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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Message to Athiests: Stop acting like cranks

In the past on various forums and boards and such, I've spoken out a lot against the freaky fundamentalist people - more than a lot actually. However as I've said in a previous video, that kind of thing doesn't really motivate me very much anymore. Really who gives a shit what someone thinks about the afterlife? Nobody really knows anyway. It begins to matter when they make public policy out of what should be private beliefs, but if people want to do stupid shit in the privacy of their own homes who are you to stop them?

One thing I have noticed though since about that time is there seems to be an increase of people who are declaring themselves as "atheists" or agnostics (myself included.) Like I said in Episode 6 there's a very large debate on-line between theists and non-theists, which is actually a great thing if you think about it. What we have here are not pastors debating philosophers or priests arguing with scientists - what we have are ordinary people using this medium to debate beliefs directly. Really can you name anytime in history when everyone had such access to disseminate their ideas? The fact that it's being done rationally, without violence is also pretty big if you look at history.

But anyway, suffice to say there's a pretty big atheist presence out on teh intertubes. The problem is however is when you start actually listening to these people, you find a rather large amount of them are former believers who have either had some kind of personal crisis, people who have in some way been burned really hard and have now thrown all the faith they used to place in a personal, all-knowing God behind a non-personal, materialistic science. It seems to me there's very, very few atheists out there who came from a neutral standpoint, studied both sides, and then chose the atheist conclusion.

The problem with these people then becomes that they begin to push their new lack-of-faith as hard as they pushed their former faith. It goes to ridiculous lengths. We have people trying to remove "in God we trust" from the money. People sue to remove of nativity scenes and Christmas trees from public spaces. This is all done under the guise of "separating church from state," but in real life there's also a selfish slant to it. For instance, you notice these people never advocate removing religious holidays from federal paid-status.

Having a Christmas tree in a public square or a nativity scene in a public park isn't State endorsing religion. You know what is? Having daily bible study in the fucking White House. Putting the Ten Commandments in front of a court house is. Giving our tax dollars to one religious institution while seizing the assets of another - that's the state endorsing religion.

So my message to Atheists is this - if you really do not believe, then any of the bullshit that believers do which does not negatively affect you or society should not matter. Who gives a shit if people like putting gifts under their pagan holly tree, or if they like hiding the Easter fertility eggs, or if they want to set up a light up manger scene one day out of the year? You know what the message you people give off is? "I'm such a self-hating prick that I'm gonna fuck up your holidays, because I can." That's why morons like Bill O'Rielly can stand up and declare some farcical "War on Christmas" every single year and people believe his stupid shit, because some dried up idealist out there has taken it upon himself to be the atheist avenger and fuck up someone else's holiday. If you do not believe in it, then what is the fucking problem?

My final point to the Atheists is to choose your battles wisely. You're not going to show anyone the error of their primitive ways by insulting their holidays, or by calling them names, or by suing to get their trite, commercialized displays taken down. You do it by encouraging people to learn and discover alternate points of view for themselves. The truth is educated people tend to not be fundamentalists - so you want to get rid of all those reactionary bible thumpers who seem hell bent on starting Armageddon? Advocate for education, fully fund our schools. Stop letting the fucking Republicans cut down public education until it's crawling to corporations for funding. Get people to read fucking books instead of watching TV - you know, so they can actually learn something.

The video I post after this is going to sound like it contradicts it, but it doesn't.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Birthers, conspiracy, and Reality.

Once upon a time in America, when there was an election and the guy you voted for lost, you accepted this loss and adopted the winner as your own. The person who won the election represented you, for better or worse. If you didn't like it you wrote letters and got yourselves organized for next time. Sadly in the United States this doesn't seem to happen anymore. Now when the guy you vote for loses you make shit up out of whole cloth and use said lies as excuses to vote against your own self interest.

What I'm referring to specifically is the ongoing Obama birth certificate "conspiracy." You would think most people would've given up on this shit already, but that assumes people who believe such things are like, rational and everything. You know, believing things like EVIDENCE and all.

This whole thing started last year as a way of slandering the Obama campaign under a thinly veiled label of racism. In today's PC climate it's a big no-no to use the N word when describing your political opponent. So since they couldn't make pictures of Obama eating watermelon and fried chicken they chose to focus then on his "foreign" sounding name. Anyone remember during the campaign when all the right wingers started purposely using his middle name whenever they could? It was right around the same time they tried to link him to Bill Ayers. Since they couldn't stir up hate because he was black (at least, not officially,) they went the "closet Muslim terrorist sympathizer" route instead.

Right around this time someone somewhere out in Republican land got the bright idea to dispute Obama's citizenship. You can't get your ass beat in an election if the guy running against you isn't qualified, right? Too bad that particular tactic was shot down rather quickly when Factcheck.org posted Obama's certificate of live birth, which is authentic (even though of course the "birthers" immediately turned around and called it fake, which it isn't.)

By the way a certificate of live birth is the document you get from the state when one requests a birth certificate. Your real birth certificate, i.e. the document with the seal on it and baby foot prints and all that jazz, goes on file in some statehouse somewhere when you're born. Why? Because it's a matter of public record. When you request copies of it the Certificate of live birth is what you get instead, which is a document that certifies that the Birth Certificate exists. You do not get one of these if your Birth Certificate does not exist. Keep in mind though the law about Birth certificates differs depending on what state you're in. For instance, my mother is in possession of her real Birth Certificate, while I myself only have a Certificate of Live Birth. Everyone understand that?

Well, let's ignore this particular piece of evidence for the time being (why not, the birthers certainly do.) We also have newspaper birth announcements from the time which announce President Obama's birth, in Hawaii. These can be found on Snopes.com here. Now how exactly can someone ignore these little bits of evidence? I can see someone claiming the Certificate of live birth is fake, but what about these? Did someone 48 years ago plant these in the local newspapers to one day set up Barrack Obama as the President?

Sounds crazy, right? No one could possibly believe this, right? Not if you listen to the New World Order crowd. These are the people that believe world politics are manipulated by the Illuminati to slowly bring us all into a one world fascist government, and have always maintained that the presidents of all nations are merely puppets, and the real government is run by a cabal of families with ancient bloodlines and controlling interests in financial and corporate power. This far right fringe conspiracy mythology has been gestating for several decades now, and seem to now involve everything from UFOs to Jesus Christ.

Obama conspiracies run from the mundane (for a conspiracy,) such as from Alex Jones, who merely thinks Obama is a "savior" type being set up by the elites in order to usher in the one world government (unless he's the Antichrist,) to the paranoid rediculous - take for instance David Icke, who believes Obama is a reptilian from another dimension (to be fair, David Icke thinks most famous people and world leaders are also lizards in disguise.) Then you have the totally flailing and batshit insane, say like Freeman of the Freeman Perspective who maintains Obama and his whole family are clones of the ancient Pharonic family of Akhenaten here to usher us back into an Egyptian monothestic religion (be careful though, becasue Freeman also predicted 9-11, at least he says he did.) I'm glad to see the lunatic fringe has gleefully worked the Obama birth conspiracy into their greater narrative, it makes for some great late night radio.

Putting the far right tin foil hat people aside (because some people will believe any kind of horseshit,) we're still left with a very hard core group of conservatives that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary still won't get it through their bony heads that a black man is president. Some of the arguments these people cite is thus:

1) The font on the Certificate of live birth was designed in 1982, far after Obama's birth - this fails to take into account that the document is a print out made with modern office equipment.

2) There's no embossed seal or signature on the Certificate of live birth. That's because it's on the other side, you morons.

3) Obama is not a natural born citizen because Hawaii law says his mother had to be 21 in order for this to be so. Snopes.com also does a good job of debunking this one

3) Some try to twist around the wording of the 14th amendment itself, to make it sound like it implies a person is a natural born citizen only if both his parents are also citizens. Too bad it doesn't say that. The relevant text is right there in section 1:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

BOOYA, you stupid fucks.

4) Another thing I keep hearing from these mouth breathing morons is a flub he made during the campaign where he mentioned he had visited 57 states. Here's the video:



The Birthers insist this means that Obama doesn't know how many states there are. Give me a fucking break. Is this the best you dumbasses can come up with?

5) Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart when taking the pledge of allegiance. And this relates to his citizenship how, exactly?

The sad fact is, there is no talking to the people who believe this bullshit. Know why? Because we've been talking to them for the last decade. These are the same people who impeached a Democratic president for lying about an infidelity but didn't lift a finger to a Republican president for lying about starting a fucking war. These people WANT there to be war in Afghanistan, they WANT us to stay in Iraq for the next 100 years. These people WANT us to have an American gulag where we can throw people without charging them and without trials. These are the people where you can put overwhelming evidence that their own leaders are manipulating them and they'll ignore it. Yet when a Democrat gets in and does something like spend some money fixing our crumbling bridges and trying to give people health care all of the sudden sales of guns and ammo go through the roof.

These people voted for McCain in the hope that he'd die halfway through so Mrs. Sarah-moose-shooting-non-rape-kit-providing-helicopter-wolf-hunting-abstinence-only-oh-look-my-teenage-daughter-is-pregnant-Palin would ascend to the throne and start WWIII with Iran so Jesus would finally come back and outlaw abortion or something. They WANT us all living in a police state and working at Burger King for $2 a week becasue the only fucking thing they seem to care about are fucking guns and baby killing.

What's even worse is now they're taking all the shit that got started in the Bush administration, like say a 700 billion dollar bail out, or the economy, or TORTURE for godsakes, and they turn right around and blame it on Obama. Give me a fucking break - it's only been six months. Have you dumbasses forgotten who ran the country for the last decade?

THERE IS NO TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE. They are incapable of comprehending anything that goes against their fantastical narrative. It's not that they don't care; it's that they're too fucking stupid to know any better. That's right, I'm calling all you conservative shit monkeys out there FUCKING STUPID. All we need do is look at how screwed up the country is to see why. Fuck talking to these people, I'm through talking, I'm through debating, I'm through trying to convince these people. Thing is the Democrats now have a 60 seat majority, so why are they even bothering to "debate" anything? The Republicans sure didn't waste anytime implementing their evil fucking agenda when they had the votes. I say pass the fucking health bill and spend the fucking money and end the fucking wars without their permission or input. You know why? Because FUCK THEM.

In a few years no doubt the Republicans will take back the white house again, then these people will all be back in the uncomfortable position of defending the government.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Unplug yourself

Hello, my name is Mark, and I'm a couch potato.

Or at least, I used to be. I, like millions of other people out there, was in the habit of coming home from a long day's work, turning on the TV and just sitting there for like 27 hours straight watching whatever stupid crap that was on. Even when there was really nothing worth watching whatsoever I would spend countless precious hours just flipping through channels trying to find something, anything to veg out on. Eventually you start watching random bullshit that, given a choice, you would never look twice at. Things like Spanish language soap operas - which is fine, except I don't speak Spanish. Or crap like infomercials, surreal children's educational shows that have a lot of puppets, or conservative news channels.

I have the Internet to thank for breaking my TV habit. A few years ago I finally managed to get a job where I could afford my own (crappy) place, without having to live with roommates or parents. But at the time I had to make a choice: either Cable TV or Internet access. Since my job requires me to work from home on weekends on occasion (and also, you know, I need to be able to play Command & Conquer against real people else I go insane) I chose Internet access. Thus no more TV for me.

Thank God. I'll never go back. I'll never have cable TV again ever as long as I live. I'm a hundred billion times more productive than I used to be. True back in the day I usually would be doing other things while the TV was on in the background, but now that I don't have that incessant white noise distracting me I'm able to accomplish so much more. Those of you who know me know that I'm an artist. Whereas before I would usually just doodle while being distracted by cartoons and eventually finish something if it turned out good, now that I don't sit there like a zombie for 87 hours a week my artistic output is in overdrive. I produce a fully rendered work every singe day (most of which can be seen here and here :) My apartment isn't a complete fucking disorganized mess, because I'm motivated to do shit like vacuum the floor and wash dishes. Of course, I'm not 100% divorced from the TV - my DVD collection has grown like an out-of-control fungus in the last few years - but now at least I get things done instead of sitting there like a fucking kumquat.

I do spend a lot of time online now. But it's not the same as just sitting there vegging out in front of the idiot box. While online you're at least interacting: You're reading, you're communicating, you're debating, you're researching, you're commenting - your brain is engaged. You are not a zombie while online (unless you like, sit there in front of YouTube all day watching videos of kittens or people falling off skateboards or something....) Spending an hour on Wikipedia verses an hour with Jerry fucking Springer is no comparison. One of them makes you stupid.

One thing I've noticed now that I don't watch a lot of television is that television is all that everyone fucking talks about. I miss out on all the latest gossip about Lost or Smallville or whatever show is on top now. There's really nothing wrong with that - what else you gonna talk about - but it seems really bizarre to me that people spend so much time talking about useless crap that has no bearing on their lives whatsoever.

Then you start noticing that once you don't expose yourself to the television, you start missing the latest distracting newstainement "story" of the week that everyone is supposed to be concerned about. For instance, I had no idea who the stupid fucking Octomom was, nor did I care. I was instead online reading up on the economic collapse and bank bailouts that were happening at the time, you know, the important shit that they try to get you to ignore by hoisting these bullshit media-blitzes at you. It also took me a week to notice that there was some kind of gigantic Pig flu epidemic that everyone was supposed to die from. Oh I knew about the swine flu and it's effect in Mexico thanks to online news sources, I just no idea how much of a big deal the media made it out to be. It really is funny that whenever something really important happens, like say torture memos are unearthed or a bank collapses or the CIA admits to releasing radiation into American cities or something, that there's always some dumb-ass tabloid celebrity story the media chooses to cover instead. It's just uncanny how the timing of these thing always coincide.

There's a reason why they call TV shows "programs." It's because they program YOU. When you watch Television shows (most especially, television news programs) you have to remember that the people who create this programming have their own agendas. Most of the time that agenda is to get you to buy from their sponsors, but that's not always the extent. You are being told how to think, and that stupid idiot machine hypnotizes you into accepting their version of reality.

There's a reason why people out there are so fucking stupid. Why do you think people continuously vote against their own interests? Why can a war get started on fake evidence, and no one does anything about it? Why do people believe things like President Obama is a closet Muslim extremist who also has a radical conservative preacher at the same time and wasn't born in this country yet refuse to do anything about real criminals in government, even when absolute proof of their lies are presented to them? Why do people believe that somehow the government is overstepping it's powers by acting as arbitrator when one of the nation's top auto manufacturers declares bankruptcy, yet at the same time assign no blame to the people who stand to make a boatload of cash as a result? How can people stand by and allow prisoners to be tortured, for American citizens to be held for years without trial, for people to be brutalized for no good reason or for one "right" after another to be taken away without raising a fucking finger to stop it?

But they get real pissed off when Uncle Sam dares to take the TV away so we can all have nationwide free public wifi Internet access.

I hope to God they do the digital switchover soon, and that millions of people are left without television. That is what this nation needs, people to unplug and stop watching the official version of events, and to get free Internet. Maybe then the intelligence quotient of this nation might go up a few points and we'll stop being the laughing stock of the western world.

There's really no end to this rant. Just stop watching fucking TV and your quality of life will improve. That is all.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Ten Things I Fucking Hate part 12

1) People who brag about being smart as children: Wow, you had a 140 IQ at twelve and went to a gifted school, huh? Well what the fuck happened? Why you workin' at this place? When did you go from being so smart and gifted to such a neurotic loser? Here's an idea, why don't you quit talking about how smart you USED to be and do something smart today, like shutting the fuck up?

2) Whole towns that ban smoking: Here's another disturbing fascist trend going around this country, entire towns that ban smoking outside within X number of feet of any public building. I can understand banning it inside of places. I can understand restaurants and such not allowing smoking on their patios. But to not allow smoking, when a person is outside, in an entire town? Give me a fuckin' break. I quit smoking a year ago, and let me tell you I'm happy becasue this shit is getting out of hand. Pretty soon we'll be throwing these people in prision and hooking up car batteries to their testicles for buying a carton of Luckys. There are far more important things out there to worry about.

3) American Remakes of recent Asian movies: First we had The Ring remake, then The Grudge, then The Eye, now there's an American remake of the Host coming soon. Problem is all of the Asian originals of these movies are rather recent. I can understand remaking a movie that's several decades old, but why remake a movie that just came out? Why not just dub or sub the one that's already there, why take the extra expense of buying the rights and refilming it? It's pretty racist if you think about it - These studios that are slogging out these substandard remakes think I'm more likely to want to see these movies just becasue there are white people in them. Fuck that shit.

4) Chickenshit Myspace and thier bending-over-backwards legal team: Couldn't help but notice that Myspace has started blocking playlist.com widgets. Thanks assholes. Thing is there's no particular law being broken by using such players, chances are You would think that now that Myspace is owned by a gigantic worldwide media megaconglomerate with billions of dollars behind it that they would be able to stand up to pissant legal threats like this. But you would be wrong.

5) Embedded text in Youtube videos: So now not only do I have to slog through badly made music videos and failed viral youtube poop bullshit, I also have to contend with big ugly gray boxes taking up half the viewable area at the same time. Who's bright idea was this shit? It's not like the video isn't three inches across in the first place. Let's make it so I can't see even more of what's going on. Good idea dumbasses.

I also notice there's those little sub banner ads on youtube videos now. They don't just appear for a few seconds, it'll popup and just hang out for the whole damn video, forcing you to break concentration and actually click to turn the annoying shit off, but they make the "x" all small and shit on purpose so you accidentally click on the advert and get redirected...Ugh... fuck Youtube.

6) The United States government and everyone in it: Wow, just noticing NOW after 8 years how fucked up everything is? So all you nincompoops just turned a blind eye to the criminal cabal that's been ripping us off and shredding the constitution for the majority of the last decade? Fact is anyone who worked in any government agency during the Bush era has been complacent in the face of corruption.

Yes, all of them, every last one of them - all the bureaucrats, congressional aids, soldiers, FBI agents, CIA spooks, park rangers, social workers, engineers, plumbers, mailmen, everyone - they are all guilty to some degree of turning the other way while the Bush people fucking destroyed everything. You know what you do when the people you work for do unscrupulous things? You quit. You separate yourself from them. If you're a dockworker, and the company you work for is smuggling cocaine inside of teddy bears, and you don't quit after finding this out, then when they get busted you go down with them. Now our government is starting to unravel, shit is falling apart. All of you people who kept your heads down and followed orders are going down with it. If you morons would have stood up in 2001 when the Bush people stole the election and everyone knew it we wouldn't be in this mess. Yes, I am still bitter about that. You should be too, becasue right now we're reaping the result of that fiasco.It's embarrassing, and it's shameful that no one is going to do a goddamned thing about it.

Thank God it's finally over. Thank God someone who actually like, got the majority of votes has actually been elected. You know, DEMOCRACY.

7)People who get pissed off when you let other people cut in line: The other day I went to a bagel place to get me some breakfast. There was a big huge line as usual. When I got to the front, a little old lady came up and politely asked me if she could cut in line and get a small coffee, as she was in a hurry. However before I could say anything some Jerkoff nincompoop got all squeaky and arrogant, gave me that "Excuse me, but we've all been waiting" line. Seems to me lately that the only people who get mad at this kind of thing are arrogant white people, usually young, make too much money and somehow thing they deserve special treatment. The kind of people who have never ever ever had to actually want for anything. I marched right up to that goofy big-nosed asshole and drop kicked him right in the face, rolled into a flying power bomb and finished him off with a DDT to his nutsack, then kicked him in his stupid head and burned his house down.

Then in real life, the old lady went to back away after Squeaky-asshole man stuck his big nose in, but I made sure to say rather loudly "I don't care what that guy thinks" and not only let her line, I also offered to buy her coffee for her (of which she steadfastly refused.) Squeaky looked angry but was too chickenshit to say anything - he was obviously not used to someone calling his bluff. The world would be a better place if people would stand up to assholes like that more often.

8) People who buy stupid shit: A co-worker of mine pointed out to me an online store that sold toothpaste with industrial grade diamonds in them. As if someone out there had a mouth crusty enough that the only way they could possibly clean it was to scrub them with diamonds. Freakin' DIAMONDS, for crissakes. Consequently this toothpaste cost $24.50.

Whenever I see stupid crap like this I always hope it becomes the next big thing. I hope these diamond toothpaste peddlers sell millions upon millions of them, so that millions of people out there grind off the top layer of tooth enamel and lacerate the fuck out of their gums and then sue the living shit out of these toothpaste fuckers. Then maybe, just maybe, some of those morons will learn to stop buying stupid shit.

9) Conservatives - Every last one of them: I couldn't help but notice that all you conservative shitheads seem obsessed with two things:

1. Socialism

2. Weapons

A real funny thing that's happened since the election last year is that sales of guns and ammo have gone off the freakin' scale. It's almost like since there's a black man in charge now who just happens to have a big "D" in front of his name all you slack jawed yokels suddenly think the New World order is gonna finally have you peeling potatoes in those bus termina- I mean concentration camps.

So let me get this straight, exactly:

Bush:
- Drops the Ball on 9-11
- Starts two wars, fucks up both of them
- Spends a trillion dollars on said wars, kills over 1,000,000 people (or a mere hundred thousand, if you're a conservative. Like that's any better.)
- Takes away Habeas Corpus
- Takes away Posse Comitatus
- Starts a whole new department of Homeland security
- Throws people (including American Citizens) into secret prisons, without trial
- Vice President runs an assassination squad
- Katrina = teh fail
- Spying on American citizens, then lying about it
- Begins a new arms race with his rediculous fictional Star Wars anti-missile system.
- Takes a perfectly good projected surplus and turns it into the largest National Debt in American history
- Fails to regulate wallstreet when Enron goes under.
- Stands by in his lame duck term and does jack shit while the financial markets implode

You: No problem, everything's cool!

Obama:

- Bails out the financial and Auto industry, has the audacity to spend money on things other than banks.

You: OMG SOCIALIST NEW WORLD ORDER! BUY TEH GUNS AND WAIT FOR THE SECOND COMMING!

It's just so fucking embarrassing...


10) Adobe Reader: Can we make this slow buggy piece of shit hog more of my system resources? I don't think it makes my computer slow down enough. Like when it totally takes over my system during it's twenty minute update installation cycle. You know, that thing that other programs can do in like two minutes. Maybe we can make it totally lock up my system for days at a time. It's not like I'm actually doing you know, work or anything.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

I am disappointed in my country.

However I'm not disappointed in my president, for a change. The man has been president for a little over three weeks now, and in that time he's done many of the things he said he would do, Most notably setting in motion the process to shut down Guantanamo bay, directing all intelligence agencies to follow the Army's field manual guidelines as to the treatment of prisoners (as in, no more hooking up car batteries to some dude's nipples or filling his lungs with water then saving him half a second before he dies,) and, for the love of God, instituting a timeline to finally end major combat operations in fucking Iraq. These three things already put Obama head and shoulders over the Bush thieves that have been eating away at our country for the last eight years. True he's done some things that I do not agree with, for instance maintaining the practice of extraordinary rendition, scaling up the conflict in Afghanistan, and allowing bombing raids into Pakistan. But you take the good with the bad. It's a misconception that all Iraq war protesters are also against the Afghan war too. violent retaliation is perfectly justified against Al Queda, in fact if we would have concentrated on that instead of the illegal Iraq war it would probably be over with by now.

Why I am disappointed is because the Democrats are still so fucking spineless, AGAIN. For the last three months or so we've all been talking about Obama's stimulus package. It's been headline news 24/7 since he won the election. It seemed to me that the news media would routinely bring it back during the waning weeks of the Bush administration, as if to give the people something to hope for between news of continuous layoffs and shutdowns - "Just sit tight and wait for Obama to get in there, and this stimulus package will be coming our way." Obama it seemed then went out of his way to get the Republicans on board. But when it came down to it the vote in the house was dead split along party lines. Not one Republican voted for it. We had almost the same in the senate, with a mere 3 of the opposing party on board. This is after the package was cut back by 100 billion - which was taken from the education and environmental portions of the bill I might add. We didn't see any cuts from the corporate fucking tax breaks section.

The major news media of course is just blind to all this as always. While the economy is melting down and thousands upon thousands of us are loosing our jobs those shitheads are busy blabbering about a swimmer guy who got busted smoking weed and some stupid bitch who had eight stupid babies at the same time. Yeah that's some real news there.

This sounds evil and dastardly, but the truth is the Democrats have always been the Junior party. Even though the Repubs got trounced in the last election they still continue to set the Agenda while the Democrats play defense. That's just how it works in Washington. This is going to be a pattern that we'll see a lot in the next four years. The democratic majority in the House is large enough that every Republican can safely boycott every bill that goes by and not have to worry about looking bad. In the Senate small concessions will be made to get the one or two Republicans on board that are needed to get anything passed. Things may change during the mid term elections but don't count on it. Truth be told it's probably better this way. One party shouldn't have too much power anyway, even if it's the people you voted for.

What's really disappointing me though is how fast and hard the right wing pundit assholes have made a 180 - two months ago they were defending the flag, mom, and apple pie, now they're calling for Revolution. Right wing radio is still reeling from the defeat last November and their response has been to froth at the mouth. The hate machine is turned on higher than ever, trying to blame Obama for all of Bush's failures - the one I really love is the line that the stock market tanking and the banks falling apart is somehow the result of Obama winning the election and not the culture of corruption we've allowed to fester for the last decade. Yeah, ok. I suppose he started the wars too, huh?

You notice that none of these people ever call him "President Obama." Limbaugh calls Obama "the Messiah." Mocica Crowly calls him "Da Bama." If they are forced to actually use his name they always make sure to include the "Hussein." It's Almost like they just can't bring themselves to say "President," like that would be admitting defeat. It's also a nice way of dehumanizing someone. A good drinking game (if you're ever home at 11am and feel like boozing it) is to switch back and forth between clearchannel stations and see how many demeaning nicknames you can spot.

This is all really funny, because even though they're all screaming crazy like wild animals about how much Obama is going to destroy the world their arguments (as always) hold very very very little substance. Instead of attacking any particular policy too directly, like say the stimulus package (probably because the Republicans aren't stupid and know we actually do need it,) they tend to focus on his "character," which so far has been impeccable. But that doesn't stop them from twisting it around - now the fact that Obama can like, actually speak and make sense on TV is turned around and he's a "demagogue." It's that same old line from last summer when they kept calling him a "Celebrity." Ann Coulter even attacked the first lady, calling her a "saint." What the fuck kind of an insult is "saint?" What does that mean, exactly? Is she too GOOD? Then, when Obama decided to include his middle name during his swearing in, Coulter actually demanded an APOLOGY from everyone. Are you fucking kidding me?

It doesn't take an earth shattering leap of logic to see that these names are all a thinly veiled substitute for "NIGGER." You know I'm right. That's why only redneck hillbilly truck drivers listen to this garbage in the first place. Did we call Bush names like this? Clinton? Not really, not to the same extent. It's a dehumanizing tactic so we'll instantly turn against anything he might actually be doing. Conservative media people have always been quick to point out how namecalling is a "liberal" tactic while always engaging in a healthy amount of the practice themselves. Then some half-cooked wackjob shows up at a Church play and starts gunning down "liberals." Well when you're fed a diet of hate speech 24-7 from fat drug addicted slimebags what the hell do you think is gonna happen?

You know, clear channel laid off 1,850 people in January. This article says the new parent company is looking to cut about $400 million in costs. Hey, guess who got a $400 million dollar contract with Clear Channel last year? Looks like the wrong fat got trimmed. But people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Micheal Savage, etc all, they do not see the connection between their own ridiculously over bloated salaries and waves upon waves of blue collar layoffs. That's why you don't hear these assholes saying much about how the banks just ripped us off for $350 billion last October. The analogy is just a little to close to home for these people. To them this is survival of the fittest. To them, it's YOUR fault that you have the shitty job you have, it's YOUR fault your job doesn't pay enough to have health insurance, or has shitty benefits so your CEO can make 800 times what you make. They say it's YOUR fault if your job doesn't have benefits at all (like say, mine) and it's YOUR fault if your job gets shipped to India so they can pay some poor schmo 5% of what they used to pay you. It's also your fault if your whole company goes under because some pencil necked bean counter was cookin' the books through off shore shell companies so the CEO can snort coke off a hooker's ass during a company trip to Thailand. They don't give a fuck, because each time something goes wrong they get to write another book about how it's all the Black President's fault.

These people do not care about you. The line we keep hearing from them is we should just cut taxes down to zero and shrink the government down to nothing, and somehow this will magically create a super duper unstoppable economy and everyone will get rich. Well besides the fact that such a notion is complete bullshit - I mean, what the fuck have we been doing for the last 8 years - but it's doubly ironic since the person they bent over backwards for over the last 8 years is the one who got us into this fucking mess in the first place. Remember the Bush $1 trillion dollar tax cut, and how that was supposed to make us all happy and wealthy? Well I don't know about you, but the $1200 I got spread out over 8 years kinda disappeared pretty quick. Kinda wish we had that Trillion dollars now, huh? We were supposed to be farting through silk by this time. Remember how back in 2002 they wanted to put Social Security into the stock market? Arent'cha glad that shit didn't happen? What other bad ideas do you right wing shitmonkeys have for us now? Invest Medicare into Jackalope farms and lunar cheese mines? Put our college funds into furry trout fisheries? Any other schemes that will let the top 1% rip off even more wealth?Where the fuck is your Free Market now?

It's truly disgusting when the hatemongers and the carpetbaggers get to run free while the good people who keep our world together are trodden down. The fact is these people want us to fail, becasue they're afraid the "change" everyone keeps talking about might be us changing the channel.