Chronically Pissed

Are Americans Anti-American?

I was forced by circumstance to watch some of Dancing with the Stars last night. For reasons I can't begin to understand, this was the 18th most popular show in the country last year and it got off to a big ratings start Monday night, according to Nielsen. So, a lot of Americans are watching this (and something tells me that elitist, ivy league, northeastern liberals are not a large part of that audience). So, I couldn't help but notice that the panel of judges consists of a Brit, an Italian, and a Hawaiian-born Japanese/Chinese/Irish- American. Since when does America respect the judgment of foreigners like Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli? And we all know that exotically mixed Hawaiian's like Carrie Ann Inaba cannot be trusted. Worse yet, this show is based on a British show, originally produced by the BBC!

So why is this show so popular? Are Americans Anti-American when it comes to reality TV? How did these judges even get into the country? Could they be terrorists? At the very least, aren't they stealing jobs from real Americans? I must insist on a national boycott of this treasonous show for its acceptance and glorification of foreign influence on American culture.

Miscellany

Thanks to my good friend, KBO, for sharing these thoughts yesterday:

I was just reading The Times and saw this quote from a congressman in Texas from today's hearings: “Just because God created the world in seven days doesn’t mean we have to pass this bill in seven days,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas. Forget about the politics of this for one moment (and disregard the fact that this man is apparently even ignorant of the teachings of his own religion- one which says that god created the world in SIX days, resting on the seventh). Think of what it means that a United States Congressman, in the midst of a major, perhaps catastrophic moment in U.S. history, believes that the earth was created in seven days and is informed about issues, existential and historical, by a 2,000 year-old book; talking snakes, winged horses, arcs with two of each species, etc.

This man is an elected official, sent to Washington D.C. to solve real problems- not to engage in an high-stakes game of theological Dungeons & Dragons in which one's fantasies can be reality. There are real problems to solve which require intelligence and education and knowledge of earthbound reality. So back to his statement, since he had no qualms about saying this on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives... Did "god" make the world in 7 days? Okay- where did he get that information, and will this source also help provide us with some answers about how to manage the realities of the terrestrial financial mess that these people have gotten us into (presumably, a book ghost written by the lord might be our best bet for answers to all our quandaries)? Maybe it will please and appease him if we do a rain dance to ask for good crops this year? Or perhaps he will smite us should our offerings fall short (offering up a virgin could help)?

Do you think that someday, in our lifetimes, we'll see an end to talk like this? I mean, that saying crazy shit in public will be embarrassing and sound just as weird to people's ears as saying "Zeus commands us...." would today? Religion = willful ignorance of reality. Willful ignorance of reality = the huge fucking mess that these religious half-wits have put us in by electing incompetent leaders because they're "good Christians."

Fortunately for them, this is self-perpetuating: the more religious people get, the more ignorant they become; the more ignorant they become, the worse things get in reality land (where I and my friends like to live); the worse things get in reality land, the more religious people get. If only I could find a business model so self-sustaining. I bet I could make 700 billion dollars.

Now for a thought of my own, if you'll indulge me in a brief departure from politics. I really hate to let parenthood issues creep into CP, but I have to say this...

If you can't handle the normal range of behaviors exhibited by children while flying on commercial air carriers, you need to consider other, more private modes of transportation, such as chartered jet or your own automobile. Flying, especially if you can't afford first class, is for the masses now. It is a fast, efficient, affordable way to travel long distances. You are not special just because your job requires you to fly every other day. Your sleep requirements are not the concern of anyone else on the plane. It is a public place, just like a bus, a train, or the subway. So get the fuck over yourself and spare me the dirty looks and melodramatic sighs. You'll survive these two hours just like you've survived your miserable job, your loveless marriage, and your erectile dysfunction.

What's In It For Us?

The $700 billion dollar bailout that has been proposed to salvage our financial system has me so enraged that I felt compelled to create an entirely new website. It's not a blog really - just an attempt to start a movement. I felt like it might have a little more traction if I distanced it from this site, for reasons that will be obvious if you've been reading for any length of time. Anyway, I hope you'll check it out...

What's In It For Us?

Fundamentals

John McCain has been pilloried for sounding like Herbert Hoover when he said "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," on the same day the Dow plummeted more than 500 points. His bizarre response was to redefine the standard understanding of the phrase "fundamentals of our economy," saying that he was referring to American workers. This reinterpretation was accompanied by an attack on people who would argue that the "fundamentals of our economy" are not strong - as they are now, by John McCain's standards, insulting the American worker - even though those infidels were obviously not referring to the American worker, but to the major financial indexes of our fiscal health and stability.

This has all been hashed out and appropriately ridiculed for its cynicism and outright stupidity. Reporters and pundits have roundly rejected McCain's silly explanation of his 18,000 declarations that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." Strangely, however, they've stayed focused on his ridiculous "clarification," without asking the following question: "Okay, Senator McCain, so we now know how you feel about the American worker, but could you please tell us how you feel about the 'fundamentals of our economy' as that phrase is more commonly understood by people who speak English?"

McCain is caught in a vicious circle. He wants to declare that the FOOE are strong - which is why he's said over and over again that they are - because he's part of the party that has left them in shambles. He can no longer get away with saying that the FOOE are strong because, well...just read the papers. No one has yet forced him to be straightforward about this by making him answer the real question. Anyone?

The Race Race

Stop. Take a deep breath and listen very carefully. You are not thinking straight. You are disoriented by an onslaught of misinformation being thrown at you by people who do not care about you, your family, or your problems. You don't realize it, but there is a psychological civil war taking place in your head and it's time to get a peace treaty worked out quick before more damage is done. Let me help.

I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green, or Whig. If you are not extraordinarily wealthy, you should listen to me. If you are unemployed, uninsured, underpaid, unable to afford your child’s college education, or unsure about your future, you should listen to me. If you would not like to see the U.S. enter an era of long-term conflict and perpetual war, you should listen to me. If you sense that things are not as they should be in the United States of America, you must listen to me.

It would appear that you are seriously thinking about casting your vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin this November, despite your profound unhappiness with the policies George W. Bush, John McCain, and  Republican Party in general. The pollsters have figured this out. Malign them all you want, but the numbers don’t lie. Statistically speaking, you are ready for a change and you are prepared to vote for Democrats at the state and local level, but you’ve either decided on McCain or remained mysteriously “undecided” about your presidential choice. You don’t really agree with McCain on any of the major issues of the day and you think the Democrats are better suited to get us back on track, but you can’t quite bring yourself to support Obama. You are, in fact, prepared to vote against Obama. It doesn’t take a statistical or sociological genius to draw conclusions about the basis of your ambivalence.

Let’s deal with an ugly truth right now. If you find yourself saying and thinking things like “I don’t know what it is…I just don’t trust Barack Obama,” then you, my friend, are suffering from what we call racism. It may be subconscious, you may be appalled by the notion, you may even know some black people,but if you look closely—and we will—there is simply no other viable explanation for your irrational distrust of Barack Obama. (This is most evident in those of you who claim that you would have voted for Hillary Clinton but will not vote for Barack Obama. Unless your sole reason for supporting Hillary was her lack of a penis, your thought process cannot be justified in any other way. There is not a single substantive issue on which Barack Obama’s position is not infinitely closer to Clinton’s than to McCain’s. If her lack of a penis was, in fact, your sole criterion, then I can see how the selection of Sarah Palin—who stands ideologically even farther from Clinton than McCain does—might have changed your mind. Otherwise, I’m sorry to inform you that you are on the verge of making a race-based decision to the detriment of your own well-being.)

John McCain and his people are going to try to make this easy for you. They’re going to provide you with a laundry list of “issues” and “concerns” that will help you rationalize your decision. So far, this list consists exclusively of distortions, exaggerations, and flat-out lies. They’re not even putting any real effort into this because they think your intrinsic bigotry will do the heavy lifting for them. They know that you are subconsciously looking for a reason to not vote for the black guy, which is why you might just buy the ludicrous argument that little, white, western Sarah Palin—mayoress, governor, neighbor-of-Russia—is more “experienced” than Barack Obama. It’s a perfectly efficient and sterile justification, if you can blithely ignore the demonstrated intellectual acumen of both candidates, if you can disregard the considered judgment of the 18 million voters who saw Obama through a rigorous presidential primary (that’s approximately 17.4 million more people than there are residents of Alaska), if you can look yourself in the mirror and pretend that Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are comparable in any way. They’re betting that you are so innately desperate to not vote for the black guy that yes...you can.

They think you’re so desperate to not vote for the black guy that they can convince you that John McCain, who boasted of voting with President Bush 90% of the time, is a maverick. They think you’re so desperate to not vote for the black guy that they can dismiss Barack Obama as a Paris Hilton-like, flash-in-the-pan celebrity. Apparently, they think you’re so desperate to not vote for the black guy that they can just bullshit their way through election day. (In a particularly repulsive move, they’re parading Cindy McCain around in belligerently white, designer, 50’s housewife costumes—as if she’s a Barbie doll—just so you have a chance to compare and contrast that image with Michelle Obama’s blackness.)

It's insulting. It's embarassing. It is the saddest thing I've ever known.   

This election is too important to let them manipulate you like this. This isn’t just about health insurance, stagnant wages, and the Iraq war. This is about big, broad, existential issues, like whether we are going to continue to let corporate America strangle the American dream out of the American worker; like whether my child—your children— will be drafted one day because neo-conservatives like John McCain preferred fighting to talking; like whether we are going to continue to live in fear of everything and everyone that did not originate inside our borders.

Are you really willing to let your innocent, provincial nervousness about Barak Obama’s non-whiteness be the deciding factor in this election? Are you really willing to let things get worse than they are just because Barack Obama makes you vaguely uncomfortable...in ways you can't really articulate? Do you yearn for a more traditional candidate? Do you wish the Democrats had made this easier by nominating a more conventional candidate? Well…too bad. You passed up decent, non-revolutionary men in 2000 and 2004 and gave George W. Bush eight whole years to drive us to our knees. In 2008, wholesale transformation is the order of the day. Grand mistakes lead to great demands.

You must not let them make a fool of you. You must defy them. They are exploiting a weakness you may not have even known you had—a weakness you might have overcome without their interference. They know that if this were a blind taste test—a clash over issues and ideas—Obama would win in the biggest landslide ever recorded. They have nothing positive to say, no real change to offer. And so their only path to victory—a path that a true patriot would refuse to tread—demands a gruesome willingness to pick at the slowly healing scabs of America’s painful struggle with race relations.

And all you have to do to stop them is look out for yourself.  You don’t have to march on Washington, or join the ACLU, or donate to a campaign. You just have to look at the issues, look at our current circumstances, look at the behavior of these two campaigns, think about the last two elections, think about the future, set aside your petty prejudices, and do what's right for your country. You just have to suck it up and vote for the right man, regardless of his race.

Dear Abby

Dear Abby,

My son is a senior in high school and the time has come to make some decisions about his college plans. He really wants to go to Yale or Harvard and has already been accepted to both. I am very disappointed in his decision to apply to these northeastern, elite-type schools and would prefer that he either go to the state school right up in Backwater, where he can get a perfectly good education - without sacrificing his small-town values - or join the armed forces and go serve his country in Iraq or Afghanistan, preferably on the front lines, where he would have the opportunity to make the ultimate sacrifice that so many small-town boys have made for their country.

I am just so worried that my little boy will turn out like all the fancy pants Ivy-Leaguers I see on the TV, with their heads all stuffed full of ideas that my husband and I didn't need to raise our six children, even after Ed lost his job at the factory and had to get a maintenance job at the high school. Seems to me the only thing those schools can teach you that the local college can't is how to prefer brie over american, arugala over iceberg, and microbrews over Budweiser. Next thing you know, my son will be more concerned about homeless colored folks than little unborn babies.

My dream for my son is that he will one day experience the pride I feel in living an ordinary, provincial life. I would hate for him to be burdened by the opportunities that a world-class education provides - seduced into world exploration, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, abstract thinking, and other subtle forms of treason, never mind the mortal sins of the flesh that await him in the northeast's big cities. I sure didn't need to travel the world to know that America is the greatest nation in the history of this planet.

Please help us Abby. We've tried so hard to raise a good, proud, American boy. Now we see him slipping into the dark worlds of intellectualism and achievement. I just don't understand what kind of child would do this to his mother. Is he ungrateful? Did we hurt him in some way? Should we consider reporting him to the Department of Homeland Security before he is turned into an liberal, anti-American activist/terrorist?

Sincerely,

Elle Ectorate

Night of the Living Dead

I haven't written in almost a week for a couple of reasons. First, I collapsed with some sort of horrifically nasty flu last Friday, the day after the RNC closed its convention. It all felt very metaphorical and not good. Second, I really just...and I'm not being melodramatic here...I just don't even know where to fucking start. I'm not sure whether I want to attack them anymore because I think that's what they want. They're like the blob now - growing stronger with every breath anyone utters to refute the gelatinous bullshit they're spreading all over America. They've chosen to feed on the cheapest, most cynical form of fuel known to man - the ignorance and fear of the American people. So I feel like the American people - or at least those who are susceptible to these tactics - are the enemy now. It feels to me like the moment in zombie movies when the flesh-eating undead reach critical mass and the odds begin to diminish for the living.

I've never seen anything so embarassing as the sight of herds of my fellow citizens creaming themselves over the selection of Sarah Palin - as if she would have been their very FIRST choice for the vice-presidency, if only they'd had a fucking clue who she was 13 days ago. They rose up and made her an instant celebrity, raging with unbearable indignation at each news story that revealed yet another inconvenient tidbit about Sarah's past. "How could anyone stoop to say anything negative about this heroic angel we met three days ago?!" "How dare you say a word about her pregnant teenage daughter!" "Look...her son is going to Iraq!" "The media hates women, hates families, hates children, and hates small town values!"

Well look, I've gotten over Sarah Palin. She's a nasty little cunt who doesn't deserve our attention. What DOES deserve our attention is John McCain's judgment in selecting her. It would be laughable if only so American voters weren't a) not much better off than Trig, intellectually speaking, and/or b) desperately looking for a reason not to vote for the black guy. John McCain gave them a perfect reason: She's JUST LIKE YOU.

Much has been said, thanks to the last two presidential elections, about the electorate's preference for the candidate they'd "like to have a beer with." The McCain camp has even acknowledged that this election will be about personalities, not issues, thanks to the Palin pick. It dawned on me yesterday that it's just slightly more complex than a simple popularity contest. Republicans have essentially convinced voters that they can validate their own way of life by voting for the candidate that lives the most like them (or at least pretends to). The office doesn't matter, the issues can go fuck themselves. If you don't pick the gun-toting, pick-up driving, troop-lovin', cowboy or cowgirl, you'll be admitting that facncy-pants ivy-leaguers are better'n you. Never mind the fact that you'd love for your kid to go to Princeton someday. This is about today! This is about not letting the big-city, smart guys win.

Maybe that all sounds very obvious, but I had never considered this slight inversion of the whole culture war issue. I'd always accepted at face value that people were voting on actual cultural issues, not merely trying to justify their own existence with their vote for the President of the United States. That would explain why so many people whose interests are starkly at odds with the policies of John McCain are now considering voting for him. In Sarah Palin, they have a chance to elect one of their own into the White House. "So what if she's not going to improve our lives, she's going to validate our lives!" "She's got five kids!" "She didn't abort the retarded one!" "She's against sex-ed and likes burning books!" That'll show them uppity latte-sippers!

Go for it America. If your egos are so sensitive that you'd rather vote for the guy/gal who acts like you than the one who wants to help you, be my guest. Glorify simple-mindedness until the top 1% has ALL of our money, if that makes you feel better about being an idiot. Thanks for dragging the rest of us into the poorhouse with you, zombie assholes. When we're all down there together, hungry and fighting over scraps, I'm going to have my eye on your flesh.

I Don't Like This Woman

Just who the fuck do you think you are, Cunty McCuntmouth? I mean seriously…who the fuck do you think you are? You didn’t earn the position you’ve found yourself in. You are but a pawn being used by a cynical, desperate, elderly candidate who has nothing positive to run on. A qualified woman clearly wasn’t enough for John McCain because he skipped over MANY infinitely more qualified and infinitely more dignified Republican women who undoubtedly have their white, Republican-issue panties in a twist right now.

No, you didn’t do anything special, Sarah “Barracuda.” You were chosen for your lack of a penis and your unaborted, mentally disabled baby. You, the alleged maverick reformer, were chosen because John McCain’s Republican Party wouldn’t let him do the truly maverick thing by choosing the running mate he wanted – Joe Lieberman. You and your freaky little clan of oddly named Eskimo children are a circus spectacle, designed to distract us from the giant elephant that’s shitting in the center ring.

I was actually naïve enough to assume that you would use your first prime-time, nationally televised speech to show an ounce of humility about where you’ve found yourself. I was wrong. You strutted out there and had the balls to mock Barack Obama for his work as a community organizer. Who—WHO—ridicules a community organizer? What kind of filthy, cuntmouthed little whore from Shitfuck, Alaska thinks she has any right to mock a man who has captured the attention of the entire world by his words and his actions and who earned 17,992,890 more votes in a nationwide presidential primary than you earned as governor of the 47th most populous state in the union?

Last week, your party was criticizing Barack Obama for not putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket, arguing that she had earned “millions of votes” in the presidential primary. Now they’ve put someone on their own ticket who has earned exactly ZERO of those votes in her entire political career.

Let’s look at the numbers, just for fun:

2008 Democratic Presidential Primary

Barack Obama        18,107,587
Hillary Clinton    18,045,829

2008 Republican Presidential Primary

John McCain        9,840,746
Mitt Romney        4,525,746
Mike Huckabee    4,179,514

2006 Alaska Gubernatorial Election

Sarah Palin    114,697 votes

No, that’s not a typo. Oh, but wait…you have more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined. You just love that new buzzword, don’t you? Executive. Experience. It sounds so official. By this new standard, any mayor of any town in America would be qualified to serve as commander-in-chief by virtue of their executive experience. Is that right? Do I understand that correctly?

Well guess what, Cunty McBitchfuck: You are nobody next to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Condoleeza Rice, Kay Bailey Hutchison, or any of the thousands of people who have earned the respect of the American people through their service. I don’t even like most of those people, but they are, objectively, somebodies. You are, objectively speaking, nobody. No one could even figure out how to pronounce your name last Friday morning. Those drooling, chanting crowds? Don’t flatter yourself. They would be acting that way if John McCain had nominated an anti-abortion lemur.

So who the fuck are you, Sarah Palin, to walk out on that stage and pretend that you are somebody? Who the fuck are you, Sarah Palin, to attack people who have more gravitas in their respective left nipples than you have in your entire person. Who the fuck are you to pretend that you got where you are by anything other than sheer political luck? You’re not so tough, Bitchy McCuntface. You’re just a dumb bitch on a leash who thinks she’s dominant in a room full of big dogs.

I wouldn’t be talking this way if you’d acted like half of a human being by indicating that you have some inkling of your place in the universe, if you hadn't chosen sarcasm and arrogance. The day before your speech I said to people “I’m sure she’s a very nice lady. I just happen to disagree with nearly everything she believes in.” Well, now we know that you’re not a very nice person. You’re a cocky little asshole who just fell out of an airplane, landed on homeplate, and thought you hit a home run.

There's Something About Sarah

[Forgot to post this last night.]

I'm sorry if you're getting sick of my newfound obsession with Sarah Palin, but I just can't even begin to wrap my mind around all the contradictions that are being employed to pretend that she's the least bit appropriate for the job of vice-president of the United States. And so I must burden you with my thoughts as I work them out. I think I've isolated the three biggest flip-flops of common sense that are being bandied about.

1. A week ago, the McCain campaign wanted us to think about experience in terms of John McCain's military service and Barack Obama's short tenure on the national scene. Today, they'd like us to think about experience solely in terms of "executive experience." They keep saying "Sarah Palin has more executive experience that Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined." It makes me fall out of my chair every time because they forget to ad John McCain to that list. It would be hysterical if it weren't so fucking obtuse. They're actually undercutting the readiness of their own candidate by making executive experience the high water mark.

2. SImilarly, a week ago the McCain campaign was attacking Obama for failing to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket. The American people, they argued, had taken a good, hard look at Hillary Clinton and decided that,  [despite her lack of executive experience], she was ready for and deserving of the job. The implication here is that primary votes are as important as any kind of real-world experience, that they validate a candidate's qualification for a job that has rather ambiguous resume requirements. They would like us to promptly forget that argument now that Sarah Palin has been nominated without having been put through that kind of test.   

3. John McCain's big slogan is "Country First." What they mean, in this instance, this week, is that Democrats should have nominated a candidate who is as blindly, stubbornly, and obviously "patriotic" as John McCain. What they mean, in this instance, this week, is that John McCain puts country first by selecting a candidate that suits the most ideologically extreme wing of his party, regardless of her gravitas and readiness to hold the office.

I'm trying very hard to see it from the other side. I'm trying desperately to imagine how I would have felt if Barack Obama had nominated San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsome, just because he is an aggressively pro-gay rights, pro-universal health care, immigrant-sympathizing environmentalist. Now I agree with all of those positions - and the city of San Francisco has nearly a hundred thousand more residents than the state of Alaska - but I daresay I still would have been outraged and disappointed in the extreme. I would be working my ass off to undo what was done before the convention formally nominated a neophyte who has no business being anywhere near a presidential ticket. I certainly wouldn't be pretending, with all my might, that he was the best possibly choice my candidate could have made. John McCain has made a sick fucking joke not only out of himself but by all the people who are clamoring to cover up his ridiculous mistake.

Sexkimos

I was really hoping my attempt to combine the words "sex" and "eskimos" would work out better than that. Oh well...

I just watched Joe Scarborough rant and rave for 45 minutes about the media exposing, reporting, and discussing the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter. Again...Joe Scarborough just discussed...for almost an hour...how awful it is that the media is discussing the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter. That should be all the needs to be said, but let me continue.

Is anyone actually suggesting that we were supposed to go about our business pretending we didn't see the vice-presidential candidate's teenage daughter growing ever more pregnant without ever saying a word about it? This is a child who, if her mother is successful, will likely be living in the White House when she gives birth to her bastard child. I use that term only because conservative types think that way about pre-marital sex and out-of-wedlock children. They have, of course, forgiven Bristol because...well, because she is apparently going to marry this mystery man.

Let me be clear: If Sarah Palin were not an anti-choice, anti-sex education moralist, I would have absolutely nothing to say about this issue. Sarah Palin IS those things. Her position on sex education may well have derailed her daughter's life by making her ignorant and careless. It's too bad her mom took those positions and it's too bad her mom decided to thrust her dysfunctional family into the national spotlight because John McCain needed a vagina at his side.

Scarborough and others like him are appalled - APPALLED, I tell you! - that this is being covered at all, that it has been "splashed all over the front page of the New York Times," declaring a double-standard." The media didn't do this to Chelsea Clinton, he argued. Well Joe...I hate to tell you this, but Chelsea Clinton didn't get herself knocked up by an Eskimo. If she did, she clearly made the wise decision to do that which is still legal in this country.

The other big question that emerges here - aside from Sarah Palin's stance on sex-ed and abortion, which she would like to impose upon this country - is one I asked before this was revealed: How the hell is she going to function as vice-president (and probably president) with 5 children - one a disabled infant - and, now, a grandchild that is due sometime around inauguration day? Do tell.