United States General Assessment

So, I just drove across the entire country.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

So, I just drove across the entire goddamn country.

From Los Angeles, California to Yarmouth, Maine.
It was at least 30 miles.

Here's what I learned about these United States:

1. Flagstaff, Arizona has the best beer in the world. I've been to Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, London and Scotland. But in Flagstaff I had a stout that gave me goosebumps.
2. From New Mexico to Pennsylvania no one knows how to drive. Seriously. Fuck you guys.
3. There is a motel just outside of Oklahoma City that belongs in a 3rd world country. Stains on the sheets, holes in the ceiling and wall (some of them plugged up with toilet paper). In the shower they provided a solitary bar of soap that was originally from another motel. I have no idea how these guys stay in business. On the plus side it only cost 35 bucks a night.
4. Arizona has the best sunsets (besides Maine).
5. God had no part in the design of Boston's roads.
6. I-40 mostly has a 75 mph speed limit. You must behold its glory by ignoring it and driving 90 mph.
7. Amarillo, Texas is the worst place in the world. The whole town smells awful because it's surrounded by cattle.
8. Southern California has the America's most boring weather. Sorry, it's not cool to have the same exact weather all year around - it's monotonous and breeds forest fires. Also, smog.
9. There is a chain of gas stations in the flyover states called "Kum & Go". The sheer stupidity required to go through the lengthy process of establishing a franchise and refusing to see that your business name is wrought with sexual innuendo is impressive.

This pretty much sums it all up.

Dick Cheney is a Goddamn Robot

According to this article on Reuters, Dick Cheney was found to have an "irregular heartbeat". At first I hoped they meant "no heartbeat", but then I read on...

Tests determined Cheney, 66, one of President George W. Bush's closest advisers, had "atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm involving the upper chambers of the heart," said Megan Mitchell, his spokeswoman.

I like how they specify that Cheney is one of Bush's "closest advisers". Since Dick has tried to pass himself off as a member of the legislative branch, instead of one of the executive branch (something every high schooler knows), people have no idea what to call him now. I could go with a joke about Darth Cheney right now, but I'm not gonna do it, I'm just not gonna do.

Of course this irregular heartbeat in Cheney's dark chasm of a chest is caused by him being a robot. The magnetic fields on Earth have been surprisingly active lately and this is causing a disturbance in his mechanical heart. By "abnormal rhythm" the doctors meant that when they pressed the stethoscope to Cheney's back they heard Kraftwerk. We all know how much robots like Kraftwerk.

This has no effect on us mere humans, though. Our soft, fleshy exterior will be easily torn apart by Lord Robot King Cheney's steel grapples, forged by Bill Kristol in the dark basement of the Skull and Bones building.

Fat People Like to Kill Each Other

So I just found this article on forbes.com.

It's about fat people.

Specifically, the fattest cities in America.

In that article you'll find links to other lists of the most murderous and sedentary cities in America. What's surprising about these articles is that there's an alarming amount of overlap in each of the lists.

One city, Detroit, showed up in the Top 5 of each list. So Detroit is a fat, violent and lazy city. It doesn't make much sense, if you think about it. To murder someone you usually have to go out of your way to do it. There's also probably some amount of planning and preparation that goes into it, too. What goes on in Detroit? A bunch of fat people sit around with guns shooting at each other whilst wolfing down buckets of KFC (see Fig. 1).

(Fig 1.)

This is what makes America great. It doesn't matter if you're morbidly obese and hardly ever leave your room, you could still order a semi-automatic handgun off of ebay and shoot blindly out the window.

I don't know, maybe the people of Detroit have pioneered a new method for murder. You invite the person over and then sit in front of the door with a shotgun. The city is probably plagued by drive-bys in Rascals. Slow get-away, maximum comfort.

Deer in Headlights

Nothing says "competent leadership" like having your press secretary stare blankly into the eyes of a journalist.

Don't get me wrong, Scott McClellan's doe-like eyes and dough-like body are enough to melt anyone's heart. But when he looks at you like a child who was asked to solve a quadratic equation, you have to feel sorry for him.

He recently said that he unknowingly passed on false information back when he was press secretary.

"So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Get outta here. I don't believe you. You're in politics and you had to lie? My world has been rocked to the core.

I would really like to know what the hell goes on in Bush's office. I'd imagine that it must be like an Aerosmith recording session in the 70s. Mounds of cocaine everywhere, Condi Rice passed out in her underwear, Karl Rove banging at the door, needing another fix, all the while Cheney and Richard Pearle do inhuman lines of coke and bounce ideas off each other while saying "dude" a lot.

This Makes No Sense...

I read Thomas Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" a few years ago. Some of my friends thought it was watered-down fare on the topic of globalization, but I thought it was great. Then again, I'm one of those retards who likes anecdotal examples (no, I did not do well in school).

It's too bad that Thomas Friedman has gone completely fucking insane.

In his newest article in the New York Times Friedman makes the assertion that Dick Cheney should be Barack Obama's vice president - and he's serious.

First of all, Cheney needs to be shot out of a cannon, not allowed to further hold public office. Second of all... I'm sorry I lost track of my thoughts by thinking of what hell this country would be if Cheney were allowed to stay VP.... it would probably be like this.

"When negotiating with murderous regimes like Iran’s or Syria’s, you want Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird. " Friedman says this in his article and, I hope, he meant it to be taken with a grain of salt. There are a lot of similarities between Dick Cheney and Tony Soprano.

1. Tony Soprano and Dick Cheney are both crooks.
2. Tony Soprano's daughter is a hot babe; Dick Cheney's daughter digs hot babes.
3. Tony Soprano kills his friend over a horse; Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face... for no reason.
4. Tony Soprano is balding; Dick Cheney is balding.
5. Tony Soprano is a sociopath; Dick Cheney is, you know, a sociopath.

So you can see why we'd want someone like Tony Soprano as the Vice President of the world's most powerful nation.

Thomas Friedman also talks a lot about Iran in his article. So I think it's fitting that I talk about Iran, too. I think I'll do it in list form, since people like to read lists.

1. Sharia law can suck my dick.
2. Ahmadinejad needs to shut the hell up.
3. Don't make nukes, they're like viagara for nations - you can't have just one and then stop.

You know what? That's all I've got to say about that.

Richard Cheney is Kind of a Dick

I haven't updated in a month. So sue me. I would like to say that I was off battling grizzly bears and making love to many beautiful women, but the truth is that I was battling polar bears and banging hookers.

I was planning on deleting my blog and starting a new one that was devoted to serious political debate, but then I saw this article.
If you're too lazy to read the article, I'll summarize: Dick Cheney is so bad at hunting that - not only does he shoot old men in the face - but he hunts animals that have been caged their whole lives and have no idea how to survive in the wild.

A quote in the article says that what he does is the equivalent to "having sex with a blowup doll," which is really, truly, excessive. Nowhere in any article relating to Mr. Cheney should you mention sex. It's just sick to correlate the two thoughts.

But no, they go on and mention viagara. Seriously.

Now we have to think about Cheney's impotence as well as his pathetic sex life (Note: if you have to take viagara in order to just have sex with a blowup doll - kill yourself).

I hate to advocate the sort of ad hominem bullshit that the Neocons are famous for (Obama doesn't like to have his appearance made fun of - don't vote!), but a man who takes joy in killing animals who are at a severe, artificial disadvantage is one thing - a sadistic dick who should probably not be in public office. It's one thing if you go out there with a rifle and hunt wild game, but this sort of "hunting" is just cartoonishly evil.

Blackwater Don't Give a Fuck

Blackwater must exclusively hire people who want to emulate gangsta rap lyrics.
A US Army colonel recently came forward and detailed a 2006 incident in which Blackwater employees pulled their weapons on a Humvee full of our nation's troops.

The incident (as described in the article I just linked, but, come on, I want to tell a story) occurred after a Blackwater SUV crashed into an Army Humvee. The Blackwater employees then exited the SUV, drew their weapons on the soldiers and ordered them to lie on the ground while they got their SUV free from the wreckage.

This all happened in the green zone and the story has been confirmed by the head of another security firm that's in Iraq.

How much must that suck? You're in the military, in the middle of the desert and you crash US property into an SUV filled with pissed-off, wannabe gangsta, rednecks. Not only are you gonna catch shit because you crashed the Humvee, but you have a bunch of M4s being shoved in your face, forcing you to lie down in the hot sand.
And they say Democrats don't "support the troops"?

I'd really like it if my tax money wasn't going toward these fucksticks who are pulling guns on our own troops.
It seems like a vicious circle: The US troops try to maintain good relations with the Iraqis (especially lately, since they have to make up for the private security firms), while these private security cowboys ride around on the tax-payers dollar and fuck things up. Every time we get a step ahead, the rug gets pulled back two steps.

When Erik Prince was reached for a comment on the incident he responded "Deez nuts!" and promptly hung up.

Someone Please Have Sex With Ann Coulter

We need some patriots on this - stat.
Ann Coulter probably hasn't had sex in years. That's the only reason why she could be so batshit insane. She's sexually frustrated and is taking it out... on the JEWS!

COULTER: No, we think -- we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?

Note for the immature: Deutsch is pronounced "Doich" not "Douche"... jackasses.

First of all: Who is "we"? Who is Ann Coulter speaking for other than other insane, middle aged wannabe soccer moms who pour hot wax on their thighs in front of pictures of Ronald Reagan (there can only be one woman who is like that).
Second of all: Perfected? I don't mean to summon Godwin's law here, but when you start talking about "perfecting" a race, then you're in Hitler territory.
Thirdly: SHE SITES A FUCKING EPISODE OF SEINFELD AS EVIDENCE FOR HER ARGUMENT!

DEUTSCH: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don't see any more or less chips there either way. That's erroneous.

COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you're lying.

DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.

We all know that when she's not on some cable news channel being interviewed she's at home eating Haagen Dazs and watching TV. So obviously she frames her standpoints around television sitcoms.
What does she do when she's not eating frozen dairy and channel surfing? Well she's either throwing up that ice cream in order to keep her Skeletor-like appearance, or she's at a singles bar trying to get laid. Of course she fails at the latter because she succeeds at the former.

This is why I think that we should start a campaign to pay people to have sex with Ann Coulter. If we raise enough money we can afford to have her humped 24 hours a day, thus keeping her off of Fox news.
This is brilliant.
I'm a genius.

The US Does Not Torture People

President Bush said today that the US doesn't torture people. Which is a relief because I thought that those pictures from Abu Ghraib and testimonials from people imprisoned at Guantanamo were real. It's nice to know that President Bush can tell us the truth about US policy once and for all.

In all fairness, though, if you thought that the US wasn't torturing people long before Bush, then you've been living in a dream world.

How can he deny the plausibility of the US torturing people at Guantanamo Bay when his administration has consistently pointed out that the people held there were not protected under the Geneva Convention. Why else would they say this so frequently if the rules of the Geneva Convention weren't being followed? The War on Terror isn't a formal war, therefore the people we detain are not soldiers of war. Easy enough, right? So torture away.

We are told that the information that comes from these interrogations save American lives, but we are never told of where A meets B - where the information leads to anything. Americans are kept so in the dark that it's difficult to formulate a substantial opinion on the issue rather than our reactions to the baser aspects of the act itself. Of course, the information given by the detained is confidential, very hush-hush and so forth.

The unwashed masses in the US have a mentality that since terrorists brutalize and murder our soldiers and journalists, we have a right to do the same to them. Good thing Hammurabi's Code is the basis for civil law... right.
I don't see how people (especially Christians) can justify the US torturing our enemies on that basis that they do the same to us.
It confounds me.
We are supposed to be better than our enemy. We are not supposed to be childish and immature (no matter how good that may feel) and antagonize them. With the large Christian base in the US, I find it surprising that many so-called Christians are supporting entirely un-Christ-like notion that whatever they do to us, we can do to them. It only perpetuates war to think like that.

Be Glad You Don't Live in Burma

That's it.
No punchline here.

Nothing's Shocking

Today Bush vetoed expanding children's health care. After doing this he punched a baby in the face and then ate a kitten (pictured).

The reasons that he gave were "poor kids first", "I believe in private health care" and "It's too expensive".
First of all, how does expanding coverage to more children make the health care received any worse? The poor children are already covered, how does it make things worse for them if we extend that coverage to the "not-so-poor".
I believe people are thinking about this issue like an elastic is being stretched out to cover more people, thereby making the coverage "thinner". When in reality it's just getting a bigger elastic - the same coverage for more people.

This would cost more money, yes.
It would take $35 Billion over the next five years.
The Iraq war has cost over $400 Billion in under five years.
This is a bill that will save children's lives.
This bill doesn't include cool tanks and bombs and M16s.
And yet, it gets shot down by our president for being "too expensive".
WTF?

Furthermore he said that he was worried that people who are on private health care would sign up for state-sponsored health care.
I see a fault in this argument.
If private health care is supposed to be the bee's knees, and state health care is supposed to be awful... then why would people sign up for worse health care?
To save money?
Last time I checked, people don't skimp when it comes to the "you got in a car accident and are about to die" issues. If state-sponsored health care is such a draw that people are willing to give up their shiny, expensive private health care, then why don't we all try to get it?

The agenda behind this, of course, is political school-yard antics.
The Republicans are pissed that they didn't fare too well in the 2006 elections. However, they still had a President in office who would veto a bill to bring sunshine and lollipops to all the children of the world if it meant that some Democrats would get angry. So the Republicans were eager to veto the first thing they could. The Democrats saw this and pushed forward a bill that looked so good and would make whoever went against it like Satan.
Well, they turned it down.
It's kind of like that part in the movie where the dude grabs a hot chick to use as a human shield, thinking that no one would take a shot at him for fear of hitting the babe. Then the police sniper takes his M82 and blasts a huge fucking hole through the babe's chest to shoot the guy with the gun.
If only politics were really like that...

Jackson Browne and John Hall / Possible Congressional Condemning of Rush Limbaugh

Left to Right: John Hall, Jackson Browne, John Amato, Lucas Gardner, Howie Klein

Just got back from a fantastic show/fund raiser at Rob Light's house in Encino. The fund raiser was for John Hall, and the show was by Jackson Browne. John also spent a good deal of time on stage with Jackson and they had a great, great set. Mr. Browne's vocals sounded particularly good; he has an amazing head voice.
Before the show, John Amato (from Crooks&Liars), Howie Klein (from downwithtyranny) and I got to have a chat with John Hall where we talked primarily about the infamous moveon.org ad. Congressman Hall had voted to condemn the ad, which seemed incongruous with his otherwise stellar voting record. During our talk, he defended his positioned and gave us further clarification beyond "yay" and "nay".

The Moveon.org ad, he said, was counter-productive to the Democrat's cause. The controversial headline of the ad distracted people from the valid points laid out in the paragraph below, Hall thought. Furthermore, he believes it gave the Republicans fodder for their ridiculous party line that Democrats don't support the troops (which is funny, because we were pushing to give them more time off).

Hall also pointed out that he is pushing forward a bill to condemn Rush Limbaugh for calling two, now-deceased soldiers "phony soldiers". I believe that condemning Rush would be a fantastic idea. My father listens to him and thusly I grew up listening to him, too. Rush is a fat, slobbering, hypocrite. When I was in the Dominican Republic it was well-known "secret" that Mr. Limbaugh came to Santo Domingo to have sex with people of a "younger disposition". It makes sense that he's deaf in one ear from codeine abuse - if he had two functioning ears he would kill himself if he could hear all of the shit that comes out of his mouth (one can only hope for giant strides forward in hearing restoration). But I digress.

Though the motion to condemn Rush is fantastic, one has to wonder what exactly it accomplishes except a congressional "slap on the wrist". When Howie asked Congressman Hall if voting on bills to condemn people's actions was a good use of congressional time, Hall replied "Probably not". I happen to agree with him. I also agree that the moveon.org ad gave the Republicans fodder for the endless white noise that they spew instead than talking about substantial issues.

But here's a question: If Congress condemns moveon.org for an advertisement, and they may condemn Rush Limbaugh for something he said, then why not publicly condemn Blackwater Security for killing civilians and allegedly smuggling guns?

Left to Right: Jackson Browne, John Amato, and Lucas Gardner (photo by Howie Klein)

Saturday Night Fun With Stats

Since I am a complete waste of space and have nothing to do on a Saturday night other than read articles, I am doing a roundup of stats that I found entertaining.

1. Faith in the Federal Government is now at Watergate levels. A new Gallup poll shows that people's confidence in the executive branch is at 43%. Nixon's lowest was 40%. This shows that, if you rape people of their rights, run the country into debt and kill off soldiers without much reason, it will take Americans six years to notice there's a problem. Today I left my laundry in the washer for seven hours, so I guess I can't say I'm any better.

2. The divorce rate in America is at its lowest level since the 70s. So why do people think that marriage is dying? Maybe it's because social conservatives want people to think that marriage is too fragile to withstand gays getting married. Because if two dudes filed their taxes together and got on the same insurance plan then things would really start turning to shit.
Isn't it kind of strange how when people talk about marriage, it seems like they're talking about a human? Marriage is fragile, we don't want to violate it. I picture athropomorphized marriage as a little girl wearing a white sun dress, running through a field of wheat? Then, as she makes her way across a small dell, she comes upon two men having intercourse behind a barn. Marriage then grows up to be a prostitute and dies because she mixed heroin and cocaine.

3. Republican voters have heads filled with cotton candy. Sweet, sweet cotton candy. Seriously, how the hell can you want Mitt Romney to be our president? The man is beyond detestable. He said helping him become president was as much a service to our country as being US soldier. Giving your life vs. helping Mitt Romney. I, personally, would chug a beaker of sulfuric acid than spend 10 minutes with Romney.
And how the hell can Giuliani be number two? Look at the shit this guy tries to pull. Of course he blames it on the one thing his campaign is built around: 9/11. Huuuuge surprise.

What the Hell...

You know what's great?
Debt.
Lots and lots of debt.

We all know that the American people love debt. Which is why the Senate, in their infinite and uncorrupted wisdom, increased the federal debt limit from $8.9 trillion to $9.8 trillion (they thought that if they switched the numbers around then no one would notice).
This is the 5th time they've had to do it since Bush has been in office. They've increased the debt limit nearly $4 trillion dollars (which is worth more than all the tea in China, for those curious).

Lets do some math:
The debt limit now $9.8 trillion. If they've increased it by nearly $4 trillion, then they've almost doubled the federal debt limit in eight years.

Why did they do this? Maybe because everyone knows that Bush is asking for $190 billion dollars for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan war is going so well that Osama may have escaped U.S. forces... MAY have... apparently our intelligence isn't good enough to know a flying fuck about the most notorious man in the world.

This is an amazing way for a country to work. If the government finds themselves unable to get more money because of a limit imposed, they just change the limit. The same idea works for laws, I'm sure.

Now, here's an interesting thing about the vote:
The votes came out to be 94 for and 1 against (thanks Russ Feingold, it was a noble effort). There were 5 missing senators - all of them running for president. Clinton, Obama, Biden, McCain, and Brownback.
This is because there is no good way to vote for this gap-widening for the war money.
If they vote against it, they look like they're not supporting the troops (which is a bullshit phrase, by the way).
If they vote for it, they look like a bunch of fucking idiots. Which is why they took the typical politician's route out of it and acted like the problem wasn't there.

What is Happening to America?

Last year, around this time, I was in the Dominican Republic working at a hospital that ran off of donations. During the time I was there a few major contributers visited the hospital to check up on things. I ended up spending some time with a few of these people, and got to talk to them about something other than how hot it was all the time.
One of these people, who I'll call John, was a 60-something man from the Northeast. While spending a weekend on the beach John noticed that I was reading America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama, and he asked me what it was about. I told him it was about Neo-Conservatism, and proceeded to tell him why it's so loathsome, and why it's killing America.
John disagreed with me.
John said that what is killing America wasn't the infringement of civil rights, the corrupt officials, the never-ending wars, the over-spending on said wars, the poor foreign policy, or the light-speed progress towards a dictatorship. None of that.
John said that what is killing America was homosexuals.

I laughed. I asked him why he thought that.
"Because that's what happened to Rome," he answered.
Wow. I thought what brought the fall of Rome was political instability and constant agitation from groups like the Gauls. If anal sex can topple one of history's greatest civilizations then humanity deserves extinction.

It was because of this conversation with John that I finally realized what is killing the United States.
It's us.
We can blame our officials and blame our media and blame our education, but we are the root of all of those problems. Because those officials must be elected, that news must be written, and those children must be taught - all of this must be done by Americans.
Something happened a few years ago and there were promises all over the country that "Things would never be the same." America did change - it went to sleep.

I don't even know where to push for change. We live in a nation where this kind of shit makes sense to people. We live in a nation where people want there to be theocratic law. We live in a nation where people willingly have RFID chips implanted in them. We live in a nation where the eye of the government is so omniscient that you could use it to stalk your ex-girlfriend. We live in a nation where this man was elected - twice.

America was founded as nation where man would make the law. Where you weren't bound by your heritage. Where anything could be earned. Where you could be born a pauper but die a prince. And it is that idea that is so fragile in a very certain way. Because that idea can't be killed by a tyrant, terrorist, or invader.
But it can be forgotten; and that is the greatest danger facing America today.

Blackwater Will Kill You Dead (and Get Paid)

There's this American mentality that something you pay for has to be better than something you get for free. This is probably rooted in the fact that the US Government screws up nearly everything it touches, for the most part.
You've probably heard recently that Blackwater got suspended from ground operations in Iraq for killing eight Iraqi civilians.
Well, they're not suspended anymore.
Blackwater was suspended, in total, for four days. Which equals out to be a half day for each civillian killed. So if you're Iraqi you should know that your death isn't worth a full 24 hours, just a petty 12. And if you're a mercenary in Iraq, you'll only get suspended for 12 hours for every Iraqi killed (so if you want a week off, then kill ten Iraqis).

Blackwater apparently has been a problem in Iraq for a while, notably as a figure of hate for Iraqi civillians. One of downwithtyranny's neighbors works in Iraq and he refuses to use Blackwater security. This makes sense, seeing as the mercenaries are probably more of a target than the people they're hired to protect.

Despite the fact that they're known to have bad relations with Iraqis, our own Congress has nearly no idea what these people are up to.

We know virtually nothing about them. We think about forty cents of every dollar goes to private military contractors, we think about 800 of them have been killed in Iraq, but we don't know that - they're not even counted. And we think that there are 25 thousand to 40 thousand engaged in combat-related activities - but we don't know and we can't find out.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) House Intelligence Committee

Why is it so damn hard to find out anything about Blackwater? I'm sure it was nothing to do with the fact that Erik Prince is a major Republican contributor and Cofer Black was a counter terrorism official with the Bush administration in 2001. Because politicians never, ever hand out favors in exchange for money.

Shit.

We all knew this would happen. It's been like the big pink elephant in the room. Wait, it's been more like ten huge pink elephants with guns and top hats.
The exchange rate is now 1 to 1.0012 between the US dollar and Canadian dollar, respectively.
Isn't that great. Just now, while I was writing this, it's gone down to 1.0010.

We've done it, America. We're now on par with Junior Varsity America. In a few weeks the Canadian dollar will surpass ours and our towns will be overrun by the mounties and maple syrup will rain from the skies while poutine erupts from the ground.
I, for one, welcome our new amusingly-accented overlords. The prospect of Canadian bacon and french fries drenched in cheese and gravy might not sound that good, but this might help me learn French a bit quicker.

The Saudis have stopped using the dollar, the Euro is completely owning us, and the US Treasury is about to reach its debt limit. Oh, and the housing market will continue to suck for a while. This is awesome. Who wants a good economy? If you want a good economy you're anti-American.

Really, this doesn't have anything to do with the billions-a-week war that we're waging. It's no wonder Bush opposed expanding children's health care.
War vs. Saving Children. It's an easy decision because war is so much cooler. There's explosions and guns. Children are just the future of humanity. Yawn.

Colin Powell: "Terrorists are Not Our Greatest Threat"

I get the feeling that Colin Powell would tell you how much he hated the Bush administration if you got a few beers into him. Maybe GQ got him drunk when they took this incredibly creepy picture of his face for their piece.
Jesus Christ, he looks like one of those homeless guys who have two-sided arguments with parking meters.
Drunk or not, he managed to say something smart:

"What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?"

What's he saying there? Basically that we can't let Bush take away our privacy, civil liberties and... uh... what's that other thing... oh yeah, our constitution. But that thing is over 200 years old, so no one gives a fuck about it anymore. Right? He also says something else smart that would piss off most Republicans:

"America could not survive without immigration," he says. "Even the undocumented immigrants are contributing to our economy. That's the country my parents came to. That's the image we have to portray to the rest of the world: kind, generous, a nation of nations, touched by every nation, and we touch every nation in return."

Holy shit. Did he just say that America should fool around with the rest of the world? I'm pretty sure that Australia has the clap, but Sweden's looking pretty nice up there.
He makes a good point that America is now a nation of immigrants (since we fucking laid waste to the native population, setting the tone for the next few hundred years...).

We shouldn't forget that without immigration, and the prompt massacre of anyone already here, America wouldn't be the country that it is today; drunk with power, wandering into other countries and blathering on about how Canada used to be so much cooler, and how Britain was always down to party, before passing out somewhere around the Falklands, promptly starting another war.

But the threat of Bush chipping away the very existence of what makes this a free country is so real that it's becoming very, very scary. On October 1st, there's a new branch of Homeland Security that will be spying on you called The National Applications Office. So we'll officially have a telescope pointing inwards, to our own country.

Why is the government doing this? Because there are two things that gives Bush sustenance: Taking away the civil liberties of Americans, and eating the still-beating heart of a kitten.
And he's fresh out of kittens.

Liberals More Likely to Be Open-Minded, Conservatives More Likely to Be Self-Oppressed Homosexuals

The LA Times had an article today about the differences in the minds of Liberals and Conservatives. No word on the rampant self-oppressed sexual proclivities in today's Conservative culture, though (*cough* Mark Foley, Bill O'Reilly, Larry Craig*cough*). FTA:

"Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M."

Besides being having ninja-like reflexes when recognizing the alphabet, Liberals are apparently better at dealing with change and supporting innovation.

"Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy...

...Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

"There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.""

Well, saying that Liberals deal with change better might be putting a spin on it. Would it sound better if I just said that "Liberals aren't quasi-solipsist elitists who throw tantrums when they see two dudes kissing". Because, really, this is a no-spin zone (©Fox News), and I'd like to keep it as conservative friendly as possible (sorry guys, I don't have any nude pictures of congressional pages).

I don't even know why they needed to hook college students up to an electroencephalograph. Christ, just look at the kind of music that conservatives make. Ted Nugent's biggest hit was "Cat Scratch Fever". Have you heard that song? If you haven't, then enjoy the fact that you can sleep.
John Malkovich, a conservative actor, has played the same fucking character in every movie he's been in. He played an intergalactic politician/messiah in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and he acted exactly the same when he played himself in Being John Malkovich.

To be honest, though, I don't know that John Malkovich isn't an intergalactic politician/messiah. He very well could be.

It's Goddamn Inspiring to Meet an Honest Politician

Today I got a chance to meet Southern California Congressional candidate Russ Warner.
That's Russ in the center of the photo, with the tie. For those of you who are curious, that's me in the upper right hand side looking very, very serious.
I had a great time meeting some experienced bloggers like David Dayden, Tom Beeton, Jane Hamsher and Howie Klein. Jane was gracious enough to link me on her page.

Russ Warner had some things to say about America's current state that I thought were ballsy and spot-on, like how The Soviet Union had already tried what America's doing these days. They went into Afghanistan and ended up running themselves dry by, among other things, trying to take over the country.
And what is America doing these days? We're running ourselves dry by over-extending our military and financial reach.
Now the economy is so far south that it speaks with a Southern Drawl and eats grits.
Our military is stretched so thin that soldiers are sometimes out there for well over a year without any leave to go home.
Can you imagine what it must be like for a hormone-crazed 19 year old to be stuck in a desert for over a year?

What I liked most about Mr. Warner was that he wasn't just spitting out party rhetoric- he believes the words that he says. Finding a politician who does this is harder than finding a Chinese river dolphin.

Warner told an amazing story about his son, Greg, during the party that gave me chills.
Greg gave Warner a call while he was in Iraq to see how the family was doing. Halfway through the conversation Warner heard loud noises and shouting in the background. Of course, like any father, he became frantic and asked his son what was going on. Greg came back on the phone and calmly said:
"Oh, it's alright, Dad. They weren't shooting at me."

Greg was in Iraq for seventeen months. Seventeen months! I haven't even kept a girlfriend for longer than twelve months, and Greg's job was to be shot at in the most dangerous country in the world for SEVENTEEN MONTHS. You have to write that in all caps.

Warner said that phone call with his son was a life changing experience for him, one that made him push even harder for ending the war.
When he says that he wants to bring the troops home - he means it.
Not because it's the party line.
Not because it will get votes.
Not because he has a vendetta.
But because he knows that there are sons and daughters over there, dying, for a reason that no one can seem to stamp down.

When Greg got home from Iraq he sat down with his father and asked him to do something to help end the war. So Russ Warner is running for congress against David Dreier.
Imagine that.
A politician running to fulfill a promise he made to his son.
If you don't think that's awesome then get the hell off of my internet.

Bush Would Probably Sleep With Your Girlfriend if She Was Drunk and "Feelin' it"

Some people are pissed off at Bush's recent comments while visiting Iraq. He said that he would base his Iraq decisions off of advice from the military rather than polls taken in the United States. Which is great, because, you know, we don't live in a Democracy...

Yeah, yeah, I know that it's an representative democracy and the proper way to have our voice heard is to vote, have that vote thrown away, and to have men in suits decide who will be fucking us for the next 4 years.
But, really, shouldn't the people's opinion have at least some affect on the President's decision on how long we're going to let our soldiers die? I mean, they are OUR soldiers, right? Like, the people own the government and thusly they're our soldiers. Last I heard, we weren't under Spartan rule. Though that would be badass.

General Petraeus Does Not Care About Black People

Petraeus (who has the name of a Roman hero from a Charlton Heston movie) has said that some of our soldiers might be coming home. About 4,000. Which is about one brigade.

Of course, the headlines I see are "PETRAEUS CONSIDERS IRAQ TROOP PULLOUT", which would lead anyone who reads it to think that he was talking about pulling out all soldiers. Which, according to recent estimates, is going to happen sometime after the sun explodes.

But, really, look at that man. He's got the shining face of a little boy. Who could stay mad at him? Bush likes him because no matter how bad the news is, Petraeus' bright smile will make him giggle and hide under his desk.

Iraq Might Be a Mess...

Even though Bush claimed that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq; we are not.
Nope.
Not even by a long shot.

But it's not surprising he thinks that because, according to ex-CIA officers, he doesn't give a fuck about intelligence (9th paragraph down). Did Bush ban televisions from the White House? I could ask a fetus how Iraq was doing and it'd give me a more accurate answer.

Keep in mind that this man, our President (Dick Chen... I mean, George Bush), couldn't even remember why he dissolved the native Iraqi army.

God, it's so much easier to just picture this like when you were a little kid and you had to work on this school project with someone you didn't know. And after you start working on the project he gets distracted and you just want him to leave.

Iraq: "Hey, thanks for your help, but... really, you can go now, I can finish this project by myself"
America (playing on Iraq's XBox): "Yeah, in a minute."
10 minutes later...
Iraq: "Dude, really, you need to go. This is getting annoying, you're just over here because your mom gives you money to work on school projects. Also, Jimmy Al Qaeda lives right next door and he keeps throwing rocks at my house because you're over here and he hates you"
America (throws down the controller): "FINE! You like your precious project so much? (stomps all over Iraq's school project) THERE, now you NEED me, motherfucker!"

Now I hear that the Iraqi federal police is saying that they can't do the job anymore because they're spread too thin (what a bunch of pansies, it's only 438,317 square kilometers). Maybe getting rid of the Iraq Army for no apparent reason was a bad idea, because we kind of need supplementary military forces over there that aren't our own (especially since 2/3 of the ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET doesn't want us there).

Steve Jobs is a dick.

iPhone price 2 months ago: $599
iPhone price as of today: $399

It's amazing how fast Apple found a cheaper way to produce the iPhone in 2 magical months. Steve Jobs must do a lot of coke.

But these kinds of things are to be expected from Apple.
I bought a Powerbook a few years ago, and its processor was 1.33GHz. A month after I bought it, they kept the price and changed the processor to 1.66GHz. I wasn't that mad because the performance increase wasn't that dramatic.

Last November they unveiled the G5 iMac and it was cool, everyone was like "Oh, cool, now we get the G5 in the iMacs. I will now purchase one." Then BAM! Apple switches over to the Intel Core Duo processors a few months later. Mass suicide sweeps the nation.

Now they make such a fuss about releasing the iPhone and lure in the geeks like a Dutch hooker, who will pay anything for new technology or sex, and then lower the price by the SAME amount it would take to hire a real prostitute.

It's a brilliant marketing tactic:
Step 1. Release a cool, somewhat-innovative device that is crippled on some key features, but is so aesthetically appealing that people buy it anyways.
Step 2. Wait a few months and then lower the price substantially, or remedy the lacking features.
Step 3. Have everyone who already bought the 1st generation device buy another one (e.g. Profit!)

To top it all off, the special AT&T return policy on the iPhone was 14 days instead of the regular policy of 30 days. At least the 4GB phone has gone down in price. Oh, how fast do things become obsolete.

Phil Spector Will Kill You Dead

I'll be honest, I don't really have anything of value to say about the Phil Spector case.

He was a great record producer and innovator in the studio, many bands owe their careers to him; The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers...

But look at that face. This man is a stone-cold, eat-your -children, throw-kittens-in-a-blender, killer.
I heard that the US Military tried to recruit him into their special forces, but Spector got so pissed off that someone was talking to him that he killed JFK. (Really, Spector released a Christmas album on the same day Kennedy was shot. Coincidence?)

The only way the courts have been able to quell his blood-lust during the trail is by letting him grow out a fop of ridiculously age-inappropriate hair.
It's hypothesized that the hair stops the cooling of his blood, and soothes the human part of his body. He's more machine than man now.

Someone Said Something About Darfur.

From the BBC...
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (wtf?) went to Darfur and was apparently "shocked and humbled" by the sight of a refugee camp.
Ki-Moon assured people that the plan to send a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force was right on track.
Well, that's nice. Right on track? So those 26,000 soldiers should be there any time now, right?
No.
By "right on track," Ki-Moon meant "they'll be here in a year, motherfuckers."
That's right. The UN Peacekeeping force will be there in a year.

Holy shit. Why didn't he just go around the refugee camp scarfing down Big Macs and calling conflict diamonds "bling bling" while he was at it.

200,000 people have died. Like, not coming back to life dead. And there's a fucking year long delay to send UN support.
How convoluted does a bureaucracy have to do stuff like this?
Anyone remember what happened Rwanda? Of course you do - there was a movie made about it. By the time the UN got an effective (read: able to shoot people) force there, almost 1 million people had died.
It must be hard to be part of the UN.
I bet they just play Bioshock on XBox all day. That's a pretty sweet game. If I had to save thousands of people from a grisly death and there was an XBox 360 in front of me, I would have a hard time getting around to it.

THIS ISN'T OMINOUS AT ALL...

Oh, wow. This is great.

It seems that the man to your left, the honorable Lord Justice Sedley, has decreed (because that's the kind of shit they do) that all citizens of, and visitors to the United Kingdom have to give up swabs of their DNA.

Sweet.

I wouldn't even trust the government to do my laundry, let alone have my genetic code on file. Although there are some days when I don't know if I love my genes or my jeans more. But those are drunk, drunk days.

Keep in mind that this law was declared by a guy with a fucking carpet on his scalp. Think about that for a little bit.
A man with a carpet on his head wants to have your genetic code.

I swear to God if I was an alien visiting earth and I saw this shit I would just keep on moving.