to scientific research that may help them walk someday?
According to the Christian Right, Jesus hates science. Fine! Fuck 'em! If a rightwing Christian's spinal cord become injured at anytime, they've got a cure already -- Benny Hinn. Robert Goddamned Tilton, for cryin' out loud. Then again, maybe not since those two theiving motherfuckers sure as hell made their asses scarce when Terry Schiavo was vegitating her last hours on national TV. Isn't that a bitch? Whenever the media is focusing on "Runaway Brides" and "American Idol", those televangelist witchdoctors on the far right like Tilton and Hinn can be found a few channels away curing invalids of all walks of life with just a simple slap on the forehead and a "Pah-RAISE JEBUS!" but once the media turns their fisheye lenses upon a person in dire need of a real miracle cure, the chariot swings low and these morons make a fast exodus to their spiderholes, man. Gone! Raptured without a fuckin' trace! What's up with that? C'mon, why didn't Randall Terry bawl out to the crowd, "HAY!! WHICH OF YOU SONSABICHES HAVE BENNY HINN'S CELL NUMBER, FOR CHRIST'S SAKES?!?!"
Oh, and wouldn't you know it once the real person in dire need keels over, and the media's cameras turn their attention to the outraged Fundamentalists and the pontificating politicians, those shysters slowly come back like the North Eastern coastline after a rolling black out. They become "un-raptured" just as mysteriously as they were raptured in the first place and within a week or so, you can find them right back on that same damn channel laying the smackethdown on more noggins and shit as if nothing happened. Where's Stone Phillips at times like these? This is a constant fucking "Roswell" here and it doesn't measure a blip on their radar.
I dunno. Maybe the 700 Club will address the ol' "Mystery of the Vanishing Hucksters" someday. In the meantime, fuck 'em. These soothsayers can't disappear at all time and at least it's not science so the rightwing Christian fundamentalists who suffer spine injuries will just have to make do with they got. Now, if they would just uninvite themselves from the stem-cell research debate, and if the crooked Senators would vote with their hearts instead of their wallets, stemcell research might be able to attract more private investors and this country might be able to do something our forefathers intended it to do in the first place -- PROGRESS!
But I'm gonna very frank with you all here (yep, all two of you) and say that the next time the media finds another "Schaivo" to parade around (because we know they will) and if the Taliborn Again does not go on an excusion to find Benny Hinn or Robert Tilton, then I'm afraid I just might be tempted to cutting my own spirtual losses by flushing my Bibles down the ol' hopper. Despite Conan O'Brien's idiocy and other like-minded fools, it can be done.
How?
The same way our own soldiers did it with the Koran:ONE PAGE AT A TIIIIIIIIIIME, SWEET JESUS!!
|
Nawp, No Activist Judges Here, Cletus!
Remember the whole Filibuster debacle just weeks ago and how Tom "The Ticking Termite" DeLay & Bill "Callico Gumbo" Frist were co-headliners on the Tali-Born Again's "Republican Judges For Our Republican Jesus" tour? Sure you do, and that brings me to Justice Cale J. Bradford of the Marion County Superior Court in Indianapolis. What's so bad about him? Apparently, not enough witches were burned at the stake in Salem all those years ago and Judge Bradford hasn't felt good about himself ever since, resulting in a ruling that not only adds another fecal skidmark to the Constitution but does so by going after witches again -- this time through their own flesh and blood. Seriously, with all the agents in Hollywood, Aaron Spelling himself couldn't make this up:An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."
The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.
Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show.
Oh, but wait -- here's the real slimey part: The order does not define a mainstream religion.
C'mon now, Judge? If you're gonna trample all over the Constitutional and Civil rights of two divorced Wiccan parents and their son by calling their religion "non-mainstream", at least go balls out by defining what you personally consider to be a "mainstream" religion. Ulp, that's right -- you can't. Not unless you really want to stir up a hornet's nest. Don't wanna be too activist in one's activism, eh? Defense lawyer Alisa G. Cohen skewers the Judge quite nicely:Jones and the ICLU also argue the order is so vague that it could lead to Jones being found in contempt and losing custody of his son. "When they read the order to me, I said, 'You've got to be kidding,' " said Alisa G. Cohen, an Indianapolis attorney representing Jones. "Didn't the judge get the memo that it's not up to him what constitutes a valid religion?"
This might come as no surprize to any Wiccans or Columbus, Ohio residents who might be reading this. I've had Wiccan friends for years and every year -- if they've got the money -- they head down to Columbus to attend a huge Pagan festival out there that lasts for days. Of course, since the Paganistic nature of Wicca is in direct competition with Christianity, guess who "invites" themselves to the same gala in order to save the souls of the apostates? That's right -- the Fundamentalist Fristians. Like Microsoft, they can't stand competiton and so every time when my Wiccan friends head down there, they come back with another horror story to tell. One year, a Christian fundamentalist woman ripped a newborn baby out of the arms of it's Wiccan mother, refusing to give the child back. Doing something that extreme is just flat out asking for an ass-beating. When my friends told me this, they said, "Jay, we should bring you down there one year!"
HELL NO!
Tempting as it is, to hell with that shit. I need that like I'd need a hole in the head. For one, I'm Christian allright but I'm human, too, therefore I can only take right-wing Christian fundies in very, very small doses before my human nature kicks the Holy Spirit aside, rolling up its sleeves and screaming, "Lemme at 'em!!" Secondly, I don't play favorites so I might end up saying something that would piss both groups off, leaving me with a very long walk home. Third, it would just be a waste of time and breath. If common sense and/or decades of Bible reading can't set the Christian fundie crowd straight, nothing will. Lastly, since Wiccans do have naked rituals and most of my Wiccan friends dress like Goths ......... uh, yeah. Granted, I'm no sight for sore eyes but there's just something hideous about a couple 6 foot tall, zombified, fishing lures doing the goddamned streak in the moonlight. Just imagining it is torture enough.
Then again, maybe it's just me.
Other than that, Wiccans are peaceful people. And Justice Bradford needs a good clue-by-four for falling asleep in Law School too often. Trampling on the rights of others by going through their own flesh and blood is a sure fire way to launch a nuclear option of huge purportions. Anyone whose ever walked in Family Court knows that for a fact, especially fathers.
|
