Oh yeah, um… there was that right-wing uber nut job talk show host Les Kinsolving at every White House press conference, asking questions like, “How can you stand the evil Democrats and their attempts to destroy America?” ..But you know, it wasn’t Rush so it doesn’t count. Nothing the far right does ever counts. EVER. When will we stupid reality-based people learn? – Politico’s Daily Anti-Obama rant.

I understand at their next meeting, they’re going to have Bob the Builder speak to them about infrastructure.

Joe The Plumber, Republican Strategist.

See also Joe “My Name Isn’t Really Joe and I’m Not Really A Plumber” Wurzelbacher as the Republican’s chief economic adviser.

“For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.”

Two things to note:

1. – The last round (involving billions of OUR dollars handed out as cash rewards) resulted in tens of thousands of completely innocent people being imprisoned and tortured by the our government. Cash is irresistable and most of these “war lords” don’t know any real terrorists, so what could you really expect?
   I remember that one guy was hung by his hands until they were dead and had to be amputated…then what do you know they decided he was innocent after all. Huh, well, sorry about the hands thing..have a nice day.
   That’s what happens when you offer millions to turn in anyone for anything.
2. – For the record, this little program makes the Americans International Drug Dealers; a death-penalty offense in Afghanistan and a life offense in America. Yep, prescription drugs handed out without a prescription.. illegal as hell. I’m sure the virulently anti-drug administration will be prosecuting these guys soon. *cough* *hypocrite bastards* *cough*

So now we’ll have another round of innocent people tortured brutalized and occasionally murdered… but all the war lords will have boners so it’s okay.

I started thinking like that a few years back when I saw a commercial for the U.S. Army which talked about our soldiers as “peacekeepers” and showed them riding around in a tank-like conveyance. Funny thing: the streets the tank-looking thing was moving along looked more like an American ghetto than some place full of furriners. A little bell went off in my head. Lo and behold, I just read the following:

Ray Gun for Taming America

Of course, there’s always the possibility that how they actually met doesn’t line up with your fantasy version of how it happened, which would, of course, ruin your entire thesis.

So, you do the laziest thing possible, which is to simply not bother to try to find out how they met and just go with your science fiction version of the Obamas’ first encounter.  It’s fun to play pretend, isn’t it?  That’s why small children do it. – [Link]

They were suicide bombers, right?  That means they blew themselves up.  Into teensy tiny bits.  So, how the hell does anyone know they had Down Syndrome?  You’d be lucky to be able to identify their gender after they went kaboom.

Every news outlet went with the Down Syndrome story as if it was Gospel, though.  Did you hear, read or see one single word expressing the slightest doubt about the Down Syndrome thing?  Nope, you didn’t.  It was reported as if it was a fact, like the Sun rising in the East.

Oh, but the crazy Iraqi terrorists are SO crazy that they used retarded people as suicide bombers.  Um, excuse me for asking a question, but why would they need to do that?  It doesn’t seem to me as if there’s any shortage of NON-retarded religious fanatic nutjobs over there to cause them to have to resort to Operation Strap Bombs to the Retards.

My theory is simple: someone in the American military or intelligence simply made up the Down Syndrome story.  It’s intended to make the crazy religious fanatic nutjobs look even crazier.  Remember the story during the first Gulf War about Iraqi soldiers taking newborn infants out of their incubators and thrown onto the floor?  Remember how the girl who told that story to Congress turned out to be the daughter of an ambassador and the whole story was fictitious?  Oh, you didn’t hear that second part?  Well, it’s correct, I’m not making it up.  The whole “throwing babies on the floor” thing was bullshit, designed to whip up anti-Iraqi fervor on the part of the American public.

I’m smelling the same big rat with this Down Syndrome suicide bomber story.  Now that a majority of the American public wants our troops to be brought home, it’s time to make the crazy Mohammad lovers look even crazier to get people to want our military to bomb the living shit out of them again.  I’m predicting some kind of ramped-up offensive on the part of the U.S. military any day now. 

Seriously, folks, isn’t it time we wised up to the fact that our government is currently run by people who will tell any lie about anyone at any time when it’s advantageous for them?  They aren’t nice people, even if they do wear little American flag lapel pins. 

Poison gumballs the next terror tactic?

Welcome to Reality®, Dude.  Apparently what the high-tech stuff of the near future really is, is “pain weapons” designed to break up riots.  I guess we’re not supposed to think about this, but it seems that the Big Brains among us see a future in which there are riots so large that the military, not the police, has to break them up.

“But, Cranky Media Guy,” you say, “the military says these pain weapons are intended for use in places like Iraq, not Detroit.”

To you I respond, “Uh, since when do you see the military using non-lethal weapons?  Don’t they normally just shoot people with the intent of killing them?  After all, dead enemies are gone forever, while stunned enemies just plot how to get you another day.

Sorry, I’m not buying the notion that these will not be deployed domestically, which makes me wonder what the Powers That Be think is going to cause American society to devolve into large-scale rioting.  I just hope we don’t all find out the answer to that question.

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon.

Kidding aside, I’m getting really REALLY tired of these fucking Republicans leveling with the public about all the scummy shit that’s been done in the name of the American public AFTER they leave public serve and get a hefty publishing advance or are worried about how history will judge them.  Yes, I’m looking at you, Colin Powell.

Seriously, how do these people sleep at night, knowing that they could have told America what was going on but they kept their mouths shut because, at the time, it was better for their careers?

In a just world, all of these honest-only-when-it-pays fuckers would go on some kind of Scumbag Picnic, driven there in a rickety school bus along a road on the edge of a cliff high above the ocean by a meth addict overdue for his dose.  Oops, he missed the sharp curve.  Darn the luck!  Ah, but I digress.

Hey, Greenspan!  I realize it won’t be long now before the Icy Grip of Death grabs you by the balls and drags you into the grave but you might consider taking a moment out of your busy book-selling schedule to apologize to the people of America and the world for keeping your geriatric jaw shut about what you knew about the “Battle for Iraq” (as my local Fox affiliate’s news show calls it).  Doesn’t it ever bother you, Alan, when you sit down to cut into your nice filet mignon and you see all that blood on your hands?  All the book royalties in the world won’t make it go away.  Try washing some of it off with TRUTH, Old Man.

Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil – Times Online

Oh, OK, I’ll go a little further with this.  Quoting from the article:

“Rand had a reputation for living for her own interest. She is said to
have seduced her most serious reader, Nathaniel Branden, when he was 24
or 25 and she was at least 50. Each was married to someone else. In
fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, they called their spouses to a meeting at
which the pair announced their intention to make the mentor-protégé
relationship a sexual one.”

Oh, so she was a cheating bitch.  Good role model there.  I’m sure her husband appreciated the objectivism that went into her decision to fuck a younger guy behind his back.

More:

“Last year, bookstores sold 150,000 copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a younger generation. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was born in 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, who was 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.”

I’m not aware of anything terrible that Mark Cuban has done, but he does have a widespread reputation for being pretty fucking cuckoo.  Didn’t he get fined a huge amount of money for screaming at refs during a Mavericks game?

As for the guy who runs Whole Foods, that asshole got caught recently putting anonymous postings on a business-oriented web site’s message board disparaging his biggest competitor, saying that it was poorly run, etc.  Oh, funny story, he just BOUGHT that competitor.  What’s that, Randians?  Oh, he was just acting in his “rational self-interest,” not being a flaming douchebag who lied about his competition to lower its sale price?  Oh, no prob, then.

“The book’s hero, John Galt, also continues to live on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building,
which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell, was the John
Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last month after a fire
at the building killed two firefighters.”

Yeah, turns out (not that the New York Times seemed to think that this was worth telling you in this article) that the John Galt Corporation never demolished anything before.  Hey, who needs experience when you have self-interest to service and powerful fellow Rand fans to grease the skids for you?

Know what?  I’ve changed my mind.  I take back “fuck Ayn Rand.”  Fuck Ayn Rand AND all the assholes who think that her elaborate rationalization of selfishness constitutes a “philosophy.” 

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism – New York Times

Remember the late Phil Hartman of Saturday Night Live as Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer?  He was, as the name suggests, a caveman who was unfrozen from an iceberg and went on to become a trial lawyer.  Since he was a caveman, he kept referring (unconvincingly) to his fear of the modern world’s technology.  That’s the Republicans, without the “unconvincing” part.  As they said on Family Guy, the two symbols of the Republican Party are the elephant and an old, fat, white guy who is threatened by change.

OK, I am now going to let you in (sort of) on a secret.  I was actually on that CNN/YouTube debate.  Well, I kind of was and was NOT on the debate.  Near the top of the show, host Anderson Cooper aired very brief looks at some videos that didn’t make the cut.  In case you happen to have recorded the debate, I won’t tell you exactly which non-CNN-approved person I am (or why I was not approveable), but I AM seen on camera, although you don’t hear my voice.  It’s nice to see that CNN has standards; they aren’t going to allow anything silly on their air during a Presidential candidates’ debate.  Oh wait, what’s that?  A question about global warming from a SNOWMAN?  OK, now I’m confused.

Hey, maybe that’s what frightened the Republicans.  They think the talking snowman is real.

OK, here’s what you do, hypothetical rich guy.  You get yourself booked on Larry King; once you’re on there, you show Jurassic Larry a check for a million dollars and you say,

“I will give this check to the Democratic Party on November 1 if they have forced the removal of at least some of the troops from Iraq by that date.  I’m not talking about efforts that almost worked or fell a few votes short; I’m talking about them actually having started to do the job they were hired by the American public to do.  If they haven’t managed to do that by November 1st, I’ll give the million to the Republicans instead.”

This offer would accomplish two things.  First, you’re dangling the Big Carrot in front of the Democrats.  Secondly, you’re threatening to help their opponents if they don’t get off their asses.  I think the Democrats would go ape shit over this.  Would they dare to accuse you of trying to blackmail them when all you’re doing is attempting to get them to do their fucking jobs??  I think most of the public would cheer you, especially if you made the point that, unlike most big donors to the political parties in this country, you’re not looking for quid pro quo; you aren’t asking them to deregulate your industry, build you a bridge to nowhere or rezone your property.  The hypothetical rich guy should not be afraid of the “blackmail” charge; he should say, “Yeah, I AM blackmailing you.  So what?  Just do your fucking job, end this war and I give you the money.”

If I don’t hit the lottery in the next few weeks (and I admit that the odds on that happening are pretty low), I’m hoping someone like Larry Flynt will come along and take up this cause.  I’m convinced that this offer would throw the current political season into chaos, good chaos.  For once, someone with the public interest in mind would be openly speaking in the only language American politicians understand:  CASH.

What I’d REALLY love to see is several rich people throwing a million each into the pot.  Think the Democrats would be suddenly motivated to stop the excuse-making and actually do something to end the war if there was five or ten million dollars on the line?  I do.

I swear to you that, if a miracle occurs and I actually do win the Powerball in the next several weeks, I will be putting my million bucks on the line.  So, rich people, how serious are you really about ending the war?  You in with me?  Let’s stir the pot and change history for the better at the same time.

You may be aware that Great Britain is the country with the most security cameras on Earth.  London has a so-called Ring of Steel, a web of cameras and roadblocks “designed to detect, track and deter terrorists.” 

New York emulating London’s web of cameras is a good thing, you say?  It’ll help prevent terror attacks, you say.  Oh, really?

From the NYT:

“British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track
suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb
plots last month.”

In other words, the thousands of cameras in London did exactly Jack Shit to prevent psychos from killing innocent people.  Do you honestly imagine that anyone extreme enough to engage in a suicide bombing is going to think, “I’m willing to die for [insert irrational cause here] but not if I’m on camera“?

Let me ask you a question.  If you think that government-operated cameras exist to protect the public and are a great thing, would you have wanted to live in the former Soviet Union or East Germany which employed many of them?

“No,” you say, “those cameras were installed by governments that were afraid of their own citizens and which used the threat of terrorists/subversives/whatever to keep the public docile and in line.”

To that, I reply, “Exactly.”

New York Plans Surveillance Veil for Downtown – New York Times

While disgusting and a bunch of ultra-right-wing bullshit, it gave me an idea. All businesses have the “right to refuse service to anyone” as we can all see. It’s time the rest of us started using that power by showing that government criminals are not welcome in our world.

Just for starters: We MUST BAN SCOOTER LIBBY! If you have a business, put a poster on your door. Put a poster on your office. Put a poster on your cubicle. Scooter Libby is not welcome here.

No, I’m not fucking kidding. I’m tired of just rolling over and playing dead. I want businesses to Print out Libby’s picture, and tape it to their front doors: Scooter Libby is NOT WELCOME HERE.

If you survive 9/11 and blame the government, you’ll get banned. So let’s ban a criminal who was at least a party to committing treason against the United States of America.

George Bush has prevented Scooter Libby from being punished for his many crimes against the people of the United States, but we can apply a little street justice by letting him know that we know what he did to us, and that he isn’t welcome in our businesses.

Just do it! Show you are a real patriot instead of the usual FAKE kind that makes me wanna puke!

Getting started, here’s your NO SCOOTER poster. The linked file is suitable for printing:

Get Your “NO SCOOTER!” Poster Here!