6 Days

I'm exhausted with this. More important, I'm really exhausted with being angry....please, please, please let Obama win so I can be at least a little bit less angry for a few years.

I'm just too tired for another 4 years of kicking everyone in the shins, I just wasn't born with Michelle Malkin's innate gift of hatred which flows naturally from her every oriface. My hatred had to be cultivated over many years and many tears and seriously folks...it takes a huge toll on me.

If you haven't already voted (I have) please do.

The Universe Can Be Fair, Who Knew!

If you've already seen the "woman chains self to home to avoid foreclosure" bit on the news you may recognise this woman. Sadly I could not locate a picture of her equally retarded cockroach of a spouse or I'd be making custom dartboards out of the pair right now.

What do we learn from this story? Hopefully we learn that when we hit rough financial times ("rough" being relative here since I've never known anyone going through "rough" times who could afford a french manicure much less a house in Mira Mesa, CA) that we probably should NOT run out and take out an ARM on our nearly-paid-off home of 19 years that 90% of Americans could not have afforded in the first place.

You just couldn't deal with the idea of selling and downscaling to a less expensive home in a "less desireable" location, could you? I'll tell you a little secret Mr & Mrs Dumbass: my home is paid for, been paid for a very long time and one of the reasons we decided not to "move up" was because of people like you. See, we just weren't real keen on spending a lot of money to live in a neighborhood filled with twat-brains like you. That would have been "less desireable" to us.

Mr & Mrs Reyno you'd laugh at my little house I'm sure, my 8 year old compact car would not impress you and my unmanicured fingers would certainly be fodder for a lot of jokes but you know what, I'll still have a home and money in the bank and food in my belly when you and your kind are sitting on a street corner waiting for the next soup line to open. The truth is I've been waiting my entire life to see scavenging pond scum like you in this position and was only afraid I wouldn't live long enough to see it. Your tears are like lemon balm to my heart and probably to the hearts of all the people you "helped" out of their homes over the years.

Sadly you'll probably be okay, more than likely end up still better off than the thousands who lost everything in Katrina or the millions who never had anything to lose in the first place. You should be extremely grateful I'm not running the universe or you'd spend the rest of your waste-of-airspace lives trying to decide between buying Top Ramen or toilet paper.

So what did I learn from this? Not that I'm meaner than a junkyard dog, that I already knew. I learned that it is entirely possible to be mad enough to spit nails and laugh till you pee your pants all at the same time.

No Good Words

Definition of "lying cunt". Oh, and fuck you Fox news.

While We Were Sleeping

Canada and the EU have begun working on a "free trade" agreement which would include the free movement of workers and reciprocal recognition of professional licenses and India is actively pursuing free trade agreements with both Japan and China.

Just in case anyone was still confused enough to believe that our current financial crisis would be resolved with a return to "business as usual", that is simply not going to happen.

I realize this hasn't gotten much (um, try any) media attention what with oh-so-much-more weighty matters in the headlines like Sarah Palin's clothing budget and what the latest ill thought out remark Joe Biden just made but in real-world terms this is likely to have a whole lot more impact on all of us than either of the above. I'm not going to waste anyone's time writing a thousand word essay on why this is relevant to us, a simple look at who buys our goods and who sells us goods and some basic mathematical calculations ought to make it all crystal clear to everyone except maybe Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

The days of the US dominating the world economy are done, we screwed the pooch on that one and frankly there is absolutely nothing we can do to change that. So what's left? Try for a seat at the table. A little humility could go a long way here folks.

There is the big question: are we going to start dealing with reality or are we going to continue pretending we are the lords of the universe in spite of all evidence to the contrary? I hope for all our sakes we choose the first option. Or we could just become a giant tax-haven destination offering fine restaurants and cheap real estate to the rest of the world. You choose.

Just something to think about.

Wading Through Pig Slop

Well I certainly pushed someone's button with the last post so let's clarify a couple of things.

Numero uno and most importantly: I have no intention or even any desire of shushing every voice of opposition. What I am saying and will continue to say is that in the name of "freedom of speech" and being "fair and balanced" we've actually ended up sponsoring lunatics.

If you cannot tell the difference between Peggy Noonan and Sarah Palin or George Will and Bill O'Reilly then you are part of the problem. Joe Scarborough may annoy the hell out of me but he is neither dangerous nor an idiot, I'd never mistake him for Lou Dobbs. If the differences listed aren't apparent enough for you then consider the fact that I have heard all of the above express the very same concern I am expressing, albeit in politer terms, over the last couple of months. They are, if anything, more horrified than I am at what the "Republican base" has become, a conglomeration of extremists of nearly every type.

The same comparisons can be made on the left, try Dennis Kucinich versus Al Gore for starters. Sorry fellow Lefties, Dennis is King of silly season and would have us all in soup lines left to do his thing. The difference is no one has given crazies on the left their own television shows, much if any media air time and thus far anyway they aren't holding rallies where followers feel free to call for death to their opponents nor is there a chance in hell I'd support it if it happened. I'm sure that will earn me no love from the left but see that's the thing...I don't care. If the only love I can get is from the deranged or the hopelessly naive then I'd call it a job well done to be detested. On the other hand I'm not inclined to declare war on them for the very simple reason that they aren't advocating for or attempting to incite violence upon anyone nor are they in any position of power to do so. If Cindy Sheehan got her own talk show and gathered the faithful to rally for some crazy agenda would I call for her removal? You betcha.

I didn't sign on to live in Crazy Extremist Land and I'm going to do whatever little I can do to stop anyone trying to lead us down any path heading us in that direction. That ought to get me on just about everybody's kill-on-sight list.

This brings us to the Bill Ayers versus the Alaska secessionist movement. A lot has been made of Obama knowing and working on the same board with Ayers and only a few whispers regarding Palin and the secessionists. In a perfect world neither candidate would have these associations but welcome to the real world where it often becomes necessary to work with, to some extent even socialize with, highly imperfect and sometimes even dangerous individuals.

Blowing up people you disagree with regardless of your intentions is never the correct answer, I know that, most Americans know that and for damned sure Sen. Obama knows that. If you believe Sen. Obama would actually sympathize with such action or in any way facilitate such actions then I have no problem at all saying you are as crazy and dangerous as Mr. Ayers was at his worst. Unfortunately for Sen. Obama, he like most of us, did not get to hand pick who he worked with or who he lives near.

Alaska seceding from the US to form it's own independant nation is kind of a no-brainer for anyone with even half a brain though I confess it would be amusing to see them try to go even 6 months minus their federal subsidies. Even Sarah Palin knows this and if you're thinking she is secretly plotting to gain office to free Alaska then you are also insane. The even sadder truth is that these secessionist movements are neither brand new nor isolated to Alaska and as the public discourse has become increasingly vile they have gained momentum. These groups and their sympathizers are scattered all across the country, in nearly every state and are often heavily concentrated in rural and semi-rural communities. Trust me on this one because we have them here in Pahrumpistan. You'd have a tough go of it getting elected to anything without "making nice" with at least some of them.

Kind of makes my original point: our complete lack of discrimination between "free speech" and "crazy speech" led to a situation in which Gov. Palin would never have been elected mayor much less become the Republican VP candidate had she not been somewhat cozy with a pack of insane secessionists. As much as I do not like Palin and consider much of her rhetoric dangerous even I understand this. You were wondering why we struggle to find decent leaders?

The old saying that "cream always rises to the top" is true when you're talking about a pail of milk but doesn't work out so well when you throw it in a trough full of muck.

Blood In The Streets

Not yet anyway but that would be next if we continue.

I'm not quite certain why I'm writing this at all, certainly it is highly unlikely anyone will listen to me anyway and in all fairness I'm not even certain I care. Maybe it just seems fair that I at least put this out there so I can say I tried to tell you and then laugh at the carnage with a clear conscience.

You need to stop. Now.

It doesn't matter if you're a conservative who blames irresponsible borrowers or a liberal who blames greedy corporations, you need to knock it the fuck off and accept that everyone had a part in this and no one from the riskiest low-income borrower to the most reprehensible corporate CEO did anything that over 90% of the human race would not have done given half a chance and more importantly, it's done and now we get to deal with it.

So what can we do? First off you can stop panic selling. At this late stage of the game you are not only destroying yourself but you are also destroying the only mechanism that has any potential to save your asses from living in a cave with no toilet paper.

I've done my part, I've bought up all I can afford to buy up while most of the public was busy locking in losses from which many will never recover but I'm only one person and I sure as hell am not Warren Buffet. Even he is going to give up on you if you continue on the present course of run-around-in-circles, scream-and-shout.

If you think you are screwed now just continue panicking and find out what really screwed is.

Next up, stop with the "neither candidate has the answers", "they're all crooks" blah, blah, blah, bullshit. Most of our elected officials are no better OR worse than most of us. We're truly fortunate that at least 1/4 of them are actually smarter than most of us. Believe me they have a vested interest in our survival and stand to gain nothing by impoverishing us all and eating our brains. While you're pondering that keep in mind most of you were more than happy to toss at least 25% of our population out with the garbage as long as you didn't think you were in that group.

Most of us only behaved better than the average CEO or pol because most of us have never been in any position to get away with the things they do. Given the opportunity many of us would be eating each others brains, if you doubt that look at Somalia or Iraq or any number of countries where economies and governments have failed.

Which brings us to point #2: understand that your neighbors survival is as critical to your well-being as it is to his. Probably has a lot to do with why I'm bothering to write this because I damned sure do not love most of you. Neither hard core conservatives nor hardcore liberals tend to get this (for very different reasons) but for the moment they had better at least try and fake it.

Point #3 is take a tip from the ancestors. Humans survived and exercised social control in the very distant past by a very simple mechanism: social ostracism. I would suggest that we drop the PC bullshit of "oh, I respect John McCain even though I disagree" and "Palin is being abused because she is a woman". John McCain is an asshole and a bully and that is all he has EVER been and Sarah Palin is being dissed because she is a raving lunatic. Gay people are not destroying America nor are immigrants and no I will not "respect your belief" that the earth was created in 7 days and is only 8,000 years old. I will call you an idiot and I will shun you both socially and financially in every possible way. It's way past time we stopped politely coughing when our friends/family members/etc utter this nonsense. The next time someone says something utterly retarded within your earshot....call them on it.

That pretty much wraps it up, stop tolerating and accepting stupidity and acting as though Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck have as much credibility and reason to be on the air as Tom Brokaw or the late, great Walter Cronkite. They don't and you know it and they've been allowed to spew their poison in the name of "fairness" and through our own inaction. I believe in free speech and fairness as much as the next person but providing airtime and a public forum for the basest and least intelligent among us is not "free speech", it's public sponsorship of insanity. No one is stopping these lunatics from getting their own blogs, there's no need to give them air time. If we're going to continue with this we might as well give Charles Manson his own talk show and let the insanity run its course.

All of that may seem to some like it isn't even connected but it is, all of the above are directly connected to how we've gotten to where we are today. Naturally you do not have to believe me, can call me an idiot, and we can continue on the current course. Let me know how that works out for you.

The Dangers of Channel Surfing

Margaret Cho, Craig Ferguson, and Sarah Palin in a 3-way? Skip to the last few minutes of the video and hope your capacity for mental imagery isn't as good as mine.

So You Wanted A Crazy Solution?

So the "rescue" bill passed, the market farted and all is still completely screwed up in the world. I'm still neither happy or unhappy about it because truthfully I'm much more interested in the dynamics of who voted which way on both the first and second bills and more importantly...why.

Fascinating that we had to add another $100 billion in fixin's to that crap sandwich to get supposedly "conservative" republicans to eat it, isn't it? Of course we had our own Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley who after being staunchly opposed to the first bill, eagerly gobbled up the second as quickly as my beagle eats his own turds. Nice to see irresponsible and capricious voting while the country is going down the poophole is bipartisan anyway.

Meanwhile I came up with my own "rescue plan" for the economy which took all of, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes.

1. Eagerly endorse and embrace same-sex marriage then launch an international ad campaign openly recruiting qualified gay and lesbian immigrants. We'd attract some of the best and brightest from around the world along with their assets both intellectual and worldly. Think of the lovely shops we'd get.

2. Raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour, phased in over the next 8 quarters, thereafter tied to core inflation and adjusted annually. Bet you wouldn't see much inflation.

3. Revamp the tax code. Close nearly all exemptions with the exception of home mortgage interest and dependent and medical deductions but lock in the 15% capital gains tax rate and lock in a 5% rate for anyone below the 15% tax bracket. Same for dividends. Investments would soar.

Sounds pretty crazy I'm sure but it's about as sensible as anything that's been proposed and far less looney than anything the McCain camp will do given a chance.