I'll be back sometime Friday...

...unless I blog from the library that is, because my cable, internet, and phone won't be hooked up until late Friday afternoon.

So until then my friends, I'm leaving you with some photos of the lovely Salma Hayek. Enjoy.

Fail out

Until they address the real causes of this "economic meltdown," which are the bad loans the banks insisted on making (funny what happens when you make loans to people who really can't afford them isn't it?), the endemic culture of greed on Wall Street and in corporations in general, and the lack of regulation and oversight in the financial sector, then no progressive or liberal lawmaker should embrace this bail out.

When the FDIC took over Indy Mac bank they aggressively looked through that banks mortgages and sought out those who could pay for their homes if the sky high interest rates were brought down, the same thing should be done now. Making thousands of people homeless isn't a smart solution. If some of these people who got these bad mortgages can keep their homes by having their interest rates brought down then ever effort should be made to save them. Home ownership is still the best option for many of these people, we all benefit when people don't default on their home loans.

Or maybe they should just do nothing until Bush gets out of office because if he and his people handle this bail out like they've handled the war of terror on Iraq, Katrina, and everything else then we'd probably be in a world of hurt. And the other upside to all of this is that the longer this drags out, the more it hurts McCain.

Happy new year!

Happy new year to all my Jewish readers! I hope all of you, especially Katie Schwartz, Angry Ballerina, Mathman and family, Amy Guth, Boxer Rebellion, and Tony Kornheiser, have a sweet successful new year.

These wishes of goodwill for my Jewish friends and neighbors do not extend to Traitor Joe Lieberman and his den of turncoats. May the ghosts of Democrats long gone haunt you forever for the way you have turned your back on the Democratic party.

Packed and ready

We've spent the entire weekend, just about, finishing up the final packing and we only have a few more things to go. It's down to the wire on getting out of our condo and into our new place.

We're both mentally worn out. The stress of all this has nearly caused our heads, especially Sparky's since she has more brains inside hers, to explode. Physically we're also near the breaking point. We've been packing, staging boxes, cleaning, and other chores in preparation for the movers on Tuesday. We switched most all the services over to our new place, electricity, water, etc, with the exception of our cable which also mean our high speed internet. Due to some asinine cable company policies I can't get it transferred over yet so that means I'll be without cable, damn!, and my internet for a few days beginning on Tuesday. The cable services here are scheduled to be to on through until the 30th so that means they could cut it off at one second past midnight tonight. If they do, then they do and I'll see you kids again as soon as they hook us up. I'll miss you but what with unpacking and setting things up in our new place I'll have plenty to do.

Wish us luck, send us some of your spare energy (if you have any that is), and I'll see you later my peeps. Much love to you all.

Belated thanks go to...

...the Washington Redskins for beating the hated Dallas Cowboys and for going 3-1 so far this season.


...the Boston Red Sox for making it to the post season yet again! Here's hoping you kick the Angel's asses.

...to the lovely and talented Diva Jood for giving me this award. It's an honor to be honored by my fellow bloggers, especially one so good as she.

Looks like I found your Christmas present!

It'll be the best $29.95 I ever spent on you.

Which Bush McCain will you vote for?

I found this over at Pulp Friction. Thanks for posting it first Karen!

RIP Paul Newman

Paul Newman is takin' the dirt nap now and I for one will miss him greatly. He was a damn fine actor, a damn fine sportsman, and a damn fine human being. Unlike a lot of his contemporaries he was faithful to his lovely wife and he remained a complete professional through out his career. You never saw his name among those who threw temper tantrums or caused problems on whatever movie sets he worked on.

One of my favorite films of his was Buffalo Bill and the Indians, which was adapted by Alan Rudolph from the Arthur Kopit play of the same name and was directed by Robert Altman. Newman was brilliant in this deconstructivist mid '70's western. It was misunderstood by the critics who panned it and it was ignored by audiences when it came out but it stands up today as a fine piece of film making and Newman's performance in it is nothing short of great.
My other favorite Newman film is Slapshot.
Newman's performance as the aging hockey has been who tries to rally his soon to be defunct team to victory through any means necessary is by turns funny, poignant, and sad. Watch this film if you get the chance and avoid the sequel like the plague.

Even better than all the films and TV roles that Newman left us with is his line of foods. I love buying Newman's Own products because all the profit they make on the sale of them goes to charity. And most of the charities that benefit from Paul's largess are charities that help out sick kids.
My favorite Newman's Own products are this sauce

and these cookies.

I know Paul wasn't a saint and I'm sure that some asshole will come out of the woodwork and say he was the worst thing ever to walk the planet, but in my book the man stood ten feet tall and he was a hell of a guy. Good night Paul, I'll miss you and you work.

There's no debate...

...that Bush McCain was extremely disrespectful of Sen. Obama and moderator Jim Lerher last night. Lerher asked him time and again to address Obama specifically but he refused to do so. And his refusal to look at Sen. Obama showed that the old man is either afraid to face his opponent directly or he's just being a petulant childish man once again. I don't know about you but I want a President who will look our friends, allies, and others in the eye when he negotiates or deals with them.

It seemed to me that James Carville, the master of repeating talking points over and over until weak minded people start to believe them as truth, had coached Bush McCain on his debate style. McCain kept repeating his talking points over and over and he did his best to even stuff them into answers where they had no business being.

My advice to Obama is that at that next debate he stop saying that the old fart is 'right.' The old man is not right, he dangerously wrong and he gave every indication that he'll keep the bull headed 'diplomacy' we've had for the past eight years.

Calm the hell down

America, calm the hell down. I mean it. Stop with the nervous Nellie bullshit.

The financial crisis is not a crisis for you. It's a crisis for the greedy pig fuckers at the top of the financial food chain who made all those bad loans. They thought they were oh so smart by lending big sums of money at high interest rates to people. But I could have told them that no amount of interest is going to save you when you loan money that is never going to to be repaid.

Many years ago, before Bush McCain and Phil Gramm and all those other Republicans and some Democrats deregulated the banks and the financial sector of our economy and they laid waste to all those great Great Depression era laws that would have prevented this shit from happening, when you went to a bank and you didn't have enough money to repay a loan the bank told you, "No, you can't have a loan, please get out." But after deregulation they said, "Hells yeah you can have a loan but since you are a credit risk we have to charge you a higher interest rate and we have to fudge your loan application a bit so that it looks like you've got more assets than you really do." The point is they made many loans to people who were credit risks, and please understand I'm not blaming the people who applied for those loans, I would have done the same thing if I had been in their shoes. I'm blaming the banks who made the loans. They got stars in their eyes and a boner for more profits when they decided to wade into the less than stellar credit pool. No one forced these banks to give loans to people who were considered credit risks, they did it all by themselves because they wanted to make more money.

And now when after they see what their actions have wrought they want us to bail them out and that's bullshit.

My over all point here is that you all need to calm down. Your home, your job, your bank account is not at risk here. It's the people at the top who are going to suffer. They want to scare you so you'll turn over more control to them. They want this to the the financial equivalent of what they did in the aftermath of 9/11. Don't fall for it, it's bull shit. remember all this panic is being brought to you by the people who gave you the Patriot Act, the never ending war of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bungled response to Katrina. Do you seriously believe the man who stood on a flight deck in front of a banner that read "Mission Accomplished" and told us that the battle for Iraq was over and that we'd won? He was wrong then and he's wrong now. He's worried that his pals in the very top of the business world will lose money while he is in office and that's why he's in a panic. He's worried that they might toss him into their version of Gitmo and do bad things to him for losing them all this money.

But seriously America, calm down. This shit storm is not going to hit you, it's all on them. You keep on keepin' on, go to work, pay your bills, and live your life. And if you laugh as the chickens come home to roost on Wall Street, then I certainly wouldn't blame you.

What are you doing to help your country in this time of financial crisis?

I'll tell you what you're doing, unlike Sparky and I, you aren't doing a damn thing. We, on the other hand, are keeping all your sorry asses afloat by selling our condo and buying a house. And let me tell you people I'll be damn glad when it's all over with.

We've spent our entire summer either getting our place ready to sell, looking for a new place, and stressing out over doing both those things. We got tossed out of our place when prospective buyers came by to see our condo and we had many people tossed out of their homes when we went to look at their houses. Finally when we agreed to sell our place to our buyers we then had to worry about finding another house to buy after one that we made an offer on had major problems with it. Thankfully we found a great place and we move in on Tuesday.

While I will never put the address of our new homes on this blog and I also will never put a photo of the outside of the house on here, I will tell you that it's a great house. If someone would have told me that we'd end up buying this house when we started out all this months ago I would have told them they were crazy but here we are with a great house in a super neighborhood. We are both excited as anything to be moving out of the condo we currently have and into the new place, in fact we got so excited that we couldn't stand it yesterday afternoon so we drove by the new house and as we drove past it we noticed that one of our new next door neighbors had an Obama '08 yard sign in their yard. Sparky and I both squealed with delight when we saw it. I'm never going to tell on this blog how much we got our new house for because I know some smart ass will leave a comment that says something like, "You couldn't buy a show box for that price where I live." But I will say this, we got a good deal on what to us is a lot of house.

In just a few days we'll be out from under the condo association, take possession of our new place, and move in. And when we become masters of our own home destiny then all this stress, all the worry, all the bull shit, all the hard work we did getting ready to sell our condo, all the hard work we did packing up our stuff will have been worth it because we will be in the last house we'll ever buy, barring either of us winning the Powerball and or Mega Millions jackpots that is.

So that's what we're doing to help the economy, we're buying a house, paying movers, and buying some stuff to go in our new place. We're doing all we possibly can, now it's time for you slackers to do your share too.

Self aggrandizement first, country second

So old man McCain wants the campaign to stop so he can go help bail the country out of the problems his deregulation hath wrought. How noble of him. How very noble.

Except it's not. It's a ploy and we all know it.

He wants us to say, "Oh gosh, what a selfless old man. How kind that he's putting politics behind and working to save our country." Well, if I was dropping like a rock in the polls in every swing state then I'd want a break too. If the bump I got when I made my cynical politically calculating choice for Vice President was was wearing off and people were noticing how inexperienced, unintelligent, and downright creepy she was, then I'd want some time off too. If my campaign bungled everything it touched then I'd want take a couple of days off as well. His selflessness looks now like timidity. If the shit hits the fan, and I apologize for using the word "fan" in front of you all, is he going to take a day or two off if by some miracle he gets elected? I can hear him now, "Oh no! The Russians are being mean to me and Congress won't pass my bloated budget and my the lobbyists who ran my campaign are mad as well, it's time to suspend my Presidency so I can have a nap. And for god's sake, don't let that idiot Palin touch anything while I'm sleeping. Hey, you know when I was a POW I didn't get much sleep. That's how the Viet Cong rolled."

Holy crap. Was this old fart the best thing the Republicans had to offer? The man who was admonished by his US Senate peers in the Keating 5 scandal? The man who has always been for deregulation except for when his chances of becoming President slip? The who won't let his running mate speak to the press or campaign with out being by her side? Holy fuck, this man is not ready to be our President, he's ready for a nursing home or a shuffle board court. And that's some straight talk you can take to the bank my friends, unless your bank has gone out of business in the latest financial meltdown that is.

Vote Obama/Biden and let's get our country back on track. Enough of the libertarian conservative Republican religious right wing bullshit. They've almost ruined us once more, it's time to put some intelligent grown ups in office again. We've had enough of petulant rich white guys who shoot from the hip and make decisions on the fly.

Guess who's back, back again

Ahhh, now that Sparky has gone to work and I've got Monkey Central all to my self I can relax a bit and sneak a smoke. Ahhhhhhh, sweet sweet tobacco, how I've missed you since my heart attack. Yesssss, inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Oh sweet jeebus how I've missed smoking. Huh? What's that noise? It sounds like a small child is hurtling itself at my front door. I better go check it out. Holy crap, it's my canine buddy Chester Cheesy Poof! What's up boy? Why have you come to see me?

Grrrr. Ruff, ruff. Arff. Bark. Bark. Ruff, ruff arf.

No this isn't a cigarette. Oh ok, yes it is. I'll put it out. Happy now?

Ruff, ruff ruff, bark arf arf arf.

Oh my gosh! Are you kidding me Chester? Has Bush McCain really suspended his campaign in the light of the economic meltdown that he helped create? You mean he's backing down like a spineless little ninny baby?

Ruff, ruff, arf arf bark bark.

No Chester, I couldn't possibly get back into the Presidential campaign, I've been off the campaign trail for over a month now. I've got other things to do.

Arf, bark, arf arf arf?

Well if you must know, I've got to finish reading War and Peace. I've got to finish those paint by number paintings, learn to waltz, train a bear to do some unnecessary highly invasive exploratory surgery, memorize my multiplication tables, make a list of things I need to forget to do today, and subdue my newest mortal enemy Nicolette Fury:So as you can see Chester I don't have time to run for President again. And besides my running mate is pissed about how I dropped out of the campaign without telling her. How can I run with out my girl Kristi in my corner?

Arf, arf, bark, bark! Arf, ruff, ruff ruff arf!

Holy crap, you're right Chester. I can't turn my back on my country now, I've got to get back in this race so that I can win it and save the USA from stupid politicians who are about to sell us out to the Wall Street fat cats once again! I've got to go warm up the hoverpod!Arf ruff ruff ruff arf! Ruff, bark bark. Ruff ruff.

Good idea Chester! You go tell Kristi that we're back in the race and to meet me in Oxford Mississippi the site of the first Presidential debate while I go do the rounds on the TV talks shows. Tell her I'll see her on Friday and tell her we're in this to win this!

Arf, arf, bark! Bark bark bark. Arf ruff ruff.

Oh that's just fat Elvis, don't worry he's harmless. He won't eat you. At least I think he won't. Now run Chester run!

Zaius, Dr. Smith, and Diva Jood better watch out because Monkey/Love is back! And we're out to kick some ass!

Christians can't count

Refresh my memory, how many is in a quartet?

Is this a good time?

Have you ever noticed how when something bad happens on the national scene the conservatives and the others on the wrong side of every issue, or as you know them, the Republicans and Libertarians always cry, "This is not the time to talk about ____."

If there has been yet another school shooting then they fill in the blank with gun control or stricter gun laws. To them it's never a good time to talk about closing loopholes in our crazy quilt of gun laws or about limiting people access to one of the main causes of death and destruction in this country.

If there has been another national disaster that we've been not ready for because too many resources are tied up in the endless quagmire that is the war of terror on Iraq then they fill in the blank with FEMA mismanagement. After Katrina they screamed, "Now is not the time to play the blame game!" And they said, "How dare you play the blame game!"

Well people in the wake of this latest disaster, the financial crisis, Sec. of the Treasury Paulson said something to the effect of, "Now is not the time to investigate the causes of this mess. Let's just roll up our sleeves and you give me all the money I ask for with no oversight and I may or may not fix this problem that I helped cause." Sorry Hank but that's bullshit. The time for not talking is through. It's time we stopped letting spoiled rich white guys who love to make decisions based on gut feelings decide what we talk about and when. It's time for our 'shoot from the hip' President to wake the fuck up and allow the grown ups who actually know something decide things for a change. I don't trust Chuck Schumer all that much, especially in the light of his decision to support Alberto Gonzalez Jr. as Atty. Gen., but I trust him a whole lot more than I do any Republican who voted time and time again to deregulate the banks and banking industry. Give me Chris Dodd and Joe Biden over Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney any day of the week. Hell at this point I'd trust the decisions of a bucket of spoiled shell fish more than I would a living breathing member of the Republican party when it comes to this mess.

Personally I think they ought to take whatever billions or gazillions or quintillions they decide to throw at this mess and give that money to the people who's homes are in jeopardy. They ought to buy those mortgages and make gifts of those homes to the hardworking Americans who got suckered into getting shitty mortgages that made those banks millions of dollars in profit. The people on Wall Street and those who made a ton of money lobbying for them ought not to get one red cent. In fact they should be made to give any bonuses they made over the past few years to the government and then the government should take that money and use it to rebuild schools where they should teach kids all about how FDR and the Democrats saved this country after the last time conservatives, Republicans, and Libertarians almost ruined us financially.

I'm against this bailout of Wall Street firms. I'm against the bail out of the US auto industry too. It's time to stop throwing good money at bad greedy stupid people. If the people who ran these investment banks were stupid enough to make millions of dollars in bad loans and if the US auto companies were so stupid and shortsighted that they refused to make hybrid and electric cars in an era when gas and oil is becoming ever more scarce then they all deserve to fail and have their bones picked clean by scavengers, after all they did the same thing to other companies during the 'go go bull market' boom of the 1990's. What was fair for the goose ought now to be fair for the gander. Let the bad businessmen fail and let their companies topple and then maybe when they're standing in an unemployment line and worrying about how they're going to pay for their lights and heat and groceries then maybe they'll learn what the rest of us have either went through or are going through now.

Nothing comes between a German guy and his Zither

And I do mean nothing!

Lest we forget...

Here's some of the "great deregulator's" greatest hits:

All that talk of deregulation the banks and the financial markets is awfully funny coming from the man who was BFF's with Charles Keating.

On a snide side note, I wonder if my lil' right wing troll buddy no_slappz lost his job in the current financial meltdown. Maybe he worked for Lehman Bros. and he's now trying to collect some of that socialist unemployment insurance. Dude, if you're out of work and need a can or two of food I'll be happy to help you out and I'm betting a bunch of my readers will send you some food as well. We liberals and progressives look after every one, not just ourselves.

You knew it was coming...

...the Presidential race just got a whole lot uglier. I expect the anti-liberal crowd to form an angry torch wielding mob any second now.

Canned "meat" update

"Kids, eat all your skallops or you won't get any tofutti for dessert!"

Boob Tube Blather

• I might try but I don't think I could despise Nancy Grace any more than I do right this second. I'm hoping against hope that they sterilized her when she gave birth to the anti-Christ a few months ago.


• That blonde woman on Show Biz Tonight is running a close second to Nancy Grace in my despise-a-thon.


• I could not be more pleased that Rachel Maddow's show is kicking major ass. Go Rachel! I always knew that there was room for and that people would flock to a show that was hosted by a smart funny progressive female. Now if only the idiots who run the free networks would give a late night talk show to someone like Amy Sedaris or Sarah Vowell, then we'd be cooking with gas.


• I love Lost waaaaay more than I should but seriously people, is there a TV network that didn't pick it up as soon as it hit syndication?


• Remember the good old days when Spike TV used to show back to back to back to back episodes of MXC instead of those skeevy UFC shows? I'd rather see Japanese people get whacked on their heads by cartoonishly oversized things and fall off of stuff than see a couple of trailer park rejects battle it out for meth money.


• Note to ESPN: it may be wrong of me to wish that Stu Scott and Chris Berman get stuck in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison for the next 20 years but I still wish it just the same.


• Miley Cyrus makes my ears hurt, my eyes bleed, and she makes the baby Jesus projectile vomit. Oh and is she still dating her dad or what?


• Attention Fox network, Gordon Ramsay isn't the huge asshole you desperately want to make him out to be. I've seen his shows on BBC America and yes, he says "fuck" a lot but he's actually pretty engaging and watchable on his own.


• Hey Little Britain guys, I'm really looking forward to Little Britain USA despite the fact that you're letting that awful 'Emily the rubbish transvestite' live on. That character stopped being funny after series one. Bring back the Scottish inn keeper who played the flute and please kill off Emily.


• Here's my idea to revive Saturday Night Live, make it a fifteen minute show. Just do the opening sketch and forget the rest because the rest of the show sucks, especially Seth Myers.


• One day in the not too distant future Paula Deen will have to trap, skin, and cook Aretha Franklin in order to keep her side of the pact that she made with Satan to be on TV for so long. Trust me, when it happens, it'll be a mercy killing.


• Why can't we have more talk shoes like the Graham Norton Show?


• And finally, are the people who were behind The Kumars at #42 and all those Alan Partridge shows busy doing any shows now? Because if they aren't then they need to be.

More corporate media driven chicanery

First the media cried he couldn't beat Hillary in the primaries and look how that turned out.

Then they wailed he couldn't keep female voters from bolting to Bush McCain, turns out they were mistaken about that too.

Now they're saying that whites won't really vote for him in November. Speaking as a white guy who is whiter than white, in fact I'm almost albino, my only regret is that I can only vote for him once.

The point, my people, is that the media has to have something to report, they need a controversy to keep them going. And just like in those first two cases, they're wrong about this one as well. Not only are whites going to vote for him, we're going to vote for him in overwhelming numbers, just like black people are, just like Hispanic people are, just like gay and lesbian people are.

I found out early voting here in my county in TN starts Oct. 15th and I'll be there with bells on ready to vote for Obama/Biden.

But enough from me, let's give the last word to our next President of the United States. Say, Sen. Obama, how much of the bilge that the corporate media spews do you think we should believe?
Dang, that much huh. Well, if you say so sir.

In the pantheon of horrible toys it ranks just above Bag O' Glass

Those kids look like they're really having "fun" on that thing, don't they.

Don't do it

If the idiots in Congress let the people who brought us the ineffectual response to Katrina, the endless waste of money and lives that is the war of terror on Iraq, and the squandering of the biggest budget surplus we've seen in our lifetimes handle this current crisis in the financial markets without any oversight then it's sheer madness. When Bush and his conservative cronies finally cause our economy to collapse, it's not going to be pretty. We'll all look like this guy in this Jack Kirby comic book panel:
This bail out MUST include help for the millions of hard working Americans who lost their homes after being given a bad loan by the banks who now cry for our tax dollars to save them. We've also got to address the root causes of the problems that led us here in the first place, deregulation of the banking industry and the insatiable greed of Wall Street and corporations. I'm a student of history and this current financial crisis stuff sounds a lot like what was said right before the Great Depression hit and it sounds like the talk that preceeded most every financial crisis that hit the USA in the 19th century. I hope we're not stupid enough to let history repeat itself again.

Monkey movie review round up

Here's some quick thoughts on some of the movies I've seen recently.

I can't be very objective about Morgan Spurlock and his movies because I love him so much. He's from West Virginia, which is not too far from me and so I consider him a "local boy who made good." I loved Super Size Me, I love his TV show, and I loved this movie. This film gives you some of the best reactions to our ill fated adventurism in the Middle East any where and it gives a quick concise rundown of the horrible things we've done to warrant the treatment we're getting in the Middle Eastern countries while we occupy Iraq. It's at times a funny, scary, imaginative documentary. I hope Spurlock keeps cranking these out for many years to come.

While this second movie in the stoner saga of Harold and Kumar is not as funny as the first one, it's still damn funny. If you liked the first one, which I did with a passion, then you'll like this one. Once again Neil Patrick Harris steals every scene he's in. The stereotypical southern couple and the "scary" black basketball players cracked me up. I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for these movies and if they make a third one I'll probably see it as well.
Coming from a theatre background like I do, I had always heard about the musical Sweeney Todd but I had never seen it or heard any of the songs from it. Then I saw this version. It was just okay. I've seen Depp do other roles that I liked better and I can barely stand Helena Bonham Carter, I could be wrong but to me she's a cold fish who is way too snooty for her own good, in other words, in my book she 'ain't all of that.' Now if only someone would come along and make a film adaptation of Into the Woods, then I'd be all over that mofro.

I caught this on PBS last night:

I fell for Billie Piper when she was on the new Doctor Who but in this film she seemed like she had been clubbed in the back of the head one too many times and she was doomed to wander this production in a fugue like state. Everyone else was good in it, especially Julie Waters, but Ms. Piper seemed out of place. Maybe her character is supposed to be like she played it, I haven't read the books these are based on. All in all though it was an enjoyable production.

Mini score!

I'm moving in a little over a week and yet I'm still buying vintage photos and magazines from antique stores. I bought a couple of issues of True magazine from the early 70's and I also bought a half dozen vintage photos all for two bucks today at an antique store in Greeneville, TN.

Here's one of the photos I bought:

On the back someone wrote:

Bob, Ramona, and Miresta
1327 Foothill Blvd.
San Luis Opisbo
1953

Congrats!

This young lady and I, the late Gus Hall*,
my all time favorite Cubs pitcher Fergie Jenkins, and the lovely Elizabeth Shue**all send out congratulations to Phil Fulmer and the Tennessee Vols for losing yet another game to the Florida Gators. Phil, seriously, you are a country bumpkin who has been unmasked yet again as a talentless idiot who has no business coaching a big time college football team but who inexplicably got lucky for many years. You should be fired tomorrow for losing once more to Florida.

Oh yeah, we'd all like to send out congrats out to the Chicago Cubs for clinching their division and making the playoffs. But seriously Cub fans, don't get your hopes up until your team is one out from winning in the final game of the World Series. After so many years of frustration on my part in which I was rooting for the Red Sox to win, they seemed to always find a way to lose it all. I hope your team wins this year even if it means you beat my BoSox in the series. You long suffering people deserve a win for a change.

*Gus Hall picture stolen from the Guys from Area 51
**I have no idea if Elizabeth Shue is a Cubs fan or not I just wanted to finally use that picture I've had of her for months on my computer.

My 2015th post!

I knew I'd hit 2000 posts when I started this blog about a year and a half ago but damn, I had no idea I'd hit 2015! So to celebrate my landmark 2015th post I leave you with this picture of a barn:

Don't get fooled again

When the shit hit the fan the other day about the financial crisis on Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial stocks dropped 500 points. Then the next day they rose 400 points. Crazy huh?

You're damned right it's crazy. And you are just as crazy if you think this is all over because of a one day rebound in stock prices. The fact is the fundamentals of our economy are not strong, no matter how many times a rich white man tells you they are.

If home ownership is out the reach of millions of working class families then the fundamentals of our economy are not strong.

If retirement accounts and 401K's are shrinking every day then the fundamentals are not strong.

If politicians who once championed deregulation with every breath they took are now against that very same deregulation they championed then the fundamentals are out of whack.

If you can't make ends meet after working two or three jobs then there is something fundamentally wrong about the current state of our economy.

If the only people who can get welfare in this country are the heads of huge corporations that gave tons of money to the politicians who are now bailing them out, then the fundamentals of our economic system stink like a fresh steaming pile of crap.

The fundamentally rotten nature of conservative Republican economics has finally culminated in this current meltdown. Just a few months back they were blaming all this on a few people who had gotten home loans they could not afford. Now they're blaming it on the institutions that made the bad home loans, but they have refused to lay the blame where it really lies: on the politicians who deregulated the banking and financial sector and the free market economic zealots like Milton Friedman and his acolytes.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 the conservatives began to systematically tear down and dismantle FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. The fiscal conservatives had always wanted to bring down those programs that FDR and LBJ built which had helped so many crawl out of poverty and had helped reign in the power of greedy bankers and businesses but they didn't have the clout to do it until they joined forces with the religious conservatives of the so called "Moral Majority." United at last in their hatred of "left wing" social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and of the Great Depression era laws that kept the banks and stock markets in check the newly powerful conservative movement began working day and night to turn America back into the country it was before working and middle class people had protections from predatory banks and financiers.

And under George W. Bush they finally got their wish.

And look where it's gotten us.

And now they want us to think that everything is going to be okay now that the Dow Jones Industrial stocks have rebounded. That's bullshit. When more people shop at stores that are locally owned rather than shopping at big box retailers, then our economy will rebound. When more people grow their own food and they sell their surplus to their friends and neighbors, then our economy will rebound. When people who work blue collar jobs can afford to buy a house, then our economy will rebound. When we have the kind of strong and vigorous regulation and oversight of banks and the financial sector like we had in the wake of the Great Depression, that when our economy will rebound.

Don't listen to Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbo, Laura Inghram, and other Bush McCain campaign hacks, the market will not correct itself. The market did not correct itself during the Great Depression, nor did it do it in Wiemar Germany, nor did it do it in Chile after we installed Pinochet in a coup. Free market economics are a sham. And as we are finding out the hard way, deregulating the banks and financial markets was a bad idea. Corporations will do anything they can get away with to make money for a few shareholders, it's the job of the government to protect the millions of us who are not shareholders in corporations from them and their greedy business practices.

Who's a fat bastard?

Me. I'm a fat bastard.

UPDATE: That's not actually our place. I took that picture of myself in a funky antique store just before I broke a vase.

One day after we get moved in our new to us house I'll take some photos and share them with you all.

A very special guest post from Art Linkletter

What I've learned from children is this:

• Susie has cooties.
• Jimmy is a doodyhead.
• Mrs. Weist smells funny.
• The janitor touches old Mrs. Klingman in her "special place" when he thinks no one is looking.
• John McCain will make all kids go to school on Saturdays and he's going to cancel Christmas so you better tell your mommy and daddy to vote for the tall black fellow.
• Mormons, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Presbos, Methodists, and Seventh Day Adventists are all going to hell. God and Jesus only love people who take up serpents and drink strychnine and so they will be the only ones in heaven.
• Dogs love to eat homework.
• Billy's daddy only started drinking again after his mommy had that baby who looks a lot like the Mexican guy who cleans their pool.
• No means no.

Screw Waldo, where's Carly?

One day she's riding high as the CEO of HP. She's cutting jobs, making ill advised mergers, and watching helplessly as her company's stock price tumbles into oblivion all the while shoving the ham fisted fist of management up the ass of her employees.

"Feel the power of my ring you damn drones you!"

But then seemingly the next day she's Bush McCain's top female economic advisor and she's everywhere on TV, radio, and on the road with her new boss

and his running mate.
Then in another cruel twist of fate Carly spoke too much truth, she said that neither her boss Bush McCain nor his running mate Bush Palin were qualified to run her former company. This statement enraged her famously ill tempered boss and he has banished her from his campaign. Now the question is, if she's no longer on TV and radio, where's Carly? Well, have no fear gentle readers, I'm all over this. My people and I are looking for her and this is what we found:


She was not in this dumpster in Gatlinburg, TN that my associate checked out. However there were a couple of bear cubs in there and my associate tranquilized them and brought them to Monkey Central where I am now in the process of training them to perform light opera and to do unnecessary highly invasive exploratory surgery.

Ms. Fiorina was not in this line up of Bollywood dancers. And she was not hiding in the bras or panties of any of these women either. I know because I checked them all. Throughly. Several times.
Carly was nowhere to be seen when I had my Christmas card photo taken.However the guy who took that photo told me that he had seen La Fiorina at a frat house party so I ran over to see if she was still there.Alas she was not anywhere to be seen but her date, the guy on the left told me that she got on the Girl's Gone Wild bus that had just passed through. So being the blogger I am I went and looked at some of the older Girls Gone Wild DVD's to see if she had been in any of the previous editions.

Nope. She wasn't in that one.And I suffered hysterical blindness before I could finish watching this one:

But I can report that I didn't see her in it.

My dumpster diving associate called me and told me that she heard that Miss Carly was going to be at a College Kids for McCain rally at Giant Stadium in New Jersey so off I went.

But when I got there neither the college kids nor Miss Fiorina were anywhere to be found. It was a shame because when they finally woke him up, McCain gave a cogent speech that only had 25 flip flops in it. And the people who did attend the rally really ate his speech up. They kept saying how dreamy he was and that if they were only 20 years younger that they'd "jump his bones."

As soon as I left my cell phone rang and it was none other than Carly herself! She told me that the guilt of fucking over so many people while she was at HP and the lies she had to tell on the campaign trail finally took their toll on her and she cracked. She told me she's giving up the lie a minute sexy swingin' Republican economic hit woman lifestyle and she's going to join a cult.Her new name is going to be Moonbeam McTwatty and she'll be selling flowers, pencils, and slightly used condoms on a street corner near the White House sometime soon. If you see her don't make eye contact or she'll take it as a sign you want to know all about her new life.