Let this be a sign unto you. . .

Living right on the Atlantic coast in Florida, I often see and hear blimps cruising the shoreline at low altitude.  It was a a beautiful day yesterday and I spent the balmy afternoon reading and listening to music on my boat and perhaps I would have seen the Romney Blimp ( technically a hot air dirigible) had it made the trip up the coast from Miami, just over a hundred miles south of here.

It didn't, because as WPLG TV reports, it was forced down by high winds, crashed and went limp in a field near Davie, FL.  In other words the winds of  reality outweighed the artificially created hot air holding it aloft.

There's something amusingly Ozymandian about the smiling image of Willard Mitt Romney looking out from the wreckage of a collapsed airship; something so appealingly metaphorical and  prophetic.  Please, God -- let it be a sign.

2012, the end of an era

I've been a Newsweek reader and subscriber for more than a half century and of course I haven't always been appreciative of all their regular columnists.  I haven't ever in fact, but none the less, people like George Will or the current counterpoise to rational thinking, Niall Furguson, haven't made me cancel my subscription  as I've threatened to do on occasion. But you can't fight progress and you can't fight the kind of decay progress leaves in its wake and the magazine that once published some of the best political writing and news reporting in America has been fighting a losing battle. Advertising revenue is drying up in the slow economy and advertisers may feel they get a bigger bang and a bigger audience elsewhere.

 The venerable publication was sold last year and combined with The Daily Beast.  Controversial editor in chief Tina Brown, known for saving The New Yorker a few years back hasn't been able to save Newsweek or stem the flight of advertising revenue -- or as I might speculate, stem the rising illiteracy and unwillingness to read objective journalism and I read this morning that as of the end of this year, Newsweek will cease to put out a print edition. Alas.

I had been meaning to write this week about the noticeable trend toward being 'fair and balanced' in Newsweek and indeed almost every other slowly sinking print publication by including a measure of snarky, sulfurous vituperation  to balance out any accurate reportage or fact based opinion that will irritate the delusional Right, as if  there actually were two sides to arithmetic or an alternate and opposite  history despite the accuracy of the record.  I was going to chastise Ms. Brown for the October 15th cover story "Heaven is Real" pandering, once again, to irrational beliefs, but at least for Newsweek, the Mayans were correct.  It's the end of an era.

It may be more of a dignified end however, than being bought up by Darth Murdoch or some corporation controlled by the Koch brothers or Karl Rove.  They plan to continue on the Web and I plan to read them but I can't say I don't have a feeling of loss or a suspicion that the future of Journalism is not the improvement of journalism but more like a large, dark cave full of screaming voices.

More of the same

Over 65% of respondents to the CNN poll so far this morning ( 10:15 EDT) say Obama "won" the "debate."  Of course it wasn't really a debate and nobody really wins because supporters always think their candidate did better whether he was lying or not.  I think Romney came off better than he should have, but then that's what a con man does.  A good flim-flam man makes the marks forget what he said or did ten minutes ago by sheer force of personality.  The truth just isn't as sexy and it's almost always harder to understand even for those few who try and I think Romney did as well as he could have in reassuring his minions that our current condition had nothing to do with the long standing Republican policies that caused it.  Did he do as well with his claims that his vague and not so honestly described "policies" would quickly restore the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era?  It remains to be seen.

Did Obama really stress adequately that Democratic policies, equally trashed by Republicans gave us unprecedented prosperity and near full employment or that virtually all our debt was acquired by Republican administrations preaching the same 'debt doesn't matter' idea and that  'slashing the upper brackets produces prosperity?'   No, but if the viewer doesn't see it already, he's not going to and the public is more dishonest with itself than Romney could ever be with us.

The fact check people of course, are suggesting that the fierceness of Mitt's assertions seem to correspond to their inaccuracy and mendacity, but again; fact checkers are to the cult members as liberally biased as is math itself and it won't change minds well trained to reject information from outside sources.  Perhaps Mitt's little tantrums about being able to talk over his opponent, or his foot stamping, infantile and dishonest demonstration about "government land" gives us a peek into his private self or at least a whiff of sulfur, but perceptive, informed and analytical people aren't really Mitt supporters in the first place.  Folders full of facts ( and the fact is that oil and gas production are way, way up despite the sluggish economy) can't outweigh the slick haircut, the the silver tongue and the polished art of the con.

So I'm not going to say who I thought 'won' this thing because I don't know.  I can hope that a sufficient number will be disgusted enough to go to the polls and vote. A large turnout usually favors the Democrats.

Why are these men laughing?

This just in:

Fox &Friends claims Biden's debate laughter indicates dementia!

            Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GettyImages

Ablow the man down

So, another Monday morning in this best of all possible countries; this greatest there ever was since the Big Bang and greatest there will ever be until Jesus comes back. And what do I read in the news this proud American morning?

Mark Sanford, as though he hadn't disgraced himself enough as Governor of South Carolina, calls President Obama a spear chucker.  Don't tempt me, Mark.

The American Family Association, that Far Right group of  Freaky Fundies masquerading as an American Family Association tells it's cult members to keep their kids out of school for an Oct 30
anti-bullying event, “Mix It Up For Lunch Day,” they insist, is 

"just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda."  

Imagine trying to tell kids it isn't the Christian thing to do to beat up gay kids or torment them to the point of suicide.  What would Jesus do, after all?

And on Fox & Friends some alleged psychiatrist aptly named Ablow declared that Vice President Biden was probably demented based on what he saw in the 'debate' with Lyin' Ryan.

“I did not evaluate Joe Biden, but if someone said to me, we want you to do what’s really required. You have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis. You have to say bizarre laughter, interrupting. If this were your dad or your grandfather, wouldn’t you say if you brought him to me, Keith, tell me, is he suffering with dementia? Because he can’t seem to listen, he’s laughing inappropriately.”

I did not evaluate, so I know the problem. How very Fox.  Is this what they call an Ablow job?    to tell the truth, Ryan makes me laugh at him  too and I just can't listen to the goddamn lies and sedition from the foreign owned Fascist propaganda organization any more, nor do I think laughter is what is really needed here as a national response to the Idiot's Crusade. Bring back the laughing stock!

I read this morning at Raw Story that "A Florida judge has ruled that a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the “Prince of God” and is convinced that he will be resurrected to sit for eternity at God’s right hand is sane and can put to death next week."

Good to know that such people are considered sane in Florida and perhaps that explains why according to my local paper 81% of this county's inmates plan to vote for Mitt the Shit and Lyin' Ryan. So the hell with the Supreme Court ruling against killing the insane, We don't need no damn government and we're gonna do the Christian thing anyway.  Jesus is going to need a man like Prince John Ferguson when it comes time to shove the Jews into the lake of fire after the Rapture.

My current issue of Newsweek has a lurid cover story proving that heaven is real because some guy who went into a coma from meningitis says he went to heaven and met beautiful women there.  Another straight to the recycling bin issue.

So perhaps we have to put dementia in the differential diagnosis of our national psyche and definitely we have to be grateful there isn't a YHWH to blow America to kingdom come or to wherever Sodom wound up, because if this is the best of all possible countries, no god worth his apocalypse would stand for our sad, demented, ugly and hate filled planet. Or perhaps I'm wrong about that and perhaps that's what the newly discovered comet 2012 S1 (ISON) due to fill the sky in about a year is all about. If it doesn't blow us all to hell, perhaps the fundies and righties and all the other dimwitted, demented friends of the Fox will dress in purple robes and tennis shoes and take the Cyanide Express to the Mother Ship.  Even in the worst of times, there's always hope.

Skuby Dooby Do

I'm glad it's a long way to New Jersey but Bill Skuby, who owns Skuby & Co. Lifestyle Clothing in Spring Lake, N.J should be happy too.  I think I felt something snap in my head when I looked at the ABC News web page this morning and saw the thing he has in his store window.  Quite frankly I'm not sure I'd be able to restrain myself.  It's not that I actually advocate an act of violence against him or his property and I certainly don't want the Government to deprive him of the right to be a stupid, ugly, bigoted, ignorant and anti-American bastard ( no insult to involuntary bastards intended here.)  I'm all for the right to sedition.

But I'm only human and a picture of the President of the United States dressed as a semi-naked witch doctor taped to a tombstone and a bold face title with OBAMA CARE in which the letter C is a hammer and sickle, makes me have bad thoughts; very bad thoughts. Why is it that the two legged vermin who insist we worship a flag like some religious icon, that we swoon in an ecstasy of Chauvinistic self-praise at every mention of our often ugly history can condone the kind of disrespect that makes the world laugh contemptuously at our delusional stupidity and willful ignorance.

 

No, Skuby, the health care plan drafted by Republicans in conjunction with the health care corporations has less to do with Communism than you do with sanity or honesty for that matter. Switzerland, the holy land of Capitalism and Conservatism has a similar one and arguably the best health care and healthiest population anywhere and they spend a hell of a lot less then we do.  You're an idiot, Skuby Doo.  You're an idiot not only for putting a disgusting picture of the President on a tombstone but more of an idiot for telling us:

"if Mitt Romney had the same plan as the president; his picture would be in the window."  

You're worse than an idiot, you're a liar, because Slippery Mitt did have that plan until he decided to sell his withered soul to the Devil and run for President. Did you forget?  And no, you're not a racist and if there's racism now, it's Obama's fault, he says.

"This is America, isn't it?Aren't we able to say and do pretty much what we want to do?"

 Asks the scummy Mr. Skuby. I really wish that were true, but then we'd have to condone tarring and feathering and probably worse and if this idiot isn't one of those dumb Limbaugh loving lizard brained bastards who wanted to put people in jail for criticizing W, I'd be very surprised.  You should be thankful we can't do pretty much what we want to do to you.  Damned thankful if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.

So, I'm glad people are shunning your store and I truly hope you'll go broke and be unable to file for bankruptcy protection because of the Republican "reforms" and that you'll lose your health insurance and be unable to replace it because of the interrupted coverage.  I hope your kid needs an operation and runs up a quarter million dollar medical bill you can't pay and so you'll lose everything and wind up on the street with a tin can so I can go by and piss in it.Why don't you ask the Koch Brothers for a handout?

Reality Show

Oh who cares whether Ryan or Biden "won" this TV spectacle? Vice presidents don't count, unless you think about Cheney, and although Romney is a sock puppet with the strong arm of  the radical authoritarians making his lips move, I don't see him being led around by Ryan as another Darth Cheney.  Who cares anyway? It's not as though the public has become smarter or has learned from experience.  These things are only a game and never, ever does a President resemble in office what he tried to resemble on camera and the platform they sell at the convention is rarely more than a facade.  There's a difference between dealing with the world as it is and dealing with the tableaux, the passion plays, the street theater, the Potemkin Village we take for reality.

So CNN says his supporters think Ryan expressed himself better.  I don't know. I have better things to do with my time, but assuming he did, does anyone think that getting the angry rabble to cheer is the indicator of suitability to administrate a Democracy -- even a pretend Democracy like ours?  Obama's haters were quick to syllogize at us in 2008 that he gave good speeches and Hitler gave good speeches, and therefore Obama is another Hitler. Who cares what such people think?

So the Romney/Ryan thing gives rousing speeches, albeit captious and dishonest ones. So the real truth is not quite as rousing, easily summed up to the satisfaction of one's enemies, or blamed on 'Libtards.'  Who gives a shit?

I had a conversation with someone last night.  An engineer, a very nice guy, a very devout Baptist and fellow Radio Amateur about the peculiar state of the ionosphere.  We're supposed to be near a sunspot peak and yet HF propagation is generally poor, without the Summer openings on 10 and 6 meters we've waited years for. I joked about writing my congressman. He quipped about killing all the lawyers because, as he said, "they'll only blame it on Global Warming and George Bush." He wasn't smiling.

So easily is scientific consensus and massive data dismissed and so easily the destruction of the US economy according to the 30 year experiment with trickle down, debt-doesn't-matter and wars-pay-for-themselves-when-we-cut-taxes agenda as given us by the Republicans. Truth doesn't matter, so how can these 'debates' mean anything?

Really -- why should I listen to these things?  I already know who has built a three ring circus around  the argumentum ad captandum argument, learned to enrage the public with lies and profit from the rage they ignited. No, I'm not going to tell you that Romney will exterminate minorities or that Ryan is a Nazi who wants to put Grandma in a camp, but the people who pull their strings have perfected the same rhetoric, the technique and the ability to harness tribal enmity, bigotry, superstition and self-pity.  They know how to make you passionately believe things that are self-contradictory, follow policies that always and dramatically fail and they know how to get their way. So sure, Romney won and Ryan won and whether or not they're elected, George W. Bush and Global Warming have sealed our fate, or at least made it unlikely that anything will ever be the same. 

What a Doocebag!

With a name like Doocy, one probably grows up with countless attempts to make fun of one's surname. I doubt I could come up with a new one, but why ridicule the man's name when you can stand by and watch him smear it himself; making himself the idiot's action figure, the bobble-head doll of arrogant, self righteous religious authority and enemy of everything the United States ever stood for or was supposed to stand for and still pretends to be all about.

Yes, I'm talking about religion again and I sure as hell wish you would too, because that bundle of authoritarian offal with a cross stuck on it stinks so bad, I'm sure you could smell it on the moon. Where is the resistance to this endless calumny, this unceasing assault on our freedom, in our classrooms, our meeting places, our legislative assemblies?

On Fox today, (where else?)  Stevie the Dooce made fun of religious freedom and our protection against official State religions by mocking Pennsylvania State Representative  Babette Josephs (D) for declining to recite that nauseating formula declaring the United States of America to be what it's constitutionally forbidden to be: Under God.

Good for her and like her, I haven't dignified that 'Satanic Verse' since the Republicans shoved it up the National ass in 1954, taking time out from their struggle to keep the 'coloreds' in their place and making sure the races didn't mix. Time out from making sure people lost their jobs because of their politics.

“I wonder if she refuses to use money because money has ‘In God We Trust’ on it?” 

chortled the coiffed and polyestered Doocy through three quarters on an inch of pancake makeup; totally forgetting a legendary tantrum of a certain Jewish agitator concerning money with God written on it being in the Jerusalem Temple, but like so many of these Christian pretenders, hiding behind some perverted pretense they call 'faith' as they hide their inner secrets behind stage makeup, behind patter and persiflage with their scummy Fox familiars,  He's an enemy of almost anything good, anything that stands for freedom, for respect, for kindness, decency, democracy and yes -- American Values and American law.  Is that schoolgirl giggling supposed to make us forget or be embarrassed by the fact that neither citizens nor their elected officials may be required to make religious oaths?   No, Doocebag, I don't trust your God and if I had the opportunity to shove the constitution and a Gutenberg Bible sideways up your gaping anus I would feel like an instrument of justice and a defender of America. Do you wipe your foul ass with the Constitution because it has that Establishment clause?  Do you pay for sex with money that has God on it?

I almost expect blood to ooze from beneath my fingernails as I try to avoid the most obscene and vulgar maledictions against Doocy and his gibbering boyfriend Brian Kilmead; foul mouthed imprecations and excrement encrusted execrations against that evil Republican empire that employs them to eat at the heart of America like a parasitic worm.  It's hard to do and words come to mind, thoughts I don't dare to mention.  Yes, it's hard not to dream of  these evil men being in fact under some angry God -- like a dead, oozing cockroach under an iron boot heel.

Chick-Fil-Ahole

"Families are very important to our country. And they're very important to those of us who are concerned about being able to hang on to our heritage. We support Biblical families, and they've always been a part of that."

Jesus, can't anybody see the logical disconnect between families being important and the right of some Bible pounding chicken plucker to interfere with the civil rights of his fellow citizens?  Freedom is important too and sure as hell, this kind of religion doesn't support freedom and has spent centuries killing people for thinking and acting free.

Well I guess not and it's just another example of how religion poisons everything; corrupts the critical faculties and undermines democracy.  Yes, it's Chicken Man Dan again "supporting Biblical Families" with a carefully extracted and deep fried opinion from a few extracts from the Greek section added on to the Hebrew Bible in the 4th Century CE.  

Tradition does not convey a right, particularly a right to interfere with freedom, nor does one "tradition" have the right to declare itself official in this free country any more than the smell of frying birds conveys wisdom or power or decency. 

So what about Lot's family, Abraham's family and all those Biblical examples of polygamy, romps in the sack with the serving girls, mistreatment of women, selling one's daughters into slavery and prostitution and the like?  Never mind.

Look, there's nothing that can't be supported by that pile of political hogwash written, edited, redacted and selected by ancient bastards greedy for power and that isn't being used by their smiling, Jesus plated contemporary imposters like Dan Cathy.  To be sure, he has the protected right to be an asshole, to act like he's got some special insight, to justify his petty, arrogant, small minded opinions about chicken plucking with what he calls the Bible and I call a fraud,  Indeed that's much more of a "heritage" than gay bashing, that horrible compilation of ancient ignorance having been used for every ill purpose including slavery, destruction of Native cultures and the burning of innocent women in this sad country.  And of course I have the right to call him any name I like, now that he's a public figure.

I have the right, as an American, to call him a malicious and ignorant and self-righteous idiot and we all have the right to take our hunger for greasy chicken to KFC or to that vacant lot a mile from here where they sell home made chicken, barbecue, greens, black beans and rice on the weekends and where they have a smile for everybody and mind their own goddamned Christian business.

"Chick-Fil-A Doesn't belong in Boston," says Mayor Thomas Menino. " you can't have a business in the City of Boston that discriminates against the population . . . and we're not going to have a company, Chick-Fil-A, or whatever the hell their name is, on our Freedom Trail."

Me neither, Mayor -- me neither. 

Lies and consequences

I think there's a kind of hysteresis in politics.  You get a certain effect from telling a bold lie, but you don't lose nearly all that gain by retracting it, so it pays to lie.  You may gain 100,000 votes by saying your opponent is a cannibal, but if you only lose 30 or 40 thousand when you admit "I was wrong to say that" why not keep lying?  There's no limit to how many you can tell and a good part of the public, who really wanted to hear bad things about the other side will tell themselves you were forced to retract it by "the liberals" and it's really true - he's a cannibal from the dark jungles of Kenya. It pays to lie even when you get caught. It doesn't hurt to say one thing to one group and another thing to another. You may actually gain support from people who will think you're being a big man for correcting yourself and will forget that you deliberately lied, deliberately tried to cash in on the meanest and nastiest and most dishonest impulses of the public to get votes.

No matter how much the candidate lies, we can count on the fact that the public is as least as dishonest with themselves and often far more so.  If one tells one's family that taking a pay cut won't add to the family debt, one has a tough sell, but the candidate is talking to people who want to believe they would be much better off  if their personal tax load were lightened and so they will listen eagerly and listen dismissively when the truth is explained. Tell them their taxes are actually lower than ever and they won't listen. Show them that nearly everybody pays 25 to 30 percent of what they earn and they'll put their hands over their ears and chant liberaliberaliberal.  I think this is why the Romney ad I heard this morning on TV could get away with claiming that an independent study proved that Obama planned to tax the average Joe an extra $4000 next year ( and presumably by executive fiat. )  Not one of his likely supporters will bother to check any facts that support their beliefs.  First comes the distrust and anger and dislike, and then the reasons we tell ourselves and others. What we want to hear is what we hear and when we hear it, we stop listening further.

So Romney may substantially reduce any loses he suffered by his 47% gaffe by admitting he was "Completely wrong."  Takes a big man, after all and of course, we all know that there are still huge numbers of loafers and leeches and welfare queens driving Caddies -- enough to cause us to scrap any attempts at helping people become productive again, keeping children from falling hopelessly into inextricable cycles of crime and poverty and disease by using MY HARD EARNED MONEY that all belongs to ME and of course NOBODY EVER GAVE ME ANYTHING. And isn't it annoying that we have to be so "politically correct" and just like we can't say Merry Christmas any more we can't call 'these people' by our traditional words?  I mean traditional values mean something.

Romney Shrugged

One casual observation I suspect of having some merit  is that people who complain a lot about some failing in others are covering up something similar in themselves.  Perhaps those who make such a constant noise about large numbers of our countrymen being freeloaders while covering themselves in self-adulation would give weight to the conjecture. Are they really getting a raw deal?

One certainly does hear more than enough fiction from the Republican Party's candidates about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the stifling of initiative that comes from subsidized school lunches and perhaps a bit less about subsidies for business interests and of course, now we have that abominable new straw man, the 47%.

It's an American habit, and not just a Conservative habit, to dismiss, and often angrily dismiss any discussion of  factual support for political arguments and particularly examples of how our assertions fail to be born out in other countries, so of course those who support Mr. Romney for reasons known only to their subconscious minds, that 47% of Americans do not make enough money at present to pay Federal Income Tax are happy to frame that in terms of government dependency.  

Of course, as with most things you hear from Romney and Ryan, it's not true at all, finely crafted as the rhetoric might be and as effective in pushing that American middle class self pity hot button. As Ezra Klein pointed out in the Washington Post not long ago, the taxpayer supporting a family on $40,000 a year may not pay Federal Income Tax, but he's paying tax on every dollar he makes while the fortunate one ( excuse me, the selfless job creator) making $4,000,000 is likely paying  less than 35% on the whole chalupa.  As Klein says, it's phrased that way to make it seem only fair to give a break to those heavily burdened 'job creators.'  What it's not supposed to do is to remind you that the $40,000 'freeloader' is paying payroll tax on every dime up to around $100,000.  So when you look at the total family tax bill, it seems quite a different story.  The numbers make liars out of a lot of people and the burden is being shouldered by the rich and poor only it's the poor and the struggling middle who can't pay their bills because of it.  Taxes aren't cutting into the caviar budget, they're making it harder to buy the canned tuna and hamburger helper; harder to pay for college, harder to pay those ridiculous medical bills and harder to buy those new cars and appliances and houses that are the real job creators.

Not 47 percent paying nothing, but everybody paying something, and most Americans paying between 25 percent and 30 percent of their income.  Where are the freeloaders?  Where are all those hordes of freeloaders eating up the hard earned dollars of the job creating Galts?  The taxpayer earning a hundred grand pays more than the one making over a million and the poverty stricken have to pay 20% of their miserable $25K all of which they need to spend to stay alive.  Is it difficult to refrain from bad language and malediction when listening to such damaging lies?  You bet.

So they're lying of course and as usual. The total tax burden is far more equally distributed than the Republicans want you to believe and one might make a case that the people crying loudest about freeloaders are getting a better deal then they would like to admit. Perhaps there's some hidden guilt involved, perhaps not.

There is no more factual support for calling nearly half of us freeloaders dependent  upon government subsidy than there is for Ryan's 3 hour marathon times and in reply to that cynical bumper sticker I saw yesterday sneering "4 more years?  Are you out of your mind?"  Why no sir, I'm not and I'd remind you that neither intelligence nor honesty are more equitably distributed in the world than money. 

Sin and Atonement

Today is Yom Kippur and being an atheist and unobservant Jew, the fact that I remembered is unusual for me.  A collection of ritual and remembrance and appeals for mercy to some doddering old imaginary reprobate in the upper troposphere aren't the sort of things I often occupy my mind with, but for the random musings I sometimes indulge in on gray mornings such as this. 

I don't know all that much about the origins of  this holy day.  Vague memories from childhood religious school attempts at indoctrination, involve the guilt of pretending to be Christian following 1492.  I'm not sure it's quite true, but then even the true myths aren't quite honest, are they? Besides that was a few years before I was born and I never pretended not to be a Jew.

Anyway, Judaism is hardly unique in being soaked to the bone in feelings of guilt and sinfulness and the feeling of remorse for things that need not produce it; things that often never happened. There are sins we get from sexual thoughts not approved by authority ( few are) and sins we get from mythological ancestors who didn't exist and couldn't have committed them. That's more of a Christian thing, of course and even if a childless, non-Christian God might forgive you ad libitum and with regard to your subsequent actions.  We can't avoid it though, even as Jews, and prophets from time immemorial were there to tell you that every misfortune you'd think God would have prevented happened because -- well just because you're steeped in sin. Whatever happens, there's always a prophet there to cash in by blaming it on sin and with his hand out for offerings.

People will tell you that prostitution is the oldest profession, but of course freedom to exchange favors didn't originate until some priest, some prophet, learned to control his tribe by threatening them with some imaginary god; by inventing sin and selling a way to make it go away.  Give part of the hunt to God by letting the priest eat it, support your synagogue and maintain the kind of ethnocentrism needed to support the clergy and government by expiating the guilt, atoning for the "sin."

And sin, almost by necessity, has nothing to do with  harming anyone.  The original sin had to do with disobedience to arbitrary command ( he's jealous by his own admission, remember) and in particular the disobedience involved in learning about morality -- taking moral decisions into one's own hands as one takes a piece of fruit into one's mouth. It involves a forbidden improvement of our human lot for which we will be punished -- unless. . .  Upon that unless is many a church founded.

So if you're a Jew, you may be afraid not to spend today hungry and thirsty and miserable, chastising yourself for committing all those sins we surely must have committed  but not necessarily reporting to the police or the IRS or our spouses so that old whoozis in the clouds will let us live another year and you'll do it in full knowledge that there's no correlation whatsoever between ritual, sin, expiation and living another year.  After all we've made decisions and had thoughts the priests and prophets, rabbis and our relatives didn't decide or think for us and  Yahweh-in-the-sky-with-lightening wouldn't approve of us making all by ourselves.

But of course, this is a Jewish holiday, observed by many Jews simply because they are Jews and feel in need of that sort of identity for one reason or another even if it's only to set them apart from others with their own ways of expiating their innate feelings of unworthiness.

CNN's Belief Blog asks us what we are atoning for, and some of the answers gave rise to this post.  One sad response was about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. Another pointed out that as a Catholic, she atoned for her laziness and impatience, as though she somehow owed some cosmic entity much hard work without asking for any return. (40 days longer than those flaky Jews as she pointed out) Perhaps that lack was somehow as bad as pushing someone down the stairs, but I'll leave the ranking of sins to the self-appointed experts. All I can do is talk about the harm one does to another. Perhaps therefore, an apology to the sister would do more good than religious ritual or the profession of a credo, but I fear an apology to the dog would be as effective in obtaining forgiveness from the infinite and uncaring cosmos.

Then of course was the writer who tweeted:

"I don't need to atone for anything. Jesus Christ already atoned for every wrong thing I've ever done or will do."

I don't know if he or she was standing on a pedestal while tweeting, but that's how I imagine it.  Forgive me if I find that to be dangerous and arrogant and a rejection of moral scruple and if I cannot imagine any mystic process by which the execution of an ancient political and religious dissenter  would free one of moral responsibility (or any trace of humility) but that's religion for you.  Chum the waters with fear of unavoidable and dire consequences and then offer a hook with a way out wrapped around it that's so entirely meaningless in moral terms it can't be dealt with by appeal to fact or reason and perhaps only with Tertullian's 'Credo quia absurdum' which, being in itself absurd really doesn't deal with it anyway.

So anyway, I'm a Jew and it's Yom Kippur and even though there are countless things I'm sorry for having done or not done, my thoughts are my business and I go where they lead me and I don't expect special favors or indulgences for not eating bacon or sewing a cotton shirt with linen thread or any of the 600 some odd commandments or for not atoning for things that never happened or can't be made better or be undone because I don't matter all that much.  It all comes to the same thing and our Earth will boil away and our Sun die and the universe disperse forever into the cold and dark and all our gods and atonements in vain, time without end.

Smoke some Tea with Bruce Tinsley

Life provides some tasty moments, even in lean  and hopeless times: delicious little bonbons like the news that the Romney campaign had to borrow $20 million last month and is still $11 million in the hole. Of course that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for that socialist Obama.  Say, maybe he can pay off that debt by cutting costs and quitting now!  Nah, he'll have to raise some revenue by going after the very, very, very rich.  Irony is sweeter than Tupelo honey.

But it's the disconnect, the discontinuity at the interface between reality and the wild and hyperbolic hurricane of principle and theory and doctrine and ad hoc explanations that makes these things so sticky, gooey sweet.

I had to laugh today at a newspaper comic strip called Mallard Fillmore that illustrates that discontinuity; bashing Obama and Liberals and free thinkers so desperately, it's obvious that Bruce Tinsley the perpetrator, has long since run out past the boundaries of the real into a world of his own where Obama is falling in the polls and Tinsley has some far better alternative to offer, but don't ask. 

Humor from the alternate reality where Bush's failures were Clinton's fault, where the Bush economic fundamentals were 'robust' and where paying off Bush's unprecedented spending spree means the debt is Obama's fault.A reality where the government cannot create jobs but that Damn Obama isn't creating the jobs we demand.

Hey, I'm four years older than I was four years ago.  Damn those Liberals!

No, sorry Tinsley, you never were funny. Bitter, angry and a bit delusional and really a bit pathetic certainly.  You've been very wrong for a very long time and you need to recognize it.  You get printed so that the papers can pretend to be balanced, so that their corporate owners can be told that their viewpoints are being served and so that the barrel scrapings, the scab picking, booger eating, shack dwelling, debt ridden 98 IQ dregs of hung over humanity might buy an occasional paper and find something they have the vocabulary to read and feel good about themselves that they too can hate that Damned Obama just like you -- find an anger bigger than their own to unite behind.

Those people

You're going to hear a lot about it today and I have to admit, there's a smile on my face this morning.  It's not because I put a lot of store in some stupid remark that may or may not be a window into the true mind of Mitt, but because I've been hoping all along that the sheer arrogance evidenced by the ballooning buffoonery of the Swaggering Right would be their downfall.  After all, it's damned hard to step carefully when you're goose-stepping. Looks like Mitt has done just that -- stepped right in it.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."

 Said Willard M. Romney, thinking he was still in an age when you could say things and the words would just fade away.

Romney was, of course flattering his audience as politicians always do; flattering people who like to think of themselves as special because they make or have or have inherited a good deal of money - or people who certainly would be rich if it weren't for all those freeloaders and Democrats. Build up their self-esteem,and a  good way to keep up that head of steam is to look down on others. And so Mitt reminded them that his job is not to worry about those people, which is a sideways way to say his job as president would be to worry about these people, his wealthy constituents. Remind them that Obama supporters are just looking for an excuse to pick their pockets.

And should any be troubled by Marley's chains rattling in the background, Mitt is there to remind them that those people don't rate sympathy because they all think of themselves as victims, because they depend on the largesse of the large-assed assembled patricians.  Don't worry about those people. His concern is with the 5% the 10% who are thoughtful, not the ignorant under $250K a year rabble with all their cooties.

Those 47% of course don't really live tax free of course.  28% do pay payroll taxes and we're not talking about Social Security and Medicare -- and nearly everyone pays real estate taxes directly or indirectly and we all pay sales taxes. About 17% just don't make enough money or are elderly and dependent -- those whose jobs went to India perhaps or those devastated by huge medical bills, but although there are millions of different stories, it's good to know that Mitt thinks the President's job is not to worry about them.  Let them worry about themselves.  The real problem for a president according to people like Mitt is that he and his audience have to pay taxes.  America is about us.  The business of their president is asset retention and Mitt is here to tell them he's their man -- one of these people.

Off to see The Liz

The Wonderful Magical Apology tour Is waiting to take you away over at Fox News.

"I will not and I will never apologize for America. I don't apologize for America, because I believe in America."
-  Mitt Romney -

"You know, after he went over there and apologized to them, I can't vote for that guy"

-heard everywhere and every day- 

Associated Press Fact Check would beg to differ and the Washington Post agrees that this Wagnerian cycle of Obama's Apology Tour, like Ryan's 'under three hour' marathon time -- a lie.

With the November Elections close at hand, one might expect to be hearing some concrete plans about what the Republicans might actually do about the economy and since we are not hearing some concrete plans about what to do that differ from the deed that got us into this mess, we might rightly expect that, as with Nixon's infamous "secret plan to win the war" the plan consists of  clinging white knuckled to the same course that ran us off the cliff and swept the GOP out of power.  The plan is to keep the lies coming, keep them consistent enough, outrageous enough and nasty enough to satisfy the Josef Goebbels system requirements.  Hey, it works and it got Tricky Dick re-elected.

Yes, indeed -- we all know the debt is enormous and we're told all day and all night that it's all because of  Obama's  never specified 'Policies.'  You know, those policies that have more people on welfare than ever, according to the river of e-mail I get every morning and  which isn't any more true than that he eliminated the  Democratic 'work for welfare' program or tried to keep military voters out of the polls or that "he went over there and apologized to them."  Yes, yes, "the government keeps printing money."  They keep saying it, but then the bills need to be paid and there's no new money coming in thanks to the cuts.  But remember -- for the most part those bills were run up by the President Who Never Existed: George W. Bush who actually told us the bills would pay themselves - by magic. Now why is it you haven't heard Bush quoted or mentioned for quite some time now?  Haven't heard him speechifying for Mitt, now have you?  Bush who?

The most expensive war in American history, the GWB prescription drug plan, the biggest, most expensive agency we've ever had and the large cuts to revenue which for 30 years have been promised as the magic fertilizer from which prosperity grows, haven't grown anything but the noxious Kudzu of debt and never actually were supposed to, since as Co-President Dick Cheney smilingly said "Debt Doesn't Matter."  No, it's true, no new private sector jobs were created during the Bush frat party years, the government ballooned in size and expense and so did the debt and we didn't hear a God damned peep out of Chicken Little who's clucking himself half to death at the moment.  We heard a lot of Liberal bashing though, didn't we?  And the Liberals were right though, weren't they? 

But we're not hearing it, we're hearing about birth certificates, death panels, radical Socialism and magical, mystical apology tours to 'over there' where he apologized to them.  And of course the US has never done anything it needs to apologize for, being the magically mystically greatest country since God created the Earth 5773 years ago today. The Slave auctions to Wounded knee to My Lai, we've always been angels and heroes in our own hermetic consciousness.

You're not hearing that the facts make liars out of the Fox and its friends, that 90% marginal tax rates once presided over prosperity and full employment and diminishing debt, that slashing the top bracket funnels money into the market and real estate and hedge funds and inflated bubbles which bring on busts and recessions. You're not hearing that we're paying less taxes than ever and still after decades it hasn't showed a hint of paying off.

Hell, you're not hearing anything but lies or breathing any thing but the smoke of desperation.  That Colored boy - now he's gone and abandoned Czechoslovakia, that empty suit, Commie tyrant Muslim from Africa! whines Fox News.  That smell? It's the smoke and the stink of desperation. The collapse, the bailouts -- all that began under Bush and the current candidates loved it -- and Czechoslovakia went out of existence 10 years ago before you ever heard of Mr. Obama and his apology tour over there.

So keep believing, as Liz the Wiz Cheney tells us on Fox, how he went over there and apologized to them even though he didn't, because it's all you've got if you're a Romney supporter. It's all you've got. Keep joking about how he's not an American like fancy pants Willard because the smoke would be blown away if you had any memory and were willing to use it. The curtain of slander would be torn asunder and all you'd see is the few dozen wizards burning up millions and millions  trying to make themselves very, very much richer at the expense of your future.

" The president himself has got a terrible record on national security, and it’s clearly something that Gov. Romney ought rightly to be pushing” 

Continued the Liz, as the Fox folk danced down the yellow brick road away from the fact that Al Qaeda is in tatters and the 9/11 planners including Osama are dead and there have been no more attacks on our soil.  Yes, and I'm sure he will be pushing it while bashing the health care plan he wrote and extolling all those empty shibboleths like smaller government and all that religious claptrap about morals and birth control.  What the hell else can these people do when the facts, if facts be remembered, would cast them all into the pit?

Obama killed Jesus -- and a whole lotta other stuff.

Scientists plead for urgent action to tackle the growing dementia crisis

 reads the headline in The Observer. Have they been listening to the 2012 Presidential campaign or watching Fox News?

Brit Hume of the paralyzed face; has the Botox affected his brain or has he been surgically altered so as not to grimace when he dutifully reveals what his corporate masters want you to think: that President Obama sympathizes with the people who  killed a US ambassador and some of his staff.

He loved it, Obama did. He loved it like he loved 9/11, like he'd love to grab your guns, raise your taxes and steal your chickens. He hates America and everything you hold dear and he pisses on the Bible and shits on the flag every morning before breakfast and uses them new smart meters the power company installed to sneak through the wires and  have phone sex with your wife at night.  You know, he does things -- things like the way he 'went over there and apologized to them' and other things, other policies, other histories that only happened in the Budweiser soaked minds of America's demented underclass, straining for some excuse to make it appear that they're not ignorant, demented bigots.

Yessir, Romney was right, just like Mister Brit said -- but Ol' Rom  just didn't say it right so's them libby rills would be satisfied, but hell, ya'll know that boy ain't a real Amerkin. And never you mind that ol' preacher Terry Jones  who went from roastin' weenies over Koran fires to makin' films showing us how all them other prophets like to lick Satan's privates and Jesus hates 'em all.  Just because them pagan ragheads got all exited don't make it his fault or our fault for promotin' him and stirrin' up the good Amerkun Tea Paytry-its in the name 'a righteousness.

Logic 101

Let's say it's because the truth hurts, but I really hate to be taken for stupid by people who don't know me from Adam. I would at least prefer to be given the opportunity to say or do something to prove it.

So they tried to take me for a fool last night. When my Caller ID screen flashed "Opinion Poll"  I was suspicious.  It didn't say something like Zogby or any name I would recognize, so I paused the TV and picked it up hoping to have an opportunity to express my displeasure at the illegally late hour.  I soon detected that "David" from the "polling company" was actually a computer. Didn't take any Holmesian deduction really.  If the Voice on the phone does not stumble or pause at my assertions as to his oedipal relationships it's likely that old Dave is a new Dell.

But I went along, hoping to have my shot, answering that yes, I was going to vote, yes I was certain I was going to vote, am a registered Democrat and no I wasn't going to risk divine retribution by voting for some tin horn torturer  like Allen "deport the commies" West,  but noticing that the questions all compared the Republican Party with the "Democrat" Party, I began to lose patience.

You probably aren't old enough to remember how easy it was to determine political polarity by noting how the speaker pronounced Vietnam. It rhymed with Pete Ham if you were for the glorious crusade to protect American freedom.  Curiously the same dialect discrimination obtained with our invasion of Iraq.  If it was Eye-wrack, you were for it.  But these chuckleheads can't bring themselves to acknowledge the Democratic Party by saying it right and they're too smugly stupid to notice that I might notice. They always and steadfastly and in the face of cannon fire, call it the 'Democrat' Party. 

But I digress. One might expect a careless listener of some intelligence to miss this point, but when Digital Dave asked whether my preference might lie with the Republican plan to create jobs, build prosperity and bring on a new dawn of American world domination in Jesus' name amen by getting rid of crippling business regulation and those unnecessarily Marxist corporate taxes --- or whether I might somehow, perhaps accidentally make the thoughtless mistake of  destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum by letting the top bracket rise to the point where Ronald Reagan shocked us by lowering it -- and voting for the Democrat agenda?

So would you vote for peace and prosperity or for disaster?

Somewhere in a primary school class where they teach basic reasoning skills; ( they do do that, don't they?) somewhere in the beginning pages of Logic for Dummies, there must be mention of forced choice questions. No, I don't have advanced degrees and my Greek doesn't exist. My first grade teacher thought I was not first grade material and I only had three years of calculus in College, but really.  If this reeks of stupid to me, is this the best these bozos can do?

 Somewhere in Hell, just south of the place reserved for cannibals and mass murderers there's a parking spot with a nice tin sign that reads:  THIS SPOT RESERVED FOR THE TREASONOUS BASTARDS AT ELKHURST COMMUNICATIONS.

Cursing God

Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.

Job 27:23

I was going to begin this with "Only in a Godless universe could Chuck Norris thrive" but of course that's not true.  Perhaps there is a God like YHWH who has made another cynical bet with one of his drinking buddies that a nation claiming to be Godly and "under God" and to be possessed of divine virtue and guidance and "values" would reject evil counsel.  If so, my money is on the Paraclete and not on that Religious-Right parrot Norris.

In a  video released this weekend, Chucky Cheesus, with his wig on his head and his wife by his side and looking like a talking armpit, told those foolish enough to watch him that:

 “If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack . We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”

Yes, things like taking care of the old and infirm and helpless children will certainly do that or daring to tax people like Prince Romulus and his Court Jester Ryan as much as we tax my gardener.  If we   dare not to reject the African/Indonesian born Antichrist and his evil plan to salvage Democracy from God's own Ecclesiastical Christian Feudalism.  Indeed, as the nitwit Norris claims:  the only reason the Evil Obama was elected is that God's own martial artists stayed home, doubtless rolling and gibbering on the floor licking rattlesnakes instead of  following the Idiot's Crusade down to their holy polling place to elect a hypocrite whore of a candidate who couldn't remember his own address but was able to parrot anything the Billionaire Electors and pious pimps of God told him to do to gain high office and like Pilatus, serve the needs of Empire.

Yes sir, if the vicious Roman occupation of Judea had had state managed health insurance, Mary would have aborted Jesus for sure said the martial arts messiah, his capped teeth clapping together through his crotch-like facial hair. But not, of course if the Romans had used the nearly identical Romney version.   If this makes your head spin, you must be some kind of heretic who has forgotten the mysterious ways of God. Have you forgotten that the more something stinks of bullshit and deceit, the more redolent is it of  sanctity?

Yes sir, we're in for "a thousand years of darkness" says Norris' familiar, Gena, quoting the Great Buffoonicator St. Ronnie the Reagan, praised be his name -- even though Reagan, blessed be his memory, raised the evil taxes most high and may have cut a deal with the Ayatollah and facilitated the rape and murder of nuns and other innocents.  A thousand years, even though Obama the Unclean hath not done these things nor banned he any sacred guns as did Bush the Elder.  It's not the facts that Damn the evil Obama, it's the "policies" we tell you about in our moronic maledictions but never mention specifically, lest truth intrude.

A thousand years of darkness, perhaps much like the darkness pre-Enlightenment Christian world enjoyed in Europe under the domination of the Church and all its pomps. 

A thousand years of darkness after those Democrats "enshrine Islamic moral codes into US law"  and turn the Boy Scouts gay.

Sure, there could be a God.  He could be hardening the hearts and forcing the stupidity of these pusillanimous Pharaonic pretenders in order to destroy them, but I suggest that  we don't wait for waters to part or for manna from heaven nor should we wait for 40 years to get to the polls. By all means let's not wait for that Thousand year Reich Norris dreams of.  These people are evil and if you don't like such crapulous, worn and loaded usage, lets just call them dishonest, deluded and  demonstrably dumb. When you hear them talk about God, know they're talking about a different entity than you might expect and that the praise of God, in their mouths, is a curse.

Your name, so long the last word of the Savant, the sanction of the judge, the force of the prince, the hope of the poor, the refuge of the repentant sinner,  -- this incommunicable name I say, henceforth an object of contempt and curses, shall be a hissing among men.

-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon-

Tampa and the will to power

As I've been saying since Richard "you sure as hell are a crook" Nixon departed the White house and the Republican War on Truth began, if the Republicans accuse their opponents of something, you can be sure not only that it isn't quite true, but that the accusation is an attempt to distract from their own guilt.  So when the war criminal Allen West disgusts us with the accusation that the Democrats are "the most racist party I've ever seen in my life" we know the opposite is true.

And why doth West protest? Why because the press isn't showing him the respect his hypertrophied ego demands and why would anyone detest the torturer of innocent civilians; despise the accusations that Democrats are Nazis and Communists (at the same time no less?)  It could only be that he's got dark skin, of course. 

And then, there's Paul Ryan, the delight of Tea Perverts everywhere who enlightens us with lies like:

 "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. ... So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama" 

when it isn't actually true -- the cuts are in payments to hospitals, not in coverage to individuals. The cuts are savings  while Ryan's plan would actually deprive Medicare recipients of coverage.  Paul Ryan is a liar, but what did you expect?  The truth would ride out of town with him on a rail and covered with feathers.

And then There's Paul Ryan howling like a damned soul about the "corporate welfare" that was the stimulus package. Welfare and Communism and all that, even though the Republicans asked for a much bigger package and with no requirement to tell us who was getting what - even though Ryan stomped his feet and whined and begged for even more money for Wisconsin companies.  Paul Ryan is a lying, duplicitous, forked tongued son of a bitch, but I repeat myself.  I already said he is a Republican candidate.

And then there's Paul Ryan, the con man, the liar, the swindler, the bearer of false witness -- there's Paul Ryan blaming Obama for the closure of a Janesville Wisconsin plant that was shut down before Obama became president. Ryan, following in the tradition of accusing FDR of  causing an economic crash that started three years before he was elected. And there's Ryan condemning from the platform in Tampa that Obama disregarded the advice of a bipartisan debt committee that Ryan himself condemned. Did I mention that Ryan is a Republican?  Lying is what they do, whether it's lying to start wars, lying about how top bracket tax cuts don't cause recessions when they do and raising them prevents growth when the opposite is true.  That's what history says, but hey, you can't believe history -- history is Liberal. Hell you can't even hear History, it speaks in timorous whispers while the Right Wing roars and threatens and rages from every screen, from every radio speaker and every corporate owned newspaper.

But why lay the lies on Ryan alone? They're all liars and pickpockets and Romney has to take responsibility for it all.  He has to explain why taking the $716 billion in Medicare savings achieved by Obama and spending it will reduce spending and why reducing revenue will pay off the debt. He has to give us more than vague generalities and slogans and promises that are negated by other promises, but he can't because what he says is designed to "energize" people who know nothing and prefer to remain angry at their chosen scapegoats.  

But of course the truth would lose the election for him and of course the New Right isn't about fixing the country anyway, it's about power.  It's not about you or your life, your liberty or your pursuit of happiness; it's about power, power and more power and such such concentrated power that answers only to money -- power over a country that is more and more irrelevant, increasingly deluded and ignorant, ever more bellicose and yet has the power to destroy the world. 

The eye of the idiot

"For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet."

 On August 28, 1963, a year short of 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King told us he had a dream.  I wonder if anyone still does. 

Watching and listening to the madness growling and the lies howling across the country, I have mostly nightmares.  If  "America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned" it's now intent on defaulting on any promise it has ever made to anyone but the corporate robber barons, the rabid Christianist insurgents and the anarchists.

We have a self described Anarchist group of US military personnel, a militia plotting to overthrow the government by violence, some members of which are now on trial for murder. We have the most popular cable news network inventing calumnies against our elected government and some of our wealthiest citizens and businesses spending billions on so distorting the truth that we can't remember how we got here and are eager to repeat everything we did to cause the two largest economic catastrophes  in the last hundred years. We have widespread attempts at voter suppression.

No, you can't get to the truth easily these days, but you can bet that if the Republicans are screaming about all the things the demon Democrats and the Beast Obama have done, are doing and are about to do at any minute, you can be sure the truth is that the Republicans have done the same or are engaged in doing it or plotting it.  Yesterday I received a thick envelope in the mail, ostensibly from John McCain but certainly written by others.  Designed in every way to generate a sense of emergency, it insisted that I take the opportunity and use the express mail envelope (postage not included) to mail $2000, or maybe a little less if I want to risk an accusation of Marxism, as AN EMERGENCY DONATION to "stop the billion dollar Obama fundraising Juggernaut." 

Whether or not Jesus cares enough to weep any more, I do.  I do at least when the growing rage allows it.   Yes, yes, I know.  You poor victims of truth, justice and common decency will tell me as you've been doing since you turned the most prosperous nation on earth into the largest debtor with a cynical smile on your face -- you'll tell me I'm simply wrong and generally stupid because I'm angry at the "legitimate rape of America."

It's the logic of liars, the argument of the evil and if God has forsaken us, or left us behind, which may be a better translation, we're still too stupid to know it. We're legitimately stupid enough to see God's will in our own evil that we nod together like hollow bobble heads and agree with the Robertsonians that God saved the Republican convention from getting wet but if an asteroid fails to fall on the Democratic convention, it will mean nothing.

But in a way, that's true. This is America and meaning is in the eye of the idiot.