Apparently it really IS rocket surgery

Astronomers have "discovered" a 10th planet, according to the Chicago Tribune (though it's unclear how you discover something that's older than you are).

Fundamentalist Christians dispute scientists' claims to have found the newest official member of our solar system, saying that the Bible revealed long ago that there were many more than nine planets--since no "intelligent designer" would have made a 9-planet system. "It's unbalanced," said true believer and avid mouthbreather Derrell Hapler of the Intelligent Design Research Center in Modesto, CA. "What kind of God would make an odd number of planets? I mean, if every planet was either male or female, that would leave one without a mate--how would that work--there's no gays or threesomes in the solar system." Mr. Hapler is apparently unaware of Greek and Roman mythology, in which the planets are sexed and Pluto, or Hades, attempted to take as his bride Persephone, human and daughter of the goddess of the Spring, Demeter.

Be that as it may, according to the actual article in the Tribune (ie, this is something I'm not making up), the unnamed planet shines so brightly that "an amateur stargazer could have spotted it years ago."

And THESE are some of the same people Bush wants to give more money to so we can go to Mars? They can't even find a fucking planet that's visible with the naked eye.

The Greatest American Hero

Lance Armstrong lost an appeal in Britain to keep a newspaper from publishing an article about his steroid use. Um, "alleged" steroid use. Doesn't matter--the modifier doesn't protect anyone from getting sued. Um, "alleged" modifier. "Allegedly."

Why didn't we hear about this during the Tour de France--especially since the book about Lance's doping was written by a Frenchman? Oh, yeah: because we're a nation of chest-thumping idiots who would rather see a doper do something amazing than a normal athlete perform to the best of his abilities. You hit that ball, Barry! RIDE that cycle, Lance! RUN that 100-meters really fast, generic black man with huge diamond stud earring!! You are what the USA is all about!

"Believe it or not, it's just meeeee...um, I mean 'bovine growth hormone and meeeeeee'. Oops."

Parable

One month ago, my neighbor came over and told me that he wanted to burn down the house of the guy who lived on the other side of his lot. My neighbor, Dave, said that the other guy, Pete, had been planning to steal his lawn tractor. I said that I didn't know anything about that, but then Dave got mad and accused me of covering up for Pete. Then, he said that he had been "sanctioning" Pete for a few weeks by not talking to him, but that Pete showed no signs of giving up on his plan to steal Dave's lawn tractor. Dave asked me to help him burn down Pete's house.

I said no. That would be criminal, and such action would be based on unfounded suspicion. The whole thing sounded made-up, like a figment of Dave's vengeful imagination (Pete had hit on Dave's wife a few years back at the neighborhood bar-b-q).

A few days later, I awoke in the pre-dawn hours to the sound of sirens. Pete's house was burning furiously, and within an hour it was no more. Amid the smoking ashes stood Dave, who yelled to anyone within earshot that he had done it and that Pete deserved it. Moreover, Dave told everyone present that he had actually done it to protect everyone's lawn tractors, since Pete wouldn't stop after stealing Dave's tractor but would have gone on to take every tractor in the neighborhood and had, in fact, stolen his own lawn tractor from his own family--his wife's brother, to be exact. But, amid the smoldering ruin, there was no tractor to be found, nor even the accoutrements of lawn tractor ownership: no gas can, no leaf bag; nothing. Later on, Dave claimed that he had done it not because of lawn tractors--since none had been found--but because Pete needed a new home and could not get one until the old one was demolished. I thought this was ludicrous and, frankly, so obvious a lie as to be beneath contempt, but Dave persisted and managed to convince the neighborhood association that he had acted out of charity and benevolence in destroying Pete's home.

The story gets more bizarre. Two weeks ago, Dave showed up at my house again. He said that he had been ordered by the court to rebuild Pete's house. Dave said he was really sorry and that he would do everything to put the house back together--not as Pete had it, but as Dave would like it, since "everybody knows that Pete is a goddamn asshole and his old house sucked. No one should have to live like that." Dave's plan was to build a five-story apartment building on the site, even though Pete and his wife live alone, with no kids. The whole building seemed to suit Dave's large family better than Pete's small one. I guess Dave thought he was being generous.

Anyway, Dave asked for my help to rebuild the house. I reminded him that I didn't think he should have burned it down in the first place, but he paid me no mind. In fact, Dave insisted that I help him, and that I pay for the whole thing. He said that, even though Pete didn't want him to build him an apartment building, this was the best structure for the site and would, in the long run, yield the most profit. "The most profit for whom?" I asked, but Dave again paid me no mind. "They all think alike," Dave said. "Just like you and me--right, buddy? I mean, who wouldn't want to live in an apartment building instead of a single-family home? That's the American way!"

I told Dave that his plan was fallacious, and that every American had a different concept of the American Dream, but he would have none of it. In the end, he built the huge building on Pete's lot. Pete and his wife couldn't use it, so they moved away. I wound up paying for most of the construction, and am still paying on the debt today. And Dave? He bought the building at auction and is making a fine living renting the apartments to college students.


*What do you think? Too subtle?

How NOT to Think

This is so bad it's hard to look at, but Liberty University just hosted a creationist Mega-Conference. A telling example of the wisdom presented:

Do not let evidence fuel your appreciation of God. Let your appreciation of God influence your view of the evidence.
-Carl Kerby

So, in other words, god gives us a level of cognition higher than any other mammal, but prefers we not use it. What would jebus do? Embrace willfull stupidity, apparently.

To think that a university, if we can call it that, gives host to speakers who insist that the world is only 6000 years old is either laughable or scary, and I'm not sure which. Either way, it's bad theology, non-science, and a good reason to kick the state of Virginia out of the Union, and while we're at it, I'm not above agreeing to launch Virginia Beach into the Atlantic. But, since Richmond's music scene has given us the talent of Lamb of God and Strike Anywhere, I'll let the state slide. For now.
_______________________________________________________

Or, for more in-depth analysis, see Jason Rosenhouse's description at pandasthumb.org

Speaking of Stupid

Reproductive scientists at UC Riverside just discovered that exposure to cigarette smoke reduces transport of eggs in hamsters. Wow. What a productive use of research time and funding. What we learn from this, I guess, is that if you're pursuing an exciting career in hamster husbandry, and you also smoke, perhaps you should quit.

The co-editor of the journal says this research provides another cautionary note about the harmful health effects of smoking. Thanks. I knew, as has everbuddy for most of the last century, that this stinky expensive habit would give me lung cancer and emphysema, but now that I know it also will keep my hamster dam from producing pups, shit, I'm gonna quit now.

The animal rights hippies will surely use this as an example of why we shouldn't experiment on animals, and while we most certainly should use animals for research, this little project makes it hard to defend the right side of that issue. Next time, let's develop a drug that makes us smokers develop explosive hot diarrhea in the presence of nicotine . . . now that's research I would support.

World Stupidity Awards

Bush "only" won once. But, Ann Coulter won for "Stupidest Man of the Year". Ha!

"HOW MANY troops died today?? Well, GAAAAAAWWWW-DAAAAAMN!! Hooo-boy, that's depressin'!! But you know me, I'm workin' hard..at, uh...somethin'! Not gettin' 'em any body armor, or raising their health benefits or pay, but I'm doin' SOMETHIN', and it's HARD WORK!"

"I don't know him...and fuck the Wall Street Journal!"

We watched Three Days of the Condor last night and my, what a prescient movie. Robert Redford plays a man employed as a low-level CIA analyst, who reads all published books and tries to discern patterns in them (codes, recurring words, dirty tricks, etc.). He discovers that there is a secret cabal within the CIA that is planning an invasion of the Middle East solely to secure its oil. His report is passed to his section chief, one of the cabal, who then orders a hit on Redford's entire office to prevent the truth from making it to higher circles. Redford miraculously escapes, hides out for a few days in NY, then manages to get to the people at the head of the secret ring. In the end, with all the conspirators dead and the CIA higher-ups once again in control, Redford ends up talking to the head of the agency, Higgins, on a street in the city. Just as he had been warned by a free-lance hitman (played by the superb Max von Sydow) earlier, Higgins, whom he trusts, offers him a ride and Redford suspects that it will be his last. He declines, then engages Higgins in conversation about the plan to steal the world's oil. The crux of the thing is that Higgins, despite having just quelled a revolt from within his own agency, believes that the plan could have worked; the US could have taken over Middle East oil fields easily and would have then controlled the world. Redford, incredulous, asks him how that would gibe with our "cherished ideals" like democracy, free and open political communication, and respect for human rights. Higgins replies that he could not care less about those things and, at heart, neither could most Americans. "Ask 'em? Twenty years from now, when their heat doesn't work and they're cold, when people who have never known hunger begin to go hungry, do you think they'll want us to ask them? No, they'll just want us to get it for them" Higgins says. Then, he asserts that all dirty tricks are allowed, because "the other side plays games, too." Sound like anybody you know?

The only flaw I see in the film's prognostication is that it didn't aim high enough. Made in 1975, just two years after Nixon resigned, the filmmakers felt that the CIA was the biggest potential world-wrecker out there; not the White House. Spooks, they said, would subvert democracy and take over the world. Well, exactly 30 years on, it is in fact sitting presidents, their businessmen aides and fathers, and corporate interests that dictate our world domination fantasies. And popular culture of the kind Redford scanned in the film has become the conduit of propaganda of the simplest, most vile kind: totalitarianism dressed in a patriot's clothes. And those working to sew up the world's oil for their own profits no longer pretend to be serving the interests of "America" and they don't send coded messages in the pulp press; they call reporters at the New York Times and Time magazine; they hold White House press conferences and announce their "vision" to the whole world; they pay the American Enterprise Institute millions of dollars to draw up a plan of attack and then they pass it off as sound policy.

Ultimately, Redford and Higgins wind up in front of the New York Times building and Redford says that the game is up: he told the newspaper everything. Higgins looks sick. As Redford begins to walk away, though, Higgins smirks and says, "You can walk away, but it'll be a very short walk if they don't print it." Stumped, and growing nervous, Redford replies, "They'll print it," to which Higgins shoots back, "How do you know they'll print it?" Cut, lights, finis.

In 1975, two years after Watergate, a film came out that insinuated that the American press is just a tool of the government. Hooray for Sidney Pollack; I suppose he must be feeling very smart with his booby prize. And, lo and behold! Judy Miller is in jail, has been proven to be a lying tool of the White House, is protecting a traitor to this country with her silence, and yet, somehow, she's still on the payroll at the Times.

Revolutionary Condiments

The real problem with capitalism isn't class conflict. It isn't oppression. It isn't unbridled, rampant greed. It's the stark reality that capitalism turns everthing into a This Is Spinal Tap caricature of itself. (See: Hell's Angel's Leathers, Harley Davidson, Green Day, Che Lives shirts at the vanilla suburbistan mall (and no, he doesn't, he's quite dead).

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that former Black Panthers have unleashed a new business venture: revolutionary barbeque sauce: Burn Baby Burn. Revolutionary Proletarian Condiments, hot damn! Where do I sign up! I wanna change the world and feed the poor with nitrates and sodium and lycopene! Now, this is understandable - ever one of us would bite the chance to get rich off exploiting whatever social movement we could.

But if you really want to be a fucktard, try to philosophize your product:

"I guess I want to celebrate the history and to let people know the actual facts of the Black Panther Party and how some of these programs are woven in today, like free breakfast programs and the call for free health care, " she said.

"It's not about violence, but the hot sauce will remind people of the rebellion in Watts and how the slogan came about," Hilliard said. "But this is an emphasis on using some of the revenue used by our hot sauce to educate."

Yeah, when I'm eatin mah chicken, I'm thinkin "hey, remember when we hated black people? Didn't that suck? And when our society treated poor children like dirty dogs - oh wait, pass the hot sauce, this barbeque is bland - Watts up with that?" Damn, I'm learnin me so much from these condiments. This is real history, right here - almost as informative as the Let's Orgasm Over Hitler and Hiroshima While Feigning Disgust Channel, aka History Channel. And please pass the vinegar, cause everbuddy knows that jebus only eats eastern nawth carlina bbq, with jesse helms at his side and a buzz*oven record on the player.

Enfamil's 3rd Law of Family Outings: When at the zoo, children will always prefer the sculpture of the gorillas to the actual gorillas.

Living in the Fourth Reich

BBC World News had a story a week from Sunday in which a reporter went to Serbia to cover the homegrown (if very small) movement for a national apology for the massacre at Srebrenica. The video clip was of a debate over responsibility for the killing of over 5,000 (exact number unknown) residents of the Bosnian Muslim town. Mass graves are still being turned up in the area now, almost ten years after the war's end. Anyway, the debate devolved quickly into older attendees chanting the names of fugitive Serbian war criminals and the youth shouting "fascist!" at their parents and elders. Interviews with people on the street revealed mainly ambivalence about dealing with the event in the name of the national conscience. One young man, however, said that he felt bad and that he believed the country should be shamed in atonement.

Germany, it occurs to me, had a similar problem, but on a grander scale. Generations of German youth came up not only reviling their parents and grandparents for their docility or complicity in the actions of the Nazi regime, but also hating their homeland and refusing to use certain words that evoked memories of the war. They have been a long time in working through that internal conflict, and Germany as a nation hasn't completely dealt with its legacy.

What will the United States do in ten years? Smile, shop, drive, and pretend nothing happened? Sure, for a while. Look back at Fahrenheit 9/11 and see the reaction to the Iraqi woman whose son was killed by US troops. Look at the American woman whose son was killed in Iraq. Now look at all the grinning white faces whose children will never die in a foreign war. Do they care? Isn't it obvious that they don't?

But somewhere down the line, we WILL care. As a nation, we will want to reconcile our principles with our actions; we will get tired of suppressing our guilt. And then what will we do? Will we be shamed, as a nation, for our actions? Does that concept even exist in our culture? We have never, as a nation or as a people that thinks it understands its own history, admitted wrong or made atonement. Recall: 110,000 ordinary people were vaporized in one week in 1945. Historians, and that's about the extent of it, debate whether atonement is necessary--sixty years later.

Start planning your legacy now. Your children will ask you about what you did while the United States was murdering the planet, and you'd better have a good answer. Mass murder on the scale of Iraq and Afghanistan has never been carried out by this country before, for this duration, for this goal, and by these means. This is an unique and horrific situation. And it will be back to haunt us. What are you going to do when that happens?

The American Public can Hold Only One Adjective in its Mind at One Time. So, is Karl Rove A: Smart or B: Fat?

Clearly, the answer is B.

Oh, and one more thing: what, besides his obesity and frat-boy arrogance, makes Karl Rove so "special"?

Even the liberals are buying/have bought the line that he's a genius--evil incarnate, however--and can bend the laws of space and time to his whim. Hence, the defeated tone in which he is discussed in left circles.

But what has he ever done that's so brilliant? Take away the free pass he has been issued by the media up until now (and factor in the public's utter disinterest with knowing who the president's advisers are) and explain to me how he's so smart?

Look, his one "attribute", if you can call it that without heaving, is his utter lack of scruples. Being a totally soulless creep is truly rare, I grant you. But it isn't "smart" and it isn't necessarily "scary" either. It's moronic. And now, Rove's bete-noir--his own lack of principle--is biting him in the ass, hard. If not for a media machine that took it upon itself (it was NOT manipulated by Rove, et al, in other words) to keep Al Gore out of the White House, Bush/Rove and co. would never have gotten off the ground.

Look at the situation he's in and then tell me, with a straight face, that he's a fucking genius, that he's "played every hand perfectly", that he's still the master of spin. Go ahead. I dare you. When he's in jail, you can tell me how he's mastered the art of stamping license plates and how he got his cellmate elected head Trusty--as if the warden didn't exist.

I Hate Freedom, Too

It's always seemed like childish gibberish to me, but now I know its genius: when the President says that "the turr'ists hate us for our freedoms" (see?? it still sounds stupid, even when you understand it!), what he really means is: "we have to destroy all them freedoms, so we can get the turr'ists to stop hating us." Really, I'm sure that's it. Just like the shitheel at the Fourth of July fireworks who insists on singing "Only in America" (definitely without irony), so we have been annoying the fuck out of all the other countries on earth with our "free press" and "independent judiciary" and "free speech" and "free choice" and "open political dialogue." I mean, if God wanted us to have the freedom to do what we want to, without inteference from a higher authority, he would have given us free will! But he didn't, and so neither can our governme...oh, wait. He did give us free will. Huh. Well, moving on, then...

So the end result is, the Republicans are actually men of peace, not hate and death and evil. They want world peace. And the way to get it is to remove the thing that makes our enemies hate us: our freedom. Of course, it could just be a case of some ignorant fucktard in the White House shitting all over our Constitution for his and his cronies' personal gain. But that seems farfetched.

Sign me up for a two year hitch at Gitmo! Hoo-haaaah!!

Feral child found in Chicago subway.

Semper F.U.

Turns out the military DOESN'T pay your college costs when you get out. This dumb kid can barely afford community college after a four year hitch in the Army. Of course, he does live in California, where people are a little dumber than in the rest of the nation and colleges cost more, even community colleges (which all the Californians I've met insist on calling "junior colleges" for some reason).

Compounding his problem is the outrageous price of higher education. He wants to transfer to UC-Davis (we ain't even talking Berkeley or UCLA, here) and he needs some $37,000 to go there next year. IN-STATE. What has our Great Leader done about this problem in the last five years? He DID increase the number of federal loans (by splitting the awards and reducing the amount of individual aid), but he hasn't done shit to address the fact that most poor people cannot afford college anymore.

And now, on top of cutting their health benefits, denying them proper equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and cutting their pay, the mis-Administration wants soldiers to PAY INTO the college funding plan AND won't pony up the money to give the kids a decent education. What a fucking joke.

Good thing all the lily-white rich kids in the Young Republicans will soon be flooding the recruitment centers (that is, if Daddy will let young Spencer take the car over to the "colored" side of town)--they already have top-notch educations. Yessir, we'll soon have us the best-taught, yellowest-bellied army this world has ever seen!

No Comment . . .

Toyota skips the Southeastern U.S. for Ontario.

"The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

-CBC News

Avian Jihad

All this time, we've missed the real front for the War on Terrorism. It's not the A-rabs, it's the birds.

Alex, the African Grey, has accidentally learned the concept of zero - a high level mathematical concept that even humans have difficulty grasping. Now, if you want to find a real hardline atheist, find a mathematician. And then, those godless Western philosophers so often appeal to maths to support their virulent, anti-theist arguments. America being God's Pre-Ordained City on a Hill, founded on those holy Biblical principles of Patriarchy and Slavery, atheists are therefore un-American, as the Bushes have told us repeatedly.

And then, just as godless homos spread AIDS, so do birds spread Chlamydia. STD's are God's punishment for sexual immorality, and these birds must be stopped.

Further, birds are attacking planes at airports, and why the hell is the Homeland Security dept. not recognizing this threat? They've killed 200 people since 1998.

And just as the Muslim terrists have sympathizers in academe (Churchill, Chomsky, et al), so do birds have co-conspirators - bird watchers. Fortunately, our Dept. of Homeland Stupidity has jumped on these insurgents. They slink around military bases and bridges with nefarious weapons of mass destruction, like binoculars and cameras. You know damned well that the best weapon to destroy a nation with nuclear weapons is a 35mm Nikon.

Why do birds hate 'merica?

The Comedy of the Working Class

There's something about being poor and desperate that makes a person funny. When I was a jobless malcontent, working for my father as a semi-skilled construction lackey (not really a job at all in the "adult" sense--what you gonna do, live with your parents all your life??!--hence the "jobless" label), I was a fucking laugh riot. I amused myself and all who came within my sphere of interaction with my comic renderings of the day's events and our fellow workers' foibles. It was absolute gold material, too. I suppose that my utter hopelessness translated into fearless experimentation with the limits of taste and language.

But now I'm a damn bourgie graduate student, and I "consume" books and write overly-serious papers that nobody wants to read. And I am not funny. And it's eating me. My sister and her husband were just here. With them were my two nephews. We spent a week together and I can't remember making them laugh even once.

What happened to me?

If you don't think I'm serious, take a look at the archives. The early stuff on this blog I stand behind without reservations, even in its awkwardness. Have I done anything even close to that since? No. That wasn't even a-material and I look back at it longingly.

I think the difference is geographical, as well. With my sisters and my parents, it's always a scream. They are the funniest people I know or have heard of, and when we are all together it's like magic--we all work from the same experience and play effortlessly off of each other in what I can only imagine is something like what great musicians experience when they collaborate. But of course we are not high art; we are crude, and vulgar, and utterly proletarian. These are my favorite memories and my highest aspirations--to make my family laugh. And I don't think it's exclusive: anyone would think it was funny, even you.

There is no one like that in graduate school. I am only the student who isn't "really serious" and every day is one slog after another. Is this what life is like? Why do I feel like I'm becoming dumber by the second? Why is my vocabulary shrinking--all those magnificent epithets replaced by horrid bastards like "problematic" and ""presentist" and "evidentiary threshold"?

Autobiography is not art. Sorry to go on a wank-fest there, but these are the questions that have no answer. What happens to academics to make them such unholy bores? Wouldn't anything be preferable to brain death--or I suppose, the death of the part of the brain that produces comedy?

Causality, Anyone?

While our Preznit couldn't pull himself away from a group of kids to address a tragedy, at least Tony Blair managed to take leave from the leaders of the eight most powerful, er, wealthiest, nations on the planet to return to the people he's charged to serve, in a similar circumstance. I guess he already studied My Pet Goat.

While discussing a continent stricken with desperation, poverty, death, misery, disease, and more terrible acts and civil war than we could ever comprehend, maybe, just maybe, the G8 will see the important connection between these things and terrorism. Maybe they will see that the special recognition and sympathy given to terrist acts in Western democracies are problematic, as they ignore that other nations suffer with this ad infinitum all the damned time, every single day. Maybe, just maybe, they'll see the connection. Desperation, poverty, and rage promotes radical agents for change. Put those radicals down with violence, and you get a response which, unfortunately, is very human: more violence. One needs not be a conservative or liberal to recognize causality. The philosophical underpinnings of that concept have provided us with revolutionary, benevolent science for three hundred years. It works in medicine, it works in technology, it works in social science.

But, probably, they won't see it. All I see so far is a lot of dick waving. Let's show resolve, we're strong, we'll continue like nothings changed, let's root out the terrists. Jebus, it's like Eric Cartman is running the god damn planet. Respect mah authoritah!

Terrism doesn't plop from the sky. Like everything else, it has root causes. Could someone, in power, please, for once, ask the important question about the causality of these acts? You can play tactical and try to prevent this all you want, but if you want to solve the problem, get to the root of it. This ain't a goddamned football game.

Our Fireworks Are Bigger

Tomorrow we all gonna celebrate our independence by drinkin Milwaukee's Best Light* (made by a South African company, but it's still the best shitty beer ever) and shooting off fireworks made by the Chi-Coms. The irony is just delicious.

But us capitalist 'mericans, we're throwing a multi-million dollar spacecraft into a ten mile wide comet at 23,000 miles an hour tomorrow. Won't look like much from here, being that it's 83 million miles away, but I'm pretty sure this means that we still have the biggest proverbial dick of any nation-state ever. Hell, even I can be jingoistic for one day of the year.

Plus, we need science like this. During the ten seconds of the Live 8 program I caught yesterday, Kanye West asserted that 1) the government invented crack to break up the BPP, and 2) the govt. invented HIV to kill Africans. Having spent time in an African village where nearly everbuddy had AIDS and all the cattle had hoof and mouth disease, I gotta say that's the dumbest conspiracy theory I've ever heard - a level of grandiosity that even Chomsky, I doubt, would attempt. Let the scientists research the AIDS issue before you pop off with some bullshit, okay? So, NASA, next time we sling an 800 pound copper slug at a comet, let's strap some fucktard pop stars to the leading edge of it.

*Yes, the "Beast" is good beer. 'Tis an acquired taste, to be sure, and if you disagree, you're a bourgeois sympathizer in much need of a long sit down with the new Clutch record and a gool 'ol fashioned ass kickin.
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heh. that's "good" not "gool." maybe milwaukee's best ain't such a good idea after all . . . see, this is what happens when workers get a three day weekend. it's like when they gave holidays to the slaves and they got trashed . . .

Time to Go to Work

I see lots of crying on the lefty blogs right now over the Supreme Court. What's the matter, bitches? Scared of a little hard work?

Ow.

Actually, I can't decide if I like this review of Bewitched better than the one for War of the Worlds. Mean-spirited writing was never better.

Spielberg Blows It Again!

Here's one guy who knows a hack when he sees one. War of the Worlds, it turns out, is completely lame. So how come I see hundreds of other reviews that give it 3 stars and call it a boring, silly, badly acted melodrama that is nonetheless "exciting to watch" and "a visual spectacle"??? Are we giving out top ratings these days based on the size of the effects budget? Or are you just too much of a turd to give Spielberg and Cruise a bad review? Is there a more useless job (other than "progressive Supreme Court Justice," I mean) on earth? Oh Martians, destroy us!

Thanks for Nothing

Or, I suppose, we ought to thank Sandra Day O'Connor for that one thing she did in Roe v. Wade. But, in the immediate sense, thanks for nothing. She made it all these years and purported to stand for women and progress, and yet she is retiring so the buffoon in the White House can appoint a monster to the bench. Is Dracula still dead? How about Hitler? Perhaps Bush could pardon, then appoint, Charles Manson to the Supreme Court. Now THERE'S a guy who likes women...dead. Or crazy. But whatever.

Say it with me: Fuck you, you stupid cunt. I hope the new Court imposes mandatory euthanasia for all people over seventy--you first, dearie.

Let us reflect, too, on the fact that the showdown over a Supreme Court nominee is sure to take everyone's eyes off the debacle in Iraq, Chimpy's falling poll numbers, the Plame case, and all the Republicans' other problems. Now we can get back to the only issue with any traction for the right: those bad old, obstructionist Democrats, who surely won't give well-qualified criminals like Alberto Gonzales an up-or-down vote. O'Connor has shown her true colors at last: sniveling lackey for the Republican Party. This could not have come at a worse time, but it will finally provide an acid test for the left in this country. There is only one acceptable outcome to this fight, and we will soon know the answer to the question "whither America?" Seems tragic and exciting. It wouldn't be hard work if there wasn't a chance of failure, so buck up you fucking crybabies, and let's dig in and fight for this.

State Governments' Budget Crises

Today's news brings word that Minnesota's state government has shut down due to a failure to pass an emergency spending bill. While most of the animosity between Democrats and Republicans comes through in the articles I've seen, NOT ONE "reporter" bothered to or was able to report why, exactly, states across the nation, including Minnesota, are facing budgetary shortfalls that grow more severe each year. In fact, since the mid-1990s, state governments have been hurting for revenue, a combination of the Republicans at the national level starving the states by slashing federal assistance funds and Republicans at the state level slashing tax rates to curry favor with pools of greedy (white) voters who can't see past their own suburban cul-de-sac.

The consequence of all this giving back of "your money" and the crackdown on "welfare programs" like education for the poor, is that states are broke--and have been since, oh, 1994 or so. Does that year ring a bell? Republican Contract with America, anyone?

No one, to my knowledge, has ever gotten on TV and said this. If you, too, live in a state that has a budget crisis, and you are bearing the brunt of it, go find a Republican and ask him what he's done for you lately. If he says he got you a tax break, kick him in the balls. Tax breaks don't fix roads, schools, public buildings, start drug treatment programs, hire cops, feed orphans, treat injuries, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc....you fucking retards.