God, I’m in a pissy mood. Maybe it’s all the Beck shit. That such a mediocre talent would warrant such penis envy from the left wing media! I heard today that the Huffington Post posted, then quickly retracted (with an apology), a $100K offer to find dirt on Beck that would remove him permanently from the “spotlight”. That’s easy! Shut the fuck up about the guy for 10 seconds, maybe he’ll go away…
It’s probably the heat, but a whole bunch of shit is really getting under my skin recently. Here goes, in no particular order:
1) Big Ass Diesel trucks. Jesus shit. I realize diesel is the big thing these days. These pick-ups get 17 mpg instead of 14 in the standard issue engine, but they are loud and they stink. Every time I hear one rumble past , I can hear every one of the 8 cylinders from 5 blocks away, like a thousand nickles rattling on a cookie sheet. Fuck. And none of these land barges look like they have ever even hauled a bag of Quick-Crete. And we can’t forge an energy policy in this country because these dipshits are suffering a midlife crisis? Clue: get a grip boys; buy an over-priced, under-powered Harley, get a tattoo, and go on a donut run with the gang on Saturday morning and spare the rest of us the noise and the parking space.
2) Macy’s. Here’s a confession: in a moment of weakness, I actually bought a couple of Chistmas gifts last year, and used a Macy’s credit card. As it turns out, I eventually owed them a grand total of $16. Sixteen, not 16 thousand, or even 16 hundred. These cocksuckers called me every day, every hour for two weeks to collect their $16. I am not lying. When I finally relented and paid them the $16, they continued to call me because, I guess, I was “in their system”. When I finally called them and told them to back off, they momentarily relented. The gal on the phone said ” Oh. I see you submitted your payment. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” The calls resumed the next morning at 7 AM. If I could fire bomb the Macy’s at Parkway Plaza tomorrow morning, and get away with it, I wouldn’t be writing this blog; I’d be pouring gasoline into coke bottles.
3) Now to Beck: it’s not Glenn who pisses me off. After all, he’s just a dumb-ass radio guy who hit a hot streak and capitalized on it. Hey, I’m a radio guy too, and at the core of it, and I reluctantly have to give the guy his props. But who are the fucking dipshits who think this guy is the messiah? The people who pumped $37 million into his pockets in the past calendar year? I have to share the planet with these assholes? Beck is a mediocrity who makes Limbaugh look like Shakespeare. Are they putting something in the water??? (Yes, they are, incidentally.)
“My role, as I see it, is to wake America up to the backsliding of principles and values and most of all of God,” he said. “We are a country of God. As I look at the problems in our country, quite honestly, I think the hot breath of destruction is breathing on our necks and to fix it politically is a figure that I don’t see anywhere.” (Glenn Beck)
This week brought news of devastating floods, erupting volcanoes, a world economy in free fall, an alarming spike in Afghanistan violence, and, of course, Tiger Woods’ divorce. And yet, at week’s end, the news is dominated by coverage of a radio talk show host’s fan club rally in Washington. Of course it wasn’t just Glenn Beck that gathered a large crowd to the nation’s capital for a series of Tea Party meets Jesus events. It was also anti-abortionist Patrick Lee, self-parody Sarah Palin, homophobic uber-Zionist John Hagee, drunk driving St. Louis Cardinal’s manager Tony LaRussa, along with an assortment of Christo-fascists, conservative rabbi’s, and right wing sycophants (Or as George W. Bush would call them: “My base, heh, heh, heh.”) How big was this story? No fewer than 5 of the 15 most-emailed stories on the New York Times website were about Beck, the Tea Party, or both. The New York Times, not the Washington Times.
NBC estimated the crowd to be around a staggering 300,000. (Other estimates were as low as 85,000.) Hell, I’d be staggering too if I had to sit through the stultifying twaddle that roused the rabble at an event alternately billed as “America’s Divine Destiny” or”Restore Honor” rally. Highlights include Lee’s admonition that public prayer would make America a better place, black belt conservative hack Chuck Norris quoting from Ben Franklin , and war worshiping Palin saying things like “Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me.”
“I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans…I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that…There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades…The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment.”(Rev. John Hagee, 2005)
And, of course, there was Beck himself, mugging for the camera, unleashing his potent repertoire of facial tics, and conjuring up brilliant bon mots like “If you look at the Washington Monument, you might notice its scars. … a quarter of the way up it changes color. Look at it. Look at its scars. How did the scar get there? They stopped building it in the Civil War. And when the war was over, they began again. No one sees the scars of the Washington Memorial, the Washington Monument; we see what it stands for.”
You like that one? Well, there’s more where that came from, Buckie: “Something beyond imagination is happening. America today begins to turn back to God.”
And yes, the whole messianic megalomania of the event, the phony humbleness of Beck (who grossed $37 million last year), the huge turn out, and Palin’s smug, tired act do annoy the crap out of me. But, as you can tell from my opening paragraphs, it was the coverage of this thing that really grates. The increasingly insufferable Keith Olbermann of MSNBC absolutely couldn’t keep his mouth shut, providing literally hours of publicity to Beck and the rally over the past several weeks. CNN’s Sunday morning “Reliable Sources” show was devoted almost entirely to the event and featured this excruciatingly inane exchange between host Howard Kurtz and Democratic party hack Bill Press:
KURTZ: Bill Press, you have been crusading against this event for weeks. Most of the talk from Glenn Beck was about God and patriotism. What did he say, if anything, that you found troubling?
BILL PRESS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, first of all, talking about God on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By the way, whatever the numbers were –
KURTZ: Haven’t preachers done that?
PRESS: — 200,000, or whatever, I was there yesterday. I went down there. OK?
And I’ll tell you, I thought I was at a camp meeting, an old- fashioned religious camp meeting. I don’t think that’s appropriate on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But two things.
KURTZ: Why is it not appropriate. Let’s stick with that. Why is it not appropriate?
PRESS: Because it is a sacred spot, number one. I don’t think it should be turned over to be a political or a religious rally. It was both, in my opinion. It was political. Not that he ever mentioned the word “Obama,” but you can’t bash Obama five days a week on the radio and television and then stand up on the Sabbath and be a non-political person.
Fox News, Beck’s spiritual home, actually covered the event less than either CNN or MSNBC
and didn’t even broadcast the first 2 hours of the rally. And post-mortem news coverage focused on the “message” Dems should be receiving about the crowd turnout, the religious psych-babble, and the anti-government tone of Operation Restore Honor. Yes, the fringe kook tea bag movement has officially entered the mainstream, with lots of help from NBC, CNN, the New York Times, Bill Press, Keith Olbermann, and the usual suspects. I guess that’s why they call it the Mainstream Media.
As DrinkingwithBob so artfully put it, are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?! This guy speaks for me. Two freakin’ mosques already near “ground zero” and another one on the way?! What the freak, you freakin’ freak-wads: this is Hallowed Ground, like Arlington National Cemetery, like Gettysburg, like the set of “American Chopper”! Just take a look, you freedom hating, elitist, surrender monkeys:
That’s not just a freakin’ hole in the freakin’ ground, Abdul, that’s a freakin’ hole in freakin’ hallowed ground! But not everybody in this great country is gonna roll over and play dead before the Islam-o-fascist-jihadist towel heads. Bryan Fischer of The American Family Association has it nailed:
“Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero.This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”
And I learned a few other things while recently searching the freakin’ web! For example, did you know that muslims who work at the Pentagon are allowed to pray to Allah, like, 500 times a day? There’s your freakin’ tax dollars at work for you. Now, I’m not saying that the Pentagon is exactly hallowed ground, because after all, it was designed along the lines of a pentagram, the universal occultist symbol for One World Government domination. But still. I’m just sayin’.
Bunch of freakin’ ‘tards. I can’t freakin’ believe it. What happened to this country? What happened to my America? Go back to freakin’ Libya, where you were born, Barrack Hussein Obama!
A decade ago, there was much hue and cry about the vanishing middle class. Jobs were being “out-sourced” to overseas slave labor markets, illegal immigration was forcing wages and salaries down, old line “smoke stack” industries were crumbling under the weight of foreign competition, and technology was replacing manpower. The rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer, and there wasn’t much in between.
Now, looking back, those were the good old days. Today, due to an global economic collapse, even the overseas slaves are loosing their $2-a-day jobs. Whereas a few years ago, people were flocking to big box stores like Costco to stock up on heavily discounted staples like bread, milk, rice, and 30-pound bags of M&M’s, now people are lining up 10 deep in the same stores just to get the free sample of pita chips and hummus. Gotta eat something.
Friday’s “jobs report” was sobering. The so-called economic recovery ground to a halt in July as only 31,000 jobs were added to the private sector. In fact, there was a net lossin jobs. Here is the reality:
- 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
- 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck.
- 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
- For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
- In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
- The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
- More than 40 million Americans are on food stamps.
- Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
- Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
- The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
And, of course, the irony is that that top 10% of Americans who earn 50% of our national income are, in large part, the same swindlers who’s greed and avarice caused the economic melt-down in the first place. And what is the Republican party’s response to this disaster? They want to extend the Bush tax cuts so that Goldman Sachs, et al, can keep a few billion dollars more of their obscene profits, while the hard working wage earner can pocket an extra 400 bucks.
To be fair, the Obama administrations response to the collapsewas weighted heavily in favor of Goldman Sux and Shitty Bank as well. Exactly where are all those high paying jobs we heard were going to be created by TARP, you know, the ones rebuilding dilapidated bridges, spraying Round-Up on Mount Rushmore, and shoring up decaying infrastructure? Oh yeah, that didn’t happen.
But at least the Repugs know who their constituents are, and unlike the Dims, they’re out to reward them. Look at the above statistics: millionaires actually constitute 16% of American society, and they vote. And once that the tea baggers and the rest of theboobgeosie are convinced that the tax cuts, like gun ownership and homophobia, are part of God’s sacred covenant, these millionaires will be laughing all the way to the bank. The one they own.
That’s Ag Secretary Tommy Vilsack explaining the forced resignation of low-level department civil servant Shirley Sherrod, over “racially explosive” remarks she made recently about hating honkies and refusing to help them, especially honky farmers, especially one specific honky farmer whom she failed to recently help, when he desperately needed it.
Except, of course, none of that is true, except for the forced resignation part. What actually happened is that Ms. Sherrod had given a 40 minute speech 24 years ago, where she recounted her come-to-jesus moment, overcoming her resentment toward white folks, and reaching out to help a white farmer, with whom she has since become friends. So why the precipitous over-reaction by Vilsack? Well, because the NAACP fell prey to a cheap media stunt (“snookered” was their word) by Andrew Brietbard, the Wavy Gravy of right wing cyber-loons, who posted 2 1/2 out-of-context minutes of Sherrod’s quarter-century-old speech on his website in a cheap game of “Gotcha!”. The NAACP took the bait, Vilsack followed suit, and Sherrod was gone. Even Obama was “briefed” on the situation. (This all, by the way, a result of Brietbart being incensed by the NAACP request last month that the “Tea Party” denounce some of its more outrageously racist rhetoric.)
Make sense? Brietbart intentionally posts Sherrod’s edited remarks in an attempt to smear her, the NAACP accepts Brietbart’s hit-piece at face value, and Vilsack sacks Sherrod without even so much as having one of his low-level Ag Dept. cabana boys watch the speech in its entirety. Now, of course, Vilsack and the NAACP and even the administration is all apologetic over the shabby, sorry-ass treatment Sherrod recieved, even though as of this posting, she still hasn’t gotten her job back.
In a sane world, nobody except ‘baggers, war mongers, survivalists, and televangalists should even know who this Brietbart creep is. But he’s a master mixologist, and the kool-aid he cooks up in his cyber lab has just the right balance of hollywood-hating, war-loving, “small government”, anti-tax bullshit to reach a much wider audience of dunces. That includes the NAACP, the Secretary of Agriculture, and even the President of the United States. Who should know better. But they don’t. And that’s fucking disappointing and sad.
Finally got around this weekend to reading the “inflammatory” Rolling Stone articleon General Stanley McChrystal, the “hit piece” authored by embedded reporter Michael Hastings. Clearly, I should have read the article the moment R.S. arrived in my mail box, but I spent 3 days periodically staring at the air brushed cover photo of Lady Gaga’s rump, never realizing it was McChrystal’s ass that would end up grass. That is, until I turned on the tube and was avalanched by the coverage of the fall out from Hasting’s piece.
Needless to say, before the dust settled, President Obama had relieved McCrystal of his command duties in Afghanistan, to be replaced by the more user-friendly David Petraeus, a baffling move given the actual content of the article. If anything, McChrystal comes across as an affable, albeit arrogant, soldier, perhaps a tad entranced by his own press clippings, but otherwise an Ok Joe trying his best to do the job right in the unforgiving circumstances of trying to win an un-winnable war.
Actually the most damning thing in the R.S. piece was McChrystal’s role in the cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death:
After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn’t read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman’s death. “If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public,” he wrote, it could cause “public embarrassment” for the president.
But the Tillman cover-up was old news, perhaps a reason to thwart his ascent to status of Allied Commander, but one would assume Obama was fully vetted on that issue before he made the promotion. (The other damning fact exposed by Hastings is that McChrystal prefers Bud Light Lime to French Bordeaux, but, what the hell, 10 years in the Middle East heat probably eats at the brain.) So what warranted the swift and provacative shit-canning from Obama? The now infamous Biden-”Bite me!” witicism? I hope not, since that dorky, un-funny comment was offered up by an aide to the General. McChrystal’s characterization of Obama as appearing “uncomfortable and intimidated” during their first meeting? Again, I hope not, given that the comment of hearsay from an un-named source:
According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”
The Boss was pretty diappointed? Whoa! Gotcha!!!
Of course, the most interesting thing about Hasting’s profile is the fall-out from the scrubs in the mainstream media, including this exchange from future Dancing with the Stars contestant, the vacuous home-wrecker Lara Logan of CBS news, appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”:
I mean, the question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal’s? I mean, Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.
Although I essentially agree with Logan’s conclusions, what does Hasting’s military service have to do with anything? It wasn’t his decision to can McChrystal’s ass, it was Obama’s.
I also researched Logan’s “service” to her country, but this photo was all I could come up with.
But Logan’s reaction pales in comparison to this laughable segment recorded last week on the “No Spin Zone”, between Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera, the only reporter that was actually expelled from a war zone (at least in recent memory) because of disclosures that truly compromised the the safety of our troops. Here, Rivera, the pathetic punchline to a million journalism jokes, accuses Hastings of compromising national security with his Biden-”Bite Me” revalations:
After right wing dweeb and head of the California Republican party, Ron Nehring, proposed that the new Alpine High School be named after Ronald Reagan, a minor tempest arose in the East County bedroom community. Local hayseeds, many of whom disclosed their delusional love for the over-rated Gipper, spoke out against the move, preferring a name with a more regional flare. So the Grossmont School Board at least appeared to be bending to the public will when they announced they would appoint a blue ribbon panel to discuss the school naming, even though they tried mightily to keep secret the panel’s members. That is until Sunday, when the San Diego Union Tribune revealed the group to be largely comprised of fringe conservative kooks and Republican politicos.
Along with Nehring, the panel includes, among others, former Republican congressman and war monger Duncan Hunter, and, mysteriously, homophobic jesus freak, Sylvia Sullivan, former local head of the anti-abortion mob, Operation Rescue. Sullivan, pictured above protesting stem cell research, as far as I know has never even set foot in Alpine and has zero connection to public education. Nehring, of course, should have more important matters on his mind other than naming schools, given recent revelations about his love life, but he now finds himself in the position to strong arm the local Alpine bumpkins into bending to his will.
But why single out Sullivan and Nehring for ridicule, when the panel also includes Grossmont School Board prez Jim Kelly, another right wing looney toon who strenuously opposed the new Alpine school from the gitgo. For the un-initiated, here is a brief snapshot of the Grossmont board under Kelly’s leadership.
And the ironies don’t stop there. Reagan, as governor of California, practically eviscerated public education in the state, which, the last time I checked, ranked last among the 50 states in per-pupil education spending.
So the question is: after the Fishwrap’s recent revelations, will the fine citizen of Alpine stop sweeping their patios and skimming their pools to voice their dissent? Or will they, in the words of Reaganite oil tycoon Clayton Williams, just lie back and enjoy it?
This one is so easy it writes itself. Monica Crowley of Faux News laments the name calling eminating from the White House. The gripe? Obama refers to the tea party movement as “tea baggers“! Really. It’s not the childish Obama-as- Hitler posters, or the idiocy of the birther movement, it’s the term “tea bagger” that’s the felony here.
Crowley: He ought to really apologize for this vulgar and vile comment referencing the American people, and also try to give some sort of speech — I know a lot of us have heard enough from the president already — but he should try to put out some words that are going to make up for this kind of thing.
… But you know, Megyn, even if he were to go out and say this, I would encourage him to do it, but he’s got a credibility problem now because it seems that every time there is a movement or an individual or an institution or an organization that disagrees with his policies, he personalizes it. He singles them out, whether it’s Fox News, or Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge police department, or the entire state of Arizona for supporting this new immigration law, whether it’s the Tea Party movement, he has this willingness that’s very unbecoming of the American president, to go out and single out the American people.
I held myself hostage for a couple hours yesterday as the Senate banking committee grilled a series of reptilian Goldman Sachs executives, both past and present, including current CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
The chief inquisitor was Michigan Dem, Carl Levin, long-time water carrier for the auto industry and fierce opponent of CAFE standards, and therefore fierce opponent of clean air. Levin single- handedly created an instant smash hit drinking game, as every time he quoted the word “shitty”, derived from internal G.S. emails, I downed a shot of Russian vodka, mainly to dull the reality of the charade that was unfolding before me.
In case you missed it, the main issue with Goldman Sachs is that, during the housing bubble, they were selling bundles of toxic mortgage securities to unwitting dupe clients, while their own investment wing was “shorting” the same securities, effectively unloading crap they didn’t want anymore, while raking in $billions in profits on the short side. An analogy would be if a car dealer unloaded a lemon on some sucker while at the same time taking bets on whether the clunker would make it to the next stoplight.
The problem with the senate’s grandstanding clusterfuck was, of course, that it was responsible for the the very deregulation, a shitbomb known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, that allowed predators like G.S. to engage legally in these activities in the first place. And who, among others, fully endorsed Gramm-Leach-Bliley? Of course, the good Senator Levin.
But can you blame the Obama administration and congressional democrats for flipping the populist card? After all, Obama’s single largest campaign contributor turns out to be Goldman Sachs, and dem pols have been raking in Wall Street moolah ever since they decided the trade unions and their campaign contributions were counter productive to their newly furbished image as Global Capitalists. And if the proposed banking “reform” that Democrats are proposing is anything like the recently-passed health care “reform”, expect so many loopholes and exemptions Goldman, et al, will merely have to create another “legal” form of corporate fraud.
I was a featured speaker, along with Congressman Bob Filner, at a “Coffee Party” event held Sunday in North Park. In the event that you are unaware, The Coffee Party is a liberal response to “The Tea Party”, of course minus the yahoos, cretins, imbeciles, and bigots that comprise the tea baggers. It was a nice group of folks, actually, if anything, too nice, at least in my opinion.
Naturally a couple of baggers showed up to protest the protesters and one of them actually had a bullhorn and one of those signs that I’ve only seen on television, you know, the one that has a picture of Obama and Hitler side-by-side. (Apparently while I was looking elsewhere, Obama has gone from a commie to a fascist almost overnight.) Local Fox TV news was on hand as well. Anway, while Filner was being interviewed on the sidewalk in front of the venue, bullhorn boy (here he is after a brief , but annoying ad) was shouting from 6 feet away “Filner is afraid to meet the voters!!” ( odd when you consider that, well, Filner was in fact meeting the voters. )
While this sideshow was getting most of the attention, there was another tea bagger, sans bullhorn, who was patiently explaining to an attentive lib how being spat upon by hippies upon returning from ‘Nam was what awakened his political activism. If true, his was possibly the only real authentic case of spat-upon-vets yet to surface.
And, of course, that’s the problem with these dolts: they just make shit up and pass it along as divine truth: Obama’s a Muslim, Obama’s not an American citizen, Obama’s gonna take your gun away, Sarah Palin is “a breath of fresh air”, a dirty hippie spit on me, Newt Gingrich is “brilliant”, Dick Cheney is not a blood-sucking war criminal, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Meanwhile, the nice guys, the coffee partiers, were actually passing around “civility pledges” inside the venue, vowing to treat with respect even those lie-spewing fear mongers who were littering the sidewalk out front. WTF? Why treat respectfully the very people that already think you’re a bunch of limp-wristed pansies? If you’ve ever tried to reason with an attacking Doberman, you get my point. The baggers apparently have no qualms about stifling respectful dialogue, given that their holy tome is a crayon-scrawled screed called “Arguing with Idiots” written by the odious Glenn Beck.
Anyway, what do I know? Maybe the play-nice tactic will eventually work. It’s certainly worth a try. The next time some tea bagger accosts you on the street, screaming bogus “truths” in your face, try just sticking a flower in the barrel of his bullhorn.
