Bush - "Your Ass Is Mine"

Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

It's called dictatorial power and as practiced by Sulla, Stalin, and godzillion other tyrants, leads to greed monkees fucking impoverished boys, and to mega yachts.

They Kill Us For Their Sport

Washington, "where the very few wealthy and powerful have a seat at the table and the rest of us are on the menu."

Don't miss the Moose-Ball Mousse, Sarah Palin's homemade dessert that's a snap to make - lightly-killed moose cojones, rolled in ice, then served with a rich gumbo of lies.

McCain's Mooseketeer

Whatever Palin's Been Inhalin' is now the drug of choice for Republicans everywhere. McCain's Mooseketeer has issued her clarion call to the clueless to come and watch the Grand Old Soap Opera of her life - see Track Palin ready himself to set off for Iraq to fight for the "surge", watch the new baby stare off into the distance, wonder at the sex life of the pregnant Bristol, drool for a chance to hang with the gallant and handsome First Dude, and thrill to the precocious cuteness of Piper Palin as she licks things.

I regret to say that McCain's choice to add Palin to the ticket is by any measure bold, risky and brilliant. With this move - and the apparent success of "his" surge, McCain lays out a claim to leadership and evidence of superior canniness.

Palin By Comparison

At Least God Is On Her Side: "'Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers out on a task that is from God.

That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.'"

"Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. 'I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,' she said."

Somebody like Palin surely must have a preacher lurking in the dim background and - walla!!!, there he is, Pastor Kalnins:

"Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."

Thank heaven for little girls. They grow up in the most unusual ways.

I just can't fathom how much fun we're about to have.

John McCain's Heart

President Palin: "'She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?' said Lyda Green, the president of the State Senate, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. 'Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?'"

An Anchorage Daily News editorial states that, "It's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be a heartbeat away from the presidency."

Uhhh... What Am I Supposed To Do Everyday?

Get Her Done, America !!: "'As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

Damn straight, girly ! - you should demand that information on your first day in office.

Leighton Woodhouse, Communications Director at Brave New Films, writing in HuffPo, says that "the McCain campaign is doing what the GOP always does when it has to fight for working class voters in a debate that Republicans can't win on its merits: they are reverting to symbolic politics, a role for which Palin is tailor-made."

To use Sarah's wonderfully vapid, Hiltonesque new phrase, "absolutely, yup, yup."

Woodhouse's evolved prediction is that "The McCain campaign is going to trot Palin out whenever they need to make the case that they feel America's pain. They're going to contrast her story to Obama's, and even to Biden's (not the part about being a scrappy kid from Scranton, but the part about being in the Senate for a million years)."

"They're going to turn any question about Palin's 'experience,' whether from a Dem or from a journalist, into another elitist attack on working class culture, another example of snooty, brainiac liberals condescending to ordinary Americans. And to boot, a bunch of good old boys picking on Mrs. Mom."

...it's eerily like that scene from the cable series Mad Men, where they discuss the affect of the "Official Evidence of Cancer" on cigarette advertising and how the entire health issue is now moot - everyone's fucked, so no cigarette can be healthier than another. Checkmate.

Back in the U.S. We Are

The Obama sensation is different than anything in American politics. Here we have “candidate as vessel”, filling up with the dreams of legions of citizens. Here is a guy whose growing gravitas is being secured by raw hope for a way out of the Great American Failure that we are living through. We are as refugees, slogging endlessly through waist-deep water toward a frightfully distant dry purchase.

If some people don't recognize any of this then perhaps their fate is to never make it to the crest of the hill to see what is beyond the shining city.

If they could see Novamerica, they'd grab some booze and join us – but perhaps their eyes do not see.

The Anatomy of a McCain Deception

"As only Mother Teresa can, she prevailed upon me to take this baby and another baby to the United States for medical care.'':

"As was pointed out yesterday by the Christian Science Monitor, the McCain campaign was called out for lying about the purported urging of Cindy McCain by Mother Teresa herself to adopt two children at her orphanage back in 1991. Turns out, McCain never met or even spoke with Mother Teresa on that trip.

Once confronted by the Monitor about the deception, the campaign quickly erased such claims from the website, as it did with Cindy's family recipes, which were proved to be lifted from the Food Network."

"Seems that Rick Warren told Larry King on Monday night that the Mother Teresa story was one of three times during Saturday's forum that McCain teared-up. They're liars and actors."

Lost and Found

Righties Pissed That Obama's Brain Works As It Should: "'Expanded access to prenatal education and heath care facilities will far more likely serve the very real state interest in preventing increasing numbers of children from being born into lives of pain and despair.'"

Right Wingers Ruin Bank, Blame Schumer

Nice Try By Swift-Boat Kill Squad : "Copies of the employee letter were distributed to the press by CRC Public Relations whose clients include the National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee."

Seems like the Republicans are all over this one.

Ugly Girl

It was all real swell until western news media pounced and made it all ugly.

Watch "The King and I" - a known classic of American cinema, and revel in female star Deborah Kerr singing some of the most beautiful songs ever written. NOT. It was somebody else singing - Marni Nixon, whose beauty was not required, and whose accomplishments as an actress perhaps not yet revealed. So?

We're such slobs it's hard to believe we used to be decent Americans - before the various Contessa Brewers and the packs of Obermanns were let loose to drum up audiences whenever and however possible. You know and I know that to keep seeing those 6 zeros in their paychecks they'd drop their pants in a second. So torturing a little chinese girl with false shame is a cakewalk for these low feeders.

Ask Chuck

Prince Charles warns that Genetically Modified Food crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental disaster: "Millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness.'"

He's way into this issue...

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

"The water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it."

I mean WAY into it...

On the Ground, In Country, Like a Rock Star !

...our sainted on-air bloviators, soaring high above reality, deliver the cliches we all need to get through the day.

The Righteous Trinity: Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity

The Shooter's Reading list: "Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of 'the liberal movement,' and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning."

And there he is again, Michael Savage, the real deal in human tripe.

Rollin' Fat

Ornish Sees Fat On Hearts - Percival Lowell Saw Canals On Mars:

"I don't know about you, but it seems amiss to me for the media to portray this as a pro-Atkins study, really, since most of us consider Atkins to be meat-based, and shouldn't the media help us to better understand the science?"

There's a large pile of mis-directed glee in this article.

If this is what Kathy Freston knows - if this is what she thinks is true, then she knows nothing.

The edge is so far beyond the faded Dean Ornish model that it is spectacular to read this organized rant pretending otherwise.

Fear of meat is not an uplifted or valuable reason for anything; it's merely fear of meat.

Follow the actual facts and you will get to the actual edge.

He Had A Hunch

The Beautiful George Carlin: "George grew tougher and sharper over the years, putting more of himself, and his intellect, at the service of his always nimble, always adventurous comedy mind. And, while his comedy was dark, his spirit with his peers was generous."

I saw him once on a TV talk show where former Hollywood bombshell Lana Turner was one of the guests. It became immediately clear that, for some reason, she had a big dislike for him and at one point said to the other host that George actually was scaring her - his look included long-hair and roughly mantained, hippie-like clothing. George seemed to be taken aback by her obvious revulsion, and so was I - bigtime. But it was suddenly and unmistakably very clear to me that she was a monster and that he was my brilliant, powerful and beautiful knight in the blessed New Order.

Life jumped out of him like radiation, and sometimes when I saw him in the later years - older than I thought many of us would ever become, I would be reminded of these lines from a Russian poet:

Into the distance disappear
the mounds of human heads

I dwindle, go unnoticed now

But in affectionate books,
in children's games

I will rise from the dead
to say, "the sun!"

Ultimately, for me, his beauty was his hunch about life - that it was never too hot to touch, and that everything mattered.

How To Look Sick

John McCain is Ann Coulter's Dick: "Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein said that John McCain's comments Tuesday that Barack Obama is willing to lose a war to win an election were the most scurrilous he had ever heard by a major party candidate."

At first I thought it was just me; maybe I was twisting what I'd heard, but then I heard it again and realized how absolutely outrageous it is for this little boy-toy runt to think he can get away with saying crap like that.

His wife can build him another little fake lake to fish in, and ply him with more free booze and scoot him around Red America on her jet, but she doesn't have enough alchohol profits in her bag to buy the humanity and common sense this guy sorely needs.

Barbara Bush might say, "I am done with him." I say fire him from everything and get him a job "selling fish to tourists in tee-shirts" and let's get back to the future.

Something Happened To Liberty

One of the Greatest Stories Seldom Told: "Tobey Maguire is attached to Universal's 'The Crusaders,' a drama about the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case."

The story of the long, plotted, pathway to the Brown case is one of the most fantastic and glorious stories you will ever hear.

If they do it right, we will all be introduced to the amazing group of people - spread out over a century, whose cleverness, brilliance, and motivation saved all of us - whites from an eternity of raw blame and guilt, and blacks from the bleak future of secondness.

I can't wait.

If You Get Screwed - You Stay Screwed

Republicans Plan On Attacking Your Daughter. Going To Stand For It ???: "...this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception."

I hope they don't come to my door and try to talk their nonsense to my kid. My reaction would be very ugly indeed.

And a glass of Chard for my cat

Pill-Popping Pets: "'He's agile,' Allan says. 'He's healthy. He's a good-looking animal.' Michelle adds, 'We love him to death.' That is why they had no choice, she says. The dog simply had to go on psychoactive drugs."

This is a great article and a fascinating topic.

Over the past five thousand and more years almost every civilization at some point experienced animals as volitional players on the human stage - and often as dear and feared gods, before whom we cowered.

I still feel the power of that past. I look to my cats in awe, treasuring them as god-like sublime perfections, and I have never doubted the reality of their passions and their sorrows and their sacred “umwelt”.

Show me the bush that they can eat when they are particularly troubled, and I will get it for them. Show me the medication that can help them deal with situations beyond their control, and I will get it for them. But I always know that their senses should not be unduly disturbed or their faculties diminished. We are interfering and, even though our motives are clean, we must do no harm.

Oops, gotta go - time to feed the Sphinx.