Stupid Shit

Gee, has it really been a year?

2009-03-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

I'm in D.C. now. It's not a great place. Don't let anyone fool you.

But there's humor. Today I was outside the Target at rush hour. A traffic cop directing busy traffic on a rainy morning, made one guy move up, into the intersection. Just before the driver's light turned red. So now, the traffic with the green couldn't go.

This happens a lot when there's no traffic cop, right?

So why is the city paying this dude to fuck up traffic on purpose?

Fucking Grammar

2008-03-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, the word "tsunami" was all the rage in the media. You know, "a tsunami of bad news," "a tsunami of dissent," "a tsunami of spouse-cheating governors." That kind of thing.

These days, the overused word du jour is "fraught." The annoying thing about it, aside from the constant overuse, is that just about everyone uses it wrong.

For example, just today I heard a guy, a journalist talking on the KPCC show The Business. It's a show about the entertainment industry, and you can podcast it if you like. Anyway, the dude being interviewed writes about the video gaming industry for a living, and he said that the gaming industry has always had a "fraught" relationship with Hollywood.

A fraught relationship.

What the fuck?

Fraught means full. For example, telling your wife or girlfriend she's mad at you because she's riding the cotton pony is fraught with peril.

It is not simply fraught.

From the guy's tone, I think he meant to indicate that the video gaming industry has had a strained relationship, or a relationship filled with tension--fraught with tension, you might say.

But not fraught.

So, to journalists everywhere, I ask this: You are getting paid to use language. Please use it well. Dumbasses.

Been there done that.

2008-03-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

Not to put too fine a point on it, but my ex-wife's boyfriend just bought her a house. This posting is dedicated to him.

In case you doubt me

2008-03-19T14:47:00.001-07:00

Read about the GOP's plans:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/19/politics/politico/main3949349.shtml

Geraldine was right

2008-03-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Obama has been mostly getting a pass as most people pretend that there's a new paradigm to race relations in this country.

He's lied about Tony Rezko, and he's lied about Jeremiah Wright:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4480868&page=1

All this means, basically, that he's just like the rest of the douchebags who run for office at the national level.

But here's the thing. When you show a black man shouting about race relations in this country, how blacks have gotten a bad deal, and saying "God damn America" from the pulpit, it tends to scare the shit out of white people.

Obama needs white people to vote for him. Leftwingers are generally wussy, and I suspect that a lot of them will run away thanks to the spectre of an angry black man in the White House. (Don't laugh--the right did an excellent job connecting Iraq to 9/11, and there has never been a demonstrable connection.)

Prostitution's Victims

2008-03-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

So I've been reading a lot about the Elliot Spitzer case lately. I mean, who hasn't? And a lot of the fallout is about whether prostitution is a victimless crime.

Lots of writers, especially women, say it is not. For example: http://blog.nj.com/njv_kathleen_obrien/2008/03/prostitution_perhaps_not_a_cri.html

But seriously, most of the people writing the equivalent of "ewwww" are women. And they always denominate the wife (aka the long-suffering wife) as a victim of the crime.

I don't think so. Prostitution doesn't involve the sale of finite resources. Pussy ain't a barrel of oil. On the flip side, Elliot's dick isn't going anywhere either.

So unless the wife was horned up and wanted to get laid when Elliot was banging the pro, she's not a victim.

I'm going to say that people writing about the poor wife are more appalled at the "betrayal" of wedding vows. Fine. It is what it is.

But they never talk about the hooker's poor boyfriend/husband beind a victim. (Granted, there isn't one in the Spitzer case.) In fact, the critics usually assume that the hooker's boyfriend/husband is complicit, that he's practically a pimp. That's how you know the critics don't really care about the sex qua sex. (For a discussion of what sex workers actually tell boyfriends, go here: http://happyendingz.blogspot.com/2008/01/boyfriends-or-how-can-you-date-someone.html.)

Honestly, I think a lot of women want to feel sorry for themselves (or, by extension, other women). But women are hard on each other. Any woman who has ever had a job or gone to school knows this. They don't see themselves as hookers, ever, but they often see themselves as the wife.

So now I'll say it. Even though Dr. Laura is nuts, she makes a good point when she says that if men are happy to come home, they will. I think that's true in more than 90% of cases. When men are done working but dread going home, they find other things to do.

In keeping with the theme of this blog

2008-03-12T12:14:00.001-07:00

I submit this:

http://www.kmbc.com/news/15573073/detail.html?rss=kc1&psp=news

Still amazing

2008-03-11T17:14:00.001-07:00

A guy who has some dough is married with kids and bored. He starts to fuck around, even going to pros. He does his best to hide what he's doing from his family.

I have no complaint about any of it. I've been married. I know what it's like to sleep with a woman who doesn't want to fuck (or at least, doesn't want to fuck me).

If you're a crusading law-and-order prosecutor, however, you're a hypocrite.

Sorry, Elliot. You fucked up.

But I get it. I understand everything he did. Well, except spending $4000 on a couple of hours of snatch, primo though it must have been. I mean, come on! Four grand?! Motherfucker. (I will say, however, that I once averaged out how often I got laid in my very long marriage, then divided it into what the marriage cost me, dollarwise. As a practical matter, I probably did spend $4k a pop. And it was harder to get her to consent than it would have been with a pro. I assume cash buys some acting ability. C'est la vie.)

Elliot is going to land on his feet. He's a rich guy already. He made almost two million bucks in 2006. With his business and political connections, he'll find a good gig making a lot of money, whether he's disbarred or not. He just won't be able to run for anything again.

He's proven, though, that the need for strange is a powerful motivator. If someone had taken him aside (where's Jiminy Cricket when you need him) and asked him if he were willing to give up his office and family for a couple of hours with a pretty, petite girl named "Kristen," he might have thought twice. But it's not the stakes that will stop someone from doing it. It's the likelihood of getting caught.

What Elliot didn't count on was that he'd made some enemies over the years. I suspect people were gleeful to figure out he was stepping out on his wife.

If nothing else, he threw the right a bone. I mean, the last four or five big sex scandals were gay Republicans. The right needed this. Of course, at least Elliot likes girls, same as Bill. There isn't much to criticize.

Amazing

2008-02-18T13:36:00.001-08:00

So, last week, my computer, which runs Microsoft Vista (which sucks, bad), automatically downloaded some updates. After that, the machine ran horribly--it was choppy, hesitant, slow.

Luckily, I figured out that heaving the machine against the wall was not the answer. Instead, I removed all but two of the updates (which are apparently not removable).

I then changed my settings so updates don't take place automatically.

In the words of The Who: I won't be fooled again.

Next time, Mac.

President or Beer Buddy

2008-02-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

I hear people (especially women) say all the time, "Yeah, Hillary's smart and experienced, but I just don't like her."

I used to hear people say about W, our Fearless Leader, "I like him. I'd like to have a beer with him."

I don't need to like my president. I'm not against it, but my criteria for voting for president do not include wanting him or her to be fun at a freaking cookout.

Romney, too

2008-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/dog.asp

Fuckers.

Fuckabee Huckabee redux

2008-01-20T17:30:00.001-08:00

Check this out:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/huckabee/dog.asp

Ass-kickers for President

2008-01-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

I've heard people criticize Hillary Clinton for trying to fuck up the Nevada caucuses. According to the complainers, she's trying to disenfranchise voters, and that's not something dems should do. That's a tactic of the right.

Well grow up, pussies.

I'm heartened that there are dems somewhere that can be streetfighters. That kind of thing wins. Do you think we had the last eight years because everyone played nice? Yes, it lowers the tenor of the debates. Yes, it cheapens the concepts of freedom and liberty. But if people like Karl Rove are to be muzzled, then the fight is going to have to be with his tactics.

Does anyone remember a few years ago when the right (Rush Limbaugh started it, I think), pushed the concept that the dems "hated" W? The left responded with some namby-pamby answer along the lines of, "No, we don't hate him. We just hate his policies."

Well, wah.

The right answer was, "Fucking A. We hate the motherfucker and we're not giving the country over to him."

The electorate responds to people they think are capable of kicking ass. It's the "I want to have a beer with him test." People want to have beers with people who seem like winners, not wusses.

Say what you will about Hillary. She's an ass-kicker. That will serve her well if she gets the nomination, because the right is full of liars and cheats.

Do you want to be pure, or do you want to win and change the way the world looks?

I Wanna Be President, So Trust Me

2008-01-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, imagine you are a guy from Hope, Arkansas, and you have decided you want to be President. Imagine, too, you're doing pretty well, that people think you're folksy and kind. They think that even though you are a right-winger, you're not all judgmental. You just like God. And you hate sins but not sinners.

So far so good, right.

But there's this other dude, from a weird religion, and he is likely to kick your ass. So what do you do? You're doing so well with positive messages, like "I'm a Republican, but I'm not mad at anybody." Still, playing nice is threatening to make you an also-ran. You do not want to go back to Arkansas, not when there's all that marble and limestone to check out in DC.

So you bite the bullet and spend some dough on an attack ad. A "Romney's Health Plan: $50 for an abortion" kind of thing. That ought to scare the shit out of the voters.

But will you run that ad? No. Why? Because maybe it will piss off the voters. Did you think of this before you spent the money on the production? Of course. Now you have the ad, and the only thing you have to do is get it shown without making people mad.

How? As Pooh said, "Think think think."

Ah, who are you kidding? You knew all along.

You go on the news and you tell people you almost went negative. But then you decided that sort of thing has to stop with you. So you tell everyone you're not going to run the ad. Now they can't be mad at you for being negative. But you also give the ad you're not going to run to the news people. So they run it. Yay! They run it, and they run it for free! Woooooooo!

You know you're smart enough to be President now. You're saving money, getting the word out, and looking like a good guy, too. Who could see through that?

Maybe Mitt's new campaign slogan should be "Fuckabee Huckabee." Well, if it weren't so negative.

Buy me a car, daddy

2007-12-10T18:53:00.000-08:00

Cadillac has a new commercial in which a hot chick drives her new Escalade, enumerating all the expensive yet shitty gifts her husband has bought her over the years. The upshot is, she likes her new SUV.

Now, from what I can tell, this chick is A++ primo pussy. She's obviously sold her booty for whatever booty she can collect from the guy who pays her rent. And I know there's no getting rid of the whole pussy for payment concept here in the US (and maybe anywhere).

But damn, does it make me want to buy a Cadillac for anyone? Nope, I don't think so. Of course, I no longer have a succubus attached to me to tell me that I do want to buy her a Cad. So I'm lucky.

I bet the ad works, however.

You poor sons of bitches.

Today's racism scandal

2007-11-16T13:56:00.001-08:00

Ok, so. Lots of eople defended Michael Vick's dog fighting by saying it was cultural and it was the way he was raised.

Well, fine.

Shouldn't that apply to Dog the Bounty Hunter?

Of course, both are assholes. But still.

And another thing.

2007-09-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

Disagreeing with the current administration doesn't make someone a traitor.

Well, maybe. I mean, maybe everyone who hated Bill Clinton (by way of example) was a traitor eight years ago.

Maybe those people hated freedom back then. Stupid fucks.

Misdirection

2007-09-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that when someone starts complaining about George W, his defenders don't actually defend him? Instead they generally do one of two things: they talk about what an asshole Bill Clinton was or they call the complainer unpatriotic.

Patriotism can take many forms. I believe in the concept of the loyal opposition. The adversary system, whether in law or government, keeps people honest (to a point). That's what checks and balances are--opposing forces keeping an eye on everyone. To call a dissenter unpatriotic is a cheap shot at best. At worst, when the accused knuckles under, you can run a country that way. The Democrats over the last eight years have been a sorry excuse for a loyal opposition. They have only risen to the challenge once they figured out public opinion was turning against George W. Having said that, however, I can understand some of their fear. After all, McCarthyism was based on nothing but fear and accusation. All you need is a guy like Roy Cohn. Or, say, Dick Cheney.

As for Bill Clinton, the worst thing he did was get a blow job and lie about it. Sometimes rightwingers will say that he didn't prepare the country for the possibility of terrorism on American shores.

Well, that's all well and good, but 9/11 happened long after the Bush administration was up and running. Transition teams were in the White House shortly after the election in November 2000, almost a year before the attacks. They knew what Clinton knew long before the inauguration. Beyond that, no matter how you slice it, Clinton is not the guy who started a war in a country to make his dad proud, ran up the deficit higher than Reagan did, and spent any good will the USA had after 9/11 by bullying the rest of the world and ignoring real threats like North Korea.

And this from a guy who was raised Republican in Indiana.

1930's Italy? How about Germany?

2007-09-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

If you need any more evidence that our country, Florida in particular (go figure) has become a fascist state, just watch this video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sE76LQwT6qA

The kid getting tasered here was arrested for "inciting a riot."

Hmm.

Well, that's not what it looked like to me. It looked like he was a perhaps overly exuberant guy who wanted to tell John Kerry that Kerry really won the 2004 election and to ask him about impeaching Bush (which should happen, as far as I'm concerned).

What you don't see in the video (and there are others on youtube) is anything that looks anything like a riot or the makings of it. The venue isn't even full, and most of the people look pretty lackadaisical, even when the kid is getting taken down. What you don't see are people (including the guy arrested) who are threatening anyone at all--cops, Kerry, other spectators. The spectators look like they're half asleep.

When I was in college, William Rehnquist came to speak. He was shouted down by dozens of protesters and cut his speech short. That crowd was WAY more boisterous and aggressive than this kid was. People were removed, but no one was hurt.

The U of Florida kid was subdued, on the ground, cuffed, before the cops tasered him. In fact, he was begging not to be tasered. Then they did it anyway.

Here's what the conspiracy theorist in me has to say:

A kid got up to ask questions of a national political figure. (Political speech gets the most First Amendment protection, too. Read the U.S. Supreme Court case called Posadas, for more on this.) He was obviously anti-Bush. Florida is the place where election irregularities brought Bush to power. Florida is run by Bush's brother. The police are an instrumentality of the government run by Bush's brother. They didn't like what the kid had to say and brought him down hard because of what he was saying. That's where we are. That's how far we've come in eight years.

This is an outrage. Everyone who's ever had even a thought that went against the majority should be scared shitless. I know I am.

No one ever thinks Nazi Germany could happen again. Bullshit. You're watching it happen every day.

Stupid Shit in NYC

2007-09-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my buddy Max is getting divorced. He has two little kids and got fired from his job a couple of months ago. He got behind on child support, but not because he is a dick. It's because he has no money.

His wife had him thrown in jail.

Now, how should he look for work (or work at all) if he's in jail?

See, in this case it's not about the money. She really really hates him.

But I'll tell you. Women like this ruin good men for the rest of the chicks out there.

Windows Vista

2007-08-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give my ringing non-endorsement for Windows Vista. I recently bought a new laptop after the losing three hard drives in six months on my old Dell.

The new one is not Dell.

It has Windows Vista, however, and Vista sucks ass. In a bad way.

Stay with XP if you can.

Vista takes forever to load, forever to shut down, and it crashes for me about once a week. Minimum.

XP was good.

Microsoft, you fucked up.

Gay has nothing to do with it

2007-08-29T10:05:00.001-07:00

My theory: If you're a United States Senator, charged with a lewd act in an airport, and you think pleading guilty will really make it go away, you're too stupid to be a United States Senator.

Star Wars, yes, the movie

2007-06-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

Here's something I don't get. In the original trilogy, Episodes 4-6, these droids, C3P0 and R2D2 escape from Princess Leia's ship and land on Tatooine, the planet which bore both Anakin and Luke Skywalker.

(Now, in the prequels, the droids are omnipresent. They are around Queen Amidala and Obiwan and Anakin and all that for all three movies.)

The droids arrive at Tatooine and they are purchased--surprise!--by Luke's Uncle Owen. And what doesn't happen? C3P0, who is more gossipy than the queen of the Pride parade, DOESN'T say, "Skywalker, huh? Any relation to Anakin? That dude's Darth Vader. I used to work with his girlfriend."

In fact, he never says it through three movies. Wouldn't you think C3P0 might say sometime, like when they're on the cloud planet with Landau, "Gee, he used to be such a nice kid. Why I remember, when he was so cute and cuddly and won a big speeder race back on Tatooine." In fact, when he went back with R2 and met up with Luke, he never said, "Oh yeah, Tatooine. There used to be this great ice cream place just outside of Mos Eisley back in the day."

And since I'm on this: When the droids take an escape pod, some Imperial dude tells Vader that there were no life forms on their pod. Vader knows, of course, that the droids were on it. But later, when the Millenium Falcon is taken aboard an Imperial cruiser, Han, Chewy, Luke, Obi Wan and the droids hide in the smuggling compartments, and no one finds them. So, what? The Imperial forces scan pods but not ships on tractor beams? Please.

Other than that, I have fun watching these flicks. Well, the first three.

Sopranos

2007-06-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Opinions are like assholes, right?

No catharsis, which is the accepted convention of dramatic storytelling. That sucked. I get the existentialism. I really do. I watched and enjoyed Groundhog Day. But characters change. This is why we watch (or, gasp, read) the stories people dream up. To learn how to live, or how not to.

So we were left with life continuing as it had.

Realistic? Sure.

But that's not why we watch.

Alternatively: maybe Tony did get whacked, but in keeping with the thing Bobby said in on the lake, it comes without your knowing it's coming. The same idea can be found in mob movies all over, for example Goodfellas.

Fine.

But we weren't in Tony's head watching the world go by for the last 7-8 years. If this was Tony's lights going out, there was no groundwork for it.

Cheap.

But, hey, I'm not the rich guy who created the show. Maybe David Chase knows some shit. I suspect he does, even if the show last night felt like a big "fuck you."

Call it what you will. I call it half a blowjob.

Skip's Election Prediction

2007-06-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

I've had a moment of clarity.

I'm pretty sure it will be Obama or Clinton for the dems.

But who will be on the red side?

Fred Thompson.

For weeks, I've been thinking no way could he be a contender. Then I realized. He evokes everything about another older politician and actor who was very successful: Ronald Reagan.

So it will be Fred--a smart, smooth, famous, Southern (Southerners do very well in Presidential politics) guy against either:

A black man with a funny name or

A carpetbagging woman from Illinois/Arkansas/New York.

Shoot, why even have the election? Someone appoint Fred quick.

TB, again

2007-06-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a great quotation from a guy on an airplane:

"I wasn't sure what to think or who to be mad at, or if I was allowed to be mad," said passenger Jason Vik. "I know he spent a lot of money on his wedding and I can understand him wanting to hold that obligation but you can't put 487 people at risk on our flight just because you've already spent this money."

He's talking about Andrew Speaker, the TB passenger from Georgia. Andrew is a divorce lawyer.

I still say he drives a Mercedes. (Mercedes drivers are the most obnoxious, self-important dickheads on the road.)

Tuberculosis? Nah, I'll get married instead.

2007-05-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the dude has a pretty much impossible to kill strain of TB, for which he will have to have surgery and a year of convalescence. So what does he do? He fucking flies to Greece to get married (for fuck's sake).

Then he's told he can't come back to the US. So he flies to Canada and drives back into the US because--get this--he's afraid he will DIE without treatment here.

So here's a guy with ZERO empathy for anyone. I'm sick, but dammit, I want to get married, when I want to, where I want to. Fuck those people on the plane. Fuck my wedding guests. Fuck the caterers and the officiant. Fuck my wife. Fuck them all. I want what I want.

I'm sick, but dammit, I must get home to be treated so I won't die. Fuck those people on the planes. Fuck the CDC, trying to let me die in Italy. Fuck everyone I come into contact with driving home.

I bet this fucking guy drives a Mercedes.

As an aside, I'm glad to know that a no-fly list works so well. Yea Team!

Hate Crimes

2007-04-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

The "hate crime" is a ridiculous invention of the legislature. (You'd never find a so-called activist judge come up with that one.)

I think the designation "hate crime" is unconstitutional. The underlying concept is that the performance of a crime while thinking bad thoughts is a separate crime.

For example, shooting up a McDonald's is a crime (attempted murder, various firearms charges, whatever).

But shooting up a McDonald's when you're a black man and hate white men? Well, add another count to the indictment.

See what I mean here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/01/national/main166708.shtml

Now, you'd think the First Amendment would protect speech, right? When your speech takes the form of a crime, it doesn't. Instead, it makes the crime worse.

That's fucked.

People should be allowed to express their thoughts. The decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court say so. The highest realm of speech, according to legal precedent, is political speech. The lowest is obscenity (whatever that is). Everything else falls somewhere in the middle. It's like Dante's circles of hell.

The there are hate crimes, where the perpetrator of a crime (i.e. something that's already illegal and punishable in some way) gets punished more than he might, just because he's thinking thoughts that are unacceptable to the legislature.

Get that--unacceptable to the legislature.

The legislature. The government.

Here's the government punishing you for what you think. No shit. It seems to have slipped under the radar of most people, even the Right. (Of course, the Right doesn't really believe in free speech anyway. That's why you're called a traitor if you question the government, when a Repub is running things).

The First Amendment was designed to protect the citizenry from the government's attempts to silence it. With hate crimes, the government is punishing people for expression.

Someone will read this and disagree.

But do you think that a black man shooting up white men is not a political act?

Let me put it another way. You can shoot up a McDonald's if you want, and pay the price. But I don't think you should have to pay a higher price because you hate the people in it than you would if you did it because your order was fucked up at the drive-thru. The act is the same. Laws should punish acts. Hate crime legislation punishes you for your thoughts, not your acts.

When the government is telling you what thoughts are appropriate, that's a problem for everyone.

Words matter

2007-04-19T21:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to talk about the Virgina Tech guy. He was crazy. We can't protect ourselves against crazies who don't care if they die. And this will always be true, anywhere in the world.

Here's what I want to say today, regarding language:

The members of the political right use the word "Liberal" the way Hitler used the word "Jew."

Next time you hear W say it or Rush Limbaugh say it, make the mental switch. It's interesting.

Fearless Leader, Part II

2007-04-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush's staff all hate his fucking guts.

Seriously.

How do I know? Easy.

In every job I've had, one of the top tasks I had, explicit or not, was to make my boss look good. Everyone has that same duty. You make your boss look good. He or she looks good to his or her boss. Everyone gets paid. Everyone continues to get paid. That's how it works.

But W. Boy, they hate him.

W has been on television and the radio for six years saying, "noo-q-lar" instead of "noo-clee-ar."

His staff obviously have not clued him in that he sounds like a dumbass Texas dipshit when he says that. (Even my father, an ardent Repub who still believes there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though the administration acknowledged there weren't, is annoyed by "noo-q-lar.")

See, if W's staff gave even the smallest shit about how W is perceived, someone would pull him aside and say, "Mr. President, dude, it's nuclear."

And he'd change it because he seems desperately not to want to be seen as the dumbass he is.

But no one's done it. No one will fix this one small-yet-enormous thing.

They hate his fucking guts.

Other possibility: They have told him, and he got shitty and told them to go fuck themselves.

Either way, he really is the dumbass he appears to be.

Fearless Leader, Part I

2007-04-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

This morning in a press conference, our President accused the Democrats who are trying to remove funding for the "war" (police action?) in Iraq of not wanting our troops to have enough bullets.

This is the same guy whose (former-heh) Secretary of Defense once said you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Presidential Politics

2007-04-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently Christopher Walken is running for president.

No, really.

http://www.walken2008.com/

Or maybe not:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/walken.asp

I'm not against it, though. At least the name Christopher sounds like a president.

Unlike Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin, who just announced he's running.

Well, fuck that.

I'm not voting for anyone with a stupid name. Not Tommy, not Mitt, not Newt, not Oloveuse (look it up), and no, not Barack.

I could vote for Chuck, Mike, Christopher, Jim, John, Bill, even Dennis and Rudy (maybe). Hillary, possibly, though that sounds like the name of a girl husband-shopping at a bar mitzvah. Wesley? He better come off as an ass-kicker. Same with Maurice.

Names mean a lot. I know a woman who named her sons Lance and Bruce so they'd be good in the arts.

Keep in mind, none of these people is responsible for his or her name. Blame the parents. But it seems to me that if parents wanted their kids to be president, they'd have given the kids presidential names. For example, Christine Todd Whitman--totally ready to be president, name-wise. I think she should stop calling herself Christy if she wants to keep going.

I heard a comic once who said his name was Truitt K. Beasley, Jr. Then he'd say, "Thanks, dad!" Hilarious. (He went by Killer Beas.)

On the presidential front, Newt, with any luck, is just fucked. Of course, my theory on Newt is that he's such an asshole because he's a freaking salamander. Who wouldn't be pissed?

Dead is dead

2007-03-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a controversy I don't understand. I get the concept of "football hero goes off to war" and all the epic grandeur of that. But what I don't understand is the outrage surrounding his death.

Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. His own dudes killed him instead of the godless Muslims. It happens in every war. War is dangerous. The point of war is killing. So there's that.

But I don't understand why it's a scandal. Apparently, the Tillman's family didn't learn whose bullets killed Pat until five weeks after he died.

So what?

Dying from friendly fire doesn't make his death any less tragic or honorable than it would have been if some Iraqi with good aim had snuffed him.

I've thought a lot about this, because my stepson is on his third tour in Iraq. Now, I imagine if something bad happens to him, I'll hear about it third hand, because he doesn't talk to me and neither does his mother, my soon-to-be ex-wife. (I don't miss her. I do miss him. And I've never been quite sure why he doesn't talk to me, though I'm sure he has his reasons.) She didn't even tell me when she had the cat put down, so I don't imagine she'll call me if our soldier has a problem.

In any event, for those people in Iraq who get killed, dead is dead. It doesn't matter how they died, generally speaking. (I heard once about a guy who got killed by rolling a Humvee. That seems pretty idiotic and not at all honorable, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.) I can't imagine giving a damn about who shot my kid. Dead is dead.

It's possible, however, that the Tillman family is upset about being lied to by the army and the administration (because W, opportunist that he is, used Pat in a speech about the war). Sure, I can see that. Being lied to sucks, especially by the people who run the show. But this is par for the course for this administration. Why does Alberto Gonzales have his tit in a wringer? For lying about his involvement in firing those U.S. Attorneys, not for actually doing it. What was Scooter Libby convicted of? Lying, not leaking.

The Pat Tillman controversy is strange, but it's an excellent indicator of W's presidency slowly collapsing presidency. That the Dems have finally figured it out is amazing, too, since they've been afraid of looking disloyal for years. I just hope people figure out that the web of lies coming out of Washington today is more serious than lying about a blowjob.

Cracks me up

2007-03-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

This is totally within the spirit of this blog. (Very little isn't.) Read on:

http://bn.craigslist.org/rnr/298811397.html

Lost

2007-03-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Great show.

But I wonder, how did a pussy like John Locke become such a badass on the island?

He sure manages to blow a lot of shit up, too.

Also, I'm not the only one who's gotten the joke of his name, right?

Pet Food Recall

2007-03-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

If you have pets, check the list of contaminated food here:

http://www.menufoods.com/recall/

Lawyers Are Fascinating

2007-03-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

First of all, some high-priced lawyers have funny names. My favorite is Scooter. Could a guy named Scooter ever be on the Supreme Court? I don't know. But Scooter Libby won't be, though I suspect W will pardon him at some point, probably after the election. Even being a fall guy has perks.

But what I've been thinking about lately is the U.S. Attorney thing. Eight of them (all appointed by W) were fired. The Justice Department said it was for performance, though this apparently contradicted previous reviews. The U.S. Attorneys were pissed. They said they were fired for political reasons.

Well, you lie down with dogs, you get fleas, right? I have no sympathy. The Elite Eight are Republican appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. They got their jobs because of politics, and if they're losing them because of politics, then they ought to update their (no doubt swanky) resumes, same as everybody else.

But the eight have suggested they were fired because they either were doing things the administration didn't want them to do or weren't doing things the administration wanted them to do (like fucking with political opponents).

Maybe so. But from what I can tell, the administration's biggest fuckup was giving a reason. All they (W, Gonzales, etc.) had to say was, "We appointed them, and now we're appointing someone else."

Sure they were probably doing it to appoint people without Senate approval (since the Patriot Act now allows such a move). Maybe Congress will actually read the fucking bills before approving them. (I know they're a lot of pages, but Congressmen have minions. And it's not like the Patriot Act was a non-binding resolution.)

But the real question has little to do with the eight U.S. Attorneys who were fired. The real question is this: Did the ones who didn't get fired play ball in some way that the administration dictated?

That's what I think is interesting. Why only eight? Why not 50? Because these are the only ones not corrupt enough to use their office for political retribution? Now that's interesting.

Welcome

2007-03-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

This is where I call bullshit on all manner of things. I think the world is finally ready.

First up, we get to delve into abortion, which is cool because we also get to mock a southern state. The South Carolina is legislature is considering a law which would require women to look at a picture of the fetus before the fetus is aborted.

Basically, the state has conceded that it can't actually ban abortion, so it's taking steps to make women (who are making what has to be the hardest decision ever) feel even shittier than they already do.

Abortion, for the time being, is legal. Making people feel shitty for engaging in a legal act sucks. Hey, South Carolina, why not make people look at a scan of their own carbon-filled lungs before buying a pack of cigarettes? (South Carolina, after all, has a long history of tobacco farming.) How about making fat people weigh in before buying a bag of chitlins? (Yes, an annual chitlin festival known as the "Chitlin Strut" is held every year in Salley, South Carolina.)

This is the dumbest idea since Kansas wanted high school teachers to teach creationism.

Here's the thing. Beginning in about 1980, the right wingers of the world held the executive branch (Reagan) and the Congress. Within a couple of years, the federal judiciary had dozens of judges at all trial and appellate levels, including a right-leaning majority in the Supreme Court. And yet, abortion remains legal.

Why?

Here's your answer: Because legal abortion is too useful a campaign tool to get rid of. If the right actually outlawed abortion, which it could have done for YEARS, it would have given up a surefire rallying cause. They don't want to get rid of abortion. They just want to complain that they can't. It brings people to the polls.

And the people who really do care about outlawing abortion? Well, they just haven't seemed to figure it out. (I don't think they have a lot of smarts, really.) So they keep voting for the same dickheads who say they want to get rid of abortion, but they never demand accountability.

Seriously, if GW and his buddies could drag us into the clusterfuck that is Iraq, don't you think they could have managed to outlaw abortion, too. Or at least tried?