I am floored

Some blogger might have lied about US atrocities is Iraq. http://www.slate.com/id/2176620/fr/rss/
is the link.

so George Bush makes the dollar worth less, starts a war on false premises with no apparent point, and conservative columnists focus on some blogger who is making shit up.

The blogger dude sounds like he is lying. Our president has decimated our currency, wrecked our economy, brought us into the most massive debt in the history of mankind, but words are being wasted on some grandstanding blogger.

My only happiness is that middle america, largely dumber and poorer than I, are voting for and being screwed more by the Republicans.

i finished fargo rock city

which means celeste can read in on the plane back.

I n iceland, parallel parking, lik knowing how to ferment sheep
'stestic=les,is a lost art.

Movin' on Up

On hundred and fifty years ago, most African-Americans were born into slavery. The Dred Scott decision, which ruled. among other things, that

No Negroes, not even free Negroes, could ever become citizens of the United States. They were "beings of an inferior order" not included in the phrase "all men" in the Declaration of Independence nor afforded any rights by the United States Constitution.

They lived in brutal, dehumanizing conditions, often in the stifling humidity of the South in Summer, and it took a bloody war over the right of secession to bring slavery to an end. Things looked up briefly, with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, but that bastard Andrew Johnson and the Ku Klux Klan ensured that as little as possible changed for Blacks in America.

The equally fucked up Plessy V. Ferguson (Separate but equal) decision of 1896 and Poll Taxes and intimidation ensured that African-Americans would remain without significant political power for several more decades. Some of the greatest baseball players ever, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, and Cool Papa Bell, never got the renumeration or credit deserved due to the racism of the American system. Jackie Robinson , the first African-American to play major league baseball was subject on a daily basis to taunts, slurs, and threats that might have made a weaker man like me go totally nuts.

Not until the Brown V. Board of Topeka decision, and the courageous stance of Rosa Parks, and the work of civil rights organizers in the 1950s and 1960s, a few of whom were brutally murdered, did African-Americans begin to feel some degree of political power.

In 2004 the Republican party made significant gains at the polls with Black voters. The cause of this is debatable, but certainly, one issue which they have made inroads with is the issue of Gay Marriage.

Which brings me to my point. Finally, it seems that a portion (hopefully not all) of the African- American community have finally gotten their hatred and bigotry revved up to match the Republican party.

Pastor Henry Coles, a true successor to MLK Jr. and Paul Robeson in his fucked up mind of hate, is moving forward:

from CNN:

Pastor Henry Coles of the Word of Faith Christian Center in Nashville says some African American ministers shy away from the gay-marriage debate because they do not want to offend some congregants, or because they do not want to join a cause more associated with Christian conservatives and Republicans.

But he is helping promote the proposed Tennessee amendment.

"For me, as a representative of Christ, unions begin with a man and a woman," Coles told CNN. "From the very beginning of the Bible, God introduces the relationship that ultimately has been the relationship of the foundation -- the standard of humanity: Adam and Eve."

Jesus: his message of hatred and intolerance. I missed that part of the New Testament, but I guess Mr. Coles has risen to play in the world of major league bigotry.

Duke Lacrosse

Much seems very clear in this case. The protagonists, or at least one, is a miscreant dickwad, Lacrosse players have a well deserved bad reputation for violence and mayhem, and the evidence againt the assualt stays at a minimal level while the defence actally seems to be building evidence, and not just OJ evidence. However, with a possible OJ makeup jury looming, it might not matter, and besides, and least one of them is such a dick that you'd vote for conviction even if this particular crime is not his.

According to court records, Finnerty and two former Chaminade teammates attacked a man who was driving by The Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue in the early hours of Nov. 5, "busting his lip and bruising his chin."

The man said that he told them to stop "calling him gay and ... derogatory names."

Now, as a psychiatrist, I could have advised those Chaminade students that, among straight men, assaulting gays makes the possiblity that you are gay quite a bit higher (the research that still needs to be done), but they probably would have beaten me up.

Finnerty has a record for gay bashing, which his lawyers seem to dismiss as one of those minor things we all do, you know, drinking in the dorms, making out with women in the dorm halls, smoking pot at rock concerts, beating up gay people… stop there.

And the evidence sucks, and while the strippers were probably harassed by the tribe of lacrosse warriors, proving crimimality is going to be almost impossible, but the DA is in a f——d position. Drop the case and be the tool of gay-bashing elitist lacrossers, or pursue the case without enow evidence. . for the moment, he chooses the former.

Tax and Spend

So, anyway, I get all these Newsmax (nutty rightwing dudes who love George Bush and marketing stock schemes and snake oil remedies) missives, and many refer to "tax and spend" liberals.

Fair enough.Liberals have been known to raise taxes and invest in social programs, although i think my grandmother was still a young woman the last time that happened.

However, are "Spend and spend" Republicans any better? I mean, at least if you tax, you can spend, but I guess I don't understand what is so brilliant about just spending and not taxing. They never seem to explain it, either.

Peter Schweizer. A total fuck

So, A super leftist friend of mine subscribed me to this newsgroup called newsmax, and they generally just send Right-Wing shit to me like this:

Editor's Note: Al Franken, Michael Moore, Pelosi, Hillary, Teddy Kennedy are all, no doubt, seeing red that Peter Schweizer's new book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do)" has just hit the #2 spot on Amazon. Let's make it #1 on Amazon and drive them really crazy - go to Amazon asap - Go Here Now. Filmmaker Michael Moore has made a career out of trashing corporations and said he doesn't own any stocks due to moral principle. How then did author Peter Schweizer uncover IRS documents showing that Moore's very own foundation has bought stocks in some of America's largest corporations - including Halliburton, other defense contractors and some of the same companies he has attacked? In his blockbuster new book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal >Hypocrisy," Hoover Fellow Schweizer reveals the glaring contradictions between the public stances and real-life behavior of prominent liberals including Al Franken, Ralph Nader, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. [Editor's Note: Get your copy of "Do As I Say" - Go Here Now.] But he reserves some of his sharpest barbs for Moore. In his first documentary "Roger & Me," Moore skewered General Motors, >Schweizer points out. In "The Big One," he went after Nike and PayDay candy bars. "Bowling for Columbine" was an attack on the American gun industry. > >Oil companies played a major role in "Fahrenheit 911." > >His upcoming film "Sicko" pillories drug companies and HMOs. > >On his television shows "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth," he criticized >HMOs and defense contractors. He once said that major defense contractor Halliburton was run by a bunch of "thugs," and suggested that for every American killed in the Iraq war, "I would like Halliburton to slay one mid-level executive." > >Publicly, Moore has claimed he wants no part of these companies and won't >own stock. In his book "Stupid White Men," he wrote: "I don't own a single share of >stock." He repeated the claim in a 1997 letter to the online magazine Salon, saying: "I don't own any stock." Privately, however, he tells the IRS a different story, Schweizer discloses >in his book. The year that Moore claimed in "Stupid White Men" that he didn't own any stock, he told the IRS that a foundation totally controlled by Moore and his wife had more than $280,000 in corporate stock and nearly $100,000 in corporate bonds. Over the past five years, Moore's holdings have "included such evil >pharmaceutical and medical companies as Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, >Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson and Boston Scientific," writes Schweizer, whose earlier works include "The Bushes" and "Reagan's War." "Moore's supposedly nonexistent portfolio also includes big bad energy >giants like Sunoco, Noble Energy, Schlumberger, Williams Companies, Transocean Sedco Forex and Anadarko, all firms that 'deplete irreplaceable >fossil fuels in the name of profit' as he put it in ?Dude, Where's My >Country?' > >"And in perhaps the ultimate irony, he also has owned shares in Halliburton. According to IRS filings, Moore sold Halliburton for a 15 >percent profit and bought shares in Noble, Ford, General Electric (another >defense contractor), AOL Time Warner (evil corporate media) and McDonald's. "Also on Moore's investment menu: defense contractors Honeywell, Boeing and Loral." Does Moore share the stock proceeds of his "foundation" with charitable >causes, you might ask? Schweizer found that "for a man who by 2002 had a net worth in eight >figures, he gave away a modest $36,000 through the foundation, much of it >to his friends in the film business or tony cultural organizations that >later provided him with venues to promote his books and film." > >Moore's hypocrisy doesn't end with his financial holdings. He has criticized the journalism industry and Hollywood for their lack of African-Americans in prominent positions, and in 1998 he said he personally >wanted to hire minorities "who come from the working class." In "Stupid White Men," he proclaimed his plans to "hire only black people." But when Schweizer checked the senior credits for Moore's latest film "Fahrenheit 911," he found that of the movie's 14 producers, three editors, production manager and production coordinator, all 19 were white. So were all three cameramen and the two people who did the original music. On "Bowling for Columbine," 13 of the 14 producers were white, as were the two executives in charge of production, the cameramen, the film editor and the music composer. His show "TV Nation" had 13 producers, four film editors and 10 writers - but not a single African-American among them. > >And as for Moore's insistence on portraying himself as "working class" and an "average Joe," Schweizer recounts this anecdote: "When Moore flew to London to visit people at the BBC or promote a film, he took the Concorde and stayed at the Ritz. But he also allegedly booked a room at a cheap hotel down the street where he could meet with journalists and pose as a ?man of humble circumstances.'" > >That's hypocrisy with a capital H! Editor's Note: Al Franken, Michael Moore, Pelosi, Hillary, Teddy Kennedy - are all, no doubt, seeing red that Peter Schweizer's new book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do) has just hit the #2 spot on Amazon. Let's put make it #1 on Amazon and drive them really crazy - go to Amazon asap - It makes a great gift for your liberal friends too! Go Here Now.

Apparently, and I am serious, the premise of this book, by a Hoover fellow (does that mean they suck like a vacuum?), is that he was tired of conservatives being caught in the web of their hypocrisy by the press, so he decided to attack liberals for their hypocrisies. Apparently, something he considered to be unjustifiable, he attacked by, um, launching a greater number of smears. He must be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth sort of due. Peter Schweizer does sound like an old testament kind of name, although his namesake, Al, would probably say he lacked a T and common sense.
He has a quote from Rush Limbaugh lauding the book on its jacket, and I suppose Mr. Limbaugh, a winner of the Strom Thurmond award for his work on defending mandatory minimum drug sentences while higher than a kite on Dilaudid, does know his hypocrisy, but what sort of academic institution supports this sort of crap? It makes Harvard's John Mack's defense of alien abduction seems downright reasonable.

Schweizer found that "for a man who by 2002 had a net worth in eight figures, he gave away a modest $36,000 through the foundation, much of it to his friends in the film business or tony cultural organizations that later provided him with venues to promote his books and film."

My rant begins:
"Schweizer, who has an academic appointment as a fellow to an institution that presumably (and, in fairness, usually does) studies matters of worth, instead chose to use his time to write some pandering crap that kowtows to a denominator lower than the 11th level of Hell, although Rush Limbaugh loved it."

What a fuck.

She that makes my heart beat

I think I first noticed it in my undergrad years. I had a Teaching assistant from Germany (She taught German), and she and many of the other German teachers were not happy with America. Now, I can certainly understand not liking the American government and likeliving in the U.S. , but these were people who noted constantly that they couldn't wait for the 78 days, 1 hours and 12 minutes to expire on their contracts, as they were going to be on that first flight out. Fair enough. We all have our opinions. My girlfriend likes Zoolander. It is almost enough for me to fall out of love with her.

Nevertheless, 5 years later, as I wandered, drunk, into a theatre to see Tampopo, I saw her, my German T.A., and she looked stunning, and I wondered why I hadn't been wasting my time hitting on her instead of poking her about her dislike of San Diego and its surrounding nation. Nevertheless, I reverted to my juvenile freshman ways and asked her why she was still living in San Diego, as I recalled she hated America so much. She smiled and said maybe she had changed her mind, and I thought.

Then, more recently, it seems like every friggin' extremist Muslim extremist who is not hunted on the planet lives in England or Denmark. They never seem to live in an Islamic nation, which is probably the only thing about them I understand. Well, maybe they like to pull their toilet paper so that it open on the side away from the wall. We might share that as well.

And then there is her. the last woman I said I love you to that I really meant it, the one that I uttered it way too soon, perhps on the only the fourth date, the one who still haunts me every moment of the day, whose was the real Kelly McGillis, one-half Rocket Scientist, One-Third Playboy Playmate, and one third Miscellanous (116 percent, she was), who sat in my house and disparaged San Francisco, who hated it all and couldn't wait until she moved to the Midwest. Perhaps after me she found another man who loves SF as well, and perhaps she has to live here, in this hellhole, to be with her true love, but she is still here five years after I met her.

And she looks goddamn fine in her website pictures, I gotta say.