Is it just me? Or is it time to really hate the Clintons?

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton was asked if Obama, the presumptive nominee of his party, and the man he pledged to support, was ready to be president. He said “You can argue that nobody is ready to be President.”

Yeah, you can argue that, Bill, especially if you’re a dick.

Look, I’m not saying that it’s not true, I’m saying that he refused, in that churlish “I did not have sex with that woman” way of his to say, simply, “Yes.” And you and I both know, that if the nominee had been his wife, or in fact any other Democratic nominee except Obama, he would have said yes.

Clearly he has a bone to pick with the Obama campaign over their allegation that Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s South Carolina primary win to Jesse Jackson’s South Carolina primary wins was a racist one. It really sticks in Clinton’s craw that the Obama campaign had the nerve to accuse him (whose office is in Harlem, c’mon!) of racism.

Regarding the Jackson comparison…make no mistake, politicians of Clinton’s caliber don’t just stumble into analogies like that. He walked into that trap with his eyes wide open. It was a calculated risk he took, saying that it wasn’t, in his mind, the first time that an unelectable black man won that same primary. The inference was clear that Obama only won because he’s black, and even if you don’t think it’s a racist statement, it doesn’t matter, because Clinton knew it would be perceived that way, and knew the Obama camp would push back, and knew that he would pull out his “first black president” credentials, and that would be that.

Except it turns out that Clinton’s credentials had expired in the last eight years, and he had never bothered to have them renewed.

And now he’s pissed. He wants his wife to be president, and goddamn if he’s not willing to take the whole kit and caboodle down with him if he has to, in order to get his way.

Take for instance, his recent comments wherein he implied that there was no difference between the McCain and Obama platforms on the environment.

Say what?

Yes, Clinton said, apparently with a straight face, that Obama’s platform was comparable to McCain’s, and that both candidates “have positions that guarantee that there will be a price set for carbon and will start to do something about climate change.” I guess Clinton’s not aware that McCain has made offshore drilling for oil a centerpiece of his campaign. I’m not sure how he missed that, especially since McCain’s first attempt at a stump speech on the subject, scheduled to take place on an offshore oil platform, had to be rescheduled due to an oil spill.

And more recently, when BushCo threw out the window a 30-year-old rule that required that the status of endangered species be evaluated by independent experts, and not by department cronies with hard-ons for industry, McCain’s campaign was strangely silent on the subject. In fact, I believe their comment was “no comment.” Obama’s spokesperson, on the other hand, said he would kill the new BushCo regs and strengthen the Endangered Species Act. I guess Clinton could not have predicted that when he said that Obama and McCain were equal, environment-wise. Although it’s funny, because I sure could have.

And now, we have Hillary’s brother and some of her old campaign flacks organizing meetings between Pennsylvanians who voted for Hillary, and Carly Fiorina, an agent of McCain’s campaign who’s so thick-headed that she can’t grasp that McCain is the enemy of every sensible woman everywhere.

And then there’s Hillary’s ex-Communications Director, Howard Wolfson, who performed some very public hand-wringing over the recent fall of John Edwards, saying that if he hadn’t lied about his extramarital affair prior to Iowa, Hillary would’ve won that state, and thus would’ve naturally won the nomination. Even if you accept all of that, which is quite a mouthful to swallow, it’s interesting to me that the campaign that prided itself on its right to not go gently into that good night is suggesting that Edwards should have.

Perhaps I can recommend to the Clintons that they consider the advice of Maria Shriver, who recently hosted a “Women for Obama” unity function, whose guests were prominent Hillary Clinton supporters that the Democrats hope to bring back into the fold. Shriver’s family was dealt a severe political blow when Ted Kennedy, a man many assumed was a presidential inevitability, lost the nomination to the very unpopular Jimmy Carter in 1980. Maria confessed that she held grudges from that campaign for too long, and that it did not, ultimately, serve her well.

Some of Clinton’s more dogged supporters refuse to accept that she did not win the nomination, and they vow to disrupt the Democratic Convention. Perhaps I can recommend to them, from that same campaign, the words of failed nominee Ted Kennedy:

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

In other words, it’s bigger than Hillary, bitches. It’s bigger than a woman being president, even. If McCain is elected, I guarantee you’re going to look back in a few years and not be able to believe what a world-class fucking idiot you were.

The very personal is political

Readers, I just had to share with you this column from WaPo’s Sally Quinn, which made me laugh out loud with its completely un-self-conscious emotionally naked batshit craziness:

When I was little, I had a recurrent dream that there was a terrible earthquake. My father, his body a horse with wings, swooped down from the sky, kneeled so I could jump on his back and flew away just as the earth cracked open beneath me. It was my most comforting dream.

Holy fucking Freud sandwich on rye toast with mayo and a big phallic kosher pickle on the side, Batman!

If I ever had a dream like that, I’d wake up my boyfriend and tell him to quick, fuck the memory of it right out of me. I wouldn’t go revealing to the whole world that the reason why I’m politically conservative is because I’m a deeply insecure individual with an Electra complex and a near-psychotic fear of sex, and the world in general. Wow. You have to give her points for honesty bordering on a compulsive need for humiliation, I guess.

And what is her column about, that she chose to begin it with such a horrifyingly inappropriate personal revelation?

It’s about evangelist Rick Warren’s interviews at Saddleback church with Obama and McCain.

!

I know. I can’t hardly believe it myself, but it’s dreamy, isn’t it? It’s like a little gift-wrapped Christmas present right there on baby Jesus’s insane op-ed page from hell.

Let’s read some more:

I want to live in that world again. I want to live in John McCain’s world. My father was a military man…

Wow. Huge fucking surprise. No doubt he made The Great Santini look like the Dalai Lama.

…My parents were friends of McCain’s parents and lived in the same apartment building. My father’s closest friend was Barry Goldwater, McCain’s mentor. Those were the days when men were men, when the differences between good and evil were clear, when they knew where they stood on every issue, when life was less complicated, when there was an air of insouciance, no matter how difficult the issues.

Damn right there was an air of insouciance. It was caused by the collective shrugging of all the white people in America when blacks and other minorities came to them and asked if they might please be allowed to vote, and have their own families, and oh, I don’t know, not be beaten randomly on the streets by policemen who no doubt were very clear that they were “men.”

Minorities can be complicated and difficult that way.

Back to Ms. Quinn:

I want to live in a world where Gen. David Petraeus and Meg Whitman, former chief executive of eBay, are the wisest people I know…

Whoa, there, Sally. Hold on. What’s a gal doing heading up a company in this little world of yours? In this world, women are for carrying pregnancies to term, and for staying faithful to their philandering husbands, and for financing, with family money of course, their husband’s political careers, even if they have to mortgage one of their ten homes or their own private jet to do it. Occasionally, women are also for becoming so overwhelmed by the soul-killing hypocrisy and uselessness of a life lived purely for the benefit of men that they become addicted to pills and/or booze. But that’s it. Definitely no CEOing allowed.

Back to Sally’s ideal world:

…where offshore drilling will help ease our energy crisis, where a guy stays in a Vietnamese prison camp even when told he could get out, and has great stories to tell.

Anybody else kinda creeped out by that last remark, by the way? I mean, to me, a “great story” is what you get when you and your pals decide to drive down to Mexico in an old school bus with 10 pounds of shrooms, and instead you end up in a bridesmaid’s dress and a Brazilian wax on a gay cruise to Alaska. Getting beaten and tortured in one of the most notorious prisons in the whole regrettable history of mankind is a life-altering experience, and an amazing personal ordeal, but it’s not a “great story.” Okay, I’m arguing semantics, now. But still. She’s a columnist, for pete’s sake. What does she have to do except get the words right?

I want to live in a world where I was absolutely certain that life begins at conception…

Instead of the world I live in now, where life begins as soon as you are white, and wealthy, and have a degree from Smith.

…where a man is a maverick and stands up against his Senate colleagues when he disagrees with them, where the only thing to do with evil is defeat it, where a guy will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell to capture him.

So…McCain thinks bin Laden is in Iraq, then? Is that why he refuses to get us the hell out of there?

I want to believe that our biggest enemy is radical Islamist terrorists.

Really? What the fuck for? I want to believe that our biggest enemy is high-fructose corn syrup, or people who wear Crocs in public, or pop stars who can’t sing without pitch correction software, but I don’t think I could make a credible case for any of it. The world is a dangerous fucking place, whether I believe it or not. Still it would be comforting to believe that our biggest enemy is the stupefying popularity of Dane Cook. I guess that’s just the difference between me and Ms. Quinn.

I want to be part of a world that doesn't have to raise taxes…

Now, that I believe.

…where America is a beacon, a shining city on a hill; where our values are simply Judeo-Christian values; and where a man always puts his country first.

I just figured out what kind of world I want: a world where the Judeo-Christians don’t think they have some kind of fucking monopoly on ethics and morality.

By the time McCain finished his interview with pastor Rick Warren…I was curled up in a fetal position in my chair, wrapped in a mohair throw, practically sucking my thumb.

If only she could stay that way until after election day.

Plus…I’m sorry, but “mohair throw”? What a cunt.

McCain did a great job of making me feel confident. He was clearly in his element at Saddleback, among supportive evangelical Christians, and he went a long way toward alleviating their fears about his inability to communicate with them in their own language.

Oh great. McCain finally figured out how to speak Bigot.

But wait, readers, for Quinn is about to get to the topic of Obama’s performance:

Obama came first, and he handled himself well in front of an audience that clearly disagrees with him on many issues.

Yes, he’s black and they disagree with that.

…He was low-key, thoughtful and nuanced. That kind of nuance is hard to understand sometimes -- it's unclear, complicated. Obama's world can be scarier. It's multicultural. It's realistic (yes, there is evil on the streets of this country as well as in other places, and a lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of good). It's honest.

So, evangelical voters are scared of thinking, nuance, non-Caucasians, realism and honesty. I must admit that I’ve rarely seen anyone on the political right speak so frankly about their constituency.

When does life begin? Only the antiabortionists are clear on that. For the majority of Americans (who are pro-choice), it is "above my pay grade," in Obama's words, where there is no hard and fast line to draw on what's worth dying for, and where people of all faiths have to be respected.

It’s true that the majority of Americans believe a woman’s body does not become government domain simply because she is pregnant. A majority of Americans believe that the woman is the best person to decide whether she must dedicate her life and her body to the growing of another life. Obama is acknowledging that the decision is not his to know, or to make. Now, you may think, as does professional tool and fellow WaPo columnist Michael Gerson, that that is a “silly” point of view. Gerson believes that if Obama is unsure of when a fetus gains human rights, he should err on the side of “innocent life,” which, just to be clear, does not refer to the pregnant woman.

Ah, but the depths of his idiocy are for another day, for Ms. Quinn is about to get to the climax of her rather sordid confessional:

I would rather live in McCain’s world than Obama’s. But I believe that we live in Obama’s world.

And there it is, in all its stunning simplicity and arrogance. The mourning of a long-ago world full of violence, machismo, intolerance, and closed-minded bigotry, and the grudging acknowledgment that by doing so, she is indulging in a childish fantasy. I would applaud her for that recognition, if only she weren’t so fucking sad about it.

P.S. You can keep the money I gave you

Dear John,

Ha, ha, that’s funny. “Dear John.”

Except it’s not.

So, John, dude.

Dude.

Ya fucked up. What else is new, huh?

I guess I have to say that, having had one marriage in which I was under a microscope, and everyone in my little community knew every detail and so therefore thought they knew me, and knew him, and also therefore thought they knew the story of our marriage, I am firmly in the “your marriage is none of my business” camp. Because no one outside of a marriage can ever really understand that marriage. And they certainly cannot judge that marriage.

But hold on. There are, as Pee Wee would say, a couple of big buts.

Big but #1 – Did Gary Hart teach you nothing? He certainly taught Bill Clinton nothing, and so Clinton was doomed to repeat Hart’s history. And now you, having not learned from Clinton, are doomed to repeat Clinton’s history. And holy cow, dude, that is some tired-ass mamajamma history. No one’s history is more tired than Bill Clinton’s. So, you know, that is making me doubt your taste a little bit. Well, that, and the dad jeans.

Big but #2 – You got 30% of the Democratic vote in Iowa! You were on television in, like, 157 debates! Have you figured out yet that the only candidate in the Democratic primary that gets to sneak around town unnoticed is Mike Gravel? In your big mea culpa statement, you pled guilty to narcissism and being egocentric, how exactly does that jive with your assumption that wearing a t-shirt to the Beverly Hills Hilton constitutes an effective disguise from the paparazzi?

Big but #3 – Dude, it’s so obvs not all out. Your timeline is wonky. Your statement disavowing all knowledge of monies paid to the other woman is not believable. You agree to a paternity test at exactly the same time the other woman changes her mind and decides NOT to have one. And lastly, your alleged baby daddy beard is a paid political operative with a criminal history. Really, the only thing missing is your DNA on the baby’s diaper.

Stop trying to mitigate. There is no mitigating. It just makes you look like a bigger weasel. Accept it all, even the bits that you feel are unfair. Take all the abuse, and take it like a man. Don’t quibble the details. You are so, so past the details.

Then go home and grow a beard and work on something worthwhile for a couple of years. I don’t know, start a soup kitchen or an employment agency. Get your hair cut at Super Cuts for twelve dollars. Suffer. Do something for that second America that I think you really do care about. I hear Habitat for Humanity can always use a hand, and hanging out with President Carter wouldn’t hurt, either. He might be able to teach you how to lust in your heart, and keep your little mill worker in your pants.

Whatever happens, don’t write any books. Seriously. That is the last thing you, and most especially we, need.

You’ve admitted that you fucked around because you thought you were special, and you thought the world revolved around you. That’s a big step. That’s a hard thing to face up to. Don’t throw it away. Embrace the humiliation, and learn something.

And then in eight years or so, come back, and tell us what you learned. By then, you will have so little to lose, that you might actually possess something valuable. Something we need. Hey, you never know, right?

Good luck, John. I mean it. Goodbye.

Dear International Olympic Committee,

Congratulations on your foresight. When you picked Beijing as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics, many critics lambasted the choice, pointing out that there were two things that Beijing was lacking that are essential components for a successful Olympic games:

1. Air that people can breathe
2. Journalists that report news

But you scoffed at their lambastion. Chinese officials assured you that by 2008 they would find a way to provide what they lacked, and you decided to listen to them and believe. After all, Communist regimes are known for producing public officials that are ambitious, and that take personal responsibility for their actions.

So cheers to the IOC. And guys, I wouldn’t make too much of the stories about how the Chinese doctored the feed of the opening ceremonies by inserting CGI fireworks. It just goes to show you that no matter how many times the TV commentators breathlessly remind us that the Chinese invented fireworks, and that they are the masters of fireworks, there’s really nothing that can’t be improved by the use of CGI.

Well, except for that first Hulk movie.

And I’m not even peeved by the fact that the Chinese denied a visa to US Olympic Gold Medalist Joey Cheek, due to his involvement with a group of athletes protesting China’s support for the government of Sudan. You know why? Freedom of speech is just not appropriate when you are visiting someone else’s country. It’s like, if I went to a party, and I found out the host was supporting a known murderer by giving him money and shielding him from law enforcement authorities, I wouldn’t keep drawing attention to it. It’s rude. Besides, it’s not the job of the US of A to go around the world spreading freedom.

One tiny word of criticism, and that involves your charter, which I do believe says that you forbid “any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise.”

C’mon guys, Saudi Arabia, like many Muslim countries, has never sent one woman to the Olympics. In 36 years, not one. Bupkiss. And it’s not because they simply don’t fund women’s athletics equally, like the US. It’s because that it’s, well, kind of illegal for women to play sports in Saudi Arabia. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m sure you could get that Saudi prince who is on the IOC to explain it to you. Also, you might be able to get some information from one of the female members of the IOC, if you can find one.

But hey, you say, what about when we banned South Africa from participating in the '60s, because of their policy of apartheid, and the fact that black athletes could not compete equally with whites there?

To which I say, yeah, what about that? That’s really confusing. Because clearly Saudi Arabia’s actions are worse in that women can’t play sports at all, let alone compete equally. Yeah, that is really fucking confusing, alright. Hm. Yeah, I have to admit that that puzzles the shit out of me right there.

In any event, best to just remove that pesky “no discrimination” clause, eh? I mean, you can always put it back at some future date, you know, like when it happens to be true.

Does that make me crazy? Probably.

Hey, guys, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been a tad sans inspiration lately, and we all know what happens when you write without inspiration. Yes, you end up penning some awful column for some paper of record wherein you compare the Democratic presidential nominee to a character from a Jane Austin novel. And all you manage to prove is A.) you’ve never actually read Pride and Prejudice, and B.), actually, there is no B., I just thought it was really embarrassing that such a famous columnist could write something so stupid.

I’ve been following the post-suicide damnation of scientist Bruce Ivins, and thinking that there was a time when we all were pretty sure that Hatfill was guilty too, and shit, he ended up with a tasty FBI settlement. 5.8 mil sure takes the sting out of being fired from a tedious government laboratory job, eh?

The general thrust of the case against Ivins, beside some pretty unconvincing circumstantial evidence, is that he’s crazy. How is he crazy? Well, mostly he appears to be crazy because he refers to himself as crazy. Like, he wrote emails to friends wherein he described his behavior as compulsive and crazy. So, I was in my house, listening to a story about Ivin’s craziness on the radio as I equipped several new handbags I’d just bought with some pursekits. What are pursekits, you ask? Well, pursekits are little, well, kits that I assemble that contain things that I want every purse to have in them. The contents of my pursekits have varied somewhat over the years, but I have now settled upon five things: a pen, a business card, matches, an individually-wrapped moistened towelette, and of course, a tampon. For years I could not decide whether to use a generic moistened towelette, or a Shout! stain-removing wipe, but I finally decided that the towelette was the more versatile performer. Anyhoo, I generally put my little kits inside that zippered interior pocket that just about every purse has. If a purse does not have an interior zippered pocket, I do also keep a supply of small drawstring bags, they’re little giftie bags, really, like what you can buy at a store that sells gift-wrapping items, although mostly I have gotten mine for free by saving them when someone gives me a gift in one of those little bags, and I put my kit in one of those and then I know when I take my wallet and sunglasses and stuff out of one purse and put them in another, to leave the little kit with the purse where it belongs. It’s a system I’ve developed over many years, and I’m pretty happy with it, except when I run out of one of my kit items, and then the purses on my desk will start to back up, either because they are new and need a kit, or because I used one of the kit items and it needs to be replenished. Now, you would think that the tampon would be the thing that most often needs to be replenished in the kit, but it’s not. It’s actually the pen. People just love to walk off with pens. I used to waitress, so I know. In fact, when I was a waitress I found that the only way to keep a hold of my pens was to never give the customer the cap. That way, they couldn’t just absentmindedly stick it in their pocket, you know? But when a friend of mine is asking for a pen, and I give them one out of my pursekit, I can’t really take the cap off and keep it, can I? That would be rude. Besides, most pens these days are retractable, anyway.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was about to say that crazy is as crazy does.

And if the standard for proof of craziness is an opinion that one is crazy, well, then the only sane people left will be those too crazy to think they’re crazy.

And don’t point to all the medications that Ivins was supposedly taking for his psychological problems. Half the population of LA is on Ambien. You can get Ambien at any corner bar. In fact, in my neighborhood, it comes with a beer back.

Look, I have no idea whether Ivins is guilty or innocent, but what I’m really wondering is if we took the same standard for evidence from the Ivins case, and applied it to Ron Suskind and the Habbush memo, well, it’d be quite a different kettle of fish, no?

In his new book, Suskind alleges that the infamous Habbush memo, which was initially hyped as the missing link between Saddam Hussein, WMD, and collusion with the al-Qaeda plotters of 9/11, was created by the CIA at the behest of BushCo. The Habbush memo was quickly revealed to be a phony, although who faked it has never exactly been known until now.

Comparison point #1

FBI: Although investigators cannot put Ivins at or near the mailbox they believe was the starting point for many of the anthrax letters, the mailbox, while located in a different state than his residence, was near a storage facility owned by a college sorority that Ivins may or may not have been obsessed with at one time. Wait. Huh?

Suskind: Ayad Allawi was a CIA “asset” who met with the CIA the week before he passed the phony memo to the reporter who published it.

Comparison point #2

FBI: Ivins, although never linked to the anthrax strain personally, did work in a facility where he and about a hundred other people had access to a strain that the government says was identical to at least some of the strains used in the mailings.

Suskind: Habbush, once chief of Saddam’s intelligence service, betrayed his country prior to the Iraqi war in order to give intelligence to the US that indicated that Saddam did not have WMD. Then, when the phony memo, which was supposedly written from Habbush to Saddam, surfaces, and says the exact opposite, BushCo suddenly gives him 5 million dollars and resettles him in Jordan.

Comparison point #3

FBI: After many years of harassment from the FBI, including offering 2.5 million and a sports car to Ivins’s son in exchange for damaging evidence, and showing pictures of dead anthrax victims to Ivins’s daughter while pressuring her for information, Ivins can’t take anymore, and kills himself, while still maintaining his innocence. He is declared crazy and is thus a liar.

Suskind: A Bush administration spokesperson said that you’d have to be crazy to believe that the order to plant the phony memo came from the White House.

Well, that’s all I got for now, readers. I encourage you to check out the links, especially on the Habbush memo story. I know that the government lying to us in order to send more soldiers to their death is kind of old hat, but I’m pretty sure it’s still news.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great idea for a post wherein I compare the Republican presidential candidate to a character from the old “I Love Lucy” show. See if you can guess which one.

Spoiler Alert!

Okay, first of all, it's called MASKING. It's what you do to your windows, your chrome, your wheels etc. so that they are protected when you set off that paint bomb in your garage.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got that spoiler kit, but it looks like something my brother might have built with his circa 1967 Erector Set.

Thirdly, you are not a badass. I'm pretty sure the reason why this car is always parked in the Walgreen's lot is because you work there.



Previous Bells On Spoiler Alerts!

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I thought since my sister just blogged her favorite TP story, that I would blog mine. She copies me a lot, because I am her big sister and she worships me. Don't worry, readers. I’m used to it, y’all. It ain’t no thing. Anyways, sometimes I like to copy her so she feels better about being in my shadow all the time.

Ahem.

So I’m playing a witch in a production of Macbeth, and the director has this concept of the play that is making my life miserable, i.e., that the witches are these seductive sirens (so original!) that are basically controlling Macbeth through paranormal means. Of course the dude playing Macbeth hates the concept, because if his character doesn’t have free will, it kinda makes it not a tragedy, but anyway, in those days I ran with a crowd who thought dramaturgs were cool and we cared about shit like Sophoclean theory. So there I am, hanging in a giant spider web above the stage with the other two witches, waiting for Macbeth to come out for his “To be thus is nothing; but to be safely thus” soliloquy, and because the three of us had to be on stage so much without any dialogue, we had developed a language of grunting and belching noises that were meant to sound like natural scary witch talk to the audience, but to us each sound had a specific meaning. Those meanings had nothing to do with any witchy-type interests. They were geared more toward wringing some amusement out of that 3 hour marathon of watching from above as dudes in burlap leggings and fake fur raised swords and shouted “Huzzah!” So basically, if one of us saw a spear carrier scratching his ass when he thought no one was looking, and managed to alert the other two in time for them to also witness said ass scratching, this was sufficient amusement to us for at least 5 or 6 scenes.

So we’re hanging in the web, and Macbeth enters, and the 1^st Witch made the sound that meant “look at this crazy shit happening over here!”, and sure enough, there was Macbeth, talkin’ all serious to the audience about vengeance and the futility of ambition with a nice long trail of toilet paper attached to his shoe. He’s walking back and forth, getting himself worked up into a good actorly froth, and completely oblivious to this tremendous kite tail following him, and I don’t know how many audience members noticed the toilet paper, but I think they couldn’t help but notice that that spider web was shaking like a poorly designed suspension bridge in a windstorm.

Eventually, the toilet paper fell off, and we witches watched from above for a whole act as it got kicked around the stage, and then when it came time to do the famous cauldron scene, we descended from the web, and as we walked downstage toward the cauldron, the 1^st witch bent down, picked up the piece of toilet paper, held it aloft, and with a great screeching howl of victory, she tossed it with some ceremony into our noxious, eye-of-newt-and-toe-of-frog-laden brew.

Mmmm. That one got us through the rest of the run. As I recall, it was a good two and a half weeks, at least.

What up, Monkey?

Monkey hasn't posted in, like 18 hours.

That is not like the Monkey.

So Monkey emailed me, and what's happened is that someone tagged his blog as spam, and so he is being prevented by Blogger from posting to it until they determine that it is not spam.

Of course Blogger doesn't say how his blog got tagged, but given the content, and given the propensity of certain right-leaning lurkers to troll teh internets and try to bully those who aren't still clinging to the mast of their sinking ship, it's not difficult to imagine.

Be strong, Monkey! And if they don't release your blog soon, I say we all go down to Blogger HQ and fling our poo at them.

Please leave a message of support for Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein here, at Monkey Muck 2.0.

Hey, wait a minute...

Remember when Obama, speaking about how unemployment and economic hardship affects some blue collar voters, and why they would likely NOT be inspired by it to vote Democratic, said:

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Oh, and how everyone crowed about how ELITIST the comments were, and how OUT OF TOUCH Obama was with the real people, and how INSULTING the mere idea was, that bitterness over economic misfortune might motivate anyone to think in such a way. It was a scandalous, unforgivable SMEAR.

Well, someone forgot to tell this guy:

Yeah, that guy who lost his job and his foodstamps and decided that homo-loving liberals were to blame and so took one of his guns and shot up a church. That guy. How come he didn't get the message about how out of touch Obama is?

I guess he doesn't watch Fox News.

Some day, everything east of California is going to slide into the Atlantic Ocean

So at around 11:50am today, there was a jolt, and I thought that our old HVAC system where I work had finally shit the bed, because it was like that shudder when the AC switches on, only magnified about a thousand times. Then I thought, wait, did someone on the second floor drop something really heavy on the ceiling above my head? And then I thought, you idiot, it's a motherfucking earthquake.

I was on the phone with corporate HR at the time, and the person on the other end of the line, I think in Denver, was rattling on about new hire paperwork procedures when I finally realized what was happening:

HR: So I'll forward to you the form, which requires a Social Security number...
Me: I'm sorry to interrupt, but I've got to go. We're having an earthquake.
HR: What?
(click)

A 5.4 no less, the strongest earthquake I've felt since living in LA (I moved here right after the 1994 Northridge 6.7). I did feel some pretty strong aftershocks in the months following the Northridge quake, but my tendency was always to misinterpret them. I was watching tv, and after my very first LA aftershock, my ex grabbed my hand and said "Are you okay? Are you scared?" I said "What do you mean?" He gave me a significant look. I said "What? That wasn't a truck driving by?" In Chicago, the city I had just come from, when the earth moves it's because there's a semi barreling down your street.

One time at work, after feeling my chair pitch, I called the Facilities Manager and asked him if the Space Shuttle had just flown by on its way to land at Edwards, and the Facilites Manager was all "What are you talking about? That was an earthquake. You don't know what an earthquake feels like?"

In my own defense, if you've never felt a sonic boom, it's definitely jolting. The last time the Shuttle flew by on its way to land at Edwards, it woke me out of a sound sleep. I had to go outside to make sure my neighbor's gas line hadn't exploded, which I was pretty sure it had. In the early dawn light, as I looked down the block, I saw another neighbor standing in the street in his PJs, looking similarly unnerved. We waved.

One thing about living in a big city, especially one as, um, accident-prone as LA, is that relatives and friends are frequently calling me or emailing because they heard something terrible is happening in my general vicinity. My sister made a joke this morning about quake season starting before fire season was over, which of course reminded me of the old joke about LA. People who don't live in LA think we don't have any seasons here, they think it's just 78 degrees and sunny all the time. But we do have four seasons. They are:

Earthquakes
Wildfires
Mudslides
Sweeps

Thanks, folks! I'll be here all week! Under my desk! Cowering!

Good night!

Get Well Soon

It’s getting dangerous to be a liberal in America. Cripes, they’re even gunning for Unitarians. What’s more harmless than a Unitarian, I wonder? Sure, one could examine their sect for oppressive homophobic woman-hating paranoid dogma and find them wanting, no doubt, but what’s the worst a Unitarian could do to you, bore you over coffee in the church basement following the service?

I shouldn’t joke, I suppose, because two people are dead and more are wounded, but I hope that guy, a self-confessed conservative who opened up on a group of Unitarians as they gathered to watch a group of children perform “Annie,” gets charged with terrorism rather than murder. If a killing spree is motivated by a political agenda, doesn’t it seem like that should be the charge?

The shooter was apparently despondent over being unemployed. Also, he had recently received notice that his food stamps were being cut back.

Hold on. An unemployed man on food stamps?

What’s the matter, Mr. Shooter, couldn’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps?

See, that’s the extent to which liberals are being demonized in this country. We are being blamed for unemployment, and social program cutbacks, which are, as everyone knows, key features of the Republicans’ agenda for America.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal that I was myself baptized Unitarian, or whatever you call baptism when it’s performed by the Unitarian church. But even the Unis failed to make anything stick to me, and I ended up just a lonesome ole atheist, doomed to spend eternity in solitary limbo, with only that chick from “The Rapture” for company, what’s her name? Mimi Rogers? Yeah, that’s her, although…wait, wasn’t she the Scientologist who converted husband Tom Cruise?

Fucking great fun that’ll be. In fact, that Unitarian basement is starting to sound pretty good to me right now.

Oh, but I kid the Unitarians. The truth is, their church is pretty cool. Thomas Jefferson was one. So were Franklin, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, Daniel Webster, John & Abigail Adams, and that furniture guy, Ethan Allen. Our founding fathers were lousy with Unitarians, in fact. Part of the appeal to those brainy, independent types was that Unitarians believe that while the Bible was inspired by God, it was written and edited by humans, and so therefore fallible and open to interpretation. They also believe that humans must exercise free will, and that no religion has a monopoly on theological truth.

I know, it’s a wonder they’ve made it this far.

Also damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t this week is Barack Obama, who cancelled an appearance visiting wounded servicemen in Germany because the Pentagon, an absolutely politics-free institution, by the way, asked him to. Their reasoning was that they didn’t want the soldiers used as political pawns.

Wait a minute. They are familiar with Iraq, right?

So Obama acquiesced, only to find himself being criticized by McCampaign for choosing not to visit the troops. As if Obama, or any politician, would pass up the opportunity willingly. And then Pentagon spokespeople, never known for their backbone under fire, released a statement saying that while they told him not to visit the troops, it was because Obama didn’t say “Mother may I?”, or something, and if he had, they totally would’ve let him.

Speaking of McCampaign, rumors are flying about a Romney VP slot. To which I say, “oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please.” Seriously, please. Please put Romney on the ticket. Please. Because then it’s just two rich white dudes and we can finally put to rest all the news stories about the Hillary-didn’t-get-the-nomination whiners and how, if he picks a woman to run with, they’re going to vote for the old guy who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade out of, you know, spite. But not just any kind of spite. Feminist spite. And as we all know, that’s the best kind of spite.

But what the hell do I know? I was hoping that W would win over McCain in 2000, because I thought NO WAY would people not see through that asshole’s cowboy act, and then Gore would win. Turns out I figured wrong. So you can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

BTW, Hillary-didn’t-get-the-nomination whiners, my nominee didn’t get picked either, okay? In fact, my nominee is such a has-been, no one cares that he not only cheated on his wife while she has CANCER, but that he might be a baby daddy as well. Although I will say in his defense that if Edwards was really running from a pack of tabloid reporters in the middle of the night at the Beverly Hills Hilton, don’t you think that someone would’ve GOTTEN A PICTURE?

But who knows, stranger things have happened. And no doubt will.

Driving Misnomer - UPDATED

Apparently, it's not enough that the Prime Minister of Iraq said that Obama's withdrawal timetable was the right one. Al-Maliki was either misquoted, or is lying because he's up for re-election, depending on which BushCo sycophant you listen to.

The press has latched onto a narrative that McCain is more trustworthy on foreign policy issues, and they're not going to give it up, even in the face of, um, well, evidence to the contrary.

Even if you don't care that, in an area of the world where which sect you belong to is a matter of life and death, McCain can't be bothered to get it straight which dudes are the Sunnis, and which are the Shi'ites, there is now the little matter of McCain babbling on national television about trouble along the Pakistan-Iraq border:



Um, wait a minute. The which border?


Yeah, that's what I thought.

But listen to this story from Morning Edition, in which there is a rather uncomfortable exchange between reporter Juan Williams and host Steve Inskeep. Williams attempts to tip-toe around the issue of exactly who thinks that McCain is more capable than Obama on foreign policy, calling them "blue-collar voters in swing states," who expressed during the primary process that they have trouble "trusting" Obama when it comes to representing their interests abroad. And Inskeep says, "do you mean white working-class voters, as it was often put during the campaign?" And Williams responds "You're so blunt, Steve."

He doesn't know from blunt.

I would say that according to certain redneck portions of the voting population, Obama might be good enough to clean the house, but they're certainly not going to give him the keys to car. He can't be trusted with it, and besides, the neighbors might see.

How's that? Blunt enough for ya?

---------------------------

Holy shit, readers, I can't hardly believe it myself, but it appears that John "voters trust me on national security" McCain has once again proven his ignorance about the war in Iraq, and this one definitely cannot be explained away as any kind of misstatement.

McCain has stated that he believes that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrror, and yet in a CBS interview with Katie Couric, he attributed the Anbar Awakening (in which Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province turned against the insurgency and began to fight al-Qaeda instead), to "the surge" of US troops, when in fact the Awakening began, and was reported in the press, months before the surge was even proposed.

Holy fucking balls, readers. Even I knew that. Even I knew that the Awakening began before the surge. And you'd think that someone who believed that Iraq was the central front of the war on terror would've known it too.

But wait, there's more.

The Sunni sheik, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, that McCain said was successfully protected by the surge and then went on to lead the Awakening, actually was killed during the surge because he had been a leader in the Awakening. McCain said "Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening."

Wrong.

And then some genius McCain campaign spokesperson, refusing to back down from the senator's mistaken assertion, said "If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda."

Wow, so the McCain campaign is blaming the possible future Obama administration for a murder that took place in September of 2007? That's a unique strategy. I wonder if the press will go for it?

Ah, but the best part is that, in the original airing of the interview with Couric, her question to McCain that prompted his wrongity-wrong-wrong response was left in, but McCain's response itself was edited out by CBS and the answer to another question was substituted in its place.

Odd behavior for a press supposedly in love with Obama, ain't it?

So what is the response today from the McCain campaign? They boldly and unflinchingly canceled their weekly press conference, pulled down the shutters, and pretended to not be at home.

Awesome. Way to go, Maverick.

How you like me now?

What's that you're saying about my pussy-ass bowling score? I can't hear you!

Overreachin'

So I was sitting on the couch yesterday, thinking that if the recent decision by Israel to trade two dead bodies to Lebanon in exchange for 12 dead jihadists, 5 pretty dangerous live incarcerated dudes, and some players to be named later, doesn’t forever lay to rest the stereotype of Jews as shrewd dealmakers, then nothing will. Spooney was sitting beside me, engaged in the rebuilding of some SS Camero engine on TLC’s Overhaulin’. Yeah, Spooney’s got the car gene. Me, I have a rule about watching television shows whose titles end in apostrophes.

Oh, don’t get me started on the whole punctuation thing. Readers, you don’t know how many times I’ve contemplated posting a rant just about people who don’t understand the difference between the plural and the singular possessive. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this country’s propensity for squeezing apostrophes into any available public space. Witness this picture I took at my local pet store:

Please do not touch the puppy’s WHAT? It’s too disturbing to even think about. I mean, are they warning off potential puppy molesters with this sign? Ew. And jinkies, even the puppy seems depressed at his chances of making it out of that bullshit enclosure and into the home of some normal, none-puppy-molesting family. Christ.

But, seriously, Israel, WTF? I know you have some strong religious/political-face-saving traditions regarding the recovery of the bodies of your soldiers, but you traded to Lebanon some asshole serving a life sentence for offing, among others, a 4-year-old girl. With a rock. He beat a four-year-old to death with a rock, apparently merely because she had the audacity to be, you know, Jewish, and you let that guy return to Lebanon to some kind of fucking hero’s welcome, and by the way Lebanon, WHAT THE FUCK on that, but it just goes to show you that religion, and the defense of religion, will make you do some fucking crazy-ass shit.

Witness the pending ballot initiative in Colorado, the not-self-righteously-at-all-named Human Life Amendment, which, if passed, will of course be challenged as unconstitutional by normal, non-hatefully-narrow-minded people, and will create a court battle that might be taken to the SCOTUS, and might then be used as the basis for overturning Roe v. Wade. No doubt this is the objective of the anti-choice group that is pushing this crap presidential campaign year let's-get-out-the-idiot-vote albatross, which attempts to make law the concept that life begins as soon as you agree with them.

Along the way, the law, if passed, would make the following types of birth control illegal in CO, because it might terminate the existence of a fertilized egg:

1. morning-after pill
2. IUD

This is the list I have seen every article on the initiative use. What they do not list, are normal birth control pills. But the morning-after pill, besides being really appallingly monikered, and is by the way commonly given to women who are seeking treatment in emergency rooms after being raped – wait – did I forget to say except in Catholic hospitals, where women can apparently go fuck themselves, because when it comes to a choice between religious dogma, and a woman forced to carry a rapist’s baby, we all know whose side the Catholics are coming down on – eh? The moral side, of course. The deeply, deeply moral side of forcing women to carry the babies of their rapists. Hallelujah.

Okay, so I never finished my sentence above, which was meant to point out that the morning-after pill is merely a super dose of normal birth control pills, so it seems unlikely that one would become illegal and not the other. So why are regular birth control pills, taken by hundreds of thousands of women in Colorado, not being discussed in these articles as being in danger of becoming illegal under this initiative? I DON’T KNOW. I AM NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST.

And what other fun times could be had by the women of Colorado if this piece of shit legislation gets the thumbs up by the geniuses of the Centennial State? (Sorry Sis and SV, but y’all did elect Senator Wayne Allard – twice!) Well, of course in-vitro fertilization will become a thing of the past, since fertilizing eggs that are not then implanted in a uterus will be tantamount to murder. Also, not only could pregnant women be prosecuted for drinking or smoking (aka having fun like a normal human being) while pregnant, they could also be prosecuted later if it turned out they engaged in the fetus-unfriendly behavior while pregnant, but before they were aware they were pregnant.

C’mon folks, ignorance of the zygote is no defense.

So, if you’re getting the idea that this bill is one hot mess of Very Bad Things, you’d be right. Which makes me wonder, what exactly is the process of getting initiatives on the ballot in Colorado, anyway? Do they have to gather a certain number of signatures, or does it just have to be spelled correctly, or do they just do what California does and throw anything on there that their governor can pronounce?

If the worst comes to pass, don’t expect any help from President McCain, who apparently thinks birth control is too icky to even talk about, let alone recognize as a fundamental healthcare right that should not be subject to the repressive tactics of the cooch a-fearin’ douchehats of the Jesus and Mary chain.

And before you go calling me a hater, please explain to me where all the pro-choice Catholic organizations are? Oh, that’s right, there aren’t any. Because if they were to use the words “Catholic” and “pro-choice” in the same breath, they’d be excommunicated.

Don’t believe me? Ask John Kerry.

The night mares

As a little girl I was, as many girls are, preoccupied with horses. I suppose Freud would attribute the tendency to- surprise! - penis envy, but to me it’s quite normal that a girl who is just coming to understand the many ways in which she is not considered equal to little boys would fall in love with a beautiful and powerful animal.

I suppose it’s small wonder then, that as a little girl I came to associate the concept of nightmares with a thundering herd of coal-black mares with flashing white teeth and foaming mouths and wild black eyes that rolled over white. The night mares would come and gallop across my consciousness as I lay in my bed, keeping me from sleep and the release that it would bring from those myriad childhood anxieties, like passing the math test, or getting through gym class without Rosa Garland using the dodge ball as a means to send my glasses flying across the room, which I believe is what she lived for.

Of course, creatures with that much power never really entirely go away. The night mares have remained a fixture in my life.

And they came again last night. I fidgeted in bed for hours as they roared past me over and over and over again. They brought with them fears about job security, and my paltry savings, and my sub-prime mortgage, and my health, and my declining looks, and even irrational thoughts such as at that very moment, my house might be on fire. Have I planned a way to escape? And what about the animals? Where are the cat carriers, anyway? And I never finished that earthquake kit, either. The big one is coming. The big one is coming. Holy shit, do I know how to TURN OFF THE GAS?

When I was a child, I would chase the night mares with Christmas. “Think about Christmas,” I would whisper to myself. “Think about the tree.”

Oh, if it were only that simple now. There is no more magic that can chase the night mares. Christmas these days is an event entirely of my own making, like Dog Washing Day. It’s become a list of things to be accomplished, and so is more likely to be fodder for the night mares than a touchstone to keep them at bay.

Beer is a good chaser for the night mares, but too much beer brings on the mare named “What If You’re an Alcoholic?” and let me tell you, that nag is a bitch. I also sometimes chase away the mares with good old fashioned exhaustion, but exhaustion has an unfortunate tendency to bring on various heretofore unknown aches and pains, which of course is just daring that old mare called “You Haven’t Got Many Years Left,” and her sister “It Might Be Cancer,” to make an unwelcome appearance.

For a while I chased the mares pretty successfully with a little miracle called Tylenol PM. Ah, the blissfully deep and uninterrupted sleep of TPM! TPM, you’re an angel sent down from heaven! You’re a demigod in bottle! If Athena really did split Zeus’s skull and spring fully formed from out of his forehead, then TPM is what Zeus would’ve kept on his nightstand on Mt. Olympus to make it all better.

Ah, but every drug has its curse, and the curse of TPM is dreams so endlessly and vividly strange and elaborate that I wondered if I hadn’t been possessed by Tim Burton. You know, a younger, still creepy, still talented Tim Burton. Pre-Planet of the Apes Tim Burton. For instance, the other night, I dreamt that I was forced to become a doctor, and the emergency room in which I worked seemed to be peopled entirely by patients whose innards had been forcibly removed from their bodies, but were still attached. They would walk up to me and shove their shockingly colorful and still-moving entrails in my face and demand that I see them next. Of course, I had no idea how to help them, but in the dream I labored most of the night on an endless line of patients, each one more fucked-up and demanding than the last. And that’s just the last dream I remember. They were all, as I only vaguely recall, marathon weirdfests of gore and expectation. Eventually, each morning after a solid eight hours of TPM-induced slumber, I ended up more exhausted than I was when I went to bed.

I say this all, sweet readers, not to invite your pity, or even your suggestions of hot milk or snuggly kittens or watching CNN. I guess I just wanted to say to you that it’s all been getting to me recently, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel like this country is about to get laid off, but we haven’t figured it out yet, and we’re still going out every night and spending our paycheck on hookers and blow. But last night, in the midst of the mares, and just when I had turned over for the 400^th time, and let out my millionth sigh, Spooney, deep in sleep, let his arm fall across my hip and gently, just briefly, tugged me toward him. Just like that. Just one small flinch of wanting. Even through the fog of dreams. Just there. And that’s all it was.

And it so hit me, readers, that I think it is good to be with someone who is not so like yourself. Spooney is by no measure any kind of cock-eyed optimist, but having rolled with so much over the years, he seems to have mastered it a bit, and I want to learn how to do that. I really must learn how to do that.

Happy Birthday, America! Hope you like lies!

A lot of people in this country like to pass the time by presuming to define what patriotism is, even though patriotism, like competence, or humility, or honor, is pretty much a moveable feast.

Recently, many people have said that it is not patriotic to criticize men who have served in the military. Fortunately for me, this leaves almost all of BushCo wide open for criticism. General Wesley Clark has found himself on the receiving end of some criticism for criticizing a military man, although, as he is himself a military man who rose through the ranks of the infantry, then…wouldn’t it not be okay to criticize Clark, even if he criticizes McCain? I’m so confused. How can you say that he can’t criticize a military man, except if he is a military man who criticizes a military man, and then it’s okay?

Oh, it was so much simpler in 2004, when it was open season on military men, or at least one in particular. Back then it was all “Medals, schmedals, you’re a traitor!” Now you can’t call a member of the military a traitor even if his name rhymes with it.

Speaking of McCain, I hope he uses the upcoming 3-day weekend to, I don’t know, like, prepare to run for president or something. After all the flap about Clark saying that flying a plane for the Navy and being a prisoner of war didn’t necessarily prepare you to be president of the United States, (I know, Clark is tough! He has some high motherfuckin standards!) you’d think that McCain would’ve spent a minute or two, or at least paid someone else to spend a minute or two, thinking about how it DID prepare him.

But he didn’t. He just got mad at the reporter who asked him about it. And did that vein-popping, boiled-lobster-face thing that he does.

Guys, I am so not looking forward to seeing that face in the White House. I mean, what if they put it on a fucking coin or something? Or a stamp? Ew. Good thing you don’t have to lick stamps anymore. And way to telegraph to the whole world that we are so not the sexy hot power country we used to be. We’re going to be like the cranky old “get off our lawn!” country, the “you kids and your jungle music!” country, the “how much for this jumbo size package of Depends?” country. No wonder Coldplay’s got the number one album in the U.S. right now, we’re only 20 electoral votes away from being lulled into nationwide senility.

And as for me, the last seven years, five months and twelve days have got me so turned around that I can’t even tell you what patriotism is anymore. I can only tell you what it isn’t.

#1 on my list of isn’t, is treason. Selling out your country for a buck. Or for your own personal power surge.

Yes, you were wondering when I was going to get around to George W, weren’t you?

Because it turns out that there is, at least for people who don’t delude themselves in order to be able to sleep at night, no longer any question at all about why we invaded Iraq. And no, I’m not saying that it was merely to make money for U.S. oil companies. That’s a perk, to be sure, but I think it’s clear that the real reason is that America no longer found it acceptable to not have a major source of oil under our control. To them, it’s a question of national security.

Ah, yes, national security, that great trumper of all things moral and decent and human-rightsy and Constitution-ish.

So the next time you ask yourself when Iraq is going to be able to stand on its own two feet, you should answer yourself “Never. Because we never intended them to.” They’re going to need our money, and our might, to make Iraq pass for livable for a nice long time. We are in there for good, if those now in power have any say about it.

And they intend to have their say. McCain’s old campaign staff, full of long-time lobbying buds, are slowly being replaced by sleek, shiny, seasoned BushCo-tested cyborgs. The Republicans are not going to go down easy, my dear gentle citizens. Prepare yourselves.

Because you know, they say the first casualty of war is truth.

I say the second one, is patriotism.

Have a great holiday weekend, citizens. I’ll be back next week.

Creativity? She does know this is standard Blogger template #7, right?

Fabulous blogger D Guzman gave me an award! For creativity!

It's from Arte de Pico, which means Art & Peak, whatever that means, and it's pretty awesome, although it does seem to have a lot of posting rules. There's always some kind of goddamn string attached, eh?

But seriously, franks, I think DGuz is a way courageous and awesomely outspoken gal, and I love her blog, and if you haven't checked it out already, you should go. Go now.

Bells On Recommends: The Long Winters

Yes, again!

If you live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York City, may I suggest you spend an evening with the best band you've never heard of?

San Francisco 7/17 - The Independent
Los Angeles 7/19 - Spaceland
New York City 7/31 - Castle Clinton

If you show up at the LA show, wave to me and Spooney!