War, Porn and Bacon

Right Wing Glossary

American People, The: Citizens who believe in the same things as you. You and those who agree with you will be referred to as “The American People,” regardless of your actual percentage of the population. Citizens who do not believe in the same things will never be referred to as “The American People”, even if they vastly outnumber you. “The American People have spoken, and they think our health care system is just fine the way it is.”

Elite: Someone who is incapable of pretending to be as unintelligent and intellectually non-curious as you.

Family: Fundamentalist Christians. See Family Research Council, American Family Association.

Fascism: Being forced to help pay for the day to day operations of the United States of America, or “Taxes.”

Fraud: When someone votes for a political candidate whom you do not like.

Freedom: Things that you like. Used as justification for causes as varying as war (“A war for freedom,” “Our enemies hate our freedom,”) or continuing to allow insurance companies to engage in the arbitrary rejection of all of your medical bills (“We are against health care reform because we are for freedom.”) Groups with “Freedom” in the title (“Freedom Works,” “Freedom Forum”) are generally founded and funded by large, multi-national corporations who have a financial interest in maintaining the status quo.

Global Warming: The theory that the overall temperature of the earth is increasing due to the unprecedented use of fossil fuels and the emission of noxious and dangerous gasses that has occurred over the past 150 years. This theory is supported by the majority of researchers and scientists all over the globe, but is not to be believed based on a personal dislike of Al Gore.

Handouts: Government benefits for which you do not personally qualify.

Junk Lawsuits: Any lawsuit except the one that you are pursuing in court right now.

Liberal: A broad based, derogatory term that can be applied to anything or anyone that you don’t like. Politicians, civilians, teachers, reporters, newspapers, actors, athletes, countries, continents, etc.

Liberty: The right to be a fundamentalist Christian, and the right to attempt to make fundamentalist views mandatory through legislation and litigation. Many groups with “Liberty” in the title (Liberty University, Liberty Counsel) are generally opposed to letting other people (women, non-Christians, homosexuals) do what they want.

Mainstream Media: Any organization that delivers news that you do not like.

Patriot: Those who believe in the same things that you do.

Pork Barrel Spending: Government spending that happens in districts or states other than your own.

Race Card, The: When someone who you don’t like points out that you are behaving as if you do not like other races.

Radical: A person in public office who does not agree with your political or economic philosophy.

Small Government: Keeping the profit earning abilities of large corporations free from regulation or government interference. Keeping the government from interfering in the lives of American citizens, with exceptions for the following issues: abortion, birth control, homosexuality, sex education, stem cell research, euthanasia, drugs, alcohol, pornography, popular music, movies, the use of salty language or the display of nudity over the public airwaves, public displays of religions other than Christianity, speaking languages other than English, the mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by children, the teaching of evolution in public schools and the burning of the American flag.

Thugs: Labor Unions

Traitors: Members of the opposition party when they are in the minority.

Tyrants: Members of the opposition party when they are in the majority.

Guns and Butter, Troops and Negroes

James “Encyclopedia Brown” O’Keefe was arrested today trying to bug the New Orleans offices of Louisiana Senator Mary Landreiu. He was probably after his latest half assed masterpiece of uh…really nothing.

You probably have no idea who James O’Keefe is, which means that you are a balanced individual with things to do during the day and a family to take care of at night. But if you are basement dwelling, teeth grinding, talk radio listening wingnut, James O’Keefe is a hero. A saint. An eternal martyr for good. See, James O’Keefe is the guy who walked around from ACORN office to ACORN office dressed like a white guy’s version of Venus Fly Trap until he was able to get someone to say something stupid and incriminating into the hidden camera he had concealed in his, uh, “pimp stick” or whatever.

He then triumphantly sent his footage to Breitbart, who published it, and then a printout of that got picked up off the floor of a urine-soaked padded cell by Glenn Beck, and then it got picked up by Hannity, Rush, Fox News, O’Reilly, et al.

So based on what one employee in one office said about prostitution that was completely imaginary, ACORN was all of a sudden the biggest criminal enterprise in the United States. Helping low income people secure housing loans? They HAVE TO be lining their own pockets. Registering people to vote, and BLACK PEOPLE at that? It HAS to be a massive voter fraud conspiracy. That explains why Obama is in the White House. “Community Organizing?” That sounds leftist to me. Plus they all happen to be black. How many of our hard earned taxpayer dollars are going to this mafia?

Once all of this speculation got out, hundreds of right wing bloggers, journalists and radio screamers suffered severe injuries when their erect penises slammed into the bottoms of their desks at ninety miles an hour. Nothing gets these guys more worked up than the idea of bringing down the Head Negro. (Never mind that Obama’s relationship with ACORN was tenuous at best. He helped handle some legal stuff for them in 1995, and paid for their services in get out the vote rallies while he was running for president. Hiring third parties is something that conservative candidates do as well. But see, Obama is black. ACORN is black. And aren’t you guys all cousins or something?)

The idea of “Widespread Voter Fraud” was floated a bunch, but this was torpedoed as inaccurate by Factcheck.org. Yeah, there were some voter registration cards that had “Mickey Mouse” or “50 Cent” on them, but you know who found these cards and then turned them in? Members of ACORN themselves. Nobody named “Mickey Mouse” or “P.Diddy” ended up successfully voting in the 2008 election.

There was an embezzlement investigation which went all the way back to 1999, which revealed that a guy named Dale Rathke had embezzled just under a million from ACORN. He got caught and was made to pay it back. And while it is surely bad when people embezzle from charitable organizations, ACORN isn’t exactly the first. A guy named William Aramony was sent to jail in 1995 for skimming 1.5 million out of the United Way. But nobody is calling the United Way a criminal enterprise. But then again, the United Way doesn’t do things like register black people to vote.

Another big stink occurred when it came out that ACORN was going to get just under a million dollars for what was called a “firefighter grant.” Cue right wing outrage boner:

“With fire departments all over Louisiana – and the rest of the country – struggling to make ends meet and get the equipment and training they need to protect their local communities, the idea of a million dollar grant going to ACORN is unsettling, to say the least,” said Vitter. “ACORN’s continued contempt for state and federal laws has placed their entire organization under a cloud of serious scrutiny, and this grant should be rescinded and awarded to a more deserving group of first responders.”

If all you are going by is that, here’s the narrative: “Our brave firefighters are going to have to charge into burning buildings without protective gear so the ACORN welfare queens can have spinning rims on their Cadillacs and fried chicken dinners.Give the money to the real heroes, like the ones in my district. You know, the white ones.”

Ok, in the first place, that money wasn’t “taken away” from anybody, fire department, municipality or otherwise. In the second place, that money is meant to go for things like working smoke detectors and sprinkler systems in low income housing, which, if anything, should make the lives of the big brave strapping firefighters a hell of a lot easier. Would they rather try to put out a fire in a poor neighborhood with no smoke detectors or sprinkler systems? Maybe we should ask them and see what they think,

Knowing a big, honking bleating scapegoat when they see one, everybody on the right went completely batshit over ACORN for about six months, so much so to the point that there was actually a bill on the floor of the house that was literally called “The Defund ACORN Act.”

Everything was cruising along with this bill, right up until the folks who were running it through realized what the language might actually mean:

This bill, designed to block any federal funds from going to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), was approved in the form of a motion to recommit with instructions to the House’s student loan bill (H.R. 3221). It has been noted that the bill is written so broadly that it could apply to organizations besides ACORN, including defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Whoopsie. Lockheed Martin? Northrop Grumman? Defense contractors? Our best buds?

Shit. Uh…well…maybe we should re-think this whole thing.

After all, the bill calls for the blocking of funds for any group or company who “has filed a fraudulent form with any federal or state regulatory agency.” So that makes the whole F-22 Raptor thing a little sticky, huh?

And if the real source of outrage is the whole “imaginary hooker” thing, then that means that DynCorp must be in a whole shit heap of trouble, right? Because those guys were using taxpayer money to actually run real live hookers. But nobody is going to take away Lockheed or DynCorp’s money, right? I mean, in terms of federal government loot, DynCorp made in a year what it took ACORN a decade to get a hold of, even with the freaking embezzlement case.

So here’s the difference, in case you haven’t figured it out. Halliburton can charge $1500 a plate to feed the troops, and that’s ok. ACORN shouldn’t receive government money because they register black people to vote, and that’s not ok. DynCorp can receive government money to run a Bosnian hooker ring, and that’s ok because DynCorp helps the troops. ACORN shouldn’t get any money because one employee said the wrong thing to a half assed investigative reporter about imaginary prostitution. But again, ACORN helps black people, and you know how those people are when they vote. Pretty uppity, huh?

It’s a big massive conundrum, isn’t it? Is it hypocrisy? Is it scapegoating? All depends. Do you sell weapons and ammo and logistics and things that go boom? That makes you a pillar of free enterprise and a defender of freedom, even if you engage in fraud, overbilling and prostitution. Do you help poor black people improve their lot in life and help them with jobs and housing but make a few mistakes that eventually turn out to be nothing? Then you’re a nigger. No money for you.

I really hope this guy O’Keefe has a chance to do some real in-depth research on corrupt liberal organizations from the depths of Angola Prison. Go ahead, buddy. Tell your cellmates all about how rotten ACORN is. They’ll be trading your ass for cigarettes within 48 hours. Why don’t you make a movie about that?

Kill ‘em All and Let The Holy Spirit Sort ‘em Out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about religion lately.

I understand why religion exists. People need a lot of emotional support, and support from regular people just won’t cut it at times. People need comfort, they need to feel loved, they need to feel that there is some sort of meaning to it all, and they absolutely need to believe that there is something waiting for them after they die. Nobody likes to think of their loved ones (and most certainly themselves) just being gone. The idea of people dying random, pointless or stupid deaths takes on a new level of cruelty if there isn’t some big hereafter, right?

That’s all fine and dandy with me. I don’t care if it’s heaven or paradise or the hunting grounds of your ancestors or the Big Rock Candy Mountain with the Razzleberry Waterfall. Whatever keeps you happy. I personally have no idea what’s going to happen, since nobody has been able to get God or Vishnu or Allah or whoever is running this great big weaselfuck that is human existence to come down to the lab and prove a damn thing. I’m certainly not going to go by what the various religious beliefs are saying. Jesus walking on water and Eurydice following Orpehus out of Hades cave cut the same amount of ice with me as far as credible stories go. So I cheerfully discard them and embrace the fact that I am blissfully ignorant about such things. What happens when we die? Don’t know. Guess I’ll find out at some point.

So the why of religion is easy to understand. What I’ve been mostly thinking about are the sorts of schisms and divisions that religions bring with them. Not the obvious schisms, like Jewish vs Muslim, but rather the ones that exist among people of the same religion.

Here’s an example: Back in the day (although you couldn’t really call it “the day,” seeing as how the ages were dark as fuck in the time that I am referring to,) there was a big division in the Catholic Church, which at the time was pretty much the only Christian religion going. The Franciscans were an order of monks who believed that as messengers of the word of Jesus, it would be only right and proper for priests of the church to follow his example and forsake all worldly goods. In other words, they thought that the entire church should take a vow of poverty. On the other side of the debate you had the Benedictine Order, who believed the best way to show glory to God was to bling the fuck out of themselves and everything around them. In other words:

Franciscan:Didn’t Jesus say something about helping the poor?

Benedictine: Dude, check out this new altarpiece! See how the golden angels are actually PISSING diamonds! Praise the SHIT out of the lord, yo!

All you have to do is take a look at the Vatican if you want to see which side won that particular debate.

Another division that can be described as “big assed” was the Protestant Reformation, which happened for about a million reasons, but a few of the main ones involved things like not allowing anyone who wasn’t a priest to read the Bible (which seems like an enormous flashing neon sign reading “Con Job” to me,) or allowing certain rich sinners to essentially buy their way out of damnation, or preaching the First Commandment while having everybody pray to more B-List saints, virgins and craven idols than you could shake a stick at.

The Protestant Reformation wasn’t a pretty split. Remember, at the time the Catholics were the only game in town, religionwise. They weren’t about to give up their spiritual monopoly without a serious fight. And pretty much everybody was either willing to or forced to fight and die for their version of the Cosmic Space Daddy. And this sort of shit went on for YEARS. It’s still going on if you take a look at Northern Ireland.

If you happen to go to a church that isn’t Catholic, you’ve probably noticed that your church isnt called a “protestant church.” You go to a Presbyterian church, or a Lutheran church, or a Methodist church, or a Baptist church. That’s because the only thing most of the Protestants could really agree on was that they all thought the Catholic Church sucked. And the various disagreements that the Protestant factions had with each other weren’t exactly what you would call “gentlemanly.” I cant think of a better example of this than our cousins across the pond.

If you have ever taken a look at England, you might notice that they don’t really have the same politically active contingent of born again Christians that we do. No member of the Labor or Conservative party has to stand up and declare a camping buddy close relationship with Jesus in order to get elected the way that politicians have to here in the States. In fact, it’s considered downright rude for a politician to proselytize at all. I’m pretty sure that the reason that’s the case is because the whole damn country was run by rabid born-agains for about five years, and they know from experience that that sort of government sucks.

They found that out after the English Civil War, which happened for a lot of non-religious reasons, but the most rabid and effective contingent of the anti-royalist faction were the Puritans. We know those guys, right? Or we think we do, anyway. We like to think of them as the dudes who ate with the Indians on that first November back in New England. Hell, we still force our kids to dress up like them at Thanksgiving. But they weren’t particularly nice folks. They were the Christian Taliban. I think there is a museum or two in Salem, Massachusetts that can tell you more about their exploits if you are interested.

One of the big events that caused them to go against King Charles was that the Charles, who was by all accounts a devoutly religious man, decided to add a new prayer book into the Church of England. The day that the priests tried reading from it, the Puritans started throwing chairs and rioting. These folks were hard core Protestants. To say they didn’t like Catholics would be an understatement. They burned down quite a few churches on suspicion of Papacy simply because they had stained glass in the windows. And the fact that King Charles had a Catholic wife just made them burn with the fire of the Lord. The BAD kind of fire of the Lord, by the way.

The leader of the Puritan faction in Parliament was a guy named Oliver Cromwell, who led what was called the New Model Army. They beat the piss out of the King’s army pretty good, but that was probably because Cromwell’s soldiers were more scared of Cromwell than they were of the King’s guys. Soldiers in the New Model Army routinely had their tongues cut out if they were caught swearing or taking the lords name in vain. Disemboweling a Cavalier with your pike was perfectly acceptable, but yelling “fuck” while doing so was simply not on.

It was on Cromwell’s orders that King Charles was beheaded. And it was Cromwell himself who became “Lord Protector of England,” and instituted a religious martial law for the five years that he was running the show. Men called “The Major Generals” rode around the whole country, locking up fornicators and blasphemers. On the plus side, he finally allowed Jews back in to the country after a forced  English absence of about two centuries, but that was only because he believed that the mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity would herald the second coming. Once Cromwell died, the Brits started to think that maybe they would like to do things other than pray, and that on the whole a little fornication isnt really so bad. So they brought back King Charles’ son to be the new King. And the Puritans became somewhat unwelcome. That’s another bit that we overlook. The “Pilgrims” weren’t really “pilgrims.” I think the better term would be “evictees.”

Anyway, maybe you can see the pattern. One big group loves the Cosmic Space Daddy, and then one half of that group loves the Cosmic Space Daddy in a different way, and then part or parts of that one half love the Cosmic Space Daddy in yet another way, and then they all beat the shit out of each other over it.

And what this idiocy always brings with it is the totally oxymoronic “Christian Warrior.” Richard the Lionhearted cutting heads off in the Holy Land. Inquisitors burning people at the stake. Cromwell having Irish Catholic prisoners of war summarily executed. Union troops burning down Atlanta while singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The Ulster Volunteer Force spraying a Catholic neighborhood with bullets and the Irish Republican Army returning the favor. Members of the Branch Davidians getting into a running gun battle with each other over who gets to be the next leader of the church. Radical Mormons shooting at the feds who come to arrest them for bigamy charges. Etc. Etc. Etc. The fucking beat goes on. If I started a religion with myself as the only member, I have no doubt that I would develop a split personality and would be kicking my own ass within ten years.

And I haven’t even touched on the other religions. Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, almost every damn religion on earth has some branch or another that thinks gunfire is the most expedient way to do the work of the lord. And while we don’t have guys willing to fly planes into buildings or blow themselves up in the name of Jesus, we still have plenty of people in the military establishment who are, to put it mildly, buggy ding dong psychotics who believe that serving Jesus comes about a million miles ahead of serving America.

Which brings me to THESE fucking assholes:

“The Marine Corps plans to meet with the manufacturer of rifle optics used by thousands of U.S. troops in combat after the company said it stamps its products with biblical references, prompting criticism that the military and religion were mixing too closely.”

Yeah, no shit.

As messed up as that is, it isn’t exactly news to me. There is a whole branch of my family who are all West Point graduates who also believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. And it wasn’t just my branch of the family at West Point who believed in such things. A significant portion of the Corps of Cadets believes that Eve came from Adam’s rib, Noah gathered up a male and female fruit fly, Jonah lived in the belly of a whale, and the laser guided precision bomb that they just launched obliterated a village that is sitting on a planet that was made in seven days and is only 6,000 years old.

There was also a scandal at the Air Force Academy a few years ago. The football team had a banner that said “Team Jesus” in their locker room. Cadets who chose not to go to chapel were ostracized, ridiculed, abused and placed in what were called “Heathen Flights.” Cadets were encouraged to be “Warriors for Christ” and “Spiritual Soldiers.” My dad was in the Air Force before it was the fucking Air Force, and when he heard about this it was about the angriest I had ever seen him.

And let’s not forget the daily intelligence briefings that the Pentagon sent to the White House during the Iraq War that had bible verses on the front of them.

Oh, and also, have you met Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater? You know, the military contractor that makes more taxpayer money in twenty minutes than ACORN makes in a decade? This is from an affidavit of one of his former employees:

“Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”

Look, I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ any more than I believe that Zeus throws thunderbolts when he’s pissed off, but I have in fact read the New Testament, and I didn’t see a damn thing in there about killing people who didn’t agree with Jesus. Nor did I see anything about how his beliefs should be mandatory and extended through the force of arms. There is no “I sayeth unto thee, the Kingdom of Heaven shall be gained through overwhelming firepower.” I’m not much of a believer, but if I were I would have a hard time seeing the message of Christ in a Claymore mine, or Napalm, or a belt fed M60 machine gun, or a flamethrower. But maybe there is a different bible that these guys read, where Jesus is sort of like an action hero. “Die Hard” starring Jesus Christ. Maybe the verses are like “And then did the Lord leap off the top of Nakatomi Plaza just as it was blowing up, where did a firehose break his fall. And then did the Lord slay the last two terrorists with the gun that he had thus taped to his back. Here endeth the lesson. Yippie-kai-yay motherfuckers.”

It bothers me enough when these born again nutjobs get involved in government, but it scares the piss out of me when they get involved in the military. These guys aren’t working for me. They are working for a different boss. And they have, quite literally, all the guns in the fucking world. I would have to agree with a guy named Mikey Weinberg, who graduated from the Air Force Academy and was properly horrified to find out that it had become a hive of evangelical extremism:

“Every single time radicalized Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state and the armed forces, we have ended up not with puddles and little streams, but with oceans and oceans of blood,” he says. “I’m not just talking about the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the four Crusades…it’s the transition from Plan A to Plan B. In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the pogroms, the Inquisition…. People say this is a Christian country founded on Christian principles. The real essential aspect of this country, woven into the tapestry of the embroidery of how beautiful this country is, is one concept above all others, which is tolerance of diversity. The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of — and it’s a blood libel, a crime against humanity — is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as ‘tolerance for diversity’ equals ‘intolerance for us in the majority.’ My response is: Fuck you. Fuck you. How dare you?”

Forever and ever, amen.

DC Famous vs. YouTube Famous

A lot of folks have this weird idea about Washington, D.C. They think our government is this cabal of secretive goblins who operate in the shadows. That isn’t the case. When Sean Hannity says that he “discovered something in the budget,” a surprising number of people think it means that he broke into Fort Knox to get the information, or met with a shadowy agent in a parking garage. But what Sean really means is “One of my interns highlighted something from the packet of easily available public information that the Heritage Foundation e-mailed me.”

There really aren’t that many “secrets” here.

I would urge anyone who thinks D.C. is Conspiracy World to just come and visit. Sit through one Appropriations Committee meeting. Read a budget. Read a report. Hell, just watch C-Span. You will not be able to see due to the glaze over your eyes. There might very well be a conspiracy against staying awake, but very little else.

This morning my man Dudley and I went to a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security. We didn’t have to show ID. We didn’t have to “know somebody.” We didn’t have to be vetted. We didn’t have to have top secret clearance or any of that Hollywood nonsense. We just walked past the enormous throng of cameramen outside the hearing chamber in the Cannon Building and sat down. The ironic thing was that this hearing which was so ridiculously easy to get into was about two other people being where they weren’t supposed to be.

Ordinarily that enormous throng of cameramen wouldn’t even be there. In fact, normally most of the freaking Congressmen wouldn’t be there. Normally it’s just the remote control security style cameras that C-Span has mounted in the room, and normally Congressmen file in and out if they can be bothered to show up at all. But today the head of the Secret Service was getting grilled, so there were Ollie North level cameras and every single Representative was in his or her appointed seat.

The reason they were hauling Mark Sullivan over the coals was because the Secret Service let two uninvited guests into a state dinner at the White House.  Tareq and Michaele Salahi managed to get past the most intense security service in the world and mingle with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Salahi are vying to get onto a reality television show, which I will not watch, not even if someone tries to pay me to do so. And I’m usually pretty broke.

Sullivan walked in and sat down at the witness table, and was immediately followed by that throng of cameramen, who surrounded him and took thousands of pictures and minutes of footage as he sat down, looked through his papers, talked with his lawyer and drank water. It didn’t look particularly dramatic to me, but I imagine some bright young thing in production will make it look that way.

The guy looked pretty miserable. I mean, Secret Service agents don’t really like cameras. It’s called the “SECRET Service,” after all. They want to be as inconspicuous as possible. That’s the reason that these Congressmen were talking to the head of the Secret Service and not the agents who messed up. (Well, that and the fact that those agents are probably on their way to their next assignment, which is probably spending the next five years guarding Nancy Reagan’s cats.) So it must have been tough for Sullivan to sit there with thirty five cameramen snapping away six inches from his face while the Representatives and their entourages wandered in and took their seats.

After about five minutes of non-stop picture taking, Chairman Bennie Thompson of Alabama whacked his gavel, and those cameramen cleared out of there like they were roaches and somebody turned on the lights. Chairman Thompson then read a statement, in which he stated the obvious. This was a major league fuckup.

Next Peter King, the Ranking Minority Member from New York, gave his statement, which I will try to recreate as accurately as possible:

“AnnoyingNewYorkAccentAnnoyingNewYorkAccentAnnoyingNewYorkAccentthis is all the White House’s fault.”

By all accounts, the White House Office of Social Services can shoulder some of the blame here, but bear in mind that those folks aren’t trained ass kickers like the Secret Service. Their job is to put the guest list together and plan the seating and make sure that everyone is sitting next to people whose guts they don’t hate. The only thing they protect the President from is boring dinner conversation. Getting people in and out of Obama’s vicinity is not really their job.

But no doubt Peter King will parlay his statement into something on the House floor, like “If this White House can’t handle a dinner party, how can they handle health care?” And gosh, won’t that be clever of him?

So the way it works is that after these opening statements from the Chair and the Ranking Minority Member, each side alternates asking questions of the witness. The questioning method of the individual Representatives says a lot about their backgrounds. For instance, Dan Lungren spent ten years as California’s Attorney General, and he went after Sullivan like the guy was a purse snatcher on the witness stand. And Sheila Jackson Lee was a municipal judge down in Houston for three years, and she openly discussed throwing criminal charges against the two aspiring reality TV actors, which would really be the only way that I would watch them. Real Housewives of Washington? Please. Real Prison Bitches of Leavenworth would be way more entertaining.

Eleanor Holmes Norton finally brought up the elephant in the room when she mentioned that considering Obama gets more death threats than any other president in history, the Secret Service might want to tighten things up a bit. I mean, yeah, this time it was only Johnny Wannabe and his lovely wife Trophia, but what if it wasn’t? What if Chuckie Whitepower of the Hard-On County Patriot Militia rents a tux, whitens his teeth and scrubs the gun oil and deer urine off of himself for a day or two? What if he was the one who went breezing by the Secret Service?

I’ve done some gate crashing in my time. I’ve blundered into rooms and met rock stars, pro athletes and various politicians. But there is a real freaking difference between doing a shot of vodka with the guitar player from Journey and meeting the President of the United States. Nobody wants to kill the guitar player from Journey, for one thing. Well, hardly anybody anyway.

Mr. and Mrs. Salahi were actually invited to the hearing, but they decided not to show, which was smart. I mean, the “invitation” might as well have read “You are cordially invited to come and incriminate the bejesus out of yourselves while we go after you like wolves chasing a shaved lamb dipped in steak sauce.” Anyone who thinks “Any Publicity is Good Publicity” has never seen one of these hearings.

So in terms of these two getting what they wanted, well, yeah, I guess they are famous. But it’s the sort of “fame” that you don’t want.  It isn’t D.C. famous. It isn’t “Dinner at the British Embassy” famous. It isn’t “Golf with Rahm Emanuel” famous. It’s “Fat Kid Doing Those Star Wars Moves” famous. It’s “Drunk Guy Getting Hit in the Balls on YouTube” famous. Their names are Mud now in D.C. They have engaged in transparent social weaselry, have publically disgraced themselves, and have probably torpedoed the careers of a few dozen Secret Service agents. What manner of mouth breathing dullard would actually watch a show about these two people?

Ah, hell. You know what? They’re probably taking meetings right now. I officially predict these guys are gonna be huge.

When in Tokyo…

I don’t believe that I’m even talking about this. Seriously. I don’t believe that all the assholes with radio shows and all of their paranoid mouth-breathing followers have turned something as simple as foreign protocol into a symbol of Obama’s masculinity.

Jesus Christ on a bike, Cleetus, would you rather that he walked in with a cowboy hat on and grabbed his testicles? Maybe if he marched in like a professional wrestler with Toby Keith playing in the background? Would that have been manly enough for you? Would that have showed everybody that we “meant business?”

Nixon bowed to the Japanese Emperor. Do any of you want to question the size of his balls? Hell, Eisenhower bowed to freaking Charles DeGaulle, the Pope, the wife of the Italian Prime Minister, and the head of the American Greek Orthodox Church. And this was after he liberated Europe, and had really earned the right to not have to bow to anybody. But he did anyway. And it wasn’t because he was “kowtowing.” It was because he went to West Point, where they teach you not to be a Grade A fuckwit.

See, I don’t know if you remember this or not, but the last time an American President marched into a roomful of dignitaries like J.R. Ewing on a bender, it didn’t go over so well.  And while we’re on the subject of ”Making America Look Like Somebody’s Bitch,” I’d much rather see a President of the United States bow to a Saudi King than see one kiss said King on the mouth and then walk around holding hands with one of his sons. But see, either way, sometimes when you meet royalty or foreign heads of state on their own turf, you follow protocol. It doesnt matter if that protocol involves bowing, hugging, high fives or the fish-slapping dance. That goes double if that foreign head of state happens to be leasing you your own economic balls.

Considering how many Hondas and Toyotas we drive, and considering how many hours a day we spend sitting on our asses watching Larry the Cable Guy on our Sony flat screens, or how much money we spend on Playstation 3’s, or how many of our meals are nuked in microwaves manufactured in Japan, I personally believe that bowing to the Emperor of the country that was responsible for producing those things is hunky dory. You might want to remember that the next time you pop your “Lee Greenwood Live” DVD into your Toshiba.

It should also be mentioned that we have quite a few military bases on Japanese soil, and not all of the Japanese are as psyched about this as you would like to think. So if you bundle up trade and military necessity, you better believe that a good, deep bow is the appropriate greeting. So get over it, and consider growing the hell up while you are at it.

Governor Footloose

About five years ago, I tried to get into law school. I failed.

I don’t think I failed miserably. I got a score on the LSAT’s that was at the very top of the very middle. I got Dean’s List grades every semester except for one during college. I even spent six months helping out an accountant who volunteered his free time tracking down session musicians who were getting screwed out of their royalties. (Let me tell you, when you get in touch with a seventy year old second chair saxophone player who is owed a cumulative $1500 for all the times that Tootsie played on cable TV, it is a glorious feeling.)

But despite all that, I got negged at every single law school to which I applied. I was bummed out for a little while, but then I realized that damn near all the lawyers I know would rather be the target in a testicle stomping contest than actually be lawyers. Hell, I know a girl who literally ran all the way to Zimbabwe rather than spend another day arguing over commas and dicking around with billable hours.  So I got over it.

About three weeks after I got over it, I started getting stuff in the mail. I got postcards, pamphlets, and on a few occasions, big thick envelopes stuffed with promotional materials. All from rinky dink law schools that I (and probably most Bar Associations) had never heard of.

Quite a few of these joints practically guaranteed me admission. And honestly, these places were so obscure that I can’t even remember the names of any of them, except for one. That would be Regent University Law School. It’s in Virginia Beach. It was started by a guy who believes that fossils are misleading tricks that were placed here by Satan. And it’s where Bob McDonnell, the guy who will probably be the next governor of Virginia, got his law degree. And actually, it wasn’t even called “Regent University” when Bob went there. It was called “Christian Broadcasting Network University.” Man. I bet all the sharp young budding lawyers were just beating the door down to get into that joint. Nothing sways a judge faster than citing the Book of Job as legal precedent.

Does it make me a poor agnostic if the idea of Bob McDonnell running my state makes me want to kick the wall and yell “JESUS CHRIST” at the top of my lungs?

I was having a conversation with a very dear friend of mine, and she said that she thought I was funny, but she also thought that maybe I should temper my speech when it comes to what I write and say about religion. These are people’s beliefs, she said, and they should be respected.

I love this friend of mine very much, but she could not be more wrong. Some beliefs should be mocked, ridiculed, and exposed as nonsense and charlatanism whenever possible. That goes double when those beliefs involve rocketing us back to some non-existent era where people were “traditional,” and that goes triple when holders of those beliefs get too close to the levers of government.

I don’t want Bob McDonnell as governor. I REALLY don’t want Bob McDonnell as governor. I don’t want anyone who turned to Pat Effing Robertson for his legal education in charge of how Virginia spends its money on schools, roads or public facilities.

I don’t want a guy who got his JD in the first place by writing a thesis stating that gays, lesbians and “fornicators” (seriously, he actually said “fornicators”) were a burden to society and should be taxed at a higher rate. And he wrote this when he was 33. Got that? He wasn’t some starry eyed zealot in his early twenties.

But it looks like he’s going to be running the show in Richmond come January. I guess all those folks who turned out for Obama just don’t find the Governor’s race to be all that sexy. You can also consider that Creigh Deeds is not the greatest candidate in the world. Good guy. Decent legislator. Solidly in the middle, just like Warner and Kaine. But he has all the charisma of a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal.

But I would rather have a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal than John Lithgow’s character in “Footloose” running the show. And despite McDonnell trying to hide it, his legislation over the years has been a pretty solid reflection of his beliefs that I’m not at all supposed to ridicule.

So I predict the following: Under McDonnell, the roads will not get fixed because he won’t be able to or just plain won’t want to raise the money to pay for them. That would involve some manner of tax, you see, and why should all those patriotic, God Fearing Real Americans down south have to pony up for those liberal fancy pants up north? NoVa is only the economic engine of the state, after all.

Sex education in schools will probably come under fire, probably snuck into unrelated legislation by some snake handling dimbulb delegate from Cumberland Gap. There will probably be all manner of challenges put into place to simply walk into the door of an abortion clinic.

It also wouldn’t surprise me if somebody made a stab at putting disclaimer stickers on the covers of biology textbooks. Maybe a Lynchburg delegate will notice that he has a comrade-in-batshittery in the Governor’s Mansion and will give it a shot. (And if that happens, I will wage a one man campaign to have disclaimer stickers put on Bibles. I’ll put them on myself if I have to.)

McDonnell will try and probably fail to privatize the liquor business in Virginia. His argument will be that it will “raise revenue,” but I don’t see how. The state can sell all the liquor store licenses it wants, but considering what a liquor store usually brings with it, I can’t imagine local zoning boards would be too psyched about the idea of putting them in their neighborhoods.

Ugh. It’s depressing to think about.

So on Tuesday, I will stagger over to the polling place and cast my vote in a losing effort, but what the hell else am I supposed to do? I can’t not vote. I guess at this point it’s all about making a statement. Digging in your heels, then grabbing onto something and holding on for dear life to keep from being dragged backwards by these Bronze Age ding dongs.

Please do the same. If Deeds just barely loses instead of getting swamped it might be that much tougher for some of McDonnell’s more insane inclinations to get through.

An Open Letter to the English Premier League

(This is something I wrote for another blog. If you have any friends in England, please forward it on.)

Dear Lads (or Blokes, or Geezers, or Yobs, or Whatever the Hell),

I would like to state unequivocally that like most of my countrymen, I know fuck all about your version of football. As you can probably tell by our performances in the World Cup, your national game just never caught on here.

But upon giving the state of your sport a passing glance, I am able to find certain similarities between our football and yours. For instance, in the rampaging dullard category, you guys have Milwall while we have Philadelphia and Oakland. Some things are just universal.

Just like you, we also have high ticket prices, overpriced food and drink, jerseys that were made by a kid who got paid a bowl of rice for his labors being sold for $100, and public funding schemes for new stadiums in order to pacify owners who have money literally falling out of every orifice in their corpulent white bodies. And like you, we are justifiably resentful of such things.

To be sure, there are teams who are at least providing a quality product on the field (or pitch, or whatever) both on your side of the pond and ours, which eases the pain of a watered down nine dollar beer somewhat. But for most real fans of the game, the football experience both here and in the UK is a long march of misery and failure, punctuated by minor ticks of misplaced joy. I’m sure that fans of Queens Park Rangers would have a great deal in common with fans of the Cleveland Browns, who are on occasion rewarded with a decent year, but for the most part are left to suffer the indignities of losing season after losing season.

A poor team is bad enough, but bad ownership and management makes the whole experience even worse. Stupid trades, coaches who couldn’t manage a successful bowel movement much less a football team, ridiculously overpaying unproven or past their prime talent, these are things that are not exclusive to either American or British football.

For instance, the team that I support is the Washington Redskins. (Yes, we know, it’s a racist name, but believe me when I tell you that the name is the least of the team’s problems.) The Redskins are currently owned by an incompetent, greedy, vindictive, awful little shit of a man named Dan Snyder. He bought the team for $800 million in 1999 after the death of Jack Kent Cooke, whose smart stewardship of the franchise led us to three separate NFL Championships from 1983 to 1991. The Skins have not even come close to that level of achievement since.

Dan Snyder bought a team with a fanatical built in fan base. Despite Washington’s reputation as a transitional city, the D.C. area is actually mostly populated by people who come from families who have lived here for multiple generations, myself included. And we live and die by this team. It wasn’t like Mr. Snyder had to engage in an uphill marketing battle to really sell Washington Redskins football. Heroin dealers have a rough time of it in comparison. The time spent on the waiting list for season tickets is about twenty years. It isn’t uncommon for new parents to put their infant’s name down on the season ticket list in the hopes that they will be able to afford them when their names finally get called. (This is actually becoming more and more unlikely.)

Upon buying the team, Mr. Snyder immediately began to treat this devoted fan base as if they were nothing more than dogshit with ATM cards. He jacked up the rates for everything, including parking, which is particularly bad because the stadium is hell and gone out in Prince George’s County and is mostly inaccessible by public transportation. Tailgating, a tradition as old as football itself, has been forcibly curtailed. The idea that people are eating their own food and drinking their own beer before entering the stadium is blasphemy to Dan Snyder, who would much rather squeeze nickels out of his devoted fans by forcing them to pay for poorly made $10 chicken tenders and hot dogs. It would not be absurd to imagine Mr. Snyder bottling his own knock off brand of Coca-Cola or brewing his own shitty beer in the basement of Fed Ex Field in order to maximize his profits.

He has plastered every available surface of the stadium with advertising. (Do bear in mind that when an American says that there is too much advertising, you better fucking BELIEVE that there is too much advertising.) Any stoppage in play is met with a series of adverts for cars, sodas, beers, mutual funds etc. Not on television, mind you, but on the twin giant HD television screens which dominate both sides of the stadium. The broadcasters deliver the game from “The Popeye’s Fried Chicken Broadcasting Booth.” (Seriously. They actually say this.) Time outs are referred to as “Jiffy Lube Time Outs.” There are barely any advertising free seconds of broadcast when you listen to the game on the radio.

As you probably know, the global economy is in a recession, but since Dan Snyder personally isn’t, he sees no reason why those who cannot afford their season tickets should not be taken to court in order to be made to pay up. A season ticket contract is an actual contract, after all, right?

So, in short, everything that you guys hate about America? The rip-offs, the principle of money over all, the idea that absolutely everything is for sale, the Cui Bono horse shit that makes us big and loud and blazing and fucking impossible to deal with at times? Dan Snyder embraces this sort of thing with a passion that is embarrassing to watch, and expensive to experience.

He also makes my beloved Redskins awful.

The traditional role of an owner in American football is probably the same as the proper role of an owner in British football. Be rich, shut the fuck up, look magnanimous, hire people who know what they are doing and write the necessary checks (or cheques, or whatever) needed to cover the costs. Dan Snyder does not do this. He is the only thing worse than a micromanager. He is an incompetent micromanager.

He meddles. He hires. He fires. He chooses the talent. He is hands on about every aspect of the running of the actual team, despite the fact that the closest he ever got to playing football was getting his ass kicked by the guys on the team at his high school. He also has the attention span of a nine year old that has put cocaine on his morning corn flakes, losing interest in coaches and players on which he has paid absurd amounts of money and jettisoning them when they fail to instantly turn things around. The Redskins now have such a horrible league wide reputation for front office meddling that no coach in his right mind would be willing to take the job. It’s the equivalent of a restaurant owner camping out in the kitchen during the dinner rush and second guessing the chef while he is trying to get the plates out the door.

The “General Manager” of the Washington Redskins is a “General Manager” in the sense that Elvis Presley’s karate instructor was “really teaching” the King how to be a black belt. Vinny Cerrato is a sycophantic, powerless yes man who does what he’s told. His is a job that could be done by quite literally anyone, from Lilly Allen to Flavor Flav, from Aaron Aaronnsen to Zoe Zayers. No skill, initiative or counsel is required. Just be an efficient bag man and you too could be the General Manager of the Washington Redskins.

And the play on the field reflects all this. To put it in terms that you might understand, if the National Football League used the practice of relegation, the Washington Redskins would be playing high school teams in Montgomery County by now.

So why am I troubling you about all this? Why would anyone in England give one tenth of one percent of one shit about some god awful American billionaire and his embarrassingly named team?

Head’s up, Nigel. This unbelievable dickhead is sniffing around your neck of the woods.

Two years ago he was creeping around London, trying to make a bid on Tottenham. And he won’t stop there. Believe me when I tell you, this guy is not Malcolm Glazer. Manchester United has apparently continued to be a good team despite Glazer buying the team. Dan Snyder is the reverse King Midas of sport. Everything he touches turns to shit. If he buys Aston Villa or Arsenal or Man City or Wolves or whoever the fuck, you can guarantee that overnight this guy will think he’s channeling Pele and will start making all the personnel decisions of the team to absolutely catastrophic effect.

There won’t just be advertising on the front of the jersey. Each individual ass cheek of the players’ shorts will be for sale, as will their socks, cleats and probably their jockstraps as well. Ticket prices will go up. EVERYTHING will go up. Beer, food, jerseys, whatever. That’s what he does. That’s WHO HE IS.

Dan Snyder is first and foremost a businessman, and in Washington, D.C. his business is peddling misery. We figured that maybe we should let you guys know before he starts exporting that product to you. Judging from the You Tube evidence, y’all are pretty good at rioting over there. That should come in handy in the event that this blight on the soul of my city buys one of your teams.

Best of luck, chaps. Just do remember that we tried to warn you.

Yeah, But Will it Play in the Asylum?

Have you ever seen those guys that hand out pamphlets outside the DMV? Maybe the guy on the street corner with “THE END IS NIGH” sandwich board? Maybe the guy that even knocks on your door because he has some urgent information about…whatever?

Have you ever found yourself in a bar and realize that you accidentally got into a conversation with the absolute wrong person? Like, all of a sudden the conversation goes from who would be a better point guard for the Dallas Mavericks to Zionist conspiracies? And you take a good look at the guy spouting this nonsense and you see this charge in his eyes and you realize that you would rather be somewhere, hell, ANYWHERE else?

Last weekend, a huge congregation of those folks all came to my neck of the woods.

It was “Teabagfest Mark 2,” in which people came to Washington to roar about how upset they are that all of their taxes have gone up even though none of their taxes have gone up. It was where people with signs calling the President a Muslim and a terrorist and a communist and a socialist and a killer of old people came to D.C. to protest the fact that their freedoms are at risk, even though you have to figure that if you are in a country where it’s perfectly okay to carry a sign calling the President a Muslim and a terrorist and a communist and a socialist and a killer of old people, your freedoms are humming along pretty freaking good. They came to protest rampant government spending, which has honest to God never happened in America before. Seriously.

Come on, Cleetus, we know it isn’t just the spending. It’s those two peripheral factors about the spending that are bugging you. Your first problem is what the gubmint happens to be spending the money on. You had no problems with that level of spending during the W Administration because they were spending money on stuff that you liked. Shiny things that go boom. Giving Halliburton seventy gajillion bucks so the troops could have fresh rainbow colored sprinkles at the new food court sundae bar. Tax cuts for the people that laid you off. Good thing too, because when you win the lottery you sure as hell won’t want Uncle Sam digging in your pockets. Any day now, any day now…

Problem number two is, let’s face it, the uh…complexion, shall we say, of the guy doing the spending. Sorry. I saw too many Dixie flags and heard far too many comfortable utterances of the word “nigger” for me to believe otherwise.

This was not the march of principled, thoughtful conservatives. If it were, there sure as hell would have been more than 70,000 people. Do not let it be spun that the media was just focusing on the bad apples. It was ALL bad apples. It was those guys at the DMV. The street corner prophets. The wrong guy at the bar. The guy knocking at your door. This was the march of the hot new demographic. The batshit crazy. The fanatically uninformed. The conspiracy freaks. The cheerful bigots.

Which is what Fox News has figured out. Somewhere in New York, some bright young thing in marketing said, “You know what? Those guys in the tinfoil hats probably eat breakfast cereal, too. And there are just enough of these folks to make catering to them profitable.”

So you have shows where every single dingbat rumor culled from the scum traps of the internet are given credence, graphics and lots and lots of camera time. And all those dingbats, those nutcases, those paranoid, delusional and Yes, Virginia, utterly racist bozos are RIVITED to Fox News now. And in order to keep these folks glued to the screen, they are going to have to get weirder and wilder, just like on Lost. And Obama has only been in office 9 months. If you think those talking heads and talk radio hosts are crazy now, just wait until this time next year.

Been Sick

Sorry. Getting so I am not hacking up my lungs has been quite important.

Anyway, I’ll have something up soon.

K?

K.

Fornicators of Virginia, Unite!

As a mostly lifelong resident of Virginia, I can’t tell you the number of times I have had to defend my own state. I defend it to people who live in D.C. (“The suburbs are so boring,” says the guy who moved to the District eighteen months ago from Moose Testicles, Minnesota.) I defend it to people who live further down south. (“Virginia ain’t the south,” says a guy from the Carolinas.) I defend it to people who live in the North and West. (“Virginia? That’s like, I don’t know, all redneck and shit, right?” asks the bong maker from Santa Cruz.) Hell, I even have to defend northern Virginia to people in southern Virginia, and vice versa. “No, we aren’t all communist faggots up here in Arlington, and no, they aren’t all mule screwing hillbillies down in Lexington.”

It’s hard enough defending this state as it is. But it’s going to be damn near impossible if we elect a governor who used the word “fornicators” in his master’s thesis.

According to the Washington Post:

Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

This thesis was written in 1989, by the way, even though it sounds like something that was read aloud in Salem just before they set Biddy Junkins on fire for consorting with evil spirits. And McDonnell was not some starry eyed twenty two year old when he wrote it. He was in his mid-thirties.

McDonnell is claiming that this thesis was simply an “academic exercise,” but remember that he was going to Pat Roberton’s Regent “University.” I sincerely doubt there are academic exercises of any sort going on in that nut hatchery.

As an unapologetic “fornicator,” I really have a problem with this dude occupying the governor’s mansion. I’m sure that all of my “cohabitating” and “homosexual” friends would as well. As would all of my women friends who happen to be, you know, working for a living.

I am start to finish sick of these Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson/Liberty University/Regent University Stone Age children of the corn, and I don’t want them anywhere near the mechanisms of government. If you are a Virginian and care at all about this state, please vote in November and help crush this backwards, superstitious bozo.