Idiocy

No comment necessary.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Since my return from Hilton Head Island earlier this summer, I have been trying to figure out a way to present/write this post. Fortunately, the Republican National Convention has given me just the platform. I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed by my ethnicity. I understand this is really difficult ground to tread without discharging numerous racial mines, so please bear with me. What I am mainly disillusioned by is our (meaning the white population) inability to embrace the changing ethnic landscape that this country is undergoing. It is my true hope that the 2008 RNC in St. Paul is the last time I have to look at a crowd filled completely with aging, out of touch Caucasians rallying for other aging out of touch Caucasians who are advocating a platform that supports only aging out of touch Caucasians. Seriously, I wonder how many of the delegates in attendance have taken a good look around their communities lately. Because, if they had, they would have to be a little shaken by the fact that the people in attendance with them in St. Paul bear little resemblance to those that they run across in everyday life at the convenience store, or dry cleaners, or grocery store, or dentists’ office. I know that the dems supposedly occupy the elitist ground in this country, but we all know that position is theirs solely because of the likes of Karl Rove and his minions. I defy anyone to spend a week in Hilton Head or Kiawah and tell me which party is the party of the elite.

Full Disclosure: I am part Native American, so maybe this post is nothing but sour grapes.

What was He Thinking?

As we roll through this lovely campaign season, or as I like to call it, the most shitful time of the year™, I found this little gem from Mr. Whitman and it reminded me of just how far we have fallen. Indissoluble companionship? Fucking blasphemy. The guy must have been some sort of dirty fucking hippie.

For You, O Democracy

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

The Free Market Ate My Baby

I am ashamed to admit that one of my best friends is a one issue voter. His issue is taxes. It actually goes deeper than that; he is a full blown Randian Free Market Whack Job™. He is completely opposed to any type of government handouts, basically any altruistic activity. What I find so ironic is that he fails to see the conflict with his position and the fact that he recently began day trading his wife’s inheritance after a prolonged period of joblessness.

We often get together to drink and argue. He says that my problem is that I care too much about others. I tell him that his problem is that he is pretending to be something he is not. No matter how much data and evidence I show him regarding who actually pays the majority of the taxes (answer: the middle class) and who the Bush tax cuts benefit (answer: not the middle class) he returns to this Atlas Shrugged argument about taking care of oneself and the welfare state. At this point I usually find the nearest sharp object and jam it deep into my ear canal. He then continues with the story citing the importance of high profits for the leaders of companies because without them we would not have jobs and they support all sorts of side industries (vendors) and they take all kinds of risk and they should be deified and perhaps have their faces carved on Mt. Rushmore. I then calmly explain that living wages are down, profits are up, and that the gap between executive pay and employee pay is at an all time high. Despite being faced with these arguments he still returns to the ideas that in a free market these supposedly abused employees could just go find another great paying job and move on. Because of course in a free market all things are equal (except of course for the tariffs and subsidies the government uses to manipulate various industries).

Why I can't stand Krauthammer. Reason #658974125

Let me see if I have this straight; in Charles Krauthammer’s world, lying under oath about oral sex is a crime and an impeachable offense, while lying under oath to protect your boss regarding an attempt to discredit an administration critic and someone who might hinder our march to Iraq is alright. I might be wrong, but they are both still about perjury, are they not? Krauthammer is doing every American a disservice by trivializing the conviction of Scooter Libby. Yes, Libby may have been low-hanging fruit, but his actions leading up to his conviction are clearly indicative of just how extreme this administration can be when it comes to getting what they want. In this case, what they wanted was war with Iraq, and they got it. Here we sit 4 years later, mired in the Middle East, countless lives have been lost or shattered and for what? Independence for the Iraqi’s? Vindication for a man angry about a supposed assassination attempt on his father? Oil?



As for Krauthammer’s claim that the jury convicted solely on the testimony of Tim Russert, this is simply not true. Several of the jurors have spoken out saying that of all the testimony they heard, Russert’s was the least important. Krauthammer’s cherry picking of the witness’s testimony reminds me of a certain administrations cherry picking of evidence, but I digress. Krauthammer is right about one thing, Libby will certainly be pardoned. The question is whether it will be before or after the 2008 election. My guess is that it will be the latter.