I Wanna Be Deported

Ignoring that national anthems, on the scale of musical importance, fall somewhere between Dio-era Black Sabbath and Amy Grant, the uber-nationalist fucktards (I'm habla-ing to you, Bush) might benefit from recognizing that the 'Mexican' interpretation of the Star Bomb Spangled Banner is far more relevant lyrically and more listenable than the crooning which begins the local high school football game. Considering that neither the song or the words bear any direct similarity to the original, we can reject out-of-hand Bush's attempt at criticism (the precious fellar is kinda cute when he tries to think) - attacking something he never even tried to understand seems so out of character. I'll even give Wyclef a pass for continuing a career built on performing other people's songs.

But credit to Bush for reminding us that furriners should learn to speak German English (if only he would follow that advice). We can't stress enough the importance of learning the unruly clusterfuck of the English language, what with being in a country where one does not understand the native tongue being as much fun as an endless pile of strippers, midgets, and balloons, and not at all frightening or difficult (something Bush et al might learn if ever they manage to leave the tourist districts and green zones when traveling abroad).

That said, remember that The Invasion of the Drywall Job Snatchers has done more to make possible affordable housing and fresh produce than anything this misadministration has done. And those 'illegals' using other's SS numbers are paying into a system they can't draw from, so stop calling them leaches on your tax dollars – they're donating to your retirement, gringo. When ya'll are done misdirecting your discontent from the fags and negroes to the beaners and creating a new Other to hate, try looking into who's really freeloading here (hint – it ain't the Hispanic women earning 54% that of white men).

There's a bigger lesson to be learned here about the promise betrayed democracy, and it's icing on the empanada that this Monday won't readily lend itself to Left-Right categories, but I don't know exactly what that lesson is yet. Should the purge continue, having just poked at the National Pasttime of Texas, I hope to be deported with them. I prefer the Pantanal or the Yucatan, but I'll settle for any place with good ceviche.

The Poor in Israel

They ain't just Arabs anymore.

One Slight Correction

Decent article by Sean Wilentz, he of Chants Democratic, in Rolling Stone (does anyone still read that?).

OK, so Bush is the worst president ever, in all likelihood. What are you going to do about it, college boy?

Wilentz errs in his assessment of Bush's relation to other presidents. He predicts--quite rightly--that Bush will have to reshuffle his staff and manufacture another national crisis to divert attention from his miserable ass, but then he relates the situation to Clinton and claims that Bill did the same things when confronted with "plummeting poll numbers."

Now, I know Wilentz isn't an idiot, and I also know his project is not to apotheosize Bill Clinton, and I further recognize that he gave the Clinton comparison in an offhand, "everybody knows how Ol' Bill played to public opinion" way. But you would think, wouldn't you, that an historian could be bothered to look up the facts before repeating a piece of vile, right-wing slander? "Plummeting poll numbers" doesn't describe any part of Clinton's presidency. He was a popular president, and especially at the end incredibly popular, across the entire span of time he held the office.

I looked it up on the Roper Center's website. It has poll results for most presidents since the 1940's, including Clinton and Bush. And guess what? Clinton's poll numbers can never be described by any reasonable standard as having "plummeted." The numbers are remarkably consistent from week to week, poll to poll. Compared to Bush, Clinton only scored in the 30's on approval about a dozen times over 8 years (or 416 weekly polls...but who's counting?), suggesting to me that those numbers are statistical outliers.

In fact, why don't you just look at a graph?

Unfortunately, because I'm not tech savvy, I couldn't get a graph that covers his entire presidency. But the Roper Center has one, right here.

Now compare that relatively straight (or at least constant) line to Bush's ratings thus far:

Not even close, is it? To see the Roper Center graph, go here.

So, good work calling out the Chimperor, Sean, but watch the easy/lazy comparisons, will you?

The Hornet's Nest

Ah, Charlotte, what has happened to you? The Hornet's Nest of Rebellion is becalmed by easy words and even more by comfortable conceits; an old woman gazing on a slave's blanket and dreaming of the true past, eyes shut because reality is faithless. The consort of businessman Republicans, you are now a painted lady with a full purse but no independence. Where is your backbone--has it weakened and vanished from supinity and disuse? Or is it irreparably bent, hunched and round like your heels?

That Damn Sagging Economy

Two things:

1. Ford, GM, Delphi are laying off 30,000 workers and 30 million Americans have lost auto sector jobs since the 1980's (this number seems high to me, but somebody else said it, so OK, whatever). There will be more cuts in the future.

2. I learned to drive (in Driver's Ed in high school) on a Ford Taurus sedan.

How are they related? Well, let me say this first: I also rent cars fairly regularly and, but for the odd Hyundai, every car I've ever rented was American (including the most recent, a one-year-old Pontiac G6 with a persistent rattle under the hood, terrible understeer, and seats like a city bus).

Observation also tells me that 100% of American student drivers in cars with bigass "Student Driver" signs on them, learn to drive in Dodge Neons, Chevy Malibus, Ford Focuses (Foci?), and the like.

Now, to get back to it, how are these observations related to our shitty economy and, more directly, the shitty state of our homegrown auto industry?

Teenagers will eventually become automobile owners. Do you really want their first, traumatic experiences behind the wheel to come in someone else's boxy, ill-designed, unresponsive American car? I, personally, will never buy a Ford Taurus, because I recall what that car did to me as a 16-year-old.

As a national industry, doesn't the American auto sector want a young driver's first negative experience with an American car to be at the dealership, when it's too late to change your mind because you bought the fucking pile and now GM has your money ha ha ha ha ha sucker? I think so.

Plus, in another vein altogether, don't we also want our young drivers to learn on machines like Hondas that don't have squishy gas pedals, excessive road noise, better stereos than airbags, super-sensitive brakes, and confusing instrument panels? Wouldn't that make them better drivers? So, after they fob their shitty first car (American-made, as per my plan) off on some schlub, they could get a Honda or Toyota (also American-made, by the way) and really know how to drive it safely, efficiently, and responsibly.

Nah, fuck that. I love the fact that driving down the street is like being unwittingly registered in a demolition derby--and it's still a safer bet than holding a job at the GM plant.

Nervousness

Do Arabs have TVs? They must. So they have surely heard about our plans to annihilate all of Iran with little deadly nuclear weapons. For some reason, the American media, including the blogs, has failed to notice that Iranians are not under the cone of silence at present but are, as far as we know, totally aware of this discussion of sending all of them to horrible, atomic death.

Somebody said that a tactical nuclear strike on Iran would result in Tehran sending waves of suicide bombers against the US. Doesn't it make better sense, though, to do it the other way around? That is, send the bombers first, and then get nuked? I mean, if Bush is going to fuck you anyway, you might want to fuck him first, just so he knows what it feels like.

If suicide bombers struck within the US, wouldn't that delay indefinitely an attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons? The idea being, if this is what Iran will do before an attack, imagine what they do for an encore. Or, alternatively, such an attack within our borders might just be the final push that sends the Bush regime over the precipice and out of office. After all, aren't we supposed to be fighting them "over there"?

I don't think Iranians are at all in the dark about the situation over here, and it wouldn't surprise me if the suicide bombers are already in the pipeline. End times, indeed.

Bats, Balls, and Dick

Dick Cheney "threw" out (if you can consider his half-arm, stiff-legged, hunched-up girly toss a "throw") the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game today and was roundly booed by most of the 40,000 people in the stands.

From CNN/SI:

"A year ago, there was a rush for tickets and a sellout. This time, the attendance was 40,530 at 46,382-seat RFK Stadium. There were large patches of empty seats when Vice President Dick Cheney strode out to mainly boos and scattered applause for the ceremonial first pitch. Last season, it was President Bush who did the honors."

Translation: Fuck you, Dick.

Questions for a Traitor

On April 19th, Bob Novak will be on a panel at the University of Illinois-Chicago and guess who got a ticket?

If you're in the Chicago area, just send an email to karenj@uic.edu. It's free but space is limited.

Mr. Novak is an alumnus of Illinois-Urbana and currently "writes" for the Chicago Sun-Times (does he just type the word "bullshit" over and over?). He and his panel will be speaking about the media in these troubled times, which probably wouldn't be so troubled if Bob Novak weren't such a cowardly, traitorous piece of filth.

Anyway, if he's taking questions, I'm going to ask him why he isn't in jail yet and, if I have time before security gaffles me, why he is such a traitorous, cowardly piece of filth.

Any better suggestions?

Who's In Charge Here?

So according to numerous reports out of the Senate yesterday, our Attorney General thinks Bush might have a basis for ordering warrantless wiretaps (warrantless in both senses, I guess).

So? Why does the Congress always go to Gonzales whenever there's a question about legality? He's a LAWYER for the PRESIDENT, by his own admission, and he can't be trusted to give a straight answer anyway (see first point about being a lawyer). He does not, at this point, represent the American people, only his ass-play buddy, GW.

Besides, since when do we ask LAWYERS to interpret the law? Isn't that what we have a series of courts for, one of them higher than all the others--supreme, you might even say? Shit, if the media put half the faith in Nixon's proclamations that his interpretation of the law was the correct one as they do in Bush's house boy, there would've been no Watergate scandal.

Point made simple: the administration doesn't get to interpret the law. It follows the law or else it gets charged with a crime.

So again, who gives a flying fuck what Alberto Gonzales has to say about the legality of wiretaps?

The Sexist Life of Signage

Did you ever notice that women almost never drive the car in a car commercial? The last time I recall seeing a female behind the wheel is in a Ford commercial (highly fantastic, by the way, by which I mean "based on a fantasy," NOT "awesome...gush!") in which she plows her small SUV through three feet of snow (I told you it was fantastic) in order to get herself and her husband away from her in-laws. Now, this is hardly empowering: her husband is a wimpy mama's boy, as evidenced by his comment that "my parents said we can stay another night," and the conflict here is clearly between the wife and her mother-in-law. In other words, this is a commercial about women and their probems with one another, featuring an ice-cold, ruthless woman who would rather risk death in an underpowered, poorly-built Ford than endure another day with her simpering husband and his evil mother.

But aside from that, there aren't many women driving cars on TV. This could be coincidence, but it is more likely a deep-seated cultural preference being brought out in our innocuous advertising. The most obnoxious display of this is the Volkswagen series of ads that feature guys telling their girlfriends to shut the fuck up so they can listen to the sound of the engine. Now, if I only got one chance to tell my lady friend to close her wailing hole, it wouldn't be so I could listen for the squeak every time my German hamster made a revolution on his running wheel.

Usually, though, the gender bias is more subtle and ads are geared towards being funny so that we, the viewers, won't notice the discrimination.

However, there are giveaways. Charlotte, NC (which as you know, is the key to understanding America) has two main roads that run parallel and tell the story. Female passivity and male agency are bourne out on the very road markers, the visible "signs" of the invisible phenomenon. The streets? Kings Drive and Queens Road. Kings = Men and they "drive;" Queens = women and they "road" or "ride."

Where are the cultural studies people? Are they afraid to tackle real issues? Could it be any clearer that this pervasive problem is growing seeing that the penis power structure of oppressive sweaty-balled overlords can be so daring as to declare its worldview upon road signs?!

Why yes, CPCC is quite awesome. Thank you.

Central Piedmont Community College isn't the place for Bush to show his monkey face. The questioner (who wasn't Jamie, for some reason I'm still trying to figure out) didn't really have a question--he just wanted to tell Bush he ought to be ashamed of his conduct as president. The transcript has the audience saying "boo" at that point, but there are video feeds of this on the internets and it would appear only about four people actually objected.

Now, if somebody would just stand up and ask the president a "question" about his predilection for male prostitutes who get all-access passes to the White House...