last year the markets crashed and show business got so boring

hey, look, afghanistan!  what the hell are we doing there, exactly?  pipeline or some shit like that?  keeping stuff away from russia and china?  jesus, what a waste.

a long dull story of corruption

installing media darling and ineffective general david petraeus at the central intelligence agency will march the united states a few very important steps down the trail to becoming a self-identified police state, though it does keep petraeus far away from a republican presidential run, which i'm sure is its primary purpose.

vermont single payer

now this is a big fucking deal.  vermont is on the way, and unlike in connecticut where the governor is a lying douchebag, the governor in vermont campaigned on it and still supports it! boo-yah.

shocking curse bird

i'm not sure that obama torpedoing trump today with his birth certificate is such a great political move.  the longer trump went on, and the longer these racist birther idiots sucked up the free oxygen, the better off obama was.  he says he wants to move on, but trump-as-clown and the birthers and fox news insanity were big time win for the president. i don't get the timing; it was a fun political stunt, but will it help 2012?  perhaps he was doing kerry a solid re jerome corsi?  or does he really have better stuff to do?  that's a nice change.

orly taitz sounds like arianna huffington!

yeesh, larry o'donnell has that psycho orly taitz on, and she sounds a lot like arianna huffington--or maybe it's the bear on the cleveland show.  it's either a world-altering conspiracy that i've discovered or totally meaningless, but it just can't be a coincidence, can it!?

harry reid? harry reid? really?

i can't believe it, but harry reid is really gonna pound the republicans with paul ryan's idiotic plan?  wow.  nice.

goodbye sarah jane

lis sladen has died.  the ageless dr. who companion, who travelled with tom baker during the pinnacle of whodom, will be dearly missed by whovians and other geeks and nerds.  goodbye, sarah jane.

politics as intramurals

in the united states, politics are intramurals.  every game is a home game; the true opponents are not on the other team, but instead are the fan base, the observers and the rest of the surrounding community.  it's not exactly the same in the rest of the world since most political parties didn't start primarily to facilitate access into the political class like they did here in the united states.  we have always been light, too light, on ideological friction.  our politics are just a bunch of fraternity guys playing softball as an excuse to drain some kegs.

non standard & quite poor

now it's pretty obvious that standard & poor's cheap political stunt has blown over, but the question i can't stop wondering is this: has barack obama finally started cultivating the proper sort of enemies?

his bad dream

over at crooks and liars, they have a piece about giant cockbag dylan ratigan getting chummy with even bigger cockbag andrew breitbart.  this is just the latest way in which ratigan has shown that he is in no way a liberal, or even too bright, and is at best an anti-republican conservative/big-business libertarian, which may actually be some kind of mutant like a teabagger.  apparently, ratigan wound up on msnbc because he wasn't a big enough douchebag to stay on cnbc, but is still a mindless, fox news-lite style suckup.  c&l's is absolutely right; there's no way breitbart should be given a forum in any decent media.  it's beyond shame because i'm pretty sure ratigan possesses none.

one of the commenters there brought up something i caught a couple of weeks ago, too.  ratigan kissed the ass of swift boat liars and brent bozell enabler and all-around genuine american piece of shit t. boone pickens on his show because of pickens's supposed support for clean energy without ever bringing up the problems with hydro fracking for natural gas.  pickens is another person like breitbart who should never be given a forum on the public airwaves because of his proven disregard for both the truth and common decency.  just for giggles, ratigan broke the balls of professional leftie adam green the next day when green tried to find out why ratigan was such an ass-kisser and yet somehow failed to ask pickens about fracking or his millions of shares of stock in the companies looking to profiteer from said fracking.

beaten and broken

well, this story about general sanchez maybe running for senate as a democrat and the dems getting all frisky thinking about it shows how fucked up our political system really is.  if we care about justice and human rights as a nation, perhaps one of our major parties should not endorse a known torturer for an exclusive national office.

come and have a go if you think you're hard enough

oh, the horror.  it's amazing that this gaffe so nicely backs up the president's campaign speech on wednesday.  i'm sure that his political team is mortified that the tapes are out now...

scenes from the class struggle in missouri

another glorious victory in the 21st century class war!  missouri joins the 19th century: as part of a bill to extend unemployment benefits in missouri using federal money, the assholes in the missouri chamber of commerce joined with a soft-headed republican dickwad to cut the period of unemployment insurance benefits to 20 weeks for the newly jobless, because who has less political power in american than the unemployed.

with this, missouri joins michigan in doing its best to make sure that the loss of a job will permanently cripple the economic futures of as many of its working-class citizens as possible, ensuring that they will never have the means to participate in the political process ever again or have any possibility of effectively waging war against the ruling class.

there are no happy endings. only endings.

the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards darkness, cold and death.

last dance

an american folk prayer

manscara?  guyliner?

burning in the desert burning

i remember freedom bombs!  do you?

only you and your ghost will know

the nonsense that nader cost gore florida is another zombie lie that will be with us forever.  in fact, it is quite likely that nader's vigorous campaign brought gore more votes nationally and in flordia than otherwise would have been cast for him; nader himself has acknowledged that many potential nader voters--who otherwise would not have been voters at all--later admitted that they chickened out and voted for gore due to media and peer pressure.

gore fucked up much.  he ran a shitty campaign.  he failed to utilize bill clinton where he could have made all the difference.  he didn't do a good job of messaging and pushing back against the media misrepresentation.

however, the thing that absolutely cost gore the election was his disastrous choice of the heinous joe lieberman as his running mate.

ed shultz is on board

holy shit, mrs. ed shultz had better be ready to rock and roll tonight!

single payer is the compromise

watching certain mindless, smarmy obama cheerleaders get all wet and sticky and in your face over obama's midday prototype campaign speech, i am reminded of obama's--and america's--recent failure in healthcare reform.  the whole thing was kabuki theater, much as it was with clinton, with obama never intending to harm the for-profit healthcare industry.  this was made clear by the good and hard-working smart folks who have been working on the healthcare issue for years who kept shouting into the wind that the liberal position on healthcare is a nation health service and the conservative position is the for-profit horror we have now.  single-payer, which makes the government the payer of record and covers everyone while preserving the private health care delivery system, is the fucking compromise position!  the fact that obama did not start from national health and fight like hell against every step to the right, knowing that single-payer would be the best he could hope for, shows that he wasn't serious at all.  purple prose and belittling mental midgets like paul ryan in campaign speeches aside, i wonder how serious obama is when he starts from right of center and is willing to compromise to really far right, just not as far right as teabagging asshole republicans.

governor cuomo, meet mr. nader

in the always vital counterpunch, ralph nader gets a little shrill with governor cuomo's priorities.  i'm sure such talk would be met with smug derision by some hard-nosed, steadfast, always-sensible  pragmatists, but cuomo and governor malloy in connecticut have shot out of the gates as obamaesque.

rachel maddow is relieved

she seems very happy too that republicans hated the speech.  obama is relieved himself that campaigning has started in earnest and actual governing can now be put in abeyance until after election day.

the rude pundit and paul krugman are not the same person

not so rude rude pundit on the president's speech: 5 simple words.

paul krugman essentially says not good enough since obama's flowery rhetoric will be the starting point, the left pole, and the finished deal will be a hell of a lot worse.

recent history says they're both right.

in case you forgot: bill o'reilly is a disgusting, sex pervert...

lying, vile piece of human filth.  dick morris, too.  assholes.

win the future

obama should fight the future and retire that stupid line.  it sucks.

dan malloy hearts barack obama

politicians lie, and health care is a long struggle because there's tons of money involved.  malloy should be ashamed of himself, but now that he's in office, he will never again be an advocate for real health care reform.  any progress on the implementation of sustinet in connecticut will come despite malloy.

peter gammons is no dennis eckersley

and the nesn postgame show is pretty fucking lame after a sox loss without eck or jim rice.

take his name in vain

so, who are the enthusiastic supporters for obama in 2012?

establishment dems and the village-idiot media class and the operatives of the bribery-class whose checks get a little bigger when there's a democrat in the white house.

who else?

anti-war?  nope.

labor?  nope.

energy policy?  nope.

equal rights?  nope.

health care for all?  nope.

economic prosperity?  nope.

progressive taxation?  nope.

civil rights?  nope.

government transparency?  nope.

transportation policy?  infrastructure?  nope & nope.

so unless you're an apparatchik or a fool, what about obama could positively energize you to vote for him?

ed shultz is shrill

sure, it's shtick, but at least it's an attempt at a little fire on the leftish over the pussified agenda obama craves.

empire of the senseless

why does anyone in this country give a shit about this disgusting inbred retard circus?  these are some of the most vile people on the face of the earth, equal only to some of the guests.  the best thing the uk could have done was to put that entire horrible family on one boat 30 years ago and let general gerry adams and the provos send them into exile once and for all in exchange for a cease fire.

rachel maddow looks like she's gonna lose it soon

i'm not sure how much more she can take.  piles of cash vs. a minimum of self respect...

update: maddow is on abortion at the bottom of the hour, back in her righteous comfort zone; it's like ben & jerry's to her.  and she has a point; those people are sick fuckers.

welcome to level 7, fukushima

it's as bad as chernobyl.  flantastic.  and a new fire today.  it's been a month; they don't have the end in sight.

alex proyas

my god, knowing was worse than i, robot!  how is that possible?  those had to be the lamest angels ever; why just choose the kids with aspergers?  and bunnies!  just awful.

hanrahan's wife

is slap shot the most entertaining film ever?

my daughter's favorite bad religion song

she has a little trouble with the city on fire as metaphor for destructive media culture, but she digs it.  she's also a fan of social d and the dead kennedys and x.  but she likes miranda cosgrove and big time rush, too; some things defy explanation.

update: she wants it entered into the record that she liked the music of the ramones and green day when she was a toddler.

what is john cole so afraid of?

it seems like he just can't deal with conflict or dissent or something.  it's odd, because obama has done much to alienate his base.  that's a charitable way of saying that he failed to live up to the expectations he created during the campaign.  he was a master of stating simply that he was a corporatist douche on the one hand, while spouting flowery and soaring rhetoric about some undefined, fanciful vision of hope and change before and after the simple, corporatist declarations.  blame the victim, but those people, the ones dumb or desperate enough to believe the rhetoric instead of the confession, are stung just the same.  obama has proven to be the master of getting backed into his chosen corner.  it's happened again and again, so you know it's not an accident.  his political skill is staking out a position weakly, failing to defend it all and winding up right in his comfort zone.  he's a right-wing politician, just not as ostentatiously stupid as paul ryan or michelle bachmann.  he cares as little about the deficit and the debt as the rest of them, but he is willing take any position in order to appear to be ahead of the prevailing, ruling-class fashion.

so back to the question: what's the problem?  fear of losing?  feeling lousy about backing the wrong team?  going with the status quo to feel like you have a stake?  it cannot be about results, because obama has failed time after time.  what he calls victories should be called failures by john cole and his people.

up until recently, i thought obama would not be beaten, but now i'm starting to question.  an energized base for the repubs, full of teabaggers and racist assholes and fueled by unlimited kochesque money, making a play for boatloads of those vile and ignorant 'independents' along with a disinterested and disheartened democratic liberal activist base leaves the 2008 electoral map in tatters.  could be, but nobody's gonna primary obama in any serious way regardless.

here's something

i don't believe a word of it, but hey, it's fun to dream!

is the answer the supreme court?

if the question is exactly what obama is good for?  because, we could get this idiocy from pretty much anybody in washington from either party.  no, you don't cut spending in the middle of a recession.  and if you need revenue, how bout raising taxes on the group whose wealth is accelerating?

wisconsin...

fucking wisconsin.  if this had been some jerkoff conservative peckerwood winning by 200 votes in georgia, and then a liberal, possibly african-american, clerk in atlanta had found 10,000 votes for the democrat, well, jesus, there would have been empty republican heads exploding all over the country!

virag's movie reviews: extract (2009)

finally watched extract after recording it on the dvr.  it sucked.  office space was understated and absurd and quite entertaining.  idiocracy so fucking cheap, with cheap shots, and chock full of profane hilarity.  sure it barely looked like an actual film, but it also sure seemed like a documentary at times!  extract had none of that fire or the entertainment of office space.  it really was kind of petty and mean and lifeless.  and boring.  some okay casting, though, so the utter uselessness of the whole project is very odd.  maybe mike judge should go back to creating ads for carl's jr.: fuck you, i'm eating!

is a bell?

glenn beck: bill o'reilly can skip the cialis tonight!

there's one person in america happier than you about glenn beck getting shitcanned today, and that's bill o'reilly.  that parade float-headed sex pervert narcissist cockbag is pleased as punch that one of fox newz's other giant incontinent egos will no longer be sniffing after his associate producers and interns.  wrinkly ole mrs. o'reilly is gonna need the zestra and testerone cream tonight!  the worst 6 seconds of her year.

nesn redsox postgame

the baseball season has been high in entertainment value so far.

so far, so good? wisconsin

still 50/50, with prosser down by a couple.  jesus.

invaluable work & wisdom from digby

the interwebs is a big place full of nothing and is mostly useless. however, there are some spots worth the minimal effort, like digby.  she's been all over this sort of horseshit forever, always bringing an invaluable populist perspective to topics usually argued by spoiled and secure blowhards from both political parties.

more wisconsin idiocy: paul ryan

just what kind of fetid puddle of rancid retard slime spawns such a vile troglodyte as paul ryan?  jesus, wasn't wisconsin supposed to have more fucking sense than mississippi?

wisconsin @ 10:35 edt

wisconsin's court vote is 50/50 @ 10:35 eastern time.  what the fuck is up with that?  those cheesehead asshole democrats were supposed to be on this shit, so there's no reason that dick prosser should be anywhere near close in this race.  if they fuck this up, how will they recall those other douchebags?

ncaa women's final tonight

somebody else will win this year.  that's something.  i really do think they would increase interest in the women's final if they had it on the sunday between the men's final four and championship games.  putting it after the men's championship always seems to find most of the enthusiasm deflated.  wouldn't putting it in the middle attract more college hoops fans, not just fans of the women's game?

i don't watch much women's hoops, but i was watching a little bit of the pregame on espn-something and caught a bit of abby waner doing studio work.  i never remember watching her play at duke--and she seemed to be a completely fine broadcaster for the few minutes i watched--but sweet jesus she's a stunningly attractive young woman.  shit.

ncaa men's final last night

now that uconn has won the championship while the can't-lose uconn women's team choked big time, i hope they get the hot tar and feathers out for geno and his constant bitching and run him out of town.  not gonna happen, but it would be nice.  the interest in the women's teams always go way down when any given school's men's team finds success at the highest level, and i'm sure this is one of calhoun's very best days.

subtle

here's some prime fukushima bullshit

this is from reuters.  expect to see tons and tons of the industry-fed bullshit in the coming months.  the welfare queens in the nuclear industry are seriously spooked and will do all they can to obfuscate the shit out of the fukushima situation and minimize the devastation as much as possible.  see three mile island and chernobyl.