TBT: The Brutal Truth

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Ladies, The EULA Is In The Mail

Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, surviving one of the narrowest Senate confirmation votes in a century to become the second conservative put on the court by President Bush.

Alito took the constitutional and judicial oaths from Chief Justice John Roberts, Bush's first Supreme Court appointee, in a private ceremony at the court, a spokeswoman said.

Bush appointed Roberts and Alito after promising to select justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the court's two most conservative members. The choice of Alito sparked concern among Democrats and some liberal groups that his former stands against abortion and on other hot-button social issues would push the court to the right.

After weeks of debate, the Senate confirmed Alito, 55, a federal appeals judge since 1990, on a largely party-line vote of 58-42, making him the 110th member of the nation's highest court.


Reuters
Bush Nominee Alito Sworn In
January 31, 2006


-----------------------------------------------


EXECUTIVE UTERUS LICENSE AGREEMENT


Effective immediately, the uterus of all legal and illegal American female citizens become the property of the U.S. Government. This EULA is being sent to all legal and illegal American female citizens ahead of the formalities (e.g. the imminent overturning of Roe V. Wade) to educate you, Ms. ______ on the terms of this agreement. THESE TERMS ARE NON-NEGOTIABLE.

ONE: Your uterus has officially been declared by the office of the Unitary Executive (i.e. President/King of The United States) as a "United States Interest" on the same level as cheap foreign slave labor, oil, and other U.S. interests. Persuiant to the terms of this EULA, your uterus will deliver two (2) children that you'll be required to nuture and raise on your own time and dime for the purpose of replenshing collateral damage to our offensive and defensive miltary structure. You will be required to do this for a period of eighteen (18) years where upon the "First Right Of Refusal" clause of this EULA will be enacted. This clause grants us the power to -- upon the descretion of the United States Government - to claim "eminent domain" upon one of both children where they will be confiscated and undergo intensive mental and physical therepy for whatever role we require within our national offensive and defensive military structure. The U.S. Government is under no legal or moral obligation to reveal what that role might be in specific terms -- it could be fighting a just war or being convenient fodder for the parent company(s) of the United States Government (e.g. The Corportocracy) and their entitlement to the U.S. Treasury.

TWO: Under no circumstances are you place the uterus into direct or indirect harm.

THREE: Under no circumstances are you to apply for (and become approved of) social entitlement programs such as WIC, ADC/Foodstamps, and Medicaid. Persuiant to the orders of this EULA, you are to raise and nuture our interests on your own time and dime. NO HANDOUTS - NO EXCEPTIONS.

FOUR: Under no cirucumstances are you to terminate the incubation of our interests via Perscription/Non-Perscription abortificants or the "back alley" method. In such an event, you'll be charged and convicted of 1st degree murder, and become a ward of the U.S. Government for a period of time per the perogative of the ruling judge. From there, our uterus will become arficially inseminated by a sperm donor of our choice (most likely Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson but possible Donald Rumsfeld) and you will be under 24-hour, round the clock supervision shackled to a wall.

FIVE: In the event of an unfortunate malady that leaves you unable to provide future war-time investiments (e.g. in case you're as barren as Ken Mehlman's heterosexual sex life), the terms of this EULA shall be null and void except for direct property rights allready declared. In other words, if you're a poor, trailer-park peice of trash making less than $60,000 a year with endometriosis, we don't want to know about you ... but we still own your skanky uterus.

SIX: In the event ... aww fuck it.

Bottom Line: Just because we own your uterus does not imply we're responsible for it. Whose your daddy now, bitches?!? Get your preggo ass the fuck back in the kitchen and make us a sammich ...


|

Riddle You That

Over at Ms. Shakes's sandbox, somewaterytart asks:

Hey, I have a question. Why, when people say 'I swear,' are they often admonished with 'don't swear'? Or when asked to swear, some people won't? Is this a religious thing, like you're only supposed to swear about things pertaining to Jesus? When I was little I thought it was because 'swear' also means bad words, and bad words are bad. Like that girl on my soccer team who would scold me for saying 'Oh my God,' and even 'oh my gosh,' because it starts with the same letter. I had to carpool with that bitch. Either way, please, riddle me that.

Since my response was apparently too long for Ms. Shakes' HaloScan, I'll post it here: I consider it all just fashions-in-thought designed to artifically boost one's self esteem. In other words, the person that tells you, "Don't take the Lords name in vain" when they hear you say "gosh darn it" is most likely engaging in textbook projectionism -- they say it too, but only when nobody is around. Ahhh, but since you're both in the public eye when in church together, that person wants to either put on a false cloak of religiosity or impose a guilt trip in on your ass. Sometimes both.

As any one who reads this rag of mine couldn't tell allready, I got tossed out of churches alot because (in my opinion) I brought something mainstream religion hasn't had since about the 4th century: LOGIC! I'll give two examples: As a wee lad around 10 or 12, I was once requested by a self-appointed church leader to sing. I didn't feel like singing and thus I said, "No." That lead to cajoling in the form of, "But, Jay! A good singing voice of yours gives glory to Gawd!"

Again, I'd said, "No" because I just wasn't in the mood. Then came the fear-mongering, "Well, God just said He wants you the sing," and that's when I'd answer back with logic: "Why would God stick His head through the clowds when I'm not looking to give me a message through you?!?" and that earn me a firm slap on the ass and, now forced to sing, I'd deliberately sing terribly out of spite (kinda hard to do for people who can sing moderately well because they're their own worse critic -- if they sound like a wounded water buffalo in heat to their own ears, they're not about to let someone else hear them bleat!)

The second example was when I was in my mid-teens helping a church build a ramp for handicapped people. Bashed my thumb with a hammer and bellowed, "Motherfuckin' God Dammit!!" Everybody gasped, "Shame on you! Confess your sin, brother!" Still ticked off, I said, "What sin?!?" and somebody said, "You took the Lord's name in vain."

"No, I didn't," I bitched, "I didn't say 'Hi, I'm God, but you can call me Jehovah'! I made an appeal to God to DAMN the freakin' hammer which He will not do anyway -- He and Jesus are too busy laughing their asses off at my request to damn an innocent, inanimate object that wouldn't have caused me pain had my scrawny hide been a little more coordinated!"

Somebody said, "That's blaspheme! God wouldn't have such a foul sense of humor!" and I said, "Why not?!? He created your fickle and sinful ass, didn't He?!?" More gasps of shock followed by catcalls of how I couldn't have been a true Christian because of the way I talk. Personally, I believe the way I talk is right in line with 1st Corinthians chapter 13 -- speak in ways that can be understood and do with love. That's what I try to do -- speak with love; be it eros, phileo, or agape.

Give or take a "rat's hairy ass" ... *grin*

Taking a chance only once in your life
Only weakness can stop you from hearing new languages
Translate each word as they bring you creation
Your voice is the perfect key


Yes
"New Languages"
1999


|

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Truth Disciple Update

My blogroll is a list of "Truth Disciples" and yep, she's been cleaned up and updated. First off, even though Art Silber's gone, he'll remain on the roll as an honorary "Truth Disciple" for he was a fine blogger with a brilliant mind and I'll be damned if his contributions go down the memory hole. Other than that, I removed a few links but I've added a new "Truth Disciple" -- stop by and give a shout to Gordon, Fixer, and the rest of the gang at Alternate Brain ...


|

Saturday, January 28, 2006

The Village Called ...

Ever since the WaPo/Howell debacle, I've decided that linking to the WaPo any further would just help the sorry-assed newspaper continue to collect ad-revenue by people who click their ads. And I'm going to stay true to that regardless of my traffic level. However, I won't begrudge other blogs that continue to do so, which John Amato does, thus clues his readers in on the following insanity from Democratic lobbyist and stategist Steve Elmendorf:

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

Amato goes ballistic:

WTF does that mean? So the only thing we represent to this nitwit is a couple of cans of Red Bull and a shit load of ATM machines.

Exactly, it's the "Fuck 'Em And Forget 'Em" strategy: (1) fuck 'em out of their money, (2) fuck 'em out of their vote, (3) forget 'em as soon as we win election. Steve Elmendorf should probably change his surname to "Scheißdorf" because if our Democrats follow that advice -- and LOSE again -- they're gonna take up pitchforks and torches looking for the idiot that espoused such shitty advice and from what village he hailed from. In you, Steve, they'll find both personified and set it all ablaze. Most people wouldn't dare commit personal and professional suicide but it looks like you're offering yourself as a prime candidate. The only thing I can do as a blogger and an American is to make sure I've got enough marshmellows and smores to happily roast over your ashes. My only regret is I won't be able to drink in celebration ...

I once mixed grain alcohol with smores.

Once.


|

Thursday, January 26, 2006

It's The Cover-Up, Stupid

As the Bush Administration's stonewalling over elusive pictures of King George schmoozing with Jack Abramoff hasn't convinced the WH Press Corp to let Clueless McClellan come up for air anytime soon, we now find out that Bush's latest goalpost is the very one Ms. Shakes predicted would be tossed onto the field by the Dictator-In-Chief himself:

"I mean, there's thousands of people that come through and get their pictures taken," Mr. Bush said. "I'm also mindful that we live in a world in which those pictures will be used for pure political purposes, and they're not relevant to the investigation."

Uh-huh. Interesting how that works -- photos and documents on the previous Democratic President was certainly relevant to the GOP just 10 years ago but now with a SCOTUS-selected, Republican, card-carrying member of the Tali-Born Again destroying the country a hell lot more than Bin Laden could only dream of, there's that big rush to change the standard. It's something that I noticed about 5 years into my former life as a fellow Fundy Fristian Kool-Aide drinker and after two years of self-imposed soul-searching, I found the answer: Republicans and Christian Conservatives walk hand-in-hand with a mindless Leo Straussian-esque assertion that one standard exists for all of mankind while another standard should be used for themselves.

In other words, when Clinton's repugnant moral character became the cashcow of big media and the perfect boogie man for Christian Conservatives to latch onto, they all screamed in unison, "How can he commit adultery and perjury and still claim to be Christian?!?" Now with the tables turned on a rightwing "Christian" President's repugnant moral character becoming the hot button issue the media doesn't want to deal with, mum is the word from those very same people. Nobody in rightwing Christianity has jumped up and bellowed, "How can Bush have fellowship with a convicted fellon and still call himself Christian?!?"

And it won't happen -- the standards must be different when dealing with leftwinger and rightwinger (Christian or not) because, as far as Red Staters are concerned, we leftwing Christians have no souls. Since souls come from God, the lack of having a soul is analogous to being "Gawdless" in their mind. Thus, that's how they try to get away with these hypocritical double-standards and it's exactly how we've gone from relevant pictures of Clinton to irrelevant pictures of Chimpy in such a short period of time. Henceforth, it comes to no surprize that Josh Marshall catches Reflections in the act of sweeping the irrelevant under the Papal rug:

After a few minutes, she returned and proceeded to pull up the photo in question on the CD. Then, to her audible surprise, she told me the "photo was deleted" from the CD.

That, as you'd imagine, caught my attention. So I asked what that meant. The woman from Reflections told me that that this sometimes happened when the White House wanted to prevent the public from accessing certain photographs of the president.

When I asked her when this had happened she told she didn't know and wouldn't be at liberty to tell me even if she did.

This was back on January 11th. From what we could tell, the photograph had been removed from the site roughly a week earlier ... But early this afternoon, I decided to take one more go at Reflections. I talked to company president Joanne Amos. We went back and forth over various questions about whether photographs at the site were available to the public and why some had been removed. When she, at length, asked me who it was in the picture with the president. I told her we believed it was Jack Abramoff.

Amos very straightforwardly told me that the photographs had been removed and that they had been removed because they showed Abramoff and the president in the same picture. The photos were, she told me, "not relevant."


Don't you just love that shit? The elitism, the haughtiness, the snobbery is just so dripping. Somehow, she was annointed with a level of infallible authority to whit she and her clients (e.g. The Bush Administration, and to a greater degree their clients; The GOP and the MSM) will ultimately decide for the public what is relevant and what isn't despite the fact that we're the sonsabitches paying (in more ways than one) for the unmitigated damage her crooked-assed clients and the felons she's trying to protect are doing to this country every single second of every day.

What makes her think she was bestoyed this unmitigated awesome power of influence and diction over us mensch? Why, she dropped a few thousand dimes on the horse and its breeders -- this fact unearthed by Dave Donnelly:

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Amos gave $2,000 to Bush in 2003 and $2,000 to the RNC in 2004.

This goes back to what I said earlier about Republicanism today being ruled by Race, Religion, and Revenue. The demand for the Bush/Abramoff photos is so huge that even Abramoff himself can't decide which of the myriads of offers he should take (read: Revenue) which itself is compounded by the apparent fact that Amos isn't so much as concerned with cashing in on these photos as she is with making damned sure her horse isn't put out to pasture by a impeachment pretzel-er ... process stuck in its craw. That requires steadfast, fierce, religious-like fervor in protecting a guilty-as-all-get-up President despite it being against her best interests -- just like the Red State poor and middle class. There's nobody more dangerous than a brainwashed minion licking the snake-skin boots of its benefactor especially when he can change into a malefactor (Joannie, yer doin' a hellava jawb).

Unfortunately for her and her clients, this "business decision" has made the "irrelevant" much more relevant now and practically guarantees these photos showing up any moment from -- I predict -- another GOP source (afterall, when your President's approval rating is nearing the freezing temperature of water, one visit to a back-alley fence and you're off to a warmer climate for a while).

It's the cover-up, stupid ...


|

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Harry Reid Goes Nookyalur



Sometimes, Reid's balls seem to clang together like chappel bells on a cold Fitzmas morning and this has been one of those times. My favorite part of the speech:

In his 2000 campaign, George Bush promised to bring “dignity” to the White House… but we’ve since found that he brought Jack Abramoff instead.

If Abramoff is Bush's idea of "dignity", I don't want to see "honor".

Then again, maybe I already have ...


|

He Who Laughs Last ...

I've been in a funk the last few days because of Chris Matthews and the rest of the prima donna pinheads of Big Media comparing Osama Bin Laden to Michael Moore, John Kerry, and the rest of us liberal hippie leftist moonbats and I think I'm coming out of that funk. Just a moment ago, I re-read the last few posts of mine ... and had an epiphany. What if we liberals not only turned our back to President Bush during his SOTU address, but decided to go a few steps further? How further? Our Democrats aren't even an opposition party and they haven't raised any hell in the 5 years that the GOP has kicked their teeth in. If I had contributed to Howard Dean and DNC right now, I'd be barking for a refund.

If they aren't going to empower themselves in the face of these sancimonious, totalitarian, fake Christian, Republican fucktards, then why should we bankroll their asses this year? Let's yank not only our contributions but also our Federal taxes we may owe this year (if Uncle Sam owes you money, by all means collect it). This way, we gut both the Culture of Corruption along with the Culture of Complacency, leaving them with only whatever cashflow they get from the Corportocracy and their lobbiests. Lets these pinheads bankroll their own multi-million dollar re-election campaigns with their own wallet instead of ours (at this point, I gotta bail on the notion at dKos that grassroots netroots money is going to save our Democratic party at least until I'm fortunate enough to ever read their book).

Can we go further?

Sure, why not. Instead of letting the Republicans hunt us down and exterminate us from the landscape alltogether, let's pack up our fucking sandboxes and do something they told us to do if we "hated America so much" in the first place -- LEAVE. Vote with our feet and leave this country to the Taliborn Again. Vote with our feet and leave this country to these rotten Republican thugs with their torture, unitary executive, and Mammon addictions. Leave this country ... and give them and their water carriers within the MSM the blessed liberal-free Amerika they've been dreaming about since they first rocked back and forth and screamed "Limbaugh Ackbar" in orgasmic glee whilst petting their pricks and AM radios.

Why?

Because without liberals, civil libertarians, and Democrats in this country, the corporate media's parent networks are just one wardrobe malfunction away from getting hunted down like dogs and unitarily executed themselves by the very crooked, thieving, fake Christian, authoritarian Republican whores (and man-whores) they're all too happy to spread their legs or bend themselves over to.

So, go ahead Matthews, Scarborough, Howell and the rest you pompous twits in the mainstream media. Spread your legs, grab your ankles, and continue to moan in ecstasy as the so-called "Christian" Republicans of today proceed to cram their dicks into your hides and bang you like a chorus of shithouse doors in a gale in exchange for access and tax-breaks but just remember that their warm cocks can turn into cold phalluses the size of mountains ribbed with razor blades in a demagogic conquest for morality and decency all at the exposure of somebody's 1% chance of botching something as small and insignifact as a botton, draw string, or strip of velcro.

Is it worth that bargain? Without us, they finally get their Christian nation. From there, it's only a matter of time before you are forced to litter those sprawling news sets with crufixes, busts of Jesus, and a mandatory moment of prayer before the national weather.

Who sounds like Osama Bin Laden now?!?


|

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Dogs Of War

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

And you have been far too polite about this. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Back in 1995, Republican Senator Phil Gramm said, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." That was eleven years ago. If you listen close, you can hear the beasts baying in the distance, waiting to slip the leash.


William Rivers Pitt
Democrats: Get Up And Walk Out
January 22, 2006

(Hat tip Ms. Shakes)

---------------------------------------------
Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency is flesh and bone
Hell opened up and put on sale
Gather 'round and haggle
For hard cash, we will lie and deceive
Even our masters don't know the webs we weave

One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world

Invisible transfers, long distance calls,
Hollow laughter in marble halls
Steps have been taken, a silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You can't stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion
We all have a dark side, to say the least
And dealing in death is the nature of the beast

One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world

The dogs of war don't negotiate
The dogs of war won't capitulate,
They will take and you will give,
And you must die so that they may live
You can knock at any door,
But wherever you go, you know they've been there before
Well winners can lose and things can get strained
But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain.

One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One world


Pink Floyd
"The Dogs Of War"
1987


|

Saturday, January 21, 2006

MSNBC In Serious Legal Jeopardy

To the chagrin of MSNBC's legal department, John Amato at has, within the last week, archived and documented incontrovertible evidence that spuring demands for a public apology and retraction. Instead of doing just that, Mr. Matthews and another MSNBC employee Joe Scarborough compared Osama Bin Laden to Micheal Moore but to Sen. John Kerry and every single American currently voicing dissent with President Bush - be they Democrat, Liberal, Civil Libertarian, or Republican - as well.

This is a much larger issue that just mere slander.

Does MSNBC and its shareholders grant Mr. Matthews and Mr. Scarborough to use company resources for the expressed purpose of abusing their personal Freedom of Speech as individuals along with MSNBC's Freedom of the Press to blatantly engage in the criminal acts of the marketing and distribution of agitative propaganda in a time of war to further maginalize the public up to point of potentially inciting riots and other forms of civil unrest?

I hope for their sake they do not and hereby demand that MSNBC suspend for 90 days both Mr. Matthews and Mr. Scarborough without pay and for the CEO of MSNBC to issue a prompt public apology for their remarks. These individuals must cease and desist immediately or MSNBC could face other legal options by a concerned public to remedy these serious infractions ... or even worse.

It doesn't take a legal scholar to realize that the inverse cost of freedom in America is responsibility. I may have the freedom of speech, but I have to take responsibility for abusing that speech, especially if I were to be so stupid to yell, "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre. On that same token, it's shouldn't take a legal scholar to show MSNBC the error of their ways by abusing their freedoms of well -- all it should take is a look at history.

Apparently, the media hasn't learned a single thing from the 1960s where the divisions over the Vietnam War spurred protests and mass riots. Not one whit. Does history have to repeat itself outside of MSNBC's own studios to make that point all over again?!? Is that what Mr. Matthews and Mr. Scarborough want in this country -- RIOTS?!? Is that what MSNBC and it's shareholders hope to provoke?!? If so, then how can one avoid the ultimate conclusion that the media itself is deliberately trying to incite domestic terrorism within -- in an age where we are trying to fight terrorism from without at the cost of over 2200 soldiers' lives (and rising) as well as billions of tax-payer dollars?!?


Show some damned responsibility ...


|

License To Bork

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Republican Party activists on Friday night that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats."

If a Democrat would've said a SCOTUS nominee was "the worst nightmare of Conservative Republicans", Sheik Robertson and Osama Bin Falwell of the Tali-Born Again would be issuing fatwahs 24/7 on the Fox Propaganda Channel, resulting in a Republican filibuster. Thank you, Bill Frist, for giving our Democrats a license to Bork (and they better use it).


|

Friday, January 20, 2006

Conyers Judiciary Hearing -- Where Was Your MSM?!?

As of 11:15AM, C-SPAN broke from Washington Journal to cover on Bush's "Project Shamrock II" NSA spying scandal. So, where was your mainstream, Corporate-owned, Republican-controlled, public service, mainstream media between 11:40AM and 1:40PM?!?

11:40AM
CNN: Commercials!
FOX: More Missing Miners?!?!
MSNBC: Yay, it's the weather!

Noon
CNN / FOX / MSNBC = Miners.

12:10PM:
CNN = Commericals
FOX = Dow Jones / Bin Laden
MSNBC = Commerical "Google/Pr0n" Segway

12:30PM
CNN = Eco Terrorism Indictments
FOX = Miners
MSNBC = Iraq / Al-Queda

12:50PM
CNN = "Google/Pr0n"
FOX = Bin Laden
MSNBC = Commericials

1:23PM
CNN = Stocks Slump
FOX = Missing Journalist
MSNBC = Russia's Record Cold (not kidding).

1:40PM
The meeting adjourned.

Not one drop of LIVE coverage in 2 hours.

As for the meat and potatoes of the meeting, it sounds like some Democrats are seriously considering censure/impeachment proceedings. Wexler shoved Bush's face in the mud early on when he quoted Bush as saying "that the terrorists hate our Freedom and our form of government" and then reamed him (paraphrasing): "Why did our very President undermine this government of ours via his unconstitutional warrantless searches?!?" Damn straight.

John Turley commented that the only way Bush can justify "Project Shamrock II" is to claim that FISA is unconstitutional but he said that's an angle even he'd wouldn't want to persue in court because everything could be claimed unconstitutional by the Bush Administration's subscription to the "Unitary Executive Theory".

Van Hollen agreed and said that this sheds light on why Bush has never vetoed anything -- he's just going to ignore whatever he doesn't like with his signing statements and said that Bush's ludicrous behavior would be hilarious if it weren't so serious. As far as I'm concerned, Bush's penchant for ignoring laws using these signing statements is the equivilent of pulling a "line item veto" out of thin air.

More comments and highlights shortly (scouring for transcripts).


|

A Rebuttal of Spineless Purportions

Democratic governor of Virgina Tim Kaine has been chosen to give the rebuttal to Bush's State of The Union address. Kos likes it. Huffington loathes it and recommeds John Murtha which Jane and Amato approve of. Where I stand? Huffington makes the better argument against Tim Kaine:

On the same day that Osama Bin Laden's chilling warnings make it Red Alert clear that Bush's obsession with Iraq has not made us safer here at home -- and, indeed, has caused us to take our eye off the real enemy -- the Dems decide that the charge against Bush shouldn't be led by someone who can forcefully articulate why the GOP is not the party that can best keep us safe, but by someone whose only claim to fame is that he carried a red state.

Talk about clueless.


Of course, any win for the Democratic party is a good win and I'm as happy as a pig in shit that Kaine took Virginia from the Republican "ownership society" but that's not enough for him in my book. She then lobbies for Sen. John Murtha:

I know I've said this before and before, but the Democrats will never become the majority party until they can prove to the American people that they have a better plan for keeping us safe. And that means having someone like Jack Murtha give the State of the Union response -- someone with the authority to make the point that, on every level, Iraq is the wrong priority. And that the hundreds of billions already spent on Iraq (and the countless billions to come) would be better spent shoring up our ports, roadways, railways, securing our nuclear installations and chemical plants, and properly supporting our first responders.


Oh, Arianna, how quickly we forget the Al Gore speech. No doubt; she is right that the Democrats need to convince us they've got a better plan on security but Al Gore's speech proves that they also need to drive home the point that we don't have to treat our Constitution as if it were a roll of Charmin in order to get it done. Within Republican circles, there's a belligerant talking point they use in their rabid defense of Bush's gross violation of the law with "Project Shamrock II" by equating our dear Constitution to that of a "suicide pact" instead of the very fabric of what made this country survive and carry on for the past two centuries. Barrack Obama could articulate this message very well but I'm not keen on Obama, either.

As much as I love and respect John Murtha, I've got to tell like it is and call 'em as I see them -- I'm sick and tired of seeing and hearing him. Jane, Amato, and Huffington may not like it, but that's the way I feel at the moment. Why? Because John Murtha hasn't really defended himself against the Swift Boating being done to him by the rabid rightwingers. Pundits like Michael Reagan have called for the heads of those speaking out on the war. So, let me cut through the bullshit and make my point: Unless Sen. Murtha calls up Joe Wilson and asks him if he still has that noose he wore about his neck when he walked the floors of Saddam Hussein's palaces in the early 1990s, Murtha isn't really standing up like a Marine should in the face of despotic President whom has done nothing more than carried on the legacy of butchering of Hussein in the guise of this War on Terror and I know plenty of Marines. He isn't, to borrow the expression of R. Lee Ermey, sounding off like he has a pair.

Marines stick together like luggage. If you smear one, you've smeared them all, and every Marine I know personally has told me -- despite either agreeing or disagreeing with Murtha -- they would do or say anything to shut assholes like Micheal Reagan down. I guarantee you that if John Murtha had drapped a noose around his neck, applied a bulleye sticker to his forehead, and walked the Senate floor just like Joe Wilson walked the the floors of Hussein's palaces a little over a decade ago, the media would go ballistic and every USMC base would be at a standstill. There would be journalists camped out on the steps of the Hill waiting for a moment to talk to Murtha. They would ask him, "Senator, explain the noose and bulleye for us", and Murtha can say, "If Micheal Reagan believes the President should have me tried and then shot or hung for treason, I've got five words for the both of them: YOU KNOW WHERE I SLEEP!"

That is a response worthy and expected from a 10-year marriage let alone a 27-year Marine veteran. Every USMC base would erupt in a deafening chorus of "HOORAH!" and FreeRepublic would be inaccessible because several routers would have meltdowns from the rush of all the 101st Fighting Keyboardists climbing over each other to be the first one to let the foam fly. When it eventually does come back online, them fucking chickenhawks would be smacking each other around instead of Murtha. Using the term "unhinged" to describe the state of prime time punditry would be a gross understatement and the only person that would be hung or shot would be one that would have to tell Bush the truth: "Mr. President, we just lost a good portion of the military vote," but I won't mention names (*cough*TURDBLOSSOM!*ahem*).

Granted, other bloggers may say that I'm being very disengenous to single out Sen. Murtha for not really making a stand and that would have some merit -- they know as well as I that there was once a time where the entire Democratic party in general would seriously consider donning a noose and bullseye proudly and in open defiance to the eliminationist "try them for treason" rhetoric of the ReThugs. But that's all the more reason why I feel compelled to single out Murtha -- it's got to start somewhere; why not a Marine veteran?

In the end, who gives the rebuttal probably isn't going to ammount to a hill of beans. The Democratic party has sported a consistancy of complacency rather than courage over the last 5 years, thus I'm more apt to prepare for further consistancy in that regard instead of being pleasantly surprized by the emergence of consistancy in the latter.


|

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Broken By "Brokeback"

The other day, Ms. Shakes picked up a Christian confession on IMDB:

I've always been somewhat reluctant to come down hard on homosexuals (in social situations with other church-goers or with my Republican friends at political events). I'm just not the type to judge others out of spite. I've never really known anyone close to me that's gay, although I've met a few people here and there at my work that later I was told were.

Last weekend, I was in Dallas and - to make a long story short - I ended up "having" to see this film. It definitely was NOT my choice to do so, but to avoid a confrontation, I relented. Everybody makes this sort of compromise sooner or later, right? If the film we wanted to see hadn't been sold out, I don't think I'd ever have seen "Brokeback Mountain."

It's been four days since I saw the film, and progressively, day after day, I have been forced to admit that I am ashamed of the way I felt about homosexuals. I literally had no concept of what life is truly like for these individuals, and must continue to be. In my heart I know that good, wholesome, long-standing friends of mine - true-believing Christians - have made life horrible for these people when they go out of their way to bad mouth them behind their backs (no one I know I think would get in someone's face), tell their children homosexuals are going to Hell, etc etc.

I can't explain what I'm feeling, but I haven't had this kind of doubt (about the church I go to) since I made the decision a long, long time ago to leave the family business against my father's wishes. I also didn't go into the same branch of the armed forces that he went into. Which is another story. In a way, I guess, my own personal history and my relationship with a disapproving (and uneducated) father somehow made me "get" what Heath Ledger's character goes through. Let me just say that a lot of heartache was involved. The God I believe in, that I teach my kids to trust, would never wish the kind of pain that I went through on anyone, which really I now know for real, is the same kind of pain homosexuals must go through just to live what for them is an honest life, and the choice they must make. I'd never had my eyes opened to this before, not ONE IOTA.

Tonight, winding down, I said a little prayer. It was more or less the same thing that's been going round and round inside my head since I saw this movie... who am I to judge? I honestly was trembling at one point during the credits before we got up to leave, and I had to struggle to re-gain my composure. Now that I am remembering that, it reminds me of the way I trembled when I first asked God to forgive me of my sins and accept me as I am.

"Brokeback Mountain" humbled me.


I must disagree - the movie convicted him of his unconscious sins and the idea of having to admit, and thus dignify the stark, stone cold, truth of them resulted in being humbled. Now, I haven't saw the film yet because I'm not paying out the nose for a Coke or bucket of popcorn and the large screen combined with my short-sightedness tends to trigger the anxiety attacks I'll permanately experiance off and on as a result of the 1989 LSD trip that scared me clean. In a few months, it'll be on DVD. However, I'm thrilled that this movie is a great success because -- as a 16 year Nascent Christian lesbian trapped inside a man's body that endured 7 years of rightwing Christian fundamentalism -- I can honestly tell you that the most castigated, persecuted, and misunderstood group are indeed homosexuals.

They really have no safe haven as the fear of acceptance and rejection from family, friends, co-workers, and clergy unfairly force them to repress feelings, emotions, and convictions that are as natural to them as sunshine. Fear spills into worry and anxiety and, after so long, something has to crack and usually it's their fear. They reach a point where they're sick and tired of denying who and what they are. They reach a point of self-loathing not because of being homosexual but because they allowed their self-esteem to be dictated by outside influences and utlimately decide it's no way to live. Finally, they throw off their shackles, come out the closet, and be as open about their lifestyles as heterosexuals and Christians do. Afterall, if heterosexual couples can walk hand in hand through a mall, Christians can openly wear a cruficix, then homosexuals should be able to do the same. If people don't like what they see, God gave them neck for a reason -- nothing forces them to view it; they can either turn away or accept it. Another reason is because the success of "Brokeback" opens the floodgates for more movies along that vein (one of which could be the screenplay I've had rattling around in my head for the past 3 years).

To an extent, the ardent legislation of taste or morality is a lost cause because of the concept of free will itself. Hell, I think Paris Hilton is the skankiest broad on the planet but what am I supposed to do -- tell her, "Stop being ugly and be little cuter, damn you"?!? No. Where is she obligated to change for my fickle ass?!? Nowhere. Finding something more pleasant to look at is my obligation and sooo .... *WRENCH* .... thus turneth my neck. Same goes for homosexuals -- they're not obligated to stop being homosexual because some Christian came up to them and said, "Stop being a fag or you'll burn in HAAALE!" Somebody says that within my earshot, I'm going to turn to them and say, "Stop wearing cotton polyester blends, but since it's impossible, I'll settle for you to stop being a rude fuck!" For all that talk Christians do about not passing judgement, they have the biggest trouble of practicing Romans 14:4 the most and that brings me to the second most castigated and persecuted group: Christians By Christians! There are over 22,000 denominations of Christianity and each of them of believes that they're right and the other 21,999+ denominations are full of shit.

Movies like "Brokeback" are the needles to their amniotic sacs and this guy is proof of it. Of course, movies like these aren't going to change everybody overnight. Oh, hell no. But they can change somebody; one single soul. One at a time. Everytime. When that happens, they realize exactly just how damned misguided they really were when it came to homosexuality. It's amazing what 2 hours of practicality can do to decades worth of religious fundamentalist conditioning. Rightwing Christian fundamentalism's aversion and apprehension to homosexuality is about as unjustified as it gets when it must confront the reality of practicality.

Here's a dose of reality-based practicality: suppose you're driving down the middle of a 6-lane expressway and the car your approaching to your left leaves no room for doubt the the driver is a proud openly gay person. Rainbows, "GAY PRIDE" bumper stickers, humorous window signs, the whole nine yards. He's doing nothing but driving along tapping the steering wheel in time to the music just like you. Over to the right, there's another car with a "JESUS SAVES" bumber sticker on it, another bumper sticker of a foodstamp with the caption "DON'T FEED THE SHARKS!", a "W 04" sticker in the window, pro-life ribbons on the antenna, etc. leaving no question that the driver is a Conservative Christian but she is yaking away on a cell-phone. Now, here's the burning question Christian fundamentalists need to ask themselves: based on the "hazardous behavior" engaged in by both of these people ......... which one stands to FUCK you in the ass real good?!? If you distract the homosexual, he might smile and wave at you (maybe blow you a kiss -- depending on how hawt and secksy you are and how OPEN he is) but if the least little thing distracts Ms. Holy Roller, she could put your ass in a fuckin' morgue. Perhaps all three of you in the morgue, for that matter.

Moral of the story? The queer is the safer bet. He just wants peace and brotherly love (peice and manly love, if he blew a kiss). Oh, but that broad talking to Jesus on her cell phone is trying to commit vehicular manslaughter. Greater moral of the story: The reliance of fashions-in-thought is to distract our attention away from our real dangers.


|

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

WaPo Ombudsman Done Dealing With Critics

Aravosis fields this one from Media Matters:

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has reportedly posted a comment on the Post's internal message board announcing that she has learned the following "lesson" from exchanges with Media Matters for America: "From now on, I don't reply." Howell's language did not make clear whether she meant that she would no longer reply to any criticism, or only to that registered by Media Matters.


An ombudsman is defined as a person "who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers or students and an institution or organization". In the context of a newspaper, the ombudsman would investigate complaints between the public, the editorial board, and the paper's owner/publisher regarding the fairness and accuracy of the paper's reportage and then offer fair and unbiased advice on how the paper can better serve the public trust. In other words, the ombudsman is supposed to act as a neutral third pair of eyeballs in a dispute between parties that can't or won't see eye to eye.

Therefore, to have an ombudsman vow to not listen to criticism is to have an ombudsman who refuses to do the job they were tapped to do in the first place. What is the nature of Howell's vow to not respond to critics? Does she mean she will no longer listen to the criticism of Media Matters or the the public in general?

If the former, she's pulling an O'Rielly.

If the latter, she's pulling a George W. Bush.

Either way, she needs to step down or face termination.

UPDATE: It's official -- WaPo's ombudsman meant criticism in general. AmericaBlog does the digging and this is what the WaPo doesn't want people to see -- a cache of their blog before they went ahead and pulled a Talon News scrubbing all the comments. Censorship of this magnatude combined with the Bob Woodward scandal shows that our media -- especially the WaPo and the NY Times -- are nothing more that State-Sponsored propaganda channels. Someone needs to ask Bill Clinton if he's still happy over signing the 1996 Deregulation Act.


|

Playing Guitar While Rome Is Burning

... many establishment journalists have raging contempt for the blogosphere. It is a contempt grounded in the fallacy of credentialism and a pseudo-elitist belief that only the approved and admitted members of their little elite journalist club can be trusted to enlighten the masses. Many of them see blogs as a distasteful and anarchic sewer, where uncredentialed and irresponsible people who are totally unqualified to articulate opinions are running around spewing all sorts of uninformed trash. And these journalistic gate-keepers become especially angry when blogospheric criticism is directed towards other establishment journalists, who previously were immune from any real public accountability.


Those are the words of Glenn Greenwald who drives his point home by focusing on "The Plank" -- the official blog of The New Republic, where the on-the-inside journalists of TNR often slap their fellow journalists on the ass in a self-felating orgy just as often as they slime and castigate the blogosphere. Interestingly enough, by taking them on, Glenn earned a rebuttal by none other than Ezra Klein:

Glenn Greenwald, whose stuff is often excellent, has unleashed a breathtakingly misguided attack at The New Republic today. As one would expect, it's getting many a link, and those who long ago decided The New Republic a festering tumor attached to our body politic are excitedly congratulating Glenn for his bit of amateur surgery. But while the operation is technically impressive (no one disputes Greenwald's ability to turn a phrase), we're dealing with some serious malpractice here ...


Hoooboy, looks like a wrastlin' match and Klein immediately rolls Glenn up in a School-Boy:

Here's a media critic's first lesson: "many" is a warning flag, a dodge, the most obvious and troubling sign of a trend piece. Many is not a percentage and it's not a list of names, it's an assumption masked as a measurement. And the next step for "many" is to become one: a singular (or single digit) example touted as an oft-replicated template.


Unfortunately, Ezra made the mistake of prancing around like Adorable Adrian Adonis as if the quick win spoke volumes, forgetting all about the one important stipulation in the Blogosphere Wrestling Federation: all contests are Lumberjack Ironman matches ... and Glenn brought some hefty lumberjacks with him (who is that under the ring?!?).

OK, my pathetic Jim Ross impression aside, I like both of these guys and have posted no wager in what is more or less a match between two bird dogs sniffing each others assholes sizing each other up. However, I believe Glenn came out on top and not because he's an underdog to "Big Media" Klein. He brings a much more compelling argument to the table.

Perhaps my favorite part of this utterly inane attack is the commenter who opines, "Schmidt's getting paid like Armstrong Williams got paid." How does somone (sic) so stupid manage to operate a computer?


His quoting of TNR's Michael Crowley right there reminds me of someone else:

"Tim Robbins, who thinks he can say any thing at any time . . . I have a question: How is it that Tim Robbins is still walking free? How in the world is this guy still able to go to the National Press Club and say whatever he wants to say?


And it's leaving me wonder did Crowley channel Rush Limbaugh, his bottles of Oxy, or both?!? Seriously, where in the hell would the pontificating journalists within their established ivory towers looking down their beaks to the plebian masses be without Rush Limbaugh to channel every single time one of us here in the "Johnny-Come-Lately" blogsphere has the blasphemous termity to rattle their nosechains? The way I see it is journalists within the establishment such as Zengerle and Crowley who continually spurn the blogsphere with their pompous contempt do nothing more than tell us a hell of lot more about themselves than the bloggers they're smearing and, as a result, TNR's subscription rolls are a pale shadow of what they used to be simply because bloggers are nothing more than disenfrancised readers whom got sick and tired of their intelligence being insulted by the ass-slapping has-beens within the establishment.

Even Lex gets it:

I've been a newspaper journalist for 22 years, Ezra, and I'm with Glenn: Our industry has worried far too much about credentials and not enough about the goods.


Exactly, and it's not the only industry that does that. Everything I know about computer hardware and software has been self-taught using a liberal concoction of RTFMing and old fashioned trial and error. No degrees, no certificates, nothing. I could pass them with flying colors but what's the point considering they're expensive as hell and that no customer is going to look at them on my wall and ask me where did I learn everything I know about computers anymoreso than they ask the telephone/cable technician for their credentials on how to crimp a fucking wire.

Lex continues:

Now, worrying about credentials in other fields is certainly appropriate; indeed, the administration's outright hostility toward those with credentials is a big part of why we're in the mess we're in. But journalism isn't public health or intelligence analysis or (need it even be said?) rocket science. Anyone who's reasonably logical and analytical, and a good writer, can function reasonably well as a journalist.


The only thing Lex forgot to mention was a brain -- nature's best bullshit detector. Everybody has them but, unfortunately, most men don't have enough blood to operate it half the time. Atrios hit that one on the head by lambasting the establishment for paving the way for disenfranchised media consumers to get fed up and use their computers for things other than leeching porn, collecting spam, and hardening their arteries to a 18-hour marathon World of Warcraft session (pssst ... hey -- if your heart stops, you lose!) by the establishment flocking like geese to former thinktank-shills-turned-syndicated-firebrands whom sincerely believe that Jesus really did call them to be journalists through the Chick Tract they nearly wiped their asses with instead of nurturing and cultivating the in-house talent.

In the end, the established journalists who get enraged at the Blogosphere for deconstructing their lies, causing them to trip up during their kabuki dancing show me nothing that I haven't seen allready when I end up pissing off the Best Buy/Geek Squad register bisquit out of his commission trying to bullshit ignorant consumers into an extra 512MB stick of RAM for their Dual Layer DVD burner to run properly on a Pentium4/AthlonXP system with 1GB of RAM pre-installed. Same shit, just different piles. The difference is while one Best Buy/Geek Squad asshat successfully had security show me the door for daring to set his monkey ass straight, the same can't be said about the anti-blogger established journalists for the blogosphere itself is policed by the very "hardcore meritocracy" Greenwald smacked them with.


|

Ready, Set, Cluck!

Billmon watched in international game of "Chicken" yesterday and I missed it ...

Dammit!


|

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

The Wrath Of Clueless McClellan

He rejected Gore's call for a special investigator. Paul the Spud (via Ms. Shakes) with the goods:

"This is aimed at international communications involving someone who is associated with al Qaeda. This is about connecting the dots and preventing attacks from happening," McClellan said. "It is a vital tool in our efforts to preventing further attacks inside the United States."


BULLSHIT!

This is about wiping one's ass with the Constitution, shredding our Civil Rights, and fighting terrorism on the cheap side. Afterall, why open the Federal kitty and hire more FBI translators (remember Sibel Edmounds, anyone?) when spying on journalists saves enough of tax-payer's money for the Bush Administration to continue purchasing propaganda space in Iraqi newspapers?!?


|

Monday, January 16, 2006

Gore'd Out Of His Boots

President-Elect Al Gore is currently live on C-SPAN skewering the hell out of President-Select George W. Bush. The camera just panned the audience and there's no doubt that the rubes at Powerline, LGF, and Freeperville will beligerately claim that the near capacity crowd should be tried for treason and hating 'Murika. Oh, and someone should check on The Maltese Malkin -- I can actually hear the foam start to collect on her muzzle already like a can of Barbasol ...


Extended Thoughts: RawStory dishes out a full transcript of . Also, a very belated thanks goes to John & Mike at C&L and for the frontpage love and their readers. I was so attentive to eating brunch while absorbing every morsel of Gore's speech that engaging in any other activity would've been a distraction. Sorry if any C&L visitors may have gotten the impression of me live-blogging the event. That would've been impossible -- aside from probably sucking at it, this was one of those events where I felt my obligations as a citizen outweighed my obligations as a blogger and thus Gore deserved my full and undivided attention. There's much better live-bloggers in the 'Sphere and, as good as their talents are, I don't believe they would've done this event justice. Even RawStory's transcript itself loses Gore's passion and conviction which can only be experianced by his speech.

As puts it, Gore pointed out in crystal clear fashion that one would have to be either living under a rock or within an amniotic bubble of willing denial to not see how Bush's nefarious spying scheme broke the law as well as how his complete lack of a conscience (and a spineless opposition party pretending to be Democrats) continues to let him do so.

It's the most arrogant and blatant disregard of the Constitution we've seen from an American president since the days of Tricky Dick. The sad irony there is, fortunately for us all, a great monolithic, profit-driven, Entertainment Industry-based Corportocracy hadn't had complete control of the media yet. The press did their jobs airing Dicky's incriminating audio tapes and Barry Goldwater promptly done his civic duty by tossing Nixon unaplogetically under the bus.

What an utter sad state of affairs in this nation when we find ourselves at today -- reliving history where the honor of being a modern-day Goldwater goes not to any current Republican or Democrat holding office but to a statesman some 6 years into retirement while the corporate press can't be bothered to give it a single whit of live coverage?!? Apparently profiting off our potential concerns of an overturned tanker is more important that the continued bastardization of our Constitution by a President whose unchecked power today makes Stalin and Hitler turn in their respective graves (as their souls in Hell gnash their teeth).

And even when they do manage to devote live coverage to the event (as CNN's "The Situation Room" done so from what I could glean from C&L's HaloScan), the best they can do is spin it in a negative fashion making ridiculous claims that Gore's speech was nothing more than a pre-campaign stump speech for 2008. Apparently, Wolf Blitzer saw Al Gore hang around taking bows, shaking hands, and kissing babies at the end of his speech.

However, what I saw at the end was Al Gore utter a brief but sincere thanks and then promptly exit stage right even to the surprize of the near-capacity audience who expected Gore to come back and bask in the standing ovation. After watching an empty stage for 20 seconds, the crowd started to gather their things and leave. Thus, I'm left with no other alternative but to continue to believe that Blitzer's perscription on his eyeglasses indeed ran out somewhere around 1992, and he's been wandering the CNN newsroom blind as a bearded, persistantly vegatative, fruitbat ever since. If I didn't feel Jack Cafferty deserved his salary, I certainly wouldn't be enriching CNN's corporate coffers with my continued viewership, that's for sure (and Jack strikes me as a guy who has a characature of Blitzer wielding a tamborine and coffey mug full of pencils stapled to the wall of his cubicle, garnering hushed chortles from passers-by).

Color me not surprized by the MSM's coverage.

Double color me not surprized by The RNC's response:

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, shot back: “Al Gore’s incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as our lack of balls to have him tried for giving aid and confort to the enemy and fed to the lions. Why does he hate America so much?!?"


Triple color me not surprized by , who quickly put to bed Gore's call for a special counsel to investigate the legalities of Bush's "Operation Shamrock II":

KING: Back to former Vice President Gore asking for a special counsel to investigate, would you object to that?

GONZALES: Object?!? Damn straight, I object! I don't wanna go to prison and share a bunk and a bump in the night with Scooter. Sheesus, Larry - you've seen what Fitzgerald's done to Karl. Jenny Craig couldn't get those results even if she was trafficking in cocaine. From its inception, this program has been carefully reviewed by me - *cough* I mean, the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration and we just want to let George run rampant in the jungle until the time is ripe to dissolve Congress, and send the entire judicial branch home in time to watch the premier of Ms. Alito's made-for-TV movie on LifeTime.


Our options, as Peter Daou explains, are rather limited and I'm leaning towards the uphill struggle bit. Cajoling the hell out of the corporate MSM, their sponsors, and their shareholders would be a fine start (works for L. Brent Bozell - keeps him out of the unemployment lines but not out of lawsuits from professional wrestling moguls) and I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone to drop a dime on their elected Representatives as well as tighting the screws a notch or two on Harry Reid and Howard Dean.

Just don't trust Nancy Pelosi ...


|

Rage Against "The Machine"

Boy, I don't know if Hunter realizes this, but his recent entry at entitled "A Million Tiny Strands" does a hell of a lot more than take us through a roller coaster ride, exposing the myriads of connections in the rightwing's penchant for "Swift Boating" dissenters, particularly the recent campaign against Sen. John Murtha and Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 Election. That's only the tip of the iceberg -- this shows exactly how the Rightwing Noise Machine was built in the first place. Armed with those blueprints, the Rightwing Noise Machine can be completely torn down and cast into the vast sea of irrelevancy within the confines of public discourse forever! Read the whole thing first - I'll wait ...

Christ, the connections Hunter has uncovered speak volumes: CNSNews (and it's parent - Media Research Council, helmed by FOX News mainstay L. Brent Bozell), Fumento, Ron Arnold, Exxon-Mobil, Monsanto, Marc Morano (former producer for Rush Limbaugh during Mid-1990s and current CNSNews "Journalist"), CORE and its talking head Niger Innis, Paul Driessen, Patrick Moore, Joseph Farah WingNutDaily, biotech lobbying firms BIO and AgBioWorld, Robert Bindinotto, Dennis Avery the Hudson Institute, Fred Smith's Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institute, Tech Central Science Foundation, Alan Gottlieb's Center For The Defense Of Free Enterprize, Rev. Sun Myung Moon's American Freedom Coalition, and last but not least Karl Rove.

These connections underly three basic tenets that serves as the bricks and mortar of the entire Right Wing Noise Machine but before I get to them, let me remind you that the departed (and sorely missed) blogger Arthur Silber earlier last year wrote an essay where he pointed out that Republicans really don't hate the media -- they're obsessed with it. That obsession is evidenced by the Right Wing Noise Machine's presence itself, how well organized it is, how many pundits and ditto-heads it employs to advance the GOPs talking points and rhetoric via their penchant toward opinionated journalism. But it is by their obsession of the media and their desire to influence and/or control it at all costs where their other more darker obsessions are laid bare for all to see -- Race, Religion, & Revenue. As far as I'm concerned, those are the three "R"s of Republicanism today and they likewise function as the triangular cornerstones of their entire propaganda machine.

Obsessions with fetuses, crotches, darkies and wetbacks, Islamic terrorists, welfare queens, and homosexuals pale in comparison simply because those smaller obsessions are just the bastard children of their larger obsessions -- race, religion, and revenue. Republicans are deeply and tragically scared shitless of anybody that isn't white (e.g race), are constantly in anxiety on whether or not God approves of their conduct (e.g. religion), and totally quake in their penny loafers wondering when their God returns as "King Of Kings - Lord of Lords", what is going to be the nature of beast? What's going to be Christ's political and social policies? In other words, "Will Jesus be a Marxist/Socialist and redistribute all my hard-earned money to the parasitic welfare state?!?" That really makes them shudder because they know that if Christ happens to be someone other than a Conservative Republican, they can't bribe, can't impeach, and sure as Hell can't assassinate Him. Been there, done that, and look what Satan's getting for the effort. Besides, he's King. Here for a 1,000 year reign -- like it or not, right?)

They don't know how to deal with such things and it fills them with anxiety and worry that permeates every fiber of their being. No ammount of praying, fasting, seeking advice from a pastor, visiting a psychiatrist, popping perscription anti-anxiety drugs, NOTHING can help them cope with it (since their pastors, counselors, and psychiatrists worry about them, too) and so they need to surround themselves with something insulatory; something big, loud, and powerful enough to outblare the din of their own consciences. This is where the obsession with the media comes in -- it isn't so much as to control the media and necessarily bullshit the masses (although for the Strassians, that does help) but it's more along the lines of controling the media in order to bullshit and reassure themselves.

The power of the mass media can make anything popular, and therefore acceptable (e.g. "right") thus the bullshitting of the masses is how they create "popular opinion" and the "popular opinion" is used in their own minds to keep the imaginary boogey men at bay for, in their minds, "right" makes "might". I think this is evidenced by that way Republicans/Conservatives and their pundits often touted Bush's popularity polls 18 months ago as a means of poo-pooing away any arguments to the contrary that'd show just how much of a total knuckle-dragging asshat their Dear Leader might be. Now with Bush's approval rating hovering around 39%-40%, those same yokels no longer bring that subject up and rabidly castigate those that dare so (e.g. "damned liberal media").

Back in my days at NvNews, whenever I'd get lambasted by resident Conservatives for "playing the race card", "playing the religion card", or "defending the lazy and shiftless welfare state", I've always retorted that as long as a Conservative Republican exists in this country, both the race and religion cards are in a perpetual state of play because it's the Conservative Republicans whom must keep them in play. Their obsessions with them eat them alive. Along with their obsession with money, all three are constantly at the forefront of their rhetoric-based media empire. However, they must be disguised from detection by pushing ear-tickling platitudes and "feel-good" journalism. Through their obsessions with race, religion, and revenue, all of those racial/big business/religious connections Hunter discovered in CNSNews's attempt to Swift Boat Sen. Murtha shows that by having such a morbid obsession with the media, Conservatives and Republicans at this point aren't concerned as much as using their stranglehold with the media in trying to advance a story (e.g. does Murtha's deserve his medals) as they are in using it to kill one.

That story is the first casualty of every war -- the truth.

Got enough fucking blood on your hands, Karl?!?


|

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Charter Communications To Lose $13,000 Over $35 Late Fee

Back in the late 1990s when I worked the loading docks of a growing retailer/grocer, a portion of our training consisted of proper customer assistance. Just because we were on the dock doesn't mean we wouldn't be on the sales floor in full view of shoppers. Quite the contrary is true: we'd be on the sales floor periodically throughout our shift if we ever have to assist other departments. So, regardless of the department we worked in, we were all trained in customer service because at any time we were on the sales floor, we could get stopped by shoppers asking where certain items were even if we didn't know exactly where they were, if we carried them, or had any in stock if we did. That training said to be courteous and either escort the customer to the product (even if we could tell them something like, "It's in the middle of aisle 6, second shelf on the left") or escort them to another employee who may know. Saying, "Sorry, it's not my department" was a good way to get repremanded by management and your union steward.

Why was that?

Because the company's training gurus taught us that their own marketing research showed that every single person that walks into the store -- even if they only browsed and purchased nothing during their visit -- was worth over $30,000 a year to them alone. Their logic consisted of this: A typical customer spends an average of $3,000 a year in the store and if they were to walk up to me for assisstance and I responded something like, "Sorry, it's not my department" or "I've got no idea", that customer wouldn't be happy with their shopping experiance and may decide to never return, thus taking their $3,000 a year somewhere else. Since that customer knows at least 10 other people consisting of friends and family, they're going tell them, "Never shop at this place! They're horrible" and suddenly the loss of that one single person's $3,000 a year alone turns into $30,000 because for those 10 people are likely to their $3,000 elsewhere, too. Having worked marketing and research prior to self-employment building and fixing computers, I can honestly say that their logic is right on the money -- never underestimate the power of "word-of-mouth" advertizing because it'll make or break you.

This brings me to Charter Communications, the company we have Digital Cable and Internet service from. Last year, we busted Charter Communications in an unethical business practice known as "cramming/slamming" -- they tried to argue that we were behind one month on our cable bill when in reality we were not. These arguments took place over the course of 3-4 weeks when they ultimately said that if we didn't pay them the $120 past due bill, they'd shut off my service within 72 hours. This forced me to lose one day of work to stay home, locate every returned check and paid Charter bill for the past 6 months, and show up at their local office where I dropped it all right on their sorry laps daring them to call me and my bank liars right to my face. After a good hour of haggling, Charter backed their asses down and said that we were caught up. I demanded they put it in writing stating that I indeed owed them no more money, that it was all misunderstanding on their part, and they grudgingly did so. From there, I promised them (I don't make threats because threats are for the insecure) that if they ever forced me to lose a day of work to come down and jump their asses again, they'd only thing I'd be paying for is the gas it took to return two digitial decoders and a cable modem for their prompt insertion into their asses if they refused to give me a month of free service. After all, losing a day's work is $80-$100 I'll never see.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago. I had a network problem and had to call their support line, go through their rigamorale, and in the end had to schedule an appointment for a service call. A few moments later, I solve the problem myself (we computer gurus have always said 90% of all computer problems are the fault of the person at the keyboard and, by all means, we gurus aren't immune) and call them back to cancel the service call. The tech I talked to then suggested that I keep the appointment because "your cable modem is returning way too much voltage to us". No problem - I keep the appointment. When the local tech came, I told him exactly what the nationwide tech told me about the cable modem returning to much voltage.

What does this moron do? He removes the coax from the back of the modem, hooks it up to a small machine, and does a line quality test. In other words, he didn't physical test the modem at all -- just the integrity of the drop. The drop was fine because even the nationwide tech was jealous that my Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) was in the mid 40s (to which I responded like a braggart, "Yeap, it's slightly better than my sound card!") Naturally, the local tech found no problem (DUH) and I told him he just wasted his time -- the modem was the problem. He glanced at the modem and says, "Oh, that's a top of the line modem!"

Right off the bat, my bullshit alarm is ringing because my 15+ years of computer hardware software experiance says that a Motorola SURFBoard SB4100 is NOT top of the line -- the fucking thing is barely DOCSIS 1.x compliant. It was "top of the line" a few years ago when the fastest connection Charter offered was 1Mb down. Today, Charter's slowest speed package is 3Mb down ... and this modem barely handles it because the DOCSIS 1.x white paper I read at the time suggested that although the technology is capable of supporting a max of 8Mb, expect stability issues as low as 3Mb (alot of other DOCSIS 1.x modems start to overheat and puke after 2.5Mb barrier such as an infamous RCA model). Furthermore, DOCSIS 1.x modems couldn't handle large upsteam bandwidth since it didn't support advancements in digital modulation. So the "top of the line" title at this very moment goes to the DOCSIS 2.x Complaint Motorola SURFBoard 5200 series as DOCSIS 2.0 properly fixes the myriads of kinks the prior 1.x standard was plagued with as well as certifies the maximum theorhetical downstream speed capability to something like 15-30Mb (the fastest Charter offers now is 4Mb is some small areas and Comcast is starting to roll out an 8Mb package now). Obviously, this tech thought I was an idiot but I went along with him because made me sick. The faster he finished up, the faster he'd get out of my sight.

A few days later, we make a $90 payment.

The very next day, a very rude Charter Communications representative calls us and again tries to argue that we owe them $152 for the period of December 21th of last year to January 20th of this year. Mind you, they made this argument that just before Christmas, meaning they're trying to claim that we owe them for services they haven't even rendered yet (January 20th was still a month away). When we told them we just paid them $90, they asked when we'd be able to pay the remaining ballance. We argued the remaining ballance is only $35 and if we can come up with it, they'd would get it but money is tight. It's Winter in Michigan and between energy and gasoline costs, money is stretched as it is. Charter Communications then told us that if they didn't recieve the $35 within 3-5 days, our service would be interrupted. If payment wasn't recieved within so many days after the interuption, our service would be disconnected. In other words, Charter Communications goes from "craming/slamming" us a year ago to graduating to point blank extortion -- extortion because the back of their invoices state that if service is ever interrupted, they reserve the right to add additional fees such as a re-connection fee. This reconnection fee would be to re-enable our DCR boxes. Our service was indeed interrupted a week later when Charter disabled both Digital Cable recievers during the wee hours of the morning. Extended basic still worked as well as my internet service so in order to watch TV, we had to disconnect the DCRs and hook the drops direct to our TVs.

Just 4 hours ago, I get the following birthday present -- a contractor with Charter shows up to disconnect my service entirely, collect the two DCRs, and the cable modem if we didn't pay. I said, "Over $35 fucking dollars?!?" and he looks at his clibboard and says, "My sheet says you owe at least $115 and I've gotta disconnect if I don't get at least $55 from you today." I hit the roof and told him, "Fuckin' slice it then. I'm calling Comcast. Wait there, I'll get your gear." I start to unhook my DCR box and he says, "Man, I'm just doing my job but I probably can take a check for $35." I realize today is Saturday so even if I did call Comcast, the latest they could hook me back up would be the following Wednesday (even if they told me Monday over the phone, knowing Comcast's track record) So, now I gotta dip into the funds meant for another bill. I write his monkey ass a check for $35 and hand over one DCR and consider telling him that if Charter doesn't get bought by Comcast soon, his employment days are numbered anyway because in the end, my $35 deliquency just cost Charter more than $13,000 this year allready in lost revenue.

How come?

Because I've noticed over the past two years that all cable companies offer package deals where in the end, the price is deliberately fixed so that they can collect at least $100-$120 a month per customer. If you just get regular basic (Channel 2 thru 75 or so) and internet service, you pay more a month for the internet service. However, if you sign up for Digital, the internet goes down a few bucks. No matter what, cable providers are trying to market their package deals in a way so that you are paying an average monthly bill (Expanded Basic Or Digital, 0 to 1 Premium, 3MB Internet) of $100-$120. Multiply that by 12 months and that's an estimated $1,300 a year.

Since they've been a pain in my ass for the past year now, I'm done with these crooked, bankrupt, incompetent idiots so there goes their $1,300 from me. Ahhh, but I also know at least 10 other people with Charter and as soon as I'm done posting this entry, I'll be calling them up on the phone telling them that the end of my days sustaining Charter Communications from their inevitible bankruptcy are nigh at hand with the deliberate purpose of getting those 10 friends and family members to dump Charter at the first opportunity they can. And the coup de grace? You're looking at it -- my latest SiteMeter figures suggest that TBT generates roughly 20 hits a day. Of course, that's hits; not site views. Those hits mainly stem from search engines but a hit in a Google search for "Charter Communications" could translate to a pageview for TBT ... and those people might just be Charter customers as well whom may need just one excuse to dump their service, too.

Do the math.

Charter Communications sure as hell isn't.


|

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Anti-ACLU Rhetoric: An Exegesis On Fearmongering

Perusing through dKos's frontpage, DarkSyde posts an interview with Ed Brayton, the blogger behind Dispatches From The Culture Wars. The interview goes into the subject of Anti-ACLU rhetoric that the rightwing moonbats and their Fundy Fristian base keep milking in order to keep Bible-based Red Staters perpetually enslaved on the GOP's plantation. By reminding of us two specific legal cases, Ed lassos the entire Anti-ACLU brigade and yanks them violently from off the top of their moral tree where they then proceed to smack every single branch on the way down:



DS: The ACLU seems to be targeted for misinformation by the theocratic element of the GOP: Do you as an Independent sense an organized effort to undermine and/or eliminate the ACLU, and if so, who, what, where, and why?

EB: Oh, absolutely there is. The ACLU is a convenient boogeyman for a wide range of groups and it is very useful as a fundraising tool. Bear in mind what I said before about politics being now largely an exercise in marketing. One of the principal tools of marketing is fear. People are afraid and insecure in all sorts of situations and marketers exploit that to sell products. Afraid of bad breath that might make you lose that date with the girl you like? Don't worry, just buy our product and your breath will be minty fresh. And we'll sell you zit cream and teeth whitening toothpaste and weight loss products and even new cars using essentially the same techniques. And the same thing is true in political marketing. There's that great line in the movie The American President where one politician says of his opponent, "Whatever your problems are, I promise you that Bob Rumson isn't the least bit interested in solving them. Bob Rumson is interested in two things - making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections." And that is indeed how elections are won these days.

For a wide range of religious right leaders - Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and many others - the ACLU has become, quite literally, their meal ticket. By blaming the ACLU for the moral rot in America, they scare simple-minded folks who long for a mythical past when everything was so much better and induce them to send in money to protect them from this boogeyman. And it wouldn't bother me nearly so much if the marketing campaign was not so deceitful.

DS: What's an example of distorting or lying about the ACLU that we hear too often from the right?

EB: Oh boy, I can think of lots of them. I'll give you a general example ... In the early 90s there was a Supreme Court case called Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches. It involved a church in New York that wanted to rent a public school auditorium to show a series of films. The school district had a policy that community groups could rent their facilities after school hours, but not churches or religious groups. The church filed suit and they were represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson's legal group headed by Jay Sekulow. They won the case, as well they should have. But when the case was over and they had won, Jay Sekulow went on the 700 Club and talked to Pat Robertson and they proclaimed that this case was a "great victory against the ACLU." There was only one problem with that - the ACLU was on their side in the case. The ACLU had submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs arguing that the school district's policy was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and should be voided.

Another example, and more recent, involves Jerry Falwell. In a nationally syndicated column last year, Falwell discussed a case in Massachusetts where a group of students were suspended from school for handing out candy canes with religious messages attached to them on a little card at Christmas time. In that column, Falwell said that students have the right to pass out religious literature "no matter what the ACLU says." But here again, this was highly dishonest. Not only was the ACLU on the same side in the case, it was the ACLU who wrote a letter to the principal on behalf of these very same students telling him that the suspension was unconstitutional, that the students had every right to distribute the candy canes and that if the decision was not reversed they would be filing a suit. The school reversed its position as a result of that letter, lifted the suspension and apologized to the students.

One could easily go on all day with similar examples. The fact is that the ACLU has consistently defended the rights of Christians to exercise their religion freely. They have defended the rights of street preachers to preach on public sidewalks and public property all over the nation, from Indiana to Washington to Las Vegas to New Mexico. They have defended the right of churches to perform baptisms in public parks. They have defended churches against zoning restrictions that are an undue burden on them, including defending Jerry Falwell himself against the city of Lynchburg in a case against a city zoning regulation that forbid his church from owning more than a certain amount of property.


Oh, and before we forget, we also don't know to what extent Rush Limbaugh himself waltzed with drugs other than OxyContin thanks to the ACLU's liberal-as-all-hell defense of his right to medical privacy. Nevertheless, by dredging up those two cases Ed shows exactly where Pat Roberton, Jerry Falwell, Tony Perkins, Lou Sheldon, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly (just to name a few) would be at today without the ACLU: ON WELFARE! Forget those full loaded Lexuses and multi-million dollar vacation homes in Florida -- every single one of these sanctimonious blowhards would be ...



... LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!


|

IRS Joins GOP's "War On Those People"

When I posted the other day regarding David Sirota's exposure of the IRS, I missed this from USA Today:

The IRS has frozen refunds for hundreds of thousands of low-income taxpayers without telling them they're being investigated for tax fraud or giving them a chance to defend themselves, the IRS taxpayer advocate said Tuesday.

In a blistering report to Congress, Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson said complaints about unpaid tax refunds have soared more than 400% since 2002. Sixty-six percent of those who complained were entitled to a full refund, an investigation by her office found. An additional 14% were determined to be eligible for a partial refund, Olson says.


Translation?





Granted, the above picuture may be agitprop in the context of Islamic terrorism but, in the minds of a your typical rightwing, Bible-thumping, Freeper/Green Footballing rube, there's very few degrees of seperation between the "them" in that picture and the "those kind" of New Orleans.


|

Freepers Ressurrect "The Gong Show"

John recently got this wild e-mail:

So, John I guess I've figured you out. I wonder if the rest of your poster's really know who you are, what your about and who you really work for. They will know very soon whom you work for John. You work for the Government. You allow all these anti-war, anti-Bush posts at C L for the sole purpose for these posters to rounded up later and arrested. That free publicity about C L was just to get more people at your site. We are to Mr. Amato, if that is your real name, and very soon you will be exposed for the fraud that you are.

In other words ...

Freepers such as this loopy bastard believes with all their heart, mind, and soul that the vast leftwing conspiracy tanks within the U.S. Government deliberately seeked out a former Duran Duran saxophone player turned video-blogger for a little super double-secret background work on the side.

Chuck Barris, eat your fucking heart out.

SwOoOoSh ... GoOnG!


|

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Bush's Bullito Is Borkalicious

Ms. Shakes links to Gordon who wastes no time in cracking Scalito upside the gourd:

Falwell, Santorum, and Dobson are for Alito's confirmation. Filibuster? Hell, yes!


Anyone the gets the blessing of the Tali-born Again, Fundy Fristian rightwingers needs to be Borked like nobody has been Borked before, moreso than Bork himself as Gordon is backed up by -Yasss, pah-rayze Jebus!- you guessed it: Dr. Gerry Lower who baptizes them in a shower of Lincoln Logs prior to setting them on fire:

Religious fundamentalism becomes religious psychosis when employed to coerce the people into collective action against their own interests (and in the interests of someone else). It becomes psychosis when employed to justify self-righteousness and belligerence on the world stage. It becomes psychosis when it imposes itself on democracy.


Dr. Lower's essay raises an interesting (and harrowing) observation: what I said earlier in regards to how Rightwing Christianity's pushing for "intelligent design" in public schools is the ultimate proof that they openly admit that our churches are failing in their duties is evidenced by the very presence of "intelligent design" itself. You know why Rightwing Christians are pushing ID sooo much?!? It's because they know it's their only way to finally get "creationism" back into the system. Think about that: they had to take Bible-based "creationism" and re-package it as something else in the hope and intent of deceiving the masses. Last time I checked the Bible, deception was the game of Satan; not Christ.

So, to save our asses and our Democracy, Scalito is Borkalicious.


|

The Smoking Gun Of Our "Corporatocracy"

David Sirota reveals a huge 30-year-old double-standard the IRS uses when parsing taxes between the rich and the poor. Read it and seriously consider excercising your 2nd Amendment on the way to the ballot box from now on. That or arm yourself with a timeclock. Personally, I've haven't decided on what I'll be showing up with at the voting booth this year -- could be anything consisting of a gun, a timeclock, a razor, shaving cream, a Legg's pantyhose egg ... or all of the above.

The rich -- from Kerry to Bush -- can go fuck themselves if they want to sic the NSA, CIA, FBI or whatever on my ass because the simple truth is it's a very, very, dangerous thing for the rich to have too many American poor people with nothing more to lose. Guns are the poor man's lawyer. Lawyers are the rich man's gun.

I'm fucking sick of this selective "War on Terror" we've got. Terrorism is something that isn't just limited to Islamic fundamentalists. People who can't find jobs because the outsourced employees of the Corportocracy (e.g. our policitians) are too busy watching the Corportocracy itself outsource them to India is terrorism. Poor people who are starving and homeless in this country is terrorism. Elderly whom can't afford their 2000-4000% marked-up perscriptions is terrorism.

If our politicians can spend TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars every 4-6 years for the fucking privelege of a $200,000 job in Washington, DC, then by God they can spare no expense on Americans by providing security, defense, healthy food at reasonable prices, health care, etc. The list goes on and on. If they're not going to stand and deliver, then we need to stand and deliver -- by ballots or bullets. It's high time for the Halliburtons, the Bechtels, the News Corps, the GEs, the Viacoms, and the Microsofts (and their purchased politicians) to get their asses shoved back.

Break the monotony -- Bust the Corporatocracy.

Power to the people ...


|

Monday, January 09, 2006

Murtha & Moran's "Town Hall" Joke

Yesterday morning on C-SPAN, I caught the last 20 minutes of a town hall meeting joined by Sen. Murtha and Sen. Moran and some of the things Moran said at the ass end of this pissed me off to no end.

At the 59 Minute mark, a Marine reservist from Virginia relates a story involving his son in Iraq whom operates a 155mm cannon drops the burning question:
"With this criminal negligence going on, why shouldn't you impeach Bush & Cheney?"


While the crowd went nuts with applause, whistles, hoots and hollers, Sen. Murtha's face was grim and he nodded until they quieted. The following was his answer:

I tell ya, I get alot of letters just like that. And with real [unintelligible] and concern about what's happening and the direction we're going and I think the reason why I got such an outpouring of people calling, faxing, writing ... because they're so distressed by what's happening. They're so distressed by the fact that [The Bush Administration] has been so arrogant and not listen to an ordinary person. So [unintelligible] making the sacrifices and that's what's so frustrating to the American people.


Sounds like Murtha dodged the question.

Moran, however, did not but his answer is totally unconscionable:

I don't think impeachment is the right course of action. We have a democracy and the right course of action is to express yourself at the polls, for the American people to get united and to elect leaders that uh ... are going to uh ... be honest with them and carry out the policies that they feel are more responsible and -- as you know, I voted against President Clinton's impeachment. I think impeachment is uh ... is inconsistant with the Democratic process and uh ... [at this point, some people in crowd heckled Moran with questions] ... the other fact is it's not gonna happen. Congress is controlled by the Republican Party. This is a moot issue and I appreciate the kind of response because I happen to be in the other party and have different views from the party of this Administration. But, it's not going to happen, but uh people like you and around the worl-erm country can change the course through the Democratic process and that's what has to be done when you feel that strongly ...


TRANSLATION: "What's in it for me?!?"

Good fucking Christ, Senator -- why didn't you just flip the man from Virginia the middle finger. Would've saved you a shitload of breath and would've have removed all doubt as to what this town hall meeting was all about -- a demagogic appeal to filch votes, money, and power from the audience for the expressed purpose of continuing the "Culture of Complacency" within the Democratic Party! Being the minority party is no damned excuse -- Harry Reid shut down the Senate for hours in order to put the squeeze on the Republican "ownership society" regarding the second phase of the 9/11 whitewashing Commission's report. Clearly, there are options the Democrats can utilize to force the corrupt Republican bastards to toss Bush and his administration under the bus. If the American people can't trust the Democrats to lead, follow, or obstruct as a MINORITY, how in the flying fuck do you expect them to trust the Democrats to lead, follow, obstruct as a MAJORITY?!? If you want to keep your $200,000 a year job, Senator Moran, you've got EARN it and the only way to earn it to make a damned stand irregardless of the status of the Democratic party instead of making excuses.

Later on at the end of the meeting (which the MP3 doesn't cover but C-SPAN's coverage did), Sen. Moran hung around a little while longer while Sen. Murtha left and he fielded more questions. One of the answers he gave to a question speaks volumes and I'll paraphrase here:

The Democratic party isn't going to be outraged until the American people become outraged.


TRANSLATION: "We Democrats have no conscience unless we're given a permission slip to have one!"

What a complete and utter fucktard. Yo, planet Earth to Sen. Moran -- if you didn't come pre-packaged with a conscience before you plopped your sorry ass on our time and dime as a Senator, then the only thing you've admitted here is the fact that you yourself need to be REPLACED come this November and I sure as hell hope the "democratic process" succeeds in taking care of that problem. Besides that, you should already HAVE a permission slip to have a conscience, otherwise what the fuck else have WE been delivering to you every April 15th and 4th November -- a permission slip to keep collecting a $200,000 welfare check for doing nothing?!?! If that's what you think, you've only got 8 months to find yourself a whole new, 300 Million strong, group of American sugar-daddies because you're starting to sound like one very expensive, high-maintainence date. One that doesn't "put out", if I may be so bold.

Sen. Moran also made this observation about the Republican "Culture of Corruption" at the 58:50 mark:

Some people are more than happy to hold other people accountable but not themselves.


Indeed, and as far as I'm concerned, Sen. Moran needs to take a good look at the nearest mirror but I doubt he has the testicular fortitude to do so since his own complacency will stare right back at him. This "Culture of Complacency" permeates the Democratic party and Moran's words here at this joke of a Town Hall meeting should be the proverbial millstone around his neck. Our Democrats have a pathetic, whiny, and borderline sanctimonious attitude that bleats and brays like a stuck mule, "Ohh, woe is us. We can't do anything since we're the minority and the only way for that to change is for the people to come along and empower to us."

My answer to that? Hey, Democrats -- how does it feel to feel like a circa 1960s Rosa Parks?!? Actually, that's probably an insult to Rosa Parks because when she realized no politician was ever going to come along and empower her, she grew a spine and empowered herself. Our Democrats need to do the same -- they need to empower themselves first. Then and only then do they deserve empowerment from us -- the voters and tax-payers. If that means impeaching or containing the dictator we've got for a President now ... then it's sink or swim time for the Democratic party.

Period.

And leave the jokes to John Stewart.


|