A round-up of Mark Steyn posts, including the redefinition of "pedophile" so as to not give offence to a certain segment of the population known for smelling like a camel in full rut, and exploding unexpectedly. Oh, and stepping all over Western principles of free-speech at the same time.
There's more Steyn on the failure of multiculturalism -- and the mess it's left us in -- here and here.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Our Government is Out to Kill Us....
There is no other explanation.
$60 billion dollars wasted on intelligence agencies which seem incapable of telling people what they need to know, but then can -- with a straight face -- point to a single sentence, with no relevance whatsoever and after the fact, which purports to "prove" that the Obama Administration "was on top" of the whole Egypt debacle all the time. The entire thing a sad-but-necessary bit of political theatre. Barack Obama, the Lightworker, Savior of the Universe, must be seen as infallible and all-knowing -- even if he is dumber than a sack of hammers, and some General has to ruin his reputation trying to convince you of it.
Sorry, but it doesn't look like Obama knows a damned thing about anything from here. But then again, that's perhaps not so much his fault, as it appears the people who are supposed to know seem incapable of telling him. Maybe The One wants it that way; no unpleasant news which might interfere with his fantasy world where Communism can be made to work. Perhaps people are just afraid to approach the Right Hand of God and utter non-politically-correct blasphemies to him. Maybe, just maybe, there's so many goddamned Czars, Special Advisers, Special-Assistants-to-the-Special-Advisers, Special-Advisers-to-the-Special-Czar-Assistants, that by the time information percolates up to the Resident of the United States, it's been cherry-picked, mangled, garbled, folded, spindled and mutilated to such an extent that he can't make any use of it, or it leaves him badly misinformed.
I will remind Gen. Tapper -- and I really dislike his cavalier defense of what appears to be indefensible --of something that he should already know, assuming he's read any history whatsoever; when the intelligence services are no longer interested in providing badly-needed facts, especially inconvenient and politically-painful ones, and are instead committed to ensuring that a certain political point of view is presented and advanced, then the term "intelligence service" becomes an oxymoron, and the threat to our citizens increases one-hundred-fold. If that was an example of what we're paying for -- something that read like a 5th-grade book report, only with fewer facts and fewer reasonable conclusions, to judge from the excerpts -- then it's no wonder that the Obama administration hasn't clue fucking one about how to fight a war against terrorism (then again, GWB didn't either), and seems to always be two steps behind the curve on every foreign policy issue of the day.
I'll tell you all you need to know about how to deal with the Middle East and international terrorism, Mr. Obama, and I don't need expensive satellites, eavesdropping equipment, spies, a great big expeditionary force, or fifty douchebags in government gray three-piece suits carrying James Bond briefcases, and Cereal-box Batman Decoder Rings. I don't need $60 billion bucks, either; I'd settle for $1 billion (tax free) if and when my ideas are tried and found to work.
Here's how you treat any issue arising from the Middle East;
1. Start killing Muslims by the tens of thousands, right in the shitholes where they breed, at the first sign of trouble. Make them suffer horribly, and if and when they beg for mercy, kick 'em in the teeth, and repeat the process. Once the Muslim World has been reduced to a smoking wasteland of ashes, pulverized concrete, and starving dogs feeding on rancid corpses, you won't need to spend a whole lot of money spying on anyone there, because the survivors (if there are any) will be far too busy trying to remember how to walk upright and gathering insects for subsistence to entertain thoughts about bombing anyone or shouting "Death to America!"
The reasons why we haven't followed this surprisingly simple strategy are easy to understand:
a. We are afraid, as a culture, to face the truth about the nature of the enemy, and his motivations. This (War against Radical Islam) is not about some minuscule band of nutjobs that simply 'give Islam a bad name', nor is it just some politically-motivated movement of really-excitable people; it is a fight against a poisonous cultural and religious imperative that is inimical to every value we hold dear. These guys can't be negotiated with. They can't be bought off. They can't be democratized, and then traded with. Their goal is nothing less than our death as a culture, and if they can't arrange that, they'd be happy to settle for our enslavement.
Instead of recognizing the obvious -- the leaders of this crusade (not afraid to use that word!) have only been telling us what they intend for the last 50 years -- we chose to be willingly deaf, and to advance with Eyes Wide Shut. Why is it that no one is listening, or takingnote of the obvious? Because if you took the Ama-dada-doo-dads of the world at their word, someone might expect you to actually do something, and who the fuck wants to take action? Taking action means possibly making mistakes, and when you make mistakes, they talk badly about you in the newspapers and on FoxNews.
b. There is a streak of cowardice which runs through the political leadership of the West. Doing what is necessary, in this case fighting a war of annihilation, is simply something too terrible for them to contemplate. In European capitols this is understandable; they've been -- excuse the expression -- Ground Zero for two World Wars, and they are, literally, on the front lines in this fight; the Muslim populations of a good number of European cities is absolutely staggering. War is already on their doorstep, but their cultural memory of war is such that they shrink from the prospect of further violence.
I have news for you; these guys (the Terrorists and Islamonazis) aren't afraid to die, like we are. In fact, they're eager to die; when you kill them, you're doing them a favor and sending them to Heaven and hooking them up with the false Paradise their stinking excuse for a religion promises them. Killing them by the tens of thousands, in this regard, is not as terrible, as say, the useless and bloody experiences of the Somme, Verdun or Ypres, the mass slaughters on the Eastern Front or the Hurtgenwald, it's actually an undertaking which would make both parties happy: we get to continue our way of life, they get Martyrdom. Everybody's happy!
But, bearing that sort of history in mind, it is easy to see just why Europeans would shrink from the sort of violence necessary to win a war of this nature.
There is no excuse for such a cringing attitude in this country, however, which makes the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan so confusing. No American city has ever been bombed flat...or at least not yet, and one would assume we'd be less squeamish than pansy Frenchmen and Panty-wearing Belgians. It appears as if the original strategy for both wars was to give the appearance of a strong response to Islamic terrorism without actually responding strongly at all. Considering the length and apparent meager returns of both campaigns, one is left to wonder just when it is that the real war is going to begin in earnest. From my viewpoint, there hasn't been a War on Terror as much as there has been a Public Relations Exercise With Guns in the Middle East, and a steady assault upon the liberties of Americans at home. All excused and justified by the threat of a future terrorist attack.
Two consecutive Administrations have talked a good game about a War on Terror, but there's been very little useful action, all the purple thumbs not withstanding.
c. The people who hold and exercise political power in this country are committed, insanely, to an unworkable program of encouraging democracy in a part of the world where that term has no meaning -- unless it means that the people get to vote for Sharia Law and expanded Jihad, implemented under the auspices of the dictator of their own choice -- and where the institutions to create what a Westerner would recognize as a pluralistic, free-market democracy simply do not exist, and cannot be created swiftly. Not without a long-term, and probably-bloody, super-expensive and difficult occupation of the Middle East.
This should not be surprising as it has been evident for a very long time in the Western world that our own political institutions have been overrun and infected by a multitude of people who poorly understand both the nature and origins of democracy, themselves. Their attempts to democratize the Middle East, and their repeated, weak justifications for their hard-to-fathom (in-)actions to date, remind one of some new-and-improved-and-vaguely-defined version of the White Man's Burden; only this time the program is being handled not by the energetic and clever individuals who built, say, the British Empire, but by a bunch of drooling doofuses who can't articulate just what it is they do hope to accomplish, and who are too busy playing domestic politics with the issue to be bothered with such petty distractions like winning the war before claiming victory for this or that piece of it.
d. Let's be clear; these wars are about Oil and access to it. The terrorists are funded by the proceeds of petroleum, and the West, for a variety of insane and often-contradictory reasons, is addicted to the Middle Eastern variety; but we could shrug off the worst of this addiction in a relative heartbeat, if we really tried. Doing so, however, is politically impossible at present because neither Right nor Left is either honest about it's true motivations, nor ready to jettison most of it's own Sacred Cows. So, we're locked into a strategy of trying to negotiate with madmen, dangling the trinkets of democracy, diplomatic niceties, commerce, and friendship -- none of which they want or understand -- all the while denying that the true engine of this conflict is the Right's requirement of Middle Eastern oil to maintain it's technological and economic dominance (while crowing about Free Trade), and the Left's motivation which is to ensure that all the pollution, dirt, danger and poisons that come from drilling and refining crude oil -- and which make possible their cushy lifestyles -- to be the problem of some brown-skinned people so that we can posture about saving endangered fleas and have nice, clean parks. And this all happens while Leftists paradoxically crow about their concern for both the 'environment' and the welfare of the 'Third World'.
The first step in winning this war is to be honest about why we're in it, and exposing the bullshit political pathologies which guide and inform the people who supposedly run it.
2. Since international terrorists do not respect the distinctions between innocents and combatants, or the niceties of international borders and sovereignty, neither should we. If it becomes necessary, for example, to chase a terrorist from Afghanistan and into Pakistan, it should be done, and fuck the Pakistani government; if they were truly an ally, they would be going after these guys themselves.
This is a war where there is no battlefield, no well-defined and recognizable front lines, unless you remember that London, Madrid, and New York were made such by the enemy. In this war, the enemy has the initiative; he chooses where to strike, he chooses where to fight, and when we chase him from one battlefield (say Afghanistan), he quickly melts away to another (say, Somalia). This isn't the same bunch of ragheads hopping from country-to-country every time, either; it's a world-wide movement that springs up in another place just as soon as we're occupied elsewhere, and this is by design.
Al'Qaeda, much like McDonald's, is a franchise; you don't have to have met Usama Bin Hidin' personally, or been given orders from his own mouth, to open up a branch of Al'Qaeda...only a press release, and an atrocity. Which is why it is imperative to stop this nonsense about building schools, and bringing clean water to a guy who is your friend this week, and planting IED's the next; start doing some truly horrific violence to people, and the romantic allure of becoming a Junior Al'Qaeda quickly wears off. String together a series of truly-disgusting incidents of violence, and pretty soon either no one wants that McBomb Franchise anymore, or, even better, there's no one left to join the Jihad.
Being nice to these folks is not going to deter them. Recognizing their borders and sovereignty is a courtesy they certainly don't extend to us. Being sensitive to their feelings is tantamount to surrender. It should be the policy of this country that it will reserve the right to beat the piss out of terrorists wherever we find them, and we fucking double-dog-dare-you to stop us.
3. Since the terrorists, and the states which support them, don't give a damn about UN resolutions, international law, cultural sensibilities, etc., neither should we. The only way to win this thing -- permanently -- is to be just as ruthless as the enemy, and often, thrice as ruthless. This is not a war over some line on a map; it's about ridding the planet of a pernicious evil that is every bit as dangerous and deadly as any we've ever known.
This is not a rabble of discontented people fighting for their freedom or rights; it's the mass psychosis of an entire culture reaching it's boiling point and erupting all over the world, committed to the idea that it is a chosen group, born to rule, promised dominance by God. It will use unspeakable violence to achieve that goal, and it is aware of the fact that it cannot achieve it's victory in one fell swoop; it is prepared to spend decades, perhaps centuries, to achieve it's divine destiny. For this culture, perpetual warfare is something that will just have to be accepted as the price of success. That many will die, and good number of them will be committed to suicide as a tactic, is something they actually embrace. With enthusiasm.
Along the way, they will engage in the worst crimes a Westerner's fevered imagination can come up with; slavery, mass rape, genocide, mass destruction, looting, pillaging, beheading, floggings, mutilations, burning down entire cities, destruction of cultural icons (art, architecture, literature, etc.), theft and dislocation. Their motto, to paraphrase the Caliph who ordered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, is "if it agrees with the Koran, it is not needed; if it does not agree with the Koran, it is not wanted...".
These assholes are not interested in our quaint notions of law, justice or diplomatic discourse; they want nothing less than to erase everything we hold dear or recognize as decent from human memory.
The West has dealt with enemies of this sort before. These are the New Huns. The New Nazis, Vandals, Visigoths, and Mongols. They are the New Breed of the Emperor-worshiping, fanatical, Kamikaze Japanese Militarists who had to be dug out of a hundred island strongholds, subdued by firebombing, bloody direct assaults, and atomic blasts. They are the Modern Day equivalent of the Aztec who had a perpetual need for slaves, flowing blood, and the beating hearts of their enemies -- a gift to their insatiable gods who gave them the imperative to conquer and kill in their names.
And while we dither, while we argue over the financial costs of wars we're barely fighting, as we argue about how to give free boob jobs to senior citizens and illegal immigrants, while we pretend to know what's in the hearts and minds of Muslims while blissfully ignoring the evidence of our eyes and ears to the contrary, while we pretend that we're dealing with people who are just like us, and who want the same things we do, and who are just jealous of our freedoms, they're arming themselves with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons; establishing contacts and alliances with the Enemies of Decency, the international drug cartels (Mexico, Columbia), the rogue states (North Korea),the criminal dictators of the world (Chavez, Khadaffi, Castro, Putin, et. al.), that will enable them to strike at us so much more easily and decisively when they're finally ready to do so -- all of it financed by The West itself, in the form of oil and drug money.
They've also infiltrated our societies, mostly because they were invited to do so, and work from within to weaken our resolve, tie us up in our own laws and pieties and suicidal need to be seen as 'nice', and if they can manage it, score a Trifecta of Insult by building a Mosque at Ground Zero, with federal funds, and with Western politicians and courts defending every overtly obnoxious, antagonistic gesture they make in the process. They laugh at us while they sap our morale and plan to kill us with our own money and institutions.
I promise; if you follow my plan, you'll see guaranteed results within 30 days, Mr. President...or your money (or rather, OUR money) back..
$60 billion dollars wasted on intelligence agencies which seem incapable of telling people what they need to know, but then can -- with a straight face -- point to a single sentence, with no relevance whatsoever and after the fact, which purports to "prove" that the Obama Administration "was on top" of the whole Egypt debacle all the time. The entire thing a sad-but-necessary bit of political theatre. Barack Obama, the Lightworker, Savior of the Universe, must be seen as infallible and all-knowing -- even if he is dumber than a sack of hammers, and some General has to ruin his reputation trying to convince you of it.
Sorry, but it doesn't look like Obama knows a damned thing about anything from here. But then again, that's perhaps not so much his fault, as it appears the people who are supposed to know seem incapable of telling him. Maybe The One wants it that way; no unpleasant news which might interfere with his fantasy world where Communism can be made to work. Perhaps people are just afraid to approach the Right Hand of God and utter non-politically-correct blasphemies to him. Maybe, just maybe, there's so many goddamned Czars, Special Advisers, Special-Assistants-to-the-Special-Advisers, Special-Advisers-to-the-Special-Czar-Assistants, that by the time information percolates up to the Resident of the United States, it's been cherry-picked, mangled, garbled, folded, spindled and mutilated to such an extent that he can't make any use of it, or it leaves him badly misinformed.
I will remind Gen. Tapper -- and I really dislike his cavalier defense of what appears to be indefensible --of something that he should already know, assuming he's read any history whatsoever; when the intelligence services are no longer interested in providing badly-needed facts, especially inconvenient and politically-painful ones, and are instead committed to ensuring that a certain political point of view is presented and advanced, then the term "intelligence service" becomes an oxymoron, and the threat to our citizens increases one-hundred-fold. If that was an example of what we're paying for -- something that read like a 5th-grade book report, only with fewer facts and fewer reasonable conclusions, to judge from the excerpts -- then it's no wonder that the Obama administration hasn't clue fucking one about how to fight a war against terrorism (then again, GWB didn't either), and seems to always be two steps behind the curve on every foreign policy issue of the day.
I'll tell you all you need to know about how to deal with the Middle East and international terrorism, Mr. Obama, and I don't need expensive satellites, eavesdropping equipment, spies, a great big expeditionary force, or fifty douchebags in government gray three-piece suits carrying James Bond briefcases, and Cereal-box Batman Decoder Rings. I don't need $60 billion bucks, either; I'd settle for $1 billion (tax free) if and when my ideas are tried and found to work.
Here's how you treat any issue arising from the Middle East;
1. Start killing Muslims by the tens of thousands, right in the shitholes where they breed, at the first sign of trouble. Make them suffer horribly, and if and when they beg for mercy, kick 'em in the teeth, and repeat the process. Once the Muslim World has been reduced to a smoking wasteland of ashes, pulverized concrete, and starving dogs feeding on rancid corpses, you won't need to spend a whole lot of money spying on anyone there, because the survivors (if there are any) will be far too busy trying to remember how to walk upright and gathering insects for subsistence to entertain thoughts about bombing anyone or shouting "Death to America!"
The reasons why we haven't followed this surprisingly simple strategy are easy to understand:
a. We are afraid, as a culture, to face the truth about the nature of the enemy, and his motivations. This (War against Radical Islam) is not about some minuscule band of nutjobs that simply 'give Islam a bad name', nor is it just some politically-motivated movement of really-excitable people; it is a fight against a poisonous cultural and religious imperative that is inimical to every value we hold dear. These guys can't be negotiated with. They can't be bought off. They can't be democratized, and then traded with. Their goal is nothing less than our death as a culture, and if they can't arrange that, they'd be happy to settle for our enslavement.
Instead of recognizing the obvious -- the leaders of this crusade (not afraid to use that word!) have only been telling us what they intend for the last 50 years -- we chose to be willingly deaf, and to advance with Eyes Wide Shut. Why is it that no one is listening, or takingnote of the obvious? Because if you took the Ama-dada-doo-dads of the world at their word, someone might expect you to actually do something, and who the fuck wants to take action? Taking action means possibly making mistakes, and when you make mistakes, they talk badly about you in the newspapers and on FoxNews.
b. There is a streak of cowardice which runs through the political leadership of the West. Doing what is necessary, in this case fighting a war of annihilation, is simply something too terrible for them to contemplate. In European capitols this is understandable; they've been -- excuse the expression -- Ground Zero for two World Wars, and they are, literally, on the front lines in this fight; the Muslim populations of a good number of European cities is absolutely staggering. War is already on their doorstep, but their cultural memory of war is such that they shrink from the prospect of further violence.
I have news for you; these guys (the Terrorists and Islamonazis) aren't afraid to die, like we are. In fact, they're eager to die; when you kill them, you're doing them a favor and sending them to Heaven and hooking them up with the false Paradise their stinking excuse for a religion promises them. Killing them by the tens of thousands, in this regard, is not as terrible, as say, the useless and bloody experiences of the Somme, Verdun or Ypres, the mass slaughters on the Eastern Front or the Hurtgenwald, it's actually an undertaking which would make both parties happy: we get to continue our way of life, they get Martyrdom. Everybody's happy!
But, bearing that sort of history in mind, it is easy to see just why Europeans would shrink from the sort of violence necessary to win a war of this nature.
There is no excuse for such a cringing attitude in this country, however, which makes the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan so confusing. No American city has ever been bombed flat...or at least not yet, and one would assume we'd be less squeamish than pansy Frenchmen and Panty-wearing Belgians. It appears as if the original strategy for both wars was to give the appearance of a strong response to Islamic terrorism without actually responding strongly at all. Considering the length and apparent meager returns of both campaigns, one is left to wonder just when it is that the real war is going to begin in earnest. From my viewpoint, there hasn't been a War on Terror as much as there has been a Public Relations Exercise With Guns in the Middle East, and a steady assault upon the liberties of Americans at home. All excused and justified by the threat of a future terrorist attack.
Two consecutive Administrations have talked a good game about a War on Terror, but there's been very little useful action, all the purple thumbs not withstanding.
c. The people who hold and exercise political power in this country are committed, insanely, to an unworkable program of encouraging democracy in a part of the world where that term has no meaning -- unless it means that the people get to vote for Sharia Law and expanded Jihad, implemented under the auspices of the dictator of their own choice -- and where the institutions to create what a Westerner would recognize as a pluralistic, free-market democracy simply do not exist, and cannot be created swiftly. Not without a long-term, and probably-bloody, super-expensive and difficult occupation of the Middle East.
This should not be surprising as it has been evident for a very long time in the Western world that our own political institutions have been overrun and infected by a multitude of people who poorly understand both the nature and origins of democracy, themselves. Their attempts to democratize the Middle East, and their repeated, weak justifications for their hard-to-fathom (in-)actions to date, remind one of some new-and-improved-and-vaguely-defined version of the White Man's Burden; only this time the program is being handled not by the energetic and clever individuals who built, say, the British Empire, but by a bunch of drooling doofuses who can't articulate just what it is they do hope to accomplish, and who are too busy playing domestic politics with the issue to be bothered with such petty distractions like winning the war before claiming victory for this or that piece of it.
d. Let's be clear; these wars are about Oil and access to it. The terrorists are funded by the proceeds of petroleum, and the West, for a variety of insane and often-contradictory reasons, is addicted to the Middle Eastern variety; but we could shrug off the worst of this addiction in a relative heartbeat, if we really tried. Doing so, however, is politically impossible at present because neither Right nor Left is either honest about it's true motivations, nor ready to jettison most of it's own Sacred Cows. So, we're locked into a strategy of trying to negotiate with madmen, dangling the trinkets of democracy, diplomatic niceties, commerce, and friendship -- none of which they want or understand -- all the while denying that the true engine of this conflict is the Right's requirement of Middle Eastern oil to maintain it's technological and economic dominance (while crowing about Free Trade), and the Left's motivation which is to ensure that all the pollution, dirt, danger and poisons that come from drilling and refining crude oil -- and which make possible their cushy lifestyles -- to be the problem of some brown-skinned people so that we can posture about saving endangered fleas and have nice, clean parks. And this all happens while Leftists paradoxically crow about their concern for both the 'environment' and the welfare of the 'Third World'.
The first step in winning this war is to be honest about why we're in it, and exposing the bullshit political pathologies which guide and inform the people who supposedly run it.
2. Since international terrorists do not respect the distinctions between innocents and combatants, or the niceties of international borders and sovereignty, neither should we. If it becomes necessary, for example, to chase a terrorist from Afghanistan and into Pakistan, it should be done, and fuck the Pakistani government; if they were truly an ally, they would be going after these guys themselves.
This is a war where there is no battlefield, no well-defined and recognizable front lines, unless you remember that London, Madrid, and New York were made such by the enemy. In this war, the enemy has the initiative; he chooses where to strike, he chooses where to fight, and when we chase him from one battlefield (say Afghanistan), he quickly melts away to another (say, Somalia). This isn't the same bunch of ragheads hopping from country-to-country every time, either; it's a world-wide movement that springs up in another place just as soon as we're occupied elsewhere, and this is by design.
Al'Qaeda, much like McDonald's, is a franchise; you don't have to have met Usama Bin Hidin' personally, or been given orders from his own mouth, to open up a branch of Al'Qaeda...only a press release, and an atrocity. Which is why it is imperative to stop this nonsense about building schools, and bringing clean water to a guy who is your friend this week, and planting IED's the next; start doing some truly horrific violence to people, and the romantic allure of becoming a Junior Al'Qaeda quickly wears off. String together a series of truly-disgusting incidents of violence, and pretty soon either no one wants that McBomb Franchise anymore, or, even better, there's no one left to join the Jihad.
Being nice to these folks is not going to deter them. Recognizing their borders and sovereignty is a courtesy they certainly don't extend to us. Being sensitive to their feelings is tantamount to surrender. It should be the policy of this country that it will reserve the right to beat the piss out of terrorists wherever we find them, and we fucking double-dog-dare-you to stop us.
3. Since the terrorists, and the states which support them, don't give a damn about UN resolutions, international law, cultural sensibilities, etc., neither should we. The only way to win this thing -- permanently -- is to be just as ruthless as the enemy, and often, thrice as ruthless. This is not a war over some line on a map; it's about ridding the planet of a pernicious evil that is every bit as dangerous and deadly as any we've ever known.
This is not a rabble of discontented people fighting for their freedom or rights; it's the mass psychosis of an entire culture reaching it's boiling point and erupting all over the world, committed to the idea that it is a chosen group, born to rule, promised dominance by God. It will use unspeakable violence to achieve that goal, and it is aware of the fact that it cannot achieve it's victory in one fell swoop; it is prepared to spend decades, perhaps centuries, to achieve it's divine destiny. For this culture, perpetual warfare is something that will just have to be accepted as the price of success. That many will die, and good number of them will be committed to suicide as a tactic, is something they actually embrace. With enthusiasm.
Along the way, they will engage in the worst crimes a Westerner's fevered imagination can come up with; slavery, mass rape, genocide, mass destruction, looting, pillaging, beheading, floggings, mutilations, burning down entire cities, destruction of cultural icons (art, architecture, literature, etc.), theft and dislocation. Their motto, to paraphrase the Caliph who ordered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, is "if it agrees with the Koran, it is not needed; if it does not agree with the Koran, it is not wanted...".
These assholes are not interested in our quaint notions of law, justice or diplomatic discourse; they want nothing less than to erase everything we hold dear or recognize as decent from human memory.
The West has dealt with enemies of this sort before. These are the New Huns. The New Nazis, Vandals, Visigoths, and Mongols. They are the New Breed of the Emperor-worshiping, fanatical, Kamikaze Japanese Militarists who had to be dug out of a hundred island strongholds, subdued by firebombing, bloody direct assaults, and atomic blasts. They are the Modern Day equivalent of the Aztec who had a perpetual need for slaves, flowing blood, and the beating hearts of their enemies -- a gift to their insatiable gods who gave them the imperative to conquer and kill in their names.
And while we dither, while we argue over the financial costs of wars we're barely fighting, as we argue about how to give free boob jobs to senior citizens and illegal immigrants, while we pretend to know what's in the hearts and minds of Muslims while blissfully ignoring the evidence of our eyes and ears to the contrary, while we pretend that we're dealing with people who are just like us, and who want the same things we do, and who are just jealous of our freedoms, they're arming themselves with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons; establishing contacts and alliances with the Enemies of Decency, the international drug cartels (Mexico, Columbia), the rogue states (North Korea),the criminal dictators of the world (Chavez, Khadaffi, Castro, Putin, et. al.), that will enable them to strike at us so much more easily and decisively when they're finally ready to do so -- all of it financed by The West itself, in the form of oil and drug money.
They've also infiltrated our societies, mostly because they were invited to do so, and work from within to weaken our resolve, tie us up in our own laws and pieties and suicidal need to be seen as 'nice', and if they can manage it, score a Trifecta of Insult by building a Mosque at Ground Zero, with federal funds, and with Western politicians and courts defending every overtly obnoxious, antagonistic gesture they make in the process. They laugh at us while they sap our morale and plan to kill us with our own money and institutions.
I promise; if you follow my plan, you'll see guaranteed results within 30 days, Mr. President...or your money (or rather, OUR money) back..
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Culling The Herd...
A Giant Glass Crater.
A very good friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning remarking on yesterday's puked-up pablum. In that post, I recommended the forced migration and expulsion of Muslims from the Western World if only because it would make the process of boarding a flight to Disneyland that much easier for us all, and represent a giant step towards getting the government out of our lives. He also makes reference to some of my other pet peeves, written about extensively in this Diary of a Madman (the epidemic of stupidity, the complete wasteland full of knuckle-dragging barbarians that is American politics, and my going-to-crap-at-warp-speed hometown). He writes:
A giant glass crater...... is what you want the middle east to become...I'm convinced Staten island should [secede] from the union and implement a few of your policies.Oh, while you're at it, I want you to enforce that you need to take a general intelligence test before you get the right to vote, too. Too many idiots in this world cast their vote because they are promised a free lunch and a brief joyride on a minibus. Thoughts?
And this began to dovetail nicely with one of the recurring themes which runs through my mailbox; the comments and e-mails I get from complete retards who want to know what sort of horrible disease I must suffer from that makes me so "negative" and "hateful" of (fill-in-the-blank) Muslims/Democrats/Women/Minorities/Ivy Leaguers/Irish Setters/ the Elderly/Single Mothers/Europeans/Union Workers, et. al.
The most impassioned nonsense though, comes from self-important Baby Boomers who want to know why I hate them so much. There was one 60+ year old respondent yesterday who especially chapped my ass with is sanctimony about how his generation 'created' so much, and 'contributed' to this-that-and-the-other, and was 'owed' a 'debt' of 'gratitude'. I wanted to puke.
The notions seemingly came together of their own accord -- would life really be more tolerable if we just started knocking off certain categories of disagreeable people? Why is it that I seem to hold certain antipathies towards certain groups of folks? And who the fuck does this jackoff lecturing me in an e-mail think he is? -- and shit just sprang into my head.
So, with this in mind, I wrote my buddy back. I hope my "I'm Baby Boomer God" correspondent reads this, and finally gets it:
Yes, there should be a great culling of the herd, methinks, to be followed by a carefully-planned program of street executions.
Never mind taking a test to vote; there should be a list of minimum requirements necessary for continued breathing. And, of course, I'd just kill anyone born before 1960, if only because I don't feel like supporting them in their old age, which thanks to medical science seems to last far longer than it actually needs to, and keeps people alive long past the point where they're of any use to anyone.
To wit: our world is run by the Baby Boomers. They are the CEO's, Politicians, Professors, Money managers, Media figures, Generals, Bishops, and Bureaucrats, all infused with the rubbishy, romantically-retarded mindsets of their youth -- the Kennedy worshipers, the Flower Power generation, the Hippies, the Draft Dodgers, the Acid Droppers, the Communism-was-a-great-idea-only-poorly-executed mindset, and the No-Fault Divorce Generation. Do you think they've done a good job running this world? Have they done the right things? Are they leaving anything of value in their wake? If you judged an entire generation of human beings on just what it was they collectively left to a civilization, what would their (the Baby Boomer's) record be?
The Beatles, The Nehru Jacket, Situational Ethics, AIDS, Hedonism, The Pet Rock, Jimmy Carter, Mood Rings, Earth Shoes, Financial Collapse, interminable warfare with incomplete or nebulous 'Victories', and the mass marketing and consumption of Viagra and Cheetos?
Yes, re-open Auschwitz under new management, I say!
Baby Boomers are some of my biggest detractors, and my second-deadliest enemy (I didn't forget about you fly-swatting-eat-with-the-same-hand-I-wipe-my-ass-with-sheep-shaggers-in-the-sand!). This generation seems to think they're smarter and better than I am, that they're entitled to live forever on my dime all hopped up on government-financed Viagra, plastic surgery, and medical miracles that claim to 'cure' all the inconveniences of Old Age -- from a toe fungus to malfunctioning prostate -- at $300 a bottle, and which always comes with a list of side effects that predictably begins with crippling diarrhea and always includes with 'risk of sudden heart failure', and a warning not to drive or operate heavy machinery under it's influence. That's when they're not busy lecturing me on how I wouldn't live "in the world we have today" if it hadn't had been for them and their Noble Enterprise in every field of endeavor from modern communications to medicine.
Guess again, people. If you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd see just exactly what pieces of excrement the majority of you truly are. You have merely stood upon the shoulders of giants, and self-proclaimed yourselves Titans, and presuming the right to lord it over much better people than you.
Does this world look like an Earthly Paradise to you? Does it even look like a moderately-tolerable world? It's the World you Baby Boomers have created, you know. You run it. You crafted it in your mold and gave it the special ingredient that only you could provide in abundance; bullshit. In my mind, the resulting product of such infantile minds was entirely predictable.
Because, for the most part, Baby Boomers were the most mollycoddled, selfish, spoiled, over-indulged, and least-disciplined generation of human beings to ever come down the pike. Spare me the defensive e-mails, please, about how you, personally, are the exception to the rule; how grew up poor, how your parents were strict disciplinarians, and how you did 'all the right things', ate your peas, and never followed that pot-smoking-orgy-lovin' Hippie crowd. If you actually do exist, in the form you've presented yourself, then you, Sir or Madam, are a distinct minority. You are a dinosaur. You are the unexpected shard of pottery that turns up in the stratigraphy of human history, and throws the archaeologist for a loop. A flaw in the pattern. The majority of the people of your generation have caused the people of my generation to wonder whether or not you were all just a colossal waste of DNA, some Great Cosmic Mistake.
On that Chart that shows the "Evolution of Man", I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to count 'Baby Boomer' as a separate species, and then stick it someplace between the primordial primates and the first upright-walkers? We could call it Homo Erectus Erectus, the two 'Erectus' designation nicely describing both what absolute pricks most of you are, and your complete fascination with the hard-on. Viva Viagra! and all that.
Where does this visceral dislike come from, you ask? This desire to write off an entire mass of human beings, this lack of empathy, sympathy, the denial, even, of your basic humanity?
Well, I would think it starts with my parents, who for lack of a better term, were/are absolutely horrible human beings. They weren't cruel, nor were they neglecting --up to a certain point -- but they were selfish, thoughtless bastards, the pair. Mostly this is because the culture in which they 'came of age' was a selfish, thoughtless age of bastards. They were still living on the cusp of the previous era, where some Old-Fashioned virtues were still respected, or at least still followed because society had not made it's Next Great Leap of Stupidity (that would require a new range of technology which on the one had, promised to make communication ever faster, cheaper, easier and achievable, to break down frontiers and open new vistas of human achievement, and on the other, isolates and stratifies us all in ways that we can barely begin to recognize),which explains why they got married so young (father: 23, mother: 20) . That was, according to the mores of the day, what you were 'supposed' to do when you were that age, and when the routine of double-feature-and-hamburger-at-the-Malt-shop became stale, when you couldn't think of anything better to do on Saturday Night, and you didn't have the guts to wear tie-dye and get blasted as 'mind-expanding' experience.
My parents weren't exactly what you would call 'involved', unless you applied that word to them solely as individuals. They were certainly very involved with themselves. Which is probably why they got divorced. As I've 'grown up' and 'matured' I've come to recognize that my parents never gave me a single piece of advice, not one decent example, not a shred of guidance in any form that you would expect to get from a parent, which didn't, ultimately, revolve around three basic premises:
1. Don't embarrass me in public.
2. What would people say about ME if they saw you behaving that way?
3.I'm your Mother/Father....you owe me.
In fact, it was my grandparents who taught me my lessons growing up, and unfortunately for me, they died (young) just at the point where I probably was just beginning to understand what sort of people they were, what they were telling me, and just what it was they still had to offer. My (maternal) grandparents were teaching me maxims that if one person in ten still followed, would make Planet Earth a much better place;
1. People have obligations to one another, and responsibilities towards one another
2. Hard work eventually pays off
3. A man's word is his bond, and honesty is always the best policy
4. Nothing EVER comes before family
5. Do 'the right things' all the time and all will be well.
Unfortunately, they were teaching me these things just at that point in history where my parent's generation was busy tearing that foundation of common sense, that Universal Code of Conduct, down.
In fact, in retrospect, the only things my parents ever taught me was that everything in life could be dealt with by the application of a very simple formula;
1. Denial
2. Run away from your problems when they could no longer be ignored
3. Bitch and whine about your problems when running away no longer works is the only way to go,
,4. When denial, running, bitching, whining don't serve, do everything you can to make your problems someone else's,
5. When all of the above fails, complain that you are the victim of an invisible, all-encompassing conspiracy, and then stew in your own juices about how 'unfair' it all is.
My Father, an absolute cretin that someone thought it would be a good idea to give a badge and gun to, thankfully died at age 37, and so spared me having to put up with his special brand of insanity for many years after. My mother simply made her misery everyone else's by making bad decisions in serial fashion and then calling upon her children to pick up the pieces of her shattered life (and, naturally, suffer the consequences that came with those pieces). If that meant your eldest (19 year-old) son had to co-sign second mortgages as part of your (second) divorce settlement, or take out extended lines of credit in his name for your use, or work 12-hours a day, seven-days a week to feed everyone, while you declared personal bankruptcy in the dark of night without his knowledge -- so you could be 'free' while sticking him with the bills and legal responsibilities -- then so much the better. The part where he had to financially and morally support you for the next 20 years, and become all but a surrogate husband because you were a depressed bag of skin for whom work was a dirty word, was the part that went unspoken. But then again, I was younger and dumber, and still thought that sons were supposed to do things like this for their mothers. It was a rather romantic notion, no?
There was never even as much as a "Thank you", or an "I'm sorry". No need for any of that. You gave birth, after all.
When I went to work for a living (at age 18), skipping college because my overriding goal since the age of 14 was to get the fuck out of my mother's house just as quickly as possible (she remarried, when I was 13, to a complete asshole who's Ozzie-and-Harriet vision of what a married couple should be didn't seem to include a wife with three teenagers that he couldn't stand in tow) I encountered a shitload of people just like my parents; authority figures who were self-interested, selfish, stupid, short-sighted, crass, conceited, and convinced of their own superiority (after all, they had been at Woodstock, and burned their Draft Cards, and finished college, although they hardly ever seemed to display anything approaching 'smarts', you see), and they had a certain power -- they could sign a paycheck, or they could pass on the secrets of the trade -- and they used these, often wantonly, to bludgeon people into line.
"Into Line" is a euphemism for 'keep me employed without having to really work, Cubicle Slave!'
I can't tell you how many really bad bosses I've had. I've lost count. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been denied promotions, recognition of a job well done, opportunities, or even just the simple respect due a human being because there was something else at stake -- usually money -- by someone who had achieved a certain position in life and had to do everything humanly possible just to stay there. If that meant stepping all over others, then so be it. If that meant making a promise one day and breaking it the next, then that was alright, too. Ethics, you see, are something that you're supposed to demand, but which only other people are supposed to have, and something that's conveniently forgotten by you until it becomes necessary to use them to your advantage.
Yeah, I know: Life isn't fair. Fine, I can deal with that. When it's unfair because someone has a vested interest in making it unfair, then I have issues.
Keeping someone 'in their place' because they kept you in YOUR place was simply what a 'good manager' did, the definition of 'good manager' being 'bigger paycheck for me, more responsibility (and accountability) for everyone else'. I found the worst examples of this mindset in exactly the place you would most reasonably expect to find it; on Wall Street.
If you've ever had any morals or quaint ideas of the Old-fashioned virtues about you, you will quickly become a victim in that sort of environment. You're dead meat the second you walk through the door with that mindset. There's hunters and there's prey, and what comes in between equates to the human equivalent of a Serengeti-plains scavenger, like a hyena. The differences between people on Wall Street are not truly measured in ability, intelligence or potential, but in corner offices, status, bonus checks, perks, and titles, but mostly by what one is willing and prepared to do to his fellow human beings in order to get them. The ability to play at office politics, rather than the ability to do something productive, is far more important in this regard , as is having the 'right' qualifications (pieces of paper that say you faithfully parroted whatever the professor told you to think). 'Connections' (Ivy League vs. State School, working-class background vs. upper-middle class background, school or club ties vs. professional ones) matter even more than smarts or politics.
If you doubt this, take a look at our 401(k) statement this month, or ask your bank just how it is that your home is now basically worthless. The 'Best and the Brightest'? How many of them actually got fired after that debacle? How many billions of dollars did the government pour into financial institutions to cover their losses? Don't make me laugh. These guys are simply bookies in better suits. The Mob is actually fairer, more honest about what it does, and harder-working, but because the Mafia isn't a licensed agent of the State Revenue Collectors, they're the ones who get prosecuted.
When you haven't any of that ammunition (the right sort of qualifications or connections) in your arsenal, you have to do the best you can. I became a master of playing their game -- but by my own rules. Wall Street made me a hyena.
So, you need me (to keep you in your cushy no-responsibility-high-pay job) more than I need you? Good, let's see you discipline me when I'm an hour late late tomorrow...and the next day. I want to see you have to eat my shit for a change when I do it.Thinking of throwing me to the wolves to save your own sorry hide when the time comes? Well, let's just see who else will work every weekend and holiday, or take on the shittiest projects when you need them to, because otherwise you don't get the leather upholstery in the BMW this year. Not going to put an extra zero on the end of that bonus check? What do you think will happen when your wife gets that letter in which I rat you out for all the shit I know you've done in your life?
I made my living by being the 'Indispensable Man'; they guy who knows everything, especially where all the bodies were buried, who does everything, has his hand in everything, but really doesn't give a shit unless there's extra zeros involved, who can stick that in your face, or beat you over the head with it the way you used to beat him.
It worked for a good, long while, too. Until one September morning where the depth of the depravity finally reached new lows; a 757 was forcibly embedded within the North Tower, and every suit in the building was consumed not by the idea or horrors of the incredible human tragedy being played out in Lower Manhattan, but whether or not such a disaster meant the financial markets wouldn't be open for business that day. They did open, incidentally. Trading actually took place. A lot of it. It happened, in small part, because I was one of the people who made sure it could. That was my job; it was the means by which I survived in that particular jungle.
And a week later, you see yourself within a promotional video in which your company's line-up of Financial Superstars brags that while the tallest buildings in New York may now be smoldering ruins, 3,000 people are dead, a trillion dollars of mostly-paper assets were wiped off the boards, and the country was now going to war, by God, Smith-Barney -- a Division of Citigroup -- turned a goddamned profit on 9/11! In fact,they were the only brokerage house to do so on that day. Why, that's a fabulous selling point; the world may be going to shit, people may be getting murdered in the streets, but dammit, we'll still make you hard, cold cash.
It made me physically ill to watch that. I guess not all of the decency in me had completely evaporated.
I don't know you would feel, but I couldn't live with myself after that. I felt absolutely filthy. And that's where it all started. There's much, much more to tell, but you get the general idea; when you've been surrounded by complete assholes all of your life, it's only a matter of time before your head explodes. At every point in Life, it seems, there was always someone born between 1945 and 1960 who stole, cheated, lied, oppressed, frustrated and disppointed, at the focal point of every personal crisis.
Who were my rotten parents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who shit on the values of my grandparents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who disappointed, lied, cheated, stole? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who turned me into a heartless, mercenary prick? Baby Boomers. Who planted the flag of financial victory on a pile of corpses? Why, they were Baby Boomers, too. Imagine that?
And now in 21st century America, it's the same people who have presided over the figuratively-smoldering ruins of a once-great nation. They run everything, you know, and they've run everything right into the ground, too. It's the generation of "if it feels good, do it", or "tune in, turn on, drop out', of "Greed is Good", of "I didn't inhale" or "Compassionate Conservatism" and "I voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it". The generation where every problem is the result of someone being a "victim" of someone else. Where conspiracy theory and petty partisan politics informs the public discourse, where the battlecries of a Stoned Generation -- equality, fairness, justice --still echo, but never take any concrete form or appear to be one fucking inch closer toreality. It was all lip service and posturing. It's a generation which has created a world where everyone is entitled to everything, but no one is ever expected to actually earn anything, and if you do earn it, someone else has the right to take it from you. A world where the rule is "do as I say, not as I do", and where getting away with the absolute worst of abuses is often either a badge of distinction, or a sign of how much smarter you are than everyone else.
It's a world run by people who fight wars to "bring freedom" to others who have no idea what that means, no matter how many lives or how much of (other-people's) blood and treasure it takes. It's a place where color still matters, regardless of how much legislation you pass, because it's a wound that can never be allowed to heal (otherwise, you couldn't troll votes and campaign donations, Dummy!). It's a place where people become gazillionaires by running three-decade-long Ponzi schemes with no legal oversight, and by creating bright, shiny, visually-exciting virtual worlds wherein nothing of consequence is ever achieved. Here, in our current state of affairs, the way to the top is by manipulating people; rich vs. poor, black vs. white, manual laborer vs. office worker, tax generator vs. tax consumer, man vs. woman. None of this, incidentally, is new; the history of mankind is replete with examples of all of this stupidity, it's just that the Baby Boomers who have it developed it into a fine art, gotten stupendously wealthy off it, caused so much grief and heartache along the way, and then expect to be rewarded for the absolute desolation they have created in perpetuity by a shrinking tax base (another consequence of their actions? a lower birthrate!), which is harried, worked, propagandized, categorized, dictated to, and indebted to inhuman levels by a system of government absolutely crammed to the rafters with the very people who will soon benefit the most -- i.e. Baby Boomers. Or so they think.
I don't like you people. I don't want to be like you. You're evil. For the majority of you, a natural death is more than you deserve. And guess what? There's literally millions more of me out here, and we're determined to ensure that you get exactly what you deserve, and not a penny more. Not even as much as an extra aspirin, roll of toilet paper, or five minutes of our time. Why? Because you've left us with nothing; no anchors, morally or spiritually, no ethics -- just ask five people at random to define that word for you, and you'll be surprised that no one can anymore -- no code of conduct that hasn't been torn to tatters by your hypocrisy, no system of justice or government that hasn't been tainted by your foul stench. Remember when your parents used to say to you "I hope one day you have children who do to you what you do to me?" -- and you laughed at them?
Guess who's laughing now? You'll soon be retiring in massive numbers with greatly-depleted assets. Think those Tea Partiers in the street are concerned with 'government spending' as a matter of principle? Take a closer look, and you'll see all the 40-somethings out there, and on some level, I can promise you, there's a great mass of them who recognize the enormous blood-sucking-probiscus the Hippie Generation is about to put on their wallets, and all that talk of 'curbing govenrment spending' is really just a subconcious euphemism for 'starve those selfish pricks to death!'. On some level, all that Tea Party jazz isn't so much about taxes, as much as it is Generational Warfare.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Never have so Many owed so much to so Few...", and quite soon, that will become a kind of reality in America with regards to the huge swarms of retiring Baby Boomers who want nothing but free Healthcare and ever-growing Social Security checks, convinced that they deserve it all. Only in a few years, it will become "Never have so Many Depended Upon So Few".The parallels are these: Churchill's Few were fighting for Survival, and the New Few who are expected to pay for, and then shut up about, being screwed by the most-selfish Generation of Many in human history, are in a similar battle for their own survival. Churchill's Few were men willing to sacrifice on behalf of others; Our Few won't sacrifice for anyone...our Parents, Teachers, Bosses, Politicians, all taught us we that didn't have to, as that was always someone else's job.
You sowed the wind, and I dearly hope you reap the whirlwind, Assholes. If you're really lucky, maybe some 40-something will have enough compassion for you to invent a low-salt cat food that's far more palatable and easier to eat without Medicare-supplied dentures really, really soon.
And you should be fucking thankful for even that much.
A very good friend of mine sent me an e-mail this morning remarking on yesterday's puked-up pablum. In that post, I recommended the forced migration and expulsion of Muslims from the Western World if only because it would make the process of boarding a flight to Disneyland that much easier for us all, and represent a giant step towards getting the government out of our lives. He also makes reference to some of my other pet peeves, written about extensively in this Diary of a Madman (the epidemic of stupidity, the complete wasteland full of knuckle-dragging barbarians that is American politics, and my going-to-crap-at-warp-speed hometown). He writes:
A giant glass crater...... is what you want the middle east to become...I'm convinced Staten island should [secede] from the union and implement a few of your policies.Oh, while you're at it, I want you to enforce that you need to take a general intelligence test before you get the right to vote, too. Too many idiots in this world cast their vote because they are promised a free lunch and a brief joyride on a minibus. Thoughts?
And this began to dovetail nicely with one of the recurring themes which runs through my mailbox; the comments and e-mails I get from complete retards who want to know what sort of horrible disease I must suffer from that makes me so "negative" and "hateful" of (fill-in-the-blank) Muslims/Democrats/Women/Minorities/Ivy Leaguers/Irish Setters/ the Elderly/Single Mothers/Europeans/Union Workers, et. al.
The most impassioned nonsense though, comes from self-important Baby Boomers who want to know why I hate them so much. There was one 60+ year old respondent yesterday who especially chapped my ass with is sanctimony about how his generation 'created' so much, and 'contributed' to this-that-and-the-other, and was 'owed' a 'debt' of 'gratitude'. I wanted to puke.
The notions seemingly came together of their own accord -- would life really be more tolerable if we just started knocking off certain categories of disagreeable people? Why is it that I seem to hold certain antipathies towards certain groups of folks? And who the fuck does this jackoff lecturing me in an e-mail think he is? -- and shit just sprang into my head.
So, with this in mind, I wrote my buddy back. I hope my "I'm Baby Boomer God" correspondent reads this, and finally gets it:
Yes, there should be a great culling of the herd, methinks, to be followed by a carefully-planned program of street executions.
Never mind taking a test to vote; there should be a list of minimum requirements necessary for continued breathing. And, of course, I'd just kill anyone born before 1960, if only because I don't feel like supporting them in their old age, which thanks to medical science seems to last far longer than it actually needs to, and keeps people alive long past the point where they're of any use to anyone.
To wit: our world is run by the Baby Boomers. They are the CEO's, Politicians, Professors, Money managers, Media figures, Generals, Bishops, and Bureaucrats, all infused with the rubbishy, romantically-retarded mindsets of their youth -- the Kennedy worshipers, the Flower Power generation, the Hippies, the Draft Dodgers, the Acid Droppers, the Communism-was-a-great-idea-only-poorly-executed mindset, and the No-Fault Divorce Generation. Do you think they've done a good job running this world? Have they done the right things? Are they leaving anything of value in their wake? If you judged an entire generation of human beings on just what it was they collectively left to a civilization, what would their (the Baby Boomer's) record be?
The Beatles, The Nehru Jacket, Situational Ethics, AIDS, Hedonism, The Pet Rock, Jimmy Carter, Mood Rings, Earth Shoes, Financial Collapse, interminable warfare with incomplete or nebulous 'Victories', and the mass marketing and consumption of Viagra and Cheetos?
Yes, re-open Auschwitz under new management, I say!
Baby Boomers are some of my biggest detractors, and my second-deadliest enemy (I didn't forget about you fly-swatting-eat-with-the-same-hand-I-wipe-my-ass-with-sheep-shaggers-in-the-sand!). This generation seems to think they're smarter and better than I am, that they're entitled to live forever on my dime all hopped up on government-financed Viagra, plastic surgery, and medical miracles that claim to 'cure' all the inconveniences of Old Age -- from a toe fungus to malfunctioning prostate -- at $300 a bottle, and which always comes with a list of side effects that predictably begins with crippling diarrhea and always includes with 'risk of sudden heart failure', and a warning not to drive or operate heavy machinery under it's influence. That's when they're not busy lecturing me on how I wouldn't live "in the world we have today" if it hadn't had been for them and their Noble Enterprise in every field of endeavor from modern communications to medicine.
Guess again, people. If you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd see just exactly what pieces of excrement the majority of you truly are. You have merely stood upon the shoulders of giants, and self-proclaimed yourselves Titans, and presuming the right to lord it over much better people than you.
Does this world look like an Earthly Paradise to you? Does it even look like a moderately-tolerable world? It's the World you Baby Boomers have created, you know. You run it. You crafted it in your mold and gave it the special ingredient that only you could provide in abundance; bullshit. In my mind, the resulting product of such infantile minds was entirely predictable.
Because, for the most part, Baby Boomers were the most mollycoddled, selfish, spoiled, over-indulged, and least-disciplined generation of human beings to ever come down the pike. Spare me the defensive e-mails, please, about how you, personally, are the exception to the rule; how grew up poor, how your parents were strict disciplinarians, and how you did 'all the right things', ate your peas, and never followed that pot-smoking-orgy-lovin' Hippie crowd. If you actually do exist, in the form you've presented yourself, then you, Sir or Madam, are a distinct minority. You are a dinosaur. You are the unexpected shard of pottery that turns up in the stratigraphy of human history, and throws the archaeologist for a loop. A flaw in the pattern. The majority of the people of your generation have caused the people of my generation to wonder whether or not you were all just a colossal waste of DNA, some Great Cosmic Mistake.
On that Chart that shows the "Evolution of Man", I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to count 'Baby Boomer' as a separate species, and then stick it someplace between the primordial primates and the first upright-walkers? We could call it Homo Erectus Erectus, the two 'Erectus' designation nicely describing both what absolute pricks most of you are, and your complete fascination with the hard-on. Viva Viagra! and all that.
Where does this visceral dislike come from, you ask? This desire to write off an entire mass of human beings, this lack of empathy, sympathy, the denial, even, of your basic humanity?
Well, I would think it starts with my parents, who for lack of a better term, were/are absolutely horrible human beings. They weren't cruel, nor were they neglecting --up to a certain point -- but they were selfish, thoughtless bastards, the pair. Mostly this is because the culture in which they 'came of age' was a selfish, thoughtless age of bastards. They were still living on the cusp of the previous era, where some Old-Fashioned virtues were still respected, or at least still followed because society had not made it's Next Great Leap of Stupidity (that would require a new range of technology which on the one had, promised to make communication ever faster, cheaper, easier and achievable, to break down frontiers and open new vistas of human achievement, and on the other, isolates and stratifies us all in ways that we can barely begin to recognize),which explains why they got married so young (father: 23, mother: 20) . That was, according to the mores of the day, what you were 'supposed' to do when you were that age, and when the routine of double-feature-and-hamburger-at-the-Malt-shop became stale, when you couldn't think of anything better to do on Saturday Night, and you didn't have the guts to wear tie-dye and get blasted as 'mind-expanding' experience.
My parents weren't exactly what you would call 'involved', unless you applied that word to them solely as individuals. They were certainly very involved with themselves. Which is probably why they got divorced. As I've 'grown up' and 'matured' I've come to recognize that my parents never gave me a single piece of advice, not one decent example, not a shred of guidance in any form that you would expect to get from a parent, which didn't, ultimately, revolve around three basic premises:
1. Don't embarrass me in public.
2. What would people say about ME if they saw you behaving that way?
3.I'm your Mother/Father....you owe me.
In fact, it was my grandparents who taught me my lessons growing up, and unfortunately for me, they died (young) just at the point where I probably was just beginning to understand what sort of people they were, what they were telling me, and just what it was they still had to offer. My (maternal) grandparents were teaching me maxims that if one person in ten still followed, would make Planet Earth a much better place;
1. People have obligations to one another, and responsibilities towards one another
2. Hard work eventually pays off
3. A man's word is his bond, and honesty is always the best policy
4. Nothing EVER comes before family
5. Do 'the right things' all the time and all will be well.
Unfortunately, they were teaching me these things just at that point in history where my parent's generation was busy tearing that foundation of common sense, that Universal Code of Conduct, down.
In fact, in retrospect, the only things my parents ever taught me was that everything in life could be dealt with by the application of a very simple formula;
1. Denial
2. Run away from your problems when they could no longer be ignored
3. Bitch and whine about your problems when running away no longer works is the only way to go,
,4. When denial, running, bitching, whining don't serve, do everything you can to make your problems someone else's,
5. When all of the above fails, complain that you are the victim of an invisible, all-encompassing conspiracy, and then stew in your own juices about how 'unfair' it all is.
My Father, an absolute cretin that someone thought it would be a good idea to give a badge and gun to, thankfully died at age 37, and so spared me having to put up with his special brand of insanity for many years after. My mother simply made her misery everyone else's by making bad decisions in serial fashion and then calling upon her children to pick up the pieces of her shattered life (and, naturally, suffer the consequences that came with those pieces). If that meant your eldest (19 year-old) son had to co-sign second mortgages as part of your (second) divorce settlement, or take out extended lines of credit in his name for your use, or work 12-hours a day, seven-days a week to feed everyone, while you declared personal bankruptcy in the dark of night without his knowledge -- so you could be 'free' while sticking him with the bills and legal responsibilities -- then so much the better. The part where he had to financially and morally support you for the next 20 years, and become all but a surrogate husband because you were a depressed bag of skin for whom work was a dirty word, was the part that went unspoken. But then again, I was younger and dumber, and still thought that sons were supposed to do things like this for their mothers. It was a rather romantic notion, no?
There was never even as much as a "Thank you", or an "I'm sorry". No need for any of that. You gave birth, after all.
When I went to work for a living (at age 18), skipping college because my overriding goal since the age of 14 was to get the fuck out of my mother's house just as quickly as possible (she remarried, when I was 13, to a complete asshole who's Ozzie-and-Harriet vision of what a married couple should be didn't seem to include a wife with three teenagers that he couldn't stand in tow) I encountered a shitload of people just like my parents; authority figures who were self-interested, selfish, stupid, short-sighted, crass, conceited, and convinced of their own superiority (after all, they had been at Woodstock, and burned their Draft Cards, and finished college, although they hardly ever seemed to display anything approaching 'smarts', you see), and they had a certain power -- they could sign a paycheck, or they could pass on the secrets of the trade -- and they used these, often wantonly, to bludgeon people into line.
"Into Line" is a euphemism for 'keep me employed without having to really work, Cubicle Slave!'
I can't tell you how many really bad bosses I've had. I've lost count. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been denied promotions, recognition of a job well done, opportunities, or even just the simple respect due a human being because there was something else at stake -- usually money -- by someone who had achieved a certain position in life and had to do everything humanly possible just to stay there. If that meant stepping all over others, then so be it. If that meant making a promise one day and breaking it the next, then that was alright, too. Ethics, you see, are something that you're supposed to demand, but which only other people are supposed to have, and something that's conveniently forgotten by you until it becomes necessary to use them to your advantage.
Yeah, I know: Life isn't fair. Fine, I can deal with that. When it's unfair because someone has a vested interest in making it unfair, then I have issues.
Keeping someone 'in their place' because they kept you in YOUR place was simply what a 'good manager' did, the definition of 'good manager' being 'bigger paycheck for me, more responsibility (and accountability) for everyone else'. I found the worst examples of this mindset in exactly the place you would most reasonably expect to find it; on Wall Street.
If you've ever had any morals or quaint ideas of the Old-fashioned virtues about you, you will quickly become a victim in that sort of environment. You're dead meat the second you walk through the door with that mindset. There's hunters and there's prey, and what comes in between equates to the human equivalent of a Serengeti-plains scavenger, like a hyena. The differences between people on Wall Street are not truly measured in ability, intelligence or potential, but in corner offices, status, bonus checks, perks, and titles, but mostly by what one is willing and prepared to do to his fellow human beings in order to get them. The ability to play at office politics, rather than the ability to do something productive, is far more important in this regard , as is having the 'right' qualifications (pieces of paper that say you faithfully parroted whatever the professor told you to think). 'Connections' (Ivy League vs. State School, working-class background vs. upper-middle class background, school or club ties vs. professional ones) matter even more than smarts or politics.
If you doubt this, take a look at our 401(k) statement this month, or ask your bank just how it is that your home is now basically worthless. The 'Best and the Brightest'? How many of them actually got fired after that debacle? How many billions of dollars did the government pour into financial institutions to cover their losses? Don't make me laugh. These guys are simply bookies in better suits. The Mob is actually fairer, more honest about what it does, and harder-working, but because the Mafia isn't a licensed agent of the State Revenue Collectors, they're the ones who get prosecuted.
When you haven't any of that ammunition (the right sort of qualifications or connections) in your arsenal, you have to do the best you can. I became a master of playing their game -- but by my own rules. Wall Street made me a hyena.
So, you need me (to keep you in your cushy no-responsibility-high-pay job) more than I need you? Good, let's see you discipline me when I'm an hour late late tomorrow...and the next day. I want to see you have to eat my shit for a change when I do it.Thinking of throwing me to the wolves to save your own sorry hide when the time comes? Well, let's just see who else will work every weekend and holiday, or take on the shittiest projects when you need them to, because otherwise you don't get the leather upholstery in the BMW this year. Not going to put an extra zero on the end of that bonus check? What do you think will happen when your wife gets that letter in which I rat you out for all the shit I know you've done in your life?
I made my living by being the 'Indispensable Man'; they guy who knows everything, especially where all the bodies were buried, who does everything, has his hand in everything, but really doesn't give a shit unless there's extra zeros involved, who can stick that in your face, or beat you over the head with it the way you used to beat him.
It worked for a good, long while, too. Until one September morning where the depth of the depravity finally reached new lows; a 757 was forcibly embedded within the North Tower, and every suit in the building was consumed not by the idea or horrors of the incredible human tragedy being played out in Lower Manhattan, but whether or not such a disaster meant the financial markets wouldn't be open for business that day. They did open, incidentally. Trading actually took place. A lot of it. It happened, in small part, because I was one of the people who made sure it could. That was my job; it was the means by which I survived in that particular jungle.
And a week later, you see yourself within a promotional video in which your company's line-up of Financial Superstars brags that while the tallest buildings in New York may now be smoldering ruins, 3,000 people are dead, a trillion dollars of mostly-paper assets were wiped off the boards, and the country was now going to war, by God, Smith-Barney -- a Division of Citigroup -- turned a goddamned profit on 9/11! In fact,they were the only brokerage house to do so on that day. Why, that's a fabulous selling point; the world may be going to shit, people may be getting murdered in the streets, but dammit, we'll still make you hard, cold cash.
It made me physically ill to watch that. I guess not all of the decency in me had completely evaporated.
I don't know you would feel, but I couldn't live with myself after that. I felt absolutely filthy. And that's where it all started. There's much, much more to tell, but you get the general idea; when you've been surrounded by complete assholes all of your life, it's only a matter of time before your head explodes. At every point in Life, it seems, there was always someone born between 1945 and 1960 who stole, cheated, lied, oppressed, frustrated and disppointed, at the focal point of every personal crisis.
Who were my rotten parents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who shit on the values of my grandparents? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who disappointed, lied, cheated, stole? Baby Boomers. Who were the people who turned me into a heartless, mercenary prick? Baby Boomers. Who planted the flag of financial victory on a pile of corpses? Why, they were Baby Boomers, too. Imagine that?
And now in 21st century America, it's the same people who have presided over the figuratively-smoldering ruins of a once-great nation. They run everything, you know, and they've run everything right into the ground, too. It's the generation of "if it feels good, do it", or "tune in, turn on, drop out', of "Greed is Good", of "I didn't inhale" or "Compassionate Conservatism" and "I voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it". The generation where every problem is the result of someone being a "victim" of someone else. Where conspiracy theory and petty partisan politics informs the public discourse, where the battlecries of a Stoned Generation -- equality, fairness, justice --still echo, but never take any concrete form or appear to be one fucking inch closer toreality. It was all lip service and posturing. It's a generation which has created a world where everyone is entitled to everything, but no one is ever expected to actually earn anything, and if you do earn it, someone else has the right to take it from you. A world where the rule is "do as I say, not as I do", and where getting away with the absolute worst of abuses is often either a badge of distinction, or a sign of how much smarter you are than everyone else.
It's a world run by people who fight wars to "bring freedom" to others who have no idea what that means, no matter how many lives or how much of (other-people's) blood and treasure it takes. It's a place where color still matters, regardless of how much legislation you pass, because it's a wound that can never be allowed to heal (otherwise, you couldn't troll votes and campaign donations, Dummy!). It's a place where people become gazillionaires by running three-decade-long Ponzi schemes with no legal oversight, and by creating bright, shiny, visually-exciting virtual worlds wherein nothing of consequence is ever achieved. Here, in our current state of affairs, the way to the top is by manipulating people; rich vs. poor, black vs. white, manual laborer vs. office worker, tax generator vs. tax consumer, man vs. woman. None of this, incidentally, is new; the history of mankind is replete with examples of all of this stupidity, it's just that the Baby Boomers who have it developed it into a fine art, gotten stupendously wealthy off it, caused so much grief and heartache along the way, and then expect to be rewarded for the absolute desolation they have created in perpetuity by a shrinking tax base (another consequence of their actions? a lower birthrate!), which is harried, worked, propagandized, categorized, dictated to, and indebted to inhuman levels by a system of government absolutely crammed to the rafters with the very people who will soon benefit the most -- i.e. Baby Boomers. Or so they think.
I don't like you people. I don't want to be like you. You're evil. For the majority of you, a natural death is more than you deserve. And guess what? There's literally millions more of me out here, and we're determined to ensure that you get exactly what you deserve, and not a penny more. Not even as much as an extra aspirin, roll of toilet paper, or five minutes of our time. Why? Because you've left us with nothing; no anchors, morally or spiritually, no ethics -- just ask five people at random to define that word for you, and you'll be surprised that no one can anymore -- no code of conduct that hasn't been torn to tatters by your hypocrisy, no system of justice or government that hasn't been tainted by your foul stench. Remember when your parents used to say to you "I hope one day you have children who do to you what you do to me?" -- and you laughed at them?
Guess who's laughing now? You'll soon be retiring in massive numbers with greatly-depleted assets. Think those Tea Partiers in the street are concerned with 'government spending' as a matter of principle? Take a closer look, and you'll see all the 40-somethings out there, and on some level, I can promise you, there's a great mass of them who recognize the enormous blood-sucking-probiscus the Hippie Generation is about to put on their wallets, and all that talk of 'curbing govenrment spending' is really just a subconcious euphemism for 'starve those selfish pricks to death!'. On some level, all that Tea Party jazz isn't so much about taxes, as much as it is Generational Warfare.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Never have so Many owed so much to so Few...", and quite soon, that will become a kind of reality in America with regards to the huge swarms of retiring Baby Boomers who want nothing but free Healthcare and ever-growing Social Security checks, convinced that they deserve it all. Only in a few years, it will become "Never have so Many Depended Upon So Few".The parallels are these: Churchill's Few were fighting for Survival, and the New Few who are expected to pay for, and then shut up about, being screwed by the most-selfish Generation of Many in human history, are in a similar battle for their own survival. Churchill's Few were men willing to sacrifice on behalf of others; Our Few won't sacrifice for anyone...our Parents, Teachers, Bosses, Politicians, all taught us we that didn't have to, as that was always someone else's job.
You sowed the wind, and I dearly hope you reap the whirlwind, Assholes. If you're really lucky, maybe some 40-something will have enough compassion for you to invent a low-salt cat food that's far more palatable and easier to eat without Medicare-supplied dentures really, really soon.
And you should be fucking thankful for even that much.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The Patriot Act is Dead...Maybe.
Congress just voted to extend the Patriot Act for another 90 days after not voting to extend it at all earlier in the week. Don't ask me why. Don't know, don't care. So far as I know, the Patriot Act hasn't captured a single terrorist, no one's been prosecuted under it, and it's simply been an excuse for the government to do things it really shouldn't be doing, like invading people's privacy without the protection of a search warrant.
It's another one of those (in hindsight) really stupid laws Congress passed in a panic after 9/11 -- you know, like the ones that make it necessary for you to take your shoes off, get a full-body x-ray scan, go without food, water and blankets on some flights, and require you to be at the airport three hours before your two hour flight. Just in case there's a need for a thorough cavity search, and so that some minimum-wage, government-union douchebag can go through your luggage and steal all the good stuff before it gets put on the plane, which is part of a total 'security regime' which has increased the cost of flying, made it a complicated, exhausting and ever-more unpleasant experience than it was before. And even for all this 'security' you still have to, occasionally, band together with your fellow passengers to put down an out-of-control drunk, or wrestle a Zippo from the hands of some doofus about to light the fuse in his BVD's.
Unless you're Muslim -- then for some reason they leave you the fuck alone with all this shit so as to not racially-profile you, this despite the fact that it's because of Muslims we have all this shit in the first place!
So let me get this straight; we have a bunch of odious laws and security procedures on the books which are a direct response to a terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims, but if we applied the laws to Muslims, we'd be profiling them, and thus violating their civil rights? And then somehow it's not violating MY civil rights to peek into my bank accounts without permission, subject me to a full-body scan -- my other choice is to be groped -- on my next trip to Disney, and deny me a bag of beer nuts on my flight because I've never been part of a terrorist organization, nor ever tried to blow anything up, and neither has anyone I've ever known?
This makes sense...how?
Congress did after 9/11 what it always does after getting caught with it's pants down; it not only reacted to the event that just happened, it overreacted to events it could not predict, and so to cover it's ass (because that's the only thing most Congresscritters are really good at, besides spending money and mugging for the cameras) they tried to craft something that would 'protect America' (i.e. their useless jobs) forever. That it runs roughshod over the Constitution was no big deal -- Congress and the Courts do that all the time, anyway.
Truth of the matter is this: prior to 9/11, the government was already listening to terrorists on the telephone. It was already collecting information of suspected plots. It had data on who the players were, where they might be, and what they might be up to. They didn't have information that specifically gave them any hints about 9/11, but the authorities knew something was up. What was lacking on that day was not the government's ability to eavesdrop and snoop in advance of an attack so as to prevent it, but rather the ability to concentrate, analyze, and then quickly act upon, the information they already had.
The Patriot Act would not have stopped September 11th, and it didn't stop Maj. Hassan, the Underwear Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, or any other attack or attempted attack that we know of. It's about time the damn thing goes away, especially when we live in the Age of The Modern Progressive. There are some people on the Left who, armed with a Patriot Act, would simply scare the crap out of me. The people who usually complain the loudest about Civil Rights being violated are usually the ones who can be counted upon violate the rights of others in a New York Minute if it meant getting, oh, say a single-payer healthcare system, putting Dick Cheney on trial as a war criminal, or finding a reason to give the gold bars in Fort Knox and free plastic surgery to illegal aliens, or something similarly important or useful.
Every time I go through an airport security checkpoint, or have to show my ID to get on a train, or have my backpack searched before getting on the ferry, or can't get a driver's license or passport renewed because of all the stupid new restrictions, or watch the cops in riot gear and gas masks, and bomb-sniffing dogs, still patrolling the train stations and street corners 10 years after the fact, I get the distinct impression that Usama Bin Laden might have actually won, after all.
He's wandering the mountains of Pakistan free as a bird, and I have to practically get naked and bring a note from my mother, just to get on Amtrak, and if I refuse because it's a violation of my rights, I'm either going to jail or walking. Unless I have a headscarf, then they just pretend to hassle me and then put me on the next available flight.
I'm about to suggest a course of action that is so incredibly novel that I just know it has never occurred to anyone who is part of the so-called leadership of this country. Here's my easy-to-remember, 5-step plan, that doesn't require confusing color codes, where no one has to have a pelvic exam at the airport, and carry-on bags could still fly free. Some will point out that it might violate the civil rights of a particular group, but what the fuck; the Patriot Act did that, too, and besides, after Step 1, there won't be any Civil Rights to violate. Here goes:
1. Stop Muslim immigration to the West. If you wear a headscarf, pray to a dusty rock in the desert, have multiple wives, smell of a mixture of camel dung, successive weeks of armpit sweat and unwashed clothes -- with just a hint of gunpowder and sheep urine -- you're not allowed into the United States. Not to visit, not to live, not to work. If your name is Mohammed, you're automatically barred, and if your name has two Mohammed's in it, you're a candidate for immediate lethal injection.
If you're already here, we should just ask you to leave before you or one of your crazy relatives decides God said to bomb the local Dairy Queen, because that ice cream cone on the roof is somehow offensive to that scraped-off-the-bottom-of-my-shoe, sorry excuse for a 'religion' of your's.
See, if you don't let them in and don't let them become citizens, they have no civil rights to violate. Likewise, if you strip them of their citizenship and politely ask them to get the fuck out of the country. No muss, no fuss, no need for a Patriot Act.
2. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Our Relations with the Muslim World: kill everyone, poison the landscape for the next 50,000 years, and piss on everyone's grave before you leave. If anyone in the Muslim world has a problem with that, repeat the process. We have that power, and that we have not exercised it says more about the moral superiority of this country than it does about the so-called virtues of the Muslim world.
We don't have to take your 'feelings' and 'cultural sensitivities' into account in our dealings with you people. Because we're Americans, and you suck. In fact, we've done far too much of that 'outreach' bullshit, and the response has been 40 years of terrorism, 40 years of OPEC jerking us around, I've forgotten how many wars, 'incidents', police actions, and armed confrontations, I can't recall how many hostages have been taken and executed, how much American 'aid' has been squandered or stolen by Muslim leadership, and somehow, you people have the balls to say that we deserve death? The United States has done more on behalf of the Muslim World than the Muslim World ever did for itself, and our reward is to be attacked by cowards who won't fight on the battlefields, acting like thieves in the night, hiding behind women and children.
Fuck you all.
3. Make it a requirement that American politicians must pass a series of examinations in order to obtain a license to run for Congress, or higher office. I want literacy tests (even though a third of our Congresscritters would probably fail). I want to know they can add, subtract, and know what the fuck an isosceles triangle is. They have to pass an American History course -- and not the one they teach at Berkeley which is three-quarters lies and one-quarter some douchebag's 'feelings' -- but the real McCoy. They have to be subjected to an extensive series of x-rays in order to determine that, yes, this candidate does, indeed, have both a brain and a spine.
Once we have capable, qualified, intelligent people in the United States Congress, the sooner we can get rid of the mentality that a) passes something like the Patriot Act, and b) believes spending another trillion dollars we'll have to borrow (again) this year is somehow a deficit reduction program.
Oh, and then have them pass a law making every member of the political establishment have to stand in an airport security line with the rest of us at least once a week.
4. The American business community will simply have to step up to the plate, and begin to seriously invest in finding viable alternatives to the crude oil that we have to import from gritty, smelly little, goat-blowing buttholes named Mohammed. The Middle East only produces one commodity (pubic lice, syphilis, and terrorists don't count as commodities), and by finding an alternative to that single product, we can make the Muslim world irrelevant, poorer and starving to death all that much sooner. Get crackin', boys!
5. Empty the prison in Guantanamo Bay...by tossing the inmates into the Bay, itself. If these guys are too dangerous to be let out of jail, then why are they still alive? Normally, I would be dead-set against the death penalty for anyone (excepting democrats and child molesters, but that's redundant) but I'm also not supporting Achmed in a tropical paradise complete with Halal cuisine and his own Koran. Fuck 'em; I want 'em dead.
Do you think an American captured in what passes for their country would be kept alive at taxpayer expense for life? Getting fat at taxpayer expense? With excellent medical care, when there's people in this country who can't get any? Hell, NO! Make an example of the Gitmo Boys, an educational video, if you will.
Shwo the world what happens to you if you wind up in Gitmo; you get a cement block chained to your ankles, and slathered in bacon grease just before they toss you overboard, so that you can go to meet Allah in an unclean state. No 72 virgins for you!
See, all of that would be too easy, and wouldn't give anyone any power to fuck up everyone's life, which is why we had to have a Patriot Act in the first place, because it was never about keeping YOU safe, but always about keeping Congressman Dingleberry, and Senator Douchebag safe..in their jobs, even though they passed an extremely bad law, which was a direct assault upon the rights of every citizen.
It's another one of those (in hindsight) really stupid laws Congress passed in a panic after 9/11 -- you know, like the ones that make it necessary for you to take your shoes off, get a full-body x-ray scan, go without food, water and blankets on some flights, and require you to be at the airport three hours before your two hour flight. Just in case there's a need for a thorough cavity search, and so that some minimum-wage, government-union douchebag can go through your luggage and steal all the good stuff before it gets put on the plane, which is part of a total 'security regime' which has increased the cost of flying, made it a complicated, exhausting and ever-more unpleasant experience than it was before. And even for all this 'security' you still have to, occasionally, band together with your fellow passengers to put down an out-of-control drunk, or wrestle a Zippo from the hands of some doofus about to light the fuse in his BVD's.
Unless you're Muslim -- then for some reason they leave you the fuck alone with all this shit so as to not racially-profile you, this despite the fact that it's because of Muslims we have all this shit in the first place!
So let me get this straight; we have a bunch of odious laws and security procedures on the books which are a direct response to a terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims, but if we applied the laws to Muslims, we'd be profiling them, and thus violating their civil rights? And then somehow it's not violating MY civil rights to peek into my bank accounts without permission, subject me to a full-body scan -- my other choice is to be groped -- on my next trip to Disney, and deny me a bag of beer nuts on my flight because I've never been part of a terrorist organization, nor ever tried to blow anything up, and neither has anyone I've ever known?
This makes sense...how?
Congress did after 9/11 what it always does after getting caught with it's pants down; it not only reacted to the event that just happened, it overreacted to events it could not predict, and so to cover it's ass (because that's the only thing most Congresscritters are really good at, besides spending money and mugging for the cameras) they tried to craft something that would 'protect America' (i.e. their useless jobs) forever. That it runs roughshod over the Constitution was no big deal -- Congress and the Courts do that all the time, anyway.
Truth of the matter is this: prior to 9/11, the government was already listening to terrorists on the telephone. It was already collecting information of suspected plots. It had data on who the players were, where they might be, and what they might be up to. They didn't have information that specifically gave them any hints about 9/11, but the authorities knew something was up. What was lacking on that day was not the government's ability to eavesdrop and snoop in advance of an attack so as to prevent it, but rather the ability to concentrate, analyze, and then quickly act upon, the information they already had.
The Patriot Act would not have stopped September 11th, and it didn't stop Maj. Hassan, the Underwear Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, or any other attack or attempted attack that we know of. It's about time the damn thing goes away, especially when we live in the Age of The Modern Progressive. There are some people on the Left who, armed with a Patriot Act, would simply scare the crap out of me. The people who usually complain the loudest about Civil Rights being violated are usually the ones who can be counted upon violate the rights of others in a New York Minute if it meant getting, oh, say a single-payer healthcare system, putting Dick Cheney on trial as a war criminal, or finding a reason to give the gold bars in Fort Knox and free plastic surgery to illegal aliens, or something similarly important or useful.
Every time I go through an airport security checkpoint, or have to show my ID to get on a train, or have my backpack searched before getting on the ferry, or can't get a driver's license or passport renewed because of all the stupid new restrictions, or watch the cops in riot gear and gas masks, and bomb-sniffing dogs, still patrolling the train stations and street corners 10 years after the fact, I get the distinct impression that Usama Bin Laden might have actually won, after all.
He's wandering the mountains of Pakistan free as a bird, and I have to practically get naked and bring a note from my mother, just to get on Amtrak, and if I refuse because it's a violation of my rights, I'm either going to jail or walking. Unless I have a headscarf, then they just pretend to hassle me and then put me on the next available flight.
I'm about to suggest a course of action that is so incredibly novel that I just know it has never occurred to anyone who is part of the so-called leadership of this country. Here's my easy-to-remember, 5-step plan, that doesn't require confusing color codes, where no one has to have a pelvic exam at the airport, and carry-on bags could still fly free. Some will point out that it might violate the civil rights of a particular group, but what the fuck; the Patriot Act did that, too, and besides, after Step 1, there won't be any Civil Rights to violate. Here goes:
1. Stop Muslim immigration to the West. If you wear a headscarf, pray to a dusty rock in the desert, have multiple wives, smell of a mixture of camel dung, successive weeks of armpit sweat and unwashed clothes -- with just a hint of gunpowder and sheep urine -- you're not allowed into the United States. Not to visit, not to live, not to work. If your name is Mohammed, you're automatically barred, and if your name has two Mohammed's in it, you're a candidate for immediate lethal injection.
If you're already here, we should just ask you to leave before you or one of your crazy relatives decides God said to bomb the local Dairy Queen, because that ice cream cone on the roof is somehow offensive to that scraped-off-the-bottom-of-my-shoe, sorry excuse for a 'religion' of your's.
See, if you don't let them in and don't let them become citizens, they have no civil rights to violate. Likewise, if you strip them of their citizenship and politely ask them to get the fuck out of the country. No muss, no fuss, no need for a Patriot Act.
2. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Our Relations with the Muslim World: kill everyone, poison the landscape for the next 50,000 years, and piss on everyone's grave before you leave. If anyone in the Muslim world has a problem with that, repeat the process. We have that power, and that we have not exercised it says more about the moral superiority of this country than it does about the so-called virtues of the Muslim world.
We don't have to take your 'feelings' and 'cultural sensitivities' into account in our dealings with you people. Because we're Americans, and you suck. In fact, we've done far too much of that 'outreach' bullshit, and the response has been 40 years of terrorism, 40 years of OPEC jerking us around, I've forgotten how many wars, 'incidents', police actions, and armed confrontations, I can't recall how many hostages have been taken and executed, how much American 'aid' has been squandered or stolen by Muslim leadership, and somehow, you people have the balls to say that we deserve death? The United States has done more on behalf of the Muslim World than the Muslim World ever did for itself, and our reward is to be attacked by cowards who won't fight on the battlefields, acting like thieves in the night, hiding behind women and children.
Fuck you all.
3. Make it a requirement that American politicians must pass a series of examinations in order to obtain a license to run for Congress, or higher office. I want literacy tests (even though a third of our Congresscritters would probably fail). I want to know they can add, subtract, and know what the fuck an isosceles triangle is. They have to pass an American History course -- and not the one they teach at Berkeley which is three-quarters lies and one-quarter some douchebag's 'feelings' -- but the real McCoy. They have to be subjected to an extensive series of x-rays in order to determine that, yes, this candidate does, indeed, have both a brain and a spine.
Once we have capable, qualified, intelligent people in the United States Congress, the sooner we can get rid of the mentality that a) passes something like the Patriot Act, and b) believes spending another trillion dollars we'll have to borrow (again) this year is somehow a deficit reduction program.
Oh, and then have them pass a law making every member of the political establishment have to stand in an airport security line with the rest of us at least once a week.
4. The American business community will simply have to step up to the plate, and begin to seriously invest in finding viable alternatives to the crude oil that we have to import from gritty, smelly little, goat-blowing buttholes named Mohammed. The Middle East only produces one commodity (pubic lice, syphilis, and terrorists don't count as commodities), and by finding an alternative to that single product, we can make the Muslim world irrelevant, poorer and starving to death all that much sooner. Get crackin', boys!
5. Empty the prison in Guantanamo Bay...by tossing the inmates into the Bay, itself. If these guys are too dangerous to be let out of jail, then why are they still alive? Normally, I would be dead-set against the death penalty for anyone (excepting democrats and child molesters, but that's redundant) but I'm also not supporting Achmed in a tropical paradise complete with Halal cuisine and his own Koran. Fuck 'em; I want 'em dead.
Do you think an American captured in what passes for their country would be kept alive at taxpayer expense for life? Getting fat at taxpayer expense? With excellent medical care, when there's people in this country who can't get any? Hell, NO! Make an example of the Gitmo Boys, an educational video, if you will.
Shwo the world what happens to you if you wind up in Gitmo; you get a cement block chained to your ankles, and slathered in bacon grease just before they toss you overboard, so that you can go to meet Allah in an unclean state. No 72 virgins for you!
See, all of that would be too easy, and wouldn't give anyone any power to fuck up everyone's life, which is why we had to have a Patriot Act in the first place, because it was never about keeping YOU safe, but always about keeping Congressman Dingleberry, and Senator Douchebag safe..in their jobs, even though they passed an extremely bad law, which was a direct assault upon the rights of every citizen.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Guess Who's Running For President...Again...
It's Hillary Clinton in all her cynical, pre-primary, re-positioning and re-packaging glory, all over again.
Expect her to resign as Secretary of State really, really soon. Trying to out-right the Right on National Security, though? What's that all about?
Maybe Barack Obama was wrong; you can put lipstick on a pig, -- but only if you believe you can continue to rely on the stupidity and short memories of the American Left, maybe? It only really requires....what was that phrase she used when she tried to grill General Petreus, again? Oh, right...A Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
I'm wondering if Hillary repaid all those debts from the last campaign yet, you know, the ones she had to solicit donations from people who already contributed to her lost campaign to pay off? Only in America could you spend the sort of (other-people's) money that a Presidential candidate is somehow obliged to spend, and then be able to beg for more (of the same people's money) to pay off your own debts.
Sounds like there's an awful lot in common between our politicians, AIG and GM. But, I digress...
Dissecting the 2008 primaries as best I can, it seems that Obama was originally the Ultra-Libtard attempt to get their views to the fore, because so far as they were concerned, Hillary Clinton was simply George W. Bush with a more masculine haircut. No one expected Obama to win so much as to bear the standard bearer of the demented Left. His 'job' was to put their issues on the table, and to warn 'centrist' dems (a contradiction in terms) that the Dingbat Wing of the party could not be taken for granted. Subsequent events, I think, have proven me correct in this assumption; bearing the last two years in mind, does it look like Barack Obama was ever prepared to be President of the United States, or that he ever expected to win?
What has resulted, from a policy perspective, both foreign and domestic, seems to indicate that no, he was not expecting town, and when he actually did, he had no plan. No vision. What Barack Obama actually did was to let Congress do his heavy lifting while he played golf and bought time to learn what being in charge actually means.
In retrospect, Hillary Clinton in the White House was far more preferable, even to a hardened republican like me, if only because if you gave me the choice between Prostate Cancer and Ebola, I'd take the Cancer every time. You can cut a cancer out. You can shrink a tumor. There's medicine for that.
Ebola just turns your insides into a bloody, pulpy, necrotic mess until your sphincter muscles finally rot out and the liquid remains of your guts flow out across the floor.
In any event, Clinton lost an election she had every opportunity to win. It's not like John McCain was the best the GOP could do, you know. Primarily, she lost for two major reasons;
a) She ran her campaign as if she had already won, as if the Office of President was her fucking birthright. She took the Victory Lap before the race even started. She did everything but measure the Oval Office windows for new curtains (on the off-chance the old ones might still have Bill's you-know-what all over them), and plan to return the silverware that she and Bill stole when the Bushes moved (back) in.
Politically, Hillary would have been Bush-like; she would have continued the War, she would have left Guantanamo open, she would have kept the Patriot Act (mostly so that she and Billy could abuse it for personal gain), she would not have advanced the same radical Health Care stupidity that parvenu Obama did. A Hillary Clinton Presidency would have seen someone who took it for granted that she could mollify the rabid left while playing the centrist on TV. She would, at least, not rocked the boat. A vote for Hillary was really a vote for the status quo, only with something like tits. if you were a Whackjob Lefty in 2008, Hillary Clinton was George W. Bush's third term.
It was also a part of her great misfortune that Americans had become so sick-and-tired of the usual bunch of morons treating the Office like a revolving door (the Bush Dynasty wasn't going to be followed by a Clinton Dynasty, if the electorate could help it), and of course, the Financial Meltdown occurred (conveniently, wouldn't you say?) in such a way as to knock the Old Guard in both parties so silly that they couldn't figure out just what to do -- except resort to their old stock response, which was to waste other people's money, pass useless 'reforms' after the fact, and then claim virtue. Hillary Clinton would still have voted for TARP, to bail out AIG, and nationalize GM, she would have done no more than the lesser amongst her (Obama and McCain) did.
If you were a democratic party voter in the fall of 2008, and your choice was between The Crusty Black Pantsuit who talked a good game, but lied to your face, and could be reasonably expected to simply continue Bush's policies with only minor, cosmetic changes, or the Slick Hipster 'Outsider' who had inspired you with lofty rhetoric and a thin resume, but who restored your deluded vision of the heady days of JFK, RFK and MLK, only with a Program of Reparations attached, who would you chose? Especially when the prevailing mood, in both parties, was to Throw the Bums Out?
Ironically, it was mantra of 'Hope', the very one uttered by Bill Clinton on 1991, that drove a stake through Hillary's heart in 2008. It's almost sad to see how badly that man's stench clings to her (I said 'almost'; Hillary Clinton has made her bed, and all that). It has since proven to be every bit as hollow and tinny now as it was in 1992, primarily because there is a huge chasm between the rhetoric and reality. Funny how history repeats itself, ain't it?
b) Hillary Clinton carried far too much baggage. About 200 pounds of it in the form of her husband. When you vote for a Clinton, as we all know, you get a two-fer. What sort of President would she have been with that (alleged) rapist and admitted perjurer hovering over her shoulder, whispering in her ear? A Vote for Hillary was actually a vote for Bill, for he would have been the real power behind the throne, and the Long National Nightmare that was the Clinton Administration would begin anew. As it was, Barack Obambi more or less brought the Clinton Administration back in all it's former glory for you, anyway (Rahm Emanuel, Leon Pannettta, Erskine Bowles, and about 90% of the lesser lights in that panoply of dim stars that was Camelot-on-Little-Rock), so we really did get 1992 all over again, only without it's principal actors.
It didn't really matter which democrat you voted for in 2008, anyway; you were still getting more of the same with abigger price tag, the only argument was over which figurehead was more attractive. Considering Hillary had more-or-less the same experience as Obama (neither has held a real job in their lives) there was no real distinction to be made between the two, other than novelty. And in a country that was in a desperate enough a situation, the Novelty Act spouting tried-and-failed communist boilerplate was seen as better than the Old-and-Tired spouting tried-and-failed communist boilerplate, especially when the Other Side was offering....what, exactly?
After all, your only other choice was to jump ship and...ewwww...vote for the obviously-confused McCain and the Hot-As-All-Hell-Librarian-who-Could-See-Russia-From-Her-House.
In the Great Pecking Order of Worthiest Victim Groups that is democratic (small 'd' intentional) politics, Hillary The Heir Apparent was stunned to learn that (half-) Black Man still trumped Woman Done Wrong By Cheating and Abusive Husband. That's how democrats usually vote, you know; they try to decide which candidate is the more historically-aggrieved minority. It's a pity they don't know any actual history. Anyways, Clinton only took the job of Secretary of State because it was the next, best thing; it gave her a serious job (junior Senator from a state you don't really live in is like being an unpaid intern, and besides, Schumer is an obnoxious boor), and it might even prove a springboard to future success.
Judging from the foreign policy mistakes of this Administration (ones that Hillary will be glad to tell you in the coming primary season were not her doing; she was simply following orders from above...yeah, like that worked at Nuremberg, too) that's not exactly something I would want on my resume. She will pull out her old 'Centrist Democrat' disguise -- something that barely exists anymore, thanks to the GOP-Tea Party romp in the 2010 Mid-Terms -- and run to Obama's right as a New-Old-Centrist-Blue-Dog Democrat (four lies for the price of one) while outhawking the GOP Hawks, and do her damndest to be as indistinguishable as the most centrist Republican come 2012. She'll trot out all the old Clinton Administration bromides with new bells and whistles, harken back to their supposed glories and virtues, cry once or twice for the cameras, and then triangulate her big, fat ass all the way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, come Hell or High Water.
And you'll never see Bill anywhere near her...unless there's money to raise.
When Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before she voted against them, who all but called the General in Charge of those wars a liar, who decried the Surge strategy, and almost-religiously followed the Far Left line that the wars were lost, unwinniable, that Iraq was a 'quagmire' and Afghanistan a 'stalemate', suddenly becomes a defender of the national (in-)security establishment, you know something is rotten in the state of Denmark, or at least, in the State Department. The woman has been 'positioning' herself (again) for the last two years for another run at the White House.
Hillary doesn't really give a shit about national security; if she did, she'd be front-and-center in the fight against illegal immigration, and in the trenches for border security. She has been absent on both, because if you plan to run for President on the democratic party ticket you can't afford to offend all the illegal voters in California, your Mother Lode of illegal-alien-and-welfare-mother-supplied Electoral Votes --54 of them. That's 20% of the total required to be elected, you know.
Let's see if the American electorate can still be that stupid two Presidential elections in a row, and fall for someone who's so obviously a poser, or whether the 'Throw The Bums Out' fervor of the Tea Party and the Great Middle continues. Get yer popcorn, folks, there's gonna be a fight on the Left very soon.
Expect her to resign as Secretary of State really, really soon. Trying to out-right the Right on National Security, though? What's that all about?
Maybe Barack Obama was wrong; you can put lipstick on a pig, -- but only if you believe you can continue to rely on the stupidity and short memories of the American Left, maybe? It only really requires....what was that phrase she used when she tried to grill General Petreus, again? Oh, right...A Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
I'm wondering if Hillary repaid all those debts from the last campaign yet, you know, the ones she had to solicit donations from people who already contributed to her lost campaign to pay off? Only in America could you spend the sort of (other-people's) money that a Presidential candidate is somehow obliged to spend, and then be able to beg for more (of the same people's money) to pay off your own debts.
Sounds like there's an awful lot in common between our politicians, AIG and GM. But, I digress...
Dissecting the 2008 primaries as best I can, it seems that Obama was originally the Ultra-Libtard attempt to get their views to the fore, because so far as they were concerned, Hillary Clinton was simply George W. Bush with a more masculine haircut. No one expected Obama to win so much as to bear the standard bearer of the demented Left. His 'job' was to put their issues on the table, and to warn 'centrist' dems (a contradiction in terms) that the Dingbat Wing of the party could not be taken for granted. Subsequent events, I think, have proven me correct in this assumption; bearing the last two years in mind, does it look like Barack Obama was ever prepared to be President of the United States, or that he ever expected to win?
What has resulted, from a policy perspective, both foreign and domestic, seems to indicate that no, he was not expecting town, and when he actually did, he had no plan. No vision. What Barack Obama actually did was to let Congress do his heavy lifting while he played golf and bought time to learn what being in charge actually means.
In retrospect, Hillary Clinton in the White House was far more preferable, even to a hardened republican like me, if only because if you gave me the choice between Prostate Cancer and Ebola, I'd take the Cancer every time. You can cut a cancer out. You can shrink a tumor. There's medicine for that.
Ebola just turns your insides into a bloody, pulpy, necrotic mess until your sphincter muscles finally rot out and the liquid remains of your guts flow out across the floor.
In any event, Clinton lost an election she had every opportunity to win. It's not like John McCain was the best the GOP could do, you know. Primarily, she lost for two major reasons;
a) She ran her campaign as if she had already won, as if the Office of President was her fucking birthright. She took the Victory Lap before the race even started. She did everything but measure the Oval Office windows for new curtains (on the off-chance the old ones might still have Bill's you-know-what all over them), and plan to return the silverware that she and Bill stole when the Bushes moved (back) in.
Politically, Hillary would have been Bush-like; she would have continued the War, she would have left Guantanamo open, she would have kept the Patriot Act (mostly so that she and Billy could abuse it for personal gain), she would not have advanced the same radical Health Care stupidity that parvenu Obama did. A Hillary Clinton Presidency would have seen someone who took it for granted that she could mollify the rabid left while playing the centrist on TV. She would, at least, not rocked the boat. A vote for Hillary was really a vote for the status quo, only with something like tits. if you were a Whackjob Lefty in 2008, Hillary Clinton was George W. Bush's third term.
It was also a part of her great misfortune that Americans had become so sick-and-tired of the usual bunch of morons treating the Office like a revolving door (the Bush Dynasty wasn't going to be followed by a Clinton Dynasty, if the electorate could help it), and of course, the Financial Meltdown occurred (conveniently, wouldn't you say?) in such a way as to knock the Old Guard in both parties so silly that they couldn't figure out just what to do -- except resort to their old stock response, which was to waste other people's money, pass useless 'reforms' after the fact, and then claim virtue. Hillary Clinton would still have voted for TARP, to bail out AIG, and nationalize GM, she would have done no more than the lesser amongst her (Obama and McCain) did.
If you were a democratic party voter in the fall of 2008, and your choice was between The Crusty Black Pantsuit who talked a good game, but lied to your face, and could be reasonably expected to simply continue Bush's policies with only minor, cosmetic changes, or the Slick Hipster 'Outsider' who had inspired you with lofty rhetoric and a thin resume, but who restored your deluded vision of the heady days of JFK, RFK and MLK, only with a Program of Reparations attached, who would you chose? Especially when the prevailing mood, in both parties, was to Throw the Bums Out?
Ironically, it was mantra of 'Hope', the very one uttered by Bill Clinton on 1991, that drove a stake through Hillary's heart in 2008. It's almost sad to see how badly that man's stench clings to her (I said 'almost'; Hillary Clinton has made her bed, and all that). It has since proven to be every bit as hollow and tinny now as it was in 1992, primarily because there is a huge chasm between the rhetoric and reality. Funny how history repeats itself, ain't it?
b) Hillary Clinton carried far too much baggage. About 200 pounds of it in the form of her husband. When you vote for a Clinton, as we all know, you get a two-fer. What sort of President would she have been with that (alleged) rapist and admitted perjurer hovering over her shoulder, whispering in her ear? A Vote for Hillary was actually a vote for Bill, for he would have been the real power behind the throne, and the Long National Nightmare that was the Clinton Administration would begin anew. As it was, Barack Obambi more or less brought the Clinton Administration back in all it's former glory for you, anyway (Rahm Emanuel, Leon Pannettta, Erskine Bowles, and about 90% of the lesser lights in that panoply of dim stars that was Camelot-on-Little-Rock), so we really did get 1992 all over again, only without it's principal actors.
It didn't really matter which democrat you voted for in 2008, anyway; you were still getting more of the same with abigger price tag, the only argument was over which figurehead was more attractive. Considering Hillary had more-or-less the same experience as Obama (neither has held a real job in their lives) there was no real distinction to be made between the two, other than novelty. And in a country that was in a desperate enough a situation, the Novelty Act spouting tried-and-failed communist boilerplate was seen as better than the Old-and-Tired spouting tried-and-failed communist boilerplate, especially when the Other Side was offering....what, exactly?
After all, your only other choice was to jump ship and...ewwww...vote for the obviously-confused McCain and the Hot-As-All-Hell-Librarian-who-Could-See-Russia-From-Her-House.
In the Great Pecking Order of Worthiest Victim Groups that is democratic (small 'd' intentional) politics, Hillary The Heir Apparent was stunned to learn that (half-) Black Man still trumped Woman Done Wrong By Cheating and Abusive Husband. That's how democrats usually vote, you know; they try to decide which candidate is the more historically-aggrieved minority. It's a pity they don't know any actual history. Anyways, Clinton only took the job of Secretary of State because it was the next, best thing; it gave her a serious job (junior Senator from a state you don't really live in is like being an unpaid intern, and besides, Schumer is an obnoxious boor), and it might even prove a springboard to future success.
Judging from the foreign policy mistakes of this Administration (ones that Hillary will be glad to tell you in the coming primary season were not her doing; she was simply following orders from above...yeah, like that worked at Nuremberg, too) that's not exactly something I would want on my resume. She will pull out her old 'Centrist Democrat' disguise -- something that barely exists anymore, thanks to the GOP-Tea Party romp in the 2010 Mid-Terms -- and run to Obama's right as a New-Old-Centrist-Blue-Dog Democrat (four lies for the price of one) while outhawking the GOP Hawks, and do her damndest to be as indistinguishable as the most centrist Republican come 2012. She'll trot out all the old Clinton Administration bromides with new bells and whistles, harken back to their supposed glories and virtues, cry once or twice for the cameras, and then triangulate her big, fat ass all the way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, come Hell or High Water.
And you'll never see Bill anywhere near her...unless there's money to raise.
When Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before she voted against them, who all but called the General in Charge of those wars a liar, who decried the Surge strategy, and almost-religiously followed the Far Left line that the wars were lost, unwinniable, that Iraq was a 'quagmire' and Afghanistan a 'stalemate', suddenly becomes a defender of the national (in-)security establishment, you know something is rotten in the state of Denmark, or at least, in the State Department. The woman has been 'positioning' herself (again) for the last two years for another run at the White House.
Hillary doesn't really give a shit about national security; if she did, she'd be front-and-center in the fight against illegal immigration, and in the trenches for border security. She has been absent on both, because if you plan to run for President on the democratic party ticket you can't afford to offend all the illegal voters in California, your Mother Lode of illegal-alien-and-welfare-mother-supplied Electoral Votes --54 of them. That's 20% of the total required to be elected, you know.
Let's see if the American electorate can still be that stupid two Presidential elections in a row, and fall for someone who's so obviously a poser, or whether the 'Throw The Bums Out' fervor of the Tea Party and the Great Middle continues. Get yer popcorn, folks, there's gonna be a fight on the Left very soon.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Happy Valentine's Day...
Here's a roundup of Valentine's Day News You Can Use, with some demented commentary from Your's Truly.
Although today is supposed to be about the expression of love and affection, we're often reminded that this is not always exactly the case. Whatever it's original purpose, or supposed virtues, Valentine's Day long ago ceased to be about Love and Romance, and is well on it's way to becoming one of those things that quickly becomes a hell of a lot more trouble than it's probably worth.
For example, if you live in Malaysia, Valentine's Day is not a holiday for the...ahem...faint of heart. Because instead of a cheeky greeting card, one is much more likely to receive a fatwa (religious edict) warning against the consequences of immoral behavior, defined as: perhaps showing an ankle, a smooch on the cheek given to someone not your spouse, engaging in decadent "Western" behavior.
Because the origin of Valentine's Day lay in the Christian calendar, of course, and because with the advance of time and the relaxation of sexual mores common in Western culture, it's gone from a religious celebration to a full-bore freight train of promiscuity and material indulgence. If you're a Muslim, these things are bad for you, and can get you killed.
Then again, the words 'Malaysian Islamic Economic Development Department' is an oxymoron. Like 'Democratic Party'. There can be no economic development, Islamic or otherwise, without freedom of thought, expression or conscience. Be that as it may, it seems that Allah frowns upon displays of affection that don't involve shagging a goat in a Scriptually-approved manner. One wonders if somewhere in the Middle East today, some poor woman wrapped head-to-toe in a carpet, and subjected to daily beatings, isn't giving her paramour a heart-shaped (that's actual human-heart-shaped, not that vile Westernized thingy that's rounded at the tops and pointy at the bottom) box of plastic explosives with a lovey-dovey note attached that reads "from your Hostage in Love..."
Somewhere, I'm thinking there's a self-appointed Islamic Morality Hall Monitor disguised as a Malaysian Islamic Economic honcho nodding in agreement with that sort of sentiment.
By the way, when anything with the word 'Islamic' incorporated in it's title says it'll be 'carrying out morality checks' what it really means is that they will beat, maim or kill anyone who doesn't live and behave according to their mentally-constipated worldview. Now there's love for you! And really, what does the 'Islamic Economic Development Council' have to do with morality in the first place, unless it's a deliberate obfuscation of both fact and intent?
And, of course, nothing says "I Love You" in the Islamic World like a good beheading. Even if it takes place in Buffalo.
Ah, the things we do for Love, eh?
If 7th-century-inspired notions of what constitutes love just don't float your boat, you can always settle for the 21st Century American equivalent, which, of course, involves computers, Budweiser, a pre-date "compatibility" questionnaire that has all the romance of a job interview and rectal exam rolled-into-one, and a gross violation of your personal privacy. But hey: it'll help you get laid on this special day. That is, after all, the purpose of the whole exercise, right?
This pretty much proves something that I have investigated (and often proved) many times in the last 20+ years: if you asked ten women, at random, to make the Beast with Two Backs, you'll get at least three positive responses on any given evening. Apparently, if you throw some beer into the mix, your odds of success more than double.
I figured that out at the age of 19, and didn't need a freakin' computer to do it. Nowadays, people are so intellectually-lazy and gadget-oriented (read: dependant) that they won't even fart , let alone fuck, unless there's an app for that. If it wasn't for the fact that I, eventually, Grew Up and put on my Big Boy Pants, I'd still be out there when the mischievous mood struck, chatting up would-be conquests ten at a time.
Had it down to a near-science, too.
(Note to all those who think this is a great idea: it gets boring after a very short time. Mostly because it's waaaaay too easy, and the majority of your takers barely have basic brainstem functions.)
Naturally, this would not be America if there wasn't a small minority of deranged dipshits out there who believe that no activity in the pursuit of your 'soulmate' is too extreme. Even a 24-hour murder spree.
I'm certain that somewhere, there's a clinical psychologist who's furiously trying to explain how stabbing your intended to death is just the mouth-foaming sociopath's way of expressing affection, and we just need to be tolerant of this 'different' manifestation of love, and try to extrapolate this stupidity into a pro-Gay-Marriage argument.
We should stab that so-called doctor to death, too.
As for my own Valentine's Day celebration, well...there won't be one this year. The lady who would be my heart's desire is unavailable to me, alas. Mostly by choice, because she's as big a lunatic as I am, and that just ain't healthy for either of us. As for the Other One that I was, until recently, 'keeping company' with, I tossed her overboard just as soon as I heard those words that now make me break out in a cold sweat and want to reach for a flame-thrower;
"I really, really need your help..."
That 'help', incidentally, didn't involve changing a light bulb, fixing a flat tire, or squashing an inconvenient spider in the bathtub, but was rather an attempt to get me to take some responsibility (i.e. do all the heavy lifting) in 'helping' her sort out her (egregious) personal and familial issues. Sorry, but I'm just not equipped for that anymore; The White Knight has finally hung up his spurs for good. If I'm spending all my time taking care of your issues, then I'm not taking care of mine, thanks very much. Besides, I wasn't ever going to marry you, I don't think, and your kid regards me as the next best thing to Rudolf Eichmann.
Romance, it seems, is dead. What a pity.
In a day-and-age where we're sold the idea that the heart-shaped box of Russel Stover's is the end-all-be-all, where 'Every Kiss begins With Kay', Wal-Mart tries to pass itself off as your Valentine's Day Headquarters by flogging cheap jewelry that no one with taste and a median income near the National Average would buy without chemical stimulus, where the Vermont Teddy Bear is sold as the key to unlocking the vault wherein is hidden the Pearl of Great Price, True Romance is but a few mouse-clicks away on E-Harmony, and where "do for me what I won't do for myself" becomes the basis for, and only purpose of, a one-sided "relationship" that will eventually end in disaster for both parties, it's no fucking wonder.
I think back to simpler days when I used to write a young lady who had snagged my affections love letters. She thought they were the Greatest Thing Ever, and a few days before she married someone else, she told me she had kept every last one...and still read them regularly. I wouldn't be surprised to find that she still had and read them all, 20 years later, because what passes for romance these days is kitchy, tied to outrageous displays of grossly-conspicuous consumption, and always contains at least three pathologies that should have half the country on a psychiatrist's couch somewhere.
It's all become way too impersonal, tied to empty display, or centered upon a formulation wherein personal growth is directly proportional to how well you manage to slough your personal problems off on someone else and frame the issue in terms of "if you love me, you'll do it..."
Excuse me while I vomit at the thought of Valentine's Day.
Whatever happened to those simpler times, when the free Expression of Love -- for it's own sake -- didn't come with a commercial, a political stance, religious repression, physical violence, or it's own chapter in the DSM IV?
Happy Valentine's Day, America. See most of you in the local meat market tomorrow...after you've gotten your Chromium-plated Chocloate Diamond pendant, and shaken off your beer goggles, assuming we haven't been marked for death by the local Islamic Economic Development folks for our sinful, lusty apostasy.
Update: What Women Really Want. If you believe this, you're a douchebag. (H/T Closet Conservative). Probably, it's more like some sick bitch doing research on how to snag a queer dude, and 'convert' him into suitable husband material just so that they can share wardrobes.
Also, What Women Really, Really Want: The Ins-and-Outs of the Marriage Proposal.
Personally, if I ever had a chick who demanded that a Broadway production be made of my marriage proposal as proof of my devotion, I'd do it...but only so I could take the ring back and tell her to go fuck herself -- you selfish bitch -- in front of her friends and family right at the moment of her greatest triumph.
Although today is supposed to be about the expression of love and affection, we're often reminded that this is not always exactly the case. Whatever it's original purpose, or supposed virtues, Valentine's Day long ago ceased to be about Love and Romance, and is well on it's way to becoming one of those things that quickly becomes a hell of a lot more trouble than it's probably worth.
For example, if you live in Malaysia, Valentine's Day is not a holiday for the...ahem...faint of heart. Because instead of a cheeky greeting card, one is much more likely to receive a fatwa (religious edict) warning against the consequences of immoral behavior, defined as: perhaps showing an ankle, a smooch on the cheek given to someone not your spouse, engaging in decadent "Western" behavior.
Because the origin of Valentine's Day lay in the Christian calendar, of course, and because with the advance of time and the relaxation of sexual mores common in Western culture, it's gone from a religious celebration to a full-bore freight train of promiscuity and material indulgence. If you're a Muslim, these things are bad for you, and can get you killed.
Then again, the words 'Malaysian Islamic Economic Development Department' is an oxymoron. Like 'Democratic Party'. There can be no economic development, Islamic or otherwise, without freedom of thought, expression or conscience. Be that as it may, it seems that Allah frowns upon displays of affection that don't involve shagging a goat in a Scriptually-approved manner. One wonders if somewhere in the Middle East today, some poor woman wrapped head-to-toe in a carpet, and subjected to daily beatings, isn't giving her paramour a heart-shaped (that's actual human-heart-shaped, not that vile Westernized thingy that's rounded at the tops and pointy at the bottom) box of plastic explosives with a lovey-dovey note attached that reads "from your Hostage in Love..."
Somewhere, I'm thinking there's a self-appointed Islamic Morality Hall Monitor disguised as a Malaysian Islamic Economic honcho nodding in agreement with that sort of sentiment.
By the way, when anything with the word 'Islamic' incorporated in it's title says it'll be 'carrying out morality checks' what it really means is that they will beat, maim or kill anyone who doesn't live and behave according to their mentally-constipated worldview. Now there's love for you! And really, what does the 'Islamic Economic Development Council' have to do with morality in the first place, unless it's a deliberate obfuscation of both fact and intent?
And, of course, nothing says "I Love You" in the Islamic World like a good beheading. Even if it takes place in Buffalo.
Ah, the things we do for Love, eh?
If 7th-century-inspired notions of what constitutes love just don't float your boat, you can always settle for the 21st Century American equivalent, which, of course, involves computers, Budweiser, a pre-date "compatibility" questionnaire that has all the romance of a job interview and rectal exam rolled-into-one, and a gross violation of your personal privacy. But hey: it'll help you get laid on this special day. That is, after all, the purpose of the whole exercise, right?
This pretty much proves something that I have investigated (and often proved) many times in the last 20+ years: if you asked ten women, at random, to make the Beast with Two Backs, you'll get at least three positive responses on any given evening. Apparently, if you throw some beer into the mix, your odds of success more than double.
I figured that out at the age of 19, and didn't need a freakin' computer to do it. Nowadays, people are so intellectually-lazy and gadget-oriented (read: dependant) that they won't even fart , let alone fuck, unless there's an app for that. If it wasn't for the fact that I, eventually, Grew Up and put on my Big Boy Pants, I'd still be out there when the mischievous mood struck, chatting up would-be conquests ten at a time.
Had it down to a near-science, too.
(Note to all those who think this is a great idea: it gets boring after a very short time. Mostly because it's waaaaay too easy, and the majority of your takers barely have basic brainstem functions.)
Naturally, this would not be America if there wasn't a small minority of deranged dipshits out there who believe that no activity in the pursuit of your 'soulmate' is too extreme. Even a 24-hour murder spree.
I'm certain that somewhere, there's a clinical psychologist who's furiously trying to explain how stabbing your intended to death is just the mouth-foaming sociopath's way of expressing affection, and we just need to be tolerant of this 'different' manifestation of love, and try to extrapolate this stupidity into a pro-Gay-Marriage argument.
We should stab that so-called doctor to death, too.
As for my own Valentine's Day celebration, well...there won't be one this year. The lady who would be my heart's desire is unavailable to me, alas. Mostly by choice, because she's as big a lunatic as I am, and that just ain't healthy for either of us. As for the Other One that I was, until recently, 'keeping company' with, I tossed her overboard just as soon as I heard those words that now make me break out in a cold sweat and want to reach for a flame-thrower;
"I really, really need your help..."
That 'help', incidentally, didn't involve changing a light bulb, fixing a flat tire, or squashing an inconvenient spider in the bathtub, but was rather an attempt to get me to take some responsibility (i.e. do all the heavy lifting) in 'helping' her sort out her (egregious) personal and familial issues. Sorry, but I'm just not equipped for that anymore; The White Knight has finally hung up his spurs for good. If I'm spending all my time taking care of your issues, then I'm not taking care of mine, thanks very much. Besides, I wasn't ever going to marry you, I don't think, and your kid regards me as the next best thing to Rudolf Eichmann.
Romance, it seems, is dead. What a pity.
In a day-and-age where we're sold the idea that the heart-shaped box of Russel Stover's is the end-all-be-all, where 'Every Kiss begins With Kay', Wal-Mart tries to pass itself off as your Valentine's Day Headquarters by flogging cheap jewelry that no one with taste and a median income near the National Average would buy without chemical stimulus, where the Vermont Teddy Bear is sold as the key to unlocking the vault wherein is hidden the Pearl of Great Price, True Romance is but a few mouse-clicks away on E-Harmony, and where "do for me what I won't do for myself" becomes the basis for, and only purpose of, a one-sided "relationship" that will eventually end in disaster for both parties, it's no fucking wonder.
I think back to simpler days when I used to write a young lady who had snagged my affections love letters. She thought they were the Greatest Thing Ever, and a few days before she married someone else, she told me she had kept every last one...and still read them regularly. I wouldn't be surprised to find that she still had and read them all, 20 years later, because what passes for romance these days is kitchy, tied to outrageous displays of grossly-conspicuous consumption, and always contains at least three pathologies that should have half the country on a psychiatrist's couch somewhere.
It's all become way too impersonal, tied to empty display, or centered upon a formulation wherein personal growth is directly proportional to how well you manage to slough your personal problems off on someone else and frame the issue in terms of "if you love me, you'll do it..."
Excuse me while I vomit at the thought of Valentine's Day.
Whatever happened to those simpler times, when the free Expression of Love -- for it's own sake -- didn't come with a commercial, a political stance, religious repression, physical violence, or it's own chapter in the DSM IV?
Happy Valentine's Day, America. See most of you in the local meat market tomorrow...after you've gotten your Chromium-plated Chocloate Diamond pendant, and shaken off your beer goggles, assuming we haven't been marked for death by the local Islamic Economic Development folks for our sinful, lusty apostasy.
Update: What Women Really Want. If you believe this, you're a douchebag. (H/T Closet Conservative). Probably, it's more like some sick bitch doing research on how to snag a queer dude, and 'convert' him into suitable husband material just so that they can share wardrobes.
Also, What Women Really, Really Want: The Ins-and-Outs of the Marriage Proposal.
Personally, if I ever had a chick who demanded that a Broadway production be made of my marriage proposal as proof of my devotion, I'd do it...but only so I could take the ring back and tell her to go fuck herself -- you selfish bitch -- in front of her friends and family right at the moment of her greatest triumph.
Foreign WMD's Found in America!
Maybe. There's a lot of hemming and hawing, and the word "maybe" is being thrown about an awful lot. Either the man is telling the truth, or the population is being subjected to a psychological exercise that will probably result in greater government control of everything from the production and distribution of toilet paper, to how many times and in what fashion, you may clench and unclench your sphincter when you hear the phrase "Weapon of Mass Destruction".
And since when did they become "Weapons of Mass Effect"? Is that part of the program wherein "Terrorism" became "Man-Caused Disaster"?
If this story is true, I wonder who the Obama Administration plans to sue in the event of a Man-Caused Disaster created by a Weapon of Mass Effect? Because that's pretty much all they're good for.
I'd also like to know (but I'm afraid I already know the answer to this question) why I have to read about shit like this in a British Newspaper, and not, say, the New York Times? Why doesn't Katie Couric lead with this on tonight's newscast? Where was the "in-depth" investigatory piece by Newsweek or Time?
Oh, right. Can't blame a conservative for it, and anything which might cast multiculturalism in a negative light is to be assiduously avoided. Like the Clap.
So-called journalists in this country wonder why it is that the network news and the daily newspaper are dying breeds? I can promise you this; after something went BOOM! in downtown Los Angeles or Chicago, those same "journalists" would be rushing to get crap to print or on the air in order to "inform" you, and the amount of information and the number of "experts" they would have lined up to fill you in on the why's and wherefore's would be astounding -- and indicative of just how much the Press knew before the event, but sat on for weeks and months so as to not embarrass President Marriot-Suites...and her husband, too...or withheld so as to not "give offense" to specific minority groups with a penchant for beheading and for kneeling to a black rock in an otherwise-empty desert.
Multiculturalism gets people killed. Political Correctness gets people killed. Pumped-up bubbleheads who who couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight making poorly-informed and personally-biased decisions about what is news, what is acceptable, what is politically expedient, what viewpoints are valid -- under the banner of Journalism -- are going to get people killed.
And since when did they become "Weapons of Mass Effect"? Is that part of the program wherein "Terrorism" became "Man-Caused Disaster"?
If this story is true, I wonder who the Obama Administration plans to sue in the event of a Man-Caused Disaster created by a Weapon of Mass Effect? Because that's pretty much all they're good for.
I'd also like to know (but I'm afraid I already know the answer to this question) why I have to read about shit like this in a British Newspaper, and not, say, the New York Times? Why doesn't Katie Couric lead with this on tonight's newscast? Where was the "in-depth" investigatory piece by Newsweek or Time?
Oh, right. Can't blame a conservative for it, and anything which might cast multiculturalism in a negative light is to be assiduously avoided. Like the Clap.
So-called journalists in this country wonder why it is that the network news and the daily newspaper are dying breeds? I can promise you this; after something went BOOM! in downtown Los Angeles or Chicago, those same "journalists" would be rushing to get crap to print or on the air in order to "inform" you, and the amount of information and the number of "experts" they would have lined up to fill you in on the why's and wherefore's would be astounding -- and indicative of just how much the Press knew before the event, but sat on for weeks and months so as to not embarrass President Marriot-Suites...and her husband, too...or withheld so as to not "give offense" to specific minority groups with a penchant for beheading and for kneeling to a black rock in an otherwise-empty desert.
Multiculturalism gets people killed. Political Correctness gets people killed. Pumped-up bubbleheads who who couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight making poorly-informed and personally-biased decisions about what is news, what is acceptable, what is politically expedient, what viewpoints are valid -- under the banner of Journalism -- are going to get people killed.
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