Same as it ever was

• The reason so many incumbents and those who've made their living sucking on the teat of Big Momma Government (and I'm talking about Hillary Clinton mostly here) are so upset over the Wikileaks diplomatic cable brouhaha is because it lays bare the contempt that most American politicians have for their counterparts the world over and it reinforces the view that we hate everyone who we can't bend to our will. No one died as a result of these leaks and our national security isn't threatened, so calm the fuck down. In my book the gang behind Wikileaks are stone cold heroes.
• Glenn Beck says the food safety bill that passed yesterday is going to enslave us all. Yeah, safe food, that's the last lynch pin in the progressive plan for world domination. (cue eye roll)
• Some idiot Congressman from Texas is saying he'll put Obama in his crosshairs if he gets to be chairman of the energy committee. Nice. Real nice. That's exactly what we need, a white elected official using that kind of language about our black President. It's not like some nut with a basement full of rifles and handguns won't take that idiot seriously and try to shoot the President. No, that kind of thing never ever happens, anti government right wingers just don't do that shit, do they.
• Sarah Palin tried to tie Willow's anti gay slur tirade to her mentally challenged kid. She said she was going all Momma Grizzly on that kid because he attacked her family and her brother...except as usual Quitter Palin is lying. That kid attacked the low rated Palin show on TLC, he never said a word about Trig. It's automatic now, if you disagree with the Half Term Governor then you're automatically attacking her down's syndrome grandkid. Yeah, I went there, the kid is Bristol's, and not Quitter's.
• President Quisling is getting ready to capitulate to the right once again. Oh wait, he already did with this government wage freeze business. Way to attack your base again idiot. Vote Green in 2012, you may lose but at least you won't be responsible for inflicting that class traitor on America again.
• The IMF gets to fuck Ireland. Spain, Portugal, heads up, you're next. Then it's on to Britain, Canada, and the USA! Then after all the world economies are in tatters and there's riots in the streets over food, water, and electricity, we'll get our social safety net and big government spending back. Too bad that big business will cut in front of us in that government money line, oh well, maybe we'll get a few extra crumbs before they hog it all up. Seriously, after the IMF screws over your country and makes you cut everything, the only way to revive it is by government spending. It's happened in every country the IMF ever bailed out and that's a fact Jack.

Common sense and corporate decency are dead. And our political leaders and our diplomats have no shame, none. We're fucked until this house of cards collapses. Fucked I tell you.

But don't let all that worry you right now. You go out and brighten your corner of the world and to what you can to make this place a little better no matter what the pigfuckers in charge do. And remember, Dr. Monkey loves you. He really does. If he didn't then he wouldn't talk to you like a grown up.

This economics stuff ain't so hard

Here's my plan to stimulate the economy, but god knows they won't use it because it's just too common-sensical:

• Keep all the proposed stimulus money out of the hands of banks, financial professionals, and anyone connected with any Wall Street institution. Those bastards put us where we are today so no way in hell should they be allowed to handle one cent of that money.
• Use some of the money to fix every highway and bridge in the country.
• Use some of that money to fix up and update every public school in the country, and that includes all public universities.
• Use part of that money to restore art, music, and gym classes to every K through 12 public school in the country.
• Use part of that money to do energy audits on every federal, state, and local governmental building in the country. And then if changes are needed to make those building energy efficient then use more of the money to makes the changes needed.
• Use part of that money to purchase solar energy systems that will be mounted on every federal, state, and local governmental building in the country.
• Use part of that money to purchase solar energy systems that will be mounted on every retail building, church, and non profit in the country.
• Use part of that money to start industrial hemp farms all across the country. If we grew less corn and more hemp it would benefit our economy and our health because there would be less corn to make High Fructose Corn syrup with.
• Use part of that money to fund local neighborhood farms and farmers markets.
• Use part of the money to re-open factories that were closed when companies moved their manufacturing to China and other places.

Most everything I have listed could be done easily and would benefit the country in the short and the long run. If we used the bulk of the money to fix our crumbling infrastructure and to wean ourselves from using coal and oil then it's a win win for all of us, well except for big oil and big coal but who cares about them anyway, they've been fucking us for years and it's about time we fucked them back.

Everything in the above list can be done with American workers and can't be outsourced. It would put millions of people to work and hundreds of new companies would spring in to business to help accomplish all those things.

If we give stimulus money to Haliburton and Blackwater we are screwed. If we let big business handle things during this tricky time we are screwed. If we let Mitch McConell and Bob Corker get their hands on this money we are screwed. Same goes for Diane Feinstein and any other Republican wanna be.

It's back!

It's the most wonderful time of the year again kids, it's Secret Blogger Santa time!

For those of you who do not know the way secret blogger Santa program works is this:

• if you are a blogger who wants to participate send me an email with the words Secret Santa in the subject line. Send those emails to monkeymuckATgmailDOTcom. You will get matched up with another blogger and you will be their secret Santa.


• all emails must be received by me before midnight Eastern Standard time on Thursday Dec. 18th. All emails telling you who you are to be the secret Santa to will be sent out Friday Dec. 19th.


• you then do a post sometime before Christmas about what you got for the blogger you were matched up with.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Christmas secret Santa program, you do not actually have to spend any money on the person who you are a secret Santa to. You do not actually physically buy anything for the person who you are a secret Santa to. You only do a post about what you'd like to buy them, or you can do a post and include a link to a website they might like, or you can do a post and include a photo in it that your person might enjoy looking at. Again let me be very clear for those literal minded among you, and you know who you are, no money changes hands and you do not actually buy gifts for the person you are secret Santa to.

Last year we had a few people who ended up getting nothing for one reason or another and to make sure that this does not happen again this year I will ask you to send me an email back telling me who you are the secret Santa to after I send out the emails telling everyone who they are going to be secret Santa for. The secret blogger Santa program is all about happiness and joy, so send in those emails and be a secret Santa to a deserving blogger who you know and love.

DISCLAIMER:

The secret blogger Santa and secret Santa gift exchange idea were not my original idea. That honor goes to Dr. Zaius and to Germaine Gregarious. I apologize if any of you thought that I came up with this on my own. I did not. Hopefully now that I added that disclaimer someone, and you know who you are, will get their panties out of their crack and lighten up.

What to do with that leftover turkey

This list may be a few days late but feel free to copy it and use it later. Here's what you can do with that leftover turkey:

1. Grind it up and snort it.
2. Freeze it and make Turkey Pops.
3. Use it in poultices.
4. Bury it in the backyard and never speak of it again.
5. Make a nice warm hat out of it.
6. Mail it to someone you love.
7. Drive it to Walla Walla, Washington.
8. Breathe life into it and call it Mimi.
9. Take it out and just stare at it.
10. Buy it some nice shoes.
11. Caress it.
12. Enroll it in parochial school.
13. Slap the ol' Vulcan mind meld on it and see what's on it's mind.
14. Use it in your meat sculpture.
15. Get it stoned and then set it free.
16. Indulge in a Turkey-tini.
17. Tell it the good news about Jesus Christ.
18. Dress it up and pretend it's your child.
19. Unionize it.
20. Read a novel to it.
21. Sing arias in it's general vicinity.
22. Make good luck charms out of it.
23. Tattoo it.
24. Teach it a foreign language.
25. Introduce it to a Tofurkey.

Who was it?

Who was it who decided to keep making gas guzzling cars and trucks that are clunky and ugly? The United Auto Workers union?

Who was it that decided that they should not listen to their customers who kept asking that they build electric and hybrid cars? Was it the union?

Who was it that decided to not keep pace with the forward thinking Japanese and European automakers? Was it the union?

The answer to all three questions is no. The people who bet their companies fortune on big gas guzzling SUV's was the management at the big three American automakers. They were also the people who spent billions on getting their names on sports stadiums instead of investing in their employees. They were the dunderheads who said 'No!' to making and selling electric cars.

The UAW didn't make Ford, GM, and Chrysler make bad decision after bad decision. Instead the union helped keep the car companies afloat these past few years by giving back wages and benefits so the idiots who kept making bad decisions could keep on stepping on their dicks time and time again. Any bailout for the automakers needs to include job guarantees for union workers, an end to outrageous marketing (i.e. spending millions on sporting and entertainment events), and a provision that the big three produce a couple hundred thousand plug in hybrids right off the bat. They need to stop making Hummers and SUV's and start making cars and trucks that are economically and environmentally sustainable.

If we've learned anything from the bail out of the Wall Street banks it's that none of these companies can be trusted to do the right thing for the country, their workers, and for the planet in general. If we the people are going to be the salvation of these idiots in big business and finance then it's time we fucking called the tune that they must dance to. It's unconscionable that Bush and Paulson are bailing out Citi Corp when Citi Corp won't work with people they are screwing with high mortgages and high credit card interest rates. We can't let the auto makers do the same shit, it's time they all towed the line and started doing their business in the national interest in mind instead of in the blind pursuit of short term profits.

Made in the USA

Do you want to know when the economic mess will be over with? Do you want to know when this country will get back on track and our standards of living will improve? Well boys and girls, I can tell you when. Come here and listen closely to me...the economy will get back on track when the stuff we buy is made in this country again. Simple, isn't it?

You see kids, the 1940's and '50's was our last real economic expansion. And by 'real economic expansion' I mean it was a time when millions of people made good money and got good benefits on their jobs which enabled them to buy houses, cars, and send their kids to college. Almost everyone shared in the economic prosperity, not just the top 10 percent of the richest folks in the country. And the reason why we had that big economic expansion that lifted our parents and grandparents out of poverty was because most everything we sold in this country was made in this country. Your family and friends and neighbors worked in all those factories that made the TV sets, the recliners, the gas guzzling cars, the frozen foods, the cans they put Spam in, the Spam that was eaten, and so on. And they made good wages for doing so. And the companies back then took an interest in the communities they had their factories in because they had to, they wanted to keep their workers happy so that they would continue to work and produce so that they, the company that owned the factory, could make profits.

Somewhere along the line American business decided it wasn't making enough money and that the American worker was being greedy by asking for things like health insurance and a 5 day 40 hour work week, so they decided to shut those factories down and move them to Mexico, China, and other places. And for a time this worked out okay because we kept right on buying the stuff that we used to make that was now being made overseas.

But then it caught up to us and now we're paying the price with this global economic melt down. The economic house of cards is collapsing around us, as well it should. It's just absurd to think that any system like the one we've got can succeed. You can't keep wages and benefits low and expect people to be able to buy the flood of consumer goods that are made in cheaply in China. If you are out of work because your job got sent to a Communist country then you're not going to be able to afford what ever it is they're going to make and export back to us. The mantra for big business for the past 30 years has been 'profit at any cost!' and now that cost is finally being felt.

When we bring manufacturing back to this country and we do it in an environmentally sustainable way then we'll see this mess begin to fade away. And when we restore some sane regulation to big business, banking, and Wall Street we'll get the other part of our economic house in order. One of the things I learned from reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, she's another of my celebrity girlfriends by the way, is that the way out of the mess that Milton Friedman hath wrought with his free market fantasy bullshit is through a mix of government take over of certain key industries and by retaining manufacturing inside a country that has been hard hit by outsourcing.

It's my feeling that we'll have a saner more economically and environmentally viable world when we stop making American consumer goods in China and make them here instead. Our planet will thank us when we stop telling people in India that they have to use their land to grow flowers for florist shops in El Segundo, California and Sioux City, Iowa. Your kids and your grand kids will thank us if we stop burning so much gas and oil to bring the cheap sweatshop made clothes from islands in the Pacific to the malls of America and Canada.

If we make here, in an environmentally and economically sustainable way, then we'll all benefit.

(This post was inspired in part by this post by Matty Boy and by an increasing sense that the people at the top really don't know what the fuck they're doing.)

A simple lesson

This is your brain:

This is your brain on fearmongering Republican talking points:
This is your brain after Sen. Obama wins the Presidential election and the Democrats win a bigger majority in Congress:

Hey you...

...yeah you.

You know who I'm talking to here. You need to calm down and quit crying.
I know you're all apprehensive and worried about the election. You think the Republicans are going to steal another one. You know what? YOU'RE WRONG. Dead wrong. You're just making shit up to worry about. People have had it with Bush and Bush McCain. They've had it with conservative misrule and greedy power mad priggish pseudo religious Republicans. The right kind of people, and by that I mean progressives, liberals, people of color, gays and lesbians, and clear thinking independents, and forward thinking Republicans are going to band together and we are going to elect our first ever black President. We're going to vote in such numbers that our votes can't be discounted or thrown out. We're voting early, by absentee ballot, by any means necessary. We're going to win. So please, I beg you to stop whining, to stop spreading discontent and negativity, and to do something positive to help us end the Republican reign of terror. Offer to drive the elderly to the polls on election day, call your friends, neighbors, and family and remind them to vote.

Seriously, you know I love you and most of the time we're on the same page on most things, but you've got to stop your fucking whining right this minute or I'll crush your head.
I am not kidding, I will crush that melon you call a head if you don't stop scaring people with your doomsday bullshit.

Hubris will get you every time

Outside of their intellectually bankrupt ideas, the reason why Republicans are losing so much ground is two fold:

The first part of why they are on the down swing is because years ago they got in bed with the religious right and since then people have seen that people like Pat Robertson, John Hagee, and the Farting Preacher are full of shit.

The second reason is they are on the way out is because people like Michelle Bachman and Marsha Blackburn actually believe the bile they hear spewed on right wing hate radio. When you believe your press clippings and the crap they say about you on the Rush Hannity Hate Hour then you're done for.

I'm happy they are on the way out but I'm also afraid the right wing, both religious and radio talking heads, are going to get meaner and nastier in the coming months and years that they are out of power. One can only hope that the Republican party breaks into to two factions with the Jeebus lovin' reactionaries on one side and the corporate lap dogs on the other.

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!

This just in...

I've made my decision

All the delegates from Michigan and Florida should be seated and allowed to cast votes in the Democratic Party convention.  And in the interests of fairness Obama gets half and Clinton gets half.  It doesn't matter who "won" the primaries in either state because technically no candidate was allowed to campaign there since both state parties bucked party rules by having their primaries early.  The fact is that if all candidates had been allowed to campaign in both states the result would be pretty much equal anyway.  

If they seat the delegations and assign the delegates in the manner which I have judged to be fair then no one can bitch or moan later on.  

So let it be written, so let it be done.