Chimpy McSmirkster's Road Show...

...blew into town yesterday leaving traffic blocked by the mountains of bullshit. One of the main talking points has been Hurricane Katrina (Man are they desperate to avoid dealing with Iraq.). One of their main media whores, Rich Lowry of the National Review, has an op-ed piece titled "Uncontrollable events saddle Bush's presidency" in the paper this morning, and it's all about Katrina and how Bush couldn't help it. First, Rich, Katrina was an event, not "events." Second, how do you figure that ignoring global warming so that the hurricane season keeps getting worse, siphoning Corps of Engineer levee funds off to pay for Iraq, and delaying Federal response until after the storm had already hit to be beyond Chimpy's control? Unless you're arguing that Chimpy's bowels are beyond his control, which I can believe, but all you've done there is shift the blame to the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove Cartel.

But Massuh Buttars Only Whups us a Little

Yet another salvo of silliness from Chris Butthead, this time with support from the local Republican Bund. Butthead shot his mouth off on the radio in Logan this week, saying that Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which ordered the ending of forced segregation in public schools, was wrongly decided and an example of improper, liberal, judicial activism. He further believes that desegregation has had a negative effect on minority students (How ending a separate and deliberately inferior education system hurts minorities is a question Butthead is a bit vague on.).

Butthead has backstroked a bit this week, claiming he was taken out of context (Which is a bald-assed lie. The whole interview was taped, and there was no "out of context" about it.), but he hasn't disclaimed the statements. The local Reponazis, though, have jumped right in and backed their boy. SL County Repoop Chair James "Don't Call me Uncle Tom" Evans said that Butthead is right because busing has divided neighborhoods. Hey Jimmy, Brown didn't order busing. Busing came later when Reponazis and their Dixiecrat allies in state legislatures and school boards nullified Brown by refusing to fund schools in minority neighborhoods. Don't blame the courts because your cronies were trying to maintain the plantation system.

And don't go holding yourself out as a shining example of not needing all that affirmative action crap either, Jimmy. You know that you and a select group of others such as Clarence "I'm not an Uncle Tom, I'm Scalia's Bitch" Thomas are where you are because the Grand Old Lily-White Party desperately needed some token people of color to trot out at conventions. You and I both know that until 1978, when the LDS Church finally decided, "Hey, maybe the darkies are human beings after all; and take down the Coon Chicken sign, will you," you were on a fast track to being a shoeshine boy, not a state senator.

If you were smart, Jim, you'd find a replacement for Butthead. But you're not smart. After all, who's the bigger fool: the fool state senator, or the fool party chair who has his back?

Speaking of Whining RWNJs...

... how about the nutter in Idaho who didn't want to give his social security number to the department of licensing because he considers it "the mark of the beast?" A federal law requires the collection of the SSN. The nutter argued that this violated his state right to religious freedom. The Idaho court ruled that the Supremacy Clause says that federal law trumps state law (Duh!), so the nutter had to provide his SSN. The nutter's attorney was purportedly shocked over this, which left me scratching my head until I learned that the attorney was Herb Titus. Titus is walking proof that a Harvard law degree does not necessarily mean you know diddly jack shit about law. He was founding dean of Rat Robberson's Regent University Law School. In 1996 he was the VP candidate of the US Taxpayer Party (now the Constitution Party), which chiefly advocates for a biblical foundation for government and believes most of the federal government is unconstitutional. He and Roy Moore, the Alabama Supreme Court nutjob who did the nocturnal installations of the Ten Commandments rock, codrafted the Constitution Restoration Act, which would have provided for the impeachment of any federal judge who tried to maintain the separation of church and state.

I suppose these raving hypocrites will now accuse the Idaho judges of being liberal, activist judges since they did not accept Titus's divine revelation and reverse the US Constitution.

Stupid Comic Tricks

The Salt Lake Tribune insists on publishing a right-wing-nut-job (RWNJ) crapfest comic called "Mallard Fillmore" (It also insists on publishing "Rose is Rose," but that is a complete nothingburger intended to avoid offending anyone and, while nauseating and in its own way insidious, it is ignorable.). The author of this comic strip is probably too big an idiot to realize how apropos the title is. Millard Fillmore, after finishing his stint as accidental POTUS, became the head of the Know-Nothing Party, the biggest collection of racist, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant rednecks in the mid-19th Century US. This comic upholds that proud tradition.

This morning the shit-shoveling anidae revisited a topic near and dear to his heart: how conservative faculty members are being oppressed on college campuses. Having had contact with a few dozen universities of all stripes, I can say with confidence, "You are one shit-stuffed duck." Except at the private conservative schools such as Regent and BYU, the faculties were a mix of conservative and liberal, and no one seemed terribly muzzled.

The duck's chief source is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). This outfit has won a few cases of neutral substance that it trumpets on its website, but essentially it defends faculty members who either promote right-wing Christianity or oppose anti-hate-speech policies. They like claiming that Christians are oppressed, too, but I must say I have never seen Maranatha, Campus Crusade, or Fellowship of Christian Athletes heckled, accosted, or flat barred from campus the way I've seen happen to minority religions, and the degree of Christian cramdown in athletics is sick.

FIRE claims to be libertarian. The problem with libertarians (and any Randonazi mainlining Atlas Shrugged) is that their philosophy boils down to, "I don't want to, and you can't make me." That is the philosophy of 13-year-olds, and 13 is the age you hope most that kids can make it through without killing themselves or your having to kill them. Not much to base a society on, unless you want Lord of the Flies. It's also rather odd that the only rights they're interested in are conservative ones. Hmmm....

Sorry, Mal-nard, you're a whore, and so is your "authority."

Injustice update

Well, my friend saw another doctor today and is now back out in the free world. Today's doctor concluded that a religious epiphany is not a basis for committing someone and that yesterday's doctor had shown no basis for committing her, and cut her loose. She doesn't want to sue anyone, but in my not so humble opinion that quack should not be free to do this to anyone else.

And speaking of terrorists...

... there's always Chris Butthead, er, Buttars, the state senator from Waste Jordan who wasted a whole lot of legislative time last session trying to get creationism into the science curriculum and is now trying to give the legislature the power to revoke its confirmation of any judge who makes a ruling the legislature disagrees with. Of course the legislature already has the power to amend any law it thinks has been misinterpreted by the judiciary. Problem is that Butthead is having trouble getting any of his legislation passed and is afraid he wouldn't be able to pull off any reversals by legislation. What's the matter, Chris, not feeling the love? Lyle Hillyard and the Guv have certainly distanced themselves from your latest, steaming pile of poo. That's what you get for being Gayle Ruzicka's lapdog. Makes you wonder what the folks out in Waste Jordan are thinking when they keep re-electing this monument to muck.

Borin' Orrin Shovels the Party Line

Our rapidly fossilizing senior senator has joined the other GOP tub-thumpers in the latest smear-and-fear tactic "Terrorists Want you to Vote Democratic." What a load of horse hockey. Terrorists LOVE the current White House. Chimpy and the Neoconjobbers left the Taliban active in Afghanistan, couldn't catch bin Laden (Let's do a comparison here. Length of time it took a Dem White House to crush Hitler and Tojo: 3 years, 8 months. Length of time the GOP White House has been looking for bin Laden: 4 years, 11 months. Hmmm.), destroyed any chance of making Hamas and Hizbullah legitimate, political organizations and pushed them exclusively into the terrorist camp for another couple of generations, turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists, etc., etc., etc. Now, Orrin, run it past me again just how it is that the Dems are the ones promoting terrorism.

Justice

Somewhat more sober than the last. Well, maybe not. I was just testing some quick-siting with my Browning HP .40, though, and I can assure you I would still be going for head shots.

I used to believe in law. I realize now, though, that law increasingly interferes with justice. Screw law. Enforce justice.

State of the Union

Blogging Under the Influence. GUILTY!

I've watched V for Vendetta twice this evening. Why? Well, first I met over the weekend with a couple of friends. It was the first time I had seen him since he had been released from over four months of custody. His crime? DWB (Driving While Brown) in counties of Idaho where the cops are all skinheads (Canadian border down to Boise.). He's from Iran, so he must be a terrorist (The irony is that he's a Christian and fled Iran to avoid persecution. Great fucking lot of good it did him.). Then today a friend of mine was tossed into a psych ward because she was having religious visions. First, the only basis for an involuntary commit is if the subject is a threat to herself of others. and my friend is harmless. Second, if she'd walked in and said she'd seen the Three Nephites (It's a Mormon thing.), the doctor would have given her another prescription of whatever she was on and sent her home to her patriarchal husband. In other words, this is discriminatory bullshit. The time will soon come when I post the names of the lying sack of shit quack and his lackeys who locked her up.

Feeling comfortable? Then you're fucking stupid. If you are 1/100 of a standard deviation from the norm, you are already suspect. Sooner or later they will get you. Chimpy McSmirkster and his neoconjob buddies have already made this country a hopeless case. This country was born of The Enlightenment, but we now stand against everything The Enlightenment was: reason, individualism, freedom. We are a nation of ignorant, fearful, hateful peasants. The time will soon come when this blog will be impossible from within the US, but by then my family and I will be elsewhere. We shall shoot our way out if necessary, but we shall be out.

Why I Don't Like KKKountry Music

I am a musician, and I've played a lot of different music, but there are kinds I really can't stand. (C)Rap comes immediately to mind. Contrary to politically correct opinion, it really takes no talent to do that shit. How hard is it to rhyme when you ignore grammar and syntax and make up words as needed?

Another aversion is country-western, aka shit-kicking goat roper music. It sounds like it's produced by people whose family trees don't fork. Case in point. I was scanning across the FM dial the other day, and I stumble across some "song" by some twanger. He was outraged by those of us who have the effrontery to oppose the illegal war in Iraq that El Presidente Chimpy McSmirkster and his gang of neoconjob thugs got us into. Anyway, Tex Inbred's main "argument" was, "Don't you remember what it felt like that day," i.e. 9/11.

Reality to Tex: Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. All the tub thumping by Pawn Scammity, Shill O'Really, Michael Savage Wiener, Lush Lameball, etc. to the contrary, Iraq has never been linked to the attacks. I'd tell you to think it through for yourself, Tex, except I know your reinforced recessives have rendered that impossible. So I'll be nice and ask you to do something that should be within your severely reduced capacity: If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up.

Intro, of sorts

OK, initial rant over. If you've read it, you're probably sayin, "Hey, you're not a moderate!" Incorrect. I prefer to think on a global scale, though. The rest of the world views the Democratic Party as a centrist party, with positions running from a bit left of center to a bit right of center. The GOP is viewed as running from a bit right of center to fringe right. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there is no left in the USA.

You will also notice that I use certain code words. Here are a few:

BTN: right-wing TV such as Fux Spews.
Radio Norsefire: right-wing radio, such as Michael Savage Wiener and Lush Lameball.
VB: right-wing publishers and publications such as Washington Slimes and American Expectorator.

BTN and Radio Norsefire are lifts from V for Vendetta, which I highly recommend. "VB" stands for Voelkische Beobachter, the Nazi Party organ.

It Begins

Alright, here it is, the rant zone I've been craving. Before I get to the intros, though, I need to deal with what finally pushed me over the edge and made me create this blog: an article in this morning's Des News about an old professor of mine cum political spinmeister, Dan Jones. Go here to read the article. It seems Dan was pontificating yesterday about why Democrats don't get traction in Utah. His conclusion: The Dems should blame themselves because they do not cater to Utah tastes. Let's look at his "evidence."

1. The Dems have no exit strategy for Iraq, and simply setting an exit date is not enough. I agree that simply setting a date is not enough, but how does that contrast with the GOP position (Remember, Dan is trying to give reasons people choose GOP over Dem.)? The GOP definitely don't have an exit date, and staying the course until my grandkids get drafted can't pass for a strategy. Besides, the GOP didn't have an entry strategy either, just a date, and everybody thought that was fine. Not much of a contrast there, Dan. As for civil war getting under way in Iraq, and Iran and Syria meddling, which party's policy (or rather lack of same) created that state of affairs, Dan?

2. The Dems have no immigration policy. Neither does the GOP. Building a wall is not a policy. Ask the Soviets. No meaningful contrast there, Dan.

3. Dems weren't willing to compromise to make the minimum wage increase happen. Of course the only possible compromise would have been to allow the GOP tax cuts for the rich pass. How many Utahns who care about minimum wage don't already vote Dem? Sorry Dan, try again.

4. Dems are pro-choice and pro-same-sex marriage, and Utahns don't like that. Yep, about 75% of Utahns don't. I've always considered it odd that a group that believes the Constitution was divinely inspired has no qualms about editing out the civil rights parts. But I have to credit Dan on this one; it's definitely a point of contention between the Dems and GOP.

5. Mormons think Dem positions are contrary to church positions. Gee, Dan, ya think? Just because every significant leader in the LDS Church is a retired significant leader of the GOP? And GOP meetings are on church property, while the Dems have to meet wherever they won't get raided? I think you may have gotten to the crux of it, Dan, though you don't want to say it. The Dems believe in the separation of church and state; the GOP and LDS Church don't. According to Dan, the Dems are to blame for this.

6. Utahns can't identify with national Democratic candidates. At least not since George Wallace died and Strom Thurmond switched parties. Just how far should a party go to curry Utah voters? What benefitteth it a party to gain Utah and lose its soul?

That's some interesting nonevidence and pretzel logic you have there, Dan. I knew you left academe to make more money, but apparently there was another reason: You have the reasoning skills of a gerbil. Folks, the next time you see a Dan Jones Poll, remember that it was drafted to deliver the results Dan's Masters of the Right have paid for.