Mo’ Borat

Still, kinda interesting when you think about it.

Borat, a.k.a. Sacha Baron Cohen, makes a film in which he says that all . . . ALL . . . Americans are racist, blood-thirsty, warmongering, anti-Semitic, materialistic, bigoted, brain-dead, Neo-Nazis with big bombs and small wing-wangs . . .

And America . . .

Responds by making his movie number one at the box office.

Whoa.

What’s the line by Yakov Smirnoff? “What a country.”

Borat the Bully

So, am I the only person on the planet who thinks that the movie Borat is a wretched excuse for entertainment and that Sacha Baron Cohen, the alleged comedian who plays the title role, is a bully and a moralizing, anti-American prig who should suffer extreme civil penalties for invasion of privacy?

Uh . . . anyone . . . out there?

Maybe it’s just me.

Sigh.

Election

So we woke up this a.m. to discover that the Democrats had swept the House, made big gains in the Senate, and dominated many local elections. In fact, the word “landslide” comes to mind.

That’s a LOT of votes. And most of ‘em, at least, even got recorded. Hanging chads, “lost” ballots, intimidation of voters by neocon bully-boys, fraudulent recounts . . . all (mostly) missing from the scene.

Gosh. Has anybody checked? I mean, Karl Rove is all right, isn’t he? Not sick or anything?

Mutant Pomeranians

Have you noticed that I have stopped referring to “Republicans” when I talk about the current administration? There is a good reason for that. Near as I can tell, the Bushies aren’t Republicans. They spend where the Republicans would save, interfere when Republicans would leave damn well enough alone, and rush in where Republicans would dash the other way.

In fact, come right down to it, a Republican is to a Bushie what Hello Kitty is a to a three eyed mutant giant Pomeranian with rabies and a side order of halitosis.

And that’s on a good day.

A little history

So, a little history: as the Roman Empire entered its final days, the leadership elite managed to largely exempt itself from any form of taxation while at the same time shifting the ever increasing costs of civil administration and defense to a peasantry (in effect, the middle class) that was already stretched to the breaking point. Then, too, to damper down social unrest, the same elite turned to religion as a means of social control, which is how Christianity eventually emerged as the Roman State religion, though only after the Empire had experimented with several other options, including a cult of the Invincible Sun. And, finally, to deal more with internal threats than external, the elite moved to increasingly militarize that state, so that in the end Emperors paraded about in military attire even when they, themselves, had never gotten closer to a battle than watching gladiators making each other into chopped liver on Sundays.

So, let’s sum up, shall we? A decaying social order in which the poor pay the expenses of the rich, the state is propped up by increasingly intolerant cults, and the commander-in-chief staggers about in helmet and gear that do not fit him.

Hmmm.

Why does that sound familiar?

Lesser of Two . . .

You know, much as I detest the Bushies, I gotta confess. I don’t see anybody else out there that’s has much to offer.

I mean, come on, the Democrats haven’t had a good idea since Truman dropkicked MacArthur’s Pyongyang outta Korea.

Oh me of little faith

Another cheery religious news day today . . . with the papers full of stories of people blowing themselves and other people up in the name of God . . . abusing alter boys in the name of God . . . running TV scams that bilk little old ladies out of Social Security checks in the name of God . . . voting for Right Wing psychopaths in the name of God . . . and so on.

You know, after much thought, here’s my take on faith.

Given a choice between it and good douse of doubt, I’ll take the doubt.

You’re more likely to survive it.

WMDs

So, I see now that there’s some dispute about the North Korean nuclear test. Some specialists are saying that the blast was neither as big nor as destructive as the North Koreans said it was.

Gee . . .lying about weapons of mass destructions (WMDs).

Wonder who they could have learned that from.

More on North K. Nukes

You know the tragic thing? I mean, the REALLY sad thing?

After all the lies and falsehoods the Bushites have shoveled at us . . . after all the things they’ve done that were immoral, illegal, unethical, and just plain wrong . . . after all the swift-boating and corruption and K-streeting . . .

The first thing I thought when I heard about the North Korean nuke was:

“Gee, how conveniently close to November.”

North Korean Fall-Out

North Korea has finally gone ahead and built and detonated a Bomb...

Here’s some history. The Clinton Administration’s patient diplomacy had largely pulled the fangs of the North Korean nuke program. The North Koreans had demilitarized their reactors and allowed inspectors and cameras into their facilities.

But, that was under that wimpy Clinton and his spineless liberals. Along comes the Bush II regime of good, muscular, tough-minded neocons and Real Men, like Condi. And none of that pussy footing around for them. No Sir! With them we get an aggressive, hard nosed, two fisted foreign policy. You betcha!

And so, now, we’ve got fall-out in South East Asia and every nation in the region gearing up for war.

Gosh.

And people say there’s no such thing as progress.

Our Choice

Periodically, nations decide who they wish to be.

In the 1860s, for instance, the United States decided (via force of arms) that it would not be a country of planters in a semi-feudal agricultural economy. Rather, it would be an industrial, bourgeois, classical liberal, free labor society with all the good and ill that entails. By like token, in the 1940s and ‘40s, many European nations struggled with the question of whether they wished to be empires, with potent overtones of fascism, or modern states. With one or two exceptions, they choose to be states, again for good or ill.

I think that today, the United States faces a similar choice. The next elections will determine whether we, as a people, wish to be the inhabitants of an America which embodies the best ideals of the Founding Fathers . . . of reason, and humanity, and tolerance . . . or which is, instead, the America of this Administration.

That is to say, a plutocratic theocracy headed by hypocrites, thieves, and bullies.

and still more on $2 billion

And MORE on $2 billion . . .

But, of course, there’s no way around it, really. No matter what hard things I say about the Left, it was the Right (or, Bush-Right) that got us into this mess. Despite all the propaganda and disinformation, the smear jobs and the Swift-Boating, the spin and the distortions and the flag-wrapping . . .it was the Right, the Bushies, who got us into Iraq with a collection of bald face lies about WMDs, who fought the war on the cheap and so put American soldiers into peril, who have been so focused on the oil fields of the Arab world that they are now failing to notice that the real authors of 9-11 are happily re-conquering Afghanistan, and, oh yes, who have not yet managed to find much less kill or capture Ben Laden.

So, about that “mission accomplished” thing . . .

If this is Bushies’ idea of triumph, then Good God save me from ever seeing what they’d call a disaster.

on the other hand . . .

More on the $2 billion dollars a day . . .

By an interesting coincidence, a column in the June 2006 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN noted that the current cost of petrol refinery is about $2 billion. So, in other words, every day that passes that we have an Army hostage in Iraq we spend the cash which might otherwise have gone to the cost of constructing the sort of industrial infrastructure which could save us from price hikes and fuel shortages.

But, just to show I’m detestable to everyone . . . Right, Left, and Center . . .

We COULD have spent that $60 billion a month on 30 new refineries, but according ot the article in the SCI-AM, we wouldn’t have, because good and proper environmentalists, tree huggers, bird h*mpers, and not-in-my-backyarders have managed to make it impossible for refineries to be built in this country since 1970 or there’s about—which, by the way, is one of the reasons why when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast gasoline prices went up like a sky rocket on helium on a day without gravity. A big chunk of our existing refineries, you see, went off line, and we didn’t have anything to take up the slack.

Ah, the joy of it . . .

The Right spends us into to poor house, and the Left locks the door so we can’t get out once we’re there.

$2,000,000,000 A Day

So I saw on the Web the other day that, by some measures, we are now spending $2 billion a day in Iraq.

That’s $2 BILLION . . . or $2,000,000,000 . . . every damn DAY. Or, $14 billion a week. Or $60 billion every month.

You know, I gotta admit, the Bush administration is efficient.

I mean, when I was a boy, we used to say that whenever you got Republicans into the White House, they’d “fiscal responsible” (new verb) us into a Depression. And whenever you got Democrats there, they’d moralize us into a War.

However, with the Bushies . . .

They’ve managed to do both at the same time.

Now THAT’S efficiency.

The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

All proof positive that the Creator finished inventing Cannabis before he got to vertebrates.

JJ from 'ell

J.J. Bittermuch, the world’s angriest man, writes me from the fifth circle (the Wraithful) of Hell:

“The smug woman says, ‘The more I see men, the more I love my dog.’

“I reply, ‘And I thank your poodle for removing you from the gene pool.’”

Definition

Abstraction — definition: a moral absolute like “Virtue,” “Greatness,” “National Security”, “Race,” and so on, which allows us to kill and maim without feeling a twinge of guilt.

See Abscess.

E. Coli

So, people are dropping dead from E. Coli contaminated spinach. Thousands of acres of the crop are being plowed under in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the disease.

Of course, if we’d adopted a program of sanitizing food by means of low level irradiation, the way we wanted to you a few years back, all of this could have avoided.

But, you see, radiation is “bad.” And Those Who Knew Best protested and jumped up and down and said “Three Mile Island” and claimed that we were all gonna turn into mutant freaks with two eyes and three heads. So, we didn’t do it.

Now, we’ve got dead people and a ruined industry.

Don’t you just love People Who Know Best? Who are On The Side of the Angels? And who will Save Us From Ourselves?

Say, I got an idea. Most of ‘em are Vegetarians. Many of ‘em are Vegans. So, they wouldn’t object to eating nothing but spinach for a few decades.

It would save the spinach industry. Take care of all these rotting vegetables. And best of all, provide nice snug homes for all those poor, dispossessed E. Coli.

How could anyone in league with Angels possibly object?

Pre-Texting

So, as I read in the papers, it seems that HP has been accused of “pre-texting” – i.e., gathering private information on its critics and the press.

Gosh.

So let me get this straight. We have an enormous, multinational corporation in a Bushite-Reaganoid age when “share holder value” is a religious mantra while “regulation” is a swear word, and its crewed by MBAs who’ve been trained from birth to win at ANY cost, and who believe as God is their witness that “business ethics” means disembowel the other guy before he can get you first . . .

And then it spies on its enemies . . .

And we’re gonna pretend that we’re surprised?

ABD?

By the way, since I’ve passed my oral exam, I’m now known as “All But Dissertation.”

That’s ABD for short.

Hmmm.

Sounds a bit like a personality disorder, doesn’t it?