Me Tunes

Burn Down the Pennsyltucky Vatican

Shocked, I say! Shocked!  These scumbags have been lying for years to protect their personal privilege and their tainted institution.  The Pennsyltucky Vatican is only the worst by far of a bad bunch.

One Year Ago Today

all killer, no filler 

so, last year when tilikum, the orca moral equivalent of our founding fathers, bagged #3, my then five year old daughter came up with an idea that might give captive orcas enough fun in captivity to stop murdering humans.  her idea was to take about 300 live penguins and drop them from a helicopter into the big orca tank a couple of times a week and let the big black and white dolphins go crazy eating as many penguins as they can while a big crowd watches.  any penguins that live through three drops get to live out the rest of their lives in a chilly, orca-free penguin house.  i think this idea has merits.  people would pay big bucks to see the orcas sucking the juicy innards out of the penguins and spitting out the floppy skins full of bones.  that's a hell of a lot more entertaining than the usual shamu performance.  and it might mean there's something a little bit different about my daughter.

Political Song For Al Gore to Sing

Evil or Stupid? OK, You Can Have Both

Evil and stupid.  This asshole probably should know that the life expectancy has not grown at all in any meaningful way since Social Security was started, but since he's a disingenuous scumsucker, you can't really be sure. 

Just plain stupid.  The dumb leading the hopeless.

So, Spitzer Has a Show! And Al Gore Is a Bigger Dope Than You Thought

Spitzer has a show now, but they fired the network.  Gore is such an asshole.  He proved in 2000 that he was as big a piece of shit as Karl Rove and James Baker and George W. Bush, and now in 2012 he has proven he's even a bigger fucking idiot than anyone previously thought.  Why would you hire one of the most dynamic and outspoken television commentators of his generation and then fuck him over when he tries to build your network?  The loss of Olbermann kills Current TV.  Spitzer's good; Cenk is okay.  The rest of it is tepid at best.  Oh, well.  Al Gore fucks up again.

Update: Holy shit, Al Gore totally sucks ass.

One Year Ago Today

workbook

22 years later, there's not much left to say about bob mould's workbook.  mould took the disintegration of husker du as an opportunity to stretch his composition and peel away much of the noise and establish himself as a major american songwriter.  it's hard for me to understand that this record has not been more widely heard, but it surely remains a mostly hidden gem.  well-regarded by those who have heard it, the record as a whole commands attention through understatement and introspection.  after the intro, 'sunspots', the four song suite 'wishing well', 'heartbreak a stranger', 'see a little light' and 'poison years' just amazes.  by this time, mould was a young man who had already had a long career.  workbook signaled his transition; now he's out and proud, buff and happy in ways he wasn't while in husker du.  this was the beginning of that growth, and workbook remains a touchstone. 

serial killer whale 4, the return of tilikum

tilikum, the serial killing killer whale returns to his killing fields today to stalk his next victim.  this brave freedom fighter, proven breeder and madman is looking to take his honorable resistance and killing spree into its third decade.  given the patience and intelligence he's shown thus far, it's highly likely he'll get away with it again eventually.  fight the power, shamu.

Welcome to the Sunshine State

It really is like a fucking third world country. 

Get Spitzer a Show

He's so much bette-r than most of the idiots on the tee vee--Lawrence O'Donnell--and Al Gore should get him a show.

This Is How You Parody a Smiths Song and Video

Peek Oil

Peak oil is always fun.  Some pretty well-meaning folks are very into the concept.  Really, since petroleum by-products are in everything pretty much, it goes way beyond cars and gasoline, and as a species we will do every frakking thing to extract every last bit, no matter how fucked up, dangerous or expensive it is.

One Year Ago Today

u heart mekons

i stumbled across a pretty good blog post about the mekons.  it's a nice rundown of the mekons recordings and some random youtube clips, including a great lu edmonds 'heaven and back'.  i'll disagree a little bit with some of this opinions, though.  i got into the mekons with mekons rock 'n roll; i think i bought the cd after the first time i heard 'memphis egypt' on the radio, so i jumped pretty quickly into the back catalog available at the time.  so good it hurts is a very strong album, right behind fear and whiskey and curse; to me, it holds up better than honky tonkin'.  so good it hurts, rock 'n roll and curse might be the best three albums in a row in the history of the known universe.  i'll also stand up for retreat from memphis and natural.  retreat is a fantastic rock album.  plenty of hooks and rocking songs; i know jon langford has said over the years that he's disappointed with it, but what would he know!  i got natural at the show, so i saw the songs live before i heard the record; over the years i've listened to it over and over.  great songs there; nice job, lu.  lastly, in a better universe, 'only you and your ghost will know' would have been the biggest country single of all time.

D. Luxe

No Justice for Trayvon

I guess the thought is 'Why bother?'.  He's already dead, and nothing's going to bring him back, so the assholes and their sniveling spokesman can murder his humanity and his reputation in order to protect their own personal privilege.  Our brand-new, shiny Hell is gonna fill up quick!

There Must Be a Special Place in Hell for C.L. Bryant

We should seriously consider creating an actual Hell so that this sorry son of a bitch can go straight there.

One Year Ago Today

poison years

plutonium: it's what's for dinner.  the devastation from the quake and tsunami in japan continues to be made worse by the deteriorating situation at the fukushima facility.  the responsibility to bomb civilians in libya and the hilarious flameout of various third-tier republican presidential candidates and television personalities have pushed japan and the quake and the leaky, melty nuke plant over the horizon, but that's not making any of it go away.  we'll be dealing with this long after the rest of the clean-up and rebuilding is done.  plutonium is not iodine. 

galaxy class

interesting blog by the galaxian here.  not about archaic video games, it's more about homelessness and philosophy and has a great bit for students.

hello cruel world: joe bageant is gone

a wonderful voice has left the chorus of righteous smiles.  joe bageant has died; his wonderful, humorous writing lives on.  he was always genuine and genuinely funny, a bracing antidote to the typical spoiled 'liberal'.  whether you've read him yet or not, you will miss him.

Calling All Asteroids

Where is the end when we clearly have outlived our usefulness as a species?  One of those ginormous space bastards had better be on the way. 

I Want to See Al Sharpton Squash Bill O'Reilly

O'Reilly is such a self-satisfied, empty-headed douchenozzle, and he's very upset that the murder of a black kid is getting so much coverage.  I really wanna see Al Sharpton put a beatdown on O'Reilly on live tee vee, not for Trayvon or any single person, but for all of America.  We deserve it.  And so does O'Reilly.

Update: And Newt Gingrich.

Update: And Tucker Carlson.

The Supremely Embarrassing Court and Obamacare

I have a hard time believing those retards on the Supreme Court will cock-punch Obama so obviously over the health care shit show, but if they do overturn Obamacare, in no way do I believe that action will help us get Medicare For All.

Political Song for Rassilon to Sing

One Year Ago Today

cheesing, it is fon to due

was this the last really good south park episode? 

another perspective on stossel and his fluffer 'stache

she's got a different perspective on stossel and his disingenuous ass-hattery, probably because she's got actual experience and john stossel is a douchebag.

juan cole, meet john chuckman

punch, punch, counterpunch.  while this piece was not specifically addressed to cole's smarmy screed--who the fuck is this provincial 'left' cole thinks he's schooling, exactly?--john chuckman does a hell of a hit job on the hypocrisy of the liberal interventionists who are so smug regarding the war in libya and their responsibility to protect _some_ civilians.  bombing for democracy indeed.

last weeks of the war

michigan, ohio, wisconsin, florida, texas: there's a class war going on, and there's a 99% chance that you are losing.  democrats appear more than willing to abandon every constituency except jeffrey immelt and lloyd blankfein; the republicans are little more than valets to the koch brothers.  without an army to battle on the side of most americans, it's not really not much of a fight, and not much of a war; it's more like a slaughter, without any responsibility to protect the innocent victims.

like a hit parade of stupid

into the top ten on today's hit list is this turd, a column by the apparently reliably dim-witted and helpfully incurious dan rodricks.  this scores high on the ass clown scale, from nobody died at three mile island, to a big supposed environmentalist who just 'learns more' and suddenly becomes a _huge_ nuclear power advocate, and even biofuels!  here is a major paper columnist who either doesn't understand what he's talking about or just doesn't care.  this, right here, is the biggest problem we face.  an ignorant and incurious opinion class who either by mistake or by design encourage and reinforce failure and retard necessary debate.  much like the minimizing of bob herbert and his opinions in the times by the village idiot cheerleaders, this vapidity is a symptom of our corroding political and intellectual culture.

The Secret Plan for Cheney

Is there a secret plan to keep Dick Cheney alive long enough until we actually have a government with enough balls to try him for war crimes?  That would be a really good plan.  He'll probably be a fucking Borg by the time they replace all his faulty components...

Happy, Happy Hours

One Year Ago Today

call in the airstrike with a poison kiss

as we continue to do god's work in libya,  upholding the 11th commandment of the responsibility to protect civilians, we will follow god and samatha power's word and protect the helpless civilians in yemen, syria, bahrain, saudi arabia and israel?  coming next week: the rest of africa? 

health insurance reform, or blame canada

the health insurance reform bill turned one, and both the brain damaged and evil were out in force to announce the end of days, while the easy to please, the reading impaired and the true believers were celebrating like mardi gras as the rest of us were simply mortified.  for all the benefits that supporters point to, the reality of the now year-old law is thin gruel when compared to the great need for not insurance reform but real, universal health _care_ coverage.

the triumphalist warblers and political tools see fit to ignore the very careful language: health insurance reform.  was it the best we could get?  did they do all they could?  did they bargain from a position of strength?  or was the outcome exactly the goal all along: preserve the insurance industry and insurance industry donations; preserve the welfare queen pharmaceutical industry and it's money?  we may never know the answer to these questions, but tune in next week to 'bullshit or not?'.

lots of these fools ask, 'well, how will we get what universal coverage, smart guy?'  'obama couldn't do it.'  whatever.  i don't believe it; obama had no intention of delivery universal health care; he had no intention of negotiating for universal health care; he had every intention to maintain what is essentially the status quo while putting on a puppet show for the democratic faithful, and reforming the current system at the edges to relieve much of the political pressure.  democratic health reform 2009 was cutting edge republican health reform circa 1994.

so, how's it gonna happen, smart guy?  the best hope is innovation in individual states.  that's how it went down in canada.  blame canada!  certainly many states are cesspools of backward thinking; we've seen it now in wisconsin, ohio, arizona, south dakota: utter fools and vile, santorum-baby conservatives fucking up their states.  it is very easy at the state level to sweep in and fuck up.  with luck--and after some hard work and hardball politics--the teabagging and overreach will also be undone as quickly.  not all states are so full of assholes, though.  in places where better people have some say, there has been real work on the health care issue.  both vermont and connecticut have been working for some time.  vermont has passed a single payer bill that has a good shot at becoming law.  connecticut has been working to use both state laws and federal programs and their wavers to put together a system that will have the ability to cover everyone in the state.  states are more flexible, for good and ill, and they can move more quickly _and_ with more resolve on this vital issue than the federal government is able or _willing_ to take.

the political belief is that once these programs are in place in individual states they will become very popular and spread from state to state, just like in canada.  as long as the united states has as much sense as canada.

a low-budget geraldo rivera

looking like a 70's gay porn fluffer, john stossel, primarily known as a low-budget geraldo rivera, once again shows just how abrasive and dim-witted he is on this fox 'news' train wreck.  jesus he's a douche nozzle.

That Song Could Be Your Life

Political Song for Dick Cheney to Sing

Big Easy Funfetti

Santorum is par for the course.

The Worst Use of Government-Run Healthcare Ever!

Where's the death panel when you need it?  Not only did that worthless fuck get a heart transplant ahead of someone who's not a mass-murdering psycho, but he got it paid for by the taxpayers.  What's good enough for that cocksucker is not good enough for the rest of America.  It's lovely to think he would have died if he'd been in the private insurance market.  That would be a red letter day.

Just Because You're Paranoid

Dave Lindorff is back over at Counterpunch on the Federal Government's and Obama's case regarding the offical, coordinated Occupy crackdown.  It'll be wonderful when all of Obama's useless idiots like Imani Gandy and the rest start bitching about it all over again.  Only the most brain-dead Koch-suckers would believe that Obama or any part of the Federal Government would support the Occupy Movement.

Digby Cannonballs Into the Santorum

Digby has some fun with Santorum and the creepy Quiverfull fucks who love it him.  Man-on-dog Santorum is not only a joke of a candidate, he's a joke of a human being, but his friends are even weirder than he is.  The Quiverfull wackjobs are no different than the Taliban and all the other evil, fundamentalist motherfrakkers who hate women, children, and pretty much every worthwhile thing in the universe.  But they especially hate and fear women, so they do everything they can to retard their development and experience in order to keep them right where they want them.  Scratch the surface, and the religious nonsense disappears; all these fundies, of every flavor, are simply small minded and fearful haters.

What Can You Say About Someone Who Puts Dr. Who and Battlestar Galactica as Some of the Best TV Ever?

The words fucking dipshit come to mind.  I liked some of the first Battlestar Galactica episodes, but the show blew donkey dick long before the botched abortion that was the series finale.  The reanimated Dr. Who has had some entertaining episodes, especially the Eccleston Doctor and the Tennant/Moffat ones, but much of the rest was just pointless.  I guess this level of analysis and judgement is the best you can hope for from the dimmer bulbs of bottom-quintile welfare academia.

Staring Into the Abyss

There's so much stupid on display here--read the comments, too--it almost seems like it's part of the Serotta forum.

Scams and the Scamming Scammers, Student Loan Edition

If you've ever had a real job, you probably have noticed that most professions and most careers would be better if the people populating them did not have a four-year college degree.  There's no reason for the IT staff, the programmers, the systems techs to have four-year degrees, especially since most of them will have majored in something that has nothing to with job, making college a very expensive social event.  Why would a facility manager for UPS need a college degree?  Hell, why do the supervisors at FedEx need college degrees?  They watch a bunch of temps toss packages onto conveyor belts and load trucks.  Frankly, most school teachers don't need four-year degrees.  A certification for elementary and middle schools should be a two-year deal maximum, like LPN vs. RN.  Sure, high school might need more basic knowledge, but many many people still teaching only majored in education and thus know much less about the math or science or history or English that they teach than you or I do--or many of their better students within a year or two of leaving high school.  Engineering sounds like a job that needs a four year degree until you graduate in engineering and then get a job.  That job could have been done--and would have been better in every way--with the work of a two year degree followed by all the shit you learn on the job that has nothing to do with the bullshit with which you wasted much of your time at RIT.  Why should the guy running your distribution facility have an MBA from the night program at a state school in Oklahoma on top of the barely-passed general business undergrad degree?  None of that garbage helps him or helps your business.  It's all absolutely pointless.  (Is there a bigger academic joke than the MBA in any segment of education starting as far down as all-day preschool?)

The four-year degree scam is a result two things for the most part.  The first is the student loan boondoggle.  For many kids and young adults, the four year degree requires a giant, debilitating debt, unless you are a drug-addled, brain-damaged scion of a traitorous family (or perhaps actual son of third-world dictator), legitimate super-genius who really should be in college studying something interesting, or a scholarship athlete.  Everyone else has to pay, especially if you believe that Williams for full pop is somehow better for the future B-minus student college-bound type than in-state tuition at places like UMBC or UMass Lowell or Salem State.  Those big-times loans will follow you forever, so the banks always get paid.  It's a good deal for them and bad for you.  The second major driver of the scam is the legion of sub-50th percentile Ph.D's from sub-50th percentile programs who get jobs teaching at sub-50th percentile universities.  Like the banks making their loans, these clowns and their bosses need these institutions to be filled to the brim each and every semester with students going into hock for useless, overpriced degrees that they don't really want, don't shouldn't really need, and aren't at all suited to.  All those bottom-tier university assholes make a nice salary perpetuating their lack of achievement and talent for another generation on the backs of their victims.

It's long past time to stop making overpriced and pointless four-year degrees a jobs program for people who couldn't find success in any sort of academic meritocracy at any level since they were 13.  Make the admissions programs uniformly rigorous and selective at the best schools to fill them with the people who deserve to be there and will actually study something interesting in order to further the knowledge base of humanity.  Let all the lesser degree mills, horrible private colleges, and tax-payer funded binge-drinking sleepaway camps wither, and let all the newswriters, IT staff, school teachers and administrators, service professionals, most engineers, manufacturing managers, bank employees and everyone else get their jobs with only the education they need to be successful at that job without obscene and otherwise worthless college debt, whether that education is a certificate, apprenticeship, two-year degree or in rare cases four or four-plus year degree.  The only ones who get hurt are the villains in the banks and the shitty schools pushing their junk on the kids.

Political Song for Rudolph Virag to Sing

One Year Ago Today

gnome chompsky

classic chomsky from the boston review a generation ago on humanitarian intervention, also known as freedom bombs or liberty slaughter.  chomsky's always a properly well-considered and acerbic take on this issue.  it's not new, and it's not going away.  one of the not-discussed facets to this latest round of glorious freedom bombing is that if the u.s. doesn't do it, it doesn't get done.  nobody else _can_ do this; only the u.s. can project force to any spot on the globe.  britain and france may have aircraft carriers and submarines, but they're strictly little league.  the arab league is t-ball.  when there's bombing to be done in a far away land, either the u.s. does the bulk of it, or it aint happening.

Theme Song

One Year Ago Today

freedom toast!

freedom bombs: protecting your right to be freely bombed if you live on top of our oil. 

we rule!

this sort of bullshit shouldn't bother me.  it's just more auto-fellatio by the cheering class, designed to make themselves feel smart and useful when faced with a political reality that they cannot influence and only comment on.  smarmy, self-satisfied and ultimately useless debate is about all we get these days.  freedom bombs only fall where we want them to fall.  we as in the united states.  we're the only ones who can.  france, italy, the uk, really can't project force the way we can.  they're helpful lickspittles, sure, and maybe useful for a little public relations, but the united states gets it done bombing-wise or it doesn't get done.

it's not about protecting civilians, not matter what some say they believe.  it never was and it never will be.  it's about protecting our interests and ensuring that oil and other useful commodities continue to flow to their rightful, god-given consumers.  coming soon: water.

half a life in japan

what's the half life of a crisis?  pretty short if it's measured by the attention span of the media.  but things are not going well.  the sexy freedom bombs and rescued f-15 pilots are sucking up much of the coverage, and exelon, jeffrey immelt and his pal foot-foot the president are very happy with this development.  it will help them and their plans for our glowing nuclear future if this thing disappears forever, but it's not gonna help japan.  or us. 

randy, randy hopper

yeah, it's pretty funny.  and he's an asshole hypocrite who couldn't resist the opportunity to hop on the careerist little tramp.  but i hope to christ his picture and the picture of the paramour are all over the airwaves during the election cycle.  he's a midget gingrich, and whether he is recalled or not, if the democrats and their foot soldiers don't use this asshole against gingrich and the rest of the republicans everywhere, they're hopeless.  this is an easy one kids.  it's got it all.  make sure it's got legs cuz i'm starved for quality entertainment.

Political Song for Seamus Romney to Sing

'Transexuals in Prison' was not the Nadir for Geraldo

He's finally cracked.  He still might be the sanest, most reasonable person on Fox News, but Geraldo is krayzeee!

He Makes Bikes

Renowned internet personality Richard Sachs also makes bikes!  This is a show bike, but where's the brand new Sram Red?  Frame details are wicked sweet, though, as usual.

Speaking of the Cancer That is Humanity

When's that fucking asteroid gonna hit?

Update: Seriously, another giant fucking dinosaur-killer asteroid right away is about the only hope left for intelligent life ever evolving on Earth.

One Year Ago Today

freedom tower glass made in china?

sweet jesus.  so i'm reading us glass magazine yesterday.  yes, there is such a thing, and no, don't ask why.  anyway, in the dec 2010 edition there is a single pager reporting that some of the glass for the freedom tower, now one world trade center, building will no longer be made in china but instead will be made by one of the original bidders, ppg.  wtf?  even better, the panes will have to be shipped to china to be made into the windows because the machine to do it is in china.  it seemed like a joke.  stuff for that building, the most american of american monument office towers of freedom and america, being made in china?  seems like there might be some really bad p.r. there if someone actually gave a fuck, but when i googled it, i got a trade publication editorial from 2009 and a rant on some pissy right wing blog from the same era and not much else.

holy shit.  i would have thought this would be a big deal.  you're going to rebuild the site, and you're going to use off shore suppliers instead of domestic ones, and nobody cares.   after all the outsourcing and off shoring and all the other betrayals of america and the american people by our galtian overlords, and the surrender of the political class to onslaught of ge and koch brother money, nobody cares that their american freedom memorial office tower isn't even made by free american hands. 

we have some pretty twisted priorities if the fine folks who are making a tidy sum rebuilding that site didn't think it was just a good idea to use domestic suppliers and labor to build the fucking building without having to be told.  assholes.

Ezra Klein Needs a Band Aid

Jeez, I bet that stung Lil Ezra a bit.  That's good though.  Good fun, but also good to smack these worthless bastards at every opportunity so that they will be met with acidic derision every time they open their mouths.  Klein is a big a piece of shit hack as there is out there, so fuck him.

Fund for Breitbart's Kids??

Did I really just hear this shit on Fox News?  That is the most disgusting thing I've heard all day!  That cocksucker Breitbart was unbelievably wealthy--along with being a ginormous piece of fetid human excrement--and to have some subsistence-level, worm-eating, teabagging, Fox News-viewing morons send money to the spawn of that shitbag is an outrage of epic proportions.  Humanity is a cancer in the colon of existence.

Steven Chu vs. Darrell Issa

Steven Chu is no great shakes--he's a huge nuclear power apologist and so probably kind of an establishment asshole--but compared to a vulgar fucking goon like Darrell Issa, he's a godsdamned Grade-A genius.

Politcal Song for Karl Rove to Sing

Illinois Funfetti Hangover

In the wake of the whatever-they-do-out-there-for-funfetti Illinois Republican primary, it sure looks like the professional republican asshole contingent have redoubled their efforts to clean up the santorum and all the random turds left on the sidewalk in front of eventual-nominee Mittens.  They've been at it a while, and I'm sure that most of those dickwads never thought that they'd have to deal with the likes of Senator Man-on-Dog and that reprehensible cocksucker Newt, but they sure sound like they've had enough, so expect some major shitshow if the plebes don't fall in line behind Romney toot sweet.

Supermarket Clash

Land of Lincoln Funfetti

Jon Lanford and Sally Timms may love the Land of Lincoln, but I do not.  They can shove their primary for all I care.  Romney's had this thing wrapped up ugly for a while now.

There's Got to Be a Better Way to End a War

That psycho bastard and his buddies may have in fact ended the Afghan War, but there has to be a better way to achieve that goal than an especially heinous embarrassing mass-murder of civilians.  If the Afghans really do somehow unearth the truth about the incident, I'm sure we will not hear too much about that truth on any American tee vee.  I guess if Bales and his murdering asshole buddies had used a drone to murder civilians, they probably all would've gotten a fucking medal!

Al Sharpton and Trayvon Martin

Al Sharpton is raging on his show tonight over the shooting murder of Trayvon Martin.  He's absolutely right: arrest that crazy motherfucking murderer right the fuck now.  If it had been a white kid shot by some trigger happy African American in a Florida neighborhood, that not-at-all-white shooter woulda' already been barbecued in Old Sparky.

One Year Ago Today

no shit

now the arab league is all bent because we're bombing the piss out of libya, not doing whatever it is they thought we'd do.  apparently it's their first cruise, but fuck them for being sean hannity stupid.  this is us, and libya has oil, yummy oil that the french and brits love, so what exactly did you think was going to happen, morans.

Finland has schools?

Diane Ravitch goes to school in Finland.  How the fuck can Finland figure out shit that we in the U.S. cannot?  We're doomed.

Frak me? No, Frak You!

Good overview of the frakking disaster of fracking on the Counterpunch site.  More and more of this dangerous and weird shit is going to happen as we scrape the bottom of every hydrocarbon barrel we can find.

Spitzer does Countdown

Eliot Spitzer guest-hosted Countdown last night.  He did a great job; I have no idea why Current TV hasn't put him on with his own show.  He's gotta be itching to get a little payback, and that would be good tee vee.

Political Song for Springtime

New, Chinese Knolly Free Radical

Now that all the Knolly stuff is proudly not made in Vancouver, B.C.--just across the bridge from the North Shore, can we at least get Knolly's Chinese subcontractors to cook up a bunch of Free Radical frames?  If you're gonna go the cheap Asian sourcing route, you should surely get your value-added out of those 12-hour, subsistence-wage shifts in Free Radicals.  Oh, make it in aluminium, not carbon, please.

Denver Renounces the Saviour

T-Blow just got t-blowed out by a radical conversion on the part of the Denver Broncos.  Well, that'll be that, and it is a huge fucking bonus for the rest of the Denver players that they will actually have a chance to be good next year and not have to deal with that asshole fucking up the quarterback position so heinously.

One Year Ago Today

 zoology or anthropology

limbaugh is a carnival barker.  he's the guy on the sidewalk outside of a sexshow featuring a couple of tired crack whores, hustling and selling to increase his share of the door.  small, though not in volume, he craved success and acceptance and would have joined any travelling show that would pay him.  he's found his circus and his marks, so he's going with it, but he's full of shit and an asshole and not much of an ideologue.  had democrats had a taste for failure and bad, bullying comedy, well, he would have joined them given the chance.

hannity is a true believer and an absolute fucking moron.  he couldn't even keep alan colmes in check.  he gets that bug-eyed, vacant look at the slightest deviation from the script and always keeps his guests under his own two-watt limit.  anything above that dimness he dismisses easily because he simply can't follow it.

beck is just fucking insane.  he used to be the most entertaining, but now that he is fading and loosing his ability to read his compass, he's getting a bit tiresome.  yet, this is a man that the teabaggers believe absolutely; his word is second only to gospel.  about now he's so far gone that he probably really believes he's fighting cylons, obama, bin laden and george soros alongside glen larson, starbuck, brigham young, adama, and joe smith outside the gates of heaven.  i'd imagine he ends it all fairly quickly in a tranny's closet wearing a rubber gimp mask with not one but two nooses tugging him home to kobol.  

santorum babies

maddow had some fun a few weeks back highlighting i-like-ike's position on unions and the tax rates under the president general and doing a pretty good job of showing how he'd be to the left of most elected dems today going by his speeches.  funny.  and a little bit useful to those saying that obama and clinton are both center-right politicians, kinda like nixon with blowjobs and weasellyness substituted for extreme paranoia and felonies. 

that being said, is it possible that the conservative movement in this country has in 30 years so polluted the gene pool of the republican party that they will be unable to function in even the most rudimentary governing?  mitch mcconnell, scott walker, chris christie, jim demint, john boehner, clarence thomas, rick scott, paul ryan, michelle bachmann, newt gingrich, these are all seriously disfunctional people, with little understanding of even the basic neccessities of government in general and the offices they hold in particular.  the koch brothers, the mellons, the coors family, the olin family, these are bad bad people, and they created this fundamentalist conservative movement to further their personal goals and feed their personal fortunes.  but have they done too well?  have they bred even the slightest ability or intelligence out of their class of government servants that they will be unable to do anything?  rather than the center-right democratic party withering and blowing away, will it instead be the hard-right, brain-dead republican party when they are unable to keep any branch of the u.s. government operating?  are all of the republicans now conceived in a slurry of leaking shit and bathed in astroturf tea and too stupid to remember to breath?  it looks more like that every day.

santorum babies all!

bradley manning

it's easier to dismiss failures--or downright surrenders or utter from-the-start bullshit--on large, nebulous issues.  the failure to achieve national health care reform, with single payer or a national health service or something, anything, and instead settling for absurd insurance reform can be obfuscated with talk of the senate and big pharma and rationing and the best deal.  it was a failure, but where did it happen, exactly? yes, many people understand that obama was never in favor of anything interrupting the insurance industry violation of the american people, single payer, national health public option, anything--and he lied about it from the start--but that fact is not as obvious to many others as it should be, especially staunch obama supporters and democratic apparatchiki, because the fuck-up is spread all around, and the final failure is shared broadly.  bradley manning is a different story.  it's one man being tortured by the entire united states government through the u.s. military with full knowledge of everyone including the president.  the fact that president obama did not order an end to this crime clearly puts the blame exactly where it belongs.

here's the invaluable counterpunch with ellsberg on the manning situation.

The Two Johns

Puerto Rico Funfetti

It's like The Rum Diary all over again.

One Year Ago Today

As seen in 2011.

libya

another one of the places that we wouldn't bomb if their primary export was turnips.  

happy sunshine perspective on three mile island

given the unfolding events in japan, on the issues magazine has a piece on the long-term health effects of the three mile island meltdown.  each and every time you see, hear or read that exactly zero people died and/or were harmed by three mile ilsand, remember this.

it was amazing that the official health studies just happened to validate the official narrative.  what are the chances?

Political Song for Bill Maher to Sing

Don Surber: Even Too Stupid for Fox News

Who is this person who is apparently so stupid that Fox News must seem intellectual and nuanced to them?  Imagine being such a fucking retard that you took the screeching harpies who are Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker seriously?  God damn, you gotta be a fucking moron!  It's kinda hard to believe that anyone that stupid remembers to breathe.

All right...We'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks. But we don't want the Irish!

Aw, prairie shit...Everybody!

One Year Ago Today

oh the rich people want what the poor people's got

saying that our political culture is broken is not exactly an original statement.  it's obvious that our republic has degraded into a cirlce jerk.  we are a one party state.  in theory there are differences between republicans and democrats, but two years of obama have shown that the results are mostly the same.  health care.  bradley manning.  war.  taxes.  economic policy.  energy.  no matter the style, the outcomes are equivalent.  the actual left wing of american politics is totally without representation.  the democrats are a center-right party; the repubs are an ever more extreme and ignorant right wing party.  the politicians described as far lefties by dickheads like bill o'reilly are pretty tame centerists.  yet, there are people in the streets in wisconsin and ohio.  they have no real representation. 

third parties won't work in this country.  without a parlimentary system, it's too easy for the two major parties, who represent exactly the same interests in every way, to keep them out.  and most americans buy into the status quo, egged on by opinion manufacturers of whichever jersey they've chosen to cheer for, so they resist even those who might actually represent them.  watch what happens on the blogs when anyone dares to acknowledge the actual conduct of the obama administration and compare it bush, raygun, whoever.  mass hysterics.  the folks who are honest are quickly surrounded by the circle jerk, and, well, nobody gets out of that alive.

in our system, political parties die and are replaced.  how might that happen to one of our two right-wing parties?  the folks in wisconsin and ohio probably point the way: by witholding support.  obama and walker are in the same party.  there are opponents of that party mobilizing in various states.  if those people had the will to withhold their support long enough to kill the democratic party, then perhaps a true center-left or left-wing party could form.

will that happen?  no.  there'll always be a funny anthony weiner soundbite, or bernie sanders rant, or something to keep enough of the serfs on the land.  americans don't have the balls for politics.  our only hope is that the ruling party might actually get so inbred that it will forget to breath and die.  santorum, baby. 

just a thought

i guess i understand that many of the large, leftyish blogmeisters get stiffy's imagining themselves becoming the next david broder or even ross doo-hat.  if they ingratiate themselves to the village just right, then some friend-of-obama-or-pelosi will pluck them from their seat on the lawrence o'donnell show and lead them to sententious tenure.  it's human nature, and few can resist the paycheck when they get that close.  after all, you're on cable, and obama says nuclear power is our future, so you puke up some misinformed banalities and just maybe you can skip the viagra tonight.  fine.  but where do all the other idiots come from?  this is not freerepublic, for christ's sake.  from the back bench left-wing bloggers to the legion of idiots and their comments that parrot the company line from their trenches in the realtiy based community, it is just a tiny bit disheartening to see all the stupidity on shameless display.  you don't work for the company you fool, so why do they carry their water for free?  of course, i dismiss the industry types and university shills.  they are hopeless and to be ignored.  i'm not talking about them.  it's the garden-variety igorant fuck that you find under every rock littered all over this new, left-wing media. 

again, it makes sense to be a toady if you're already getting paid and really really believe you could get a huge fucking paycheck some day.  and some of the folks out there have been properly sceptical from the start, but not as many as you would think!  are the rest just morons, misinformed or perhaps lickspittles by nature?  i'm not sure.  perhaps rather than hope for better from stars and up-and-comers, we should look for intellectual leadership and information from the old hands.  they've done their work, have found their voices, and are not interested in being careerist ass clowns anymore, if they ever were.

the nuclear issues in japan have highlighted a lot of the ignorance and useful idiocy of plenty of folks who should--and claim to everyday--know better.

magic, fear and superstition

surfing around the perportedly reality-based blogs in the wake of the earthquake in japan and subsequent nuclear catastrophy, i've been struck by the ignorance and misunderstanding polluting those sites.  i really do think it's a weakness of many 'liberals' or 'progressives' to embody the nerdgasm view of technology and believe that there's an easy answer right around the corner.  the issues with nuclear power have been hidden in plain sight for three generations, and these folks should know better.  perhaps they're being blinded by all the time they spent playing star trek role playing games before they discovered the internet.

for the record, the greenhouse emisisons for nuclear power are high.  the uranium has to be mined, after all.  then it has to be turned into fuel.  spent fuel will always be a problem, unless you happen to be in the business of building nuclear weapons. 

how much of our 20% dependence on nuclear power today could we eliminate with conservation and efficiency?  as soon as we can turn energy-star appliances and triple pane windows into atomic bombs, there will be a cabinet post demanding them.

Slainte!

Spring is here, Paddy.

Lee High!

Go Engineers!  For the next 24 hours at least, Lehigh is the most popular college basketball team in the universe.

Political Song for Michael Harrington to Sing

Poverty Shmoverty

Barbara Ehrenreich is loads of laughs on the "Culture of Poverty" idiocy that has poisoned American politics for more than two generations.  When you get right down to it, poverty is not only torture for the poor, but a horrible drain on the economy for the rest of the nation.  With our wonderful disparity of wealth, the whole of the 99% suffer because so many of our brothers and sisters don't have anywhere near enough money to survive let alone thrive.  The jobs don't pay enough, the workers don't have union representation, and the whole of the community suffers.  Even if you are one of the ones who are doing okay, you would be doing better running your store or your restaurant or your bike shop or working your worky job doing whatever stupid thing it is you do if the poorest of the poor weren't so very poor.  More money swirling around in the economy--and less money mouldering in the trust funds of the 1%--helps everybody, and if poverty is reduced, everyone benefits, so let's raise that minimum wage, pass the fucking card check, and pass universal or single-payer healthcare already!  Assholes.

The Agony of the 24" Children's Mountain Bike

Kid's bikes suck.  They look like garbage and are very expensive.  The best one is the little Scott.  It's got a cool little aluminium frame with round tubes, a downtube gusset and top tube routing.  I kinda dig it, stupid painted white crank and all, but the kid, being a picky little spoiled hard-to-please monster--proving once and for all that genes and environment do nothing to shape a wee tot's personality since I am the most easy going non-picky person in the galaxy--doesn't like it.  Too black, too green, too whatever, no Scott.  As much as I tried to explain that it was the best bike and the best deal, well, it ain't happening.  Such is life.  It's a neat bike, though.  Make the crank black and paint the fork to match the frame, and it would be just about perfect.  And make it pink.

One Year Ago Today

As seen this time last year:

wriggling around like a lizard in a tin

 

i've been told i'm a bad bad man, but the only fun even i've seen in regards to the truly terrible events in japan has been watching nbc news dance around trying to support general electric.  that jerkoff robert bazell spent the first 5 days minimizing as fast as he could, but last night he looked downright grim.  over the last 2 days the critics have finally come out on the tee vee, especially msnbc.  now the g.e. tee vee p.r. mouthpieces admit that they don't know and never did know what the fuck was going on, and that yah, it's pretty bad.  can we talk about a sane and cost-efficient energy plan now?  of course not.

That's Quite Enough of That

Welcome to year two, motherfrakkers.

Check Two

Mike Czech.

steel man cycles

i don't have anything to add about what is going on with steelman cycles beyond that it would be cool if he was healthy and happy and able to do his thing.  keep in mind, though, steelman has been making bikes a long time and plenty of those frames were amongst the most refined available at the time; i remember them for building cutting-edge steel mountain bike racing frames many years ago, using superlight steels and pure racing geometry in a wicked sano package.  most of the people who were on the cutting edge of mountain bike construction 20-25 years ago are long gone, but steelman has been building bikes all along and probably will continue.  that's pretty fucking cool.  this is a nice one, too.  that blue is sick.

microwavable karma

now that's funny.

believe it or not: someone dumber than most of the idiots on the serotta forum

it's true!  this asshole--scary scary jewzzzzz!--is probably way stupider than these assholes.  now that's scary...

political song for jenny lewis to sing in rome

long longing for ron paul

for some, the romance never ends.

beware!

scary.

red bridgestone rb-1

unlike some, i like red.  these last-generation frames were good, with the cool fork crown and all, but i just wish they had put a tiny bit more effort into fittings and frame finishing.  the '93 and '94 frames were just a little too 'mass production' for me.  those head lugs are wicked clunky and surely could have been much smaller and more sculpted, and that dropout finishing was quick and cheap, but it looks it, unfortunately.  i'm not a huge fan of the dropout eyelets, either.  it's too bad they never had the chance to do the rb-zip.  while these rb-1's looked a little cheap, the geometry was wicked wicked!

all the dumbest white guys in america, all in one place

and i don't mean the republican party!  some assholes should just keep their fucking mouths shut.  anything beyond drooling is far too difficult for them.  some of them are too stupid to take seriously.  and being a scum-sucking weasel may pay well, but you are still spending your life sucking down the scum.

watery hands

come on feel the santorum

we should all be proud, very very proud.  obama is the luckiest s.o.b. that ever lived.

rebekah brooks perp walk

she's all kinds of frakked.  the shears are out, and she's not gonna look good with a prison haircut.  this is so much fun, and with the love of jeebus will cause all sorts of problem for the u.s. parts of the fox news empire.  rock on, limey coppers!

political song for fukushima daiichi to sing

alabama and mississippi fu--what??

no fucking way.  whoever decided to extend the franchise to those places made a grave error.

kiss me kiss me kiss me

11 o'clock tick tock: it was all downhill from there for u2

reading some slobbering praise of the inexcusably heinous u2 by a fucking moron on a newly-independent bike forum, i was once again reminded that for a band that's been around for 33 mostly-awful years, they hit their high point very early on, after only one year.  '11 o'clock tick tock', produced by martin hannett, was the absolute zenith.  u2, in their role as feckless joy division sycophants, got martin hannett to produce the single with the hope that he would produce their album.  imagine boy and october produced by martin hannett instead of relentlessly radio-friendly careerist steve lillywhite!  for people of the right age, boy was a cool album.  since nobody could see the frightening future, it was easy to overlook the bits that felt a little off, and the joy division-for-dummies zeitgeist was a step above lots of the shit beginning to bubble up everywhere around that time.  i liked october for its rushed, amateurish feel; more time only would have made it more pretentious.  what would martin hannett have been able to do with those two records?  could martin hannett have been the one to beat some reality into bono's bloated, empty head, screaming 'no, no, no you fucking useless twat!  shut up!!!  no, no, no, do it again.  try again, paul!  fuck you!' until bono finally realized that he's basically an idiot and shouldn't do such a professional job of proving it every fucking time he opens his mouth?  would martin hannett have saved us all from the dublin messiah scattering crumbs?  we'll never know.  ian curtis died at 23.  bono will probably live to be a thousand.  if u2 had had the good sense to die in a fiery, lynyrd skynyrd-style plane crash after the recording of and before the release of october, they probably would have been remembered fondly as earnest, idiot-little-brothers of joy division and not the shameless and vile rawk monster they have become.

political song for darwin deez's sister to sing

first world problems: eastern woods research e-motion

with my completely disheartening search for both a kid's bike for a kid and a new full-squishy sled, i think i should just give up and get an eastern woods frame.  i'd really like an e-motion in steel, but i have no idea if they even make those at this point.  i like the e-motion design, and i'm not so much for the titanium, but in steel...that would be frigging lovely. 

southland 2012

southland is certainly more modest in scope and ambition than the show that started on nbc.  this year they're down to four regular cast members and a few key guest stars.  lucy liu and c. thomas howell really seem to be having a blast with their time on the show.  the single-shift scope of each episode works okay, but i think they could keep to the single-episode story for the uniform officers and find a way for regina king's detective to have longer, more reasonable story arcs that intersect with the other three main character patrolmen.  otherwise, what's she doing there?  she's good, but out of place in the current format.  the show's good this year, though.  entertaining so far.

go if you want to

kansas funfetti

frothy kansas.  probably gonna need oxiclean to get rid of the santorum now.

and there's one thing i know, we're not in the same boat at all

do you trust angus king?

no frakking way, but i'm sure the establishment dems will have a boehner for him by the time he's elected.

virag's movie reviews: immortals (2011)

it was the worst gods-damned r.e.m. video ever!

fred armisen is killing comedy

tee vee comedy, at least.  (seth rogen and jonah hill are taking care of whatever judd apatow missed cinema-wise.)  portlandia is excruciatingly terrible, and snl stuff is whatever the opposite of entertaining is.  it could be argued that he's doing his best to kill music, too, what with formerly being married to sally timms and dragging the hapless carrie brownstein down with him into portlandia.  fortunately, timms was able to escape!  armisen is another of those people who have a history and a background far more compelling than anything they've done in their careers.

virag's movie reviews: fatherland (????, make this movie)

someone needs to make this movie, an american, not a limey.  i know there was a stupid hbo tee vee movie, but this thing could make a fantastic real movie.  like the girl with the dragon tattoo, fatherland is an awful book, with a ridiculous middle-aged sexual superhero main character and a hilarious limey-centric point of view.  however, awful books often make good films, and there's a lot here to go with, especially if you were to put the defeated and useless british in their proper place in the story.  hitler's grand and ostentatious berlin architecture, the german-led european union, the american/german cold war and space race, 1980's technology in the world of the 1960's, nazis, americans, murder, anti-heroes, a corroding society, it's all here.  a good script could toughen up the story and characterization much like the swedes did with dragon tattoo, and now with the ability to portray the over the top nazi berlin with cgi, this thing could rock.  so, get to it.  make the fucking movie.