Free speech

So a backwards backwoods asshole says hateful things about gays and racist shit about how happy blacks folks were under Jim Crow and when he gets put off his TV for it conservatives cry that his right to free speech was violated?  Where were they when:

• the Dixie Chicks got booted off radio for saying they were ashamed the war criminal Bush was from Texas?
• ABC kicked Bill Maher off their airwaves?
• when Helen Thomas got crucified for talking about the Israeli led Palestinian genocide?
• when some people get picked on for saying 'Happy holidays' instead of 'merry Christmas'?
• when some were calling for the firing of Martin Bashir after he said someone should shit in Quitter Palin's mouth?

Your right to say anything you want doesn't apply to private business.  Oh, you can still say what you like, but if your employers doesn't like it, then your ass is gone.  The first amendment says the government can't take away your free speech, it's doesn't say a damn thing about private business.

Don't be stupid

Right wing conservatives love to twist history.  Facts be damned, they'll make history fit their narrative no matter what.  Some of their latest lies are:

• The Sikh temple shooter in Wisconsin is a liberal.  The logic behind this one is that the shooter was a racist skinhead and racist skinheads are Neo Nazi.  Nazi, in German, means National Socialist Party.  Since the word 'Socialist' is in the word 'Nazi' all Nazis therefore are liberal socialists.  There's a problem with all that faulty logic.  The problem is Nazism is a fascist political movement and fascism is a right wing conservative ideology.  If you doubt what I'm telling you, look it up it's history or better yet, ask a Neo Nazi skinhead if he's a liberal and see what happens.
•  It was Democrats who opposed civil rights for minorities, liberals were the ones with the water hoses trying to drown black folks.  This is nonsense and I have to go back to the end of the Civil War to show you why.  Abe Lincoln was a Republican, although today he'd be kept out of the party, he won the war, kept the union together, and freed the slaves.  For all that he was bitterly hated in the south.  For many years after the war being a Republican was not an option in my southern states, so even though many conservative southerners even though they agreed in principle with the Republican party, they refused to identify as a Republican.  So many who kept the machinery of Jim Crow segregation laws in place were in fact Democrats in name only.  They were conservatives, politically, religiously, and culturally.  Fast forward to the 1960's when LBJ got the Voting Rights Act passed.  Southern conservatives were outraged, they had fought desegregation and racial equality all along, and with the assurance that they could not suppress the black vote any longer, they finally jumped ship to the Republican party.  Go take a look back at conservative literature, books, magazines, films, and the like from the 1950's onward and you'll see that segregation and Jim Crow were two big parts of being conservative.
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was anti union and a Republican.  King was in Memphis to show his support for the garbage workers strike.  He was shot the morning after delivering a fiery speech in support of unions.  He not only supported unions, he supported birth control, anti poverty programs that relied on taxing the rich, and he was against the war in Vietnam.  King was hated by conservatives back when he was alive, they claimed he was a Communist, a union lover, and a philanderer who preyed on white women.  Conservatives today try to co-opt him because he's not around to speak for himself.

Turning the corner?

It looks like the French are going to run right winger Sarkozy out of office and they may elect a socialist in his place.  However, the strong showing by the ultra right proto fascist Marie Le Pen and her goons may complicate things.

You, Mr. or Ms. US Citizen, may be asking, 'Why is this important to me?"  Well, put down that super sized burrito burger nacho milkshake and turn off America's Next Top Idle and I'll tell you.

Our European trading partners, especially Germany's Angela Merkel have been pushing financial austerity as the path of the future for Europe's troubled economies, that means she's demanding little or no government investment in the private sector, massive cuts to social programs, and privatization of almost everything.  These policies, even though they've been thoroughly discredited and shown to be detrimental to economic recovery, are supposed to bring back the moribund economies of Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, England, and some want them in place here in the USA.  And siding with Merkel are the right wingers Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, and Sarkozy, head right winger in France.

Now, if Sarkozy loses, Merkel loses a key ally in her quest to shove financial austerity up the asses of the working masses in Europe.  And if enough people take to the streets to protest austerity and the new socialist head of France puts his foot down and demands higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, then maybe instead of making the poor and working folks pay to clean up the mess, they'll make the ones who caused it in the first place pay to clean it up.

If Obama loses a right wing head of state buddy in the G7, then maybe he'll stop swallowing the lie that we need financial austerity here in the USA.  Maybe this new French head of state will push back against the mania for balancing budgets and get us back on the path to bigger government investment in our economies, you know, like the kind that got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Just go away

• Bill Maher, go the fuck away. Stop saying the fat drug addict apologized to Ms. Fluke. He didn't. He never said he was sorry for calling her a slut and a whore. He said he was sorry for the words he chose, not the words he used. And if you think I'm splitting semantic hairs, you're a pot addled idiot. Just go the fuck away you smarmy creepy letch. And the next time you feel like giving a million dollars away, how about you give it to an organization like Doctors Without Borders or Partners in Health, oooh, even better, go to a shitty underfunded inner city school out in LA and buy them some books, musical instruments, and science lab equipment. Those kinds of folks need money more than Obama does.
  
• Post menopausal women who are criticizing Sandra Fluke, go the fuck away. Go the fuck away ASAP if any of you who are criticizing her also had pre marital sex, sex inside your marriage that didn't result in child birth, or extra marital sex because you did the same thing Ms. Fluke and her contemporaries are doing, taking the birth control pill.
• People who claim this birth control mandate is a violation of their religious freedom, go the fuck away. You're all too chicken shit to admit that what this is really about is your fear of women having sex and enjoying it. Go the fuck away you hypocrites.
• Lisa Murkowski and other female legislators who voted for the Blunt amendment but now regret it, go the fuck away. Sorry ladies, you can't have it both ways, either you support your fellow females or you don't. You fucking voted for the amendment and now you feel bad about it? Good, you fucking well should. Your vote was a giant step back for women and you ought to lose your ovaries for that kind of shit. Just take your dried up lady parts and go the fuck away.
• Legislators who are chipping away at our right to protest, go the fuck away. You bastards are supposed to be our servants, not our masters. You rigged the system to keep yourselves in office but I'm here to remind you politics is cyclical, you'll be out one day. You and your ilk can't go away fast enough for my tastes.
• Republicans who insist that Jesus would be against equal treatment for gay, lesbian, transgendered people, treating immigrants with dignity and respect, and single payer national health insurance for all, go the fuck away. You people obviously haven't read your Bibles. Jesus told us to love and take care of one another, he didn't say that we're supposed to be hateful assholes who use his words as a weapon. And stop using the gospels to justify your greed you greedy twisted fuckers.
• Ron Paul-bots, go the fuck away and take all the tea baggers with you. Ron Paul will never win the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. He's a huckster and a con man, he's taking your money and doing fuck knows what with it. And since you're dumb enough to believe that people will elect him POTUS and since you're dumb enough to keep giving him your hard earned money so he can waste it, you deserve all the scorn and derision I can heap on you idiots.
  

All of you, go away, go to South Carolina or South Dakota or some other hell hole and stay there while we build a wall around what ever one state you settle in so you can't mix with the rest of us ever again. Seriously. GO THE FUCK AWAY.

It's time for a David 'Wallbuilders' Barton 'history' lesson!

Back in the early days of America, while we were still a colony of England, homosexuality was rampant. The English were sending over boatloads of queers to bugger the godly and Jesus loving American colonists. But some of the brave Americans fought back by pouring hot lube on the British Nancy boys:


One of the brave American colonists, Roger Buggery, prayed many days to Jesus for a solution to this problem. And after 40 days of prayer filled days and masturbation-less filled nights, Jesus told him what to do.
Jesus told him to leave his good lady-wife and to hightail it to a shipyard. So he bid his good lady-wife adieu and told his Negro slave Mandingo Biggun to keep his wife well looked after in his absence.

With his wife in the good hands of his trusty God given slave, Roger went to the shipyard.
While there he made a giant wooden phallus that he was going to use to ram the buttocks of the King of England with so that the king would feel what it was like to be anally abused, which is what all those British gays were doing to the godly Americans. Jesus had told Roger that in this one instance it would be okay to violate the king with gay sex because it would teach him that it was bad, and that would make him stop sending all those child molesting raping hard bodied gays to our shores.

After 40 days of work and 40 nights of his wife being looked after by his upright slave, Roger Buggery finished the giant wooden dildo and he set off for the old world to rape the King of England with it. Once word got out that Roger was on his way, they did everything they could to stop him. They attacked his ship:

They put on wigs and swore oaths against him:
They smoked pot and took LSD in order to expand their minds so they could come up with better ways to stop Buggery. They scoured the internet and consulted astrologers to find ways to stop the king from being 'Rogered,' and yes, this is where that expression comes from, that's a fact, it's in the Bible.

But nothing worked because you can't stop a manly man whose giant wooden phallus is filled with Jesus spirit. God led Roger to the King's palace bedroom where he eased the giant dork of divine justice into the King's booty hole. As the phallus violated the King, the King's heart melted and he ordered the transport of the gays to the USA stopped. Once they had finished their business with the wooden penis, the King signed a treaty with Roger that said that the Americans were indeed the chosen people, not the Jews as had been previously reported in the liberal Jewish controlled media, and that the gays would go to Australia instead of America.
There was much rejoicing when the news got out. Roger went home after months away and there he found that God had performed a miracle. Roger's wife had become great with child while Roger was away on the Lord's business. Her swollen belly was proof that God blesses those who do his work.

So the lesson in this lesson is that if we do the work of Jesus, just as Buggery did, then the Lord will bless us. The other lesson is to not listen to the liberal media or academia because they'd never tell you about this bit of forgotten history. And finally, the last lesson is, all the gays need to be deported to Australia.

Praise Jesus!

You can't make this stuff up

I just heard that our 'esteemed' Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said that continuing US military operations in Afghanistan were in the best interests of the Afghan people. Funny, I'm old enough to remember when the Soviets said the same thing when they occupied that country.

We've learned nothing from history. Nothing.

An open letter to a douchebag

Dear 'Liberal' Douchebag Twat from Wisconsin,

You and I are Facebook friends no more due to the fact that you can't let go of your stereotypes about people here in the south.

You seem to think that the south is the only place in the USA where there are conservatives and radical right wing religious whack jobs. I'm here to inform you that you're an idiot for thinking that. Are there lots and lots of conservatives in the south? You bet. Are there lots and lots in your home state of Wisconsin? You bet. Do we have radical right wing religious whack jobs here in the south? Oh hells yes. Does your state have it's share of radical right wing religious whack jobs? Yes ma'am and you'd see them if you stopped looking down your nose at us. Yo, Madam Douchie, stop bitching about the splinter in our eye and do something about that log in yours.

It's not like Wisconsin cornered the market on liberals after all. Martin Luther King Jr, southern liberal. Al Gore Sr., liberal. Morris Dees, liberal. Jimmy Carter, liberal. Me and most all of my circle of friends here in northeast TN, proud liberals.

Now, I'd like to remind you of some of Wisconsin's most notorious conservatives. Joseph McCarthy, conservative. Tommy Thompson, conservative. Ron Johnson, conservative. Wow, how about that, the biggest conservative bogey man ever, Joe McCarthy, was spawned from your state. The people of your state elected him and he made life hell for left wing people for years and years. Holy shit, Wisconsin is the breeding ground for sleazy conservatives, conservatives whose witch hunts took the lives and careers of thousands of innocent people. Why I bet your grandparents voted for him. So that makes you and your family fucking despicable horrible people. How does it feel to have the blood of all those people McCarthy hounded on your hands Kate? Feels pretty slimey I bet.

And you know what? As long as you're hating on the south, please by all means, feel free to never ever come here. We don't need your sanctimonious type here. Don't ever come here and please stop using all the great things we have today that are or were brought to you by southerners. Don't use air conditioning, which was perfected by a southerner. Don't eat any of the produce that we grow here and ship up to that frozen hell hole of a state you live in. Don't drink any orange juice because they grow those oranges in Florida, a southern state.

But if you do happen to come down here to the south, we'll be nice to you because that's how we roll. We'll do our best to make you feel welcome because of a little thing called 'southern hospitality.' You ever hear of it? Hey, how come I never heard of such a thing as 'northern hospitality'? Oh wait, I know, it's because there no such thing. Yeah, we'll be nice to you. We'll be nice and offer you something to eat, something drink, a place to stay if you need one. And we'll even be nice when you drone on telling us how you do things up north. We'll smile, nod our heads, and be polite as you rudely tell us that we doing something wrong because we're not doing it the way you think we should be doing it. And we'll never tell you that you talk funny, even though you and most everyone up north will tell us that we talk funny when we have the misfortune of visiting your hellishly cold state. Please, don't misunderstand me, when I call your state hellishly cold, I mean it both figuratively and literally.

Finally, if I seem rude, mean, and condescending to you in this open letter, it's because I learned how to be those things in my early years growing up in the north. And don't get me wrong, I'm not tarring all people from Wisconsin with my brush, I'm just painting you with it because you're a closed minded asswipe who needs to be taken down notch. Many notches.

Now goodbye and good riddance.

Ironic

The teabaggers who say they want their country back want to return the USA to the 1950's because that's when white people ruled supreme and most all white folks had decent jobs, nice homes, cars, and were sending their kids to college in record numbers.
But what the teabaggers forget is that during the 1950's union membership was at it's peak in our country and that most white folks were able to get out of poverty and obtain those nice houses, new cars, and money for their kids college because they were union members. The radical right teabaggers love to complain about unions but it was unions who helped them get where they are today. And they refuse to make the connection to the fact that since unions have been on the wane, so have their wages and benefits.

It's irony in action.

First Under the North Pole

We had gotten word that there was a vast Communist work/re-education camp being operated at the North Pole so the Sec. of the Navy dispatched my submarine, the Nautilus, to check it out and destroy it if possible. Years of fighting the Communists had taught us one thing, and that thing was that when it comes to fighting Communism there was no better thing to fight it with than a long hard stiff object that's filled with seamen.
My first mate Randy Felcher and I went over our orders in my candle lit cabin.
When the temperature dropped unexpectedly while Randy and I were going over things he and I began to shiver uncontrollably. So I suggested we shed our chilly clothes and share body heat under my wool blanket. And that's all that happened in my cabin that first night on our journey to smash Communism at the North Pole. I swear. Honest.
Word got out about the night I spent with Randy and the rest of my officers soon began badgering me for the same treatment I had given him. I'm a firm but fair leader so what was I to do, I had to treat them all the same, so I sat down with them and scheduled a time when they could all spend time in my cabin discussing the virtues of our capitalist economy while sharing body heat in my bunk while under my blanket.
However, I had to draw the line at letting the enlisted men in my cabin so I let them listen to show tunes and Billy Graham sermons on the long trip to the North Pole under the sea.

But for some reason the men grew bored and restless. It was almost as if they would have been any other place in the world than on that submarine. So I came up with a plan.

I decided to spike everyone's coffee with some super strong LSD.
I figured it would liven things up on our long journey and boy was I right!
As soon as everybody was tripping their heads off out came the guitars and we sang sea chanties and Andy Williams songs. We may have sung a Paul Williams song or two, I'm not entirely sure, it was some kick ass acid after all.We also got topless and practiced the dark tonsorial arts. Hot oil treatments were also given but that's all I'm allowed to say.
Then somewhere near the Alaskan coast, water started coming in our sub and even though we were tripping balls we plugged that leak...with CPO Sharkey's head. He loved the US Navy and he made the ultimate sacrifice for us, his shipmates. Except that it turned out that we only hallucinated the water and it ends up we killed poor Sharkey for no good reason. But seeing as how I was a commander of the vessel and the leader of my men, I ate his heart and liver so his warrior soul wouldn't go to waste. And it had the effect of showing the restless tripping crew just who was in charge.
As we approached the polar region I told the ship's chemist to make the next batch of acid stronger and he complied. So by the time we reached the polar ice cap we were so whacked out of our gourds we were seeing Commies everywhere, even behind our eye lids.
I ordered the sub to cut power so we could all chill out and come down from our LSD highs. The officers and crew drank orange juice by the gallon to purge their systems while I read them some poems by Emily Dickinson and LeRoi Jones.
After we all came down enough to function properly I ordered the ship's cook to roast that pesky albatross that had been shadowing us all the way north. Turns out albatross is mighty tasty. But it makes one thirsty as a mofro and we couldn't find any decent water to wash it down with. Oh well, life, and our mission, went on.
Once the pole was spotted we surfaced and I and my officers surveyed the barren landscape. Then we spied the Communist work/re-education camp. It was filled with midgets who were being forced to make toys while some jolly fat bastard read the Communist Manifesto aloud in a sickening monotone voice.

We quickly subdued the fat SOB
and we tried and convicted him of being an insufferable Communist asswipe. The punishment we meted out was that we marooned him on the coast of Labrador with nothing to keep him warm but a light windbreaker and a pack of matches.

The top naval brass at the Pentagon was so pleased with the job we did and my leadership that they gave me some special awards upon my return.
I got a medal and my very own negro!

And that's the story of the first trip by submarine under the North Pole.

Mortified

I am absolutely mortified that someone I went to college with is stupid enough to believe in creationism. It boggles my mind that someone who went to a four year college can come out of it believing that superstitious nonsense.

I added this person as a friend on Facebook the other day because we were acquaintances back at ol' King College and we were both history majors. He was a couple of years behind me and was a nice enough guy. I knew he believed in that Christian mumbo jumbo but I assumed he had enough sense to realize that evolution is true and that creationism and intelligent design are fake science that can't be proven. But I was wrong.

His status update yesterday proclaimed that he was looking forward to going to the creationist museum and to some Cinncinatti Reds baseball games while on vacation. Ok, going to a Reds game is bad enough, not quite as bad attending a Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles game, but come the fuck on, the creationist museum? I was hoping was going to go so that he could mock it, as my buddy Keith did last year, but I was wrong again. I asked him via Facebook if he has fallen for that nonsense of creationism and he quoted me back a bible verse and said that yes, he had fallen for it.

It's beyond me how people can ignore the mountains of scientific evidence so that they can cling to lies of their chosen religion. The earth is not a little over 6000 years olds like the evangelists and true believers say it is, it's millions of years old. You know how we know that? Science. Science has not only proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth is millions of years old, it's also given us things like modern medicine, air conditioning, central heat, cars, television, the space program. You know what religion has given us? Fear, hatred, and willful ignorance that is not only stupid, it's dangerous and it kills.

I feel sorry for my old college mate. He's chosen to stay in the shadows cowering in fear of his almighty god while he ignores all the beauty and wonder of science and intelligence. He's chosen to have one fixed thought and position in his life and to try to make all things outside of his religion fit into his rigid Bronze age scheme of things. When we didn't know how things worked we invented a god who loved us and said that he made it all for us. Now that we know better we need to put the metaphor of god and religions in their proper place, the fiction shelf.

This whole business about evolution and science can and should be accepted by "committed" Christians. And for the most part most of them accept evolution and science as facts that are not incompatiable with their faith, I have other friends who are devout believers and they square all this evolution business with their religion by claiming that their god is behind it all, which is wrong but as long as they don't deny evolution is real and happening as we speak then that's a moral victory for science and reason. But I guess there are some people who are just too stubborn to accept the facts.

Educating Rachel

I really should know better but sometimes my need to stir up things gets the best of me. Over at my friend Rev. Shuck's blog I've been trying to educate a Ron Paulette, that's a female supporter of one time Libertarian Party Presidential candidate and current Republican Party (You remember them? They're the ones who got us into this mess we're into today with their deregulation of the financial markets.) member and one time fringe Presidential candidate. This woman, judging by the adolescent hero worship she is lavishing on Mr. Paul, I'd say is in her mid to late 20's and either hasn't followed politics much or is just off in the head.

Anyhoo, I have no idea how long Rachel, that's her name by the way and I'm not comprising her privacy because that's the name she comments under, has been reading my blog but she finally got the nerve up to leave a comment. She left a nasty little comment on the post I did where I answered Katie's questions for Obama supporters. Don't bother going to find her comment because I deleted it where she left it but I saved it so I could show you all just the nasty sort of person young Rachel is and also so I could make one last stab at educating her about Libertarians, Ron Paul, and how things work in our political system. And it's only fitting that her first comment be immortalized in a post since I'll not let her leave any more of her nasty ill tempered comments on my blog, and no Rachel, I am not censoring you. You are free to write anything you wish on any blog you may have or you can write what you like in a love letter to Ron Paul and tell him what a bad man I am for not supporting him. You see hon, this is my blog and I won't allow anyone who is insulting to me or my readers and commenters to leave comments on here. Everyone gets one shot at commenting and if you are insulting or you try to evangelize for one of those stone age religions on here you will find your future comments deleted as soon as I see them. You have the freedom to write whatever you like elsewhere and I have the freedom to ignore your juvenile ramblings.

Okay then, you ready Rachel? Because I'm raring to dip into your comment and teach you a thing or two, so here we go. Here's Rachel's comment as she wrote it and I have not edited it at all:

I might feel more comfortable commenting on your blog if I let you know beforehand that I have big, luscious boobs. Thanks for being honest about your position. I haven't read all the way through it, but based on your comments from Shuck and Jive I must say that you are a complete moron if you think that an Obama/Biden ticket will save our country. But let me guess, you don't give a rat's ass about our country as long as you are getting a free ride.

VOTE THIRD PARTY 08'

********

Wow. Rachel's a bit angry isn't she? She doesn't like me for some reason. And why would that be? Hmmmmm, I'd say it's because I disagree with her and because I have not drunk the Ron Paul Kool Aid like she has. But enough about her little hissy fit, it's time to use this as a "teachable moment" as I go through her comment bit by bit and break it down for her.

********

1) I might feel more comfortable commenting on your blog if I let you know beforehand that I have big, luscious boobs.

Okay, first of all don't flatter yourself Rachel, I'm not interested in you and what ever size your tits are. It's not the size of a woman's tits that interest me, it's the size of her brain. Any trailer park skank can have big boobs but that doesn't mean I want to get all up in her. I'd take a flat chested woman with a high IQ over a big boobed brainless bimbo any day or night of the week. And I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm spoken for, so you'll have to save that sweet talk about your breast size for someone who gives a damn.

********

2) Thanks for being honest about your position.

You're welcome. I try to be honest at all times. Honesty is the best policy after all.

********

3) I haven't read all the way through it, but based on your comments from Shuck and Jive I must say that you are a complete moron if you think that an Obama/Biden ticket will save our country.

It's nice to know that you make decisions about people you don't know based on things you haven't read and from comments on someone else's blog. That's big of you and I appreciate how you tossed me into the moron category because you disagree with my politics. That's ever so smart of you, and by the way it's the same thing that Republicans like Lee Atwater, Charles Colson, and Karl Rove have been doing for the last 40 years and it's one of the reasons why our political discourse has gone to shit, but since you support a Republican I see you've learned your party's tactics well. Bravo.

********

I suppose you think that Ron Paul is the only one to change the course of this country and that only through Libertarian politics can we all be saved. Hmmm, I not only know that's false, I know it's the biggest crock of shit to ever to hit the political scene in America. I saw where you wrote in the comments section of Rev. Shuck's blog that only Ron Paul would clean corporate money out of the political process and I must tell you sugar that I really had a good laugh over that little joke of yours. You see Rachel, Libertarians don't want to clean up anything corporations do, they want to let corporations do whatever they want and let the free market regulate them. The past few days, and really if your honest with yourself you'll include the past 40 years, have taught us is that corporations will never police themselves, they will do what ever they can get away with to make money. Libertarian political philosophy says that the only role government has is to provide national defense. That's it. That's all. Libertarians don't want the government to have anything to do with building roads, policing, putting out fires, building schools, printing money, collecting taxes, administering programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and providing any sort of regulation whatsoever. And who do Libertarians say is going to provide those essential services that the government will no longer provide? Why it's going to be corporations of course! Big business will step in with no regulation by the government at all and they'll provide trash pick up, bridge building, teaching your kids, and all that other stuff. And guess what Rachel? Libertarians believe that people will then only get the services they are willing to pay for. So knowing all that, please tell me how Ron Paul and the Libertarians will clean corporate money out of our political system? And when you get done telling me all that tell me how Ron Paul is going to lead us out of the current mess that Bush and McCain and Ron Paul himself have created? How are the people who championed deregulation at all costs, the very same deregulation that is killing our country today, going to save our country? How is turning over every governmental activity to big business going to solve the problems we face today?

The problem with Ron Paul and Libertarians is that they shirk the solutions to solving our most pressing problems. They claim that by abolishing the IRS and the corrupt government that somehow we'll all live happily ever after in a dog eat dog world where big business is not only unregulated, it runs the very programs they want to stop funding.

********

And finally Rachel, just because I don't subscribe to your 17th century view of what the federal government should and shouldn't do doesn't mean I don't give a rat's ass about my country. I love my country so much that I took to the streets to protest the immoral war for oil and for big business that we're waging. I care so much about my contry that I get out and vote and I encourage others to do the same. And I love my country so much that I took an hour of my time to try to educate a hick like you about the political movement that her idol champions.

Don't waste your time leaving me any comments to this post Rachel, I'll only delete them without even reading them. You can respond on your blog if you have one and if you do respond I won't bother to read it.

Community organizers

The rich white people's party sure had fun the other night deriding community organizers. They laughed and laughed at someone who would rather serve the greater good than take a job in corporate America. They, especially Rudy "9/11!" Ghouliani and Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin, sneered at community organizing and they made it clear how much contempt they have for anyone who does such a job.

I'm sure they hate the following community organizers as well:

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Sojourner Truth,

Harriet Tubman,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

John Brown,
and finally,

Jesus H. Christ.

Imagine what the world would be like now if those people hadn't been community organizers.

Setting them straight

When I saw the above picture of that billboard (I blacked out their website address because I will not give them any more publicity than I have to.) on Think Progress it sickened me that someone would be stupid enough to try to tie Democrats to 9/11 when after all Bush Jr was President and he'd been warned that Bin Laden was determined to attack America sooner or later and he and Condi and the rest of his gang of thugs dismissed that bit of intelligence so they could take us into war with Iraq for no other reason than letting the big western oil companies control the oil in Iraq. I shook my head when I saw this and I decided to let it go. Then a few moments ago I saw this story on Crooks & Liars and it had a link to a website where you can read the lyrics of the guy who paid for this billboard's song. After I read the insipid lyrics, which claim the Constitution is under attack from liberals and that we need to just sit back and let our soldiers "win the war," I saw where you can email the guy who wrote this piece of crap so I sent him this email:

The Constitution is under attack...from the right wing. Bush and his buddies in the Congress have shredded the fourth amendment and your president, and he sure as hell is yours and not mine because my President would never ever lie to the American people to take us into a war for oil, has taken powers from both the Supreme Court and from Congress that he should never have done.

And your use of the Twin Towers bombings, which I'd like to remind you took place under a Republican president who was warned by a Democratic one that it was going to happen and yet Bush and Condi did nothing, to make money is sickening. You sir are a ghoul who deserves nothing but scorn and derision. (Sorry if I used too many big words in my email to you, I am after all an intellectual elitist Liberal.)

This is America and we still have some freedom of speech, the Republicans have not said we need to give that up in the never ending war on terror yet, so you are free to spread your misinformation. And by the same token I'm free to put this email and and reply you may send me on my blog for the whole world to see.

Have no fear though, life under President Obama will be much safer than it is under Bush Jr. After all he'll be bringing our men and women home and they once they get home the terrorism against them will be ceased.

Sincerely,

Dr. Monkey

********

If they send a reply I'll be sure to post it here for all of you to see and laugh at. However, if they are like my cowardly Republican Congressman and US Senators, they won't have the balls to reply because they are too frightened of the facts.

We're good thanks. No, seriously, we're good. We mean it.

Growing up in Michigan for the first 13 years of my life I learned that Big Ten college football was a passion with people in the midwest. When I moved south in 1974 I learned that college football down here was something different, I learned it wasn't just a passion, it's a religion. And it's adherents down here are more than mere followers, they're crazy, rabid zealots for whichever Southeastern Conference team they root for. People in the south live and die each Saturday in the fall depending on which team they follow.

In the are of the south where I live now, the mountains of east TN, there is only one team that most people around here root for and that team is the University of Tennessee Volunteers. The Vols are loved by people not just all over the state of TN, people in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina love them rabidly as well. The current success of the men's basketball team is nice but people down here know that in Knoxville and in a 150 mile radius of that city football is king. Football brings in the bacon and fries it up in the pan. It pays the bills and therefore it's put on a pedestal. It's sacrilegious to speak against the Big Orange football machine around here.

Yes, there are other colleges and universities that field football teams but none has the following that UT does. Case in point, the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers. ETSU is a smaller institution of higher learning than UT but one would think since it's located in Johnson City that people in my town would have embraced their local school's football program. Well, you'd be wrong. For many years ETSU put a team on the field, not in the same division of the NCAA as UT but still football is football right?, and for may years not many people cared. People in this area stayed away from ETSU football games in droves because the only team they cared about was UT. UT played in the marquee bowl games, UT had shots at the national title, UT played on TV on ABC, CBS, ESPN. ETSU was lucky to get radio coverage or a reporter from the local TV stations to cover their games. In short no one gave a damn about ETSU football, they stuck by UT and that was that.

So about 5 years ago ETSU decided to save some money by dropping football all together. They said that while it might be painful to some, it had to be done. Attendance at games was laughable, media exposure was slim, and so it just made sense that they drop it and put that money towards something else, they still had a highly regarded basketball team that made the NCAA tourney once in a while and a very highly regarded golf team. So the axe fell and we waved bye bye to ETSU football.

But a group of ETSU football alums wouldn't let it go. They were sure that people wanted ETSU football, they were sure that people were going to rise up and demand the Bucs be allowed to live again. They wailed and gnashed their teeth, they cried foul, they spoke to anyone who would listen to them. And yet there was no clamor for ETSU football to return. No one gave a damn that it left, well no one except for the guys who used to play.

After a few y ears of crying over the loss of their beloved sport, they hit on the bright idea of letting the ETSU students vote on whether to bring back football. The university let the students know that if they brought back football then fees would rise, all fees that is, as in all fees to all students, even those who did not like football would have to pay for it. The football alums patted themselves on the back because they were sure the students would vote to bring back football but when they dust of the election settled the measure to bring it back was resoundingly defeated.

So you'd think in the face of widespread public disinterest, student apathy, and a fan base that will never be disloyal to UT, they just give up. Well, you'd be wrong. A hardcore group of these ETSU football alums got together and they paid some outfit to do a study on how they could bring football back to Johnson City. After studying the matter and looking at things the group doing the study said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "In order to bring football back you're going to have to remove all the obstacles that got it removed in the first place."

Duh. I could have told them that. Hell, I could have told them that and I would have charged them half what they paid the other guys. Oddly enough, or maybe this is a sign of how delusional these bitter decrepit old football jocks are, they got excited about putting a plan of action together based on the findings of the study. I'm not sure what they plan to do about the dominance of UT football in this area or what they're going to do about the thousands of of fans they don't have, but if it makes them happy to think they can do the impossible then more power to them.

Me, I just wish they shut the fuck up and accept the fact that ETSU football is dead and that it will never come back. It's kind of sad to see these frustrated old jerks pine for the glory days when the seats in the Mini Dome, that's right they used to play ETSU football indoors, were two thirds empty and no one gave a damn if ETSU won or not. They remind me of the Republicans who keep saying we're winning in Iraq. They think that if they pour more money and more time into study after study that shows if people came to games here that the local economy would grow like gang busters. Just as there is a fatal flaw in the Bush led war on Iraq, there's a fatal flaw in the dreams of those reviving ETSU football, just as the Iraqi's hate us and want us gone, Johnson City and the area as a whole hates ETSU football and they want it gone forever.

But like the delusional Republicans, the faded football jocks of ETSU still cling to their dream of winning hearts and minds back to Buc football. Anyone close to both situations can see that there is no such thing as victory in Iraq and there sure as hell ain't ever gonna be a victory for ETSU football in the this area. I can only hope one day we'll stop trying to "win" something in Iraq and that the cry baby ETSU football jerkoffs will stop their pointless crusade to bring football back to Johnson City.

A lesson in history for Glen Beck

Glen Beck had himself a nice lil' sit down interview with the President, well I say "sit down" but it was probably more like he had his nose up the Presidential ass while he asked his softball questions. What struck me as funny about this interview was that afterwards Beck says that Bush has a Lincolnesque honesty. I laughed my monkey ass off when I first read that. But then I got kind of sad because I figured that either Beck was joking again, like he did that time when he said that the fires in California were fine because they were burning down the homes of America "haters" or that he just didn't know who Abe Lincoln really was.

I'm in a charitable mood, this being the holidays and all, so I figured I'd use my blog for good this time instead of evil and I'll explain the difference between Abe Lincoln and George W. Bush to Mr. Beck and all the rest of his minions.

• Abe Lincoln gave his life for this country.
• Abe sought to keep our union together.
• Abe freed the slaves.
• Abe governed this nation in the interest of all the people not just a select few.
• Abe surrounded himself with people who disagreed with him so he could see all sides of an issue.
• Abe has two memorials to him, one in Washington DC that is a magnet for freedom loving people the world over and the other in South Dakota.

• George Bush refused to fight for his country when he had the chance to as a young man. He used his father's influence to get him into a cushy deployment with the Texas National Guard. And he didn't even finish that commitment.
• Bush took this nation to war over nothing and he used faulty intelligence to justify it.
• Bush has governed this nation with the interests of the white ruling elites in mind. He has shown himself time and time again to be on the side against the poor, the working class, and the middle class.
• Bush has placed himself above the law with his many "signing statements." In a nation that is governed by laws our President has exempted himself, wrongfully so, from many of them.
• Bush has refused to listen to voices of dissent from within his own administration, from the heartland of this country, and from the world in general. He refuses to speak in front of crowds that are not pre-screened and determined to be loyal to him.
• Bush has cut taxes for the wealthiest people in this country while rolling back services and programs that help the biggest majority.
• Through his war of terror on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan he has succeeded in creating more terrorists and causing our once staunch allies to hate and shun us.
• Bush has, through his refusal to sign the Kyoto accords and to do anything substantive about climate change, condemned millions of people to death and disease.
• Bush seeks to enslave millions of us to the multinational corporations and to the credit card companies.
• There will never be a memorial statue tribute to George W. Bush, or to his weak kneed milk toast of a father for that matter, because memorial statues are never built to commemorate colossal failures.

Mr. Beck, I hope that clears things up a bit for you on the difference between Lincoln and that thug who currently occupies the office of Commander in Chief.

Screw Waldo, where's democracy?

One of the big lies they told us before they took us to the warwithoutendAmen was that one of the things that the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan would bring was a flowering and spreading of democracy through out the Middle East, which as we all know is one of the most repressive areas of the world. So let's send our pal Waldo over to the Middle East to see if that's working out as well as the rest of the things they've done.

You ready Waldo?

Heck yeah! I love freedom and democracy and I'm anxious to see if the neo-con's promises have worked out.

How are things going in Egypt? Democracy get there yet?

Ummm, no Dr. Monkey. It's still a repressive country politically and religious wise as well. Women are still treated like so much chattel and most opposition political party leaders are in jail or forbidden to organize. Mubarak, who is a great friend to the USA, won't allow all political parties to run in the rigged elections he runs.

Ok Waldo, what about our staunch ally Saudi Arabia?Whew, Dr. Monkey this place is hell hole of human rights violations and it's not a democracy at all. It's controlled by the greedy bastards that we call the House of Saud and by the right wing Islamist religious police. Women have no rights, can't vote, or freely mix and mingle where they please. The young people hate the strict controls the government and the religious police put on them and couple that with the extreme difference between the haves and the have nots, and you've got one explosive cauldron of anti Western hate and Islamist extremism boiling up. It's no wonder that Bin Laden and most all of the 9/11 hijackers came from this country, if I lived here all the time I'd hate Bush and America with a burning passion too. So, no, there's no democracy been spread over here at all.

Yo Waldo, what about our strong ally Jordan?

Nope. It's still controlled by one royal family and a bunch of foreign oil companies. No democracy here, lots of sand yes, but democracy no.

Waldo go check out Pakistan.

When it comes to democracy here it's no dice dude. This place is controlled tightly by a military junta that we help stay in power. Not only do they not have democracy now but their military overthrew the last democratically elected government. And you know what? There has never been a peaceful transition of power in Pakistan. And you know what else? They are probably harboring Al Qaeda operatives and Osama himself. They also hate India and will go to war with them over Kashmir. So, no democracy here, sorry.

Waldo, slide over to Iraq and let us know how things are going over there.

Holy shit Dr. Monkey, the country we invaded expressly to bring democracy to has not become a democracy. Yes, they had elections that were staged by our government but the government of Iraq has no power. They have no say in their own country, heck they told the US occupying force that they wanted Blackwater out and the US occupying force said, "Up yours, those crazy bastards are staying." We've killed over a million people, displaced millions, maimed hundreds of thousands, scarred for life generations of innocent people, bombed a nation to the stone age, for this? There's no democracy to be had here. The war has been a waste of lives, of time, and of money.

Waldo, cheer up man. Tell you what, I'm gonna send you to some places where democracy is alive and well and you can tell us about them, okay?

Umm, okay.

Despite what people may think of their current President, he was elected democratically in a free and fair election. His administration was almost overthrown by coup that had the blessing of Bush but thank goodness the people of Venezuela took to the streets and tossed that bunch of traitors out. There may be trouble here though since they do have a shitload of oil under them in Venezuela. I'd keep my eyes peeled for any signs of invasion by Bush/Cheney.

Democracy is alive and well here. They just elected Daniel Ortega as their President. Remember him? He was one of those Sandinista's that Reagan hated so much. You remember the Sandinstas don't you? They were the ones who overthrew their US backed oppressor Antonio Samoza, who incidentally died in a hail of gunfire in Paraguay after he was deposed. There's not much oil here so I doubt Bush cares much about Nicaragua.

Haiti recently had a Presidential election and as usual the Bush backed interests in that small impoverished country almost screwed the people yet again. But the brave people of Haiti found evidence of election fraud when the Bush backed greedy business owners and army tried to steal the election. It's a constant battle between the corporate interests and the democracy loving working classes of Haiti.

Waldo, I'm sorry but you have to go back to the Middle East one last time. I need you to go to the only country in the Middle East that has a democratically elected government.

Holy crap Dr. Monkey, you mean to tell me Iran is the only country outside of Israel that has a democratically elected government?

Yep. And just like over here most of the voters in Iran think their President is an idiot who should be out of office as soon as possible. They cringe when they hear him make outrageous statements like Bush does. They wish they had a more peace loving President and so do most Americans.

Wow, I hope we don't go to war with the only real functioning democracy in the Middle East.

Well Waldo, you've seen what Bush does to democracies he doesn't like, he screws them and tries to overthrow them like he did to Saddam and Iraq.

You know what? I'm gonna go hide where no one can find my ass.

See ya!