The Bugs Are Coming to Get Me

I've managed to avoid the flu or even a mild cold for several years, but tonight I can feel the beginnings of some malign seasonal invasion. Unless it's more Polonium 210 poisoning. You know, I was on some British Airways flights through central Europe not that long ago.

The reason I know that this weekend will be spent drinking tea, blowing my nose, sucking down Riccolas, and watching a lot of mind-numbing television is because I have had a sudden drop in my vitriol level. I seem incapable of getting apoplectically angry. I am beginning to even feel sorry for Chimpie.

That's how I know I'm sick.

Really, seeing him raving on television has turned from an experience in fright to one of pity. Can't someone get this dude some help? An intervention, please!

Meanwhile, the spousal unit Rotkohl will defrost some of her custom chicken soup and will command me to eat of it until I get better. It's delicious and quite meaty, so I don't mind, but the trouble with soup is you can't eat it while in the supine position, which is the advantage of Red Vines and Twinkies. Oh, this damned sore throat!

Let me ask you this--if you were the intelligent designer of the universe, couldn't you come up with something better than pain to signal a problem? Oy!

Interviews--What's the Point at My Age?

This is a lost day. I've got an interview at 2:30--yes, for a fucking job--and another tomorrow morning at 9:30am. The interview today is for a part-time techie position, but I'm pretty sure they'll find it suspicious that I want to take a low-level 3/4 time slot, and I can't outright declare that I'm semi-retired. Tomorrow's interview is for a writing gig for technology crap, also part-time. They'll take one look at me and say to themselves, "This old fuck? Who wants to listen to his boring stories?"

Truth be told, I don't really want either of these, and so I ask you all--should I use this opportunity to be totally honest in the interview? You know, like when they ask me about my proudest accomplishment, I tell them about getting my boss fired for masturbating at his desk. Or if they ask about my biggest mistake I could admit that to be when I got caught stealing Polonium 210 from the nuclear lab I was working in. Never did find it, either. And as to why I want to work in their facility, I could explain the benefits of having a warm place to shit and a free high-speed internet connection, not to mention all the office supplies.

I need help here, my friends (and enemies). Let's help Olaf scorch the interview. Give him your very best advice.

Patience, My Ass

I've kept my mouth shut for long enough about the new Congress, hoping that justice would finally be served and the cabal of war criminals in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department would be summarily impeached/indicted, tried, sentenced, and our dark national legacy finally lightened at least a little. But, exactly as we feared, the Democrats are going to continue their campaign of gutless inaction. The only changes you see will be cosmetic or rhetorical, and the same interests continue to control the levers of government. When the Dems assume power in January, they will lightfoot their way around Iraq, civil liberties, the Patriot Act, etc. They won't fix Medicare, and they may well try to sell out Social Security by failing to do the one simple thing that would ensure its liquidity for 100 years or more--remove the cap on FICA from the present $97,500 per year set for 2007.

You may not care about this, but you should...unless you earn more than $97,500 per year. Here's what opponents to eliminating the cap say (from a paper in 2004, hence the lower cap):

Eliminating the payroll tax cap immediately affects the 9.2 million Americans who earn more than $87,900, raising their marginal tax rate — the tax paid on each additional dollar of wage income — by 12.4 percent. As a result, earners in the top income tax bracket (35 percent) would pay more than half of each additional dollar they earn in taxes.

Let me ask you a question--does that bother you? Do those top tax bracket folks face homelessness and starvation?

Moving on to other things that won't change, now that NBC has decided that the civil war in Iraq is actually a civil war in Iraq, it will be interesting to see two things develop. For one, the White House will stretch language to unimaginable distortions to deny the fact. This should launch a dozen dissertations in linguistics, at least. The second will be to watch the Democrats squirm away from actually doing anything to get us the fuck out of being in the middle of 5? 6? 7? factions killing each other. A ghoulish pool to start would be to speculate how many more Americans will die before the Democratic Congress finally acknowledges the idiocy and criminality of starting this war and pulls the troops out of the shooting gallery.

But they won't, because amoral political opportunists on the Dem's side voted to give this stupid monarchy of the Chimp's the authority to go to war, and that includes the Kerrys, Clintons, Edwards, etc. Any of these Democratic politicians who voted to authorize the war should be denied any attempt at the presidency in 2008, and should be constantly reminded of how they are all as morally culpable for this disaster as Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the rest of the criminals.

Meet the new boss--same as the old boss.

Feel fooled again?

Ready for the War on Xmas?

I'm so out of it. If my wife hadn't started talking about the need to dust off our Xmas Stalk (we use an agave stalk as the centerpiece for the annual orgy of consumerism), I wouldn't have realized that we are, as of tomorrow, in the "Holiday Season." Ordinarily, this is something I dread. If it wasn't for the old Ray Conniff Singers recordings still available, I wouldn't make it through until New Year's Day, which is a day of liberation, as far as I am concerned, because I really hate the whole American idea of Xmas. And you can throw in all the other incidental holidays too, like Hannukah, Kwaanza, Festivus, etc. In fact, holidays in general are a bust, because they are now nothing more than anchors for shopping opportunities and also because they force us into celebrations and gift-giving that is neither heartfelt nor healthy.

But actually, that all changed last year, when Bill O'Reilly--yes, that mad ranter over at Fox "News"--raised all of our consciousness about the War on Christmas. At last, I thought, there's a war I can wholeheartedly support! I cleaned my weapons, bought some new ceramic body armor, and was ready to party with whoever was waging that war. As an added bonus, standing in opposition to the "War on Christmas" were the aforementioned creep O'Reilly, plus other rightwing nutfucks like John Gibson and Michelle Malkin. Talk about your convergence of enemies!

The trouble was, I couldn't find any recruiters or the army that was fighting this "War on Christmas." Before I knew it, we were into January, and as far as I could tell, Xmas had come and gone without a shot being fired or a single Santa taken prisoner.

But I'm ready this year, so I'm asking for your help. Where do I sign up to join the "War on Christmas"? Is it an official military organization, or is it still in the guerilla stages? Do I get to wear a beret with a red star on it? What are the chances of victory? Would it really be possible to one day live in a society free from drunken office parties and deadly dull family gatherings? Could I at long last live out of the sight of inflatable candy canes and dancing snowmen?

Just don't take away my Ray Conniff Christmas records. That's real.

Problem Solved!

All it took was a single comment from a terribly desperate reader in France who reminded me of how meaningless my life was. Bingo! I feel so much better now! I really, really want to thank Jimmy the Hyena Nowlan for the therapeutic post, because now I know that however low, pointless, and pathetic my daily life may become, it's never so bad that I have to stalk some schmuck's blog to make myself feel better.

Oh, and Jimmy...how do you know that previous post wasn't a lure that I knew you couldn't resist?

Gotcha!

Really, man, you make it too easy.

Black Dog

I'm not a big fan of confessional blogging. It's very popular, I know, to pour one's heart or personal life out in daily installments, and it's likely a very healing exercise for many people. Yet as extroverted as I appear to be, it's highly likely that no one who reads this who does not know me personally has even the slightest idea who Olaf Rotkohl really is (IF, that is, there is anyone who reads this who does not know me personally).

Thanks to you all who do know me and read this, even if it is as "mercy readers" who fear I'd have no readers without them--bless you.

Anyway, since returning from vacation in Berlin in middle August, and very likely starting somewhat earlier this year, I've been slipping into a dark place, finally reaching a level where I'm so acutely conscious of my condition that the awareness itself is also near-paralyzing. I write about it today as a vanity post--you can stop reading now, because (and this is doubly tragic) so damned much has been written about depression that it's just not interesting, and in a way that's the trouble with most serious health concerns--cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, for example. Unless you're afflicted or a partner of someone afflicted, it's an abstraction at best, or, if you are touched by it, it can be a profound embarrassment. No one likes to admit weakness, even when it's beyond one's control.

If there's one thing I can feel good about, however, it's that I have become pretty good at faking being a happy person, even in the blackest moods. It's probably because I'm too afraid to be rude, or maybe it's fear of giving up some advantage to adversaries, or some other stupid reason, but it's probably not healthy to wait until absolute terror fills every public encounter before seeking some support.

And I should know better--I've been down this road before, and there are treatments that can be highly beneficial. The trouble is, however, that the key fact of depression is that one cannot even imagine ever feeling like living fully again. The universe reshapes itself into a narrowing helix along which one can only spiral down further. Hope is alien. Withdrawal is the only refuge, and it only takes one deeper.

As I write this, I await the deliver of some prescriptions that have helped in the past. Due to my own failures to act in a timely manner, and partially due to an unnecessarily Byzantine health care system in this country, even for those with health insurance, I've been spending the last few weeks crawling along inside the black dog, hanging on by my fingernails not to slide any further down that cone where I sincerely fear I might get wedged and never crawl out again.

I apologize for taking up space to write so personally, but if there is one benefit beyond my own selfish expiation, it is to tell anyone who reads this that there should never be shame or fear in seeking help when you find yourself not just having a bad day or two, but weeks and months of despair and hopelessness and hatred for every time you have to speak with another person. It's not weakness, it is illness, and in most, maybe all cases it is treatable. The devil in the affliction is that it disables even the faintest light of possibility that life can ever be enjoyable again, and that is the tragedy. If I didn't know intellectually that treatment is there and can work very effectively, I'd have given up long, long ago. But even as I don't feel hopeful, I have memory of having had a time in my life when every morning was the beginning of a fascinating day and I could not believe how lucky I was to have the world before me, so beautiful, and so full of possibilities.

If you ever find yourself here, deep inside this black dog, please tell someone. Find help. Talk to your doctor.

It's no way to live, and there are no heroes who continue to dwell here.

And Now It's Come to This...

To my pals who like to check out ol' Olaf now and then and leave comments, I'm afraid I've had to institute a moderation step into the process. Due to perhaps my own intemperate (considering the effect) commenting on another blog, I experienced a mild version of internet harrassment, including having my blog name and link spoofed. Thanks to Ed Ward at Berlin Bites (check it out--excellent writing and also listen for Ed's pieces on culture and music on Fresh Air with Terry Gross), the damage was limited.

What a pain in the ass. But that's the price of freedom of the net.

Anyway, now I'll be checking posted comments to filter a particular individual's ravings. I hate censorship, but that's essentially what it amounts to.

We had a similar problem at our local city council meetings. At one time, anyone could address the council for any purpose with no time limit...until one individual started using it as a personal platform for random ravings and insults to the council members totally unrelated to policy. The consequence was that now all citizens have a three-minute time limit imposed. In the formulation of public policy (aside from asphalt contracts, maybe) most issues are complex enough to require more than three minutes to explain one's position, but thanks to the ranter, we've all had our access constrained. That limit has already been used to try to shut out dissent, and that's the truly terrible result from those who cannot or will not understand how self-control is an essential part of adult discourse.

And that's what's so damned maddening on the internet--99.999999999 percent of all users can be good stewards. Even when involved in truly rabid flame wars, all but a tiny few don't end up trying to sabotage other people's presence in the blogosphere or wherever. But a single individual with no more than an internet hookup, access to a PC, and some malevolent and pretty useless intentions can create a royal crimp in the flow of opinion.

So I'm sorry, but until I can automate filtering the way I'd like to, it's a manual process and you may not see your comments as soon as you've sent them. I'll do my best to frequently check for new comments and get them up.

Again, sorry for the hassle. Don't let it deter you saying whatever you like--I'm only filtering for one jackass.

Another Sign That the Apocalypse Is Near

When theofascist James Dobson starts making nice with Democrats, it's time to start worrying about the coming of the Rapture, so I visited our pals over at Rapture Ready Index which is hovering at 159, a full 14 points above the highest threshold labeled "Fasten Your Seatbelts." Apparently, the recent election results caused the index to jump three points, so I'd expect Jesus to be coming over the horizon any day now to kick off the End Times.

You could almost say, as Chimpie stands down, Jesus will stand up. And that's because, you know, left-wingers are the spawn of Satan. We might as well confess as such, since we're going to be boiling in the hell cauldron for a while before being sent to eternal suffering in the underworld; that is, we "shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb," those sadistic bastards.

Rejecting Bush has put us sinful Americans on the top of God's shit list, at least according to the Tim LeHayes of the world. But this raises a nagging question: Who is the Antichrist?

Name your favorite candidate on the global scene today. Perhaps it is someone as yet unknown to us generally, but to you personally? Maybe the Antichrist is your neighbor, your friend, your mother, brother, or your uncle Buddy.

Let me know.

Veterans Day

It wasn't until I went out to get the mail that I remembered that today is the proper Veterans Day, rather than the holiday day, or the furniture sale day, or the day to earn political points on the backs of young (and not so young) men and women who serve as the apolitical armed force of the United States. I went to the oak filing cabinet to see if I could find my honorable discharge certificate and my DD214. Among those papers were some photographs of a man thirty-five years younger, with jet black hair and not a wrinkle. On my expired military ID it had my weight as fifty pounds lighter than I am now--a skinny wretch back then or a fat fuck today? Hard to say, really, though I'm sure some of the commenters will weigh in with their opinions (the ones who know me, anyway). I'm probably healthier now than then. I smoked a pack a day or more then, drank like a young man can and ought to before he gets serious, and was more belligerent than a stupid stringbean ought to be.

It was not a particularly popular thing to be in the military then, but I still was proud of being there. True, I was exceedingly lucky--Russian language training, crypto school, and Berlin, rather than advanced infantry training, survival school, and Vietnam--so I had it much, much easier than many others whose military experience was the kind of adventure that involves mutilation and death rather than simply strange lands and new ways of viewing the world. Across this nation there are men and women who are similarly going through their old boxes of memories, remembering comrades, or still outrunning nightmares. Their sacrifices were surely greater than mine, and I must remind myself daily to be grateful for the grace that their selflessness has accorded me in my life.

It is a time I also remember my grandfather who served the Army in WWI, my father who served during Korea, my uncles and aunts who fought in Europe and the Pacific in WWII, and how as a child I thrilled to look at their photo albums of them when they were young, and dark-haired, and skinny, and immortal.

There are many, many things worth fighting for--I am no pacifist--and when we choose our battles wisely and reluctantly, we can honor the memory of all those who have passed before. Please remember this day that those who wear the uniform do so because it is essential, and that even in the face or irresponsible leadership, they honor us all with their dedication and sacrifice.

Happy Veterans Day.

Let's Sing This Song All Together!

Priceless.

It's Like, Wow Man

I was on my third Pilsner Urquell in thirty minutes at about 8:00PM last night, but I switched to coffee because I needed to be lucid if what I was seeing was to be believed.

And the rest is history.

Then this morning (or whenever the hell it is now), I flipped on the radio, and Chimpie was addressing the press. Well, fuck me like a methed-up preacher man, Donald Rumsfeld is gone! Hell, I think that the Germans have already typed up indictments of him as a war criminal. Can the rest of the Bush cabal be far behind?

Anyway, what really struck me was the punishing, embarrassing, humiliating gap by which some Senate incumbents got punched. Ricky "Man-on-Dog" Santorum lost by a monstrous eighteen points, and Mike DeWine of Ohio got slapped by twelve points. Given the role Ohio played in the 2004 election, such a turn is enormous, particularly when the secretary of state for Ohio, who controlled that election, got beaten in his gubernatorial bid by twenty-three points! I mean, they punished those mofos, boy!

Of course, this is only the beginning. We still have a long way to go before Cheney, Bush, and the rest are in shackles in the court at the Hague, but this is a very, very good start. When the congressional committees open a few innocent-seeming oversight investigations, I think the whole rotten mess that is this corrupt and incompetent administration is going to explode in a stinking mess that will make the 2008 election a complete and total repudiation of the radical evangelical right, the neocon warmongers, the corporate buttboys, and the bigots.

Am I hoping for revolution? You bet your sweet ass I am. (Yes, I am a turtle--comment if you get the reference.)

Okay, I gotta go digest some more. I'm too exuberant to really think just yet.

Cross Your Fingers, Pray to Your God, Party Like It's the Free World After All

I'm off to my neighbor's to watch the returns and drink myself into insensibility. Well, not immediately. First I'm going to cook up four pounds of Molly Katzen's Szechuan Green Beans (sesame oil, tons of garlic, cayenne, slivered almonds (my touch), kosher salt). Serve hot, cold, or at room temperature. Yummmmmmmmmy!

Then we are going to hope for a reason to drink into insensibility because we're celebrating the destruction of the Repuglickkkan Party. As of this blog entry, I hear from CNN and MSNBC that "corruption" is voters' apparent primary concern. And how do we spell "corruption" class?

R-E-P-U-G-L-I-KKK-A-N

A final thought: Rev. Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Ricky Santorum, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, two ounces of meth, 1000 mg. of Viagra, and a Motel 6 room with a queen sized bed with Magic Fingers.

Now there's a party for Rush Limbaugh.

Does Evangelical==Terrorist?

Imagine that you have been faithfully tithing to your megachurch, just like the Rev. Dr. Ted Methead has been saying you must. You took in that Christian family that had been persecuted out of their homeland in Beluchistan. Even though your incredibly curvalicious coworker at Roctite Industries has been rubbing up against you in the warehouse and finally offered to have a no-attachment sexual relationship with you because she really digs clean-cut Jesus lovers, you have remained faithful to your wife, even though she has gotten a bit more shrewish since the birth of your eighth child, has refused any physical contact, and refers to you as "The Big Loser" in your Bible meetings on Wednesday nights.

Then one morning you wake up to find that Rev. Dr. Ted Methead is having a hell of a lot more fun than you are. To wit, he's having methed-out gay boner parties with hookers every month. On Sunday he tells you all about purity and faith and the terrible forces beyond that want to tempt you with homosexual urges and poisonous substances. On Monday, he drives to Denver so he can powder his nose with methamphetamine and then play hide-the-salami with a dude for pay. So what do you do?

You pray for his soul. You curse Satan for the temptations he puts before us. You muse about how insidious that the forces of evil are that they could undermine even so righteous a fellow as Rev. Dr. Ted Methead. And on Tuesday I'll bet you still pull the lever for Republicans all across the board. And you know why you do that?

Because your wife is right. You ARE "The Big Loser."

You're a big loser because you hold to a creed that is provably exploitative of dopes like you and oppressive of the women who marry you. You're a big loser because you refuse to face the evidence that is put before you time after time after time that you are being lied to, exploited, and generally played for a fool by the likes of Ted Haggard, George Bush, Dick Cheney, James Dobson, and a host of other criminals who can spot a sucker loser like you at a thousand yards. These real devils have been building careers and entire empires by picking the pockets of losers like you.

You're a big loser, a stupid freak, and a self-willed moron who refuses to use his God-given gift of free thought and critical analysis to reason through those suspicions you've suppressed whenever yet another "Man of God" gets caught with his swollen hypocrisy jammed into someone's bunghole.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to let losers like you drag this country down.

Tuesday is D-Day for America. We are at the apex between salvation and damnation. It means the forces of the true darkness have swept in because we have abdicated our duty to face truth, to honestly see the world as it is, and to bravely engage that world with enlightened and humble action.

In this final day before the mid-term elections, the Republican shit-throwing machine is doing everything in its power to get the big losers out of their malaise at how much they've been lied to and out to the polls one last time because God really is on their side. Really. God is a Republican. And God engineered Ted Haggard's butt-boy-bongo and Jim Foley's attempts to start up some of the same with underage male Congressional pages just to test your faith. And it's not true, as former White House staffer David Kuo wrote, that Karl Rove and company view you as "nuts" and "goofy." And George W. Bush really, really is a Jesus-loving Christian who only executed 152 people in Texas, sacrificed 2800+ American lives, and 50,000+ Iraqi lives because it's exactly what Jesus would have done had he the largest military in the world instead of twelve stupid deciples.

Yes, Jesus wants you to vote Republican because he hates America. And given our recent history, I'm not the least surprised.

Sideshow Politics

John Kerry's bad and bumbled joke and the insane Republican reaction (is McCain really that stupid, or is he really such a Bush asslicker?), Ted Haggard's meth-sniffing, sex-for-pay play, Mark Foley's predilection for teenage boys--why don't I ever write about these things? A friend asked me this today. Yes, it is a conscious decision during an election period because while these episodes are wonderfully salacious, juicy, and reveal the depth and gravity of right-wing hypocrisy, it's still not relevant to the exercise of power in this country. We have one huge problem in this country that must remain our focus, and that is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that is still desperately trying to establish a tyranny in this country, and who has no moral code, no admirable ideology, and virtually no competence beyond smearing opponents and intimidating dissenters. In the actual administration of power they are an utter and complete disaster.

A totalitarian mentality mixed with incompetence is what creates the perfect storm of national disaster, and our ship of state is still steadily on course for BOTH Scylla and Charybdis with a monstrous iceberg and a couple of sea dragons to boot.

If Pastor Haggard likes to dust his nostrils and then take one in the booty, well bully for him--he's gotten his just desserts for his hypocrisy as a leader against gays and non-Christians. If Mark Foley is a slimey chickenhawk cruising for buff butts, he too is now paid for his hubris in trying to simultaneously push through child protection laws. And the fact that John Kerry is an egomaniacal dope without the sense to even avoid humor that will always fall flat does not overcome the intentional or intentionally feigned stupidity of those who claim he has insulted the military--that just reveals how desperately thin their basis is for even being appointed to scrape dog shit off our cities' sidewalks.

Eyes on the ball--we face totalitarian, amoral, sociopathic megalomaniacs trying to destroy our country for reasons that defy explanation. Such is the poison of power.

The Good News?

You know that the situation in Iraq has really hit the shitter when the following is the good news coming from the U.S. military:

The chart does note some positive developments. Specifically, it notes that “hostile rhetoric” by political and religious leaders has not increased. It also notes that Iraqi security forces are refusing less often than in the past to take orders from the central government and that there has been a drop-off in mass desertions.

Three and a half years after Chimpie McFlightSuit declared "Mission Accomplished" on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the best news coming out to counter the 100+ dead Americans in October is that religious nuts are toning down their rhetoric? Oh joy! We're on the road to victory now! And lower mass disertion rates among the Iraqis who will allow us to "stand down as they stand up." Boy, I sure feel better. Smells like...catastrophe.

I have to hand it to the Bushits--they managed to stir the pot in Iraq precisely to the point where we can't fix it but can't in good conscience abandon it either. Who pays? Our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers serving in the military, whose fate lies in the hands of idiots and megalomaniacal madmen. And keep in mind that not one single civilian associated with this disastrous policy has been fired, let alone been shackled, hooded, waterboarded (a "no-brainer" per Cheney) and then dropped into the dock at the Hague for war crimes trials.

Okay, so what to do? Congressman John Murtha made these suggestions last year on November 17:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

I'd be delusional to think that "Mission Accomplished" Chimpie and his gang of thugs would do anything like this in the runup to the election, but I predict that if they lose both houses of Congress next Tuesday, they will be carefully positioning themselves to engineer exactly such a plan and then blame the Democrats in 2008 for "losing Iraq." That's like setting your house on fire and then blaming your neighbor for failing to put it out once it's already mostly ashes.

Let's Go for a Swim, Dickie

A "dunk in water" did NOT refer to waterboarding, which in turn, is NOT torture. As a return to Dick Cheney's offer to take me pheasant hunting, I'd like to take him to my favorite water park (Scroll down for pictures). You can do this at home, kids!

Another Possibility: the Genius of the Bush/Cheney Plan

In the previous post, I posited that the Chimperor and his gang had essentially contributed to a worsening of situations across the board, and the commentary got pretty heated. What if there is something both we, the so-called "Bush-haters" and their opposite, "the Bush-crack-lickers" had all gotten wrong?

What if total chaos is the overriding goal of this gang of miscreants? After all, even I wouldn't argue that Bush and company actually tried to fuck up on every single thing they touched. No one wants to be a total incompetent all the time. Or do they?

If you have investment interests in oil, or in armaments suppliers, or in shipping, or in security firms, or in big pharma, then destabilization of currencies, energy supplies, governments, security, travel, and the creation of a more fearful world are going to make you very, very wealthy.

If you own stock in Lockheed-Martin, the Carlyle Group, General Dynamics, and Northrop-Grumman, which is better: a quick, efficient victory, followed by a stable transition to new governance, and then a rapid withdrawal, or a quick, efficient victory followed by a meatgrinder of civil and sectarian strife that bogs down the world's most powerful military machine for a decade or longer?

Cui bono?

Those bastards may have outsmarted all of us on both sides.

More Americans Enter Reality-based World

When only 16% of the nation thinks that the Chimperor's administration is truthful about what happened on 9/11/2001, that's some deep doodoo, to quote the elder Bush. And speaking of Bush 41, he and his cabinet members now must bear the burden of the idiot son, Bush 43, completely fucking up the Middle East and generally weakening the United States in every arena. And they knew it was going to happen, emphasizing again how these mandarins always put their power over the national interest.

"Everyone knew how Rumsfeld acts," another key 41 assistant said. "Everyone knew 43 didn't have an attention span. Everyone knew Condi [Rice] wouldn't be able to stand up to Cheney and Rumsfeld. We told them all of this, and we were told we don't know what we're doing."

That any American still naively believes that politicians act out of conscience is frightening, but that they can be so utterly bamboozled by power-mad fiends with no conscience at all is even more frightening.

We've got to quit acting like children looking for a daddy or a mommy to make our world safe. Democrats, Republicans, independents, all politicians are corrupted by the electoral process, and owe their offices to focused special interests, not to the people who elected them. Politicians respond to the will of the people only when they fear the people. That's how power works.

And yet, despite the debacle we have entered thanks to arrogant power, we do not see people in the streets.

When I was in Leipzig, Germany, earlier this year, I spent some time in the Stasi Museum which documents the abuses of that internal security mechanism against the citizens of the state. The Stasi was perhaps the most efficient and widespread internal security operation in history. In October of 1989, however, the people got fed up. A paving stone in the town square commemorates the event when the people surrounded the secret service headquarters that now houses the museum and began chanting, "Stasi raus!" The Stasi officers barricaded themselves inside the building, genuinely fearing for their lives.

You know the rest of the story. On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell. Less than a year later, the East German regime ceased to exist.

The memorial, that paving stone, is simply the impressions of different pairs of feet. Feet on the street. That's how people take back their power.

Olaf and the White House Agree!!!

My wife is an optimist. She believes that no matter how bad the break between people, deep down somewhere there is an accord of some kind, an issue on which they can agree. And from that agreement, it is possible to build bridges to more common understanding, and ultimately achieve compromise, and maybe someday...harmony.

Well, I don't know about all that, but on one thing apparently the White House crooks have been in the closet when they could have been out front hangin' in solidarity with old Olaf Rotkohl. From MSNBC last night on Keith Olberman's Countdown, we learn something from the former #2 man inside Chimpie's Office of Faith-based Iniatives, David Kuo:

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

And yet the Bushits won something like 95 percent of the evangelical vote, and even more astonishingly, they did it by actually spending $20 million a year LESS than Clinton on the "nuts." How did they pull this off?

The money that was appropriated and disbursed, however, often served a political agenda, Kuo claims, with organizations friendly to the administration often winning grants.

More pointedly, Kuo quotes an unnamed member of the review panel charged with rating grant applications as saying she stopped looking at applications from “those non-Christian groups,” as did many of her colleagues.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Suckers! I told ya so! You and the rest of the 59 million who "reelected" these criminals in 2004 are now being shown that the only thing that matters to the Chimpie and Cheney syndicate is power, and there is no one they won't sell out, lie to, maybe even kill, to get it and keep it.

And to all of those who were conned? Both the White House and I enthusiastically say: Fuck you, fools.

Why Some People Shouldn't Do Drugs

The Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy hits one out the park! Those Democrats--so diabolical that they set up a ten-year sting operation to get Republican Mark Foley to troll for teenage boys.

Of course, there's another Republican theory on the talking points list too--that Mark Foley was in deep cover as a Democratic plant, set to embarrass them at just this moment.

Of course, applying Occam's Razor to this outrage, it would appear to simply be that Mark Foley--REPUBLICAN--is just a creepy old man with no regard for age-of-consent laws or power differentials in working relationships.