Point of Order: regarding Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, Kane West, and Joe Wilson

To all my Republican colleagues and the media outlets who give them voice: You can not go on endlessly about how horrible it was that Kanye West (the rapper) interrupted Taylor Swift's (the singer) acceptance speech while lauding Joe Wilson (the Congressman) for interrupting Barack Obama's (the President of the United States of America) address to a special joint session of Congress.

For context: Taylor Swift was saying thank you to her Mom and Dad and to all her fans for watching her videos and singing along to her vapid tales of teen-angst set to acoustic guitar. President Obama was talking about our options for reforming the health care system that is currently in the process of bankrupting the whole fucking country.

Kanye West distastefully expressed his disagreement with Taylor Swift being the recipient of her "moon man" award, thereby challenging the judgement of the panel of twenty-somethings who decided that they liked video A over video B. Joe Wilson distastefully expressed his disagreement with the President's description of the content of the version of the Health Care reform bill that he (the President) supports, thereby challenging the integrity and fundamental honesty of the leader of the free world on International Fucking Television.

To be clear - I'm not defending Kanye West - I think he's an ass. But I can say that Because I am intellectually consistent! There are obvious differences in scale, but they accrue to the benefit of MY argument. They were both stupid, but not equally so...

You can lionize Joe Wilson all you want - print bumper stickers - give him extra donations - wear buttons, hats, or whatever... But don't then turn around and pretend to be paragons of decorum by excoriating Kanye (or Serena for that matter). Just be decent and shut the fuck up. In the pantheon of mindless and Silly Ass behavior, celebrating the one while feigning offense at the other is akin to Zeus (which in this case is Greek for Douche)

Oh Republicans... doth thine fuckbaggery know no bounds?

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Introducing Joe Wilson; From ridiculous nutbag to "political reformer" in 82 hours

So I'm flipping through the channels this morning and come across a discussion on Morning Joe... They are discussing how Joe Wilson's completely inappropriate outburst during the President's address to a joint session of congress might have actually been a 'good' thing in that it injected a bit of friction into the 'debate' a la the British Parliament... They went on to reminisce fondly about how then Prime Minister Margret Thatcher would 'clutch her purse and sling right back' at her detractors.

The problem with that argument is three-fold... (1) This Ain't the fuckin' British Parliament!  (2) The President of the United States is the leader of the free world and is NOT the equivalent of the British Prime Minister  (3) There are Foreign Policy consequences when you publicly undermine the President's credibility by screaming that he's a Liar during a major policy address  

Once again the Refucklicans prove their unlimited capacity for rationalizing the most obnoxious and crazy-ass behavior in their dogged pursuit of the status quo...

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Well yeah, the market is bouncing back, BUT...

Let's see, last November, the economy was on a fast track to hell. The market was losing 6 or 700 points a day.  We saw a drop from 13,000 down to almost 7,000. Newly elected President Obama took office facing what all of the commentators and analysts agreed was the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.

Three months into President Obama's administration, faux news, Joe and Mika, and the rest of the R's were out in public proclaiming that because of the 'stimulus bill', we were now in the throws of Obama's economy.

By the 7th month of his administration, the market started to turn around (7 MONTHS) and the talking heads started changing the subject. And now in the 9th month, we are seeing slow but steady growth...

This morning on MSNBC the discussion of the market began with "Well, the market's are up, but..."

C'mon y'all.. would it kill you to acknowledge the positive? Considering the fact that the market is essentially fueled by confidence, what exactly are you attempting to do by downplaying the positives and overplaying the negatives?

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Don't sleep - Joe Scarborough is Emperor Palpatine

The way I think, I make it look easy, Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me...

I'm back y'all... I took about a nine month hiatus from blogging; got tired of trying to be witty and relevant and all of that shit... But Maaaan, there is just too much craziness going on right now to keep quiet. I swear, even if nobody ever reads this page, if I don't get some of this stuff out of me I think my head will explode. So now I'm back to do what I do; namely to offer poignant and cogent analysis which I will subsequently spoil with random and unnecessary slang and profanity... and shit.

To the point: I was banging on Buchanan, Beck, and Savage about a year ago... And while they're still asses - doing what they do - they are clearly NOT the fountainhead. The guy we should all be keeping an eye on is none other than Joe Scarborough.

He's nowhere near as acrid or caustic as a Pat Buchanon, nowhere near as paranoid or cynical as the psycho-babbleist Glenn Beck, and nowhere near as socially anachronistic and grotesque as a Mike Savage or Sean Hannity, BUT THAT WHY WE SHOULDN'T SLEEP. There is a clear synchronicity in their messages. The difference is Scarborough takes the time to roll his shit in powdered sugar, but don't be fooled, that is NOT a donut. He expresses precisely the same reflexive opposition and hostility towards Obama and EVERY initiative, plan, and program that he's launched; except Scarborough presents it calmly in the voice of a faux-rationalism that allows him to pass it off as an objective or reasoned criticism.

It's too bad, he's even taken little Mika to the darkside as well... I used to enjoy the interaction between them, with her as a genuinely rational alternative to the usual "I'm-towing-the-partyline-but-pretending-to-be-independent" charade. But that was then...

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A Bernie Made-off bailout?!?

So I'm on the treadmill this morning, and I happen to hear a reporter on Faux news discussing a pending request from victims of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme who are asking for some sort of Government bailout. The reporter himself was sympathetic as he stated that certainly those who had lost 'everything' should expect that they might receive some sort of restitution; then he questioned, "but where will it end". 

This was funny to me because it reminded me of another act of butt-ass ignorance that I had the privilege of witnessing... Some years ago, I was a soldier in the US Army. While I was yet in training, we'd spend all of the day in class and most of the evening in the day-room shooting pool, watching TV, and talking shit. One day, someone cracked the plexiglass on a vending machine with their pool cue. The insatiable greed of ordinary motherfuckas led folks to start fishing for chips and snacks out of the machine with coat hangers. This led to a larger break in the plexiglass. Which led to folks reaching into the machine with their hands. Which led to a larger break in the plexiglass. And so on and so forth until, by morning, all of the plexiglass was gone and the machine was completely empty. When the Drill Sergeants found the machine, there was hell to pay for the entire unit, not to mention the fact that we lost all of our vending machines thereafter. 

It never occurred to any of those geniuses that there would be a price to pay for their actions. It never occurred to any of those geniuses that you can never really have something for nothing. Once people became consumed with the idea that they could personally benefit, they stopped thinking and started reaching...

That's the image in my mind when I hear about the latest installment of bail-out-a-rama. Bunch of simple motherfuckas to self-focused to look ahead to tomorrow morning. Its tragic, but hell, so is life. Madoff was no Lex Luther, he was just a hustler; drop by ANY big city and you can meet a hundred more. And those who lost their money are not universal victims deserving of governmental intervention; you're just a bunch of people who got took...

But hey, now that I think about it... I got took for $30.00 in a three card monte game once. Not to mention all those times I was bamboozled by the man selling fake gold chains back in my teens. Is there an on-line application on Hank Paulson's website?

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The difference between Sexism and Racism...

Hiallry Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Katie Couric, Joe Scarboro, Pat Buchannon, Carly Fiorino, and others were pushing the idea that Hillary and now Palin were/are the victims of rampant sexism. The subject is fair game for discussion and debate, and may be raised in response to nearly any stimuli. When Governor Palin was first parodied on Saturday Night Live, even though the parody depicted both she and Senator Clinton, Fiorino went on MSNBC and declared the sketch "basically sexist".

But when election workers are reporting that across the country whites are struggling with the issue of race, and when McCain Palin were overtly using a campaign strategy to paint Obama as "not one of us", one Black man, john Lewis, makes a comment that links it to racism and EVERYONE of the aforementioned (with the exception of HRC who hasn't discussed it) has felt compelled to dismiss even the notion. Obama had to distance himself from the very suggestion of racism on the part of others because if he hadn't he would've experienced a backlash.

THAT is the difference between Sexism and Racism. People who discuss allegations of Sexism are furthering the national dialogue. African Americans who discuss racism are summarily dismissed as whiners and their complaints are deemed to be overblown.  

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Red White and BullS$%t - Interesting parallels of this election season

If you're a Democrat who has been in the Senate for two years, you are a Washington 'insider'.
If you're a Republican who has been in the Senate for 26 years, you are a Washington 'outsider'
***
If you're white, win a beauty contest, attended 5-6 colleges before finally graduating , join the PTA, are voted to be mayor by 1000 people, govern a sparsely populated state for almost two years, and randomly get chosen at the last minute to be VP, you've 'lived the American dream '.
If you're black , raised by a single mother, lived on food stamps, help the community, get into Harvard, become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, and are voted the presidential nominee by millions of people, you are 'uppity'.
***
If you live in an urban area and you get a girl pregnant, you're a 'baby daddy . '
If you're the same in Alaska, you're a 'teen father.'
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If you are born in the 50th state of the union and got a passport at birth, you are too 'cosmopolitan' and let the 'corruption of European ideals affect your judgment'.
If you grew up in the 49th state to enter the union, and never had a passport until 2007, you are a 'true patriot of America'.
***
Black teen pregnancy? A 'crisis' in America.
White teen pregnancy? A 'blessed event'.
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If you grow up in Hawaii, you're 'exotic'.
If you grow up in Alaska, you're the quintessential 'American story'.
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If you think it's okay to shoot wolves from helicopters, you're just an average American hockey mom having some fun.
If you try to ensure those wolves are treated humanely, you are out of touch with the average American.
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If you name your kid ' Barack', you're 'unpatriotic'.
If you name your kid ' Track ', you're 'colorful'.
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A Democrat who doesn't fully vet a VP is 'reckless'.
A Republican who doesn't fully vet a VP is a 'maverick'.
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Get 18 million people to vote for you in a national presidential primary, you're a 'phony'.
Get 1000 people to vote you governor of the 47th most populous state in the Union, you're 'well loved'.
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If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an 'empty suit'.
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an 'experienced executive'.
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If you cheated on your first wife with an heiress, you're a Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years, you're 'risky'.
***
If you are black or biracial, America needs 2 years and countless speeches to 'get to know you'.
If you' re white, America needs 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth of an acceptance speech to know you're 'one of us'.
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If you give your wife a fist- tap on stage, it's a ' terrorist fist jab'.
If your daughter licks her palm so that she can slick down your youngest child 's hair on national TV it's an 'adorable moment'.
***
If your pastor rails against inequality in the Unite d States of America, you're an 'extremist'.
If your pastor welcomes a sermon by Jews for Jesus, who preach that the killing of Jews by terrorists is a lesson to Jews that they must convert to Christianity, you' re a 'fundamentalist'.
***
If you' re 18, white, and get a 16 year old girl pregnant ' life happens'.
If you' re 18, black, and impregnate a 16 year old girl, you're a ' registered sex offender'.
***
If you're a Republican and you talk to America's enemies, it's ' diplomacy'.
If you're a Democrat and you talk to America's enemies, it's ' appeasement'.
***
If you're a Republican you think women should vote for a female candidate because you share the same biology, regardless of her stand on issues.
If you're a Democrat and you vote for a woman who shares your ideology, you're 'playing the gender card'.
***
If you're a Republican and are divorced once (Reagan, McCain) or twice (Giuliani, Gingrich, Limbaugh), you are a champion of Christian moral values.
If you're a Democrat and want to marry your gay partner, you are a threat to the institution of marriage.
***
If you are a conservative and reveal that your son will be deployed on Sept. 11, but that is only the date of the deployment ceremony, you are the mother of a patriot who is doing the best to confuse the terrorists and protect the troops being sent over.
If you are a democrat and announce the same thing, you would be accused of pandering to the public and trying to garner public emotion through a lie.
***
If you're a Republican and you don't wear a flag pin you're a 'maverick'.
If you're a Democrat and you don't wear a flag pin, you're 'unpatriotic'.
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If you're a Republican senator who solicits gay sex in an airport bathroom, you get to return to your job in the Senate and are encouraged to run for re-election.
If you're a Democratic Senator Having an affair, your political career is over and your wife who has terminal cancer is to blame.
***
If Bush agrees to a set date of troops leaving Iraq it is called 'horizons'.
If Obama calls for a set date of troops to leave Iraq, with the blessing of the Iraq government , it is called 'timetables', 'endangering our troops', 'cut and run' and 'wanting to lose the war for political purposes'.
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If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $ 70,000 to $ 400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are 'woefully inexperienced'.
If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the Mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the Governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you are 'well qualified' to lead the nation.

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Late Breaking News: OBAMA PLAYS THE SPECIES-CARD BY USING A CLICHE... In a SPEECH!!!

Senator and Democratic Candidate for President, Barack Obama, Shocked the Nation with an outrageous and vicious insult hurled at Pig-Americans. The Obama campaign which has displayed incredible message discipline until this point can not be given the benefit of the doubt. By attacking Pig-Americans and referencing their inexplicable consistancy even when said Pig Americans are wearing lipstick, he attempted to fan the flames of anti-pig sentiment hoping for some political gain. The complicit audience members howled in approval thereby displaying their incredible Pig bias as well.

When asked to explain his tasteless and insensitive attempt to play the Species-card, Senator Obama attempted to distract the press with some pansy-ass reference to "ISHUUES",   whatever the hell that is...

Nice try Senator smart-ass... but we heard you loud and clear with all three both ears...

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Random idiocies of Glenn Beck

I was flipping through the channels today and caught a glimpse of my favorite distraction, Glenn Beck. He was talking about oil and the need to drill for more. As I stumbled onto CNN I heard him dismissing environmental concerns, stating that there was virtually no spillage of oil even during hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

His point was, since there was no spillage there was no risk, and since there was no risk there was no reason not to drill for more oil since drilling for more oil would 'presumably' reduce our gasoline prices.

The hole in Glenn "the thinker" Beck's logic was that if there was no spillage even during Katrina or Rita, then domestic supply or the lack thereof can not adequately explain the precipitous rise in Oil prices. And if the rise in prices did not come as a result of a lack of domestic supply, then "more drilling" is the answer to a different question. He was presenting 'more drilling' as a solution to a problem that 'too little drilling' did not cause.

After every thunderstorm, solar eclipse, superbowl, graduation ceremony, and/or rock concert, our gas prices have climbed and in every case we've been given some lame excuse about the threat to supply. However, the threat has never materialized. The supply has never been diminished. Yet the prices, which have climbed a quarter at a time, remain at nearly $4.00 a gallon and fall only a penny at a time, even when the supply remains constant.

The prices we pay for oil are NOT being driven by the basic rules of supply and demand so it can not be manipulated simply by increasing our domestic supply. There is a ghost in the machine; and arresting the rise of oil prices will require that we deal with it. Sticking oil platforms off the coasts of California, South Carolina, Maine, Texas, California, and Wasington may transfer oil profits from Tehran to Texas, but it will NOT strip them away from Texico...

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More late breaking news: McCain Flip-Flops on Family Values!

Just a short time ago, the press began reporting that Bristol Palin, the 17-year old daughter of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is pregnant.

When asked about the Palin pregnancy, and the "vetting" process that Oldey McSame used in choosing Sarah Palin, the McSame campaign responded by saying that not only did they already know about the pregnancy; they considered  it a non-issue.

TEEN PREGNANCY is now a NON-ISSUE?  W.T.F.?  It appears the Republican Party is 'evolving' pretty rapidly now-a-days.

Now the count is no advocate of teen pregnancy, nor am I an activist against it. I think that teen pregnancy leads to a number of societal issues and problems, but that horse has already left the barn... All across the country, communities great and small are already dealing with the issue and it's effects.  So I'm not posting this to say that Sarah Palin is wrong, or a bad person or anything like that... But after hearing the Republicans talk for years about social pathology as though it was some shit that the Democrats invented and unleased on society like a virus, it is fascinating to watch them parse and squirm whenever one of their own turns out to be... well... american.

The funny part is the fact that McSame DIDN'T properly vet Sarah Palin; because there wasn't enough time to get it done between the Democratic convention and the Republican convention. When McSame realized that O didn't nominate Clinton as his veep, he went scrambling to find a conservative woman that he could add to the ticket hoping that she'd get him the disaffected Hillary supporters. And now with the trooper-gate drip and the pregnancy drip, the McSame campaign may finally be forced to explain why they are suddenly for these major philosophical issues that they were once against.

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