reading between the lines in cambridge: can we honestly discuss the reality of race in america?

despite having elected a black man to the highest office in the land, lets stop pretending that america has moved past its racial problems. and can we please stop talking about being "post-racial" (which is really just a nice coded way of saying "let's get back to the good old days when us white folk didn't think about race because it is an uncomfortable subject to talk about and deal with")? the arrest of professor gates has presented an opportunity that we are completely blowing...a chance to have an honest discussion about race in america and examine ourselves (and we all know how wonderful self-reflection can be...just ask sen. graham). instead, we have white men crowing how unjust it is for the president to point out the obvious...it is ludicrous to arrest a man that needs a cane for, at best, being an asshole to you.

now, none of us know precisely what happened when officers showed up at gates's home after someone in the neighborhood apparently did not recognize him at his own home. you can't fault the police for checking into a reported break-in in progress. if you have any experience with law enforcement you have a pretty damn good idea of what happened next. and it likely involved an accomplished man that felt accosted in his own home by law enforcement (something that right-wing airbags claim to understand). either the officer responded in kind to an emotionally escalating situation, or the officer responded with that condescending "calm" talk from officers that we have all experienced...the same talk that makes even suburban white males like me want to wind up and clock them. personally, I have no doubt that the officer's name and badge number were demanded, and I have little doubt that he refused to provide them. (after all, officers here in albuquerque have a nice tendency of putting electrical tape over their badge numbers and covering their faces when they head out to violate civil rights).

read between the lines of the statements the officer has made:

"I'm still just amazed that somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level, and berate me, accuse me of being a racist or racial profiling. and then speaking about my mother, it's just -- it's beyond words."

at best, this was an officer that arrested a man because the officer felt he was personally insulted. (I am sick of hearing the same old "its dangerous to be an officer and the old guy could have used his cane or grabbed a gun" argument...fact is the place was surrounded by cops. and if the officer had actually felt threatened you can be damn certain guns would be drawn). having spent a few years pouring over police reports, interviewing officers, comparing their reports to actual recordings and sitting through their subsequent testimony at trial, it seems pretty clear to me that gates was arrested not for disorderly conduct but for P.O.T.C. ("pissing off the cops"). the last sentence tells it all...gates said something about the officer's mom and the officer just felt that was inappropriate so he abused his power to teach this man to respect authority. at that point it becomes necessary to claim the arrest was for one of those fall back offenses that officers always use - disorderly conduct, disrupting the peace, and obstruction. it is absolutely not an arrestable offense to "berate" an officer, call him racist or speak about his mother. in fact...it is pretty much basic protected first amendment speech.

but perhaps the more interesting thing about what the officer has said is that he was surprised that an intelligent black man would react the way that he did. he claimed he was not expecting the response he initially received, which wasn't exactly welcoming. he also claimed surprise that an "intelligent" black man would react the way gates did. even using the age-old bullshit line of "if you have nothing to hide you would cooperate." (side note - cops love that bullshit argument...they don't want you to remember that the constitution gives you the right to tell them to fuck themselves and not cooperate with their investigation. they also don't want you to know that regardless of if you cooperate or not, they've made a decision who will be arrested and you are going down regardless).

this position from the officer is shocking (well, not surprising) to me. imagine how you would feel if an officer showed up at your own home and demanded proof that you actually lived there. unless you are lying to yourself, you would be insulted and feel as though you were being harrassed. if the officer was genuinely surprised by the response he received than he is rather out of touch with just how much americans respect the privacy of their own homes. nobody likes the government intruding past their front door.

but perhaps the most amazing response from the officer is that he was surprised at how a man "of his intelligence" would feel as though race had something to do with this. (did this actually mean "I expect this from the black kid on the street...but smart blacks should know to respect law enforcement?"). and this is where we can actually have an intelligent conversation about race in america...yet next to zero of us (and by us, I mean the white community) are attempting to do so.

now this officer may very well be a fine gentlemen and an honest cop. but his statement of surprise at gates's reaction means one of two things: (1) he is lying about how the situation went down and even he recognizes it had something to do with race; or (2) as a white man he just doesn't have a clue. although by virtue of the badge I tend to think it is a combination of the two...let's discuss the latter.

first, because I will inevitably hear from people about how this cop is so not racist that he taught a course on profiling and tried to save a famous black athlete, I will address these two points. initially...even racist crackers love the black athlete. thanks to systemic racism, athletics is deemed by white society as an appropriate place for the black male. harvard professorship? not so much. second, courses taught at the police academy aren't exactly rigorous exercises in critical thought. there just isn't the time. not only that, but I personally put together materials for the department of homeland defense's course for training first responders in potential suicide bomb attacks. my role was to examine racial profiling laws throughout the united states and determine which actions the law would and would not allow. with this in mind, I have serious doubts that any serious discussion of race relations actually occurred in an academy class on racial profiling. now, I am not saying that this officer was racist...but that in no way means that the situation did not have something to do with race.

if anything, the officer's past makes it even more evident that whites need to examine race in a way that the vast majority of us never do. the only reason that a white officer would be surprised at such a response from a black man is that the white officer has never honestly dealt with race in america. that does not mean he is a bad man or a racist, it just speaks to the truth of being white in america - race does not occur to most of us because as the dominant race we aren't forced to examine it. when the systemic racism works in your favor, it is easy to ignore it. which then makes it easy to make such intellectually dishonest comments as references to "reverse-racism" and the plight of the white man in america. if we honestly talked about race relations in this country and examined the historical significance of overt and covert racism, no white officer would be surprised at being received with hostility for asking a black man to prove he lived in a nice neighborhood. of course the issue instantly became about race for the black man...he is constantly reminded that he is black. after all, even now (and I am guilty of this as well), he is referred to as a preeminent "black" scholar rather than just a scholar. and of course the white man can't understand why it has to be about race...because he has never had to come to terms with race in america. although, if he truly examined his past and the historical mistreatment of irish immigrants in america, I am sure he could begin to understand how gates must have felt, even if it is impossible for him to fully understand.

regardless, this is something that should be discussed. this should be an opening for the white community to get serious about actually confronting what we love to just ignore (shushing children when they ask about race, averting our gaze, remaining quiet when the topic is broached). race matters in america. people of color are not allowed to forget. and just once, I wish that we would not allow ourselves to ignore it either.

getting serious about health care, police power, and the GOP chooses prison over school...

this morning I was watching horrific morning television since my music was in the car and I have been socialized to require noise to be comfortable. for whatever reason they had some bozo on as a talking head to discuss the health care "debate" (in quotes since there is far too much intellectual dishonesty going on from both sides discussing the issue). my guess is that said bozo likely has a degree in either communications, journalism or economics...none of which provide him with any historical context of the underlying issues and apparently leave him utterly ignorant to anything but token right wing talking points and accepted universal truths that are neither universal, nor truth. well, this fool basically had only two things he could say (either because he is a fool or a liar). the first was how great american health care is because rich people come to america for treatment. the second was how this issue is "being rushed" to be concluded before august. both of these are highly dubious and misleading claims that I am getting rather sick of hearing.

first off...while some filthy rich people may be coming to america to get top notch treatment, that same treatment is largely unavailable to the majority of americans. to the contrary, many americans are actually touring abroad for medical procedures that they cannot afford here in the united states. what they are really suggesting is that if america has the best of the best for a tiny fraction of the public that could afford to get it wherever it is than that is a top notch system as a whole...regardless of how pathetic it is for the rest of us.

the second claim is one of the conservative's new favorite mantras - "this is so costly and so important we cannot rush this." the obvious implication is that a national health care system has not been considered before this month. nevermind that germany implemented the first nationalized health care system over a century ago. nevermind that there was a serious discussion and attempt at this fifteen years ago in this country. nevermind that president truman proposed a national health care system over sixty years ago. and nevermind that president roosevelt had asked for it to be included in an economic bill of rights before even that. to claim that this is being "rushed" is completely ludicruous, dishonest and just plain fucking stupid. so seriously...can we stop all the damn posturing and bullshit and actually talk about this subject legitimately. I refuse to believe that america is incapable of providing quality health care to its citizens cheaper than it does when the rest of the civilized world already does it. (and don't tell me our private system "subsidizes" the rest of the world...because our government subsidizes a hell of a lot of medical research already...it just doesn't get any of the profits back).

a white cambridge police officer arrested a highly distinguished black harvard professor at his own home. now I can understand that someone in the neighborhood called in when they thought they saw someone breaking into the home (although you have to wonder which neighbor was unaware that one of the most distinguished black scholars in history lived on their block...that fact alone raises interesting questions)...but why in gods name it was necessary to arrest a man after he had shown that he was, in fact, entering his own home is completely beyond me. and the only possible explanation comes down to two prongs...the first - police still really do not like black men. the second - police forces tend to be filled with too many people that think the badge gives them too much power. the kind of guys that get off on having authority and flaunting it whenever they can. and when you combine this with systemic racism it is a dangerous coctail that is destined to lead to absurdities such as arresting a distinguished mind because he didn't hide his eyes and say "yessa" when confronted with idiocy. which also makes me wonder...where are all the screaming right-wing talking heads on this subject? shouldn't they be appalled that the government arrested a man in his own home for nothing more than not taking shit from a cop? isn't that supposed to be the limbaugh crowd's calling card? they should have a new hero...but they'll be picking the cop who refused to apologize as their martyr. as much as I wish we could...I lament that this likely will not lead to a serious discussion about race in this country.

speaking of police fucking with black men because they can...california is finally closing its budget gap to possibly avoid bankruptcy. and since the GOP absolutely refused to raise any taxes to help it happen (good ol' historically false supply side economics) they instead slashed funding for key programs designed to help those that need it most. education was gutted...right when numbers were released that put america 10th in percentage of the population with a post-secondary education. but in the process of gutting programs designed to actually benefit people (particularly the already disadvantaged) the GOP threatened to kill the process again over cuts to the department of corrections. because while it is vital to crush any program that might assist disadvantaged groups...it is also vital to make sure that we keep them out of sight and off the streets as much as possible, particularly if they have a bit more melanin. and while the media is going to ignore this for the most part...in this one dispute the GOP has been perfectly summarized. today's republican party..."if we have to choose between educating you or imprisoning you...we'll go with imprisonment."

we are underused...

the beauty and the boneheaded nature of our system...

The following is a column by Neal Gabler of the Boston Globe. We dealing with a political party that has no interest in constructive criticism or dialogue and the other without the guts to go it alone. At the same time we are being bombarded with misleading half-truths and outright lies. Mr. Gabler makes me once again wonder how close to the edge we have gotten...or if it is even under our feet anymore.

Hope, caught up in a sea of obstruction

By Neal Gabler | July 21, 2009

HERE’S THE situation: President Obama maneuvered a stimulus package through Congress that, after being reduced to attract additional senators, has proven insufficient to stimulate the economy. Now, given the political calculus, it would be nearly impossible for him to introduce an additional boost. He also proposed a regulatory scheme for Wall Street that was so riddled with compromises and concessions that it was unlikely to prevent another economic meltdown. And he has pushed a national healthcare plan that is almost certain to be eviscerated, and that even in its disemboweled form may not pass Congress.

Obviously, we face daunting problems, but we nevertheless continue to operate with a kind of hopefulness that we will meet the challenges and triumph. Historically, we have reason to feel this way. In the last 70 years , this country faced down the Great Depression, Nazism, and Jim Crow. The system, however balky and tardy it may have been, has always worked.

But today, beneath the optimistic rhetoric, lurks another possibility that no politician and few pundits want to admit: that the system is no longer up to the task and that the factors that once brought relief are no longer operable. There is the real possibility that this time we will not win but rather founder the way Japan has done since its economic catastrophe. There is the possibility that this time it is hopeless.

How has it come to pass that the most powerful (and most self-confident) nation in the world now seems helpless? The short answer is that political action is a function of political will - the public’s more than the politicians’ - and that ours has been steadily sapped. Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, has said that crisis creates opportunity, but he is only partly right. Crisis creates pain. It is the pain that creates the opportunity.

The New Deal, that great spasm of political initiative, arose out of a national agony: 25 percent of Americans were unemployed, and with absolutely no safety net to catch them. There is plenty of agony now, but it is not as deep nor as wide, in part because of the programs of the New Deal, including unemployment insurance. President Roosevelt had the advantage of an angry citizenry who wanted him to do anything to rescue them. Obama has the disadvantage of a passive citizenry that, frankly, may never hurt enough to demand what might finally cure what ails them.

Obama is also the victim of a much different and more complex political system than the one FDR faced - a system with far more interests to broker among. The number of lobbyists in Washington, a good indicator of how many interests must be served and how vested those interests are in maintaining the status quo, has more than doubled since 2000. There are now roughly 40,000, 2,000 more since last November alone. In the last year nearly 2,500 began lobbying on the single issue of climate change. By a political Newton’s Law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which means that there are thousands of thrusts and parries on any major piece of legislation - a sure prescription for inaction or for tepid action.

Then there is the new media ecology. Yes, Roosevelt had his enemies in the press - almost all of which was arrayed against him. But he did not have a 24/7 cable antagonist dedicated to his presidential demise or hundreds of Internet bomb-throwers as Obama does, and he did not have a press whose baseline was skepticism about any possible government initiative. It is not the right-wing media that inhibit change; it is the mainstream media with their own attachment to the status quo, their own loaded questions about dramatic new policies and their predilection to identify potential missteps rather than to extol potential boldness. On healthcare, for example, the press has yet to ask one simple and critical question: Why can France have vastly superior care at half the cost per person of ours?

But finally, and most importantly, our own political institutions have been steadily and deliberately hogtied or even dismantled so that they cannot effectively do very much. In truth, the system was never very good at meeting crises; it was designed for incrementalism, not daring leaps. Our Founding Fathers, worrying about demagogues and runaway democratic effusions, created a number of institutions and rules, from the aristocratic Senate, which was devised to put the brakes on what they feared might be the careening of the more democratic House, to the entire system of checks and balances. The object was to prevent change, not facilitate it.

What those Fathers could not have anticipated was a political party dedicated to total obstructionism - dedicated to making certain that the government would fiddle while the nation burned. For this we have the Republicans to blame for their actions and the Democrats to blame for their inaction. As comedian Bill Maher recently put it, “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.’’

Americans forget that after four years of Herbert Hoover’s dithering during the Great Depression members of his party almost unanimously opposed FDR’s economic stimulus, and that in the procedural run-up to Social Security, they held ranks against it, too. Twelve of the 19 Republican senators voted to have Social Security scrapped. Old age security, they argued, would spoil Americans.

Flash-forward 30 years, and the party was back to its shenanigans, opposing Medicare. Exactly half the Republicans in the House voted against it while Senate Republicans voted 17-13 to stop it. Only overwhelming Democratic majorities in 1935 and 1965 led to Social Security and Medicare - and this at a time when the GOP had a moderate wing. The conclusion: in times of dire need the system only works when there is a huge one-party majority and a popular, muscular president of the same party to keep the legislators in line.

Things have only gotten worse - much worse - since then. It is not only the 30-year Republican drumbeat that government is the problem, a cliche that has helped drain political will; or the tax cuts that, as Reagan’s budget director David Stockman candidly admitted, were largely enacted to starve government and render it ineffective; or the incompetency of George W. Bush’s appointees that was intended to discredit government. It is the Republican lurch rightward that has purged those few moderates and gamed the filibuster so that any piece of legislation is now held hostage to 40 votes. This generates cries for bipartisanship, neglecting the fact that there is one party adamantly opposed to any change whatsoever.

How obstructionist is the GOP? From 1927 to 1962, cloture - the vote to end a filibuster - was invoked only 11 times! In 2007 alone, with Republicans trying to derail initiatives in the Democratic Congress as disparate as an increased minimum wage, a climate change bill, campaign finance reform, and an energy bill, there were 62 cloture votes. When you consider that conservative Democrats are being hammered by Republicans as well as by lobbying interests who provide them with campaign contributions, you can readily see that not even the Democrats’ 60 votes in the Senate are sufficient to move legislation even if there is a public outcry for action. According to polls, roughly 70 percent of Americans want a public option in healthcare. With that kind of support, the fact that it is even being debated is testament to how decrepit our system has become.

And so we are now a nation with great professions of faith that we will succeed but little real confidence that we will, a nation that focuses more on what can go wrong than on what can go right, a nation that can’t seem to get action. We are a timid nation with small dreams and even smaller plans - a nation that seems to have lost its capacity to do big things. We all know the nation is broken, but we may no longer have the will or the institutions to fix it.

repaying the wrong ones, screwing working america, my minimum wage,and judicial red herrings...

goldman sachs made a profit such as it has never seen in its century and a half of existence. an obscene amount of money once again for doing basically nothing...credit is still non-existent, money is not going to its most productive uses, and the trend followed by every economic hegemon before us continues - worship of financialization for finance's sake at the expense of actually making anything tangible and retaining a manufacturing base that can be utilized at times like this. (how wonderful would it be to still have a strong manufacturing sector at this time and factories that might actually be opened to make things and put people back to work?) and so what is goldman sachs doing with all this money it is raking in now that the taxpayers came in to prevent collapse of the financial markets? well, it paid about $10 billion back to the government...and it is setting aside even more than that (between $11 and $12 billion) to pay out to obscenely rich people so that the average salary of their employees will near $1 million. and this is why class matters in america as it has in every nation since the dawn of civilization. there has class warfare waged in this nation since its founding...only never up the ladder, always down. and so now, long after americans fought and died for the right to a decent living and enough to eat and a roof over their heads we are heading right back to square one. uber-rich with no concept of good ol' fashioned christian morality or good ol' american equality and community spirit. and they are trying to scare us into accepting it because that is just the price of "prosperity." except that it isn't. we have had true prosperity before, in a way that benefited a hell of a lot more people than the current raping and pillaging of all but the richest. and they have the audacity to scold us about "soaking" the wealthiest of the wealthy, the people that have built walls and iron gates around their communities so they don't have to so much as look at the horror they are promulgating. since the dawn of time they've been soaking us...and the last 30 years it has turned into a tsunami. so excuse me if I don't feel so bad about making them run through a sprinkler so that my neighbor's don't lose their homes, their jobs, their health and their dignity.

which brings me to the latest sell-out of the american working class by the democratic party...the abandonment of the card-check provision in the labor bill being drawn up by the senate. (for those not in the know...this provision would allow unions to be recognized as soon as a majority of workers indicate they want one...making it much more difficult for the walmarts of the world to destroy the working class). even though anyone with the tiniest bit of context understands the historical significance of unionized labor in america and the immense benefits it bestowed upon the nation and the reality that as labor has been squeezed by the "free" market bullshit fuckheads that have no understanding of humanity and believe that we are all greedless rational beings the gap between the haves and the used to haves and the have nots has become enormous - the democrats decided it is more important to have 60 votes than to do what is right. and it is because they are scared of their campaign contributions drying up. they don't give a shit what is good for those of us that need the most help...they only care about what is good for the next election cycle. and while the republican party eats itself alive, I have to wonder if the democratic party is not far behind when the inevitable thunderstorm of severe economic distress comes upon us and the masses of america once again let their displeasure known.

and one of the things they consistently fuck us on is the minimum wage (even though a ridiculous super majority of americans think it should be higher...including card-carrying republicans). well, I've come up with a solution. forget having a minimum wage set at a real dollar amount. let's open it up for Big Business, let it float and fluctuate...with a catch. as a corporation, the lowest paid employee must make at least 1/50th of your CEO. you want to pay your CEO a $1 billion dollar bonus...fine. but then your mail-room clerk is going to get a $20 million christmas vacation. watch in amazement as CEO pay comes back to earth.

I'm am entirely sick of roe v. wade being the issue that they want us to give a shit about when it comes to who sits on the supreme court. I know that it is not nearly as important to me given that I don't have a uterus...but trust me, every day there are far more important issues being decided by the court that have serious effects on all of our every day lives. if we are going to insist on grilling about shit they won't answer...how about their views on how it is that a fictional entity concocted for the sole purpose of making money is considered a human being under the law, even though it never has to suffer the consequences that a human being would have to suffer when it breaks the law (capital punishment, jail time - side note, why the fuck don't we revoke corporate charters for 0 to life when business breaks the law?) how about their views on how spending is speech? how about their views on whether the founders meant it when they called the first states "commonwealths"? how about their views on the right of access to courts?

not that any of the condescending patronizing fuckheads could understand any of the answers. even with my lack of a uterus, I managed to be appalled at the attitude these fuckwads showed towards a woman. why the fuck are "conservatives" concerned with whether or not they are nice to lawyers all of a sudden? I thought us lawyers were evil encarnate. or is it just that this one has a vagina and so it makes her "moody" and "bitchy" where with scalia it makes him decisive, strong and intelligent. (and not that conservatives are the only ones...thank you sen. boxer for pointing out that the black guy before your committee might not have been expressing a view consistent with a NAACP resolution or another black guy from atlanta. its always lovely to see someone express their crackerness in such a pathetic way). despite the insane lack of substance that came out of four fucking days of nothing before the committee...one thing was abundantly clear. that woman that sen. graham "likes...really, he likes her" properly considers you fucking bozos mental midgets and she could run intellectual circles around your asses after a three day scotch binge.

that's when I reach for my revolver...

if you saw the face of god and love...would you change?

hey mama they got us livin' suicide...

the GOP has been absent from chicago politics for a long, long time. and they are now learning what chicago politics is all about. arizona sen. kyl, republican douchebag, is running his mouth about how they need to cancel the rest of the stimulus spending. so the administration, in good ol' fashioned chicago style, called his bluff. letters were sent to arizona's governor asking if the state would prefer the feds withhold stimulus funds per sen. kyl's wishes. finally...progressive hardball.

hey mama they got us livin' genocide...

why the hell is a fireman testifying at a confirmation hearing for a supreme court justice? is this what the process has come to? forget legal minds and colleagues...lets here from people with vendettas. this should be an opportunity to educate the public about the courts. this should be an opportunity to examine how the system is supposed to work (and in the process getting rid of the bullshit "activist judge" moniker). instead we are parading parties that lost on appeal because the appellate court agreed with the detailed ruling of the lower court. join the fucking line buddy.

you gave cash to the feds, left your school district for dead...

although that line is a hell of a lot shorter than the line developing for people that bush nominated appellate judges are fucking through "activist" tendencies, ignoring the law, their own rulings and the rulings of the supreme court if they think the guy probably did something to deserve it along the way. forty-five minutes worth of findings from the judge that heard all the evidence and lived with the case for 5 years? out the window.

still believin' the system is workin' while half my people are out of work...

the los angelos times does not think it is appropriate to "soak" the rich to pay for a healthy society. yea...having to fork over $50,000 a year if you make more than a million to ensure that people are not unnecessarily dying sounds like such a terrible thing. to put this in perspective...that's like asking the typical starting teacher in new mexico to pay an extra $1,500 bucks a year. and to put that further in perspective...ask yourself what kind of policy they would give you for $1,500 a year.

anonymous notes left in the pockets and coats of judges and juries from frisco to jersey...

and never mind that the tax rates they will enjoy will still be significantly less than it was in the post-war era during the largest, most egalitarian economic expansion in history. guess this is the result of white-washing history and never getting past WWII in the textbooks.

threats and protests, politician's mob debts...

sarah palin offered her view on energy policy in an op-ed in the washington post. it appeared just after she quit her job. she talked about how what they "know" up in alaska...the place she just quit on. as someone that used to at least have a modicum of respect for the republican party that is now utterly embarrassed at the horror show it has become...please keep talking ms. palin. maybe you could have some conversations with sen. kyl and sen. sessions on the record about how scary that black guy with the foreign sounding name is and how unbelievable it is that brown people don't all think alike.

trumped up charges with phoney arrests...

at a time when the supreme court is about to give corporations free reign in political campaigns it is important to note analysis conducted by larry bartels. in his numbers (and granted the studies he had to utilize indicate that his analysis is by no means fool-proof) he discovered that the wishes of low-income persons are literally ignored by republicans and democrats alike. but we just found video of michael jackson's hair on fire...so please continue about your day.

the CIA runnin' like their jones from indiana...

the CIA lies to people...including representatives. it is what they do. get used to it. stop feigning shock over it. end them or accept them. they are our jack nicholson at gitmo. they provide a glimpse in the mirror of how terrible we can be...but we much prefer to just go on about our days and not think about it. so either do something or don't. I am sick of this half-ass gamesmanship.

this ain't no cartoon, no one slips on bananas...

an officer actually filed suit to get an injunction so that he wouldn't have to go to war per his orders claiming that until he sees obama's birth certificate he does not consider obama a "natural born citizen." jesus. fucking. christ.

hell, I shot ronald reagan, I shot JFK, I slept with marilyn and she sung me happy birthday...

california may finally be nearing an end to handing out IOUs. and the governator is reminding everyone why the "tax cut" mantra is entirely boneheaded. at a time when they are needed most by more people than ever...he refuses to sign anything that may institute any tax raises whatsoever in order to close the gap. wish they would hold his balls to the fire and send him something that only taxes the uber-rich more. there is another wave of regular ass people blowback against the wealthy on the horizon...and the GOP is in for a stormy few decades.

politicians got lipstick on the collar, the whole media started to holler, but I don’t give a fuck who they screwin’ in private, I wanna know who they screwin’ in public...

ever notice that the majority of people whining about race are white men? its scary when your centuries-long death grip on everything is beginning to slip isn't it? look at how minority leaders (and by that I mean leaders that are minorities, not leaders of minorities) speak about race and compare it with how white male leaders talk about race. I mean seriously...white men from the south are now concerned about race injecting itself?

you tellin' the youth don't be so violent, then you drop bombs on every single continent...

at a time when "collateral damage" is used to describe civilian deaths I am called on to remember ronald reagan...the man who utterly abhored the idea of taking military action that would endanger civilian lives. the man who left lebonan when he discovered that this was just a bad idea. the "tough" guy that sat out of the conflict of his generation to make movies, who then made it a point to sit down and talk directly with the front man of the "evil empire" of his day.

mandatory minimum sentencin’ ‘cause he got caught with a pocket full of medicine,
do that again another ten up in the pen...

AIG is spending tax dollar money to pay rich people more more money. but again, please ignore this and go back to the video of michael jackson's flaming head. this doesn't concern you.

get so mad I want to bomb an institution...

roger simon brought up an interesting point about diversity on the supreme court...it is full of ivy-leaguers and sotomayor is just another to join the bunch in that regard. but simon's comments raise another question...what in the hell went wrong in this country that we became so hostile to education and intelligence? not that the ivy league is necessarily the bastion of intelligence it would like us to think. but seriously...there was a time when this nation looked up to learned people. now the "champions" that are "just like me" are morons that are proud of their inability to constructively think and mock those that are capable of complex thought processes. fuck me.

oh my god.

GOP slight of hand, thinning the ranks, murder and lies, and paying for our health...

as the right-wing gasbags heat up to sooth THE right-wing gasbag during the confirmation hearings with ridiculously misinformed, ignorant, or outright knowing lies about "activist" judges (i.e. judges that are not insanely conservative and - preferably - white men) attention is diverted from the true "activist" judges now running the supreme court that are about to overturn a 100 year old law that now serves as the last roadblock to complete and overt corporate takeover of elections. (side note - I am mildly amused to see the democrats rhetoric against qualified candidates coming back to bite them in the ass...just do it the old-fashioned way, the way the GOP has been, pack the fucking courts, make the supreme court 11...and find young lefties to fill the seats). never mind that the feigned horror at policy from the appellate courts (cough cough thurgood marshall cough cough) and judges "making" law (cough cough anglo-american common law jurisprudence cough cough) - unbeknownst to the general public, the supremes have agreed to hear a case concerning corporations activities in federal elections. and they aren't just applying the law to the case before them (i.e. the supposed GOP "ideal" judicial standard)...they are going well past that and are looking at whether limitations on corporate involvement in federal elections is constitutional (an issue not even raised by the parties in the lower courts...activism at its finest). and so, with right-wing nutjobs holding down the fort...we are likely to see over 100 years of law and decades of precedent overturned by "conservative" judges that have no problem with "activism" provided it is in favor of corporations and their profits. you thought Big Business ran the show now? wait until the next round of elections...joe q. public is about to become a footnote.

once again bills are being introduced to repeal "don't ask don't tell" - quite possibly one of the most idiotic policies ever enacted (perhaps if monica had testicles instead of breasts we would have been spared from this foolishness). in the meantime, it does not look like the big brass have been instructed to slow roll the effects of this gay-fearing idiocy. so far in 2009 alone, 100 service members have been dumped because when they go home they go home to the wrong sex. in the past, the purging of those scary gays has cost us more than a few arabic-proficient persons (oops). now, with the military stretched to its limit and recruitment suffering we are throwing people out because they consentually fuck the wrong the genital region. and the nay sayers are still clinging to their "morale" argument...which if you ask me, is a knock on our military. it necessarily implies that they can't do their job if the guy next to them has silk panties on under his fatigues. maybe I'm just confused because I always thought our soldiers were professionals...

turns out the CIA was hiding shit from congress. big surprise. and it turns out that the shit it was hiding from congress violated international and military law. big surprise. and it turns out that dick cheney wanted to keep information from congress, all eight members that are on the "know" list. big surprise. if congress really had any balls they would yank the plug on CIA funding. afterall...congress holds the purse strings and it is their trump card over every other branch. and yes, the CIA could just keep itself running through selling even more arms and drugs. but at least congress would try something more than posturing.

they are going to fuck up health care because they are claiming they can't figure out how to pay for it. what they really mean is that there is no way in hell they want to piss off their campaign contributors - the uber-wealthy and corporations (especially since corporations are about to get free-reign in elections). the highest tax bracket in this country used to be about 90%...and this during the largest and longest sustained and equal economic growth in the history of mankind. and I could be wrong, but the wealthy were still doing pretty well during the post-war period. the corporate tax rate? during that boom the highest bracket was consistently at or above 50%...and corporations were still doing pretty good. so there you go. there is your fucking money. now make it happen.

I dreamed about you for twenty-nine years before I met you...