Wipe out

Just minutes after I declare for Bill Richardson, he quits the race. Now I've got to fight off despondency and cynicism about the direction of this great country of ours. New Mexico is an incredibly beautiful state. I think Richardson could have made the whole country just as beautiful. Too much of the east is flat and boring. More beautiful mountains and fantastic sunsets would have done us good. Oh well. Que sera sera. Insha'Allah baby.

Arizona is even better, so you'd think I'd be for John McCain, but he is much more a creature of Phoenix than a real Arizonan. Phoenix is a crime against the planet. If there were a just God, it wouldn't exist. And that's what McCain offers the rest of the country. He's probably never even seen a mountain or a sunset even though he's surrounded by them at least once or twice a year. All he sees is enemies. It's not that enemies don't exist, but he sees them in all the wrong places.

Which candidate should I support now that Bill has packed it in? McCain, aside from not really representing Arizona, is too submissive. Ever since Bush beat him like a dog in South Carolina he's acted like one. So I'm kinda leaning towards Giuliani. Not, as you might imagine, because of the New York skyline or ecosystem. Sure, it would be nice if more places were like New York -- Indianapolis, St. Louis, Nashville -- all those hellholes in the midwest could use a little New York style, and that's a good reason to vote for Rudolph, but I'm more drawn to the rotten reindeer because he's such a bizarre fucking psychopath. And in so many ways. If he were elected, much hilarity would ensue, at least until he starts fucking up the lives of his critics, say for a year or so. Still, better to have a few laughs in the meantime.

A lot of people are going to suffer and die for oil and misplaced notions of honor no matter who gets elected.

Catching the wave

Took my son up to New Hampshire today to photograph an Obama rally but the line was too long and his flacks too Bush-like, so we ended up at a Richardson rally in a park (see above photo). Now I'm leaning towards Bill. New Mexico is a beautiful state. Maybe he can make the whole country that beautiful.

Sunday funnies

I caught the end of the Democrat's debate last night. They all seemed like decent enough people and any one of them would be a world of improvement over any of the Republican psychopaths.

Only Obama or Richardson would have the remotest chance of being an effective president. Edwards is too direct in his challenge to corporate hegemony and there are just too many idiots out there with an irrational hatred of Hillary. Either Clinton or Edwards would provoke massive opposition that would be as well-funded as it would be vitriolic. We'd get at least four more years of ugliness, no doubt. With Obama or Richardson, at least there'd be a minute possibility that the tenor of the attacks would mellow.

I say minute chance. Does anyone doubt that if Obama is the nominee, the Republicans will go all southern strategy all the time and the news media will support them?

Already we see that our top journalists in both broadcast and print, perceive "race" as central to all Obama stories. Over and over again they note that in Obama's case "race" is not an issue and that Obama himself never mentions it. Yet for these poor stunted souls, our journalistic elite, it is all they can talk about. If Obama continues to do well, you can count on increasingly idiotic histrionics from the beltway pundits. They will be more than happy to amplify the Republican machine's southern strategy, with a tut tut and a wink of course. Today's topic: should Americans hide the white women if Osama, I mean Obama, becomes President? Fashion industry sees potential cash cow in veils. Meanwhile, latest bloodbath in mideast helps Republicans.

Well, if anyone with African heritage can withstand what's coming, he is Barak Obama. Our prejudices are much more related to culture than color and culturally Obama is white. Here's hoping the coming ugliness backfires on the racist Republican shit heads. Beggarman, get on your horse and ride.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Sunday editorial page is always good for a few sad laughs.

David Broder, who is the dean of Washington Punditry as long as you consider "dean" a synonym for "senile" writes:

That search becomes more urgent as the major-party politicians come to understand that Obama could be the most electable candidate the Democrats have fielded in many years.

What planet does this guy live on? Of the last four elections, Democrats won the popular vote in three of them and came close in the fourth. I think Broder and most of his beltway brethren have their heads so far up their beltway asses that they really cannot differentiate between their consensus opinions and the actual results of elections. It's truly amazing.

And finally, old sharp-stick-up-the-ass George Will claims that the middle class is only shrinking because the ranks of the rich are expanding.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled, from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."

Well, you know what they say about lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I have neither the time nor wherewithal to go deep into those particular statistics, but using the $30,000 to $100,000 income range to define middle class strikes me as silly. For one thing, those numbers obviously don't mean what they meant in 1979. And even if they are adjusted for inflation, $40,000 in New York is not the same as $40,000 in Bumfuck.

But the open sore that Will tries to band-aid with income statistics isn't poverty or any decline in the percentage of middle class folk. It's the income disparity between the truly wealthy and the other 95 or so percent of us and what that disparity means for our children. It means that if something isn't done to rein in those greedy fucks, most people's character and abilities, their merit, will have nothing whatsoever to do with their chance of success in this life. The semi-retarded scions of the wealthy who could never make it on their own, the George W. Bush's, Hank Steinbrenners, James Dolans, and so many more faceless others, will have it all wrapped up in tax free trust funds and off-shore accounts. If we don't tax these losers back to competitive reality, your grandchildren better hone their ass kissing skills cause that's where just about the only opportunity for advancement that will be left.

Photo of the day

I found about a thousand old photos on a hard drive I was about to throw away. A couple are kind of interesting. This one seems to have some resonance.

Another death knell for democracy

According to the New York Times:

Emily Rocheleau, 22, an independent, said she was weighing her choices between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of their positions are really moderate, but their rhetoric and their approach to politics is more about unifying the country,” said Ms. Rocheleau, who added that she had not yet chosen her candidate.

Honestly. Do these people really exist or do reporters just make them up? If she were five, I could sympathize with her reasoning. But I know a lot of eight year olds that have significantly more intellectual depth. Really, I do.

But at least she's open minded, I guess. Too many oldsters will vote for the party they vote for because that's their party, doesn't matter who the candidate is. For them it's like rooting for the home team. Once a Stealer's fan, always as Stealer's fan.

Just imagine. In this day and age, with all the monumentally important shit going on in the world, we could very well have an election which is decided by simple folk like Ms. Rocheleau, 22, an independent, who will choose between Obama and McCain based on whether she'd prefer the cute guy or the old guy as President, her boyfriend or her grandpa.

Conspiracy theories

You may note that I have made a few changes to the blog roll on the right. I've been meaning to for some time. I've always felt bad that I link to so few, but have always taken the position that I should only link to writers that I actually read regularly. I have a rather full life and just don't have the time to spend all my time on the internets, so those are only a few.

But there are so many others I like and read occasionally, so I added a second category to include those. As yet, the list is incomplete but I will try to grow it as I go along.

And sadly, I've added a third category. Favorite writers who somehow allowed their sites to become unreadable.

Putting TBogg in that category especially pains me. He is one of the few writers on the web who I would actually pay good money to read, but it is not worth the effort to navigate his new site. It is apparently designed to make visitors click as many times as possible. My guess is that he somehow gets paid based on the number of clicks. If that's true, fine, I wish him well. People who write that well should make money off it. But if not, if the new site is just a horrible design choice, someone please ask him to fix the goddammed thing. Then let me know and I'll move his link back up to the first team. Until then, I'm afraid he will just be another small hole in my life.

Tom Tomorrow is the other writer I put in the used to be great but became unreadable category. His site was taken over by some guy shilling a book called "The Prisoner of Trebekistan." Every third sentence on the blog was an advertisement for the stinking book. I understand that writers want to sell their work and am not opposed to marketing in general, but at some point it becomes too crass. Unfortunately, poor Tom's site turned into a cross between an infomercial and a RonCo advertisement. I had to stop reading.

You know what's odd? The guy who ruined Tom Tomorrow's site with the endless shilling of his book, Bob Harris, was mentioned in a TBogg post shortly before TBogg's blog disappeared. Hmmmmmm. Could he have them locked in a basement somewhere? Maybe someone should investigate.

On a positive note, I just scanned Tom's site for the first time in ages and didn't see any infomercials. Perhaps I'll get back in the habit of going there and move him back up the blog roll. I hope so. Can't have too many good writers out there.

All about eve

Conservative Christian viral email isn't always about politics. Sometimes they make funny:

A woman and a man are involved in a car accident on a
snowy, cold Monday morning; it's a bad one. Both of
their cars are totally demolished but amazingly
neither of them are hurt. God works in mysterious
ways. After they crawl out of their cars, the man is
yelling about women drivers.

The woman says, "So, you're a man. That's interesting.
I am a woman. Wow, just look at our cars! There's
nothing left, but we're unhurt. This must be a sign
from God that we should be friends and live in peace
for the rest of our days."

Flattered, the man replies, "Oh yes, I agree
completely, this must be a sign from God! But you're
still at fault ... women shouldn't be allowed to
drive."

The woman continues, "And look at this, here's another
miracle. My car is completely demolished but this
bottle of wine didn't break. Surely God wants us to
drink this wine and celebrate our good fortune."

She hands the bottle to the man. The man nods his head
in agreement, opens it, and drinks half the bottle and
then hands it back to the woman. The woman takes the
bottle, puts the cap back on and hands it back to the
man.

The man asks, "Aren't you having any?"

The woman replies, "No, I think I'll just wait for
the police...."

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Women are clever, evil bitches.

That little fable brought to you by our moral guardian wannabees. Forward it to all your friends.

Holiday in america

Where's Santa?

Gotta wear shades

According to Peter W. Galbraith writing in the Washington Post, we may be doomed, doomed, when it comes to Pakistan, a failed state which possesses over 70 nuclear weapons and hates us.

But there is hope, he writes. The United States can do two things:

First, we can demand an international investigation into Bhutto's death.

The international investigation, I agree, is a bold move. But that, by itself, is not enough to ensure Pakistan's peaceful and prosperous future as a staunch American ally.

It's also crucial that:

President Bush should choose his words more carefully.

Insha'Allah baby. Any plan dependent on Bush choosing his words carefully is obviously doomed to miserable failure.

I'm not saying that he is incapable of carefully choosing his words, although I grant it's not his forté. No, he has proven over and over again that he will carefully choose incredibly stupid words backed up by incredibly stupid actions that will make any situation much worse.

So if an international investigation and Bush's loquacity are not enough to save Pakistan, what can we do?

How about a bold, bi-partisan congressional investigation to lay the groundwork for a sensible solution that would depend on multiple unlikely scenarios coalescing in a timely manner on which all sides, or at least Democratic presidential candidates, could agree?

Or we could go conservative and ask what Jesus would do. He would bomb them, of course, fo instant gratification if nothing else. When you're the Jesus blessed greatest country in the history of the universe, violence is always a good answer. It's more than that. its duh'vine.

A better idea

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wants to build a fence to keep potential Pakistani terrorists out of our great and God blessed country. He doesn't specify where to build this fence, Mexico presumably, though to be realistic we'd need to build a fence around Canada too. And let's not forget Hawaii and Alaska. Those Pakis can be sly devils.

But I have a better idea, more realistic and in line with the general Republican world view. Instead of a fence, let's dig a giant hole in the ground. Then we can collectively stick our heads in it. The "hole" solution would work every bit as well as a crazy assed fence for keeping the terrorists and their hand-held ballistic missiles, or little vests of dynamite, at bay in Brownsville. And it would be much more cost effective. Much more.

The only drawback is that so many Republicans, the presidential candidates first and foremost, would mistake a hole in the ground for their ass. Then they would stick their heads up their ass to keep the terrorists out.

Nasty stuff, I know, but still, a hole in the ground is a better solution than a fence. And it's not like most Republicans don't have their head up their ass without the existence of a big hole in the ground to confuse them.

Me? I'm lyin here

nothin in my ears

lyin on my bed

nothin in my head

Didn't get around to finishing my annual Xmas essay on It's a Wonderful Life. Sorry. Next year. I promise.

News from the front

Interesting developments in the war on Christmas. More to come tomorrow...

A new low

Sorry, haven't been posting much lately. Sick of writing. Haven't had the gumption to take new photos. Most of my time has been spent working on videos, which is not good for providing content for an oft-publishing on-line magazine. The damn things are fucking slow to produce.

As an offshoot of that, I needed to learn a bit about creating 3D graphics in Illustrator, so instead of the usual form of masturbation, I worked on the chuckling logo instead. Kinda fun, but ultimately useless.

But on the positive side, you can look forward to my annual X-mas eve essay on It's a Wonderful Life. Serously, I'll have it on-line X-mas eve morn. Y'all come back now. No, I mean come back then.

Why we are doomed, part MXXXVI

Perhaps the headline is overstating it a bit? I don't know. You never can tell with these things. When it comes to identifying all of the little contributing factors to the end of the world as we know it, it's easy to overstate the importance of this one or that. But as a pundit in an on-line magazine, I persist. You can be sure that when the catastrophe is upon us, the deciding factor for its cause will be something that no one considered important at the time.

Yesterday, for example, I was researching point and shoot cameras for a colleague. She wanted one those sleek little jobs, the kind that you can carry around your neck on a lanyard. A camera functional yet fashionable, something akin to those giant medallions the rappers wear, only more for the Disney World, camera-totin tour bus type. Beyond size, the requirements were short recovery time between shots and and image quality. In that order.

Did you know that those tiny cameras now come in 12 mega pixel models? That means that each photograph will have 12 million pixels. A pixel is a small square dot. To get 12 million of them on a 1.25" chip is amazing. Those are small little buggers. It's very fucking impressive. Wowsa.

Of course I knew that was just a marketing gimmick, that stuffing that many pixels on a tiny chip would more likely fuck up the quality, and would definitely fuck up the speed. So I concentrated my research in the seven or eight megapixel range.

What I found was that they no longer make the camera that virtually all the professionals agreed was far and away the best in terms of image quality. And realistically, isn't image quality what it's all about? The newest 12 MP model with a veritable plethora of useless features sells for around $300. The discontinued 6 MP model whose only bell or whistle was incredible image quality now sells for a minimum of $399 on line.

So you can take away two things from that. One is that companies will produce what their marketers can sell, not necessarily the best quality thing they can produce. The second lesson is that a lot of people have their priorities all screwed up. We are easily suckered by superficialities. Educated people will almost always choose quality. The poorly educated are drawn to the bright ans shiny. Then we wonder why our purchase sucks.

In this case we just get crappy photos. And truth be told, even the best fully automatic ultra-slim camera will not produce good pictures in much of anything less than perfect lighting, but the same dynamic is at work all across the cultural spectrum.

That's why George W. Bush is president. That's why the most spectacular failures in our political and corporate society are so lavishly rewarded. That's why the rich eat 1.7 pounds of meat every week while the poor eat 2.2. It's why we shop at WalMart and eat at McDonalds. It tells us everything we need to know about the presidential candidates.

Substance is not much of a factor in our purchasing decisions. But once the sale is made, substance is all we've got.

A very good piece of writing

It's this kind of thing, along with MapQuest, that makes the internets worthwhile.

I couldn’t understand why the police were wearing brown, that’s all I could think when we entered the house. Two policemen wearing brown taking Ricky away, because he shot a very sweet neighbor who plays golf everyday. You look for clues to explain what’s happening, something to tell you it’s all a big mistake, something askew sticks out and that was it, police dressed wrong isn’t right, policemen wear blue uniforms, these police are dressed in brown, this must be a dream.

Great stuff. On so many levels.

It's a tough job...

In this morning's edition, the New York Times reports that the "Democrats" are pathetically weak and helpless. But it's not their fault. The Republicans are just way tooo strong.

Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans are playing such tight defense, blocking nearly every bill proposed by the slim Democratic majority that they are increasingly able to dictate what they want, much to the dismay of the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and frustrated Democrats in the House.

In fact, the Senate Republicans are so accustomed to blocking measures that when the Democrats finally agreed last week to their demands on a bill to repair the alternative minimum tax, the Republicans still objected, briefly blocking the version of the bill that they wanted before scrambling to approve it later.

The Democrats send out daily tallies of the number of Republican filibusters, which the Democrats say will set a record.

You may recall that it was not so long ago that the "Democrats" were the minority party and they were unable to block much of anything at all. When they had the temerity to threaten to use the filibuster, the Republicans just laughed and threatened to abolish it altogether, arguing that it was unconstitutional. The "Democrats," as is befitting their job description, promptly caved and gave the Republicans everything they demanded.

You may also note that the "Democrats" fail to use the same awesome power of the filibuster even now when they are the majority party and could easily defeat Republican diktats. But that's not gonna happen, now is it? Defeating Republican diktats is not their job. Quite the contrary.

It's actually much more difficult for the "Democrats" being in the majority. How can they constantly lose when they control both houses of Congress? Especially whey the Republicans just spent so many years getting every single thing they wanted when they were in the majority.

It's simply impossible for a political party to be that weak and strategically inept. The only rational explanation is that it is the "Democrats" job to be defeated. I think we can safely count on much hilarity to ensue if they win the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate. How will they manage to cave in to every single Republican demand then? Oh, I trust they'll manage. They have proven extremely resilient in their relentless pursuit of weakness. If it weren't for the comedic value, I'd have stopped paying attention long ago.

Nothing to see here, move along (enhanced edition)

Via the New York Times, some blogger asks a question:

Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of legally dubious (at best) C.I.A. intelligence activities, and then saying nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at which point he expresses outrage and incredulity — but reveals nothing. Really, isn’t it about time the Democrats select an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one who will treat this scandal with the seriousness it deserves, and who will shed much-needed light on the C.I.A. program of torture, cruel treatment and obstruction of evidence?

What the naifs who populate the top echelons of our press and punditry fail to realize is -- as usual -- the obvious. Jay Rockefeller is an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee precisely because he covers up these things. When you are a prominent member of a fake opposition party, the willingness to cover up for the bad guys is one of the most important qualifications for the job.

Look at any issue and you’ll find “democrats” following the same script. They use their positions in government to cover up the inner party’s high crimes and lesser misdeeds then blather fake outrage and do nothing when anything illegal or embarrassing comes to light.

And everyday the same old becomes new again:

For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised.

Objections were not raised? However could that be?

The press, which fulfills its function as a guardian of truth only slightly better than the “democrats fulfill their role as real political party, still has trouble calling torture torture. Beating, breaking bones, wiring genitals, drowning people; none of that is torture. Those interrogations may be harsh. They may be severe. But they are not torture. They are nothing more than techniques, methods and tactics. Good things all. And sometimes these techniques, methods, and tactics are enhanced! The goodness never stops!

But occasionally some truth slips past the gatekeepers.

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

Of course the fact that the US is aping the worst totalitarian nations in the history of humankind comes near the end of the article and the fact that it’s blatantly illegal comes far past the point in the piece where 95 percent of the readers will have stopped reading. Hmmmm, top government officials in both parties collude to commit horrible crimes against humanity in the worst tradition of Hitler, Stalin, and Torquemada. Big news, you'd think.

In journalism-speak that’s what's known as burying the lede. I suspect that pretty soon the powers that be will figure out that they’re in for a dime, might as well be in for a dollar and figure uncle Joe knows best. They’ll put an end to the journalists' practice of burying uncomfortable facts deep in the article and start burying the journalists who publish facts instead.