The Crying Games

The crybaby brigade was out in full force late last week, making excuses for the presidential candidates while catering to the prejudices of America's two great (and hopelessly deluded) political tribes. It all started Wednesday night after Willard "unexpectedly" came out strong in his "debate" with President Hopey-Changey. Why oh why, many partisan Democrats were asking, didn't Obama come out swinging and put Governor 47%-er on the ropes early? This should have been like taking candy from a baby, but somehow Obama "blew it."

My favorite "explanation" for Obama's performance comes from George Jackoff Lakoff, author of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic (just shoot me now), over at the Huffington Post:

You don't win a presidential debate by being a policy wonk. Obama violated all the basics of presidential debating. The best defense is a good offense. You have to set the terms of the debate and press those terms. Obama failed. Here are those basics:

State your moral values. Contrast them with your opponent's.

Project empathy and enthusiasm. Connect.

Communicate clearly and simply. Be authentic. Say just what you believe.

Project trust.

Present an authentic view of yourself that the public can identify with and be proud of.

Obama did none of this. Instead he talked about policy details.

He needed to come on strong from the first sentence.

Democracy is based on citizens caring about and taking responsibility for both themselves as for the well-being of all. Government is the instrument that citizens use to guarantee protection and empowerment for all. We all, together, provide what is needed for a decent life. Individual accomplishment rests on what other Americans have provided and keep providing.

Building the economy requires public investment -- in public infrastructure, education, research, and much more.

Success is much more than money. It is your contribution to America as a whole -- whether it is teaching, raising children, providing food, healing the sick, making useful products, guaranteeing our rights and our safety, or running businesses that make life better. America needs us all. And we all depend on each other. Personal responsibility is necessary.

Lakoff continues on in this vein for a couple more paragraphs, but this was about all I could stand.

Notice what is missing from Lakoff's analysis of what Obama did wrong? Not once does Jackoff...er, sorry, Lakoff say that Obama needed to CLEARLY ARTICULATE HOW HIS POSITIONS ARE DIFFERENT FROM ROMNEY. And why didn't he do that? Because THERE IS NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE, which leaves sellout hack mouthpieces like Lakoff struggling with all of their might to convince their dimwitted readers that there is in fact a difference but it just wasn't clearly articulated.

Obama fumbled the debate for a very basic reason: he ain't got SHIT to say. He has a lead and he's trying to run out the clock. After all, what's Romney going to do, point out how President Sellout has broken nearly every one of his 2008 campaign promises and for four years has been treating his liberal and progressive base like the whiny little bitches that they are? Of course fucking not.

On the flip side, there was the conservative freak out on Friday when, despite the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Lying Statistic showing only 115,000 jobs being created in September, the unemployment rate "magically" dropped by .3% just in time for the home stretch in the campaign. It wasn't more than a few hours after the jobs report was released that the Fox News brigade, led by cretinous old former GE CEO Jack Welch, was out in full force trying convince their drooling troglodyte audience that it was some big conspiracy on the part of federal government drones to get Obama reelected.

So was the BLS report manipulated? Of COURSE it fucking was, just like every other monthly jobs report going back to three years ago when this "zombie recovery" started. But it isn't about trying to get Obama reelected, it's about trying to keep the fucking economy from resuming its collapse. Everything our fearless "leaders" have been doing since the fall or 2008, from the TARP law to QE3 has been a massive con job attempting to induce the average consumer idiot to keep spending. Jack Welch is smart enough to know that, which means he is either a liar or he's gone senile.

All in all, it was just another couple of excruciating days in Campaign Stupid. Thank your own personal deity that we only have about four more weeks of this bullshit to endure before it is mercifully all over.


Bonus: "I still cry...just like a baby"

Saturday Night Music Video: "The Ballad of Bill Lee" by The Karl Hendricks Trio

All of Washington has been going nuts over the Nationals making the Major League Baseball playoffs this year...the first time any DC baseball team has been in the postseason since FDR's first year in office. So in tribute to the baseball playoffs, here is a little ditty from my You Tube channel about a real life major league baseball pitcher from back in the 1970s who, shall we say, marched to the beat of his own drummer and even earned the awesome nickname, "Spaceman," for his troubles. Lee's free spirited ways eventually got him banished from the uptight Boston Red Sox and he ended his career north of the border laboring for Montreal's "Les Expos" (who, to complete the circle, moved to Washington a few years ago and are now the Nationals).

Anyway, you've just got to love a song in which the lyrics start out with, "They called me a commie fag...but I could strike out the side."

Enjoy!

Karl Denninger is Angry that the NRA Endorsed Romney

The prevailing mythical narrative that Americans still live in a representative democracy in which the choices at the ballot box actually matter is so pervasive that it continues to affect the thinking of even that small minority of the population who at least question the prevailing Holographic consensus. Case in point: economic blogger Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker, who on Friday was shocked, SHOCKED that the National Rifle Association would stoop to endorsing Willard Mitt Romney for president:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsed Mitt Romney for president late Thursday.

NRA Executive vice president Wayne LaPierre and NRA Political Victory Fund chairman Chris Cox will formally announce the endorsement at a Romney rally in Virginia later Thursday evening. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will also be on hand.

“In this election, there is no debate,” LaPierre said in a statement. “There is only one choice – only one hope – to save our firearms freedom and our way of life.”

So what got ol' Karl all hot and bothered? I'll let him tell you himself:

Let me remind you what Mitt Romney actually believes when it comes to firearms, from Mitt Romney's own mouth.

"Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts", Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony on July 1 with legislators, sportsmen's groups and gun safety advocates. "These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people." - July 1st, 2004 -- Mitt Romney

If this is the only choice and only hope we may as well give up now.

Join JPFO (I have) and tell the NRA to stick their fundraising appeals up their ass.

I've said before that I have a soft spot for old Karl, even though he is wrong at least half the time. He at least understands that America's economy is horribly broken and that our fearless "leaders" are doing nothing whatsoever to fix it. The difference between Karl and me is that, as shown by the example above and in many of his other writings, he still seems to believe that the system is salvageable despite the obvious truth flashing right before his very own eyes.

Look, I don't care what your position is on the right to bear arms. It just amazes me that Karl, or any other gun owner or NRA member still believes that the likes of Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox actually give a flying fuck about the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners. They don't. What those two power whore super lobbyists care about is keeping the dues of dimwitted NRA members flowing in so that they can keep their exorbitant salaries and benefits, fat expense accounts and access to all the perquisites that come from being deeply embedded within the Washington power structure. If tomorrow they were to realize that the political winds had suddenly changed and that they could only keep their positions by turning against the rights of gun owners, they would do it in a heartbeat. No doubt about it.

So how can I be so certain of that? Well, just look at the asinine and hysterical rhetoric in LaPierre's statement: “There is only one choice – only one hope – to save our firearms freedom and our way of life.” Not only is Wayne making that assertion on behalf of Romney despite, as Denninger points out, Willard's earlier anti-gun position, but he is making it to assist a campaign against an incumbent president who has not only not lifted a finger in favor of gun control, but is actually the gun lobby's most effective tool for keeping the progressive gun haters in his own base at bay and away from any chance to tighten America's gun laws. The gun control advocates had a perfect chance to advance their agenda after the public outcry in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, and what did Obama do to help them? Nothing. Do you really think LaPierre isn't smart enough to know this? If so, there's big phallic granite tower planted square in the middle of the Washington Mall with only minor earthquake damage that I'd like to sell you.

The fact is that the political landscape on gun control issues has been frozen in ice for at least the last decade. The Republican Party is owned by the gun lobby and the Democrats are so afraid of the NRA's power that they might as well be. But LaPierre cannot level with the NRA's membership and say that because then the organization's fundraising might dry up. It's a political con job...the same kind every other lobbying group in Washington pulls, from AARP to NOW. It is yet another way that the elites use the illusion of real democratic choice to con the masses and steal both their money and their votes.

I'm going to go ahead and expand my original rule about contributing to political campaigns to include contributing to lobbying groups...if you are not a millionaire or a billionaire and yet you give any of your hard earned money to lobbyists who care more about their own power and perks than they do about the issues that got you to contribute, you're an idiot. Really, you would be just as well off sending your money to me. I promise, I'll spend it on nothing more harmful to the cause than a few cases of good microbrews.


Bonus: "You well heeled big wheel...ha ha, charade you are"

They Should Have Died Before They Got Old

image: "Old man wasteland...it's only old man wastelaaaaaaaand!"

The Rolling Stones are seriously contemplating going out on tour again next year to celebrate their 50th anniversary as a band. I’ll pause for a moment and let the sheer horror of that last sentence sink in. Yes, you heard it right. A bunch of wrinkled up septuagenarians whose lead singer is going to squeeze his tired old bones into skin tight pants and try to prance around like he still has the sex appeal he lost back during the Reagan administration, are going to take the stage once more to bleat out “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” “Start Me Up,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Sympathy for the Devil” and a bunch of other once-risqué tunes that if the audience wasn’t freebasing on simplistic nostalgia ought to induce little more than uncontrollable giggling spasms. I mean, if your grandpa started mumbling the sexually charged lyrics to an old Stones song, you’d be sure to keep a close eye on him whenever the grandkids are around.

In fairness to Mick, Keith and Charlie, they are far from being the only rockers who have failed to recognize that they are now decades past their sell by dates and need to just go the fuck away already. Pete Townshend, for example, really should have taken his own advice and followed band mate Keith Moon’s example of dying before he could get old and become a creepy surfer of child pornography websites. Did you happen catch The Who’s pathetic Super Bowl halftime appearance a few years ago? The camera had to cut away from lead singer Roger Daltrey right before the famous scream at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” so it wouldn’t be so painfully obvious that one of the greatest frontmen in rock and roll history was lip synching so he wouldn’t hurt himself from the effort.

Speaking of which, if you are a rock legend and you find yourself agreeing to play the Superbowl half time show, please do us all a favor and find someone to do to you what The Chief did to Jack Nicolson’s character at the end of One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest. There should be an automatic condition attached to induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which stipulates a lifetime ban for any musician who plays the Superbowl. Leave that superficial spectacle celebrating America’s endless addiction to mindless consumption to talentless cretins like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

In fact, I would be willing to go even further and impose a Logan’s Run rule for all rock stars. You can have all of the fame, fortune, booze, drugs and groupies that you can possibly consume, but on your 40th birthday you have to turn yourself into the authorities for proper disposal before you get the chance to go out and debase your talents on a money grubbing nostalgia tour or have to start playing state fairs in order to make the rent. The same rule would also apply if you ever allow your waistline to expand beyond 40 inches. Honestly, no one but the most pathetic, no life member of the fan club wants to see your fat ass waddling around on stage in black Spandex.

There are just so many ways for aging rock stars to debase their legacy. In the past year alone, Sir Paul McCartney, once half of the greatest songwriting team in rock history, apparently lost his muse to the point where he was reduced to releasing a virtually unlistenable album of old big band standards. Strawberry fields are NOT forever, apparently. On this side of the Atlantic, former Velvet Underground leader Lou Reed made a desperate pitch to remain relevant by teaming up with heavy metal troubadours Metallica—and merely managed to prove that both acts really ought to just go fishing or something. And then there was the frightening spectacle of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler doing time in the literal sense as an American Idol judge. C’mon, Steven, did all of the many millions you earned during your long career really end up going right up your nose? Apparently so.

In a way, the sad fate of so many old rock stars kind of mirrors that of America as a country. It must be admitted that we were pretty hot shit right after World War Two, with our undamaged “arsenal of freedom,” our rapidly expanding suburbs and our exploding middle class. As a nation we were young, we were HOT and everybody wanted to BE us. Well, except for those crazy old commies, and they didn’t really count anyway. Flash forward six decades, and now we are the wheezing, overweight Ozzy Osborne, still attempting to scream into the microphone while failing to recognize that we’ve become a big, fat joke with our hollowed out economy, rapidly deteriorating infrastructure and a middle class that is being slowly impoverished by the greed of our predatory elites.

These days, America is on its very own pathetic nostalgia tour, still trying to throw our now flabby weight around the world stage as if any discerning observer can’t tell that as a nation we are desperately out of breath and merely lip synching our lines. Yet the average American still sits like the fans at a Rolling Stones show applauding every note like it is still 1969 and Mick can still bang half-a-dozen groupies in his dressing room without popping copious amounts of Viagra tablets as if they were Mother’s Little Helpers. Someday, this show is going to end and the lights of reality are going to come on, and the Americans in the audience are going to stare in bewilderment at the revelation that the once great nation of their hopes and dreams has actually become a dried out, decrepit old carcass just going through the motions.


Bonus: A classic song from the one guy who has been the exception the old rock stars suck rule

Campaign Stupid Just Keeps Rolling Along

As I have said here before, every day in this stupid ass country the movie Idiocracy looks more and more like a documentary. No greater proof need be presented of this basic fact than looking at just how completely the presidential campaign has descended into absolute farce. With this contest between two corporatist candidates who differ not one iota on any issue of substance, our completely corrupt and thoroughly compromised mainstream media is working overtime to gin up fake controversies that will be all-but-forgotten by the morning of November 7th in order to maintain the illusion that Americans have a real choice at the ballot box.

Below is a collection of campaign related headlines that have appeared in just the past few days on the liberal politics and news site, The Raw Story. I'm only including the headlines and not links to the stories because the titillating headlines and the resulting sound bites are what's important to swaying the opinions and votes of Americas two great political tribes, not the substance of the stories themselves. I'm also not including the stories because I did not read any of them for fear that my brain would revolt and try to escape out of my ears if subjected to such a heaping pile of sheer nonsense. Anyway, here goes:

What we still don’t know about Mitt Romney’s taxes

What's there to know that we don't already? He's a filthy rich fucker who got that way from offshoring American jobs and paying a tax rate half that of what people who actually work for a living pay. Nothing new to see here, let's move on.

Hollywood celebrities use social media to get out the vote

If you are the kind of mouth breathing nitwit who makes your choice at the ballot box based upon some poorly articulated two sentence tweet from some vacuous celebrity, your voter's registration card should be permanently rescinded because you are clearly a danger to yourself and others.

Limbaugh sides with George Will and calls Obama ‘an affirmative action hire’

Regrettably, the difference between these two bloviating media whores is that Will is allegedly smart enough to know better.

Republicans seize on Biden ‘buried’ middle class gaffe

Wow...the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden said something stupid. Stop the fucking presses already.

Supporters at Romney rally tell cardboard Obama to ‘Go back to Kenya!’

These fucking idiots absolutely fail to realize that every time they say such idiotic, bigoted things it just reinforces the Obama supporters' determination to vote for him again however disillusioned they may be with the sellouts of the first four years of his presidency.

Gary Johnson goes crowd surfing in Utah

Nice to see Gary is trying to paint himself as a different kind of candidate by stooping to the same kind of dumbass, meaningless stunts that the major candidates do.

Ann Coulter ‘horrified’ she ever dated liberals

Hear that Maher--Skeletor has officially made you part of her "walk of shame." Which begs the (ahem) burning question--can an STD be passed from a liberal to a conservative?

Richard Belzer mocks Fox News with Nazi salute on live TV

Because there is absolutely no more effective method of winning a political argument these days and bringing people over to your side than calling your opposition a bunch of Nazis.

Republican candidate posts his gun on Facebook: ‘Welcome to Tennessee, Mr. Obama’

Memo to any Tea Party morons who apparently haven't been paying attention: mentioning the president, any president, and your guns in the same sentence WILL draw unwanted attention from the Secret Service. Bank on it.

Former N.H. Gov. Sununu: Poll showing Romney losing in my state is ‘a piece of garbage’

Yeah...you tell 'em, Gov. It isn't like the land of "Live Free or Die" went blue in 2004 and 2008 or anything...oh wait.

Voter registration slumps amid lack of enthusiasm for Obama and Romney

Well, what do you know? An actual intelligent headline. Gee, ya think maybe Americans are starting to catch on that the election is a sham and that it will have absolutely no affect whatsoever in their lives no matter who wins? Perish the thought!

Beck: God put Romney behind in polls to prove it’s a miracle when he wins

Obviously, that is Glenn Beck, not the rock singer Beck. In case your whole life doesn't revolve around watching the drooling troglodytes on the cable news shows.

GOP volunteer tells voter: Obama is a Muslim who wants ‘a socialistic country’

I really think we're going to have to find a photograph of Obama with his pants down around his ankles and Lloyd Blankfein sodomizing him before these idiots get their heads out of their asses and start to realize that the truth is even worse than their delusions.

Ingraham: ‘Fools’ errand’ for Romney to attempt ‘human moment’ at debate

That would be Laura Ingraham. I just love how the media has become so insular that they just assume we know who every fucking second-rate clown pundit is, like "Ingraham" means the same thing that "Madonna" does to popular music fans.

McCain suggests Harry Reid ‘doesn’t care’ about US ambassador’s death

And you don't eirther, you warmongering old fuck. Or otherwise you'd stop pressing for the aggressive war policies that make acts like the Ambassador's killing far more likely.

But here is my absolute favorite of the lot:

Ryan on Romney’s tax plan: ‘It would take me too long’ to explain

Wow, we were just about to actually, maybe discuss one of the issues, but they are way too complicated for you stupid fucking sheep to understand. Just be sure you get your ass to the polls on November 6th so that no matter who wins this fake campaign between two Holographic images you're going to get sheared yet again over the next four years.


Bonus: We're all losers, baby, so why don't you kill me

Chickenhearted America Goes to the Movies

I have a confession to make. Back when I was in college during the mid-1980s, a cinematic guilty pleasure of mine was the Patrick Swayze-starring jingoistic farce, Red Dawn, which featured the exploits of a bunch of American high school kids turned guerrilla insurgents fighting back after a successful Soviet invasion of the American heartland. Sure, the premise of the film was highly improbable, but it was at least plausible in those final days before Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power and the Soviet colossus quickly fell apart. One would have thought, however, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union that Red Dawn would have receded to cultural irrelevance along with most other Cold War scaremongering entertainments.

Oops, not so fast. It seems that a couple of years ago Hollywood, in its ongoing quest to to remake literally every movie ever made and never, ever again produce a new or original storyline, finally scraped down far enough to the bottom of the barrel to resurrect Red Dawn for a whole new generation that has no memory of when Swayze was the hottest young stud on the teenybopper magazine beat.

There was only one little problem with remaking the movie, as the filmakers no doubt quickly realized, and that is that the Soviet Union does not exist anymore and old mother Russia just doesn't evoke the same sense fear and loathing in the popcorn-munching set. So in looking around for a new potential villain to be the fictional invader of the U.S., they no doubt read a breathless op-ed piece or two asserting that China will soon be the superpower that permanently eclipses America's hegemony in the world. Nevermind that China has virtually no ability to project its conventional military power beyond its immediate sphere of influence, nor that until recently the country did not even possess a single aircraft carrier. Also disregard the fact that the U.S. outpaces China by about seven-to-one in annual defense war spending, and maintains well over 700 military bases all around the globe: China would nevertheless be the cinematic enemy-du-jour for a new millenium of easily entertained moviegoers.

Unfortunately for the film's producers, in their rush to demonize the People's Republic they forgot that the overseas market has become vitally important to Hollywood's profits and that there are more than one billion potential customers who reside in China and might not take too kindly to being made the cartoonish bad guys who are mowed down by the courageous "Wolverines." Even worse, none of the idiots involved came to this rather obvious realization until after primary filming on the movie was already completed. Pajiba.com has the details of what happened next:

After getting slammed in Chinese state-controlled newspapers and shunned by distributors who are terrified of getting blacklisted out of the fifth largest film market in the world, MGM is now using CGI in post production to change all references to China to references to North Korea. As you can guess, this is quite the process given that the entire film is about China invading the United States. And of course it renders the entire film laughable since it asks us to suspend disbelief as a country the size of Ohio with an economy a tenth its size invades the United States.

A country, we might also add, which would have a very difficult time even conquering the southern half of its own peninsula, and which would likely be vaporized in an American counterattack if it ever tried. The plot of this dumbass movie as it will now be presented isn't just laughable, it is as absurd as asserting that the world is flat and that the sun is a baseball sized disk which revolves around it every day. Of course, one delicious irony to note here is that in the original version of Red Dawn China was said by Powers Booth's character to be America's wartime ALLY.

I should have found this whole story extremely amusing, but instead it only depressed me for what it says about the current state of affairs in this country. Since the fall of the Soviet Union nearly a quarter of a century ago, America has stood unchallenged as the lone hyperpower that has the capability to invade and occupy virtually any other nation on the planet. Moreover, the post Cold War international neoliberal economic system enforced by that overwhelming military capability ensures that Americans are able to continue even today to consume roughly a quarter of the world's resources despite having a mere 5% of its population.

And yet, as the very existence of the Red Dawn remake shows, there is still a significant portion of the populace which sincerely believes that America is under seige and that our precious so-called liberties and freedoms could be stripped away from us by a foreign power at virtually any moment. The majority of Americans are so completely ignorant of anything that happens beyond their own borders that despite all of the disproven lies told to them by their own government about Iraq and Afghanistan during this past decade they can still actually be convinced that pipsqueak powers like Iran and North Korea pose any conventional military threat to the homeland whatsoever.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the warmongering neoconservative right and the repulsive "liberal hawks" who completely dominate the Washington foreign policy establishment desperately needed to whip up other threats to scare the voters so that they would continue to consent to a gigantic portion of the public treasury being given over to the parasitic military industrial complex every year. It is only because the average American is so profoundly ignorant of the real state of the world that they are able to get away with it.

So no, I will obviously not be going to see the Red Dawn remake when it hits the theaters next month, not even as a guilty pleasure. One might be tempted to write the movie off as harmless escapism, but for the fact that so many millions of our fellow citizens long ago lost the ability to discern the difference between reality and mindlessly militant propaganda.


Bonus: "600 million screaming Chinamen"

So Paul Ryan is a Hunter? Who Gives a Shit?

I’ve said before that it isn’t often that a contributor for any mainstream website writes anything that perfectly captures my own viewpoint, but last Friday Hamilton Nolan of Gawker did a pretty good job of summarizing the sheer idiocy of identity politics:

The Romney-Ryan ticket, which will lose the US presidential election this November, is still giving it their all. The campaign is trailing in key states like Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio. But they have a secret weapon: VP nominee Paul Ryan is an avid hunter.

Who gives a shit?

Hunting is one of the top activities that politicians always do while looking painfully ridiculous, right up there with "dancing awkwardly at black churches." Paul Ryan, though, has an advantage: he actually is a hunter—a bowhunter, no less—who's been hunting since childhood, and who has all the expertise in and enthusiasm for hunting that come with a lifetime's experience.

Who gives a shit?

"[Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio] are rich in hunters and crucial swing-state Electoral College votes, and Mr. Ryan's deer-hunting credential is a resonant cultural symbol," declares the WSJ, noting that Ryan will be speaking to the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance meeting in Ohio tomorrow. Congratulations, Midwestern hunters: you are being treated like a bunch of simplistic children. The whole business of politicians posing in hunting gear, whether they really like it or not, is the height of bullshit, empty identity politics.

Hamilton then goes on to sum up what is wrong with voters who fall for such lame appeals:

"Take just one look at Paul Ryan holding a bow at full draw, and you know he's the real deal," one archery buff tells the WSJ. This is a man who is allegedly running on his economic platform. WHO GIVES A FUCK IF HE CAN SHOOT A BOW AND ARROW? He is supposed to be tasked with fixing Medicare, for fuck's sake. "Can operate a calculator correctly," would be a more relevant credential. Smell the sweet aroma of patronization, hunters. If you cast your presidential ballot based on which ticket likes bowhunting more, you are dumb; that is exactly what the campaigns think you are, and that is why Paul Ryan is speaking to a hunting group on the day that deer season opens.

Of course, this kind of crap has been going on throughout American history. Back in the early 19th century, for example, candidates who grew up in a log cabin would play up the fact even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with how they might handle a war with a Britain or France or how they might deal with the thorny and divisive issue of slavery. It is in the modern television age, however, that identity politics has reached a point where it now largely drowns out issues of real substance.

Back in the 1970s, candidates would be sure to be photographed standing outside construction sites wearing hard hats to emphasize their supposed empathy with the working man. Ronald Reagan mastered the art of always appearing in front of a whole row of American flags to visually reinforce the idea of his supposedly superior level of patriotism. A big moment in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential bid was when he played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. His wife then elevated such pandering to an even higher level during her first New York Senate campaign when, despite having grown up a few miles from Wrigley Field, she doffed a Yankees cap and claimed to have always been a fan even though any true Chicagoan would be horrified at the very idea of ever pledging allegiance to any Big Apple sports team.

President George Bush the Lesser really upped the ante on this stuff when he purchased his ranch down in Texas specifically so he could be constantly photographed clearing brush, which somehow reinforced the idea in the minds of millions of idiot voters that he was just a regular guy whom they could sip a Lone Star beer with afterward. Ever noticed how much time Chimpy has apparently spent on that stupid ranch in the years since leaving office? Uh, that would be about NONE near as I can tell.

I’ve stated repeatedly on this blog that anyone who enters the voting booth this November thinking that there is any difference between President Hopey-Changey and Governor 47%-er on issues of real substance is delusional. But those who are going to go vote based on the fact that Ryan is a hunter, or Willard’s wife is an equestrian or Obama has a superior jump shot, or Biden…well, I’m not really sure what it is that Biden does exactly…is the absolute worst of the worst, even lower on the food chain that Bill Maher’s “dipshit” low information voters (although, in fairness, many of them probably ARE low information voters, which is why such appeals work so well).

Probably the most amusing aspect of this issue is that Ryan’s running mate is actually the worst candidate at making these kinds of appeals that we have seen on the national stage in a very long time. No matter how hard he tries, Willard always comes off as an arrogant rich prick who was born with a silver spoon shoved up his ass. To what will likely be their ultimate chagrin, the Republicans managed to nominate as their standard bearer a candidate who is a little TOO true to himself. The irony of this happening to the party of charlatans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is quite delicious indeed.


Bonus: "Who the fuck are you?"

Saturday Night Music Video: "Got to Have Rock And Roll" by Heartless Bastards

I've linked to all kinds of music here at TDS, from thrash metal to alternative country to punk to Broadway show tunes. But if you were to tie me down and waterboard me until I admitted which kind of music is my favorite I would blubber for awhile and then finally acknowledge that what really stirs my loins is good old fashioned 1970s-era classic rock. And that's why I really love the recent tune linked below from the outstanding Austin, Texas, band, Heartless Bastards, featuring an ass kicking guitar lick that I swear you could get out your surfboard and ride for a good four minutes or so. It makes me want to break out some bell bottoms, fire up a doobie and go for a cruise in an old Camaro with all the windows down and the 8-track player CRANKING.

Enjoy!

Asshole Idiot Nation: Grocery Store Clerk Humiliates Food Stamp Recipient

You really have to hand it to asshole conservatives and the doctrinaire libertarians for how successful they have been in turning us plebes against one another so that we don't turn around and see that it's the face of the oligarchs that is connected to the big red, white a blue dick they are shoving up our asses on a daily basis. The brillance of their campaign to demonize poverty even as they strive hard to drive even more members of the former working and middle classes into poverty was on display again this week, as reported by Digital Journal:

Cindy Nerger of Warner Robins, Ga., who has been on a waiting list for kidney transplant for five years, was brought to tears at a supermarket last week when a clerk ridiculed her in the presence of other customers for using food stamps. Local TV station WMAZ, reported the incident after Nerger posted her story on the station's Facebook page.

She said she went shopping last week Tuesday at the Kroger off Watson Boulevard. When she got to the register, the clerk insisted wrongly that $10 worth of items were not covered. She said: "He told me I owed him 10 dollars and some change. I am not exactly sure what it was, but I told him, I said I am sorry sir, but there is nothing in my cart that is not covered by food stamps." According to Nerger, Kroger employees kept her on the line for half an hour.

A store manager finally intervened and told the clerk to give her the items. When she complained about the treatment she received, the the clerk said aloud: "Excuse me for working for a living and not relying on food stamps!" Nerger said at this point she was so embarrassed that she broke down in tears. She said: "I was upset, so, I was like, you know, I told you that it was covered under food stamps, you know, so, there was no need for all of this, you know, and he said, 'Well excuse me that I work for a living and don't rely on food stamps like you.'" She added: "I honestly was angry. I was angry at first, but it turned into tears because when I turned around and I saw the people there I was like, oh my goodness, and I just started crying."

According to The Huffington Post, Nerger, 28. said she and her husband were not proud to use food stamp debit card. She told The Huffington Post, "I felt shy when I used them and my husband does, too. I would try to hide the card." She said, "I didn't want to have to go there, you know, nobody wants to have to ask somebody for help, but it got to the point it was either ask for help or starve."

The Huffington Post reports Nerger said she started receiving food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assitance Program) after she fell ill in 2008 and became eligible for Medicare and Social Security Supplemental Income. While she is on waiting list for kidney transplant she cannot work because of daily 12-hr dialysis treatment. According to Nerger, her husband runs a carpentry business but does not make enough income to sustain the family without assistance.

No doubt that idiot grocery store clerk, who is probably living paycheck to paycheck himself, never gave a moment's thought that he could very easily find himself in Cindy Nerger's shoes at some point in the future. Funny that it is often those who are the closest to actually needing the social safety net who often times are the ones who scream the loudest about it.

I'd so like to take that asshole clerk for a visit to the corporate headquarters of Dyncorps International, or SAIC or General Dynamics so maybe he could get it through his thick fucking skull who the real welfare queens are. Those war contractor assholes and others of their ilk are sucking down many, many times more of his precious little tax dollars that all of the Cindy Nergers of the world combined. Or maybe a little tour of Wall Street and all of the giant financial firms that have been bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and whose executives continue to rake in millions of dollars in bonuses while laughing their asses off that fucking morons like him continue to listen to fat fucking pig Rush Limbaugh and to vote for the politicians that enable them to rob him and tens of millions of others like him of their livelihoods, security and futures.

Oh, who am I fucking kidding. Like there is ANY chance that a closed-minded simpleton who lacks even one iota of basic human empathy would fucking understand any of it even if you rubbed his fucking face in it. In fact, you know what? Fuck that asshole. Fuck him and every ignorant fucking piece of shit like him. I have had it with all of them. If someone in this country has to find themselves starving and destitute because of the heartless policies he so foolishly supports, let it someday BE him. I just hope I can be there when it happens to sneer and tell him to get a fucking job.


Bonus: Sorry, I think I was actually channeling angry Bill for a moment there

Bill Maher: "Dipshit" Pot Calls the Kettle Black

I used to be a fan of comedian Bill Maher, but after many years of apparently having no one in his inner circle who dares tell him he is ever wrong about anything, the man who used to pride himself on being such a supposed deep thinker as a stand up comedian is now "jumping the shark" on a regular basis. For the first time in many a moon I caught the last 20 minutes of his weekly HBO show last Friday night, and I couldn't believe all the idiotic bullshit that was pouring out of his mouth.

It started with he and Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie basically saying that they agree with xenophobic conservatives that, compared to other religions, a majority of the world's Muslims are irrational hotheads without ever once acknowledging that many Muslims residing in the Middle East and South Asia who have been the victims of America's murderous imperialistic war polices might actually have legitimate grievances. Now I would expect Rushdie, who after all has been living under an Ayatollah-imposed death sentence for nearly a quarter of a century, to be a tad bitter towards Islam, but I was appalled when Maher nodded like a sock puppet while Rushdie asserted that half a century ago cities in the region like Tehran were "open, cosmopolitan cities," rather that the hotbeds of radicalism they are today.

Yes, Salmon, Tehran back then was indeed an absolute paradise of open-minded tolerance for you as a citizen of a brutal British Empire that was only just then deigning to grant the "ignorant savages" independence the world over. Unfortunately, and this might have escaped your notice up there in your fucking ivory tower where the air apparently gets a little thin and kills off the brain cells that enable critical thinking, the average Iranian during that period lived every day in fear of being abducted, tortured and disappeared by the U.S.-backed Shah's Gestapo-like SAVAK secret police force. Maybe, just maybe, it makes more sense to blame the U.S. for engineering the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government and set the conditions that ultimately led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. To argue that Islam has become "radicalized" in the past 50 years, as Rushdie did with poodle Maher by his side, without once acknowledging the role of Western imperialism in stoking that radicalization puts Rushdie and Maher intellectually on par with the likes of Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz.

A little bit later in the show, referring to Mutt Romney's little 47% problem, Maher lamented that it has gotten to the point where no one can get up on stage to address an audience anymore without someone making a recording of it and placing it on You Tube. Maher then bizarrely compared the crap Williard has been getting for his comments to the infamous Michael Richards and smarmy douchebag Daniel Tosh notorious comedy club meltdowns.

Apparently, in the increasingly addled mind of America's most lovable atheist, no one should be able to hold you accountable if you get up on stage as Richards did and repeatedly call a black audience member the n-word while advocating that he be lynched or, as Tosh did, tell a female audience member that she deserves to be gang raped for calling out to you that she doesn't think rape jokes are funny (oh, and not incidentally, Tosh's meltdown was NOT caught on video but merely blogged about by the victim of Tosh's vicious verbal assault). Obviously I'm a huge fan of risque humor myself, but heaven forbid that the world is no longer safe for blatantly racist and misogynist stand up comedians to keep earning a buck after exposing their ugly inner thoughts onstage. Bill Hicks was a master at verbally destroying hecklers--but he knew how to do it without resorting to such garbage. Oh, and he was, you know, actually funny.

But Maher reached a new low even for him during his "new rules" segment when he called undecided voters "dipshits" who should "stay home on election day." Here is The Raw Story with the details:

“If you’re one of the 5 percent of American voters who are still undecided on who to vote for, it’s okay to admit you just don’t really give a shit,” Maher began. “Seriously, if you still can’t figure out who you like more –Mitt Romney or Barrack Obama– stay home… because you probably couldn’t find your polling place anyway. I mean, what more information does someone need to make this choice? Obama has been President for nearly four years. And Mitt Romney has been running for President since 1971, when his space egg incubated and he burst out of an astronaut’s chest.”

But Maher’s criticism wasn’t merely for the “undecideds,” but for notion that mainstream media outlets give their opinions weight.

“Can we please stop treating them like they’re more noble and discerning than the rest of us? …[Undecided voters are] put on a pedestal by the media, as if they’re Hamlet in a think tank, searching out every last bit of information and high-minded arbiters pouring over policy positions and matching them against their own philosophies. Please! They mostly fall into a category political scientists call ‘low-information voters’ –otherwise known as ‘dipshits.’”

Yeah, Bill, you are such a superior thinker being a "high information" voter and all that you laughably believe that it will make ANY fucking difference whatsoever in the lives of the average American who wins the election in November. In fact, despite President Hopey-Changey having sold the liberal and progressive movement down the river on every singe issue of real importance since his inauguration you still inexplicably donated a cool $1 million of your own money to Obama's super PAC for his reelection campaign. And this happened AFTER you publicly proclaimed that you were "disappointed" in Obama last year for "giving away the store" as you so memorably put it your own self.

So tell me, Bill, because as someone who is a "high information NON-voter" I'd really like to know the answer to this question...who's the true dipshit, the low information voter who can't make up their mind, or the smug, self-satisfied talk show host who despite all of the evidence to the contrary is still desperately trying to convince his delusional liberal and progressive audience that it matters either way?


Bonus: Here is a video of the Rushdie/Maher conversation if you can stomach it. Pretty sad when a hack like Chris Matthews serves the voice of REASON in any political discussion.

We Were Fucked from the Moment We Elected the Movie Actor

Late last week I saw what I thought was a very funny political post on a libertarian, Ron Paul supporting “doomer” blog. The essence of the post was that Obama is a terrible president because he is unqualified for the job and as proof it served up examples of how he spends more time playing golf and on vacation than he does running the country. Part of the reason I found it so amusing was that liberals and progressives used to say almost the exact same things about Chimpy Bush when he was the prez-nit. But more importantly, I found it funny because as evidenced by the post itself and the reader comments, many of these “realist” libertarian types still seem to be suffering under the delusion that the president actually runs the country.

Let’s cut to the chase and state right upfront who Obama really is: a snake oil salesman. He’s a the Wizard of Oz, with an image-perfect little family right out of central casting from the old Cosby Show, hired by the billionaire scumbags who really run the country to make America’s unceasing addiction to big business, war and empire palatable to enough of the ignorant, stupid masses to prevent serious civil unrest from breaking out. The American Hologram, as our old friend the late author Joe Bageant described the American media, maintains an ironclad grip on the thoughts and opinions of a vast majority of the population—and Obama is the vital cog that maintains the illusion that an elected official is still in charge of the country.

It wasn’t always like this. Throughout history, Americans have often complained about the Tweedledee and Tweedledum nature of the two party system, in which the choices on election day often seem to be between the “lesser of two evils.” But believe it or not, there was a time when the president WAS an independent actor who could be a fearsome opponent to anyone, even a Wall Street titan, who opposed him. Teddy Roosevelt and his staid successor, William Howard Taft, energetically smashed the old monopolistic trusts, which was the first great blow the federal government ever struck on behalf of the common people in the age of the corporation. Teddy's cousin, FDR, was hated as “a traitor to his class” for enacting the New Deal, which was a main pillar that supported the creation of a robust middle class after World War Two. Flash forward another few decades, and whatever else you might want to say about them it would be very difficult to argue that there was little difference between George McGovern and Richard Nixon in 1972, or even Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Speaking of Reagan, as I’ve stated here before it was his election that was really the turning point that started America down this long road to perdition. President Bonzo had a unique ability to appeal to superficial patriotism and cultural divides to get working and middle class people to vote against their economic interests—in other words the former Hollywood actor was also a great SALESMAN. By all accounts, Reagan himself was disinterested in the mechanics of being president, and turned much of the detail work over to his subordinates. In that dynamic, we see the first emergence of the President as a cipher, the man whose most important job is to sell policies that were designed by his puppetmasters. Reagan’s massive electoral success despite his manifest unfitness for the presidency was all the proof the oligarchs needed that they could seize total control over the political process if they could find just the right “useful idiots.”

After Reagan, Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton may have been a bit more their own men than The Gipper, but by the time we reached the disastrous administration of George Bush the Lesser the process of making the president little more than a figurehead fronting for those who put him in office was almost complete. Obama just closed the loop by becoming the first Democratic president to be a total stooge of those who have anointed him as “the one.”

And that’s where we stand today. Six weeks before the election, it appears from how the majority of the fat cat contributors’ campaign contributions are now shifting away from Romney to Obama that the powers that be have decided that President Hopey-Changey is a more effective salesman for their agenda than the hopelessly inept Governor 47%-er could ever hope to be. Obama may not have been a Hollywood actor, but he learned how to say his lines and hit his marks a long time ago, and wouldn’t be where he is today if he hadn’t.


Bonus: In retrospect, we'd have been better off electing Reagan's male co-star.

The Billionaires Do Not Care About the Integrity of ANYTHING

Hoo-boy, did Americans wake up out of their usual slumber and get all hot and bothered this week. There was consternation and gnashing of teeth from coast to coast and even out into the various territories. For a moment there, it looked like public anger would boil over and infuriated citizens would pour out into the streets in mass protest. Howard Beale, where are you when we need you? We’re mad as hell, and we absolutely are not going to take this shit anymore.

So what was it that stirred the masses from their media-induced numbness and fueled their growing outrage? Was it the latest war atrocity against innocent civilians overseas committed by a declining empire fighting a desperate rearguard action against the unceasing march of history? Was it the latest federal government bailout of Wall Street banksters who then turn around and send middle class jobs to the country that the Pentagon war pigs tell us is supposedly the worst geopolitical threat we face in the world? Perhaps likely voters are finally waking up to the fact that the approaching presidential election is a sham and that there is virtually no difference between the two major party candidates on any issue of substance?

Don’t be silly, Natch. I’m talking about the horrifically blown call by replacement referees at the end of the nationally televised Monday Night Football game that gave the Seahawks an “undeserved” victory over the Packers.

That’s what it comes down to. That’s what it takes to get the idiots upset in this stupid country. You can bone them up the ass for more than 30 years, slowly stealing their prosperity, security and their children’s futures, but goddamnit don’t allow a meaningless game between two groups of steroid-fueled, overpaid millionaires to descend into a comical farce. That’s taking things a bit too far.

What’s most amusing to me about this latest tempest in a Hologram teapot is that there actually is a very good lesson to be learned from this debacle even if you are not a sports fan. In fact, let me briefly summarize the issue for those of you who do not spend your autumn Sunday afternoons glued to your television screens. The NFL is run by a group of 31 billionaire owners (and the Green Bay Packers, who are owned by the city of Green Bay) who just signed a $20 billion national television contract to broadcast their mediocre games into every household in the land. That big, fat wad of teevee cash virtually guarantees that the owners will make a profit every year no matter how well they manage (or mismanage) their teams.

Moreover, for the past 30 years NFL commissioners have been steadfastly pushing league player personnel rules in such a way to encourage “parity” (mediocrity), meaning that the talent level on each team now evens out enough so that there are no true dynasties anymore and most individual games are closely fought contests. This “balance” is supposed to generate even more fan excitement and interest (and, not incidentally get them spending even more of their hard earned money on NFL merchandise). Unfortunately, there is one little problem that comes with parity, and that is the nature of the game itself, in which subjective penalties called by the referees in a tight contest—pass interference, holding and personal fouls in particular—can swing the results of an individual game one way or another and one bad call can negate the strenuous efforts of the players on the field.

So here you have a league in which the quality of play has already been deliberately watered down, resulting in many close games in which the quality of the refereeing is already crucial to maintaining its integrity as an athletic competition, and what do those billionaire owners with the $20 billion television contract do? Try to save a few paltry million dollars by locking out the regular referees and bringing in a bunch of incompetent scabs to replace them. There just could not be any more fitting metaphor for what the oligarchs who really run this country have been doing to the workers for the past 30 years with the complicity of the bought-and-paid for politicians.

Those sportswriters and fans who are now shrieking about how the integrity of the NFL has been damaged by the use of replacement referees are pissing in the wind. Obviously, the billionaires who run the league could not give a shit about the game’s integrity just so long as they can keep reaping billions of dollars in profits from it. Winning is nice, but making money is all they really care about. If you were to hold a gun to the head of any NFL owner and force them to answer honestly whether they would rather have their team win five Super Bowl Championships or receive a sweetheart new stadium deal with plenty of luxury skyboxes from the taxpayers of his state, I guarantee you that every single one of them would take the stadium deal over the Lombardi Trophies. That’s what separates them from the idiot fans who root for each team: the fans genuinely care whether the team wins or not.

It’s the same thing across all aspects of American society. Yesterday, I posted again about Bain Capital closing the Sensata manufacturing plant in my hometown of Freeport, Illinois, and sending the jobs off to China. You would think that such a horrendous action would rip the heart out of anyone who really cares about this country and about the welfare of its citizens, but clearly the sociopathic assholes who run Bain Capital and the poodle politicians they keep in their back pocket—from Willard Romney to President Hopey-Changey—do not care about America any more than those NFL owners do about the supposed “integrity of the game.”

Always remember that when everything in a society becomes a commodity to be bought and sold without sentiment or feeling, that society eventually reaches the point where nothing is sacred or has value for its own sake. Those who would defend the “right” of the oligarchs to do as they please should always bear in mind that what separates us as American citizens in the early 21st century from the historical human norm when life for most people was truly “nasty, brutish and short” was that brief period after World War Two when America temporarily built a more equitable and just society that allowed most citizens and not just the oligarchs to enjoy the fruits of fossil fueled prosperity. The game has since changed, the age of abundance is coming to an end and all of that is now being ripped away. So you should ask yourself: is it more likely after the dust settles that I will be one of the tiny minority of global oligarchs who rule the planet with an iron fist, or instead will I be one of the vast majority of hopeless peons who are exploited to death so that their rulers may extract every last ounce of value from our resource depleted world?


Bonus: Classic George Carlin