I can has freedoms?

Post-postmodernism

2008-10-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

So the free-enterprise US government and Republican administration is borrowing (yet more) money from Communist China in order to (partially) nationalise the nation's formerly wholly privately-held (for-profit) banking industry.

Anyone else find just a trace of irony in that?

The 21st century is shaping up to be some very interesting times indeed.

Credit to the analyst

2008-10-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

The McCain/Palin team post a weekly "fireside chat" to enthuse their supporters (as I doubt anyone not already voting for them listens).

It is no longer out of hyperbole when I say that the man (and the woman) is mentally ill. He wants to further reduce taxation (and "spending") but also wants to "build more nuclear power plants", "develop clean coal technology" and "increase use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas"? Where is the money going to come from?

You want to freeze all government spending, except the military? At this point, that's like saying I'm quitting drinking. except for beer. and wine. and spirits. The amount of money used in national "security" is mind-boggling. Even accounting for entirely pointless crap like US bases in Japan, Germany and until recently Iceland, where the hell does it all go? Especially considering the poor provisions our troops can face. How exactly do you freeze spending on things like education, the court and transportation, anyway?

Sorry, McCain, you can't type "imacheat" for a free $500,000 in funds with which build 5 new power plants à la SimCity 2000. This is real life. I really hope this is inane enough that no one actually believes the proposed "rationality" any more. You ever played Shadow President? If your answer is yes, you are probably more qualified to be president than McCain. Yes, you have to maintain your approval rating, but you also need to balance the stupid fucking budget... and if you can't, say goodbye to your rating anyway. Bread and Circuses only work so long as you can afford to keep giving it to them.

On a related note, I watched the Thursday Vice Presidential debate and Biden shows a firm grasp on the topics and formed intellectual responses to questions. Too intellectual, actually: I love how Biden is against redefining marriage, acknowledging that it is up to "the faiths" to "determine what constitutes" a marriage, while still stating support for extending civil protections of same-sex partnerships. When Palin is prompted to state her position, she simply blurts out that she does not support gay marriage. She always seems to talk a lot-- until she's needed to say something concrete.

I'm just afraid that Obama and Biden are way too smart. It's controversial because it's true.

2008-10-01T16:36:00.001-07:00

The Very Last Notes from the Right-Wing

2008-10-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and I quit.

I have better things to do with my time than argue on the internet with a mental patient with poor grammar who can't do simple division.

Analyst, Minotauromachy, Rupert Murder: we've had some good back-and-forth on some important issues. For that I thank you guys. I also thank anyone who's read this blog.

It's been real, guys.

Random Retard, it brings me great pleasure to know that you will die, starving, unsatisfied, and alone.

Sowing Discontent with a Garnishing of Panic

2008-10-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259

It's apocalyptic, but it doesn't sound implausible. The facts are true; why can't the conclusion be?

Beginner's Economics

2008-10-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

I think in times like this we should all refresh ourselves of tried-and-true, uncontroversial economic principles which make the core of modern economic theory. I can't find good sources to cite, and don't want to delve into JSTOR or anything actually entailing a degree of effort, so someone point me out some good sources if it becomes apparent.

There exist (at least) three indisputable sectors:

The primary sector, comprising the procurement of "raw materials"-- mining, agriculture, oil drilling, etc. This is a sector generally highly-dependent on immediate location and environment, for obvious reasons.

The secondary sector, comprising general "production"-- heavy industry such as construction, oil refining, steelworks, etc and light industry such as manufacturing electronics, clothes and other consumer goods. This is less dependent on the environment in which it is based

The tertiary sector pretty much is everything else-- retail, services and information/knowledge. Some people split these up into further sectors, others lump them together. This is generally the end of the production line (unless you count recycling, reuse etc as part of a production-consumption cycle).

They're called primary, secondary and tertiary because the tertiary entails the secondary and the secondary entails the primary.

The largest sector of the US economy is retail. Granted, the US has lots of agriculture, lots of mining, lots of construction, but percentage-wise, retail is king. Wal-Mart is the fourth-largest employer in the world, beaten only by public institutions. Granted, Wal-Mart is integrated to a point, but its target product is retail sales.

When people haven't got money to buy things, the retail business suffers. When the retail business suffers, they cut costs. The #1 biggest expense of any business, any businessman will tell you, is personnel. People get laid off. Profits will not drop much if there are 2 people working the till at the supermarket as opposed to 6: If you really want your groceries, you'll wait in the queue like everyone else, or just go to another supermarket where you'll have to wait anyway.

Except that, when the average American most likely works in retail than any other sector, what if he got laid off? He's not going to be buying any retail products.

See the correlation?

Necessary products of primary and secondary industry such as paving roads, repairing bridges, replacing trains, do not suffer as much-- unless your country is as fucked as the US. There is NOT always a demand for plasma-screen TVs-- compared to tarmac or refined petroleum.

Chevrolets and Fords are made in Mexico. Most every consumer products is made in China. High-end products are made in Japan (Your Infiniti), Germany (VW-- though ones in America are made in Mexico now too), France, Korea etc.

Retail in the US is comprised of mainly selling products made in another country for a profit-- thus, a certain portion of the US's wealth nevertheless leaves the US. The amount of money in China at the moment (albeit not in the hands of the common man) is staggering.

Moving on to the non-material tertiary sector, your computer game was likely developed in India. Your graphics card was engineered in Japan. Your energy-efficient washing machine was tested in a German laboratory. Your anti-depressants were likely designed (and manufactured) in Taiwan.

Most of your products are NOT American. They are not necessarily purely foreign, but they are definitely not 100% corn-fed American. When I see something "Made in America" that statement is conspicuous for a reason-- because it's so strange to see.

The service-oriented parts of the tertiary sector which are more necessary like healthcare and education have been neglected. If you disagree that American schools could be vastly improved, you were a sheltered upper-class suburban winner of the class lottery. If you disagree that the healthcare system is inefficient, what about when the US spends more on healthcare both privately and publicly than any other nation? If a country like Finland spent that much on healthcare per capita there'd be more doctors and hospital beds than people to utilise them, and people would be getting radiotherapy for kicks.

On the other side, what about all the useless jobs that are going the way of the dinosaur because they're too expensive?-- the longer waits on hold for a telephone representative of Bank of America, no one to bag your groceries, no one paid to say "Good Morning" when you walk into your yuppie Whole Foods.

The only jobs uniquely American are in our much-loved financial sector. Yes, the shark who processed your second mortgage lives in the same Bushville as you do.

You say that globalisation means that American corporations own the industry in many of these "cheap" countries and so the wealth flows back into the American economy. Yeah, I can really see how the money from Mr Seven-Figure Income Executive's new Murcielago bought at Beverly Hills Lamborghini helps me prosper. Oh, and all that corporate wealth generated? It's likely stored in a low-tax haven like Barbados, Liechtenstein or the Isle of Man: Not a penny of it will ever come into contact with the US economy.

The US's current "high" unemployment rate of 5.7% pales in comparison to stereotypical France 7.5% (2007). But you know what? France has a higher-rate of multiple-income households than the USA, meaning more people register for unemployment: You're only "unemployed" if:

a) you're looking for work, and
b) you can claim unemployment benefits/status.

It's also impossible to buy a television at 2am in France from a 24-hour Wal-Mart/Costco/Cheapo Imperium hypermarket. You can't eat a three-course meal at 2am at Denny's/Fat Joe's/Cottaging Diner. There's no poor sod to bag your groceries for your fat ass for minimum wage. In fact, in the UK, for example, instead of your late-night Blockbuster, there are little ATM-like machines that dispense videos past regular business hours when the shop itself closes. In France in 2000, no one could force you to work over 35 hours per week, and any time after that was overtime. Virtually all shops close at 5-5:30pm.

If the USA adopted such strict labour laws and reduced its "luxury" services to the level of France, unemployment would explode FAR beyond France's 7.5%. What would happen if every single 24-hour Wal-Mart in the USA was forced to only operate from 9 to 5? It would lay off over half its workforce, which would be over a million people. That's one company out of legions.

For the US to have worker's protection approaching that of other first-world countries, the US would have imploded upon implementation as opposed to sinking (un)gracefully into world recession.

As more people lose their jobs, the economy continues to go down and the dollar weakens. The raw materials used from other foreign countries become more expensive, our China-made goods become more expensive, and Wal-Mart's sales continue to plummet, forcing them to lay off yet more people. The economy is on a one-way trip to Hell.

When you become unemployed and have a nervous breakdown, you won't be able to afford your fancy Ativan made in a foreign country because the USA hasn't even got any sort of state-funded universal healthcare. So Biovail Pharmecuticals and every other medical company will suffer too. Who knows? Maybe the US will regress into a bona fide undeveloped country, without things like sanitation and hospital treatment!

So many unemployed leaves a great workforce to be exploited! ...but, wait, where's the money for enterprise? Oh yeah that's right-- both we and our government are drowning in debt. Foreign investment? Why invest in unskilled American labour when you can do business in e.g. Turkey, Chile, China or India for 1/20 the cost? Skilled, high-end labour? That's too expensive for what it offers compared to e.g. Finland or Denmark where there are untapped legions of skilled workers doing jobs under their education level. Forget about places like Taiwan or South Korea which combine the best of both worlds. Would I rather pay a nanotech engineer $150,000/yr with private healthcare benefits and nominal corporate taxation in the US, or €36,000 (~$50,000)/yr without a bloated private benefits package albeit with slightly more taxation in Finland? You do the maths-- if your education was good enough to give it to you, that is. The US is the only developed third-world country-- too expensive for cheap work, too stupid for brilliant innovation. Too privatised too withstand recession, but already developed, precluding expansion.

The only way out of this hole is to either schmooze our way even deeper into the red or nationalise. Yep, it's time for the New New Deal, friends. Deficit spending and speculation really worked well. Cheers.

You know who else had low unemployment? The Soviet Union-- at a spectacular 0%. We'll forget that they didn't play by the rules of mainstream economics (of course the US follows economic principles-- what, are you crazy? [Quiet! don't scare off the investors])

However, unlike the USA, there was no inflation (as virtually all prices were regulated, of course). They also railroaded themselves into being a powerhouse of research and innovation without the benefits of a free market, nearly beating us to the moon with a fraction of the money we had. They also had universal healthcare, more hospital beds per capita than any other nation and free education at all levels. There were more doctorates per capita in the USSR than in the USA. The US has the biggest economy of the world and still can't accomplish that.

America's employment miracle is because America is full of shit, unnecessary jobs which are all going away anyway. In North Korea, people serve as traffic signals-- doesn't mean it's efficient. Of course, if Americans were used as traffic signals, they'd have been laid off by now.

If you still believe in trickle-down economics in 2008, you've got a hole in your head where your brain should be.

I'm Random Retard, and this has been notes from the anti-right.

Dear Columbia,

2008-09-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

I am angry. Deal with it.

None of you believed me; well, sadly, now that you do, the pleasure I feel tastes of that stuff you burp up when you've eaten too much.

Some say that society's lowest members are its barometer. Well, I suppose I'm society's lowest member because I felt it long before you did.

The fact that a living wage in southern California for a young person was in the realm of $19,440 before taxes in 2004 wasn't an issue to you because you've never lived as a 19-year-old in 2004 California. The idea that the cost of living increases with youth and inexperience at the same time that wages decrease because no one gives a shit about teenage Target workers who've not got a degree was perfectly rational, because your experienced driving record and skilled job with health benefits meant that you did just fine. You try living in Chula Vista and getting to Linda Vista to work every day at 8am sharp by bus to earn $7.50/hr. You try finding a place to sleep for under $600 pcm that's not also got four wheels and fits nicely in a compact parking space.

The fact that it's impossible to live a life of modesty, with a small place near where you work without luxuries like a car never seemed a problem because you could always afford it. The fact that keeping up with the Joneses isn't an option but rather a requirement didn't cross your mind because you never had to try to do otherwise yourself.

You think that health insurance is an option you needn't take out if you can't afford it; well what about those who can't afford not to? Oh, hospital bills are scary. But you know what's even scarier?-- having a medical issue that goes on for months or even years that costs hundreds of dollars a month just to maintain your own life. How would that knowledge affect you? That if you couldn't pay the bills, you might die? Untold numbers of Americans live with that every day. It's not their fault they had health trouble. "...but it's they chose not to have health insurance". Well what if their health insurance refused to pay out? What if the cost of treatment is greater than the maximum covered? What if they're denied coverage due to actually trying to maintain their health by utilising medical services? What if they can't afford an individual plan, but they can't get company coverage because they're worthless... because they can't afford to get skills for a full-time job... because they're having to pay for healthcare in lieu of college? What about the claims of type-1 diabetics that "employers will do everything they [legally] can not to hire you if they find out you have diabetes"? Is that just paranoia?-- or is it company fiscal policy to hire the most cost-effective worker in a world of consumption-driven, deregulated privatised healthcare? How would you deal with being in that situation?

You think the crisis is now; the crisis will be here for a long time. This was 60+ years in the coming, and consequentially won't be finished a week after elections. I was eligible for full federal & state educational funding and it was still cheaper to study in a foreign fucking country that had national healthcare, public transportation, student housing and higher minimum wage and more relaxed hiring standards (probably due to no need to supply private health insurance to full-time workers). Nevertheless I am $100,000+ in debt immune to bankruptcy for a degree which is honestly fucking worthless in what it really taught me to do. I am no more skilled at planning a rota or balancing a budget or doing anything I will probably do than I was before finishing high school-- but oh yeah, everyone worth anything gets a degree so you should too. But I couldn't do a degree in something useful because I had to work during university instead of studying something intensive like radiography or architecture or computer science.

Everyone knows the education bubble: it's more lucrative to be a plumber than to get most degrees. Well it's not that easy to become a plumber either... probably more difficult, because just an equivalent of a degree to plumbing (i.e. a bullshit piece of paper you gave your life without debt away for) isn't enough.

I am in a lifetime of debt for a degree I don't really want which I have nevertheless worked relentlessly for for three years to the point of ill health, working a shit job instead of sleeping just to survive despite my surmounting debt, having virtually no hobbies or social life or anything which gosh might maintain one's well-being in a world where Americans have the worst record for mental health in the developed world and still being thrown into chaos by lending meltdown, the stress of which has made me lose the love of my life, the one thing I've ever had that made me truly happy. As of now I am waiting for my wondrous student loan cheques to be processed before Sallie Mae becomes bankrupt as well, hoping I can at least finish my final year instead of shooting myself in the head.

I'm the lowest rung, but everyone else has to go through the same system. If they're lucky, their parents paid for their education. They're the emancipated ones. The rest, well...

University is not the best time of your life. It is an indoctrination; pounding in that you can never escape the system, life is about work and not fun. Youth, vitality, optimism, ingenuity, confidence, security, adventure, entertainment-- those are all things to be sneered at because they don't mesh well with white picket fences and $2 million homes in La Jolla made of cardboard on the edge of a cliff with an H3 and a Boxter in the drive. I've got the most bleak outlook of the world of anyone on this island, and people on this blighted island have got the bleakest outlook of anyone on this continent. That is an impressive achievement. I've also probably got the highest inverted unsecured debt-to-age ratio of anyone on this continent. Because I'm American. Stereotypes exist for a reason.

Every man is not born equal; everyone does not have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The American Dream is just that. Why am I the luckiest person in the world to be born American? What has America given me? Oh, that's right-- a chance to become a slave just to survive. Give me one good reason why I should pay back my loans: Emancipated Russian serfs had to pay back "debts" for their freedom, but those Russians got angry and so the Tsar got a little afraid. Maybe Russians back then were maybe smarter than Americans are now.

Christians? You're not Christian: I know that America is an abomination to everything the Bible teaches. What about being meek and humble? What about if you've got two coats, you should give one to someone who's got none? What about forgiving unbearable debt? (keep in mind that Jewish law was divided over whether any debt for anything was ever cancellable or not). If America is the most Christian nation then God must be the Antichrist. You're certainly marching to the tune of some other "God".

I've been to the Statue of Liberty and was angered by the sight of it. Fuck you, America.

anyone here still a reagan republican?

2008-09-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

if the answer to the above question is "yes", then YOU'RE A FUCKING RETARD.

in case you have been under a rock for the last few days, or too busy paying attention to that ignorant running mate that reminds you of every obnoxious hockey/soccer/abortion-clinic-bombing mother you've ever met, the american economy is finally falling the fuck apart. the house of cards, with cards given clever names such as 'credit default swap,' 'option-ARM,' and 'eviscerate the proletariat' is crumbling, and 2008 is becoming the new 1929. i hate to say we told you so, but

but WE TOLD YOU SO.

so here's the basics of what's up as far as i can ascertain. thanks to decades of deregulation (one of the modern gop's golden calves, along with bastardized christianity and closeted homosexuality), we've stripped away all the fancy rules that we passed post-great-depression to keep our money sound. among the nice little regulations that we stripped away: the glass-steagall act of 1933, which separated consumer banks from investment banks and so forth. i'm no economist, but those who apparently are economists are saying that was a really bad idea. go ahead and thank a republican majority in congress and business-friendly democrat (read: lobbyist crony) bill clinton, who passed the 1999 bill that replaced glass-steagall. if anyone can provide a little more insight, please let me know.

so yeah, a couple of major investment banks of collapsed. merrill lynch is owned by bofa, aig is supposedly owned by you and i, washington mutual is courting suitors, and best of all, morgan stanley wants to sell just under half of itself to CHINA. what's wrong with selling to a chinese business, you say? it's not "a chinese business". it's a sovereign wealth fund. the people's republic of china might buy morgan stanley.

apparently all the rest of this bailout goes to we the people, to the tune of $900b or so. too bad we're already fucking broke. we listened to all of you when you said stupid bullshit like GO SHOPPING OR THE TERRORISTS WIN LULZ and NO SRSLY THE RICH DON'T NEED TO PAY TAXES. guess we'll just put it on the national credit card, right? sure. it's only another NINE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS OR SO, bringing our national debt to roughly $10 TRILLION or so. thank god you guys are all watching out for each other with our money, right?

minotauromachy has suggested i write some about how this relates to social security. that'll come later. if you can't tell, i'm a little too freaked out still to write rationally. instead, i'll leave you with this:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

that's from an osama bin laden tape released FOUR YEARS AGO, to coincide with the last presidential election.

i think bin laden might be winning.

getting back into it

2008-09-11T14:28:00.001-07:00

it's been a while since i've done this, so i might as well start slowly by sharing something amusing i spotted.

that is all.

Notes from the Other Camp

2008-09-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

"That Palin-- I like her; she's smart as a whip".

To those who know me, this will not be surprising: My mother is voting for McCain & Co.

Left- vs Right-wing posturing aside, the interesting thing about this revelation is that Palin, while really making no changes to the Republican/McCain platform, is rallying support through her sheer... shall we say, "personality".

Keep in mind that white, middle-aged women (usually married ones) are oft-considered the most important demographic in this election, and considering how they went for Clinton, it is apparent and uncontroversial at least in some fashion that sex and race are huge factors in this election.

However, what is strange is that hearing Palin's oratory and realising she said a whole lot of (albeit slightly-witty) nothing (not surprising for a politican), I realise she is just what she is-- a small-town conservative Alaskan wife who also happens to be a politician.

We all thought that having a pregnant teenage daughter getting shacked up would be a negative-- wrong. This is a plus in the eyes of the likes of my mother (who are, as crazy as she is, not uncommon). The shacked-up part is what makes it redeeming-- as long as you get married, it's admirable. If not, it's an atrocity.

The point is that the McCain team was smart in picking a sharp-tongued, former beauty-queen religious poly-child country wife as a running mate, because the American public has proven itself to consistently vote for that which is most like their self-image, regardless of the candidate's qualification for office-- Kerry was eschewed for being not as "average-Joe" as Bush (despite Bush being heir to a lavish estate and personal trust). Apparently Kerry's fluency in French was a bad thing. Kerry was a douchebag, but his douchebaggery paled in comparison to the bloody whore of Babylon that is Bush. Nevertheless, Bush was often said to be someone you could "have a beer with" (or something to that effect).

I don't hire employees because I like them; I hire people because they can do the job well. I don't know about you, but I personally wouldn't vote for just any 24-year-old angry left-wing university student, just because he's that and so am I. Actually, being a 24-year-old angry university student would detract from a candidate's appeal to me. I am not qualified to be VP, and neither is Palin.

Sarah Palin is the image of the perfect conservative succer mom. She is what they all look up to, the equivalent of boy racers looking up to Kimi Raikkonen for inspiration. Obama and his cohorts have to battle an old, rich "straight-talking" war hero and his equally unabashed former sexpot churchgoing WASP homemaker. He has all the bases covered. The only way Obama can win now is with a home run.

Remember, folks, this is a woman who asked Alaskans to pray for God's will in building an oil pipeline. But my mother would say that's a good thing too.

Pray that soccer mums can be defeated.

Two encounters

2008-09-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

Between Class, downtime, nothing to do, sitting outside Taper Hall. Tossing back some pages of a novel. Sitting by the self. Occasionally glancing up to track the movement of girls, putting my head down, putting it up again if a second look is warranted. Sometimes sniffing the smoke of a passing cigarette and wondering why feel no need for one anymore after 8 years of religious smoking. Not even a tinge of desire, just a curious sniffle. Then settle into rhythm of book, the post hour bustle dies down as the clock hits the ten minutes past the hour mark.

Two girls approach my periphery. I hear a bright 'Hello', look up startled. Who are these people? Survivors of the past, old acquaintances. Who else would have the gall to approach me cold like this?

"I am Janice and this is Marjorie(place holder names for I barely registered their names in the weird panic of encounter). We are from the Student Christian Association. " Right, its those kindly evangelists. Who else wants to talk to you, you fool? Who is always there for you? Who has a Conversion Manual handily available for quick readings of your true spiritual state.

"Hello" I say politely, unsure whether I should introduce myself to these lambs of God. I thought better of it. "We were just walking around campus talking to people about their relationship to the saviour." Yes, they just happened to be walking around checking spiritual meters in their spare time. This must be a form of relaxation therapy.

"Well what do you think, are you interested in the role of our saviour in your life?"(Or something to that effect, my memory is all sieve, no netting). Hmm, so kind of him to take a special interest in my particular case, especially during the lonely afternoon hours of youth. " So I said "Not really" Big "Oh" from the lead lamb "That's just like my father. He would walk past the scene of the nativity and was never aware of it or anything like that." Well maybe I hadn't convinced her properly the first time so I said - "Well I don't really believe in a God, or anything like that." At which she says -"Yes, yes, my father too." Guess I had something in common with her daddy. That is the great thing about humanity, our shared history and origins.

How aware are these girls, I thought to myself, of the baggage they are shouldering, proselytising their 'forgiving God' to the subject of an ex colonial outpost(I was born and brought up in India, where people in some parts like Goa were subjected to forced conversions and other missionary excesses). A lone student must be just a lone student to them. Hell, just weeks ago, a white Hare Krishna devotee had passed me by without proffering me a Bhagvad Gita. Wonder what he was thinking when he quickly adjusted his stride to walk past me.

The second lamb felt the need to quickly pry open her reality focusing device and read out a line from Isiah (I think) "If you ever feel the need for the presence of the living God then you may reach out and call for him to present himself"(paraphrase). I thanked them and told them I' d think about it. They walked on by.

A few minutes later I looked to my right to see a lumbering student walking toward me. As she approached me on huge, jogging rolls of her thighs a girl on a cycle cut off her colossal figure and suddenly screeched to a halt a few feet ahead of me. She padded back on her feet, balancing her bicycle between her thighs. The two passed each other and I plunged back into my book thinking the new arrival was going to park her bike. "Hey there" I heard. What the hell? Roving gangs of lambs out on the prowl today, I thought. "I have a question for you?" Doesn't everyone. "Sure" I replied.

"I am a student at the school of cinematic arts and I was going to do a shoot this Friday. Its a short and will only take me 45 minutes or so. Tell me, would you or anyone you know be interested in starring in my movie?" Would I?Hmm. "I don't think so" I said, "I am camera shy" Now the girl felt the need to unburden her difficulties to me - "You know, its so hard to find actors, in the school, there are 1 maybe 2 actors of Middle eastern or Indian descent. I have to shoot the film by the end of this weekend and then edit it and so I am just cycling around and stopping anyone I see who looks the part and asking them if they want to act." Right, right, here she is, making a singlehanded attempt to address the problems of minority representation in Hollywood.

She then asks me - "What about the people you know?" Sure, sure, I probably know a whole secret community of Indian/Middle eastern people. I hang out with them and we cook falafels and some sort of odd smelling curries together, very ambiguously. Shit, how authentic would my accent be? Would I have to emphasise it on screen? That vague, tongue rolling, lickety splickety, roll about of the vowels that Americans can't get enough of in comedic scenes. What if it was one of those days when my voice magically sounds completely unaccented?

"I am sorry I don't know anyone really." Then I sympathise with her about her film student woes. It is a rough business, I would not have the courage to do what she is trying to do. I tell her to try a bribe, 10 bucks or something, it is an hour's work after all.

My initial reaction

2008-08-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

A former beauty queen almost half his age. Well, he certainly has a type, doesn't he?

American ingenuity rears its sleepy head

2008-08-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else" Winston Churchill

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Larry Horsley loves that he doesn't buy much gas, even though he drives his '95 Chevy S-10 back and forth to work each day.

Horsley, a self-described do-it-yourselfer, simply plugs his truck into an electric wall outlet in his Douglasville, Georgia, garage and charges it overnight, instead of buying gasoline refined from mostly imported oil.

They're among a growing number of Americans who are refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles, called EVs. Not only have they rebelled against the status quo by ripping out their gas-guzzling engines and replacing them with zero-emission electric motors, they say just about anyone can do it.

Can't sell your hulk of an SUV to replace it with a factory-fresh hybrid? Why not retrofit it? Backwoods American do-it-yourself ingenuity has finally come back out in the face of hardship.

I am against consumption. Why build new vehicles when we've got millions going to the scrap heap every day? Start a vehicle retrofitting business and begin converting the masses to new technology. It takes one person ~$10,000 for one car, but it may take a large organisation much less. Hell, offer financing options less than the equivalent price of fuel and I'm sure people would bite. Or God forbid-- we might have a government-led grant programme towards energy independence.

it would certainly be better than all the other aftermarket shit people do like chrome wheels and shopping-cart spoilers.

Notes from the Right-Wing: City of Los Angeles Sucks

2008-08-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and this is Notes from the Right-Wing.

Anyone who's read this blog more than once knows how much I absolutely hate the local government of Los Angeles. Well, they just keep doing stupid crap and giving me fodder for my hatred.

On Wednesday the City Council approved something called "inclusionary zoning" regulations. From the L.A. Times:

New condominium and apartment projects in neighborhoods such as Brentwood, Studio City and other affluent parts of Los Angeles could be required to include units for very poor people under a plan approved by the City Council on Wednesday.

There is no better name for this type of crap than nanny state quasi-communism. That's what this is. Imagine you're a doctor or a lawyer or designer of integrated circuits or something, and you got a good education, worked hard, got a good job, and saved your money so you could live in, oh, let's say, Brentwood. You're pretty satisfied there, relatively insulated from the third-world cesspool that the rest of L.A. has become.

And then the City Council passes this thing, and next thing you know you're living next to poor people. Not just poor people: very poor people. The value of your home drops, crime increase, and your kids can't go to sleep at night because the neighbors play reggaeton at 110 decibels into the wee hours.

What would you do? Probably move outside of the bounds of the city. So you do, and your neighbors do, and their neighbors do, and pretty soon property values in Brentwood are the same as they are in Crenshaw, and the whole neighborhood is filled with poor people.

The City's digging its own grave here.

I currently live in a garbage neighborhood. I absolutely hate 90% of my neighbors. One day, god willing, I will move to an area with fewer poor people, at which time I hopefully will not have to deal with gang members, feral dogs, loud reggaeton at inappropriate hours, and old women who threaten to slash my tires if I park in a public parking space in front of their homes.

But the housing plan is not the only communist nanny-state issue that L.A. passed this week. There's also a more minor, but nonetheless irksome, ordinance on day laborers. From the L.A. Times:

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Wednesday requiring certain home improvement stores to develop plans for dealing with day laborers who congregate nearby in search of jobs.
The ordinance mandates that proposed big-box stores obtain conditional-use permits, which could then require them to build day-labor centers with shelter, drinking water, bathrooms and trash cans.

I'm sorry, but isn't loitering a crime? Also, don't these day laborers get paid under the table? Don't most of them avoid paying taxes on their earnings? The City is encouraging people to violate the law and duck taxes.

Beyond that, is this really the type of society we want to build for ourselves? A society where governments not only allow under-the-table, unregulated, undocumented labor, but publicly condone and foster it? Why even have minimum wage laws at all? Why have laws regarding workplace conditions?

By encouraging the use of day laborers, you're discouraging people from hiring labor via proper channels. This is harmful to businesses that actually obey labor laws. It also brings down the average real wage and harms the economy in general.

Man, I hate the City Council.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

The Magic Money Machine Goes Poof

2008-08-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

According to Reuters, equities in markets with small financial sectors perform better than those with big financial sectors.

This means that someone up there is intelligent enough to realise that the making-money-by-making-money business isn't all it's cracked up to be. If I buy something (imaginary at that [equity]) with the intention of selling it again, the price will go up-- as long as I can sell it at that price. The feedback loop continues for as long as it takes for the players to fold and cash in their chips. Then everyone at the table realises there's not enough chips to go around.

Investment is all good and fine as long as there is some sort of grounding to keep the reaction from going out of control. We've learnt about this since the 1600s from the Netherlands and her lovely tulips, after all. Is this a failing of modern economics, or its design? Certainly many people have become rich-- but even more have lost everything.

The silver lining here is that there are economies out there which are even more volatile: 18% for the US, but 30% for China?

"The irony in that conclusion is that the U.S. equity market might be relatively attractive when compared to many other markets, even though the conventional wisdom is that the credit crisis is a U.S. problem," the analysts wrote.

(This is all coming from a guy who's got £300 tucked away in wind power)

John Edwards cheats on his expensive haircut, who cares?

2008-08-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

The news story of the weekend is John Edwards' admitting to an affair he had back in 2006 with a documentary film maker. He cheated on his wife Elizabeth,who, at that time was battling cancer(which has since recurred). Among other revelations in this case was the fact that an Edwards political action committee paid 100 gs to the film maker Rielle Hunter's fledgling company to direct 4 shorts, one of them a mere 2&1/2 minutes in length. But heck, why should we care about this? Does this in any way reflect on Edwards' record of public service and his commitment to his constituents?

Now I realize that I am imitating the news media's worst traits in this entry. After reporting the tabloid friendly details of this case I am flipping it around and asking you why these things matters. It's just like the reporters, who, with a dead serious expression ask viewers if the media is over exposing the Obama campaign and thereby aid the very process they purport to question or critique. I am guilty as charged of aiding the sensationalistic process in this case. You gotta break an egg every now and then folks.

Every time one of these scandalous affairs starts getting press I always have to question the intentions of the public moralisers who self righteously claim the high ground and hurl rocks on the john(in this case the John). Doesn't splashing the details on the news only make it worse for the cuckolded spouse while the commentators play the role of ceremonial salt rubbers. That aside, my fundamental question is this - what relation does a man's private indiscretions have to his public life. Isn't it possible to be a jerk in your personal affairs and be an exemplary character in public life? Take a case from the movies - Rusell Crowe's horndog detective Richie Roberts from "American Gangster" (based on a real person) who pursues the drug dealer Frank Lucas with an almost religious zeal. Notwithstanding his marital infidelities and habitual inability to adhere to personal commitments, he is incorruptible when it comes to his work.

Lets look closely at the matter. Firstly, having an affair is not illegal. It is a private matter and I believe it should remain in that sphere. John lied about the affair several times, just like his infamous predecessor Bill Clinton. But shouldn't a public official have the right to lie about his private affairs like any other upstanding dirt bag boyfriend or slut girlfriend without any legal or professional consequences? It is certainly not perjury to do so. The only court that he is addressing in an interview is the court of self righteous public opinion, one that I personally don't care for and actively dislike. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel any pity for John Edwards but I just don't see the legitimacy's of comments like this one by David Bonior, Edwards' campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid - "Thousands of friends of the senators and his supporters have put their faith and confidence in him and he's let them down," Have we, really? Did he walk down the aisle with us? I don't remember any politician making a commitment to stay faithful to his wife, to us. I guess to me, judging a public official's private morals comes too close to mixing church with state. There is too much of the sanctity of marriage, family values above all else, bourgie righteousness to it that is the very same stuff that is responsible for support for bans on gay marriage.

I do think that in a case like that of disgraced senator Larry Craig the press has a right to question him and the people have a right to call for his resignation. Firstly he broke the law; a minor one to be sure and one that I could overlook, even in a senator. You have to understand that I have pretty loose standards and think it best to suspend judgement for minor crimes. I would go as far as to support minor infringements of the law as a method of self expression and social protest.

What was more troubling about his case was his hypocritical voting record with regards to gay rights. In such a case there is a clear intersection between private and public realms and a divergence in the judgements shown in the two cases. In the public sphere he supported harsher legislation against the homosexual community and thus drew on the support of religious conservatives who railed against the immorality of unconventional lifestyles. In his private life he cruised an airport bathroom; something that is a crime regardless of one's sexual orientation. The gross contradictions between the two stances he took, the high moral one in public and the low one he adopted in private life made him fair game. As far as I am concerned there has been no such contradiction between Edwards' public commitments and his private indiscretions.

Joeoverkill likes to adress the issue of personal responsibility. I agree with his support of this concept at times. Sometimes I think he goes too far and seems unable to empathise with people, who, because of extenuating mental or physical circumstances, are unable to exercise restraint and adhere to the tenets of personal responsibility. Similarly, I disagree with him on guns which I believe are too dangerous to be left in the hands of all too human humans. I think this John Edwards scandal is yet another case of personal responsibility. This matter is Mr Edwards' private and personal responsibility, not something that we need to trouble our collective judgements over and punish.

McCain camp makes first interesting move of campaign, uses reverse ageism to its advantage

2008-07-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the new McCain ad yet? Sure you have. Its gonna be on everywhere for a week because its the craftiest piece of politicking so far this campaign season. I daresay this ad marks the beginning of the real fall campaign; the gloves are off and its only gonna get more fun from here on. I won't deny it, I was salivating when I saw this video. It pulled me out of my recent spell of ennui and depressing, couch impressing wait for the fall semester to start. Nothing that has happened on the campaign trail since 'tha mighty Hillz' cleared out/ swept out, has managed to stir up the least upward movement of my eyebrows. Now, finally, thanks to Karl Rove's Rogues(TM) finding their rightful place in the McCain's campaign's hierarchy, I have something to talk about.

You see what the Old Dawg McCain is trying to pull here - its beautiful political sleight of hand. I call it reverse ageism. He attacks Obama by linking him to the most dissipated of the young elite illiterati, Brit and Paris, on the basis of his age and his popularity alone; never mind Obama's extensive accomplishments or qualifications . They invoke non existent connections between Obama's youthful star power and the incompetence and frivolousness that those two pop stars epitomise. What they are trying to do is put the fear of the young in the voter, the fear of a generational take over, led by a charismatic leader who(according to the GOP) may be adept only at mass media manipulation and attention gathering. Never mind that a whole generation lies between Obama's early 40s spunk and Brit and co's late 20s seediness.

Also by making the mass/pop media connections between Obama and the slut twins, they criticize Obama in a racist manner without it looking that way. These guys have obviously learnt from Hillary's mistakes on the trail. They dismiss Obama's qualifications on the basis of his age and surface similarities between his popularity and that of the pop tarts and neatly deflect criticism just outside the racism penalty box. But isn't it obvious to a viewer watching the ad that their comparison of a Harvard law review president to a pair of singing and posing vaginas is inherently racist.

Its interesting to observe the McCain camp try to turn their inability to draw crowds or generate enthusiasm into a virtue and characterise Obama's talent at those very things as a cardinal sin. It would be funny if it wasn't slightly effective. This ad has definitely put the Dems on the defensive for now. It didn't help that the world tour did not bring about the ten point bump that they had hoped for.

Notes from the Right-Wing: The Tobacco Witch Hunt Continues

2008-07-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and this is Notes from the Right-Wing.

Our federal government is continuing its war on anything fun or stimulating. From the AP:

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation that for the first time would subject the tobacco industry to regulation by federal health authorities charged with promoting public well-being...
The bill would further tighten restrictions on tobacco advertising and impose new federal penalties for selling to minors. But its most far-reaching provisions would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco, from cigarettes to new kinds of smokeless products.

Okay. First let me say that I love smoking. I think tobacco is awesome. From a more objective standpoint, however, I defy anyone to look at the body of research on the psychoactive effects of nicotine and claim that it isn't a miracle drug. It can prevent Alzheimer's, ameliorate the effects of Tourette's, improve alertness, boost cognitive functioning, increase metabolism, and bolster both short-term and long-term memory (here's a link to a summary of studies). And let's just face it: smoking is fun, and it makes you look cool. It's a relaxing, low-cost thing to do.

Sure, tobacco can have ill effects. If you get addicted to it. As you know, I'm a conservative guy. I don't blame inanimate objects for human foibles. If you shoot someone, you can't blame the gun. If you rape somebody, you can't blame the skirt she's wearing. If you get obese, you can't blame the delicious BBQ bacon stackers you've been eating every day. Same goes with tobacco. Everyone knows the risks. If you think you might get addicted, don't smoke. And if you do get addicted, don't demonize tobacco because of it. Not everyone reacts to it the same way you do.

The article continues:

While the [FDA] could not outlaw tobacco or nicotine, it could demand the reduction or elimination of cancer-causing chemicals in cigarette smoke.

Unbelievable. There are cancer-causing chemicals in everything. Imagine what would happen if the government demanded the elimination of cancer-causing chemicals from charcoal briquettes. No more charcoal briquettes, no more delicious charcoal flame-broiled hamburgers. Or if the FDA demanded the elimination of cancer-causing chemicals from soft drinks. No more diet soda, Mountain Dew, Mellow Yellow, most flavors of Gatorade, or any other drink with Blue #1, Blue #2, Yellow #6, or Red #3. I could go on. Damn near everything has cancer-causing agents in it.

And:

The bill would prohibit candy flavored cigars and cigarettes, and would give the FDA authority to ban menthol — by far the most commonly added flavoring.

Okay, first of all, this is racist. Black people love menthol cigarettes. I know, some of you are saying, "Hey Joeverkill, you're a racist for assuming that." But don't take it from me, take it from the The National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, which "has withdrawn its support for the bill, saying an outright ban on menthol is needed to protect the health of black communities."

Secondly, banning flavoring in tobacco products is like banning frosting on donuts. This is not to say that I don't enjoy tobacco with no flavoring -- indeed, I love the unadulterated taste of artisinally-grown tobacco products. But I'm a proponent of variety, of diversity, and of freedom of choice. Attempting to ban flavorings in tobacco products is yet another step in our government's quest to demolish anything fun or stimulating from out culture. If you take the flavoring out of my cigars, cigarillos, snuff, snus, and dip, sir, the terrorists have already won.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Notes from the Right-Wing: The Housing Bull... Wait, I Mean Bill... No, no, I Ras Right... Housing Bull

2008-07-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and this is Notes from the Right-Wing.

Shortsightedness and irresponsibility won another major victory today as President Bush signed a bill to bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. From the AP:

President Bush signed a housing bill Wednesday intended to rescue about 15 percent of the cash-strapped homeowners in fear of foreclosure in the next year or so...
The measure includes $300 billion in new loan authority for the government to back cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners; $3.9 billion for communities to fix up foreclosed properties causing blight in neighborhoods; and $15 billion in tax cuts, including an expanded low-income housing tax credit and a credit of up to $7,500, to be repaid, for some first-time home buyers.

...

Are you f--king kidding me?

Just to clear up the "vague" wording of the AP article, "$300 billion in new loan authority for the government to back cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners" means "$300 billion in free money for people who took out loans they can't afford to pay." Yes, that's what it means.

Are you f--king kidding me?

Again, just to be clear, when the AP article say "an expanded low-income housing tax credit and a credit of up to $7,500, to be repaid, for some first-time home buyers," it means "taxpayer money spent to encourage people who can't afford homes to buy them anyway." Yes, that's what it f--king means.

When are we going to just let people take responsibility for their actions? Am I insane? Am I the only one who's pissed off here? Guess why I haven't bought a house yet: because I've done the math and I know I can't afford to buy one. It doesn't take a genius to crunch those numbers. But there are enough f--king idiots out there that didn't do that math that it's causing a significant problem for our economy, so the spendy-go-lucky federal government digs even deeper into our pockets (and the pockets of our grandchildren) to bail 'em out.

I can't say I'm surprised. There's a phrase that use to be common in America -- "Tough sh-t. You f--cked up." You don't hear that anymore, especially not from our liberal vote-pandering congress. Buying a house is an investment, and therefore there is risk involved. There is no such thing as a guaranteed payday on any investment you make. Common sense tells you that if you can't afford to lose, you shouldn't gamble. And yet here we are.

I am so pissed off right now I can barely express myself with any sort of coherence. I want to kick every Congressman and Senator (and George W. Bush) as hard as I can in their stupid little ass vaginas. I would say I'd like to kick them in the nuts, but that would assume that any of them have a pair.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Right-Wing Rant: The Joeverkill Plan to End Inflation

2008-07-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and I haven't thrown down a Right-Wing Rant in some time. So here it is: the Joeverkill Plan to End Inflation.

Inflation is currently somewhere around 10-12%, contrary to the official numbers provided by the consumer price index (the Analyst posted on this a while back). These numbers are simply outrageous. A middle-class worker in the U.S. generally pays between 20% and 40% of his income in taxes every year. If you include sales tax, excise taxes, luxury taxes, and property taxes, that number is well over 60%. This in itself is ridiculous -- the pay you early from January to some time in July goes to the government. Add inflation to that and you realize that you only get to enjoy about 20 cent out of every dollar you make. Much less if you keep that dollar and don't invest it in our already overspeculated and oversaturated markets.

Readers of this blog have perhaps come to see that Joeverkill likes to propose plans. What's his plan for inflation? It's a tough nut to crack since any measure you can take against it poses a risk of de-stabilizing the economy.

We had the gold standard for a while. In my opinion, it wasn't all that bad of a thing. The Bretton-Woods system probably would have worked if there had been enough gold for every G-8 economy to tie its currency directly to it, rather than using the dollar as a proxy. The earlier U.S. silver standard faced a similar problem as the supply of silver was rapidly outpaced by economic growth, until the point where people realized that it was not mathematically possible for banks to issue that much silver.

We know from history that tying currency to a hard commodity can work for a while, but that it eventually causes problems. Metal standards end for one of two reasons: either A) because economic growth outstrips the supply of whatever commodity the currency is tied to, or B) because the government simply gives up and decides that it needs to print more money, eschewing its own currency standards.

I can't speak to the second issue -- governments are stupid and they have plenty of power to mess things up. But the first issue can be solved under the Joeverkill Currency Plan. Here's how.

Rather than tying the currency to a specific hard commodity, tie it to an index of hard commodities. The index -- let's call it the Joeverkill Commodities index -- would need to be robust and relatively stable. It would be tied directly to the most basic materials an economy requires to function. Here's a short list: corn, wheat, sugar, cotton, light sweet crude, iron, zinc, tin, gold, platinum, silver, copper, bauxite, aluminum, rubber, electrical wattage, (EPA approved safe-to-drink) tap water, natural gas, beef, pork, chicken, and soy.

The more economically-minded readers of this blog may be asking, "What about labor? Isn't labor a basic commodity whose value should remain stable relatively to the currency?" Sure. We already have minimum wage laws in the United States, so that value will remain stable in relation to the index.

So the formula for calculating the value of any given element within the index can be expressed as such, with "Y" referring to the amount of each given commodity one can purchase for one dollar:

[(corn x Y) + (wheat x Y) + (sugar x Y) + (cotton x Y) + (light sweet crude x Y) + (iron x Y) + (zinc x Y) + (tin x Y) + (gold x Y) + (platinum x Y) + (silver x Y) + (copper x Y) + (bauxite x Y) + (aluminum x Y) + (rubber x Y) + (tap water x Y) + (natural gas x Y) + (beef x Y) + (pork x Y) + (chicken x Y) + (soy x Y)] / 21 = $1.00

Values of individual commodities within the index can fluctuate against other commodities within the index, and even against the dollar, but by definition the other values adjust proportionally to compensate. For example, if the price of platinum doubles in a given year (an increase of 4.7 cents on the dollar for the index), the sum of the prices of the other commodities will decrease by an average of 0.22 cents.

As I already mentioned, gold and silver standards were phased out in the past because of shortages of gold and silver in relation to economic growth. It will therefore be necessary to back the currency with actual commodities. Since it would be impractical for the government to stock enough of these commodities to back every U.S. dollar, I would propose an enforced privatization of the currency backing system. Domestic companies dealing in these commodities would be required by law to abide by the index’s price points (not to say their value can’t increase; as I already discussed, that value can indeed fluctuate). And market forces will essentially guarantee that foreign companies will sell commodities at index value.

What do you guys think? Insane enough to work? Or not quite insane enough to make sense?

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been a Right-Wing Rant.

it's not a run, it's a very brisk walk.

2008-07-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

from bloomberg, by way of my buddy nick:

July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Washington Mutual Inc. tumbled more than 20 percent for a second day as Gimme Credit LLC said unsecured creditors were ``pulling funds'' from the biggest U.S. savings and loan.

---

``We won't use the phrase `run on the bank,' but we would be remiss if we did not observe that many creditors have quietly been pulling funds,'' wrote [gimme credit analyst kathleen] Shanley, based in Chicago. Their actions are ``presenting an increasing funding challenge,'' she wrote. Gimme Credit is an independent research firm serving corporate bond investors.

yeah, and i bet she's still not calling it a 'recession' either. just sprinkle a little bit of your magic wish dust, close your eyes, and count to 10, kathleen, and all your financial demons will go away.

link.

she said it wasn't a breakup, just a 'break'.

2008-07-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

according to a new poll from zogby international and the middlebury institute, an astonishing 22% of americans believe that a state has the right to "peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic". 18% would even support a secession movement in their own home state.

even more telling is the fact that "backing was strongest among younger adults, as 40% among those age 18 to 24 and 24% among those age 25 to 34 agreed states and regions have secession rights." i'm at the far end of the 18-24 demographic, and i'm a full supporter of california secession, if necessary.

older folks might be astonished at the idea, or the level of support, but it makes complete sense. i was 16 when the supreme court appointed bush as president. 18-year-olds were 10. for us young voters, most of our formative moments in american politics involved the reign of dubya. my dad got 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do from your country', the apollo program, and then nixon and stagflation. we've gotten blowjobs and the decider.

think to yourself: when was the last time the federal government did something good for you?

i doubt that it would come to that, but it's nice to know that states are asserting their states rights. vermont has a burgeoning secession movement. oklahoma recently attempt to assert its sovereignty via the tenth amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.").

as for me, my take lately has been the following:
i pay to build alabama's freeways and infrastructure through my federal taxes.
alabama supports republicans and the wars, costing me even more money and reputation abroad.
alabama's full of religious zealots that i do not agree with in the slightest, and i couldn't even argue with properly since their education system is a shitty mess.
how am i benefiting from this relationship?

(for the record, alabama's just a placeholder. replace it with any number of states full of ignorant dipshits. the results are the same.)

it would be a nasty breakup, but i think i'd be willing to pledge allegiance to the california republic.

mccain's ass wiped by mainstream media

2008-07-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

this is the genius military strategist that's going to save us in iraq? in one simple side-by-side comparison, this video points out some serious flaws in mccain's knowledge of foreign affairs (yet again). just remember boys and girls, military and foreign experience are his supposed strong point. this is why we're supposed to look the other way when he admits he doesn't know dick about the economy. this is why we're supposed to look the other way when he kisses the asses of right-wing zealots.

this video shows three things that are of note:
A) john mccain will fail in this election because he does not understand the way that information moves in 2008. he doesn't even know how the internet works, admitting that he's just now "becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter's blog first." somehow i doubt he's mastered the youtubes enough to realize that if something is recorded, it will be made public. period.
B) the mainstream media, especially television news, is guilty of the serious crime of covering up the ineptitude of our leadership. this is what i can only call a dangerous abuse of the rights guaranteed by the 1st amendment. the press is allowed to say whatever they like, but god dammit, this is offensive and irresponsible, and represents a triumph of capitalism and jingoism over legitimate journalism.
C) the ghost of edward r. murrow is likely working on haunting katie couric until she stops pretending to be a journalist and joins the cast of the view.

---

UPDATE: cbs is now trying to defend its bullshit. from politico: "As all news organizations do with extended interviews, last night’s Obama and McCain interviews were edited to fit the available time and to give viewers a fair expression of the candidates' major differences," CBS spokeswoman Jennifer Farley emailed. "The full transcript and video were and still are available at cbsnews.com."
apparently 'major differences' don't include whether or not a candidate has a fucking clue about the war.

Notes from the Right-Wing: City of Los Angeles Continues Attempt to Suck the Life Out of Citizens, Destroy All Things Enjoyable

2008-07-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and this is Notes from the Right-Wing.

I live in Los Angeles, and while I still love L.A., I have a lot of gripes about the way this city is run. Smoking bans, oppressive parking laws, an overwhelming plethora of homeless people, gang members, and illegal immigrants... All indicative of a city where the liberals have taken the reigns and are trying their damndest to destroy all things wholesome and American.

Now the municipal mommy state is trying to ban fast food. From the Wall Street Journal:

Despite its health-crazy reputation, parts of Los Angeles are plagued by obesity rates that rival any city in America. Now, the city may join a growing roster of local governments aiming to put their residents on diets by cracking down on the fast-food industry.Jan Perry, a Los Angeles city-council member, is spearheading legislation that would ban new fast-food restaurants like McDonald's and KFC from opening in a 32-square-mile chunk of the city, including her district.

I love how the liberal health Nazis demonize fast food. The same people that claim to be champions of the poor and underpriveleged want to take away the easiest, most readily available, and least expensive means of obtaining food. These fatcat politicians buy their fat sons and daughters happy meals after their soccer games and say to themselves, "Hey why is little Billy or Jenny so tubby? I bet it's the darned fast food." And then they try to impose their values on everyone else, and it makes me sick.

I can eat a full, filling meal at Burger King for about three dollars and fifty cents (two Whopper Juniors and small, refillable drink). For $4.99 at Taco Bell I can get a bean and cheese burrito, a crunchy taco, a queso crunchwrap, a bag of cinnamon twists, and a 32-ounce soft drink of my choice. In this day of the falling dollar, I call that simply amazing.

What no one seems to recognize about fast food is that it is the most cost-effective, time-effective, and efficient way to feed hundreds of millions of people. No, it's not the most nutritious food, but no one is telling you to eat it every day.

Jan Perry states concern that obesity rates in the area in which she plans to ban new fast food restaurants from opening are higher than expected:

The targeted area is already home to some 400 fast-food restaurants, she says, possibly contributing to high obesity rates there -- 30% of adults, compared with about 21% in the rest of the city. Nationally, 25.6% of adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Councilperson Perry is also ignoring the fact that obesity rates are higher among the poor, and the fact that they are much higher than the national average in blacks and latinos.
If you account for these issues, the difference between the national average and the area in question drops to almost zero.

Watch for a Right-Wing Rant on smoking bans in the near future. They piss me off too.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Those Wacky Democrats!

2008-07-12T13:13:00.001-07:00

I fucking hate Democrats.

Out of Sight, (shit) Out of Luck

2008-07-12T12:10:00.001-07:00

I know the last eight years of tyrannical horror haven't completely robbed me of my humanity because I still find shit like this appalling.

Kudos to the Washington Post for having the balls to run this story about Gina Gray - the new Public Affairs Directors at Arlington Memorial Cometary - being run out of her job for trying to publicly honor our fallen soldiers.

Some choice cuts:

But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead.

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

To break this down, just in case anyone who happens upon this post hasn't been keeping abreast of this situation (and there's a lot going on, so it's easy to miss this type of stuff), Donald Rumsfeld - known to all his close friends by his nickname, Satan - had this great idea for how to market the war in Iraq. They wouldn't allow for any real reporting of the horrors of war. In this way, they felt they could keep the people from turning against this war, a la Vietnam (a war in which the horrors were broadcast into every home in America).

This is pure genius. However, like much of the genius of the Bush administration, it has underlying insidious overtones, and it quickly tended toward the truly heartless. As troops began coming home in bodybags, they were not honored as many fallen soldiers have been in previous wars. Not only that, but the troops who have given their lives - given their lives to protect these freedoms that the men who run this country allegedly value so much - have been resoundingly ignored.

When Rummy left, there was a move to soften the image of the Defense Secretary. However, this apparently did not mean actually honoring American heroes. It simply meant a solid PR campaign for our new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. People were fired, to be sure. But make no mistake. Nothing has actually changed.

Stories like this are the reason I refuse to talk shit on Obama for the next few months. Stories like this are the reason that I may stop speaking kindly to supporters of the opposition. Stories like this make me want to fucking vomit.

And if we don't do everything we can to make sure John McCain doesn't win the White House, we're just going to see more and more stories like this.

I'll leave you with this quote, my favorite from former Public Affairs Director, Gina Gray:

"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Indeed.

time magazine can has freedoms

2008-07-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

nathan thornburgh over at time magazine (one of those news websites in paper form that old people like to read) has published a fairly lengthy article giving the rise of the ron paul revolution and bob barr's libertarian campaign their due. called libertarians: a (not so) lunatic fringe, it breaks the libertarian movement down in fairly good detail, and details the difficulty holding the disparate parts of the movement together:

It's tempting to think of Libertarianism as nothing more than old-school Republicanism, but it's always been partially left-wing, drawing from a long history of American anarchism. The modern challenge is to unite those two wings--or, as magician (and stalwart Libertarian) Penn Jillette told me, "Convince the dope guys that the gun guys are O.K., and vice versa." And many Libertarians believe the time is now. It helps that the U.S. has been throttled for a century by two parties whose core differences are narrowing. The current general election has seemed at times a contest about who can crib off the other party's platform more, from McCain's enthusiasm for using government to fight global warming to Obama's hedging on warrantless wiretapping. For an electorate having a harder time distinguishing Coke from Pepsi, there's a thirst for something--anything--new.

i've said it before and i'll say it again - now is the time for the two party system to start to fall apart. according to the article (and various polls, i'm sure), barr's current approval rating stands at 6%, which is just about the same amount as obama has over mccain in national polls.

while the libertarian party alone probably won't supplant or destroy either party, they will likely serve a role similar to the uk's liberal democrats. while their economic theories are further left than american libertarians, they are equally committed to the philosophies of classical liberalism as promoted in texts like john stuart mill's on liberty.

incidentally, on the strength of their anti-war platform, labour's increasing nanny-statism, and conservatives just generally being assholes, the liberal democrat share of parliament is now up to just under 10% as of the 2005 general election. voter support was even higher, at 22% of the total vote.

i know joeverkill has mentioned voting for barr in the face of obama's supposed civil rights compromises. what about the rest of you? anybody have any libertarian interest?

rove takes oddly-timed vacation

2008-07-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

from think progress:

This [thursday] morning, Karl Rove refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, despite a subpoena. During the hearing, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) revealed that Rove had not only skipped out of the hearing, but had skipped out of the entire country.

apparently rove had never mentioned this to congress previously.

karl rove is now to the point of being amusingly criminal. now that he's off the bush staff (or at least, off the payroll) it's just fun to watch him squirm while congress tightens the noose.

think progress and their friends in the progressive nerdosphere are insisting this means karl rove has 'fled the country'. while normally if a public figure skipped town in these circumstances, i'd simply brush that off as some leftists trying too hard to read between the lines, and assume that the person subpoenaed would be back quickly to testify. but this is karl rove we're talking about.

this reminds me of a conclusion that rupert and i have come to, and relish in bringing up whenever one of these kooks does something wacky: the bush administration has long ago fallen into what espn blogger/resident-annoying-boston-sports-fan bill simmons refers to as "the tyson zone". named after mike tyson, it is a state of being for a public figure in which "if a friend said, "Did you hear that (fill in celebrity's name) just (fill in the insane behavior: urinated on a police officer, began breeding unicorns, etc.)?", I would have no problem believing it was true." i'm pretty sure that moment arrived when dick cheney shot a guy in the fucking face.

either way, i just can't wait until we actually get rove. the second he gets threatened by jail time, this disingenuous little piggy is going to squeal, and congress will have plenty of evidence to impeach and try everyone right up to emperor george. then we'll find out about all the really crazy stuff they've been doing.

link.

Fox & Friends need to go to a Kaplan comedy seminar

2008-07-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, this may be the least important subject anyone has discussed on this blog since I’ve been here (and yes, I’m counting Rupert’s posts about wanting to doink Lara Logan), but I had to write something about those doctored photos on Fox & Friends. You know, the ones that make those New York Times writers look like puppets in the Land of Confusion music video:

Here are the pictures:
Okay, so even without the actual photos for comparison, it’s obvious the photos are doctored: Reddicliffe has smears running down his forehead and Steinberg’s chin is the size of a Coke can. Anyone with half a brain can see it, but then we are talking about people who watch Fox News so who knows how many thousands were fooled?
But did Fox & Friends set out to deceive people? I don’t think so. I don’t think Rupert Murdoch’s grand schemes for world domination hinge on convincing the public that New York Times writers look like characters from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

I think it’s something far scarier. I think they though they were being funny.
Is it just me, or since The Daily Show got big have there been a lot more people in the media and politics trying to be Jon Stewart and utterly, utterly, utterly failing. They tell jokes that you’re not even completely sure are supposed to be jokes, except there’s no other plausible explanation for why someone would say it, like McCain’s wife-beating rib-tickler that I posted about recently. Or Bernie Goldberg’s “I got some bad news before I came out; a guy from Newsweek called and said that Al Franken had flushed [my] book down the toilet.” Zing! Or Ann Coulter’s “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' crème brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media.” Nice save with the clarification at the end, Ann. You wouldn’t want someone to take that out of context and make you look crass.
Actually, maybe I should lay off Ann. You see, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that she’s not really the horrible human being she appears to be, and is, in fact, a Sacha Baron Cohen character.

I think Cohen has a crack team of makeup wizards do him up in the morning, he does the cable news rounds, and a few years from now they’ll edit all of the footage together into a movie and it will be high-larious. I mean, what other plausible explanation is there for the shit she says? “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine. Very niiiice!” “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building. High five!”

I seem to notice the not-funny jokes more on the right, but they’re certainly there in the center and the left, too. Every clip of Beat the Press I’ve ever seen has been painful. Keith Olbermann: stop it with the silly voices. Just fuckin’ knock it off. And Jeremiah Wright? Dude, what the fuck?! With the “white” voice and the Kennedy voice and the Brittish voice? What was the fucking point of that, besides proving to America that you’re the poor man’s Robin Williams:

But at least there’s one media personality you can count on to be consistently hilarious, albeit unintentionally:

Here’s what Bill had to say about those doctored photos from Fox & Friends:

“And now for perhaps the most hypocritical situation we have ever seen…Fox & Friends poked a little fun at Steinberg for misrepreporting the situation, as he does all the time. And they used an unflattering characature of him. Well, some folks at The Times are outraged… Now this is rich, because here are the charicatures The New York Times used of me when they slashed my book, Culture Warrior… You notice the horn in there?!”

Here’s the image in question. You notice the horn in there?! Or, as most of us know it, the cartoon speech bubble?!

Okay, just off the top of your head, what’s the big difference between the two sets of charactitures that make them completely different animals. That’s right! The New York Times doctored Bill’s photos so heavily that the end product looks like a hand-drawn illustration! Those bastards!
Actually, I think Cartoon O’Reilly is a much more accurate likeness than Photoshop Steinberg. See?:

If The Times had run a picture of Bill looking like this, then he’d have something to crow “hypocrisy” about:

Notes from the Right-Wing: Budget F**cked, McCain Still Bad at Math

2008-07-08T16:09:00.001-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some quick Notes from the Right-Wing.

Barack Obama is making no promises about reducing the country's budget deficit. Meanwhile John McCain is claiming he can balance the thing by 2013, though experts seem skeptical. From the AP:

Barack Obama says John McCain's plan to balance the budget doesn't add up. Easy for him to say: It's not a goal he's even trying to reach.
Not only does Obama say he won't eliminate the deficit in his first term, as McCain aims to do, he frankly says he's not sure he'd bring it down at all in four years, considering his own spending plans.
"I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families," Obama told reporters this week when asked if he'd match McCain's pledge
...Obama's criticism of McCain's pledge as "overly ambitious" is backed up by fiscal experts.
"Hypothetically it's possible to get to a balanced budget by 2013, but not under the policies that McCain has proposed," Bixby said. "The policies he would propose would actually add to the deficit when you take them all together."

What about earmarks? McCain's always ranting about earmarks.

[E]armarks accounted for just $17 billion of the $2.9 trillion budget this year.

As per usual, both sides are pissing Joeverkill off. Obama's planning on increasing federal spending, which irritates me, but at least he's being up-front about it. John McCain is simply refusing to do the math on his own budget plan, and that's inexcusable. But on the other hand, at least he's talking about reducing spending.

The thing that's really disappointing about all this is that we conservatives don't have a reasoned voice in this. We have John McCain, who is claiming stuff like the ability reduce spending while increasing our already bloated standing army by about 30%. It's infuriating.

So for this country's rational conservatives -- on the off chance that they might stumble upon this blog -- Joeverkill proposes a few bullet points for decreasing the budget.

- Get out of Iraq. That saves about $200 Billion a year on top of military overhead.
- Cut all non-elite units of the Army by 80%. This can be accomplished immediately by not recruiting for non-elite for for one year and nine months. Close bases and stop equipment orders in proportion to troop cuts. Saves about $88 billion.
- Cut the budgets for new F-22's, V-22's, F-35's, missile defense, and C-130 by 80%. Eliminate the budget for F-18's. Saves about $15 Billion.
- Raise the retirement age to 70. I'm not able to pull together had enough data to say for certain, but conservatively I'd estimate that this would save about $100 Billion.
- Cut the Department of Education's budget by half. What exactly do they do, anyhow? Saves $26 Billion.
- No farm subsidies. Saves $70 Billion.
- No more faith-based initiatives. Saves $20 Billion.
Sum total: $519 Billion per annum.

These are just a few roughly hashed-out points. I could cut deeper into this country's bloated, wasteful, stupid spending policies, but I think I've proved my point. If we followed the bullet points above and maintained our present level of taxation, we're at a surplus of about $119 Billion per year. Granted, it would still take about 75 years to eliminate the national debt, but it's better than widening it by $400 Billion a year, right?

... right?

... anybody?

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

The Time to Fight

2008-07-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's no surprise to me, really, that we've all grown a bit complacent in the blogging. During the primaries, we were all very excited.

Fuck it, I'll cut the crap. The deal is we were all terrified. We were terrified of having to choose between two shitty candidates again. Then we won that battle. And since then, we've gotten a bit complacent.

However, I'm calling this a call to arms. We are not remotely out of the woods yet. And even before the two parties have their respective national conventions, we have this:

This is what we're up against.

Look, I know. I know it's not like any of us are really doing that much to change anything by writing here, or at least that's surely how it feels. It's how I feel.

But during the primaries, this blog made me more passionate. It made me more informed. It made me care more than I already did. Most importantly, this place kept me sharp, thus making it easier for me to cut through bullshit outside the blog. It helped me hit people with quick facts and truths to combat all the lies that were out there.

Like so:

Did you know that Obama's vote was cast as it was due to the mounting evidence that Illinois was putting innocent people to death? I can't find a citation for this, because you can't google "obama" and "death penalty" anymore without hearing about the recent Supreme Court decision.

However, I found this report from the New York Times, detailing Illinois' moratorium on executions, due to the rising number of overturned convictions in the state.

So he wasn't "weak on crime" he was actually "strong on not just executing black people every time somebody dies of unnatural causes."

Just wanted to clear that up.

Pissed about FISA?

2008-07-08T11:53:00.000-07:00

Get a load of this.

((((speechless))))

now he just seems like a smelly hippie

2008-07-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

some of the more ignorant religious zealots out there would have you believe that this is and has always been a christian nation, just because some of the things they wrote included the phrases say "Year of Our Lord," or "Almighty". anyone with an inquisitive mind and an iq above 80 is able to figure out that that's not true, and even if it was, a nation of christians is not the same thing as a christian nation. even george w bush, of all people, was audacious enough to have someone in his staff who is actually literate edit out references to religious skepticism when quoting thomas jefferson at a 4th of july speech at monticello.

nonetheless, if some of y'all still dun get it, here's a little piece of interesting history for you: the jefferson bible. also known as the life and morals of jesus of nazareth, it cuts out most of the mythological junk like the virgin birth, the resurrection, and that time he jumped right into agent smith's torso and made him explode (i haven't been to church in years, so bear with me). all that's in the book is the dude's life and what he said.

from the la times:

The big question now, said Lori Anne Ferrell, a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University, is this:

"Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, 'I only believe these parts?' "

"He was a product of his age," said Ferrell, whose upcoming book, "The Bible and the People," includes a chapter on the Jefferson Bible. "Yet, he is the least likely person I'd want to pray with. He was more skeptical about religion than the other Founding Fathers."

still don't believe me, jesusfreaks? you're probably saying something like "well, where is this supposed bible?"

interwebs, bitch! or amazon, your call.

either way, i have a mental image of this secular jesus. he kinda looks like this:

It Still Weirds me out...

2008-07-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

...to think that I'm no longer in the minority in some of my dissenting opinions.

According to a CNN poll, most Americans don't believe the Founding Fathers would be proud of the way the country has turned out.

and now it's time for quotedown:

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.

So, American knows that shit is fucked up. However, we still happen to believe our shit don't stink:

Sixty-one percent said they were extremely proud to be Americans; another 28 percent said they were very proud. Seven percent answered "moderately," 2 percent said "only a little," and 1 percent answered "not at all."

And finally, because this is television news on the internet, we have some excessively nugacious bullshit tacked on at the end:

Forty-one percent of respondents said a candidate should always wear [a flag pin]. Another 13 percent said "frequently," 16 percent said "sometimes," 19 percent said "only occasionally," and 9 percent said "never."

I wish they would have asked those polled whether or not they thought our Founding Fathers would have given a two shits about something as insignificant, insincere and idiotic as a motherfucking flag pin.

I would have liked to have seen those numbers.

Obama Don't Drink No Haterade

2008-07-03T15:02:00.001-07:00

Obama has responded to the truly insane idealists who don't properly understand why he must vote for the new FISA bill (as it has come to be known).

Some choice cuts, courtesy of Huffpo:

Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I'm sworn in as president -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

hmm... it's so... logical...

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions.

awww.... love for the haters....

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country.

dude... owned.

So basically, I'm gonna lay it out right now. People got their panties in a bunch over this. They overreacted, and they showed themselves to be the same kind of zealots I've watched dictate the decisions of the executive branch of my government for the last eight years.

Barack Obama, when he is President, will not work directly for any one of us. It is not his job to do what you want him to do. You want to dictate policy? Get off your ass, go to law school and start your own political career. Or just throw your vote away on some guy named Barr.

I have been watching for awhile. Hanging back, I've noticed some patterns. And one thing that has bothered me is the progressive movement shouting out that Barack Obama is a turncoat because he refuses to become their version of GWB.

Barack Obama ran in the primaries on a platform of change and unity. So far, I don't believe I've seen anything from him to tell me he's deviated from that course.

In conclusion, quit your bitching.

(Look, I'm sorry this is so aggressive. I haven't had much presence here lately, and I'm about to leave. But I am trying to incite a debate/riot. So hit it up, and I'll be back later.)

those copycatting chinese

2008-07-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

this is what you get for trying to be the next hegemon, china. now you're gonna start inheriting all of our serious problems. first up: a real estate bubble explosion.

from the economist:

Property investors around the country are now holding their breath to see whether markets in other major cities will follow the spectacular tumble in Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, where the average per-square-metre price of new residential units dropped from over Rmb16,000 in February to Rmb11,000 at the end of May. Reports of last-minute discounts, free renovation, free cars and "cost sharing" for down payments abound, suggesting even bigger concessions to come.

...

Housing prices are also vulnerable in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Haikou on the coast, and Wuhan, Nanning, Xi'an, Lanzhou and Urumqi in the interior. All these cities experienced spectacular growth in 2007.

you know, i can't help but smile a little bit. this is what you guys get for trying to be the next america, complete with the rampant use of fossil fuels, excessive military budget, and cheap exports (remember those?).

funniest part about this? their newly empowered middle class is going to be pissed. this should be an interesting context for the beijing olympics, especially with all the other social repression issues they're going through right now.

not just our t-shirts are made in china

2008-07-02T11:47:00.001-07:00

from the international herald-tribune (the international arm of the new york times):

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

---

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including "Semi-Starvation," "Exploitation of Wounds," and "Filthy, Infested Surroundings," and with their effects: "Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator," "Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist," and "Reduces Prisoner to 'Animal Level' Concerns."

anybody else feel that sinking feeling? yeah, that's america losing our moral high ground. fast.

link.

I used the same fucking haemostatic bandage you did and when I finished it didn't look like no God damn Maxi Pad

2008-07-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was watching The News Hour last night and a detail in this report about the Pentagon's failure to get MRAPs and other supplies to our troops jumped out at me:

[Reporter]PAUL SOLMAN: Not enough tourniquets, the Baltimore Sun reported in 2005, quoting one infantry surgeon, "There is no good reason why wounded soldiers are continuing to die on the battlefield from extremity bleeding." No haemostatic bandages that chemically cauterize wounds in an instant.
[Iraq War Veteran] BILL FERGUSON: I've never seen a haemostatic bandage, not once ever. We just had the old ones. As a matter of fact, if you were, if what -- this is going to sound -- you use tampons, women's tampons. If you get shot or whatever, you stick it inside the hole, and it'll swell and like make it stop bleeding, supposedly.

Bad? It gets worse. The report cuts to another vet who has something to add:

[Iraq War Veteran] PATRICK CAMPBELL: And where do you get the tampons? You get them sent from your friends and family back home.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! The military isn't suppying our troops with tampons? They realize some of the troops are women now, right? What the fuck makes it so hard to get such basic supplies to them? Oh, wait, I'll bet I know what it is:

Notes from the Right-Wing: Same as the Old Boss

2008-07-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Guess who's the latest dirtbag to pander to the religious right and test the limits. Barack Obama.

From the AP:

Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for expanding President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — supported some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Not only does Obama want to continue a failed Bush administration policy, he wants to throw more money at.

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

Sounds somewhat reasonable at first glance, no? But can any charity with a religious affiliation really avoid proselytizing? The people who work in these charities are almost all ardently invested in their faith. Can you really prevent them from attempting to recruit those they're helping?

One of the major problems with Bush's support of faith-based initiatives is that a lot of federal money gets wasted on these charities' overhead costs. The churches take their rake, essentially. Additionally, it is difficult for the government to control where the money goes. Not only is it counterproductive to try to police these charities' spending, it's damned near impossible.

Obama proposes to elevate the program to a "moral center" of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.

Moral center. Great. Give my tax dollars away to preachy douchebags with high overhead costs and call it a moral center.

I'm fine with faith-based charities. I think they do great work, and it's awesome that people support them. But I don't want my government forcing me to pay into whatever agendas they might have. That should be my choice.

Defeating the HIV

2008-07-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Condom sales plummeted thusly.

Read the headline (hell read the whole thing), then come back and assume that whichever of these lovely quips is your favorite, that's the one I decided to go with.

a) If you listen closely you can hear a joyous outcry springing forth from the southwest U.S. - that's ASU.

b) now Joe Francis has his WHOLE life to duck charges of tax evasion and kiddy porn... and be a douchebag.

c) Do not be confused. Hepatitis still eats a bag of dicks.

d) d00d qwik tel ur mom

where do i sign?

2008-07-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

from laist - if the people behind it get the 694,354 signatures required, there will be an initiative in this november's california state ballot to legalize marijuana via constitutional amendment.

readers, i know most of you, if not native californians, have spent a lot of time in my beautiful state. i'm sure most of you (prob. not joeverkill) will agree that it's time to legalize the shit, and tax it accordingly. among other things, this amendment:

Allows marijuana to be sold in any store that sells alcohol. Establishes local boards with expansive powers, including powers to regulate and tax marijuana. Requires marijuana tax revenues support specified programs. Exempts marijuana sales profits from income tax. Forbids most testing for marijuana used outside the workplace. Prohibits most marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco advertisements. Immunizes marijuana growers and sellers from liability.

im not sure about exempting profits from income tax...if you want to legitimize it, then why not tax it like everything else?

either way, the evidence is mounting in favor of massively scaling back the war on drugs, and this is the best way to start.

he looks like emperor palpatine for a reason

2008-06-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

terrorism. n. the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

example:

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

---

"It's [the surge] now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."

-joe lieberman, scare-tactician, dogmatic religious zealot, and chief left-wing war hawk.

this is not fucking funny.

2008-06-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

at&t has recently posted and quickly rescinded new marketing copy on their online billing website in honor of getting retroactive immunity for spying on americans without warrants (thanks boingboing):

Ms. Suspicious Has Nothing to Hide.

Well, she has a little to hide, but her love of Online Billing isn't one of them. She and the other Online Liberation Movement members have all made online billing work for them, whether they need simplicity, convenience, flexibility, or just peace of mind.

hilarious, right?

for those who don't get the joke, this is a play on the amendment to the foreign intelligence surveillance act, an act that sounds like it's meant to be used to spy on...you know, foreign nationals.

sadly, this has led to bush-era warrantless wiretapping of american citizens, because, you know, anybody could be a terrorist. naturally, since sorting the wheat through the chaff is difficult, they figured that the best way to spy on the right people is to spy on everybody. it got to the point where at&t had an 'orwell room' where 'a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.'

so now, despite that we know all about the orwell room and all of that, we're going to give the telecom companies a free pass, and let them go retroactively for the shit that they pulled. obama supported the compromised bill that wound up passing. the progressive left, especially the netroots, feel betrayed, but keith "it's deep but i don't think it's playable" olbermann is defending obama's position, rationalizing it thusly:

With that preamble out of the way, here goes. John [Dean, former watergate conspirator and current bush critic] said his reading of the revised FISA statute suggested it was so poorly constructed (or maybe so sublimely constructed) that it clearly did not preclude future criminal prosecution of the telecoms - it only stopped civil suits.

I have repeated his observation each night since. Maybe I didn't sell my conviction of its conclusiveness. I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns).

Thus, as I phrased it on the air tonight, obviously Obama kicked the left in the teeth by supporting the bill. But anybody who got as hot about this as I did would prefer to see a President Obama prosecuting the telecoms criminally, instead of seeing a Senator Obama engender more "soft on terror" crap by casting a token vote in favor of civil litigation that isn't going to pass since so many other Democrats caved anyway.

so, i dunno about you guys, but here's where i stand.
1) i'm not upset with obama for his centrist shift - yet.
2) the progressives are having trouble coming to grips with the fact that in a democracy, you're just gonna have to win over the people who don't think like you.
3) at&t are a bunch of assholes.

any thoughts?

what energy crisis?

2008-06-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

you can't make this shit up:

DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

...

Water use can be a factor as well, especially in the parched areas where virtually all of the proposed plants would be built. Concentrating solar plants may require water to condense the steam used to power the turbine.

“Reclamation is another big issue,” Ms. Resseguie said. “These plants potentially have a 20- to 30-year life span. How to restore that land is a big question for us.”

meanwhile, in hypocrisyland:

Republicans want to end the 27-year ban on offshore drilling along much of the nation’s coastline, while Democrats want to force companies to speed up exploration in certain offshore areas that they already control. A version of the Democratic plan may come to a vote in the House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

well, i guess america'a answers to the problems of the 21st century is to pretend we're in the 20th still.

How McCain can win the cunt vote (#1: Stop calling it "the cunt vote")

2008-06-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

McCain did an interview with the Las Vegas Sun last week and apparently he said something that was, well, weird:

(On why he didn't choose Gov. Jim Gibbons to chair his Nevada campaign?)
I appreciate his support. As you know, the lieutenant governor is our chairman.
(Why snub the governor?)
I didn’t mean to snub him,. I've known the lieutenant governor for 15 years and we've been good friends….I didn't intend to snub him. There are other states where the governor is not the chairman.
(Maybe it's the governor's approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?)
(Chuckling) And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago….

Okay, so admittedly the questioning took kind of a dickish turn there, and I guess McCain was trying to… what? Lighten the mood with a good wife-beating joke? I mean, I’m not offended or anything, I like dark humor as much as anyone, but my understanding is that even dark humor requires some form of humor like irony, or satire, or reversal of expectation. You can’t just come out and say, “My newborn baby has terminal cancer, ha ha. Get it?” (Satire.)

So while I’m more perplexed than offended, I can think of some concerned citizens who might be pretty pissed off about that kind of joke. Citizens like those independent, outside-the-box, and not-at-all irrational thinkers at http://www.dems4mccain.info/. (Sarcasm.) Citizens like thebword who is outraged by how the “DNC stood by, encourage [sic], and participated in sexism throughout the primary” and Hillarysmygirl08 who calls Obama “the most vile sexist man on the Planet.” (Hyperbole.) Yeah, I’m betting they’re not into spousal abuse jokes. (Comic understatement.)

I remember, several years ago, one of my housemates emerged from his room after a prolonged phone conversation and stated, “Just so none of the rest of you step on the same mine that I just did: apparently girlfriends don’t like to be called “whores,” even if you’re obviously joking.” In that spirit, I think someone needs to sit McCain down and explain to him that he should avoid the following phrases unless he wants one of the dems4mccain to drive a stiletto heel (pretense of misogyny for ironic effect) through his coccyx (alliterative succession of hard “K” sounds, plus phonetic similarity to vulgar term for the phallus).

"I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago."
"At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."
"I love Cindy so much that I actually bothered to be present for one of her three miscarriages."
"Lynn Cheney didn’t choose to be a lesbian. She was born too fat for any man to find her attractive. I mean, when my first wife got fat… blech!"
"I love Cindy so much that when she developed a 20-pill-a-day Vicodin habit, I knew something was wrong as soon as she told me about it more than a year after she quit."
"Bitches ain’t shit but hos and tricks. Lick on these nuts and suck the dick. Just get the fuck out after you’re done. And I hops in my ride to make a quick run."
"Hey, check out my hilarious new shirt:"

And finally...

"We will be victorious in The War Against Terror, or TWAT. When we entered into TWAT, we encountered a putrid cesspool the likes of which mankind had never before witnessed. TWAT represents the single greatest evil confronting mankind today. And while it may seem as if more blood – horrible, horrible blood - is spilling from TWAT with each passing month, we must stay engaged in TWAT - whether we’re wanted there or not – pounding the forces of evil into submission and planting the seed of democracy, even if it take 100 excruciatingly painful years."

LOLSbian stole mah bucket

2008-06-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Pride parade yesterday in SanFran...

Ignorance is Dissed Vol. 1

2008-06-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

From an Economist article detailing the crumbling American infrastructure:

If America does not act, says Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), a body that plans for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region, it will have the infrastructure of a third-world country within a few decades. Economic growth will be constricted, and the quality of life will be diminished.

(italics mine, for emphasis)

I bet you didn't know that. I for fuck sure didn't.

The rest of the article teeters between nyah-nyah British alarmism over the hypothetical American infrastructure collapse and a startlingly honest take on a country that must now deal with the fallout of its second major natural disaster in three years (only this time around white people will have to care, because their pocketbooks will be affected). We're a country that builds to bridges to nowhere in Alaska while bridges in Minnesota collapse.

This is just the kind of story that I feel like isn't getting any run in American media, either print or otherwise. It's really a shame. Though, to the credit of American journalism, the San Diego local morning news today was running a story on the North Pole ice melting just today. So I guess that's something.

I can haz Internet memes?

2008-06-28T05:55:00.000-07:00

This probably falls somewhat outside of the guidelines of this blog, but an interesting Internet project is now underway. It aims to categorize all the different memes that sprung up from were disseminated by the Internet. As you can see, it includes everything from "all your base are belong to us" to "badger badger badger" to LOLCats to Rick Rolling. And, oh yeah, it also has all the links to videos of the same.

It's a great time waster (I spent around 5 hours on it yesterday) and, best of all, you can contribute by inserting your own memes!

Posting on more serious topics will resume soon.

climate change's first victim - santa claus

2008-06-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

according to britain's the independent, there's a 50/50 chance there will be no ice at the north pole this summer. say what you will about all the other problems in the world right now, this is the scariest one of all. this kind of heating gets exponentially worse as white, light-reflective ice turns into dark, light-collecting water. we're all gonna die.

last year, it was bad enough that the mythical northwest passage, which eluded european explorers for centuries, actually opened up and became navigable.

oh, and there's one other thing:

If [the melt] happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

are you ready to go to war with russia? you'd better be. they want the oil down there as much as we do, and they're planting flags down there all neil armstrong-like to prove it. imperialistic, no?

So What You're Saying is, I have a Shot

2008-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

If you needed further, proof, here it is. There is a God.

Lara Logan likes to fuck.

She apparently likes to fuck married dudes while she herself is married.

Though, according to wikipedia, she's going through a divorce right now.

I posted her video last week. Click here to see this woman in all her glory.

Not only is she amazing, but she's apparently down to get her nut, even in a war zone.

I might actually enlist if it means I have a shot with her.

Like seriously where do I sign up to do whatever it takes to win Lara Logan's affections? At the very least, can I figure out where to go to offer this woman some young love?

No. Seriously. I want her. Where do I sign up. Obviously she's a strong, forward-thinking woman who knows her shit on all the issues and isn't shy about getting hers. I think we'd hit it off.

Lara Logan is a goddess. That's the point of this blog.

Can I get a poster of her? Can it be this?

So hot.

I do say, I find this Scalia fellow to be most peculiar

2008-06-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

So the Supreme Court overturned D.C.'s handgun ban, and Justice Scalia took enough time away from his hobby of inventing bullshit semantic justifications for torture to write the majority opinion. From the AP:

Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."

Oh my fucking Lord, one of the most senior Supreme Court Justices is John Saxon in "Mitchell":

Sure, a gun in your house is 40 times more likely to shoot a family member than an intruder. But you know what, that's okay. Some people love their guns and are willing to risk their lives like that. Some of them even think that private gun ownership is necessary to prevent the U.S. from turning into a police state. They have the right to bear arms and it would be wrong to violate constitutional rights, even if it protects people from potential harm or death. Isn't that right, Justice Scalia from two weeks ago?

"It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed... The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

Oh. Well that almost seems kind of, sort of inconsistent. Actually, a lot of conservatives were pretty pissed off about the habeas corpus decision: Scalia, McCain, reliably douche-y political cartoonist Michael Ramirez:

"Habeas Corpses." That's the kind of clever wordplay that wins you the Pulitzer. Twice. I'm not kidding.

So tell me what I'm missing here. Putting Americans' lives in danger in order to uphold the right to own something 40 times more likely to hurt you than help you, and also maybe prevent the U.S. from turning into a police state, but that seems a little specious to me = good. Putting Americans' lives in danger in order to uphold the right to keep the government from throwing you in prison indefinitely without charging you with a crime, which kind of sounds like a police state to me = bad. I don't get it. It's illogical. In fact, I'm going to make a political cartoon about it right now.

Pulitzer Prize, please!

putting the 'peak' in peak oil

2008-06-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

the saudis pulled together a quick meeting about the oil problems in the world, and have produced marginal results. from the ny times:

The Saudis, who considered the meeting a success because of the high attendance, announced a production increase of 200,000 barrels a day and an expansion of their output capacity if needed in coming years.

But news of the immediate production increase had already been absorbed by the world market for oil. Some experts had anticipated that the Saudis might announce a bigger increase.

dude, we know you don't have as much as you're pretending. stop grandstanding, monarchs. you're gonna be irrelevant as hell in 20 years. you know how i know? oil STILL GOT MORE EXPENSIVE TODAY:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices surged nearly 4 percent to a record over $140 a barrel on Thursday after Libya said it was studying possible options to cut output in response to potential U.S. actions against producer countries.

U.S. crude settled up $5.09 at $139.64 a barrel, after hitting an all-time high of $140.39 earlier, eclipsing the previous record of $139.89 a barrel hit on June 16. London Brent crude settled up $5.50 at $139.83 a barrel.

nothing's more tragically amusing to me these days than petty dictatorships trying to flex their petro-nuts.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Buttclowns in Silly Black Dresses Get It Wrong Again

2008-06-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and this is Notes from the Right-Wing.

Those clowns in black dresses on the Supreme Court have done it again. In a 5-3 decision, the Court decided to cut Exxon-Mobil some slack. Why? Beats me. From the AP:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday slashed the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the Exxon Valdez disaster to $500 million, a decision that could have broader implications for limiting how much courts can order businesses to pay....
Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, $507.5 million, an amount equal to about four days worth of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s profits last quarter.

Are you kidding me?

By passing this judgment, the court has overstepped their bounds and imposed a punitive damages limit on every case litigated in American courts from now onward. As Justice Ginsberg stated, "The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress."

What effect will this ruling have? Suppose a company -- let's say DHL, for example -- decides to save some dollars by hiring multi-count violent convicts as delivery men. Let's say one of these guys delivers your package four hours late on a Friday, and then decides to rape and murder your wife, mutilate your kids, and cut off all of your limbs. DHL loses the case in court because they're obviously negligent in this situation. Damages come out to about a million dollars, including medical bills and lost wages. (Not very much, but the accountants double-check the math and that's what it comes out to). And yay! the court awards the maximum punitive award possible, which is another one million dollars. Maybe you're happy with two million dollars. Probably not. But I tell you who is happy: DHL. Two million dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make in a day, and in fact it turns out they saved about a hundred million by hiring all those convicts. So their stockholders open up some champagne as your mutilated children take you home and help you eat through a straw for the rest of your life.

Limiting punitive damages hurts smaller businesses and helps larger businesses. Corporations with deep pockets can now afford to be negligent, and that is terrifying.

Moreover, the Court's ruling is discriminatory. Assume, for example, two separate cases: one in which an poisoned can of Coke kills a Red Cross worker, and one in which a can of Pepsi kills Alex Rodriguez, the best shortstop in baseball. Alex Rodriguez's wife brings a lawsuit against Pepsi, the damages are assessed at about 400 million dollars (including lost wages at about $24 million per year over about 6 more years, plus endorsement deals, etc.). The Red Cross worker's wife brings a lawsuit against Coke and the damages are assessed at about $400,000 (including the guy's $12,000/year salary and the cost of a therapist for his wife). So the Red Cross worker's wife gets a maximum of $800,000. Alex Rodriguez's wife, who is already a multimillionairess, gets a maximum of about $800,000,000.

So why should Alex Rodriguez's wife get one hundred times as much money for an identical lawsuit? Moreover, why should Pepsi get away with paying 1/100th of what Coke paid?

It makes no sense. Setting firm limits on punitive damages in relation to compensatory damages is completely unjust and illogical. How about we let the judges and juries decide how plaintiffs get? What doesn't make sense about that?

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

the all-brawndo diet

2008-06-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

i have recently switched my newswire of choice from the associated press to reuters. why?

1) reuters is a british, rather than american, news wire service. while i feel kinda guilty having this knee-jerk reaction against american wire services, the fact is that a foreign publication has a lot of easier of a time getting away with saying things about easily-offended bigoted loudmouths from rosie o'donnell to pat robertson.
2) MURDOCH ALERT! rupert murdoch has recently been appointed to its board of directors. i've mentioned my animosity towards him in previous posts, and i don't think it's hyperbole to suggest that he could be the most dangerous man in the western world.
3) fabrication of false media narratives. while this is purely anecdotal speculation, the ap seemed to be just as in love with reporting on hillary clinton's dead-on-arrival campaign, long after it was clear that she was statistically eliminated. articles with headlines like "can she still win?" rather than "she can't still win" are deceptive.
4) i see way too many stories near the top of the wire like this one:

QUINTON, Va. - A Virginia man lost about 80 pounds in six months by eating nearly every meal at McDonald's. Not Big Macs, french fries and chocolate shakes. Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce.

Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds in December. The 5-foot-8 Coleson now weighs 199 pounds and his waist size has dropped from 50 to 36.

The 42-year-old businessman from Quinton says he chose McDonald's because it's convenient.

among the things not mentioned in the article: exercise plans, other pre-existing health conditions, or anything else to dissuade the reader from thinking that this guy could be mcdonalds' answer to subway spokesdouche jared fogel. in fact, this seems to me to have a striking parallel with television news' tendency to air corporate-made pr puff pieces disguised as news.

i may be reading too much into some cutesy bullshit story, but dammit, there's real news to be reported.

Score One for the Cryptkeeper

2008-06-19T22:39:00.001-07:00

Dick Cheney has apparently won the political staring/pissing contest to keep every single thing he's ever done for the past eight years a secret.

Some of the choicest fatalistic cuts:

“He has managed to stonewall everyone,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”

Sweet.

Waxman said that despite Cheney’s turning this administration into “one of the most secretive in history,” there’s not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Awesome.

“The vice president is sort of a weird duck in the sense that you do have some duties that are executive and some [that] are legislative,” said Cheney. “In terms of accountability, I’m accountable to [President George W. Bush].”

And this, my very favorite:

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who has battled with OVP to release more information, thinks [this fucking bullshit will end when Cheney leaves office].

“Vice President Cheney won the battles over non-disclosure, but I believe he has lost the war,” said Aftergood. “His position has become an object of public ridicule.”

Here's my question - How can this not piss you off? Like no. Seriously. That's not meant to be rhetorical.

How can you look at that and just shrug your shoulders? Are there people in this country who legitimately believe that the VICE FUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED GODDAMN STATES OF SHITPISSWHORESTAIN AMERICA should be allowed to conduct literally all of his business in a toxic airborne event* of complete secrecy?

Forgive me, but I believe all these people should be herded up and sent to Mexico. We'll trade them for people who actually give a shit about having the chance to live in this country and vote and give a flying fuck about things that don't happen outside the pages of In Style or Sports Illustrated.

Yeah. I think that's all I've got.

*credit Don DeLillo

Nonpolitical Interludes: Band of Horses Made a Record

2008-06-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Wannabe Indie Seattle Sentimentalists Make Pseudo-Corporate Craprock for Girls

I didn’t exactly set out for the beach looking for my next record to review. I feel my music copy is what you'd call at least up to snuff. However, the event I was attended was sponsored by a local radio station (94.9), and they were giving away free swag. I ended up with a CD. Since one of the girls had already taken Flogging Molly, I went with the band who had the best album art – Band of Horses.

It bears noting now that I haven’t listened to the radio for something like seven years. I had no idea who Band of Horses were, to be honest. I knew they were signed to Sup Pop, which told me they were likely from Seattle or were cutting their teeth there. Basically what I’m saying is that when I picked out the CD, I had no idea what I was getting. The girl who took the Flogging Molly told me, “I like those guys, but they’re kind of too sad for me.”

When I put the CD (Cease to Begin) in my car stereo on the way home, my initial response could be best summed up with the word, “eh.”

I mean, it’s cool that they like to make pretty pop indie music with a country tinge, I guess. Being a country boy, myself, I must admit songs like "The General Specific," "Window Blues" and "Marry Song" all tugged at my hickstrings, but the rest of the record is so freaking bland, it's almost too ambivalent to exist. The whole record is kind of like a hot chick who isn’t really annoying per se, but she’s just kind of totally devoid of personality. You don’t hate being around her because hey, she’s kinda hot. However, you’d never date her because she’s boring as hell.

And that’s how I felt about Cease to Begin. Upon my first listen, approximately three songs in, I turned to my buddy in the passenger seat and told him, “I bet this is the kind of music chicks listen to when they’re trying to be deep.”

Say what you want about me, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wrong.

The CD lived in my car for a day or two that weekend until I got to work on Monday. It was at this point that I truly began to understand the wonder of Band of Horses. Their record was exactly the unique blend of barely-there elevator music I needed to help me zone out and finish all my marketing copy. The songs are droning, ambient, guitar-driven pop constructions that lack the depth of Blonde Redhead or the grandiosity of M83. They never go anywhere, and with the exception of the three aforementioned tracks, all the songs pretty much sound the same.

That’s not to say songs like "Ode to LRC," "Is There a Ghost," "No One’s Gonna Love You," and "Detlef Schrempf" don’t all get stuck in my head like gangbusters. They totally do. Again, to go back to the simile, you might remember a pretty girl’s face. That doesn’t mean you’re actually interested. In much the same way, the songs on this record get stuck in my head, but that doesn’t make Cease to Exist intriguing in the slightest.

Still, I found myself singing these songs in the shower. I found myself defending the record as “not so bad” to my roommates. I asked the high school kid I’m mentoring if he’d heard of the band, and he told me they were pretty good. This kid knows about Weezy Mixtapes, so I respect his musical opinions pretty solidly. I started having this existential quarter-life crisis. Was I getting old and lame and selling out by liking this pansy record? Or was I getting old and lame and out of touch by not like this girly rock trash?

I received my answer a week later. I spent my evening hanging out with some friends, drinking and dancing, and just generally being young in a land of crumbling economy, failing war and whispering hope. After last call and the like, I was driving a couple of sorority girls I’d recently met back to their place. So I put on Cease to Begin. Having listened to the record on basic repeat for a week at work, I knew many of the words and sang along lightly and ever so sensitively.

One of the girls proceeded to melt into me as I drove her home. Her friend in the backseat was fairly quiet, as I believe she sensed a moment was occurring. However, as I parked the car and we exited to head up to their room for a nightcap, she asked me, “Hey who was that band you were playing in the car?”

I replied, “Oh that was Band of Horses. Why do you ask?”

“I kind of liked it.”

Checkmate.

Political Theatre - Part 2 - Nashville

2008-06-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Legendary american auteur Robert Altman's (M.A.S.H., McCabe and Miller) 1975 epic 'Nashville' is ostensibly a meditation on the country music star making machinery. Strictly on that plane it is a level eyed stare at the ugliness, the moral and physical exhaustion that exists behind the curtain of the Grand Ole Opry and on the fringes of the scene; in the bars filled with horny men looking for T&A and among the star struck, star wannabes trying to get backstage to deliver demo tapes to their favourite singers. But 'Nashville' is no simple musical picture. It is at once an examination of patriotism and advertising(how the two can seamlessly meld in politics and in commerce), the idea of America - the dream, the ideal, and finally the more problematic reality and the corruption and misuse of individuals by the political and showbiz machine. If that is not enough it also deals with the propagation of the mythical America by naive foreign journalists, the concept of celebrity political endorsements and finally the ultimate Altman theme - that of the sheer ugliness of people in modern society.

Remember the babble of voices that fill the soundtrack in M.A.S.H., coming at your from characters both off and on screen in a perfect simulacrum of the crosstalk of everyday life. Similar to the famous overlapping voices technique that Altman was known for, this movie features a cacophony of characters from different professions, classes and functions. Without a fixed focus the camera roves through their lives and rummages through their ambitions, desires and lusts and shows us the compromises they make to achieve them. As the movie plays out very few characters escape the director's critical eye and our condemnation. The great thing is that these two things are separate - no special effort is made to induce our judgement as in traditional films with ominous music or reaction shots of other characters. The ugliness of the characters simply stands out and we recognise these things, partly because of similar characters we may have observed in life or even on the news.

The ensemble cast (another Altman trademark that helps him achieve that babble effect described earlier) makes it difficult to describe the plot and the place in it of the characters, but I will make an effort - with the caveat that my list is far from comprehensive and to get the full effect one has to watch the film. I mention less than 1/10th of the characters that make up the cast. We have a country music elder played by a gloriously mutton chopped Robert Arkin, his shrill wife and good natured son, who comprise a country music first family of sorts. Nurturing gubernatorial ambitions of his own he agrees to the request of a slimy political operative(are there any other types of poitical operatives!) to play a concert for the enigmatic Replacement Party Candidate. This fictional candidate is represented only by a slogan spewing, painted, party van, that over the course of the movie becomes a character in its own right, given a voice alongside the people who inhabit the screen. The megaphone voiced slogans, typical of quasi successful third party candidacies including Ross Perot's, contain a mixture of common sense ideas and complete gobbledygook, like - "Does Christmas smell of oranges to you?". That van represents modern political advertising in all its campy glory.

Then there is the most repulsive and hence most interesting character of the whole cast, a sharply drawn caricature of an obnoxious BBC journalist called Opal, played by a pregnant Geraldine Chaplin, who tries to define America and her people in terms of laughably high flown literary language and what are essentially racist terms. She views people only through symbolic terms and cannot engage with them as human beings and treats everyone around her like dirt. Her only driving aim is her personal ambition. Her character is probably the vilest of the lot and appears to be born of Altman's personal rage against a profession that I am surmising had treated him shoddily.

In one symbolic scene she walks through an empty lot filled with school buses that invoke the busing controversies of the civil rights era. Ten years too late to the scene, she tries to conjure up meaning from the overwhelming yellowness of the whole scene without a single child in sight using pathetic sentences like - "Yellow, the colour of cowardice." or "the yellow menace". Her attitude towards Americans in the South is that they are a bunch of yokels - the joke of course is that they are simple to a certain extent but not in any way that her sententious journalistic sentences can grasp. She can only view blacks and whites through the racial prism gained through reading books and newspapers and refuses to acknowledge the complexity of human and race relations in the south. Altman's own handling of race in the film is a lot more subtle and some might say curious. The only outright racist statement in the whole movie is made by a drunk black man who calls a successful black country singer an Oreo cookie. The only other obviously racist characters in the film is the journalist who talks of blacks in basic noble savage terms and seems to be as much of a unrefined aristocratic classist as she is a racist - In one scene she tells an ingratiating driver/manager that she does not to gossip with servants. In one scene the Robert Arkin country singer elder character offers the black country singer a slice of watermelon at a Nascar event and his wife sho's him away and offers some other package of food. Was that a sign of his latent racism? You have to decide that and the director is not gonna offer any help either way.

The other notable characters include two wannabe stars - one, a talentless waitress trying to trade in her looks and sensuality for a career and the other, a wife who flits through the movie trying to get her demo heard while evading her angry husband. The waitress, in a depressing and humiliating scene, is coerced at a fund raising party by the machinating political operative to strip for a room full of lecherous men, who, she realises too late, don't care for her flat voice. Altman seems to be suggesting that as nauseating as showbiz might be, with its affectations of sincerity and its rampant commercialism(the harmonising duo reading and singing syrupy adverts for candy in between Opry performances shows us the music - commerce nexus and foreshadows today's clear channel mandated radio monotony) - it is but a slow witted cousin to the corrupt political machine. Given free reign, the political apparatus will simply subsume the entertainment business to its purpose and strip the bit players of what little integrity they possess. Given the flak Altman took for M.A.S.H. - a movie set in the Korean war but made in the spirit of anti war defiance during the Vietnam era one can see the genesis of this angst.

This point is driven home by the story of the returning female star Barbara Jean played by a divine Barbara Baxley. She collapses at the start of the film due to the exhaustion from the grind of the music biz and is hospitalised. In one of the most poignant and simultaneously hilarious scenes in the film she returns to the stage not completely recovered, and becomes silly(I don't know how else to describe the gentle way in which she looses her marbles) in front of the audience, telling them never ending 'aw shucks' stories from her youth that are otherwise typical of the country music circuit. This scene shows Altman's genius for evincing co - mingled emotions from the audience - nothing in life is a straight laugh or cry and his scenes have that same ability to evoke mixed, often contradictory, reactions from us.

We feel sorry for Barbara Jean and are touched by her emotionally naked fragility but also relish the breakdown of her wholesome showbiz personality because of what it reveals to us about the presentation of public figures. Her patter becomes a parody of all the feel good personal stories that entertainers and politicians tell us to ingratiate themselves in our hearts. Imagine if you will, John McCain or Barack Obama going ditsy in a pubic appearance; McCain losing his grip on his prison camp survivor persona and starting to rail emotionally against the forces stacked against him or Obama stopping in the middle of his hope suffocated racial harmonising to tell us that everything is gone to shit and he doesn't have a clue what to do about it. Wouldn't that be something, straight talk for once.

The audience shows the singer no mercy despite her recent hospitalization and calls for blood. In case you were wondering, Altman is giving you the people a big middle finger there, even you cannot escape the 360 degree spread of his withering critique. Her breakdown forces her manager/husband to accept that same Slimy Political Operative's offer of a spot on a pre rally concert the next day . Now the husband wants no part of political sloganeering and insists that the stage be kept bereft of any Replacement Party material. Any guesses as to how badly he is duped? Again, we have reinforced the point that the very nature of the political business extracts messy individualism from the performer and candidate and makes him/her a tool of the candidate's expediencies. Altman's choice to never show us the actual candidate also plays a role in the sense we get of depersonalisation in politics. I ll just throw this fact in here and see if it resounds with the context - James Brown endorsed Nixon in 69. That's right, the godfather, Mr "I am black and I am proud" backed Tricky Dick. What the fuck was he thinking? Considering the extent to which the sorry celebrity endorsement game has devolved to, one can't help but be astonished at Altman's foresight in warning us not to be swayed by some singer's or actor's limp social commitment.

The last scenes of movie are composed of footage of the concert. What follows is a terrifying scene in which Altman both evokes the then still relevant spectre of political assassination - King, X, the Kennedys - and presciently predicts the age of pop culture assassinations - Lennon, Reagan (John Hinckley Jr and the Jodie Foster connection). The bittersweet denouement has the aforementioned runaway wife/wannabe star (Barbara Harris) taking the mic and giving a soulful, frayed rendition of a song called "It don't Worry Me" while backed by a black choir. The whole thing is handled expertly, especially in some crowd shots with a number of children in it. It is shot in a documentary style reminiscent of Woodstock or of D.A. Pennebaker's pioneering roc doc - Monterrey Pop. When these scenes, seemingly transposed from a more hopeful counterculture era, are seen in the context of the political mire of post Watergate, post Vietnam America, the irony is startling. One cannot help but smile and agree when Barbara Harris suddenly says mid song - "We got to be peaceful y'all, otherwise when we die we 'll just have plastic fly swatters with red dots on em in our graves". There you have it, make what you will of it; but you won't forget it. Plastic fly swatters and orange tasting Christmases in a country that wasn't that all that different from the confusion of the present day.

3 reasons why Obama probably isn't the Antichrist

2008-06-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Hello, everybody. Let me introduce myself. I’m Blood Zirconia and I went to college with Rupert and Debbie. The other day I was talking to my dad and he told me about a new Obama smear email that one of his coworkers received. It was so hilariously asinine that I had to write something about it, and Rupert was kind enough to send me an invite.
Basically, the gist of the email was "Did you know that the book of Revelations says that the Antichrist will be a Muslim in his 40s?" Seriously.

In response, I present for your enjoyment the "How Sensitive Is Your Horseshit Detector?" Quiz:

Question 1: Is Barack Obama a Muslim or a Christian?
A) He’s a Muslim.
B) He’s a Christian and his Christian reverend has been on television constantly for the past several months so all I would have to do to know he’s a Christian is turn on the news once a month or so.

Question 2: Did Islam exist when the book of Revelations was written?
A) What’s an Islam? I thought we were talking about Muslims.
B) Christianity predates Islam by hundreds of years so the author or authors of Revelations would have no idea what a Muslim was or that they would ever exist.

Question 3: Why would a person’s status as the Antichrist be conditional upon his age? Would he suddenly become the Antichrist at the stroke of midnight on his 40th birthday? Would he cease to be the Antichrist when he turned 50?
A) You’re right, that makes no fucking sense.
B) LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA!!!

Now go to the bottom of the post and turn your computer upside-down to check your answers. If you got one to three correct answers, congratulations, you have stronger critical thinking skills than the average border collie. If you scored zero correct answers, well, you deserve every joke Dick Cheney cracks about your home state.

mccain has enron, petroleum overspeculation ties

2008-06-19T12:45:00.001-07:00

keith olbermann strikes again.

long story short, this lady who was responsible for deregulating oil trading and contributing to the overspeculation portion of the commodities bubble, is married to this man, who's one of mccain's top economic advisors, and a possible running mate candidate.

it goes deeper than that, but i'll let keith hit you with it.

let's hope the rest of the talking heads don't find out about this and think it's good news to report on, or mccain's going to be lynched by an angry mob in a matter of weeks.

q: why did we destroy a 6,000-year-old society?

2008-06-19T10:58:00.000-07:00

a: for no-bid contracts to steal their previously nationalized oil, idiot.

exxonmobil, bp, and others are coming back to iraq after saddam hussein nationalized their petroleum industry in the 70s. despite large competition from major firms from other countries such as russia and india, most of the benefits are going to america and britain. surprise surprise.

The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

does that mean that gas will get any cheaper? not bloody likely. estimates suggest that "repair work on existing fields could bring Iraq’s output up to roughly four million barrels per day within several years. After new fields are tapped, Iraq is expected to reach a plateau of about six million barrels per day."

to give a sense of perspective, supply has been flat at 85 million barrels/day or so since 2005, as i mentioned in a previous post. if these no-bid contracts wind up running efficiently (if history is any indicator, they won't), this will supply us with, at best, a 7% increase in supply, while demand will continue to spike. and it won't even happen for years.

i guess we can take the "we didn't go to war for oil" argument off of life support now. it's just too bad that this won't even help gas prices at all.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Operation Malicious Mortgage

2008-06-19T10:09:00.001-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some Notes from the Right-Wing.

Finally, someone is being held responsible for all the mortgage buttfudgery that's been going on. From the AP:

More than 400 real estate industry players have been indicted since March — including dozens over the last two days — in a Justice Department crackdown on incidents of mortgage fraud nationwide that have contributed to the country's housing crisis.
The FBI put the losses to homeowners and other borrowers who were victims in the schemes at over $1 billion...
Banks reported nearly 53,000 cases of suspected mortgage fraud last year, up from more than 37,000 a year earlier and about 10 times the level of reports in 2001 and 2002, according to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
The most common type of mortgage fraud was misstatement of income or assets, followed by forged documents, inflated appraisals and misrepresentation of a buyer's intent to occupy a property as a primary residence.

Both the borrowers and lenders are at fault here. The borrowers are already being punished... sort of. A lot of them have been foreclosed upon and/or have had to declare bankruptcy. I don't want to get off on a tangential tirade here, but I don't think that's punishment enough. Bankruptcy doesn't absolve student loan debt, but it allows people who committed mortgage fraud to get a free walk? Ridiculous. It's free money to the liars and the freeloaders, and the honest folk pay for it.

In any case, it's good that the lenders are being punished also. They have already suffered an economic hit because of the subprime crisis, but now they shall suffer legal repercussions as well. These a-holes are the ones responsible for higher rents, plummeting real estate values, and skyrocketing mortgage insurance rates. It's nice to see 'em held accountable for their indiscretions.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

fiscal self-reliance will get you nowhere

2008-06-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

obama has decided not to use public funds in the general election.

"It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Obama said in the video message.

"But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system," he said.

moral high ground is all well and good, and i don't know enough about the public campaign financing system to really have a clear grasp on what's going on, but this sounds to me like he's stretching a little bit. i already gave the government my money for this, why not use it?

"The true test of a candidate for president is whether he will stand on principle and keep his word to the American people. Barack Obama has failed that test today, and his reversal of his promise to participate in the public finance system undermines his call for a new type of politics," she said.

i mean, ok, mccain. first of all, you flip-flop more than barack obama (let alone john kerry). second of all, obama's the first presidential candidate to refuse these funds since they were instituted. by definition, that makes this a new kind of politics.

it's like arguing with your grandpa about how the krauts aren't actually bad people. he's just too old and out of touch to get it.

The Truth (about the truth)

2008-06-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

The truth sounds a whole lot awesomer when it's delivered by an insanely radiant angel of the news.

She's gorgeous, obviously. However, I'd also like to point out that Lara Logan isn't on the Daily Show for the normal reasons most people go on TV to talk shit. She has no book to sell. She has no TV news special or movie to pimp. As far as I can tell, she's on the Daily Show for two reasons.

1) to let the men who fall in the target demographic of the Daily Show know that an insanely beautiful and intelligent woman does the international news on CBS. (I now know where I would get my TV news if I were to actually watch TV news)

2) To say her piece, much of which is invaluably necessary and insightful, not to mention nearly impossibly well-informed.

I think I'm in love.

internetz pwn american covert ops

2008-06-18T20:34:00.001-07:00

has everybody heard of wikileaks before? if you haven't, you will again very soon. as the name would indicate, it's a public wiki for the exposure of secret documents from just about everyone, from scientologists to governments. naturally, they've been in trouble before, and were nearly shut down by the man.

These brave geeks have apparently stumbled upon a particularly good one that could get some powerful people into a lot of trouble. an analysis on the site entitled 'how to train death squads from san salvador to iraq' is not just hyperbole - this is a us government document teaching extremely sketchy techniques for suppressing popular insurgency in the face of an unpopular but america-supported regime.

The manual directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and (under varying circumstances) the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates employing terrorists or prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists, running false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it repeatedly advocates the use of subterfuge and "psychological operations" (propaganda) to make these and other "population & resource control" measures more palatable.

much of this is not surprising to me, and strikes me as the same old covert nonsense that helped us win the cold war and unseat too-big-for-their-britches petty dictators from noriega to hussein. nothing mindblowing involving aliens, 9/11 conspiracies, or the bavarian illuminati, but interesting stuff nonetheless. here's one part of the actual document that struck me as particularly damning:

Rights on the legality of detention or imprisonment of personnel (for example, habeas corpus) may be temporarily suspended. This measure must be taken as a last resort, since it may provide the insurgents with an effective propaganda theme. PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures can also include curfews or blackouts, travel restrictions, and restricted residential areas such as protected villages or resettlement areas. Registration and pass systems and control of sensitive items (resources control) and critical supplies such as weapons, food, and fuel are other PRC measures. Checkpoints, searches, roadblocks; surveillance, censorship, and press control; and restriction of activity that applies to selected groups (labor unions, political groups and the like) are further PRC measures.

the first half of the paragraph is nothing even the casual observer of the iraq war would not be aware of. the second half of the paragraph is suprisingly frank in its suppression of populist movements, freedom of the press, and all that other stuff that we supposedly love so damn much in this country. it's no wonder the western-friendly shah of iran fell to the mobs of angry young religious nuts. call it idealism, but how does a country export democracy by suppressing the will of the people?

i guess empires and republics don't really mix.

Abu - Dhabi car free city example of future sustainable development

2008-06-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

NY times reports of the ground breaking of Masdar city(literally - 'the source'), Abu Dhabi's own carless, sustainable mini-city fuelled by solar power and new technologies. That is a rendering of a projected aerial view above. The design for this project was provided by Forster+Partners - a London firm specializing in environmentally conscious architecture and urban planning.

Seems that among the 7 emirates of the UAE, Abu Dhabi takes the 'land of the future' mantle very seriously. They have already started constructing a 200 million dollar Guggenheim and feature some of the foremost architectural wonders of the post modern world including a Zaha Hadid bridge that is currently being built. They seem to instinctively understand that being a cultural hub alone will not cut it in the future and have made the leap into sustainable development by funding this little annex/environmental oasis. The real news in all this hype is that a old energy behemoth like Abu Dhabi is investing in a post fossil fuel world in a big way. They understand that this will give them not only a prestigious standing in the current carbon conscious media climate; note their website for the developement that is literally screaming for accolades and also the fact that the city has already won awards for its design, even before a single brick has been laid. They realise that developments like this could also save them from a slow internal decline when fossil fuels run out or from environmental calamity even before that.

The Abu Dhabi government has always been one for planning ahead. It is no surprise that their sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is currently valued at the 650 - 850 billion dollar range - one of the wealthiest in the world. Back in the seventies they made the decision to use their oil wealth to build up resources for the future. This is similar to the Scandinavians as random retard mentioned in his older post about North Sea oil.

Perhaps they also learnt from some of the urban problems the old city (relatively speaking compared to Masdar) currently faces because population and traffic growth has outstripped the city envisioned by her planners. Despite being one of the best planned cities of the 70s their wiki page lists traffic congestion, a shortage of car parking spaces, and overcrowding among their current woes. The new city will have easy public transport access(always within 200 metres according to the architect's site), zero carbon emissions within city limits and zero waste, sustainable materials, food and water among other amenities and programs.

Even the construction of the multi phase project has been envisioned in such a way as to be energy renewable. The first part is a 40 - 60 megawatt solar power plant to be built by Conergy of Germany which will then supply power for all subsequent construction work.The Masdar city wiki(which typically has more facts and technical data than the building firm's description) describes the various steps that will be taken over the course of the construction to maintain energy and water renewability. It sounds pretty impressive to me. The entire project has the air of atonement to it -one of the world's largest producers of fossil fuels making up for the damage it has caused - and I say that in the most respectful way. Now if only the largest consumer of fossil fuels would match this effort. Not that they are standing still either. MIT is assisting in setting up a university at the city that will do R&D and train people in future alternative energy and sustainability efforts.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Most Quotable President Ever

2008-06-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and I know I haven't posted in a bit, so I figured I'd throw a fun link out there that you guys might not be aware of.

George W. Bush's WikiQuote page.

It's quite glorious. It's even funnier if you keep in mind that this man was (and until the end of his term, will continue to be) the leader of the free world. The voters elected the guy to two terms. It's mind-boggling.

Anyway, here are a few of my own personal favorites.

P.S. No more public scatology.

One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.

We ought to make the pie higher.

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.

Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness.

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.

We'll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers.

It's amazing I won. I was running against peace and prosperity and incumbency. June 14, 2001, to Göran Persson, unaware he was still on live TV

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.

A submarine could take this place out. (While surveying the Arkansas River by the Clinton Presidential Center)

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.

"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel." (After visiting with wounded amputee veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center)

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Dear Mr. President

2008-06-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush, you are motherfucking retarded.

To synopsise:

Mr. Bush realizes oil is expensive. Finally. As opposed to February:

Now that he has finally heard, his solution is for us to go drilling for more oil domestically. Even though our refineries are already at max capacity.

Is it just me, or is anyone else tired of the President Black Gold telling us that the solution for our dependence on oil is to just pump more of it so we can continue using it?

Does George W. Bush realize oil is a nonrenewable resource? Is it possible he's become confused and thinks renewable and nonrenewable are the same thing, much like flammable and inflammable?

This quote, from Harry Reid:

"The math is simple: America has just three percent of the world's oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil."

That's all well and good, sir. But there's only one problem. Our President is far too mentally impaired to do word problems.

This second quote, from a friend of mine after reading this story, aptly sums up the matter.

"thankfully nobody listens to Bush anymore"

Indeed.

obama talks policy with wall street journal; mccain loses his wallet

2008-06-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

ok, so all of y'all obama haters who think he's soft on policy or doesn't have any prescriptions or is too god damned radical can shut up.

dude gave a lengthy interview with the wall street journal about his economic policies.

while he's been getting the typical anti-left attacks of "socialist" and "liberal" and so forth, it's clear that this is a man who understands the power of the free market, and how it can radically transform society.

That's why I say that the combination of globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers. I would add an anti-union climate to that list. But all weakens the position of workers, particularly blue-collar workers, in the economy, and some of it is just historical. You know after World War II, we were in this unique position where Europe was decimated, Japan was decimated. China was off the grid because of Mao. And so we didn't have a lot of competition out there, and now other countries are rising and automation has supplanted a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers.

We have drastically increased productivity since 1995, and there was the theory that if you increase productivity enough some of these problems of living standards would solve themselves. But what we've seen is rising productivity, rising corporate profits but flat-lining or even declining wages and incomes for the average family.

What that says is that it's going to be important for us to pay attention to not only growing the pie, which is always critical, but also some attention to how it is sliced. I do not believe that those two things -- fair distribution and robust economic growth -- are mutually exclusive.

meanwhile, in out-of-touch land:

McCain's view is that government's hand still weighs too heavily. 'Small businesses are what make the American economy run," he told business leaders recently. "The federal government shouldn't make your work any harder."

The centerpiece of McCain's economic plan is cutting taxes and government spending. He wants to shave the corporate income tax, eliminate the alternative minimum tax for middle-class taxpayers, and reduce the estate tax. He promises to veto needless government spending. And he says he'll balance the budget without "smoke or mirrors."

reduce the estate tax, huh? yeah, let's keep clipping off meritocratic regulations. why should children of rich people ever have to work? paris hilton is clearly contributing more to society this way, by being a superficial alcoholic socialite.

And I Said... Good Day!

2008-06-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Obama Bounce has currently shifted Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida blue. It's still early....but come on, the man's got game! By the way, if you're like me and are a political nerd that checks polling stats almost as often as you check your email please drop by FiveThirtyEight. This Pollstar was nearly spot on in every contest during the primary season. There is something to be said for that.

Git ur woar ahn

2008-06-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

seriously, we're not THAT crazy...

2008-06-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

...just able to read the writing on the wall. you can argue with us when we say that 'peak oil' is here. we're not going to stop you...just know that some smart people agree with us.

long-time oil magnate boone pickens has called it - world crude oil production has peaked, and gas is only going to get more expensive from here.

Pickens, who announced a $2 billion investment in wind energy earlier this year, told lawmakers during a hearing on renewable electricity that he expected "the price of oil will go up further." Without alternatives, the cost of foreign oil will drain the United States of more resources, he said.

"In 10 years, we will have exported close to $10 trillion out of the country if we continue on the same basis we're going now. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind," he said.

Pickens downplayed the role that speculative trading and institutional investors -- forces some see behind the high oil prices -- have had in the price trend.

just a couple years ago, this was a theory reserved for the cranks. now, a guy who's been making his money off of oil since ike was in office has decided to pull out of the business completely, move to alternative energies, and is proclaiming it dead.

the signs are everywhere. production has hit a plateau of 85 million barrels a day since 2005. the saudis are supposedly considering loosening up some extra supplies, but nobody else has said a damn thing about it. basic economics suggest that a tenfold price increase over the last decade would bring people out of the woodwork to exploit these high prices, and turn the volume of their pumps up to 11, if this over-speculation theory were true. hugo chavez would be having an oilgasm right about now. instead, he's using turning this limited supply into political clout to make the World's Greatest Nation quake in its boots, and all the powerful nations are getting together to figure out how to weed out the speculators (they won't).

more importantly: oil is fucking FINITE. it had to happen sometime.

call me an alarmist. i'm over it, because i'm probably right. i suggest you, loyal reader, do the following as soon as possible:

-throw away your suv.
-start walking again.
-get out of the burbs and move to an urban center before everyone else beats you to the punch.
-figure out where your closest mass transit stop is.
-learn to get by without plastic.
-dedicate yourself to alternative energy research.

just be prepared, because it's only going to get weirder here in the united states of driving, and more quickly than you think.

adventures in political email: part 4

2008-06-16T11:23:00.001-07:00

part of the reason i haven't blogged much lately is because i've been having a lot of back-and-forth with aforementioned conservative douchebag. it got to be pretty respectful, and i was ready to agree to disagree, until he dropped the following pro-life madness:

Next to the unseen carnage of millions of innocent, unborn lives dismembered and suctioned away in this country alone, the American slave trade, the holocaust, and least of all the war in Iraq pale in comparison. Lincoln said that the civil war might have to go on until every drop of slave blood was lost by American soldiers. If every lost life required retribution, more people would die than the cumulative loss of life in every American war that has ever been fought.

my response:

"That's insane. I'm done."

i mean, i like to be open-minded and hear everyone's point of view. i think i do a damn good job at that, but jesus christ. this guy sums up the old aphorism of 'conservatives are only pro-life until the life is out of the womb', or however it's said.

i'll be the first to tell you that i'm indecisive about the whole moral issue of abortion, but god damn, some people really ARE crazy enough to blow abortion clinics up.

mexico gives you cheap gas (besides from burritos)

2008-06-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

i saw a news article on top of the associated press that hit a little bit close to home. san diegans are starting to cross the border for $2.50/gal gas.

"I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up," said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. "Since then, I've been buying all my gas in Tijuana."

The lower prices mean a U.S. motorist could save almost $54 filling up a two-year-old Ford F150 pickup with a 26-gallon fuel tank in Mexico.

i live in the northern suburbs, so it's a little too far for me, but i'm impressed at this dedication to cheap gas. the us/mexico border crossing takes FOREVER, to the point that i hate going to tj for just a day of cheap beer and tacos.

Political Theatre - Part 1 - The Quiet American

2008-06-13T15:14:00.001-07:00

This afternoon during a button twiddling session in front of my family brain docking and memory wipe system, technically called a flat screen for its incredible ability to flatten points of view into single dimensions and to reduce the many folds of the brain into the torpid flatness of a greasy chain store pizza, I made my usual pit stop on channel 81 - TCM. It is one of my favourite channels. If you manage to catch it on the occasions when they play solid hollywood fare (noir, early silents, hard boiled Cagney or Bogie joints, 70s NY cinema etc) or on late night excursions when they have excellent foreign selections and avoid the overrated technicolour melodramas, Cary Grant romantic comedy marathons and dodge the escapist,white washed musicals one is guaranteed a good return on time spent.

I happened to land on TCM midway through what I later found out was the 1958 version of Graham Greene's -"The Quiet American" and quickly made the judgement that it would be well worth watching. This film deals with aspects of neo - colonialism and the idea of intervention, and the difficulty of maintaining political neutrality as seen through the actions of a British journalist caught in the middle of a love triangle. I must say that it is somewhat irresponsible of me to review this film without having seen it front to back or without having read the book it is based on. I will remedy the situation by getting a netflix copy of the movie and altering this review if I find any glaring errors in my analysis or my understanding of the plot. I think however that I got the thread of the story well enough to make the points I make and I read some plot summaries to fill the gaps in my knowledge. Also the readers may be interested to know that they remade this movie in 2002 with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. I wonder how they spun it this time around.

First of all I thought the movie, helmed by veteran director Joeseph Mankiewicz, was technically well made. The settings and outdoor shots seemed very authentic and I saw none of the shoddy studio shots of false, painted horizons and the mannered acting that mar a lot of older films. The only clue one has that it was filmed in Italy is the names painted on some of the sign boards and the relative lack of grime as could be expected in 50s Vietnam. The bit players looked pretty authentically Asiatic even if they seemed a little too westernised to be completely believable. Having passed the important first test of believability I found myself being able to accept the story being conveyed quite easily. Later, upon doing some IMDB digging I found out that the Asian female protagonist Phuong was played by Giorgia Moll - an Italian! Just the day before I saw Paul Muni in "The Good Earth" playing a character called Wang! However both these performances were pretty believable and not the grotesque parodies that some examples of yellowface or blackface can be so I was inclined to forgive them. (not sure though if Moll was of Asian descent so forgive me if I am wrong about this)

This movie, like most Hollywood movies based in Vietnam focuses on the Western characters and their power games in the midst of the personality devoid ethnic masses that fill out the frame in crowded marketplaces or in ballrooms and battle scenes. I happened to jump into the movie right in the middle of a pivotal scene where the older, more cynical British journalist Thomas Fowler is trapped in an observation tower with the younger American transplant(Audie Murphy) and two South Vietnamese soldiers. The American is an idealist who believes in bringing American style democracy to Vietnam, what he calls the third way, an alternative to homegrown communism and french colonialism. The Brit however is worldly wise and claims to be neutral to politics. The film was made in 1958, one year before American soldiers entered Vietnam and provides us an interesting view into the minds of American policies and thinking of that era.

As the two joust over politics we never hear what the soldiers might be thinking - they remain completely silent throughout the scene and only participate in the gunfight at the end that kills them both while the westerners escape narrowly. Indeed the only intimation we get of their thoughts is through the journalist's words when he tells Audie Murphy that they most likely don't have a political viewpoint but only fight for survival. Whether it is true or not, there is no clarification from the soldier's themselves. This argument presages several other Hollywood failures in making movies about the Vietnamese intervention; failures like 'Platoon' where the entire war is cast as a moral struggle for the American soul that only incidentally involves the inhuman, chattering, faceless Vietnamese soldiers. The left leaning Oliver Stone made the same mistake that the America-centric Mankiewicz made 30 years earlier, that of presuming to speak for the oriental other. A year before the American intervention in Vietnam, this movie already casts the American point of view and the western journalistic point of view as being more important than that of a native soldier's. The scene ends with the American risking his life to save the Brit's. In the end he is repaid for his kindness to the Brit by betrayal because he wins the heart and mind of the Vietnamese girl who has become disillusioned with the deceptions of the desperate journalist.

As the movie went on, one could see the director's point of view quiet clearly. The entire film is a propaganda effort aimed at proving the superiority of the American interventionist point of view in Vietnam. The wholesome American, because of his strong morals (as a church going do - gooder who romances the girl in an earnest fashion with an eye towards legitimising their relationship with a marriage) has the correct politics. The atheistic journalist who is willing to lie about getting a divorce from his absent wife to keep the girl, in other words a weak and decadent loser has the wrong idea about leaving Vietnam alone. His personal weakness makes him a natural fit for collaborating with the commies and his pretense to journalistic/political neutrality is easily shaken when his grip on his girl slackens. In other words, the right kind of love presages the right kind of politics in the director's rigid world view.

I understand that this is very different from the book where the American is shown in a less sympathetic light. Greene meant to show the imbecility of the American mindset when it came to stopping communism from spreading in third world countries. However since this movie was made just after the anti communist purge of Hollywood and on the eve of the Vietnam war the story was completely turned around and the British journalist and the commies depicted as villains. In the movie the American agent's politics are right because his personality is true and righteous - we get no real evidence that his politics are right because of the good they do for the Vietnamese people. He is depicted at first as a shady importer of plastics, which may or may not be used to make bombs,but eventually turns out to be a harmless capitalist idealist. On the other hand the Brit with his tendency towards journalistic impartiality and hence weak mindedness makes a fatal error of judgement, eventually succumbing to the seduction of the communistic viewpoint. As a result he betrays everyone around him and does wrong.

You are either with us or against us, the director says, and if you are against us then you are a terrorist(here a commie hit squad) sympathizer and an evil hedonist. The only right path is that of Godliness and free enterprise. You have to accept all the tenets of the American way piecemeal- the religion, the labour policies, the aggressive foreign policy, sanctity of marriage, the mainstream in all it's manifestations, if you want to escape the black hole of relativism and contradictions of opposing points of view. This movie is as relevant now as it was back then if you deconstruct its many ideological fallacies and compare them to the Neo-Con mindset. Seems like every war effort requires this kind of marshaling of values in order to ensure the defeat of internal opposition to conflict. When the initial invasion of Iraq ended the bush admin made sure to send its own idealistic republican youth brigade which was thoroughly vetted for personal politics. It became more important to have pro life conservatives in charge of running the various bureaucracies in charge of reconstruction than the most qualified experts in the field in question. Restarting business in the Baghdad stock exchange was a major priority for the people in charge of resuscitating life in that country - all because of the foolish idealism of war planners who believed exporting their mode of life was necessary for Iraqi freedom. The leap from Neo - Col to Neo - Con took 40 years and happened despite the lessons of Algeria and Vietnam.

The movie ends with a thanks to the 'government chosen by the people of Vietnam'(paraphrase) - as long as the government was a democratic government run along the lines of western examples one supposes. Communism could never be a free choice of the people but could only be an aberration in thinking that came about as a result of an incontinent morality. The only right choice is the true one of "freedom" with its blazoning bugles. The only true end of adult life is the bourgeoisie family unit with religion and state providing the backbone for a man's development. What a load of tripe we swallowed for centuries and whose cud we are still chewing on!

Here is an interesting fact - In a speech Bush gave in Aug of 2007 he had the audacity to reference the Alden Pyle character from the book - the same quiet American who creates the big mess - in support of American intervention to spread democracy. The irony of using a character conceived of as an embodiment of American idealism gone awry in an international intervention situation seemed to have escaped Bush's feeble attempts at speechifying. He ignored the bumbling idiocy of this character and instead used him as a segue to talk about the disastrous withdrawal from Saigon in 75. This is typical of Bush myth making - ignoring the misguided invasion that led to the withdrawal and instead focusing on the effects of such a withdrawal on international perception of American strength. What Bush - McCain want is for us to forget the lies and failures that set off this whole process - they want us to take an ahistorical view in order to excise and excuse failure and deception. Sorry Mr. President and Mr. Yesident that is impossible to do except unless we engage in some serious Orwellian doublethink. Just as watching this pro - American movie does not change the original story that Graham Greene meant to tell in his book. History came along and showed us the stupidity of pretending that the Vietnam adventure was anything but a colossal mistake. The movie became instantly invalidated and Greene's original point of view held fast because it was written from a perspective of reality - not idealistic hubris like the director's or Bush's point of view.

All said I would recommend this film as essential viewing because of the skill of Michael Redgrave in playing a complex and unsympathetic part in such a way that we are forced to empathise with the human motivations that drive him to do wrong. The interesting back story of the book and film versions also make it a fascinating study of the subversive politics of literary adaptations and mass media manipulation of an author's ideas.

ron paul finally hanging it up?

2008-06-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

...or is he finally cutting his ties to the republicans? this just showed up in my inbox:

We invite you to watch the live video broadcast of Dr. Paul's rally tonight, June 12th, @ 9PM CDT in Houston, TX. Dr. Paul will be making a major announcement, and we would like you to be a part of it.

given that he plans to be holding his own mini-convention, i'd be willing to believe that a third party bid is afoot.

either that, or he's going to announce that his love of the constitution has led him to finding the map on the back that leads to the secret trove of freemason treasure.

--

UPDATE: yep, he's calling it a day. he's gonna dump all of his money into a new ngo called "the campaign for liberty," supporting libertarian-oriented candidates.

sinking the swift-boaters

2008-06-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

the obama campaign has launched fightthesmears.com to combat all the harsh negative bullshit that's being used for character assassination.

right in one place, you can try to use knowledge bombs to destroy the following ideas:
-he's a muslim
-his wife's a racist
-he won't say the pledge.

good christ, does this mean that the republicans are going to have to resort to slamming him over policy?

they're so fucked in november.

adventures in political email: part 3

2008-06-11T09:48:00.001-07:00

regulars to ichf will remember that this blog started because some conservative cat tried to belittle obama for being just "good looking and well-spoken" or some nonsense. i got mad, wrote a response email to the guy, and decided that i need to start a blog.

anonymous conservative jackass is at it again. this email showed up in my inbox this morning:

However great Obama may be, you're only as good as the company you keep. Now that we've seen his "religious leaders", here's one more reason Obama's not going to win:

Subject: McCain's Wife

Not just another pretty face!

The "Other" McCain.......(More than meets the eye.)

While Obama's wife has been hating America, complaining
about the war and undermining our troops serving in Iraq
and Afghanistan, McCain's wife has been worrying about
her sons who actually are fighting or planning to fight in
the war on terror. One, in fact, was until a few months ago
deployed in Iraq during some of the worst violence.

You don't hear the McCains talk about it, but their 19-year-
old Marine, Jimmy, is preparing for his second tour of duty.
Their 21-year-old son, Jack, is poised to graduate from
Annapolis and also could join the Marines as a second
lieutenant.

The couple made the decision not to draw attention to their
sons out of respect for other families with sons and daughters in harm's' way.

Cindy also says she doesn't want to risk falling apart on the
campaign trail talking about Jimmy who was so young when
he enlisted she had to sign consent forms for his medical
tests before he could report for duty and potentially upsetting parents of soldiers who are serving or have been killed.

The McCains want to make sure their boys get no special
treatment. Same goes for their five other children, including
a daughter they adopted from Bangladesh. During a visit to
Mother Teresa's orphanage there, Cindy noticed a dying
baby.. The orphanage could not provide the medical
care needed to save her life. So she brought the child home
to America for the surgery she desperately needed. The baby is now their healthy, 16-year-old daughter, Bridget.

Though all seven McCain children including two Senator
McCain adopted from his first marriage are supportive of
their father, they prefer their privacy to the glare of the
campaign trail.

Another daughter, Meghan, 23, helps him behind the scenes.
Cindy McCain not only cherishes her children, but also her
country, which in an election year filled with America-bashing, is a refreshing novelty. She seethed when she heard Michelle Obama's unpatriotic remarks that she only recently grew proud of America. 'I am very proud of my country,' Mrs. McCain asserted.

She also may be tougher than the other women in the race.
While Hillary thinks she's come under sniper fire on
mission trips abroad, Cindy has actually seen violence.
She witnessed a boy get blown up by a mine in Kuwait during a trip with an international group that removes land mines from war-torn countries.

Mrs. McCain also is a hands-on philanthropist. She sits on
the board of Operation Smile, which arranges for plastic
surgeons to fix cleft palates and other birth defects. She also
has helped organize relief missions to Micronesia.

During a scuba-diving vacation to the islands, Mrs.McCain
took a friend to a local hospital to have a cut treated. She
was shocked, and saddened, by what she saw. 'They opened
the door to the OR, where the supplies were, and there were
two cats and a whole bunch of rats climbing out of the sterile
supplies,' she recalled. 'They had no X-ray machine, no beds. To me, it was devastating because it was a U.S. Trust territory.'

As soon as she returned home, she arranged for medical
equipment and teams of doctors to be sent to treat the island children.

Michelle Obama contributes to CARE, which fights global
poverty and works to empower poor women. Cindy sits on its board.

what what what what what WHAT?
WHAT THE FUCK?
just like all of you other righteously indignant types, i felt compelled to leave a reasoned response that masked my violent anger. analyst smash:

[Name Omitted], please do not send this uncited chain email garbage and pass it off as truth. It demeans everyone's intelligence, and turns the political process into rumor-mongering and gossip. Moreover, I think judging a person by the supposed quality of their spouses is a poor meterstick for a president's performance. After all, by that measure, we should all have voted for Hillary. I hear her spouse actually used to be president, too.

I have several issues with this saintly depiction of the McCain family. Let me tell you another story about John and his wife - his first one. This was during McCain's days at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, when he was more of a spoiled slacker playboy scion of an influential American family than any kind of leader (much like the man he's attempting to succeed). In fact, he graduated 894 out of a total 899 students (source: Wikipedia). Before John was sent to Vietnam and infamously imprisoned in a POW camp for five and a half years, he met and married to a beautiful woman named Carol. He even adopted her two children from a previous marriage, which you mentioned in your email.

When John got back from Vietnam, he was horrified to find out that Carol had changed dramatically from how he remembered her - she had been horribly disfigured in a car accident while he was gone, leaving her much shorter, and walking with a limp - a far change from the model (literally) that he married. This whole story, plus some strong words for McCain from Ross Perot, are available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html.

John met Cindy McCain when she was 25. He was still married, but that didn't stop him from "aggressively courting" her. He later divorced Carol, and married Cindy. It is well-documented that even after he married Cindy, he continued to sleep around. This continues to this day, with an under-reported story from last year about McCain's affair with a lobbyist, which may have led to improper governmental favors for her company (source: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1715403,00.html, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/20/john-mccain-affair-links_n_87690.html). Incidentally enough, Cindy was heir to the company and fortune of Hensley and Co., one of the largest Anheiser-Busch distributors in America. While John was anything but a native Arizonan, Cindy was. Thanks mostly to the strength of her connections, the former POW and war hero become the junior Senator from Arizona but one year after he moved to the state (source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02EFDF1439F934A15751C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=6). Kinda sounds this lady i know who ran for president on the back of her husband's coattails.

Also, please do not look down on Obama's "religious leaders" as you call them, while ignoring McCain's spiritual mentors. Jeremiah Wright is fucking crazy - we can all agree on that. However, the words of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, the men that McCain has called spiritual guides, are equally hateful and bilious. Parsley has gone on record as saying that Islam is an "Anti-Christ religion" and Mohammed as "a mouthpiece of spiritual evil" (source: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4905624&page=1). You can believe this if you like, and you can ignore those comments from these guys as just pastors being pastors. Judging by what you have said in the past about your moral values, I have doubts that you care that these guys have upset one of the three Abrahamic religions, or that they think homosexuals are sinners, or that they want to make policy decisions based on the possibility of the rapture being at hand. Just know that ripping on Wright while turning a blind eye on these two makes a person look like a conservative tool at best and a racist at worst.

However, before you label me as some sort of apologist for religious extremists, understand that I am simply trying to avoid my country getting involved in a holy war (a clearly un-American endeavor). These hateful, closed-minded values are un-American, and make us all look just like the religious extremists that we are supposedly at war with.

So what if Michelle Obama was saying she was proud of America for the first time in her adult life? Yeah, that's bad PR. But I can tell you from my own personal experience, that for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of the democratic process on a federal level. I'm not going to go into an anti-Bush tirade here. We all know the man's an inept war criminal. Watching him shit upon the values that we all hold dear as Americans has turned me into the guy who writes political rants like this.

It saddens me that a man who values religion and family values so highly will look the other way on John McCain's many moral improprities in the name of a political party that he believes is speaking for him. I highly encourage you to look deeper at these candidates than the junk mail that shows up in your inbox, in the name of your fellow citizens and the country they live in.

i feel better now, and can get to work like a good little analyst.

Caption Contest

2008-06-10T16:53:00.001-07:00

[Note: They wouldn't let me post this in the comment section, so I'm putting my submission on the front page, because I feel so strongly that is teh shit]

psssst... black power

libertarian quackery!

2008-06-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

for those of you keeping track, there are now two libertarian candidates in the presidential field, each vying for their own share of third place, and a solid chunk of the republican field.

bob barr, republican-turned-libertarian, is the answer to the existential question "what if we held a campaign and nobody voted?" if i had to guess, it's because of ridiculous ideas like this:

After more than 50 years of American support, “South Korea is well able to defend itself,” notes Barr. The South has an economy that is estimated to be 40 times as large as that of North Korea; South Korea has twice the North’s population and a vast technological edge. “It is time for real leadership on this important national security matter,” Barr said, adding that “maintaining a large and costly American military presence in Korea largely because that’s the way it’s been done for more than half a century makes little sense, especially if we, as we should, maintain the capability to respond quickly to actual threats against us when necessary and where necessary.”

um yeah...why the fuck are we still in south korea?
they're so crazy about starcraft over there that i'm sure you could just round up the nearest kid from an internet cafe to lead a successful ground campaign against the north koreans. kim jong il's military strategy consists entirely of "zerg rush". nothing a south korean teenager couldn't handle.

meanwhile, the libertarian-turned-republican, ron paul, is planning an all-out gop coup. after his supporters have been marginalized at state convention after state convention (despite paul's continued high primary returns), he's finally deciding to throw his own gop anti-convention to run parallel to the actual convention in minneapolis:

A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, which coincides with the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in neighboring St. Paul.

just like the marginalized nerd he truly is, paul has decided to throw his own party. expect paul supporters to show up with their dungeons and dragons boards, and make several proposals to order a bunch of pizzas for the other convention.

parents just don't understand

2008-06-10T11:24:00.001-07:00

i found this at thinkprogress, who are absolutely incensed at the fact that the dumb broad above suggested that it could be a "terrorist fist jab." sure, if that douchebag you beat at beer pong last week is planning to lay waste to american cities in the name of allah. this asshole even went so far as to call it a "Hezbollah-style fist bump," before he got slapped in the face by the giant cock of knowledge that is the internet at large. befitting the ignorant little conservative shit that he is, he later retracted the statement without even a strikethrough to show that he changed his post.

thinkprogress, you guys are fighting the good fight or whatever, but seriously, this is not enraging. this is hilarious.

which reminds me...
CAPTION CONTEST!

my submission:
no no NO michelle! you're getting it backwards...ONE bump if by nukes, TWO if by anthrax!

let's see what you guys got!

---

UPDATE: that idiot got fired. probably because old man murdoch loves obama. sweet.

ahp-edz: Karrzzzzzzzz (ai haz nun)

2008-06-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

There isn't a link in this post. Don't look for it. You won't find it.

We've linked out quite enough to plenty of American heretical shit about how car culture is going to kill us all. Hell, we even got a little human on you and revealed that we plan on exiting said car culture ASAP.

I have been planning, since January of this year, to exit car culture as of July 4th, 2008. The date itself turned out to be purely coincidental, as I had a final appointment with my shrink on the third (just to catch up with the guy, because my shrink is somehow fully erroneously convinced I'm next Hemingway), and so the fourth of July was to be actually become my own sort of Independence Day.

While it was only coincidental, the charm of such a thing was not lost on me, and I quite looked forward to telling everyone that I cut the cord from my car on the day this country celebrates its first steps toward freedom from tyranny.

I was going to write a very proud and boisterous post, probably quite long-winded and full of itself. I would likely have been tangled up in the hubris of my own wealth of information and intellect, so happy with myself for seeing the writing on the wall. I can imagine myself being totally insufferable if such events had turned in my favor.

Fortunately for everyone, they did not. Not remotely.

What follows is a history of me getting rid of my car, unabridged and in dire need of editing:

Knowing I was going to be giving up my car soon, I had begun planning trips to Los Angeles (I reside in San Diego) to see many old friends. I planned these trips around things that were already happening, and I planned them in advance.

It bears noting that when I moved back to the west coast 18 months ago, a trip up to Los Angeles to see my friends meant that I was parting with a baseline of 30 dollars for a tank of gas. that was my jumping off point for "What this trip will cost."

The last time I went to Los Angeles, I had to take a friend to keep the baseline cost of gas near 30 dollars. It took 55 smackabuckafuckeroos to fill the tank of my car, a 12.x gallon Jetta. Manual transmission. No A/C the whole weekend.

I drive this car - this company car, mind you - to and from work daily to commute. I live far from where I work and am disinclined to own a vehicle. My job felt it was important for me to be in the office every day for the first year I was employed, so they provided me with a means of transportation. I believe they hoped that I would choose to buy a car of my own when all was said and done.

When I was given this car, it felt like a coronation of sorts, even as someone who has always had an aversion to car culture (but loves a good long road trip - one of the many things this recession has robbed young people of is their right to travel this whole country and see it firsthand). I knew that this car was nicer than any I'd ever known. I felt more important driving it. All in all, it just felt good to have that car.

I say this to illustrate that I am not trying to be holier than thou. I am not trying to say I am so good, but everyone else is so bad. I say these things to try to paint a human picture of what it was like to divorce myself from car culture. It's an odd thing, but more and more people you know are going to be doing it sooner than later.

The first thing that struck me, when I started speaking about getting rid of my car, was how many people just looked at me in shock or disbelief, as though I'd grown a spiraling horn from the top of my head and told them my taint smelled faintly of blueberries at all times.

I attempted to explain to people that I planned to move into the city center and utilize mass transit. California even offers businesses tax breaks if they promote use of mass transit among employees, so I could take the train to work for free. In the meantime, my roommate and I work within 10 miles of one another. Even in the worst case scenario in terms of gas usage, he and I each stand to gain 50 dollars a month in this deal.

Beyond that, I find myself rarely leaving my home to do things like eat at restaurants or spend money at a bar. One of the great functions of this recession is that you should have less money to go do things that require a car, therefore you should use your car less.

I would try to explain this to people, and I would say more than half understood my point of view and agreed that what I was doing was good. Some people are still really going to be shocked, but for the most part I see that people are sincerely waking up to the fact that we cannot live our lives the same way we've been living them for what.. 60+ years?

In what was likely the most stunning turn of events, my job didn't care. They gave me a car, for a year, and at the end of that year, I just gave it back (in need of an oil change, making a funny noise, and with one unpaid parking ticket, but that's neither here nor there) and told them I expected my schedule to shift accordingly.

Here's the kicker - they didn't say a fucking word.

In my opinion, my job has every right to be insanely pissed that they've just given me a promotion and a raise, after having given me a car for free for a year, and my response is to tell them they might experience a shift in my hours as I figure out how to live without a vehicle.

In my defense, I was saving money for awhile. Then I realized gas was going to be topping five bucks a gallon before 2009 (turns out WAY before 2009), and I had to 86 those plans.

If my job had raised issue, I would have simply told them that between my gas expenses (now running close to 300 dollars a month), on top of a car payment (150 dollars/month on any car worth having) and insurance (let's just say it's 150 bucks a month for total coverage), I'm looking at what amounts to a second living expense, just to drive around.

The fact is that had my job not provided me with a car for the past 12 months, I likely would have been forced to ask for a raise or quit and find a job that paid better.

And so, as of today, with little fanfare, no parade and shockingly no reprimand from my employers, I am exiting car culture. I know this is going to be a terribly rough transition, as I have surely grown dependent on my vehicle.

However, I truly do believe that the hardest part is over.

reuters staffers drinking kool-aid

2008-06-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

i like to read reuters quite a bit, mostly because it's a more global and non-american perspective than the likes of the associated press. a non-american perspective, of course, keeps the journalism a little more neutral regarding american interests such as our wars, economies, and elections.

however, i saw a couple of items in there today that made me wince at how completely out of touch they seemed:

first: Goldman's Cohen: Mild Recession at Worst.

"I think it's fair to say it will not be as deep a recession, if it is a recession, as many people had feared not that long ago. There certainly is not a black hole developing in the U.S. economy," Cohen said. "Also, it is entirely possible we will not have a single quarter of negative GDP."

While there is little inflation pressure from wages, she said, commodity prices are a "complicating factor." She said the United States is importing commodity price inflation from overseas.

does anybody believe people when they say this anymore? or does this just strike you as pedantic number-crunching nonsense? a recession, by any other name, still smells like poverty. so what if we're not having negative gdp growth? she says it herself...commodity prices are a 'complicating factor.'

people die of 'complications' in hospitals all the damn time. that's all i'm saying.

second item: Gasoline to peak at $4.15/gallon in August.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. gasoline prices will continue to march to record highs this summer before peaking at $4.15 per gallon in August, the Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.

awesome, right?
oops! there's a caveat:

Last month, the EIA projected gasoline prices would peak in June at $3.73 per gallon of regular grade fuel.

so if i'm to understand this correctly - last month these guys completely screwed the pooch in their economic predictions, so as a consequence, reuters is going to credit their prediction in a headline like it's an immutable truth. great.

how is that acceptable journalism?

franken violates separation of comedian and state

2008-06-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

the man responsible for such filmic works as 'stuart saves his family', along with the seminal political treatise 'rush limbaugh is a big fat idiot', is now running for senate.

that's right - al franken, formerly of saturday night live and air america radio, is the democratic nominee for senate in the state of minnesota. yes, that minnesota. the same people who put jesse ventura in the governor's mansion are now looking to put stuart smalley on capitol hill.

sure, he's politically motivated, and a keen satirist (though one of the more obnoxious blowhards belonging to the progressives). quoth the reuters, 'He said his books and radio show have given him a solid grounding in policy, and noted that two of his movies that tackled alcoholism are used widely in sobriety clinics.'

that would be great if you were sworn in by putting your hand on the bible and saying 'hi, i'm al, and i'm an alcoholic.' it would also be great if being a pundit qualified you in the slightest to be a governor.

hiring people for jobs based on their exposure in mass media as bothers the piss out of me. look at some of the people that the tv generation were instrumental in electing to various levels of public office - arnold schwarzenegger, ronald reagan, sonny bono, clint eastwood, and so forth. while arnold is doing a decent job, this just strikes me as symbolic of negative effect of visual culture in general and television specifically on our collective culture. it's well-documented that jfk's victory against nixon was partially due to his telegenic good looks. the same could be said for reagan, clinton, and obama.

it would be wise of you to take a page from jon stewart, mr. franken, and realize that the critics should criticize. let the politicians govern. continue slamming the actual leaders all you want, but that's your job - keeping them honest. bringing a pundit like you on board would only contribute to the divisive attack-dog bullshit that has characterized our politics for so long. i suspect you don't quite know what you're getting into, and how you'll likely turn into a corrupt twit very quickly. at this rate, look for 'al franken is a big fat idiot' to hit the bookstands by 2010.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Trade Deficit

2008-06-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some notes from the Right-Wing.

The World Trade Organization is advising U.S. consumers to save their money, even as the U.S. government is trying its damnedest to get them to spend it. From the AFP:

Families in the United States have to save more if the country is to reduce a deficit in payments with the rest of the world, the World Trade Organisation said on Monday.
In a review of US trade policy, the WTO said that if consumers saved more and spent less, then there would be less demand for imported goods.
That would help to reduce a deficit on the balance of payments into and out of the country, it said.

I've always been more than a bit wary of the WTO. I'm an isolationist at heart, and I've always been suspicious of the WTO's push to liberalize the flow of goods and currencies between borders. However, they're raising a good point here. We're pushing ourselves into a deep hole of debt and deficit. In my own opinion, the U.S.'s import/export ratio has been too high for years now. The federal government is telling us to spend more, but if Americans are just spending that money on imported goods (which they mostly are), it's the economic equivalent of throwing shit on a shitfire.

As per usual, though, the WTO displayed a nearly sickening level of duplicity by
warn[ing] against any pressures for protective barriers to reduce imports, saying the world's largest economy should work instead to expand its exports to balance the account.

Okay, so the WTO doesn't want to piss off all the nations that export to the U.S. -- not necessarily the high road, but it makes sense -- but then they have the balls to rule against the U.S. in its complaint against India's high tariffs on imported alcohol products.

In the conclusion of its ruling, the WTO's dispute panel said that the United States has "failed to establish that the additional duty on alcoholic liquor is inconsistent" with India's WTO commitments.
The US had filed the complaint against India in May 2007, claiming that additional duties on alcoholic beverages were as high as 550 percent of the value of the product.

I'm not saying I oppose India's high alcohol tariffs. In fact, I support the right of sovereign nations to regulate trade. But is no one going to call the WTO out on this one? They shake their fingers at the United States, admonishing us for having too high an import/export ratio, then tell us not to raise tariffs, then support a country with already astronomically high tariffs in a decision that effectively restricts the U.S.'s ability to export. Why do we put up with stuff like this?

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Long Hot Summer Mess - Media trends and the general election

2008-06-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Rasmussen Reports finds that voters overwhelming feel that the media coverage of the '08 presidential campaign is skewed - in favor of Obama. "Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment." That figure by the way includes 27% of self declared Dems who believe reporters will try to help Obama win. When was the last time we saw that kind of comfort level among democrats with the slant of the media coverage? Not since before the embattled days of the Clinton presleazydency, I don't think.

Following the Lewinsky scandal and the self righteousness of that coverage we saw the naked, chest - thumping patriotism of the first Bush term that portrayed dem Dems as a bunch of apostate, commie, terrorism enablers. The Fox News aping partisan slide of the media slowed down after Bush's re-election when the lies and obfuscations that comprised the war sales job became public. As the failure of post invasion strategy became apparent and the tide turned in the favour of the Iraqi insurgency the media became more and more restive. The last two years have seen a definite slant against the Bush administration in terms of press.

Scott McClellan's decision to publish 'What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception' neatly bookends the end of an era. Make no mistake about it, he was and is a cowardly apologist for his former employers. He waited for the media climate to change and become safe for him to put out the book, and, even with the advantage of favourable press, refuses to admit to willful deception on Bush's part or on his own. I would be willing to accept a 'product of my environment' defense from a guy on the street busted for a robbery to survive poverty but not from the guy in charge of creating and controlling the environment. He makes it seem as if he wasn't even in the press conferences he gave and his press corp zombie incarnation took his place when he was spreading the administration's folderol. However that is a different story and I am getting carried away. The point I was trying to make is that the media tide has turned so much that it has now become profitable for former Bush cronies to come out and voice dissident opinions. The press is now going to ride the progress and change bandwagon in the opposite direction for the foreseeable future.

I am not one of those people who sees the press as being slanted permanently in one direction or the other. Except for the worst partisan hacks like Billo, most just bend with the wind as it blows. It is not as profitable to defend Bush when he has 30% approval ratings. What happens is that with their extensive sources and statistical data the press is the first to see the ball roll down the hill and they start to take defensive positions behind the most recent swing of the political pendulum. In doing so they help increase the momentum of the swing and inevitably with their bumbling enthusiasm they exaggerate the virtues of the currently favoured position. It happened to an unreasonable extent with the war and it is now happening with more justification for Obama and the democrats(My slant visible enough for you my readers!).

According to Rasmussen, all sides of the political divide seem to agree that the media has an inordinate influence on the election process - "Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Republicans believe the media has too much influence along with 80% of unaffiliated voters and 65% of Democrats. " Maybe so, but I also believe that they are only reflecting a national trend in a more liberal direction and in doing so help reinforce that trend. The media are followers, not leaders. They are like the kids who always tried too hard to fit in, in high school - imitating and repeating watered down versions of the witty kid's put downs. So, to conclude, this is good news all around for Democrat supporters. Just two days after Hillary endorsed Obama his lead has increased 48% - 50%. They give him a 94.9% chance at winning.

Still, there is a long, hot, sticky summer ahead where meltdowns abound. Obama needs to learn from Hillary's hard tumble from 'inevitable candidate' to the victim of strategic blunders, overspending and overconfidence. He needs to keep the pressure on McCain up until his cool facade starts cracking - something that has happened several times already when he faced minor provocations such as during the debate on the GI bill. Obama has made a good first move by rejecting interest group money and forcing McCain into a position where he must follow suit in order to keep up his image of being a reformer and a man of integrity. With his vastly superior campaign war chest Obama can afford to refuse Washington money while McCain's lackluster showing on the fundraising trail makes him more reliant on shady money sourced through Bush contacts. This means more stories on the McCain - lobbyist connection which the dems need to keep plugging at. It will make McCain look like a hypocrite while weakening his fundraising ability and organisational strength. Already this scandal has forced him to completely overhaul his campaign's top faces and it will cost him more money to replace those people in the long run.

McCain's tactic of asking Obama to agree along with him to use public funding seems to have hit a wall for now. Considering the extent to which small donations helped build up the democratic war chest I believe Obama can easily make the argument that it is OK for him to use that money instead of going the public funding route and still look morally superior. Meanwhile the McCain campaign seems to be asserting itself like a street brawler - by repeatedly challenging Obama to one on one events where McCain has an advantage, like the idea for a joint visit to Iraq and the joint town hall meetings tour. So far Obama has not risen to the bait and needs to continue to counter intelligently to these one sided demands.

That is not enough however and he needs to ramp up his own political attacks on McCain's weak economic plank and ties to Bush and his support for the war- his two weakest flanks. The key to winning is putting McCain on the defensive and showing voters the prickly side of his suave aviator persona. The angry McCain is an ugly sight and it does not make him seem more interesting like he seems to believe it does. Straight talk is one thing but naked bellicosity and defensive posturing is best left to the wrestling ring. The media has noticed this and has commented about it in the past. With them on Obama's side it will be easier for him to show us this side of McCain and he must take advantage of it in the future. As someone with a short fuse I know that sooner or later that kind of personality must show itself in all it's irrational belligerence. McCain's strong desire to speak the truth, the way he sees it, means that at some point he is going to put his foot in his mouth and it will get press play. The next time he says or does something like sing - "Bomb Bomb, Bomb Iran" the media must not allow him to get away with it without some clarification. In light of the short sightedness and failed intelligence that caused the war in Iraq that kind of impulsive aggression needs to be thoroughly scrutinised.

Also Obama needs to put forward a clear economic policy to counter McCain's and to address the number one issue on the public's mind at this point. He needs to make the case that decisive action is necessary to reverse the economic downturn and that his solutions are the best ones for them. I know that economic policy minutiae is not his strong suit but he needs to do his homework now and come across like the smarter guy during the fall debates. This is one aspect of his campaign that needs attention now; he has a good 3 months before the real muckraking starts and since Hillary has spared him the embarrassment and slow bleed of a prolonged campaign, he needs to use his time wisely and not simply expediently. The only way to counter the substance in a formidable opponent like McCain is with better material of your own, not just tall speeches. Considering that independent groups, especially libertarians, are going to be a key swing vote group in November, economic policy is going to matter. Also the best way to win over all the Hillary support is to understand and address their economic and health care needs. He can win those women and blue collar workers by emphasising the positive effects that his policy will have on their strained lives.

Besides, winning this election is just the first step. Given the hard conditions America is facing right now Obama faces an uphill task once in the white house. He has to start pulling things around very quickly in order to avoid the fallout of this worsening mess. Failure is not an option for him and I know he has the potential to be a two term monster like Bill Clinton given the right conditions and the right preparation.

i can makes pawlisee?

2008-06-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

the transformative power of technology over politics, as demonstrated by one simple link.

The best, most comprehensive plan for change in our country will include your ideas and your feedback. America needs a president with a mandate from the people, and everyone deserves a voice in shaping our next president's agenda.

Take a moment to share your ideas. Over the coming months the best ideas will be featured and incorporated into the campaign's policy proposals. Be as broad or specific as you want.

that's right, you can submit your policy ideas to barack obama in between checking your email and logging onto youporn.

i suggested liberalizing copyright law and decriminalizing file sharing.

a friend of mine suggested, simply, "legalize it."

point is, you have a direct channel to suggest policy to the dude, and that's an amazing thing.

ok, now where's our damn jetpacks?

2008-06-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

sci/tech geeks, ready your massive erections. the tech world coming to solve all of our problems:

item the first - an inflatable electric car that can drive 2500 miles on a single charge. let's hope this is legit. apparently it's under $10k, is shipped to you for you to assemble, ikea-style, and is made out of airbags. yes, airbags. major drunk-driving fuckups could be a thing of the past, as this thing can apparently drive off a cliff unharmed, or float instead of sink in floods.

item the second - scientists have figured out how to make shit levitate. seriously. small stuff, yeah, but it's fucking LEVITATING. "Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate. But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person."

the power of these two technological advances combined could seriously rework our transportation infrastructure in a matter of a couple decades.

more importantly, bumper cars in the future are going to be sweet.

obama hires old priest, young priest

2008-06-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

that's right, it's exorcism time! now that barack obama is the democratic party's god-king, he is wasting no time exorcising some of their demons:

"...the DNC will no longer accept donations from lobbyists and political action committees, to comply with Obama's campaign policy. Party officials say they expect the DNC's staff to quickly expand to run an aggressive general election campaign."

...

"The move indicates Obama will press his case that Republican rival John McCain is under the influence of special interests because of his advisers' lobbying ties."

something tells me that that's an amazing idea in a time when all these rich bastards are paying off the government to dick over the little guy. poor old johnny mac. you have got a long march ahead of you to november, old man.

i came, i saw, aipac

2008-06-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

the pundits talk all the time about social security and medicare being untouchable 'third rails' of american politics. politicians risk full-on career suicide by even attempting to fuck with these golden calves. while he never had much of an agenda of any kind to begin with, the wheels completely came off of bush's attempt at a second-term domestic agenda when he tried to partially privatize social security (while i don't know if i agree with the specifics of his policy decisions, fuck social security. it's broken. if i'm gonna pay for my parents to stay fed when they're old, i might as well do it without the gubmint getting involved.)

however, social security is a pretty weak third rail when compared to our continued defense of the state of israel. obama has recently recently taking a lot of heat for not unequivocally supporting israel's inherent 'rightness' in the middle east struggle - along with all of the interesting religious and social connotations that accompany that claim. from a march 19 article in politico:

Obama “fails to understand the totalitarian politics and sensibilities of the folks over there, who are not well meaning,” said E.J. Kessler, a New York Post editor who’s a longtime observer of American-Jewish politics. “His approach will appeal to a lot of lefty Jews, but it won’t appeal to the serious players,” she said, referring to the better-organized and better funded groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Council, AIPAC, at whose conference Obama put in an appearance earlier this month.

in the previous week, both obama and mccain have gone to speak to the very same aipac, which is the largest non-partisan lobbying group for the israeli cause. in a move that straddles the line between rhetorical juggling and an ideological about-face, obama reassured continued unequivocal support of the jewish state:

When McCain addressed the AIPAC group Tuesday, he ridiculed Obama for suggesting he would sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. McCain said such a session would gain little "except an earful of anti-Semitic rants and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another."

Obama said Wednesday there is no greater threat to Israel than Iran, which "supports violent extremists" and "pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race." All those threats were known in 2002, he said, yet the Bush administration "ignored it and instead invaded and occupied Iraq."

he continued in his speech (full text available here):

I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bi-partisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats. That is a commitment that both John McCain and I share, because support for Israel in this country goes beyond party. But part of our commitment must be speaking up when Israel’s security is at risk, and I don’t think any of us can be satisfied that America’s recent foreign policy has made Israel more secure.

the entire time he maintains support for a two-state policy and insists that much of the problems we are encountering today are largely credit to the bush administration.

that's all well and good, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that politicians in america have to treat israel with the utmost of kid gloves. the even more unfortunate thing is that the coalition responsible for protecting this israeli love-fest is partially consisted of christian wingnuts, who believe that the book of revelation tells them that support of the state of israel will bring about the rapture (i'm not sure where you get that from a book of the bible that's likely an allegory about the roman empire, but whatever). while this is a fairly fringe belief and not representative of the christian mainstream, many of those who hold this belief, including pat robertson and billy graham (allegedly) wield immense control over a large swath of american voters.

great. and we wonder why some people still want war with iran.

we need to very quickly reassess our strategic relationship with israel, for any number of reasons. among them are:

a) the holocaust ended more than 60 years ago. we helped them get back on their feet after that crazy shit went down, but seriously, that doesn't give them a free pass to build partition walls, or have a government as hawkish as the bush administration.
b) continued disproportionate support to israel in this conflict only helps feed fundamentalist islam's ideas of jihad. while sticking to one's ideals is one thing, one-sided support of one country and complete opposition to all of their rivals is an extremely dangerous thing to get involved in...especially when it involves two religions that share a holy city. this smacks of religious war, which is decidedly unamerican. it kinda sucks that people here like it that way.
c) israel as we know it exists based on a united nations partition plan that was largely opposed by arabs.
d) their human rights record is appalling, and the united nations has made that clear.
e) for the reasons listed above, this is the single-most entangling alliance we have, and the one responsible for most of our post-cold war diplomatic problems.

this is not to say that israel is not threatened by many of their rivals, or that we shouldn't help protect them. we're balls-deep in this mess, so we're somewhat obligated to fix it. however, they are often enough the aggressor that our disproportionate support for them and the specific circumstances of the situation make this a battle we can't and shouldn't have a part in. here's hoping the next administration can pull a two-state solution out its ass and call it a day.

Notes from the Right-Wing: McCain-Obama Town Halls

2008-06-04T14:26:00.001-07:00

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some notes from the Right-Wing.

From the AP:

John McCain challenged Barack Obama to join him in 10 town hall meetings with voters before the Democratic National Convention in August...
"We need to now sit down and work out a way that we can have these town hall meetings and have a great debate," McCain told reporters Wednesday in Baton Rouge.He credits the more intimate town hall format with his victory in the New Hampshire primary that launched his climb to the GOP nomination. McCain said the style would tell voters more than the typical formal, televised debates.

Am I the only one wondering why McCain is getting all up on the "let's have some debates" horse so early? I wonder if he's got the whole Sunni-Shia thing straight yet. Or if he's bothered to learn anything about the economy since this.

If Obama has the balls to call McCain out on stuff like McCain's relationships with lobbyists, look out, because things could get tough for McCain.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Oh No They Didn't

2008-06-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Oh yes. They did.

IN THE “Friday the 13th” franchise of horror movies the killer returns again and again after seemingly being finished off. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign might have felt that life was imitating art during the course of the long, drawn out, presidential nominating contest.

So if you're keeping score at home, that makes Hillary Clinton the deranged psycho killer who wears a bloody goalie mask and has seemingly demonic regenerative powers.

And Barack Obama is the cool kids doing all the drugs and having all the sex.

At least, according to the Economist, that's what it boils down to.

Perhaps....

2008-06-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

Hillary could run for President of Mars?

From Astronomy Pic of the Day:

Explanation: Is that ice under the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars? Quite possibly. Phoenix, which landed a week ago, was expected to dig under the Martian soil to search for ice, but the lander's braking rockets may already have uncovered some during descent. Pictured above is an image taken last week by the Robotic Arm Camera showing the unusual light-colored substance just in front of Phoenix's landing pad. Over the next few weeks, Phoenix will continue to photograph its surroundings, analyze the composition of this hard light substrate, and dig into the surrounding soil. Were the unusual light substrate indeed Martian ice, it would give Phoenix a convenient pedestal to investigate the history of water on Mars, and to better determine whether the boundary between ice and soil was ever capable of supporting life.

This quote, from Alexa:

Alexa: dude. another place to go if john mccain is elected. you know...

Indeed.

usa becomes nagging control freak wife

2008-06-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

a dramatic re-interpretation of the usa's new data collection policy towards foreign travellers:

hey! hey you, get back here! just where do you think you're going, mister? oh, new york, huh? what do you think you're doing there?

you're going with your friends? which friends?
rahim?
do i know rahim?
he sounds...ethnic.
what is he, african-american?

ohhh, he's muslim?
and you said you're going to new york?
my friend condoleeza said that's no good...she's known people who have gotten into trouble with muslims in new york.
just be careful, ok? i'm gonna call you every 3 hours and make sure condoleeza and her friends keep an eye on you.
how, you ask?
i have my ways.

wait a minute...
where are you taking that cigarette lighter, and that tube of gel?
you ARE up to no good!

how do i know? i knew already anyways. i've been reading your emails. i just wanted to hear you say it.

stay right here, mister! you're not going anywhere for a long time. these next few months are gonna be torture.

o hai olimpikz no tardz plz

2008-06-02T13:33:00.001-07:00

Today I'm pulling from ESPN to give you this amazing update on just which of your freedoms China plans to oppress this summer at the Olympic Games.

Among the favorites:

• Those with "mental diseases" or contagious conditions will be barred.

• Some parts of the country are closed to visitors -- one of them Tibet.

• Olympic tickets are no guarantee of a visa to enter China.

So to recap - if you have Olympic tickets, but you're a Free Tibet activist or you're actually retarded in the "I have a problem I was born with that isn't remotely funny to make fun of at all" way, then you should probably start researching ticket-scalping services.

Also, if you have a cold or any other visible illness, you will likely be barred from entering the country.

We spend a lot of our time focussed on the election and the recession around here, but we all need to remember that in a very short time, the entire country of China is going to attempt to put its best foot forward to the rest of the world... and then China is going to fall on its face onto a land mine made of hand grenades.

On a somewhat related note - I don't know where they're going to start, and I'm not exactly sure what's going to trip the first one, but I still predict widespread rioting by mid-August.

stimulus package goes flaccid

2008-06-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

the economic stimulus package has been obviously created to appease the bush administration and government at large's golden calf of consumer spending. retailers were quick to jump on board, offering to cash the checks, and making sales deals clearly catered to the check. i distinctly remember being mildly offended last week while watching a circuit city ad that encouraged me to "stretch my stimulus check" and offered me a new computer for $599.99 (you get to keep that extra cent!).

unfortunately for all those peddlers of cheap, easily breakable, shiny pieces of plastic, we all got bills to pay, and the economy will still blow after we get our little windfalls. according to the new york times, we're going to collectively spend somewhere between one quarter and one half. not exactly what i'd call a shopping spree. however, fear not, investors. some people are prefer to answer the call to patriotic consumerism:

“We’re going to buy a 42-inch television,” said William Meiklejohn, a self-employed computer technician, as he strolled through The Falls, a high-end shopping center south of downtown Miami, set around palm-fringed pools.

His annual income has dropped over the last year from about $100,000 to more like $80,000 as the economy has slid, Mr. Meiklejohn said. But he and his wife own their home and their two cars clear of debt, he said. Their two children are grown and married. No sense stashing their $1,200 tax rebate in a savings account.

“If I spend it, it stimulates the economy,” Mr. Meiklejohn said. “If people go around paying off bills, it’s not going to make any difference.”

i'm not an economist, and i don't think any regular contributors here are either (rootless cosmopolitan, where the hell are you?). since when does paying off one's debt not stimulate the economy? if you really wanted to mobilize us good little consumers right now, wouldn't the best idea to get all this unstable debt taken care of, making all of our banking institutions more sound? how is choosing circulate money, thereby supporting a business, not moving the economy?

it really makes you think that this is just money from the government to help us maintain our serious bread-and-circuses habit. after all, why would you cause any kind of civil disruption (political or otherwise) in a declining country, when civil disruption in liberty city is so much more fun and free of consequence?

the enhanced interrogation cruise line

2008-06-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

the bush junta's apparent response to complaints about having torture prisons in other countries has been to put them where countries aren't:

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

...

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

eighty fucking thousand?

the official story from emperor fratboy's crew, and the narrative accepted by the media, has always seemed to imply that this extraordinary rendition is extremely limited. high profile cases appear because these people are allegedly all serious threats to america. if this were an isolated incident, and we were keeping osama bin laden aboard that ship, i might be able to look the other way about allegations of fudging international laws in this manner. so might the rest of the world...bin laden's kind of a dick.

sending almost three times the population of liechtenstein is not the same. for every one guy that's truly pissed off and plotting against america (who doesn't merit/deserve this treatment anyway), there's probably another 10 or 20 who are petty criminals, who said the wrong thing at the wrong time, or went shopping with rachael ray at the burqa barn.

General thoughts to fill up the weekend hole and the gaping hole in my life!

2008-05-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

Politics has completely invaded my life this summer. I find it it a very interesting development that I am this immersed in the politics of America, a country where I am still officially statusless. That is literally my status - waiting for a status change, awaiting a green card and in between many uncertainties of life and immigration. Let me tell you, my readers, that it is a strange position to be in life - to be unrecognised so to speak. My sympathy for the many millions of illegal immigrants also stems from my own position. As I extend my opinion on the social and political happenings of the land I am besieged by questions of belonging and of whether I have a right to take part in this debate. The question of who I am becomes even more strained and greyed because of my legal status. What is my definition? Bureaucracy decides that. It is a cold place to reside in but I have decided after a full 6 years here that I have to start acting as if the matter has been decided or that that decision does not matter so much. I have decided to be proactive. A man has to make a stand sometimes, regardless of what he is recognised as.

Besides the years that I have spent here have been full, fuller than even the years I spent being born and growing up in India. I have spent the mature years of my life here after all. The major choices of my adult life have been made here. It has been a weird time here. I have made mostly bad decisions. I have jousted unhappily with the law and had a rough time trying to fit in with society at large. My first couple of years were in Los Angles(misspelled intentionally) in a big university where I lost myself in the worst ways and the best. My intellectual sparring partner from the inceptive stages of this blog, joeoverkill might remember me as a very green freshman; he will certainly remember struggling to understand my thick accent and eccentric classroom positions. It took a while to make myself be understood and a lot longer for me to understand the rich culture that I was thrown into. At the time I joined college I felt mostly disenfranchised from the culture around me. In a certain sense I fit in perfectly but in other ways I was lost, holding on to a plank in the middle of the sun scorched southern cal sea.

I remember other peers, mid westerners and east coast refugees just as homesick and lost as I was. USC is no representation of the country I learnt much later. The war on Iraq started in the spring semester of my freshman year in Trojan hall, the second dingiest dorm on campus(the honour of worst dorm of course belongs to Marks hall, that festering outpost of perpetually horny, loser overachievers! Us Trojan hall residents had them to thank for making us look slightly better. Magnoliafan, if you get an offer at SC, avoid both dorms). I remember my red headed neighbour, an awoved republican - something I would have completely been ignorant of in my freshman, foreigner complacency if not for his subsequent actions - put up fliers around the dorm. The fliers called for some kind of weak, soda and chips party(typical for the deans halls residents who were too scared of regulations to have a real party with booze) in the common hall to celebrate the declaration of war. All I had observed of my neighbour thus far was that he had an elaborate manner about him that seemed to hide a complete lack of personality and a horrible taste in music. This is just an observation of his general mode and not a critique of the war supporters. He just happened to be a zero so far in my eyes and his actions had the effect of raising my eyebrows and forcing me to notice him and the political atmosphere that I was so far ignorant of.

I remember being angry, very angry, upon reading his fliers. I left an obscene message on his dorm door chic whiteboard criticising his jingoistic missive. A few hours later I was hauled up by my epitome of chill RA for a heart to heart in the cluttered basement supplies room. This guy had passed me by several times as I hauled giant, brown paper bagged cases of coronas and Mickey's green 40's past his live and let live gaze. A real mensch and a true American spirit - a spirit that Joe's libertarian soul will find much to approve of. Ask rupey and the analyst, both of them have enjoyed the fruits of my fruitful, never carded because I am brown, expeditions to the 32nd street market. I enabled many a Trojan hall black out and bathroom puke disruption. So this guy(remind me of his name analyst or rupert, wasn't it pete?) took me to task that afternoon and told me that he could not have that kind of disruptive and divisive sentiment clog up the love pipes of his air conditioning free dormitory(I am still mad at you SC). That was one of my first encounters with the limits of political discourse. I think that was a very important discussion. My RA wanted me to apologize to my nemesis and I returned to my room angry and also forced to confront the source of my anger.

Why was I so angry with the posters Scarlet had put up? That nickname by the way fits my erstwhile nemesis appositely, for his mindset was just as ancient as his hair was red. As I composed my apology I realised that what had irked me most was not his support for an opposing position supporting the war. What troubled me most was his call for a celebration of a war - a silly, cheap, carbonated drinks and fried potato affair to commemorate and goad forward the certain death of American soldiers and Iraqi combatants and civilians. I refused to apologize to him and expressed my critique of his call in my letter. Now that I look back at that moment I am struck at the prescience of my anger at his attitude. I could never have guessed at the extent of mismanagement and carnage that the war would unravel into. At that time of my stay in America, I was a complete political novice and my only reason for opposing the war was a distrust for the hubristic, runaway nationalism epitomised in my neighbour. The celebratory(fascistic one could say), carried away by post 9/11 anger and desire for revenge is what allowed the mismanagement of the first 3 years of the war. That running down a hill energy, opposed to any heed for caution or critique is what allowed this catastrophe to happen. Irrational anger is a lot more obvious to outsiders than to someone who is caught up in a patriotic moment. Why did the Bush administration not give any heed to opposition within international bodies like the UN?

The intersection of the political and the personal is my one overwhelming concern. Without the aggregation of persons, the body politic is but a ghost that concerns and addresses abstract causes. Why is it that I am so much more concerned about politics today than I was 4 or 5 years ago. Part of it of course is my strange status. I had to live here for this long to start caring enough about the political system that controls us all, whether we voice our opinions or not. Far too many people are not represented by their representatives because they choose not to express their voices. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak. I realised over the last 5 years that even though I could not vote( and probably will not be able to for the next 10 -15 years until I become a citizen, if i do at all become one) there are other ways to express my opinions.

Certainly, going out to try to register voters for the PA democrat primaries has helped me feel closer to the heart of this beast they call the democratic process; a beast that is for the most part distant from individual concerns or opinions. The more one engages in it the closer it comes to you however. In the absence of a true, one to one democracy, the closest one can get to real representation is to take part in the dreary process of representative democracy. If my language reminds you of a college civics geek, then you are right. I am a dumb, drunk college geek in the way I relate to politics, and all the better for it. When I was a reprobate(guess I still am!) and an average, muddleheaded statusless worker(clinging to my beer bottle and my penis since I had no gun or bible to cling to!) I had no chips in play. Now I do and I am betting on change. The game is in session and I am playing. Rupert, history is a shit pile and we will plant our flags on it.

great moments in racism history: john mccain

2008-05-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

from feb 18, 2000:

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."

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"I was referring to my prison guards," McCain said, "and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends."

McCain made it clear that his anger extends only toward his captors. As a senator, he was one of the leaders of the postwar effort to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam.

i guess i can relate. i got no beef with mexicans, but i hate those god damned beaners that stole my bike (not really). if you're offended, but still want to vote for him, just imagine him as christopher walken in pulp fiction:

Mclellan Unpopular with GOP, Walking Dead

2008-05-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Bob Dole has been sending emails (WTF NO WAY).

Bob Dole does not like Scott McLellan anymore.

Bob Dole thinks McLellan is just trying to make a buck.

Bob Dole is just as surprised as everyone else that he's not fucking dead yet.

McCain/Dole '08: AKA "The Early Bird Special"

caption contest!

2008-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

i was thinking how to caption this picture, but was drawing a blank. this could be fun...what do you guys got?