Suicide Pakistan Joke

So I heard a dumb joke the other day, and I chuckled, but then realized that it demonstrates a really huge problem in this country.

Here’s the joke:

I was feeling suicidal, so I called the Suicide Hotline, but they’d outsourced it to Pakistan, and they got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

So, first I chuckled, but then I thought about how the average American would react to that and why. I think a lot of people here in the good old US of A believe that the “enemy” is Muslims. All of them. Islamofascists, so if you’re a Muslim, you’re a Fascist.

Brought to you by the Administration that “doesn’t do nuance”.

Do you think it’s possible that America is less safe because of the racist nature of the Right’s base and the blatant fear and hate mongering by the Administration?

If an occupying Iraqi soldier accidently killed your Mom, would anything about your view of Iraqis change? Can you imagine that maybe, somewhere deep inside, you’d wish revenge? Well, that there is the recipe for terrorists.

How did America fall for these boneheads?

Seriously questionable priorities

Now here’s a perfect example of “Global War On Terror” as a ridiculous political circus designed and executed with only one purpose- creating a climate of fear that keeps Republicans in power. Check this out.

We couldn’t take the route we wanted to over Hoover Dam on the way to a traditional Vegas Christmas, so we made a daytrip from the Strip. There’s a long snaking line of cars at the two security checkpoints, a 15 mph speed limit over the dam, and a ban on trucks, vans, trailers, trucks, RV’s and rental cars (how can they tell it’s a rental car?) The are building a massive highway bridge costing billions of dollars about a quarter mile from the dam.


Entering the visitor center, there are xray/metal detectors and warning signs stating, “No objects larger than this.” above a twelve by twelve inch square. All of this makes us think about what a delicate piece of infrastructure this dam must be, and how we all have to give up so much to defend OurWayOfLifeTM.

So we go on the tour and it’s really cool and massive and everything it should be, when I notice an earthquake detector/seismometer. I ask the guide about it and he says, “We believe the dam could survive a Category 9 earthquake. The canyon walls would mostly fall in, but Hoover Dam would still stand.”

I’m practically speechless. (Those who know me realize this is only a literary device.) “What the hell is all the security for?” I ask him. “Well, those jerks that fly airplanes into buildings are going for a big impact on people by targeting the dam.” (This from the man who earlier stated that if a fully loaded 747 flew into the dam it might or might not leave a mark.)

I said, “The Las Vegas Strip is 30 miles from here; no vehicle restrictions, no metal detectors. So a bomb here that “might leave a mark” is a bigger threat?” As I was wearing my “Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11” t-shirt, I guess we sort of agreed to disagree.

To further illustrate my point, a Richter Magnitude 9 earthquake is almost unimaginable. I can find no record of one in recorded history. Each point on the scale is 10 times the intensity of the lower number, so a 5 is 10 times a 4, or 100 times a 3. They don’t even define the intensity of a 9, but for an 8 (one tenth as powerful), “Almost all structures fall. Bridges wrecked. Very wide cracks in ground. Total destruction. Ground surface waves seen. Objects thrown into the air. All construction destroyed.”

If this was an actual security precaution, rather than political theater, don’t you think they could have found something more vulnerable to protect first?

Yes, Virginia, There is a War on Terror

(Republished without permission from HuffPo.)

Dear Editor,


I am 28 years old. Some of my friends say that the war on terror is a mistake, and furthermore "terror" is an abstract noun, it's not a country, and you can't wage war on an abstract noun. My friends, especially Peter Wilkins, say that there is no war on terror, it's just an excuse to manipulate and terrify the American public. I kind of agree with Peter, who's also very cute. My father though says I'm full of crap, and a slut, and have been misled by the liberal media as well as by my stupid friends. My father said I should write my question to this newspaper, and then accept the answer and shut up. So, Wall Street Journal, please tell me the truth, is there a war on terror?


Virginia O'Bannion.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except for what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, his intellect nothing as compared with the intelligence gathered by the government's warrantless wiretappings. Big Brother listening in? Perhaps. But big is good, and brother is good, so there is no problem. If we have nothing to hide, why do we want to hide it?



Yes, Virginia, there is a war on terror. It exists as certainly as Islamofascism and media bias and a turning away from the truth of Jesus Christ exist. It is an unhappy truth, but it must be faced, Virginia.

How dreary would be the world if there were no war on terror! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginia's or South Dakota's or no Texas's. There would be no childlike faith in the words of our leaders. There would be no war in Iraq, no threatening of Iran, no enhanced interrogation techniques, no foreign adventures or bravery or patriotism. The idealistic shock and awe by which America promises to impose democracy on the world would be no more.



Not believe in the war on terror! You might as well not believe in fairies. And what about Santa Claus? You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.

So it is with the war on terror. It is hard to see, it is hard to pinpoint, but it is all around us at all times, hiding on planes and in toothpaste tubes, but your little friends say these dangers are not real. Your little friends really annoy me, they are little in spirit and mind and body. For the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Depending on who you live next to, perhaps you have. Oh the times, oh the mores. We are going to hell in a hand basket, and it is foolish in all regards to be seated in a flammable basket while descending toward a furious pit of fire.


No war on terror! Thank God it lives and lives forever. It will truly go on forever, or at least until a few minutes before the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come charging down Pennsylvania Avenue with Chuck Norris and Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham all seated like spectres on their steeds, preparing the way for Jesus Christ to descend from heaven minutes later and finally make clear who is right is this world and who most damnably is wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong.

Yes, Virginia, there is a war on terror. Now turn your back on your little, 'ittle friends, and tell them they are wrong. And tell your father he is right, and beg his forgiveness and wash his feet with your hair, which the women did in the gospels, so I don't mean anything odd by it. Thank you for writing, Virginia, and Merry Christmas and Happy War on Terror.

Infallible scripture, Part 3

Okay, a guy on the YouTube/Republican debate held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe that every word in this book is true? Do you?" and the candidates fell all over themselves to try to say "Yes!" most convincingly. I was raised to believe that every "jot and tittle" of the Bible was the precise Word of God.

There are hundreds of examples, but let's try a simple one; can anybody square these verses?

Matthew 26:34 (King James Version)

34Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

Mark 14:30 (King James Version)

30And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.

Mark 14:66-72 (King James Version)

72And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.

Granted the details are not that important unless you try to claim that EVERY WORD OF THIS BOOK IS 100% ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

It can't be. Anyone?

Reprint: The Infallible Bible

Here's a reprint, because my bro avoided the point of my last post. My point is that there is an absurdly selective obedience to most precepts and rules in the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch. So here's the repost:


Long ago during my brief stint in a Christian school I learned about a concept called “theoneustos”, literally, “God breathed”. The idea was that God breathed through the writers of scripture, so we can know every word in infallible and true.

I have always had a hard time believing that a document in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church for a millennium wasn't doctored with. I wouldn’t trust them with an altar boy, never mind the written basis of a huge religious group.

Anyway, these believers, millions of them in the US today do some odd cherrypicking. To whit:

If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10 we ignore, because we can’t go around killing people such as, oh, let’s say the leading Republican candidate?

You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground—those which I have set apart as unclean for you.
Leviticus 20:25 we ignore because it’s ceremonial law. Oh yeah? Who gets to pick?

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
Leviticus 18:22 is the basis for the number one political concern of American (mostly Christian) Republicans. Not hunger, poverty, illness or any of the stuff their religion’s namesake actually said was important. What is the basis for the right’s obsession with sex anyway?

Great Depression II

I finally saw something in a letter to the editor that I’ve been looking for about 3 years. In a letter to the editor, a Phoenix woman wrote that she had lived through the last depression and that this was another one coming on. It’s odd that there are many people in important places who know perfectly well that we are like the coyote who’s run off the cliff, but hasn’t fallen down yet.

They’re all still pitching mid-caps and growth sector stocks, when they’re all moving to cash, diversifying info non-dollar currencies and getting ready for the financial Tsunami. I’m ready, but I really think most people have no clue what’s coming and are out there busily running up the Visa to buy cheap crap from China for all and any.

One bad thing about being retired is losing touch with the zeitgeist- are people talking about foreclosures at the water cooler? Are people still saying housing will go back up any day now?

As of yesterday, the major financial players and banks in the US had lost $40 billion dollars in the last quarter. And they definitely aren’t coming clean about all the crap they’re holding, not “marking to market” as the saying goes.

So how has America’s standing in the world changed under seven years of the Imperial Boy King W?

$9 TRILLION in debt, more than all 42 prior Presidents COMBINED! (That’s $27,000 for every MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN THE US!!! Whiskey, tango, foxtrot!?!?!?!?
Borrowing $2 billion a day from China, to continue tax cuts for the rich
Despised by people around the world
Civil liberties in tatters
Gang rape of the constitution by ideologues and fear mongers

Man, I can’t wait for a new Administration. Can you imagine what kind of hideous disassembly of a working government has been going on for 7 years? We need a Scouring of the Shire.

Back in the states and ready to rant

You know, I wasn’t just yelling into a closet when I asked for an explanation from any Christians on how to tell what parts of the Old Testament are ceremonial and therefore to be ignored, and which ones are eternal and important.

Seriously, there are parts of Leviticus that demand really outrageous death penalties for things people do all the time, and they are ignored, while the few references that can be construed as forbidding homosexuality are the basis of the modern church.

Are these stands defensible?

Can somebody help me with this?

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

Here's my excuse

The rants have been thinning out because we're in WAY too beautiful a place to be pissy. We'll be in Vegas next week, then Texas, both full of idiots, so the rants should resume on a more regular schedule..

I hope neither of my readers is harmed.

Morons on line, lies on tap

I have to share this comment, posted anonymously (how brave!) by some reactionary asswipe with an axe to grind and clue zero. Of some people, it's said they know nothing, this guy suspects nothing:


Actually, Tim McVey's brother in law was yosef padilla - a name which should sound familiar to you, since that family has long been known to be involved in terrorism. This wasn't a "christian white boy" acting - it was in fact muslims taking advantage of an ignorant christian white boy.



Okay, and Pat Robertson's father was Adolph Hitler, Hilliary Clinton killed Vince Foster and Fox News is fair and balanced.

Thoughts from Oklahoma City

We were in Oklahoma City a few weeks ago and I got to thinking.


They really did a beautiful job with this monument. It's visually stunning in a city that rarely rises much past bleak. Thoughtful and simple, it memorializes the victims with barely a mention of the zealot who caused those deaths. Something really striking occurred to me about Timothy McVeigh and April 19, 1995. I remember the time vividly as my company, UUNET Technologies, was to go public the next month, and I might end up with a dollar or two.

After the attack, there was much discussion about which particular Islamic group or what particular Muslim fanatics could have done this?

Oddly enough, it turned out that the terrorist was a white, Christian, conservative, native born, US Army veteran male. Here's where I thought it got interesting. On 9/11, 19 idiots (mostly from Saudi Arabia and none from Iraq, nor with any connection to Iraq) came here and killed 2974 people. That's a kill rate of almost 157 people per terrorist. McVeigh killed 168.

So we can conclude that the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil per capita was carried out by a native-born, white, conservative, Christian, combat-tested male US Army veteran. I'm obviously not saying there's something wrong with all native-born, white, conservative, Christian, combat-tested male US Army veterans. I'm just saying be careful about the idea that we can profile by type because obviously not all terrorists reflect the outlook of those in other ways similar to them.

Global War on Reason, er, Terror

So, I'm listening to “Talk of the Nation” (actually, kind of miraculous hundreds of miles south of the border) and this assclown, torture apologist is raging that the liberal media never reports on the thousands of terrorists they’ve rounded up and the plots they’ve prevented. His basic point is, “Either we torture, or thousands of Americans will die.”

Is anyone still buying this crap? I’d rather guarantee that thousands of Americans die every year in terror attacks than let this administration continue to gang rape the Constitution. What ever happened to, “Give me liberty or give me death”?

The only story about breaking up a terror operation I can remember is the one in Miami (I am a new junkie, so if it happened, I probably read about it). Remember this?

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Seven men concocted a plot to "kill all the devils we can," starting by blowing up Chicago's Sears Tower, according to charges in a federal indictment revealed Friday.


Turned out a bunch of lowlifes were bought cameras and rented cars by an FBI plant who gave them money and told them to take pictures. They did, and the photos are being used in their trial to prove they were Islamofascist terrorists. Except they were Catholics. And they smoked pot while discussing terror plots with the FBI plant who continued to give them money.

Give me $10,000 in cash and drop me in Liberty City, and I’ll come out 2 hours later with signed confessions to the killing of the last Czar, JFK and Jesus Christ.

I’m so freaking sick of the alleged war on terror. A ridiculous chance for a bunch of fat cats to get fatter.

And then I asked myself, how did I get here?

Paula asked about the whole top of the heap unreality thing that is my life, and I started to reply in a private email, but it turned into a rant, so here we go.

I was never particularly money-grubbing or a greed head. But I did study economics (philosophy with the balls to put a number on something) and minored in Yugoslav economics. I was pretty much a communist teen, so the Yugoslav model based on the 1948 Constitution was very attractive (stay with me).

Basically, the workers at factories could vote annually to keep or oust management. Also every three months they got a check for profit sharing. Here's an amusing unintended consequence- thousands of workers who had been showing up drunk and being complete slackers were beaten to death by their co-workers.

Except for the beatings, this to me seemed like the perfect fusion of social justice and economic efficiency, and as viewed from the late 70’s it seemed a likely outcome. I thought it might be interesting to try to put in place a fair, worker empowered workplace one day and stuck it on a mental bookshelf.

Flash forward a few years, and I’m having a blast working on a variety of stuff that was the early internet. We were all young and ernest and really loved the work, and we got to see people around us making fortunes at young ages, doing what they enjoyed, treating employees extremely well and making the world a better place.


I sort of gained expertise and employees and was able to but some of those worker empowerment things into practice and, lo and behold, it worked! I was running Sales and Support at a few small internet related companies in the late 80’s and early 90’s and using radical socialist models for compensation.

In the classic sales model, it’s all against all. I only win if others lose and my success depends on the failure of others. In addition, territories and quotas, the lifeblood of salespeople were usually capricious assigned, favorites rewarded, independence punished and generally really ugly workplaces. Think Glengarry Glen Ross. Lot’s of backstabbing and negative motivation to cooperate.

This may be too much inside baseball but it’s important. We divided up territories every 6 months or so, so that everybody got a historically equal territory. In addition EVERYONE got paid on EVERY sale. The individual sales rep got the most, and his team the next largest portion, but EVERYONE WANTED EVERY SALE. That means if the other guy’s phone rang and he was out, everyone dove for the phone. We quickly developed one of, no, the most cooperative workplaces I’ve ever had the pleasure to work in. There were a few other innovations, like doing almost everything over the phone, no suits, ideal hire 2 years out of college, ALL promotions from within, and just when we got the structure set up at the #3 Internet Service Provider in America, the internet exploded and we were in exactly the right place at the right time. Soon, we were global number one, and those other guys were out of business.



The normal sales model of guys in suits in cars or on airplanes couldn’t handle the volume and we did.

Over 100 of my employees became millionaires because of stock options we’d handed out, we had the largest proportion of female management of any telecom company in the world, the best maternity leave policy I’ve ever heard of, and the happiest most motivated work force I’d ever seen.

How do you top growing from million to billions in 3 years?

You don’t. You retire. And try to make the world a better place.

And that’s it.

The revolution will be on YouTube

US consumers (formerly citizens) have gotten very used to spending beyond their means. It's been encouraged from the highest levels of government, and become the conventional wisdom; buy a house you can't afford on a teaser rate. If the rate goes up, just refi! Want that 46" plasma TV? Finance it? Buy all the car you can afford and more! You deserve it!

As friends and relatives can relate, I've spent the last 3+ years telling people that stretching to buy real estate is probably a bad idea. (Somebody please back me up. You know who you are.)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the collapse of the credit bubble, real estate and the dollar will affect the social fabric of the US. The economic consequences are well covered here at iTulip, but it's a little technical for the layman.

How will we respond when over a million foreclosures occur next year? Two million voters directly affected. That makes, what, ten or twenty million close relatives to those foreclosed? What will the social outcome be? Political?

I got burned by the late 1980's real estate bubble in Massachusetts. It really rips your heart out and is completely degrading. We owed a few hundred thousand in credit card and other debt accrued trying to get my first software company off the ground..But then, when we went to the Judge about our Chapter 7 bankruptcy, he effectively said, "Your sins and debts are forgiven. Go forth and debt no more."

We left the Tip O'Neill federal building and Liz asked, "When do the men in hoods with sticks come to beat us?" And they didn't, because we had a thing called the "Second Chance Doctrine" that says every dog gets to bite once, and so we got a fresh start. Within 10 years, I had hired thousands of employees, started dozens of companies and created many, many millions of dollars of actual wealth for many people.

I'd say that was a great policy, that "Second Chance Doctrine".

Due to changes in the bankruptcy law a fear years back, a love note to the financial industry from Bush and the Republican Congress, the situation would be very different today.

Credit card debt is now NOT forgivable.
Car loans are now NOT forgivable.
Consumer debt is now NOT forgivable.

If I'd sought bankruptcy protection today, I would spend the next decade working it off.

NOT hiring thousands of people.
NOT starting dozens of companies.
NOT creating millions and millions of dollars of real wealth.

I think a lot of people like me, faced with turning into the Joads are going top be a force to be reckoned with. If I'd been saddled with decades of virtual debtors prison, I can tell you I sure would be radicalized. I'd spend every minute of spare time getting the word out that when the fatcats get too fat, they become food.

Historically, when too few have too much and too many have too little, you end up with situations like in Guatemala. But this time, we're not talking about peasants held down for centuries, we're talking homeless, garnished Americans who USED to drive new SUV's and USED to live in McMansions and USED to not have to think about which meal to eat out next.

I think they're going to be pissed. I think they're going to get violent. I think it's the best thing that could happen to the fat and happy citizenry of this spoiled rotten country and it's entitled, delusional wannabe imperial president.

I made the New York Times (again)

Last summer the extended Osborn clan's presence in the Round Hill, Maine Fourth of July Parade, a perennial and virulently lefty event,was duly noted in the Gray Lady, and Nat got named (I can't find the article to link.) This morning I posted Thomas Friedman's excellent NYT columns while failing to notice I was in the paper.

News whore? Moi? Guilty as charged. Did I mention I'm in Harper's next month?

As I tell my wife all too often,it's hard to remember, but I used to be important.

Thomas Friedman nailed it on Iran

There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this:

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

To: President Ahmadinejad

From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence

Subject: America

As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian national security. In fact, after Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had “high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.

Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cellphone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses.

True, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Congress decided to increase the miles per gallon required of U.S. car fleets by the year 2020 — which took us by surprise — but we nevertheless “strongly believe” this will not lead to any definitive breaking of America’s oil addiction, since none of the leading presidential candidates has offered an energy policy that would include a tax on oil or carbon that could trigger a truly transformational shift in America away from fossil fuels.

Therefore, it is “very likely” that Iran’s current level of high oil revenues will last for decades and insulate our regime from any decisive pressures from abroad or from our own people.

We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.” Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV. So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news.

Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of self-destruction, for three reasons:

First, 9/11 has made America afraid and therefore stupid. The “war on terrorism” is now so deeply imbedded in America’s psyche that we think it is “highly likely” that America will continue to export more fear than hope and will continue to defend things like torture and Guantánamo Bay prison and to favor politicians like Mr. Giuliani, who alienates the rest of the world.

Second, at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly unlikely” that America will arrest its decline.

Third, all the U.S. presidential candidates are distancing themselves from the core values that made America such a great power and so different from us — in particular America’s long commitment to free trade, open immigration and a reverence for scientific enquiry wherever it leads. Our intel analysts are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in evolution.

U.S. politicians seem determined to appeal either to the most nativist extremes in their respective parties — or to tell voters that something Americans call “the tooth fairy” will make their energy, budget, educational and Social Security deficits painlessly disappear.

Therefore, we conclude with “high confidence” that there is little likelihood that post-9/11 America will, as they say, “get its groove back” anytime soon.

Who needs nukes when you have this kind of America?

God is Great. Long Live the Iranian Revolution.

(Posted without explicit permission from the New York Times.)

Hypocracy - The Drug Lobby Can't Contribute (Yet)

I've been thinking alot lately about the two ways laws are used. One, to make someone feel smug that they disapprove of a behavior while having no effect or contributing to the behavior. Two, laws to actually change the behavior.

I doubt there's a member of the religious right who would favor legalizing drugs. I'm talking marijuana, heroin, you name it. But the war on drugs has cost billions of dollars to taxpayers, supports FARC in Columbia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and MS-13 in LA, not to mention putting millions of non-violent people in prison at an expense of billions. In spite of this, I could parachute into any town in America with $100 cash and in an hour I could get pot, heroin, crack, whatever. THE DRUG LAWS DON'T WORK!

Why don't we legalize marijuana? "I don't want to send the message that it's okay to do!" No probelmo with cigarettes and booze? It's easier for a 14 year old to buy pot in America than booze, because the booze is regulated. The pot is assumed not to exist? How could it be here? It's not legal!

If we legalized, taxed and regulated drug use, EVERY CRIMINAL GANG IN AMERICA WOULD BE OUT OF BUSINESS OVERNIGHT!

But the proud little clean faced boys and girls who's grandparents got it made illegal in the first place, cuz them darkies like that devil weed, can't get past the idea that making it legal would make it available to Dick and Jane for the first time.

I finally get the Iran thing

Okay, I’ve spent weeks trying figure out why the Bush and the Dick are trying to convince us that Iran is the greatest threat to the US since premarital sex, and it all came to me in a moment of clarity.

Why, I wondered would Iran go to so much trouble to build nukes to use on Israel or the US (the administration’s stated fear) when the resulting counterblow, from either nation, would leave Tehran a molten lake of glass.

Then it occurs to me that Iran’s real mortal enemy for lo these many years has been Saddam’s Iraq. Saddam, of course, claimed to have or nearly have nuclear weapons. Rationally, the Iranians move to counter and start to develop a nucular arsenal. Then in 2003 the Cheneyistas roll thru Iraq and take out the big Saddam. About the same time, the Iranians decide to suspend their nucular weapons program as the boogey man was hiding in a spider hole in Tikrit.

Flash forward to this year and the admin is a fix. Anyone with an IQ over room temperature has to realize that our involvement in Iraq is a clusterf#%k. What to do and how to avoid the blame? It’s those darn pesky Iranians. They are helping the bad guys, developing nucular weapons, and hell (as I heard Glen Beck say), “We’re already at war with Iran!”

What are they waiting for? I’ll bet anything, there is a team of American agents near the Iranian border desperately looking for something they can showcase as an Iranian causing the death of an American GI. Holy crap, all hell will break loose!

In August 1939, a prisoner was taken from a German prison, dressed as a Polish soldier, and used to stage what would look like a Polish attack on German troops. Poland fell as a result. I believe the current administration is trying to use the same playbook.

Ouch.

Reality has a known Liberal bias

The Chucklehead-in-Chief managed to reach a new low this morning at a press conference. The newest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) shows conclusively that Iran ceased any development of nucular (sic) weapons years ago.

So what does Monkey Boy have to say to that?

Nothing changed. Iran is still a threat.

“I have said Iran is dangerous,” Bush said a day after the release of the National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus of all 16 American spy agencies, “and the N.I.E. doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world — quite the contrary.”

What kind of moron calls proof positive that he is wrong "quite the contrary?"

Colbert put it so well at the White House press dinner a while back, "This is a man who will do on Wednesday what he planned on Monday, no matter what happens on Tuesday."

Such an important cause

My friend (I'm honored to call him that) Rick Prose is doing things in New Orleans we should all be trying like hell to be involved with. It's my honor to have had a small part in helping with lowernine.org, but making up for the administration's cynical, evil, racist and utterly abhorrent mistreatment of the citizens of the US who had the misfortune to be poor and black and live in New Orleans is one of the great crimes of the last decade.

Hey, George W. Bush and all of those around you! How the hell do you justify treating people like this and dare to call yourselves Christians?

Sub-prime collapse and US debt

Okay, so maybe I get to put my Economics degree to use here and run a little riff on the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and it’s doppelganger, the US debt fiasco. But I digress.

Okay, very often in Economics, as in sailing, it’s the terminology that can be the barricade to understanding. I’ll try to keep this simple.

The sub-prime debt problem is based, at least in great part, on the problem of responsibility for one’s actions. The current corrupt administration often uses phrases like this, but in practice hands out “Medals of Freedom” to some of the most unsuccessful, incompetent and and ineffective people to ever "serve" in government. (Heck of a job, Brownie!) All that "sub-prime" means, is that these weren't nade to the most credit worthy people in the world. That's it. In the 80's a lot of people thought Michael Milken was selling complete crap because of the label "Junk bonds". All it really meant was that there were a few not perfect, but not crap, issues with the companies involved.

What happened in sub-prime is that the mortgage brokers and banks selling loans generally sold them within a few days of making them. Get it? You, the loan offer gets paid your fee, usually one month's payment on the loan, and then the loan goes away. No risk. Big upside. I remember getting to college in 1977, and hearing a guy in the dorm reading from a student handbook, "Okay, so the police and campus security have to provide 24 hour written notice to enter our dorm rooms. Why shouldn't I IMMEDIATELY start dealing drugs?""

All upside, no risk.

Right, so the Right wing in the US has taken it as gospel that all taxes are bad, lowering them is good and raising them is bad. But they're getting around it by borrowing. The kind of chuckleheads who try to balance their budgets by putting it on credit cards and paying just the minimum are headed for a lot of pain.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.
Bush has borrowed more than all other Presidents combined.

Want to make sure you get my point.

Why is it so difficult for people to see this? ZERO pain for borrowing. HUGE political cost to pay for raising taxes. But George and Dick know that the bill comes due after their watch. They're leaving it to my younger readers, our children and grandchildren. And they're getting away with it.

A little math here- $9 trillion deficit
300 million Americans
That's $30,000 for every man, woman and child.
With 5% bonds, good for 20 years, that's $800 a month for a family of 4. Almost $10,000 a year. Median household income is around $48,000 a year. So 20 cents out of every dollar an average American earns will need to go to pay for George W. Bush's absurd policies, illegal war and absurd, ideological, corrupt and ineffective rule of 8 years. Then you start at zero to pay for everything else! Glad we haven't raised taxes? Just wait.

How. Stupid. Can. A. Nation's. Citizens. Be?

It's sure as hell enough to start thinking this whole democracy thing might not be up to it's billing.

From the Humble Farmer in Maine

Recently, the Humble Farmer, a 30 year veteran of Maine Public Radio was fired for making political commentary. I enjoyed and am posting one here and am assuming I have permission from the site.

How do you feel about war? I probably shouldn't take sides, being privileged as I am to sit --- with your permission --- behind this microphone, but I am going to come right out and admit that I don't care for war. No, it's not the war itself that bothers me. It's the needless killing and starvation and destruction and expense part of war that bothers me.

You might argue with me and say that war is the only way we can control the world's population. You might tell me that birth control is not a good thing but there is nothing wrong with millions of young men dying gloriously on the field of battle defending their country. You might tell me that we've got to have wars because if the population continues to increase at the present rate, in 500 years there won't be standing room on this planet. And I've got to admit that you've got me --- I can't say a word about that.

Let's admit it. You and I know that there are people who do like war. Many of them are the simple flag waving folks who will stand right up in public to show their support for a wimpy looking, weasely faced war monger from way down south who didn't even get most of the popular vote. There. I've said it and I'm glad. But this is public radio so you shouldn't be surprised to learn where I stand. And besides the support from flag wavers, you know that when there's a war every big company stands to make money. So you'll find the unions standing right beside management when you're talking big time war.

It's pretty hard to stop a war when the man --- who calls himself the leader --- wants a war. You'll notice that he starts out by sword rattling --- lets all the other world leaders know that he's got to make a move very soon to protect the safety and well-being of his people --- no matter how far away it is. And if he says the same thing over and over and over there will be a few people out there who say to themselves, "Baaaa. You know, I think he's right. There are some bad guys out there who are killing our people. We've got more planes and tanks and guns and technology than anyone else, so why should we have to put up with it. Our leader says we'll hit them so hard and so fast it will be over before they knew what hit them. And before we are done, we will have restored order and sucked all the natural resources out of an unstable region."

All this while, even though the war-mongering, rat faced wimp knows what he's going to do no matter what, he's making a big public show of talking with the top guys in Russia and France and England --- trying to either get their support or keep them off his back while he blows half the world to kingdom come.

Agh. I've said enough about him. Every time I see him blabbing on TV I wonder how anyone could possibly have been stupid enough to vote for such an idiot. I comfort myself by knowing that most of the people who went to the polls didn't.

I'll bet you don't know that wimpy little weasel face wrote a book in which he very clearly outlines his plans. And it might surprise you to hear me say that if you haven't read it, you should. Got your pencil? The name of it is Mein Kampf.

So that's the Humble Farmer. Who did you think he was talking about?

I really hate Karl Rove

Does anyone still believe anything that comes out of Rove’s mouth? His latest nonsense is this from the Washington Post:

"Rove said that the administration did not want lawmakers to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq that soon because it would "make things move too fast," before Bush could line up international allies, and politicize the issue ahead of midterm elections. But Democrats and some Republicans involved with the issue at the time said yesterday that Bush wanted a quick vote."

WHAT?!?!?!?!

It wasn’t bad planning by the administration, it was those darn pushy Democrats.

How dumb do they think we are? By any usual measure, this will be successful for the lobotomized 27% of the population that believes Rove has a point, that Nixon was framed and that Hilliary killed Vince Foster. I’ll sadly admit to having close family members in that camp. They’re actually very nice people who have been brainwashed into never seeing gray, when in fact there are very dark grays and very light grays, but damn little is black or white.

The only good news is that this is a break in the incessant drumbeat leading to an attack on Iran. I’ve already promised Liz if the US attacks Iran, we’re moving to Canuckistan and becoming Canuckistanis. Y’all can visit us in Nova Scotia in summer and Cuba in winter.