Fail Bombs

It’s really touching that Israel waited until the day after Christmas to begin their bloody campaign in Gaza: a fruitcake gift for the fruitcakes that support their actions here in the United States, no matter what they do.

If a dozen UN peacekeepers and a hundred American schoolchildren happened to be in Palestine in the wrong place and the wrong time this week, the warmonger apologists would still be strumming out the same tired lines of “Israel has the right to defend herself,” and “they deal with terrorism every day.”

Both of these lines have a reasonable amount of truth to them, but the right wing extremists in Jerusalem and Washington stretch them to the point of absolute absurdity.

It was a catastrophically stupid decision by Hamas to let the peace accord with Israel expire- they had to know what was going to come…

However, calling the random, poorly aimed home-made rockets fired into Israel a terror campaign is a line of thought even thinner than Heidi Klum’s waistline.

As usual, Israel chose to grossly overreact to the Palestinian violence by starting a vicious bombing campaign aimed at both Hamas military and civilian targets. So far over 300 people have died, and with the promise of a ground invasion to come, that number is going to expand into the four digit territory very soon.

So, the question that the American media never dares to ask, is why?

Why would they strike into the Gaza Strip and kill scores of innocent civilians on such flimsy provocation?

Don’t count on the local political discourse here to provide any clues: the answers range from the always radical antiwar’s cynical suggestion that the entire campaign is political in nature. Then there’s the blowhards at the worst’s most important propaganda publication who have the balls to suggest that the airstrikes are really in the best interest of Palestinians.

I’ve only been around since 1984, so I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that the media became the obese, slobbering imbecile that it is today. Perhaps our older readers can clue us in on the timing? When did the papers, the TV, the radio, and everything in between become completely incapable of providing a reasonable analysis of political violence?

We’re stuck between Hamas is evil and a dangerous threat to the security of the free world, and all Palestinians are happy, shining people holding hands who only want peace in their little corner of the world.

They’re both wrong.

But any reasonable person can see that the devastation in Gaza being perpetrated by the IDF is not justified at all.

This war will not bring us any closer to a peace agreement, or giving Palestine back its land, or bringing a unified holy land state together. All this war will do is serve to enrich the manufacturers of the weapons being used by Hamas and Israel: the companies in the United States that sell subsidized weapons of mass destruction to anyone, anywhere in the world, regardless of their political or religious ideology.

So, unless you’re sitting on the board at Lockheed Martin, this bombing effort has to be labeled a complete failure.

Maybe at some point in the future the media will wake from its smoggy slumber and start reporting the news objectively and intelligently, and the leaders of the free world will stop taking money from the merchants of death here and abroad, but until that happens, there is no hope for the people of Israel OR Palestine.

This war will continue until the end of time.

Whopper Whores

It’s Christmas. That means that snowflakes are falling, homes are being decorated in bright lights, children with rosy cheeks are laughing and playing, and human beings are being trampled by mobs of mindless customers in search of hot price deals at Walmart.

Fear not. This is not another lament about the consumer culture taking over our most beloved holiday.

No, this is an attempt to find out how we came to this in the first place.

The apetite for consumption in America has been around as long as the country itself, but one thing more than any other is responsible for the lengths to which we have gone in this time to consume more than we ever need: advertising.

I like advertising, I think it’s a useful tool for business and a fine hobby for intelligent and attractive people who probably get paid far too much for their time to do it. But I also think that it’s the driving force behind so much of the shopping hysteria and general greed in American culture today.

I’m talking about certain ads.

Certain ads by certain copywriters who feed on our lowest instincts:

1. Whopper Virgins: if you really are still puzzled as to why certain people are willing to blow themselves up in order to kill Americans and our allies, you need only watch these ads to understand. Whopper Virgins brings the joy of Burger King’s famed sandwich to third world villagers who (gasp) don’t speak English and (GASP!) have never eaten fast food before. A Whopper and a Big Mac are laid in front of the subject (probably as much food as they eat in an entire day) and they taste both of them. Naturally, they point towards the Whopper and mumble something in their quaint native tongue about “liking this one better.”

Just ignore the obvious racism and absurdity of the advertisement in the first place and think about it from a consumerist standpoint. The idea is that people all over the world who haven’t felt the joy of biting into a flame-broiled burger are just dying to find out what it tastes like. They are strange because they don’t consume the way Americans do, and they are vindicated when they join in the fun.

Somewhere a third world villager has a pile of grain on one side of him, and a couple of grapes on another. Nobody is asking him which he prefers more. Because his is not an American choice, therefore it does not matter. This is the way we think of the rest of the world: they are tools for our amusement and a means to an end in which we have more dollars in our pocket than we did before. This is why the war on terror began, and probably will never end.

2. Stores of Wonder, Stores of Bright

This cartoon delight brought to you by the Evanston chamber of commerce shows two women carrying dozens of shopping bags leaving a store, and heading for another. In curly Bewitched-type font over the women, the title reads: “Stores of Wonder, Stores of Bright.”

Somewhere a man or a woman who was executed for trying to bring Christianity into a hostile nation is rolling over in their grave.

This ad gets right to the very heart of it, doesn’t it? It explains why everyone I know is stressed out of their minds, my last two weekends have been spent in abhorrent traffic jams, and the global economy is falling faster than a meteor headed towards the Earth.

Environmentalism is a fad that fades out as soon as the price of gas goes down. Christian charity and love are fashionable until the New Year, whose resolutions melt with the snow, but what we never forget, what never goes out of style is shopping.

That’s because the store is our new temple, the dollar is our new God, and spending is our new form of worship.

But because our free market fundamentalist Priests stopped throwing us bones a long time ago, there’s not enough to go around anymore. We would LOVE to go out and spend and prop up this house of horse-shit economy with more consumer spending than we can possibly justify or pay for down the road, but the God just doesn’t go as far as it used to.

In their mad rush to bring our new glorious religion to every corner of the planet, our Priests shipped our Gods and our jobs overseas, where quaint villagers who’ve never eaten a Whopper don’t mind being paid a tenth of a pittance of what an American worker would. So the outlook for our temples this season is very, very bleak.

We are desperately craving the ability to worship freely in as many stores as we please, but because the heresy that is labor cost gets thrown out the window at the first sign of trouble.

That’s why the news that consumer spending is down is the front-page tragedy on Christmas Eve, instead of the dozen Iraqi deaths that occured today. Because reporting on the death of a few people who have never tasted a Whopper would just be too much of a downer for this joyous holiday.

Merry Christmas, America.

War of the Poppies

Barack Obama was elected on two key principles:

One was a general theme of hope and change, a different M.O. coming out of our leaders in Washington compared to the failed policies of the last 8 years.

The second was a promise to fix America’s ailing economy through a series of government spending projects, fiscal stimulus packages, job creation, and tighter regulation over the financial industry.

There is one issue that will prove that both of Barack Obama’s mandates will go unfulfilled, and his promises will be broken, and that is the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Supposedly we went into Afghanistan seven years and several months ago in order to root out Al Qaeda and the Taliban who gave them sanctuary. The real reason we went to Afghanistan has more to do with opium markets and intercontinental gas pipelines. In any case, today the Taliban and the people responsible for 9/11 are still at large and Afghanistan is no closer to becoming a secure, legitimate nation than Terrell Owens is to embracing humility.

Now comes word that Obama will fulfill at least one of his campaign promises: he plans to create a surge for the Afghan war, which involves putting 20 to 30,000 more US troops on the ground.

Why?

Because the incoming American administration is endorsing the idea that Afghanistan can, and must become a fully-functioning, democratic, western ally in the region so that terrorists will have one less place to operate from and recruit in.

That’s what they’re telling us. If you’re the kind of person who believes campaign promises and the official reasons behind the wars we choose to engage in, then so be it.

For the rest of us, we can rest not-so-easily in knowing that our tax dollars are going to continue to fund covert CIA operations intended to slice in the action surrounding the largest opium supplier in the world.

Afghanistan's Oil

Barack Obama promised to end reckless foreign policy and to help Main Street to survive this economic crisis. Both of these goals are made impossible by his Afghan surge plan.

How can we possibly pretend to be helping middle-class America by taking 50 cent out of every dollar of their taxes and using it to fund this global military machine that engages in drug dealing, terrorism, covert operations, military coups, and assassinations all over the world?

How we can we say that this is the change we are asking for when our new President has pledged to extent the second longest war in American history indefinitely?

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of history in the region knows that the idea that we can transform Afghanistan into a democratic beacon of hope is as foolish as trying to wash the white out of rice. Our leaders, both Bush and Obama, are not so naive.

The surge of troops and funds to Afghanistan will not serve our national security interests, or help to alleviate the financial stress of anyone, save the absurdly rich megalomaniacs who drive our foreign policy.

In 4 years, we will have another choice to face: will we choose to keep on fighting senseless wars to enrich our ruling class, or will we choose to elect an independent President who is not beholden to the interests of big business?

Defense and Drugs are already two of our biggest industries: and I, for one, am tired of subsidizing them.

What’s in My Wallet?

I sent this letter to Capital One today. Since I have absolutely no confidence that the right person will get it, or that the monkeys working there are literate in the first place, I am posting it here, sans account number.

Dear Capital One,

 

I am writing you to express my complete frustration in your incomprehensibly terrible customer service, especially in the Fraud department.

 

Every time I call you to try to work out the issues I’ve had in getting my account activated, I feel like I’m being stung with a cattle prod. I shouldn’t have to give you my full account number, social security digits, last 3 digits in the back of my card, first and last name, address, phone number, height and weight, penis size, and eye color in order for you to confirm my information. What’s more annoying than having to answer all of these questions? Having to answer them each time one of you incompetent monkeys transfers me to another incompetent monkey.

 

The errors you have committed in dealing with my account may fill an epic Tolkkien story if I listed them all, but here are a few:

 

1. When I spoke to a representative from your “company,” he told me that it was ok for me to use a piece of mail that Capital One had sent me in order to confirm my address. Two days later, a different monkey told me that this was unacceptable.
2. The original monkey also gave me the incorrect fax number for me to send my confirmation documents too.
3. After being put on hold and transferred 4 times, somebody finally confirmed that you had in fact received my information, but that because my drivers license had a different address than the one on the mailing you sent, it was no good. No monkey I spoke to prior to this told me this would be a problem.

 

I am enclosing my credit card that you approved me for. My suggestion is that you give the remnants to your chief executive officer so that he can forcefully insert them up his own ass.

 

You lost a customer because you have no coordination between your various departments and you treat callers like cattle.

 

Good luck when you face bankruptcy and liquidation. You deserve every bit of it you useless piles of shit.

 

Sincerely, Your former and vengeful customer,

T.W. Albert

Why is this Asshole still Governor?

It has been about two weeks since Governor Rod Bagoshit was arrested for charges of attempting to sell a United States senate seat.

His Hair Hides the word "Jackass" written on his forehead

How he has managed to stay in office for this long is beyond me.

Even though the President-elect has called for his resignation, his approval level has dropped below 13 percent, and Illinois’ attorney general is attempting to get him removed from office, Bagoshit has remained stubborn and clung to his governorship. He feels he has done nothing wrong and intends to fight the charges.

Yesterday Bagoshit got a helpful hand from the Supreme Court, when a judge decided not to temporarily remove him from office and put the Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn in charge for the time being.

There was no comment after the verdict.

WHY?

Doesn’t a judge feel the need to explain their decision to prop up a felon and keep him in charge of one of the largest states in the country to the public???

Here’s my theory:

Bagoshit still has friends in powerful places, and though they’ll never be seen in public with him again, they still have sway over his decisions. My guess is that the Chicago powers-that-be are telling Bagoshit to hang on so that Pat Quinn doesn’t get to be Governor.

I knew very little about Quinn until this scandal exploded, and I assumed he would become our new governor within a matter of hours. What I have heard, I like.

Pat Quinn is an outsider, a populist and consumer advocate that has consistently worked to give Illinois residents more power.

The prospect of a consumer advocate becoming governor has to be a frightening thought for the entrenched business and political interests in our city and our state.

If you’re unfamiliar with Illinois’ elections, allow me to illustrate a similar scenario: because Governors and Lt. Governors run for their respective offices on different tickets in Illinois, they rarely have the same agendas. In fact, rumor has it that Pat Quinn hasn’t met with or even spoken to the Governor for the better part of two years.

On a national scale, imagine that the President and Vice President ran on different tickets, and that last month Barack Obama was elected President, and Ralph Nader was elected Vice President. But then all of the sudden, a political corruption scandal rocked President Obama’s administration, and everyone called for his resignation.

Ralph Nader as President would be terrifying for the powerful people who got Barack Obama elected.

That’s kind of like what is happening in Illinois now.

So when we ask why Governor Bagoshit didn’t pack up his bags and leave Springfield 14 days ago, keep that in mind.

The Illinois Congress and courts need to work together and remove this so-called “man” from office so that we can get a real public servant back to work for the state as soon as possible.

But don’t count on it any time soon. The culture of patronage and rampant corruption that got Bagoshit where he is today is still alive and well, and they’ll do anything they can to stop the Pat Quinns of the world from getting any real power.

Gay Marriage Debate Part 3

I am going to attempt to write this article without replaying the footage of the Iraqi reporter throwing his shoes at President Bush. It’s a serious issue and it deserves serious attention.

In part one of this series I examined Lisa Miller’s article in Newsweek that was a mangled attempt to show biblical justification for gay marriage. In part two, Erin Solaro made a compelling case for gay marriage on legal grounds. Now I will relay my own feelings on the subject, and try not to laugh out loud every few seconds.

What is left over to say in this debate? Plenty. But I don’t intend to get thrown off course by getting into a religious or legal debate. Instead, I’ll think of the possibility of gay marriage in its social context.

LOL

I disagree with both my guest blogger and Lisa Miller about the nature of God and his role in the debate. I do believe that God exists and that the bible does make a clear condemnation of homosexuality.

Most conservatives discussing the social aspect of the idea speak of the moral decay of our nation, and how it would be a subversion of the sanctity of marriage. I cannot argue that there is a serious issue with moral decay in American society, but I feel it has less to do with gay rights than it does with drug abuse, pornography, obesity, poor leadership, injustice and the glorification of violence.

My parents were divorced when I was about 3 years old, and I have seen first hand the potential damages that come in a dysfunctional or splintered family unit. So I can understand the desire to protect our most sacred social institution as it is. Although gender roles are rapidly swinging and changing every day in America, the power that a stable mother and father can have in raising a child cannot be understated. If there is a problem with the sanctity of marriage in this country, the gay community has nothing to do with it. Divorce rates are a far greater threat to the moral fiber of our nation than same sex couples.

At the core of the issue is a simple question: what kind of society do we want to be living in?

For myself, I believe that America should be a place where people are free to do as they please, so long as it does not hurt anyone else. This is the core principle behind my political positions:

This is why I feel that drugs should be legal but capital punishment should be outlawed.

This is why I think that people should be allowed to own guns, but not assault weapons.

This is why I think we need an economy that is regulated and takes human concerns into account as well as monetary ones.

The reason why I have been reluctant to support gay marriage, and at times critical of the idea, is because I have had doubts about the gay community’s commitment to monogamy. Ignorant? Maybe. So much of my experience was colored by my first major social interactions with the gay community: a former roommate of mine was the physical incarnation of every negative gay stereotype that you can imagine. He was vapid, he was selfish, and he had a new lover every week. I assumed that many more gay men and women behaved in much the same way.

I was wrong.

I let one experience distort my judgment and my opinions on homosexuals. It’s the same mindset that allows a person to say that all Irish are drunks, all blacks are lazy, and all Germans are Nazis.

There are millions of gay men and women in America and all over the world who want to be in a stable and loving relationship, and want to have that love recognized by the larger world.

Even still, I have my doubts. If it were up to me, I probably would not legalize gay marriage. But that isn’t what matters.

What society do I want to live in?

I want to have my faith respected and not maligned by American society. But that doesn’t mean that my faith should dictate the way that other people want to live, especially when nobody is being hurt. My personal opinions and moral codes should not be a tool for legislation.

What has made this nation great is the ability of the American people to accept change and to be tolerant of other cultures and ideas. Sometimes we get sidetracked by men with twisted notions about freedom, but at our core, we want every American citizen to be free to live their lives the way they please.

I can no longer in good conscience and philosophical clarity say that I am opposed to gay marriage. We may not see it in our lifetime, but many more people said that we would never see a black President.

Martin Luther King Jr. as usual, put it better than anybody else has: “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Good luck to you and God bless.

Gay Marriage Debate Part 2

As promised, here is the next part in the continuing gay marriage debate. The following is a piece by Erin Solaro- you can read more of her work at her fantastic blog, American Samizdat.

The third installment of this series will come when I write my own ideas on the subject in a couple of days. Enjoy and let us know what you think.

Gay Marriage is a Human Right, not a Religious Issue

Tim, thank you for the kind introduction. Since you noted Lisa Miller’s Newsweek essay, I’ll take that as my starting point and say that religious arguments for and against legal recognition of same sex marriages (because this is what we are talking about, the marriage already existing in the hearts of those involved) are irrelevant for two simple reasons. The existence of God or the Gods cannot be proven, and even if these Gods existed, they would not be human beings, still less would they be citizens of this Republic.

American gay and lesbian people are not only American citizens—which as a point of law we have so far refused to accept through the prism of military service—they are also human beings. As such, in America, they are entitled to the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document strongly influenced by the United States through the person of Eleanor Roosevelt, recognizes that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” and so “men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.” Men and women are “entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution” and “marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.”

Whether or not sexual orientation is biologically innate is at best tangential to the legal recognition of marriages between people of the same sex (although the evidence is in fact overwhelming that there is a strong genetic component to sexual orientation): this is a matter of fundamental human and civil equality. If a man may marry, he may marry regardless of his sexual orientation. If a woman may marry, she may marry regardless of her sexual orientation. And that means whom they choose, provided they and their partners are of full age, and freely and fully consent. To say that gay and lesbian people may marry but only people of the opposite sex is to say, 1., they do not have the same right to marry their freely chosen and freely choosing, willing partner that they would if only one or another of them were of another sex, and 2., since very few gay or lesbian people, given any rational choice, willingly marry someone of the other sex (let alone if they genuinely care for that person), they have no practical or ethical right to marry at all.

In this context, this is what equal rights before the law means, not simply between men and women, but also between human beings more generally. If it’s OK for a man to marry a woman who wants to marry him, it’s OK for a woman to marry a woman who wants to marry her. If it’s OK for a woman to marry a man who wants to be married to her, it’s OK for a man to marry a man who wants to be married to him.

Not everything that is good should be a right, no more than everything that is bad should be a crime. The law can be a harsh and crude instrument, more suited for punishment than guidance or encouragement.

But the right to marry, which is to say, the right to have the law recognize your deepest, most important relationship with a person whom you love, honor, cherish and intend to cling to, forsaking all others, and with whom you hope and intend to spend the rest of your life, is central to the ability of each of us to create a secure, stable and dignified life. And as American citizens and human beings, gay people are entitled to the equal protection of the laws, and including the recognition of their marriages, as an essential foundation for engaging in the individual human work of creating those secure, stable and dignified lives to which we are all entitled.

To demand that people married to others of the same sex call their marriages something other than what they are—marriages—is to debase not only a language shared between Americans of all sexual orientations, but also the reality this language represents. People who wish to formally, legally pledge their lives to other people of the same sex do not wish to be “civil unioned,” they wish to be married: to take their place in the legal institution that literally gave birth to them, an institution they are heir to as much as their heterosexual brothers and sisters.

For marriage is a legal institution, not a religious one: it is not the priest or the rabbi, the pastor or the mullah whose words marry two people, but the vows of the individuals to each other, and their signatures on the marriage certificate. The relationship is between them; the state not only recognizes the relationship that they have created between themselves, it also protects it in so far as it can (the state cannot do everything); clerical sacraments merely bear witness on behalf of their congregants—not all the people, nor the Republic—and ask the deity they worship to bless that union. (That deity may or may not.) Neither churches nor individual clergy should be required to administer sacraments they do not believe are appropriate, no more than anyone should be required to attend a wedding or give a gift, except because they want to. Many of us make these judgments about marriages between heterosexuals.

However, for a majority to reserve to itself certain rights, which can only be exercised by the individuals concerned, preventing a minority from exercising them is nothing more than tyranny. There is no more clear-cut a case of the tyranny of the majority than the refusal to legally recognize marriages between people of the same sex. There is nothing at all elevated about saying, as a matter of law: having arranged our lives to suit ourselves, we will arrange your lives, too, as we please.

To refuse openly gay and lesbian Americans to serve in the military that is their military too, is to say that they are not citizens: that they not only have neither the right nor the responsibility to participate in the common defense, but that they are forbidden to participate in that defense. To refuse them legal recognition of their marriages is to say to them that they are not entitled to the fundamental human rights of marrying and creating families. It is to forbid them from fulfilling the most basic emotional need in a legally protected and socially dignified way.

If the words freedom, equality, and justice—which are not the same—mean anything, together they mean that each of us has only one life, which we may live as we see fit but in no way may we impose ourselves or our chosen life upon others. The denial of legal recognition of marriages covenanted to by people of the same sex, whether that denial takes place under color of law, constitutional amendment, or judicial decree, is an act, not of freedom of conscience or the free exercise of religion, let alone of morality, but of illegitimately depriving sovereign adults of their ability to make utterly intimate and benign choices about their lives—in short, of tyranny.

Gay Marriage Debate

I have been compelled to largely ignore this issue for a long time, mainly because I’m still on the fence, but Newsweek’s dismal treatment of the Gay Marriage debate in its most recent edition has forced my pen.

Lisa Miller’s column in support of Gay Marriage is not so much about the supposed biblical support for the idea, but an assault on the veracity of the book and a mangling of the core tenets of Christianity itself. There were a lot of messy ideas in Miller’s article, but here are the five biggest:

1. Miller begins the column by listing a string of Israeli rulers who in their time were polygamists, thereby implying that marriage between one man and one woman isn’t all that sacred after all. What she fails to mention is that God clearly did not condone the behavior of King David or Solomon.

2. This failed logic is taken one step further when Miller claims that the Bible supports the institution of slavery, because there is a section which details the proper way to pay for a slave. There is probably no greater condmenation in all historical literature of slavery than the account of the Egyptians’ treatment of the Jews.

3. Miller implies that King David and Jonathan were possibly secret gay lovers. With those chromosomes, where does she get the balls to make such a claim?

4. She goes on to say that the Bible provides a conceptual sanctuary for anti-Semitism. Mind you, she never cites any scripture to support the claim: but I can only imagine she’s referring to the Jews’ betrayal of Jesus. That is such a stretch that I’m ashamed to even mention the idea.

5. If this wasn’t enough, Miller goes on to completely mishandle the very idea of Christianity later in the article, when she says that Jesus wanted us to be good for our own sakes, and for the world. This is pretty much the worst interpretation of the teaching that I’ve ever heard of. Christ clearly taught that we should be “good” despite ourselves, even if it means poverty, pain, loneliness, or in his case, crucifixion.

If Lisa Miller wants to provide a biblical context for her support of gay marriage rights- which I’m not entirely opposed to- she should first actually read the bible and make some attempt to understand its messages beyond some vague notion of free love and inclusiveness which is more suited for a New Age massage parlor than a religious text of any kind.

Essentially, her argument comes down to this:

The Bible is outdated, dangerous, and should be ignored at all costs, but Jesus loves everyone, so it’s ok for gay people to get married.

I’m disappointed that Newsweek not only ran the linguistically butchered and intellectually lazy article, but they made it their front cover and feature story!

Maybe I’m naive to expect more from Jon Meachem and co, but if they want a serious debate about  gay marriage, they certainly got off on the wrong foot. I realize that every article in the magazine can’t be written by Fareed Zakaria, but they really need to do a better job of selecting their stories, especially when trying to set up such a debate.

The article only goes to show that many proponents of gay marriage can be just as bigoted and ignorant as those making the claim that God Hates Fags. This issue will go nowhere in this country until we take the stupid out of our respective arguments, do some honest research, and really think about it.

I’m still doing soul searching on the issue, and when I come to a more clear consensus, I will post my thoughts. In the mean time…

I will be hosting an essay in support of gay marriage soon from one of my favorite bloggers, Erin Solaro: who I’m certain will do a better job than Lisa Miller.

Feel free to join the debate, unless of course you’re in the God Hates Fags or Fags Hate God crowds.

Blagojevich Arrested

When people ask me why I’m so in-tune with national and international politics, but don’t pay much attention to the local scene, I say that it’s because Chicago is so corrupt that it’s amazing anyone following local politics doesn’t get clinically depressed.

Today comes another embarrassment: Governor Rod Blagojevich joined the long line of Illinois Governors to be arrested for abusing the office for financial gain.

What the Hell is with his Hair Anyway?

Blagojevich was already under investigation for squeezing local business leaders for campaign contributions through Tony Rezko.

This time Hot Rod was trying to get money from whatever poor sap would be filling the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama.

I think this is an extraordinary opportunity to reform this sytem so that the Governor is not responsible for naming the successor in these situations. Maybe we could, you know, hold special elections? Because, obviously, no Illinois Governor can be trusted to make ethical decisions, let alone decisions that may affect the rest of the nation.

Ok, so we’re used to massive fraud and corruption, but this reeks of the lowest kind of kickback, bootlegging era Chicago politics.

Can’t we even find a Governor who can get indicted for a serious crime that doesn’t involve petty extortion and bribery? If Blagojevic’s successor gets arrested (which they probably will), a charge of sleeping with an intern or murdering a butler would actually be a STEP UP for the State of Illinois.

This city deserves a better class of criminal.

This state deserves a thuggish, corrupt Governor who at least has the ambition to coerce international drug cartels or foreign governments into making massive campagin contributions. If we’re going to break the law, we might as well go for the gold.

Blagojevich also is being charged with threatening to withold bailout money for the Tribune Co. unless members of the editorial board who were critical of him were fired.

SRSLY?

Does this guy have the emotional intelligence of a branded buffalo?

Illinois- we can do better than this guy.

Ok, maybe we can’t do better than this guy. But whoever we choose to be our next Governor had better at least have the good sense to not get caught for whatever criminal activity he prefers to get involved in at our expense.

National Review Warriors

Of all of the accounts I have read about the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, I have only heard the city referred to as Bombay (its old name) in one place: the National Review.

A small point? Perhaps. But it should not be ignored that Bombay is the name that British occupiers bestowed upon the city. Maybe the folks at the NRO are just nostalgic for 19th century British imperialism.

Maybe though, and more likely, they’re a pack of simple-minded, extremist, warmongering savages.

The author bemoans the nature of the media coverage of the assault more than the actual deaths themselves:

“…you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion, least of all one beginning with “I-“ and ending in “-slam.” In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations — “Islamic terrorists,” “Muslim extremists…”

Nobody is doubting that the murderers were Muslim. But the freak show being run by the editorial board’s main message seems to be that unless the coverage is designed to inflame ethnic and religious tension, then it isn’t quality coverage at all.

This is not limited to this incident, or this issue. The National Review is the leading ideological outlet for the extreme right wing of America. Not every conservative buys into their baloney, but the readers that do represent a very real threat to both the idea of liberty and the very lives of millions of people all over the world.

The conservative crazies see the massacre in Mumbai like they see every other newsworthy event: as evidence of a large and violent conflict between clearly defined forces of good and evil.

Black and white.

Up and down.

Sith and Jedi.

While it makes for good fiction, the real world simply doesn’t operate like this. What is frightening is that so many influential people take these ideas to heart.

In National Review Bizarro world, annoying politically correct linguists are not only trying to rename our holidays, they are declaring War on Christmas itself.

In this world, every Muslim is a potential terrorist, because it’s an inherently violent religion.

In this world, women not only want the right to have an abortion, they want to get knocked up as often as possible, because they just can’t wait to go back to the clinic for another round.

The columnists for the National Review are not living in our reality. I don’t know what kind of dystopian, war-plagued alternative universe these poor writers and editors are living in, but I sincerely hope that somebody will rescue them from it before their diseased philosophy spreads into the real world.

What do We Want?

America is shedding jobs faster than a snake on meth sheds its skin.

I could have told you that, even before the figures came out that the economy lost over 530,000 jobs just in the last month alone.

I could have told you that because I’m on the front lines here. In one way, I’m lucky because I’m still technically employed. Although how anyone can call 15 hours a week at 10 bucks a pop gainful employment outside of a Cambodian work-camp is beyond me.

The numbers are rising. They tell a story. But it’s only half the story. Anyone who folllows sports knows that statistics can be misleading. What’s the phrase? There are lies, damn lies, politicians, and statistics? Something along those lines.

Anyway- the free market seemed to ignore the blood sacrifice that America offered last week at a Walmart in Long Island and offered more bad news.

What shall we do about this, dear readers? How should we react?

Panic has always been a favorite past-time of mine.

Misdirected rage is fun, but went out of style in the late 60s.

My solution? Offer more blood sacrifices to the God of free market capitalism, which had absolutely nothing to do with this mess in the first place. It was the perversion of its holiness that brought on this calamity.

Human bull runs and bloody stampedes are all fine and good for a Black Friday- but what about the other 364 days of the year? Why aren’t we out there in a frantic buying orgy as we speak, or as I write? Why haven’t there been more deaths?

Why doesn’t somebody go down to the unemployment office and open up on the lazy bunch of life-blood suckers with an Uzi? That will drop the unemployment numbers a hell of a lot faster than any welfare to work or 30’s style socialist programs can.

Forget jobs.

What do we want?

Blood!

When do we want it?

Now!

Forget green collar jobs, we need camouflage collared jobs! We need to reinstate the draft so that anybody male or female between the ages of  18-30 get instant full-time career opportunities in the military.

Generation Y, opportunity is knocking!

A bright and bloody future can be yours in the United States Industrial Military Complex: the greatest engine of economic growth in the history of all western civilization.

As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go sign up right now!

Change 1992 Can Believe In

The Winner of the 2008 Election

I have said going back a year that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton offered absolutely no differences as far as policy is concerned. Now that the race is over and Obama has picked his cabinet, it has been proven so.

Rahm Ehmanuel: this psycho is both a Clintonist holdover and a lobbyist for the defense industry.

Janet Napolitano has been the leading voice of cracking down on illegal immigration, aside from her Stalinist sheriff.

Robert Gates has supported the Iraq war and served under both previous Bush administrations.

Hillary Clinton is well, Hillary Clinton.

To the progressives and the liberals who jumped on the bandwagon and supported the centrist, mainstream Democratic candidate: you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.

If you really wanted to effect change, voting for a Democrat should have been the farthest thing from your mind. Now we have a President who is set to increase the size of the military, continue the revolving door of corporate influence on the White House, and build a bridge back to 1992.

Four years from now when the middle-class still doesn’t have free healthcare, and our infrastructure is still crumbling because we have continued to fund a global empire, don’t say that it’s due to conservative influence. We’re about to be reminded that donkeys are still jackasses at the end of the day, no matter what else you call them.