Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

If you want to get up to speed on just how vapid and brainless our media is, read this post by three McClatchy reporters who have been trying to do their job and report instead of mindlessly parroting administration talking points.

Please go read it. One of the reasons we are in the place we are right now is the complete failure of the major media outlets to actually do their jobs. If anything is to get better in this country we must learn from this period in American history that is sure to go down in infamy.

What are you doing still here? Go read it!

h/t Glennzilla

U.S.S.R? Yes we are.

We have retired military officers pushing the party line in the media.

We have agent provocateurs infiltrating our vegan potlucks in order to quell dissent.

We have a congress falling all over itself to protect the companies that helped Bush and Co. to commit multiple felonies.

We have a “Justice” Department that refuses to enforce any subpoena that Congress hands down.

The same “Justice” Department also seems to have colluded with the White House to jail Democrats for political reasons.

I have been aware of these stories for some time. They are just the tip of the iceberg. I really don’t know what to say. I could post every day on these subjects, but yelling, “WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T ANYONE CARE THAT CRIMINALS ARE OPENLY COMMITTING CRIMES AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT EVERY TIME?”, whilst bashing my head against the keyboard and dreaming about the sweet release provided by a nice cold, hoppy IPA does not good reading make.

I recently was acquainted with the idea of fuzzing an investigation. Basically it means to blur the details of something by cutting the information up into little bits. Each bit needs the other bits to make any sense, so by isolating parts of the information from the other parts, the truth gets fuzzed up.

I think that is kinda what is going on. There are so many things wrong with our government right now that it is impossible to grasp the big picture. Every day we hear of a new scandal, or a new investigation, or a new tale of malfeasance and woe. There is no way to worry about what happened yesterday, because we are just hearing a new bit about a new scandal. The avalanche of these News Bit Sound Bites paralyzes our sense of outrage. Mine is pegged constantly.

The result? I freeze up. I am at a loss. I fail as any kind of instrument of change because I am simply overpowered by the deluge of wrongness.

Or, as my wise friend Wilson puts it:

Inch by inch, life’s a cinch.

Yard by yard, life is hard.

Hard to count the inches when the outrage stretches to the moon.

Sigh…

Not much to add lately to the swirling cacophany of faux outrage, lying pols, and media driven popularity contests.

I am a fairly extreme person, and I am swinging toward the apathetic side of my divide. Who cares who wins the nomination? The Presidency? How will I become more organized, less lazy, a better father? How will I sort out the tangled mess that is my inner dialog? How will I become financially responsible?

Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you want to see in this world.”

I agree. I think this whole media circus/ political kabuki situation we have today is a direct reflection of how scared and powerless we all are. The worse thing get the more desperately we search the internet for the latest pictures of Brittney’s depilation, scan the check-out line for news about Suri, or read our paper looking for who is or is not wearing a fucking lapel pin.

But what can I do? How can I make a difference when I can’t control my spending habits, can’t control my drinking habits, can’t control my heart? Do I really have the right to worry about the neighbor’s yard when mine is strewn high with junked cars, broken hearts and blackberry brambles?

It occurs to me that this may almost be a re-post of something I have brought up before, but these questions haunt me. Why was I given the ability to parse the outside world so effectively, but am stumbling around blind when it comes to my own inner world? How can I rail against people I have never known and will never meet when I can’t even accomplish the simple task of organizing and paying my bills?

The political world is scary and getting scarier as we near the end of the modern era as we know it, and the more we let ourselves become distracted by the chaos, the more the chaos grows.

I find myself pining more and more for the communal life. A small group of people watching each others’ back, each making up for each others’ shortcomings. A family of association. A place where everyone matters.

I guess this is less of a blog post and more of a purge of some of the feelings that are preventing me from saying anything relevant lately. I welcome your input.

And if you have never commented here before, feel free. The world is getting too crazy to stay silent.

Mind Blowing

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

h/t Balloon Juice

The amount of work that must have gone into this is admirable, to say the least.

Where’s my Hope Bong when I need it?

(What gives with wordpress? I tried every way I could to embed the player, but wordpress keeps editing out the embed info every time I hit ‘Save’. I am not stupid, I swear!)

The Truth.

Another one of mikey’s comments that should be read by all. The back story is that Bush claimed to give up golf for the war but then went ahead and played for awhile.

Here’s the thing.

You can give up golf. You can stand in the bright sunshine and spew platitudes and justifications.

But just as it comes to those of us who did the killing, three aye emm will come for you, Mr. President.

Oh, I know, you don’t think so. Frankly, many of your most fervent opponents think you don’t have the capacity for that kind of suffering.

But you and I? We know different, don’t we Bush? We know they come to haunt you already, and that’s will all the crimes and games and stories still in play. You’re already starting to get it. Get the pain, the horror, the guilt. You kind of understand, in a fuzzy way, that you’ve got a lot to process in your remaining years. That those nights are long and dark, and they just get longer and darker.

Some night, in a few years, you’re going to be pacing the house, angry, scared, sweating, gripping Saddam’s pistol in your hand, knowing the lies were lies and the lives were wasted.

I killed, Mr. President, at my country’s behest. In large numbers. A few nights I took more lives than you did as governor. And I pay for it, over and over again, in spite of the awards and rewards of my “grateful nation”.

My family suffered for my damage. My country suffered for my crimes, as I was unable to stop fighting a war that never ended.

You know these pains, Mr. President. You recognize the haunting guilt, the things you did, the things you could have done, the things you didn’t do. And every crime is so much greater in your case. You never held the line. You never fought to hold a perimeter, you never killed at eyeball range to keep from dying, to keep from losing your friends, to get one more goddamn hour when you are nineteen years old and you just know you don’t fucking want to die.

Oh no. You owe the devil so much more. The lives you through into the grinder, American lives, Iraqi lives, American families, Iraqi families, widows, orphans, amputees, those that died quick and those that died hard and slow.

There are those who say only you know why. But you and I know the real truth, don’t we. That there is no why. You did it because you could, and you wanted to. You can never offer up a justification because you know that ultimately, there is none. All this blood. All this horror.

Go into your dotage in peace, Mr. President. The ghouls and the souls of the dead will not allow you to sleep in peace.

And that is, I suppose, as it should be. At last, you are a veteran…

mikey

My Candidate Sucks.

h/t Complex

Yes, you read that right. My candidate sucks. He’s a politician with the ambition to want to be President. That right there makes him possibly criminally insane and why I like the above take on Bogey Down Production’s Criminal Minded. He comes from Chicago, which may be the most politically corrupt city in America. He speaks in platitudes that are long on rhetoric and short on details. Once again for my slower readers, HE’S A POLITICIAN!!!

Hillary Clinton sucks too, for variations on the themes I stated above. SHE’S A POLITICIAN!!!

John McCain, on the other hand, is the definition of the Banality of Evil. He is a genuine threat to the free world, because unlike George ‘I Don’t Have a Fucking Clue’ Bush, McCain thinks he knows things. He Doesn’t. He knows just enough to be dangerous to all life on this planet.

So here’s the deal. I will vote for the Democratic candidate. Period. I hope you do the same.

When we beat McCain in November, it’s open season on anyone, (R) or (D). Until then, can we postpone the circular firing squad?

Who’s Your Daddy?

This picture has been removed due to an abusive individual.

Did you know that Japan owns 34% of our Treasury Bonds, Bills and Notes?

And China owns almost 29%?

Using my stellar math skills, I’d say that between the two countries, they own 63% of our public debt.

Interestingly enough, Carribean Banking Centers (???) own 6% of the public debt.

If either of these two countries wanted to swamp our economy, they could. Easily. By selling off their bonds they could create a run on Treasury securities, which would destroy the already faltering dollar’s value.

So by going into huge debt to fight two wars, ostensibly to protect our interests, we have given the lynch pin of our economy to one of our biggest historical enemies (Japan) and the single greatest threat to our hegemony (China).

Who is in charge of foreign policy in this country? The effin’ Really Rottens?

*Remind me never to search Google Images for ‘leather daddy’ with the SafeSearch off.

On Jumping the Shark (Now Updated with More Shark Jumpiness! X2!!)

Let’s talk economics.

The rules of supply and demand are pretty simple. Demand goes up, prices go up. Supply goes up, prices go down.

Conversely, if prices go down, demand tends to go up. If prices rise, demand falls.

Enter the John ‘YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF OF MY LAWN!’ McCain. He and his team of brilliant advisers have come up with a great idea. Let’s have a holiday from the gas tax this summer. Sounds good, no? Not.

John McCain is proposing to eliminate the 18.9 cent federal gas tax as a way to ease the burden of rising gas prices on his friends, the regular Americans. But what does this mean?

If we lower the price of gas, demand will go up, which will in turn drive prices up. So we take $.20/gallon away from the Federal Treasury. More people feel inclined to drive this summer because gas is cheaper. The price rises to the cost with the tax, except now the oil companies are making the $.20/gallon instead of the Treasury. That is his brilliant plan.

So not only is it a bone headed idea, but it flies in the face of the fact that we need to be encouraging people to drive less, both to help stabilize the price of oil, but also because the last time I checked the consensus of the global scientific community is that we have a wee problem with carbon emissions.

So of course both Democratic nominees oppose this, because they are both smart people with wise economists on their side, right? Wrong.

Hill’s down. Granted, she wants to finance the cut with a windfall tax on the oil companies’ profits whereas McCain just wants to write Big Oil a blank check, but she’s still firmly in the Voodoo Economics Camp. When was the last time Shrub, Jr. let a bill go across his desk that cut into rich people’s profits? Never, that’s when. So her plan is both irresponsible and logistically impossible. So either she’s dense as old growth, or she’s trying to pander to the low information voters. Either way stinks.

This is not a responsible plan. This is not a plan a responsible leader would endorse. This is election year shenanigans at their most pitiful.

I’m calling it. Hillary has jumped the shark. Stick a fork in her, she’s done.

Update:

“I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” Hillary told George Stephanopoulos this weekend, ““Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

What other recent President doesn’t believe in the opinions of ‘experts’? I’m drawing a blank…

When will the Hillary model come out?

Updated Again:

Damn that shit is dumb.