The 1 Percent is On The March!

So S&P is now threatening the EU with a downgrade of their credit rating, like that's really gonna make anything better. Well, except for the 1%, that is - of COURSE it's gonna be better for them - who do you think S&P work for, anyway? But somehow, I have a feeling we are getting really close to a breaking point, and here I speak not of the global environment, nor the state of Herman Cain's harem problems, but of how much the 1% can push their greed down all our throats before we just go and upchuck all over their Gucci-covered asses.

If they try to force "austerity" down the throats of many countries in the EU without making demands on the wealth-hoarding class, I strongly suspect that the lessons everyone is learning from the so-called "Arab Spring," (notice anything unusual coming from Russia the past few days?) will start showing up in more European and American cities over the weeks leading up to the holiest day in Consumerdom - Bleak Monday. Use my credit card, or, pay the damn thing off, and quit paying those bastards for all that worthless crap? Hmmm. Take the family on a ski trip, or, get in line at the soup kitchen, again? No brainer, baby.

The Pea Tardy and their lap doggies in Congress want everyone to think this is all the fault of Big Gummint, and that black guy, but that story is getting old and worn, and doesn't hold the same grip on everyone's testicles it did in 2008. The fact is, we are being driven into fiscal and moral bankruptcy by the very people who pull the strings of both those groups - people like the Koch Brothers, the big banks, the brokerages, the weapons, oil, pharma, and chemical companies, who are engaged in a truly desperate and despicable attempt to dismantle the Constitution and erect in its place the oligarchy they all share wet dreams about.

And I don't know about you, but if I'm gonna get screwed, I'd better get to enjoy it, too. These cockroaches? They have no intention of sharing any kind of joy. So unless you really like getting screwed, you might want to think about getting out of bed, right about.....now.

Well, it's Boxing Day in America - Did You Buy Your Politician a Gift Today?

Ah, I love the smell of off-season primaries in the morning! This year, we get a special treat - rabble-rousing stuff of the earth tea baggers funded by Massey Coal! Yep, this "grass root" movement is actually an open-pit movement funded by dirty coal. Turns out the fat cat what owns Massey Coal doesn't like too many (read: any) guvmint regulations, cuz, well, it get's his profit hungry panties in a bunch. So, cuz he can't get his way with the current (read: non-Bush) guvmint, well, he's gonna buy a guvmint that suits his personal needs. And, he's gonna fool a bunch of easy to fool fools into foolishly believing THEY are the one's in charge! Wow, talk about an excellent conspiracy of dunces.

Now, I'd like to re-shape the guvmint to MY own liking as much as the next billionaire, (Oh, you didn't know?) but I just don't think that was part of the "original Intent" of the foundling fathers for their newly founded fatherland. (ahem.) But why should that matter? This is Amuricah - land of the foreclosure, home of the knave, where the Almighty Profit has gone fourth and ten with seconds to go, and has plans to keep all of us, (no, not you tea baggers, uh-uh) in debt up to our third eyes for all eternity. And lo! he spaketh unto them and led them all into the wilderness of the suburbs, and made them glad to be consumers of consumption, he sayeth unto the Lard! You see how easy it is to cite scripture when your rapture is about to rupture?

Look, we KNOW you chumps just cannot be honest about your real feelings, cuz that would mean you'd have to actually own up to being the frightened white sheep that you truly are. I mean, when you yahoos say something that is clearly racist, ya'll get all fired up stoopid complaining how you are being "maligned" (look it up) just like, oh, how does Glenny-Boy put it? The Nazis are coming, the Nazis are coming!! And look! They just happen to be a mixed set, not one uniformly god-given color like us! And to have to face the trooth of yourself, well, that sends so many mixed signals to the little ones, who so look up to ya'll for guidance of their missiles. Who knows - they might even end up being aimed (horrors!) right back at you.

Ooh, messy.

Well, we'll certainly know better tomorrow whether the 'baggers are going to succeed in pulling down the entire Republican Party and drive it well over the wrong wing cliff. I certainly am cheering for ya'll. 'Cuz there is one thing I am dead certain of - Amurica tends to shy away from the extremes, regardless what side of the Great Divide they may fall. Because fall they will.

Which, as Martha likes to say, is a good thing! Maybe then, we can actually get something done in this country.

Toodles, ya'll!

One Last Smack in the Kisser Before I Go

Well, it's come down to this - I am having my throat cut tomorrow. No, it's nothing YOU said, because, well, you've been rather silent - on pretty much everything. No, it's because I am actually getting my throat cut. Really. I go under the knife, ostensibly to remove the Curse of The Moose Queen from my neck (she - She-Rah, is a pain in the neck, you see.) I will be in recovery with my half-naked shaman healer gal for several weeks or so, depending on how many antlers they have to remove. So feel free to go through my extensive snark-ives if you have just recently joined the fray. But worry not - Notumbus shall return! Until then, here's a parting shot:

On pretty much any day these days, newspapers, web news, TV, iWipes, whatever, are going for the jugular. "Slap 'em upside the head," appears to be the new approach to journalism. Hell, don't just slap 'em, kick 'em while their down, pound 'em to the ground, and do it with a s**t eating grin all the while. Oh, yes, it's pretty much world-wide at this point, but we Amuricans, we do it up right, and with far more vitriol than anyone else. And that's just one of the things that makes Amurica the Greatest Show on Earth. We don't just f**k around, no siree, we go straight for the 'nads, while simultaneously hiding behind the First Amendment. Hell, we've even found the wiggle room in that exception to the 1st, "don't shout fire in a crowded theater." We do it with innuendo and slime-journalism, setting the other guy up, ala "So, you don't really beat your wife ten times a week, do you? It must really be more like, oh, five, right?" Yeah, that's journalism, alright.

I like how suddenly everyone is all, "oh goodness, we have to do something about the bullying in the schools." Like they only just figured out this crap has been going down. Forget about the prior thousand or so years of the same violence taking place right under their noses. But here is the real Jake on this malarkey - at the same time folks are in a frou-frah about bully's in the schools, most are awfully defensive about their own bullying. Whether its the Tea Bagger's Union screaming about running politicians out of town on a splintered rail, or the Not-so-Progressives screaming about pushing She-Rah off a cliff, it seems bullying is the soup du-jour. But its the hypocrisy of all this that floors me. You really want to stop bullying in the schools? Really? The start by trending your own behavior toward civility, by debating each other with respect. Because truthfully? If I was a kid today (I was one yesterday, but today I got up on the wrong side of the era) I would be taking a page from the screaming, asinine adults all around me, and making school like Lord of the Flies. 'Cuz see, that's how we kiddies learn - from you big-mouthed louts. So stop yer whining, buck-o.

Now, some of you one or two readers of this scurrilous rag may think I am two-faced on this, but I have never said, nor will I ever say, that anyone is better than me. I would never say that. However, as someone who suffered at the hands of bully's in school, I am simply smackin' back at the ones I can see out there in the whatever-o-sphere, sort of a proxy revenge, if you will. So, if you don't like my snarky opinion, you are entirely free to spew your own. Me? I go by the simple philosophy - don't try to slap a steak on my plate, and I won't knock the pork-chop offn yourn.

In the meantime, try to be nice to folks, even if you disagree with their perspective. One day, you might need their help. And if all you do is spit on them, do you really think they'll bend down to lend you a hand when misfortune craps all over you? Yeah, didn't think so. I mean, if you are going down for the last time, you gonna ask the hand that reaches out to save you if they are a stinkin' Liberal? Hey, that's YOUR problem, ain't it?

Toodles. See ya soon.

But Seriously, Folks! Goldwater was Just As Wrong as You Are!

Today something tells me to try being serious for once. So I thought, "Self, what a unique idea, let's try it on and see how it feels." So, here goes:

The primary problem with extremism, of whatever stripe, is its failure to ever achieve it's own stated goals, while simultaneously screwing things up for everyone else. Sort of a perfect s**t storm, if you will. In fact, even a cursory review of history will reveal not one single instance where extremism succeeded in a) achieving the exact ideal world envisioned by said extremists; b) doing as little harm as possible to those in disagreement; and c) still being around today. While the Far Wrong likes to parade charges of Socialism and Communism (come on! people, even when those things purported to exist, they didn't really exist - those, too, were extremist wet dreams that failed to ever meet their initial expectations, let alone have any coherence with their self-stated theories,) they fail to see how they are not much more than the mirror images of their own shibboleths. Whenever ANYONE espouses ANY kind of radical or reactionary makeover of "the system," it ultimately fails. Don't believe me - do the research yourself.

Show me ONE radical or reactionary system that has ever really "worked." By this I mean, have the people, as a whole, NOT merely those on top, EVER really prospered under draconian fantasies? China has been in its present form (psuedo-CommiCapitalism) for less than 20 years, and that change was itself a repudiation of the prior 40 years under so-called Marxism. I say so-called because, if any of the wing nuts on the Far Wrong ever actually bothered to READ his books, they would realize actual Marxism has never actually been tried. Instead, we've had one failed mostrosity after another parading under the "Marxism" banner while never coming close to it.

The same holds true for Conservatism, or shall we say, Reactionary ideologies. Name ONE far Right government that hasn't either (or both) brutally repressed/murdered it's own populations, or resulted in hyper-inflation and economic chaos. And name even ONE of those regimes that has stood the test of time. Yeah, I thought so.

The so-called Tea Party, which is just the latest name for the Patriot Militia Movement, and the Christian Right, and the Birthers and Birchers and Timothy McVeigh Book Club and Gun Society, will eventually run into it's own contradictions. In-fighting is already being seen. And what the adherents of this not-so-new ideology refer to as their "better ideas" are in fact the same failed ideas the world has seen in many other permutations before. And, need I add, with the same sad, and often misery-inducing results.

Please note - I am not by this critique suggesting, not in the slightest, that liberal or "progressive" ideologies are any different, especially where they purport to be the "right" answer to all that ails us. Not by a long shot, dear readers. In fact, what I am arguing is simply this: we have reached a critical juncture in human evolution, where what we thought were solutions in the past are finally proving their worthlessness, and reveal the true depth of the dilemma in all its gory details.

We cannot keep recycling the same ideological tropes in hopes one of them will succeed in pulling our collective fat out of the fryer. The Far Wrong and the Radical Whack-Pack both fear the notion of "globalism," and for not so different reasons. They use different rhetoric, but in the end, they are both nativists at heart. But nativism has never truly been a bulwark against the outside world, my readers - its all around us, that Big Bad World out there, and we damn well better learn to live in it, with something at least approaching harmony, or as the saying goes, we be gone, and we be stayin' gone.

There are no boundaries for air, for water. There is no way we are going back to the days (which, lets admit it, never really happened after all - Ozzie and Harriet was a fiction, ya'll,) when we were over here, they were over there, and we/they could ignore the other, unless they/we had something we/they wanted to take, when of course we/they would go over and whupp they/we until we/they got what we wanted, and then we/they went home, and, er, well...actually...WE hardly EVER went home, except when we got our butts handed to us. So, gee, I guess we need to rethink that isolationist/nativist thingy, wouldn't ya think?

So, dear reader, I leave you with two questions: Do you think it might be time to seek some new brand of pragmatism toward dealing with our political, social, environmental, etc., problems? And, if so, how might we start that conversation? Let's have some discussions, whether here, or your place, I don't really care. I just want to get started, because truthfully? I don't really think we have that much time to start fixing things. And some of those things are well and truly busted.

I think even the smallest amount of reflection will show that, no matter what you call it, extremism is NEVER in defense of Liberty - its only in the justification for oppression. Barry Goldwater notwithstanding.

Next time, back to my usual snarkism.

Toodles!

Idiocracy, 2.0 - or - How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bums

If there is one thing that really gets my goat, it's that there isn't just one thing that really gets my goat. My duck? That's another topic. But my goat? Well, the real question is usually, where to start?

Scott Brown is very afraid that Rachel Maddow wants his seat. But that is patently absurd - Rachel has a much better seat that Brown, and, despite her well-stated sexual preferences, still looks better in spandex. Deal with it, Brownie! As we continue to see, the Far Wrong isn't just the single largest purveyor of ad hominem filth, they are also the party of "oh, god, they didn't just really say THAT, did they?"

And their "supporters", who should rightly be called their "jock straps," seem to feel that living in their violence and black-helicopter fantasy land is actually going to solve the myriad problems facing the country, nay, the world today. Tsk. It seems that the movie, Idiocracy, is proving to be farther from the truth than we first suspected - the movie itself offered hope for the idiots, whereas this present collection of buffoons is so far and away beyond the depictions in the movie it seems a more cynical sequel than even Hollywood could dream up.

As for whether the Far Wrong and it's tiny-brained offshoot, the Tea bagger's Union, represent any kind of majority? Well, their recent foray into the Nevada desert drew a whopping 7000 fanatics to relive their biblical re-enactment ceremony, whereas Burning Man had that many just for the food service. And I sincerely doubt their "loaves and fishies" franchise was even remotely capable of feeding the entire frenzied mini-crowd. But hey, we all gotta have time out for mental hygeine. But "majority?" Uh, hmm, er,.....nope. Unless we're talking a "majority" of wing nuts, in which case I'll admit, they have the franchise.

But let's just get one thing straight, besides Barney Frank (badda-boom)! I sincerely doubt, and you Far Wrong-oids are quite invited to disprove this, that one of the Mad Haters at the tea party are without insurance, have any preexisting condition (besides that lump on your shoulders), or have yet to have your company pull up stakes and head to China. But for those one or two that have, uh, simple question: what's your problem? You LIKE being behind the eight-ball? Or is this all just about what Jimmy Carter called it as - white-people fear of the dark? 'Cuz truthfully?

I have yet to see many "people of color" in your ranks. I wonder why that is?

Yowzuh!!

All Enamel, Baby! Or, Zippin' Down The Highway of Life in the Ricky Lane

Enamel coatings tend to make things all slick and shiny. Way hella lots o' money does the same thing. But when you put the two together, well, now we talkin' 'bout Shinny Happy People!! Take Rick "Self Serving" Perry down Texas way, tryin' to take the Gov mansion by advocating secession (and spendin' moolah like there's no tomorrow ((and maybe there ain't)). Yep. You heard that right - secession, as in, "it's our State and dammit, we are shuttin' down ALL the damn borders and declarin' our bad selves a separate country." Yee-friggin-ha! Well, it is Texas, and there are more tea baggers per square inch than anywhere outside of Wasilla, but still, talk about dirty pool filled with freshly-minted currency! Boy's got game!

Now, before all you folks out there think I've gone and lost my sad little mind, hear me out. I think a case can be made for old Rick-boy's idee majeur. , as it were. Them tea baggers seem to want their own country, or at least kick the rest of us out of ours, so I say, Texas? Not a bad start. Let's throw in Florida, Oklahoma, and Alaska, but no fly-over rights - don't really trust their pilots, if ya get my drift. I think they would have a) enough room; b) enough natural and unnatural resources; c) the people who don't want to be part of this less-than-grand Confederacy (oops, did I just coin a name for their new country? Maybe!), can move into the houses vacated by all the tea baggers and television/radio crap-yackers who opt to join the Degeneracy, er, Confederacy (gonna take some time to get this to just roll off the tongue, instead of making me gag); and d) have all the wrestlin', shootin', and screamin' time they all want.

Then maybe, just maybe, we give Vermont to the Demoncrats who keep waffling. It'll keep 'em in syrup for years.


The rest of us might finally be able to get some real things accomplished to put our (at that point) slightly fractured Nation back on track. To paraphrase John Lennon:

You may say I'm a dreamin', but I ain't the only one!

Toodles.

Where I Come From, Farmers Shoot The Damn Crows!

There is a special place in hell and literature for those who spit nasty at others and then complain and weep and moan when they get a little back. Self-inflation and its inevitable consequences have all the allure of a train wreck, without any of the redeeming features, such as the opportunity for heroism. When you go and stick your face into the blades of whirling public scrutiny, don't be surprised when you get turned to pulp.

It seems the Queen of the Moose, She-Rah, went and done another dumb-ass mouth-flappin'. And this time it was over a cartoon character! Well, wouldn't ya know it? Seems she was all gefiltefishy over the character of a young girl/teenager (who can tell with cartoons characters? No, really - who can tell?) who had Down's syndrome. I mean, what temerity!! to dare make fun of someone who is different? And this despite defending Rushy-pants Limpburgher's comments about "retards" after railing against a slip-o-the-lip from that Jewish guy at the Mixed-race House over there in the D.C. Yep. She gave Fatty Tarbuckle's a pass!! Go figure.

Anyhoo, here's the pickle part of the deal. Seems the young woman who actually voiced the cartoonish character on The Family Guy, herself, well, has Down's Syndrome. Hmm. Seems she makes a living as an actor and voice-over person. So, self-employed? Sounds free enterprise, don't she? And has a sense of humor, right? Sounds kinda normal-ish to me.

But as far as She-Rah goes, she'd just as soon carry her little Trig under her arm like a loaf of Frenchy bread (not my words, folks) while simultaneously asking us all to condemn someone making a living and excersizing her First Amendment right to free speech and all that ACLU-y stuff, as long as she can milk it for her own ends. But we shouldn't be surprised, should we?

Pride, as the old saw has it, goeth before a fall. But it doesn't tell you what you are going to land on when you do. Could be pillows (unlikely) or could be pitchforks, ya never can tell.

Remember them pesky old Greeks, founders of democracy and all that uncomfortable stuff? Well, they had a word for these red-faced baboons on the Far Wrong right about now.

Hubris.

The gods have a little issue with that. And if you've been paying any attention to the history of the last, oh, I don't know, 4000 years of history, then you should have a pretty decent idea of what they like to do to folks what displays that particular vice, eh?

I'm going for the plague of locusts, myself.

Toodles!