Sunday, May 31, 2009

Tearing Down The Curtain On The Corpocratic Selection Process

Anybody who is an avid reader of this here blog (both of you), or knows me knows how I feel about American Idol. To me, it takes the Nascar/football/sports ethos and applies it to the arts, music, where it doesn't belong. I like a variety of different singers, and am mature enough to know that you can't compare Louis Armstrong to Harry Nilsson, both great singers, but very disparate in musical stylings, anymore than you can compare Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol.
All that aside, I was somewhat dismayed to find out that this years winner won because of vote fraud. It seems that an Idol sponsor,AT&T, admitted providing free mobile phones and texting services to fans of Allen, a singer, guitar player and pianist, at parties organized in his home town of Jacksonville, Arkansas. And why would a corporation favor one contestant over another?
Does AT7T disapprove of Adam Lambert's lifestyle choices? In these days, are there any people out there left who are still shocked to find out there are gay people in the entertainment industry? That would be akin to being dismayed to find out the Republican Party is full of rich white men. What do they say to the two people I know who watch the show and wanted Lambert to win (one admittedly staying on the phone for two hours to cast her vote) only to find out that this election was as rigged as Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004?
In the end, it's just a television show, and although their commercials tell us that casting a ballot for your favorite contestant is the "single most important vote you can cast", in the end, if it's the choices they want you to make, it's really not much of a choice at all.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Dick Cheney Vs. History

The term "history" is tossed around too much these days for my liking. Jay Leno's last show as touted on NBC as "going down in history". Last night's local news story on an American Idol contestant mentioned Season 8 as having "gone down in the history books". But does any one really think that at anytime in the future, they'll really be looking back at the viewing habits of one nation that may or may not be around one hundred years from now, let alone be reading books?
But is history the real reason Dick Cheney is afraid of prosecution for his war crimes? A lengthy trial, legal motions and appeals processes assure that Dick Cheney will more than likely be dead before he ever sees the inside of a prison. And after the evidence that torture memos don't show what Cheney claimed will be all the torture photos showing the horrific abuse of detainees authorized by Cheney himself.
Long after the fall of the Nazi regime and successes like the Volkswagen, the Autobahn in Germany what remains for history are all the atrocities, the death camps, gas chambers, soap made from humans, and lamp shades made from human skin. All of which make Adolph Hitler the most despised person in history. Right now, Dick Cheney stands as the most despicable person alive. Any trial that may expose his truly heinous crimes may in fact over time, lead to Dick Cheney knocking Hitler down to the second position.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Please Lock Me Away

Every day, billions of people talk to an invisible guy in the sky, asking him to special favors for them, and this is considered to be normal behavior. Even though no one has ever seen this guy, people take it on faith that he exists because they want to believe it and no amount of logical persuasion can sway them otherwise. And this is considered normal. Acceptable. Sane.
While this aberrant behavior is considered to be regular, there are psychologists who think that people who question the official government conspiracy theory about 9/11 are mentally ill. It's not as if the Bush administration ever lied about anything. And everybody knows that politicians are revered the world over for their honesty. Surely one would have to be crazy to think that the government would send thousands of people to their deaths for no reason.
The official 9/11 commission report is like a scab on a large wound. You can pick at it for a while, but eventually, you open that wound up again, at a time when some people would like to move on and forget the sinister dealings of the Cheney regime. You know, the regime that thought it perfectly alright to sodomize children, torture people to create a fictional link between Saddam and 9/11, and treason is justifiable when it covers your ass. That there were those at the end of the Cheney/Bush regime who still supported that evil cabal should direct people to the truly mentally ill.
I believe we are being lied to about 9/11. Thgere are too many questions left unanswered for me. If you wish to read more, try here for starters. And if it makes me mentally ill for still having the ability to question why a steel framed building that was not struck by a plane still managed to collapse like a controlled demolition, then lock me away, or at least adjudicate me mentally defective and give me a big government monthly stipend for the remainder of my days.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Change Means Changing Your Position After You've Been Elected On An Agenda Different From The Corpocratic One


AS you spend this Memorial Day celebrating your freedom by searing the flesh of a dead animal that was manufactured by a corporation to eventually end up on an assemblage of amassed dung, you, like that animal you consume have no choice. Hundreds of thousands of your fellow Americans have died, not for your freedom, but for the freedom of our leaders to decide whether you shall remain free, or end up in indefinite detention. Yes. like The Deciderer before him, President Obama has, perhaps more eloquently, claimed special rights for him not afforded him by the constitution.
How much different is President Obama from his predecessor when he sets up a timetable with Iran for talks before sanctions are applied when Iran has yet to be found to be developing nuclear weapons?
How fee are we really when the FBI can indentify a disparate group of men that share the majority of the country’s opinion that the war on terror was wrong, radicalize them, offer them cash incentives for following the lead of the FBI informant and then finally, after a year, get them to accept fake weapons?
No, until you realize that the only freedom you really have is the choice between blindly following these assclowns, or pretending they are as irrelevant as they would be in any given free society, you will be a slave to their political whims.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

I Don't Remember

As many Americans prepare to spend their Memorial Day weekend doing things to honor those fallen soldiers fighting to protecting corporate America's business interests (coincidentally, are exactly the same as America's interests, which is why there are so many box store Memorial Day sales)such as shopping, watching sporting events on television, eating and getting sloppy drunk at family barbecues, I struggle to remember, what was the final reason we're in the quagmire in the first place.
Was it because of the 4000 Sony PlayStation 2 units Iraq purchased in 2000? You know, those toys contain a CPU that can used for military applications, which is a good thing they're made in China, because we'll never have any military confrontation with them any time in the foreseeable future.
I do remember that most of the justifications given by the previous administration were in fact lies cooked up by US intelligence sources to sway a nation of television watchers into supporting a war sold to them by corporate media propaganda. And I think we all remember those lies having heard them so many times we can recount them in our sleep.
And I do remember the reasons those who opposed the war gave for our invasion of Iraq: oil, oil, oil, oil, Israel, and oil. The reasons given, by both pro and anti-war types were nearly innumerable, even using a dollar vs. euro scenario as a pretext.
And since there is no one concrete real justifiable reason that we should have invaded, can any person give me one good reason why we are staying there?

Monday, May 18, 2009

Evil Never Goes Away, It Just Assumes A New Shape

Back in March when Sy Hersh broke the news aboutDick Cheney's executive assassination ring, I suggested in the comments section at another blog that perhaps one of the victims of said squad might have been Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. Always the one to tell you "I told you so", I told you so! It seems Ms. Bhutto spilled the beans about Osama Bin Laden being dead before the appropriate political mileage could be garnered from it by Mr. Cheney. Not that the compliant corporate media would spoil the party their defense contractor owners/sponsors were having with all the billions they were making from the war in Afghanistan.
Speaking of making billions from scare mongering and ghost fighting, the PNAC is back, albeit, with a new name and some new faces to replace the ones that already have cashed in from the last "New Pearl Harbor". I wonder if their cause to "protect democracies from terrorism" extends to the Palestinians?

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Held Up Without A Gun

You see them all over. On television, radio, billboards, even right here at this blog, ads offering you cash for your gold. And many people are willing to do this, selling many pieces of scrap or old jewelry for dollars, but I wonder, is this because they need the money? Do they not realize that their gold will retain it's value while those dollar values are falling?
The American people are being robbed, but are so unaware of it, they don't realize it. Many of them refinanced their homes when the housing bubble was still going, but housing prices have fallen 17%, which means that if you did a refinance, you just had 17% of your homes value stolen right out of it while you were sitting on your ass watching TV. Remember Bush's "ownership society"? The plan was to tie every American down to a mortgage while those same mortgages were bundled up with bad mortgages, used for leverage by banksters to steal more money from the system in bonuses and other payout schemes.
So now, with the approaching inevitable inflation, instead of holding on to something of value, Americans are willing to accept scrap gold prices instead of market prices for the gold they possess. But why? So they can fill up their gas tanks? Take a vacation? Pay off bills? Are they just victims of economic conditions created by the corpocracy who are going to squeeze every last dime out of the citizenry before they pack up the show and take it on the road to China?

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Continuing trend of No Change

The change that was to be the Obama administration gets further and further away when facing the realities of the political climate of the corpocracy. And so now, with word coming out that Obama is reversing his position on releasing detainee photos, they've become almost as inconsistent as the previous administration. Well, I mean, the previous administration did suck in a consistent fashion but other than that....
What we never will see are the videotapes out Abu Ghraib showing children being sodomized in front of their mothers, some perv at the Pentagon has that tape and probably needs it to discharge purity of essence. What did we get from all the abuse we heaped on Muslims? According to one ex-FBI agent, not a fucking thing.
The abuses that occurred under America's auspices need to be dealt with in a punitive matter. Laws were broken, treaties (among other things) were violated, and until we locate and punish those who authorized it, this will never go away. Sweeping it under a rug will just allow this to fester, and if the Democrats are just as responsible for letting this go on, then we need to dispose of them as well.
The United States is a nation of laws. We can not throw a man in prison for twenty five years for possessing marijuana because he is poor and black then turn our eyes to real and heinous crimes such as have been perpetrated by our own government in our name because the guys who did it are rich white and powerful. Equal justice under the law is a constitutional right under the law, and if we don't punish those who ordered the law breaking, then we might as well open up our prisons and let every other criminal out as well.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Where's Osama?


Republicans are funny people. During the Bush administration, they didn't have a problem spending money to fight the eternal boogeyman, Osama bin Laden. They didn't flinch as billions of dollars were laundered through the war in Iraq into the pockets of Halliburton, Blackwater, and other defense contractors. They never took to the streets in protest even after it was proven that the war in Iraq was based on lies. Why?
Al Qaeda never existed. It was a complete fabrication of the CIA, used to justify a war that the politicians those Republicans at tea parties voted into office wanted for the sole purpose of looting the country. And al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden? He's been dead for some time now (Although it hasn't prevented him from releasing audiotapes when he's conveniently needed to scare the Americans)
Now we have the president of Pakistan admitting Bin Laden is dead, and what does the US government say? You know, the change people? Nobody knows Osama'a status. Do they intend on keeping him his memory around, just in case they need to invade Pakistan?
So please, Mr. President, don't start using old Bush administration tactics. Osama is dead, and most people these days are too concerned about making it through the economic crisis to worry about some dead guy anymore. Osama is as dead as Pontiac these days, so don't try to tell us otherwise.

Friday, May 08, 2009

One Person's Hate Crime Is Another's Belief System

Christopher Columbus discovered America. We all know that. We know it because we were taught that in school. Our parents were taught it, and their parents, and most likely, our children are being taught that as well, so it must be right, right?
Wrong.
Long before Columbus, before Leif Erickson and the Vikings, there were people living here, indigenous people who had built great civilizations, such as the Mayans, and yet, in our Euro-centric education system, those people are not credited with their discovery.
Suppose you began to question this idea. You set up a Facebook page dedicated to questioning the truth, but some people urge the owners of Facebook to remove your group from it's site. What's the big deal? It's not like you put up a page dedicated to killing all native Americans or anything. And yet, although you are not harming anyone with your belief system, you are guilty of a "thought crime" because your ideas, as ludicrous as they may be to some, and repellent to others, they are mere thoughts, that, right or wrong, sane or bull goose fucking looney, are your thoughts.
Once they can make one idea, an intangible thought a crime, then they can start adding more. Lots of people believe things that are wrong in my opinion, Christianity, Elvis is alive, the moon landings were faked, or that American Idol is the best show in the history of television. Yet, No one Demands these thoughts become hate crimes. I certainly don't. In this crazy mixed up world, people certainly have the right to believe what they will, because, they're really not hurting anyone but their own credibility.
Columbus never set out to discover America, he was merely seeking a new trade route to India by proving the world is round. He was half successful. But even with revisionist history, people will believe what they want to, in the face of undeniable facts. There are still people who believe the world is flat after all.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Sure, Queer Is In The Dictionary, But So Is Dickhead


,,as well as shitheel, dipshit, and hypocrite. You see, Sam Wurzelbacher, known by the name "Joe The Plumber", even though he hasn't plumbed an inch of (galvanized) pipe since he became the darling a spokesperson for the Religiously Retarded wing of the Republican party, feels it's perfectly okay to call gays 'queer' because the word is in the dictionary.
Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur.

Strange is Sam calling himself Joe, praising Sarah Palin and casting aspersions on other Republicans for not being as Christian as Sam/Joe Wurzelplumber is, or passing judgment on gays. Like all good bigots, he uses the old 'some-of-my-best-friends-are' excuse, then flatly states that "I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children". Because, you know, gay is a disease that is transmitted from the older gays to younger children all the time. That's why they shouldn't be teachers, either.
Well, Joe, I wouldn't want you anywhere near my children. You profess to follow a God of love, and yet you hate just about everybody who isn't white, Christian, Republican and heterosexual. Wait a minute; Joe's quitting the GOP.
Joe says he might consider running for office someday (obviously not as a Republican) but says "God hasn't said, 'Joe, I want you to run.'" Haven't you been listening Joe? Your book has tanked, you're a laughingstock to most of the country, and I'm sure your old boss has replaced your position within his company. God hasn't told you to run, he's told you to just go away.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Test Driving Digital Broadcast Television

Back in February of this year, i was under going an anxiety attack. You see, the 17th was rapidly approaching, and I had not yet purchased a digital television converter box. You see, I don't have cable, and while I watch very little television, there are those shows I like to watch, and with out a TV signal, well, I'd be forced to watching old videotapes and the same twelve DVDs I've had for years.
Just as time was running out, my ex-wife provided me with a coupon that allowed me to purchase a new converter box for a mere fraction of the cost. I hooked up my antenna, tested the system and.... they pushed the switch date back to June 12th. So it sat next to my TV, like the pile of broken DVD players I've been accumulating, collecting dust like them, waiting for the day when it becomes something resembling useful.
Then, a couple of weekends ago, while using the analog antenna reception, we came across RetroJams, a weird broadcast channel showing old videos non-stop. One of the boys suggested we try and see if we could pull it in better with digital converter box, so we turned it on , scanned for available channels, and found that a number of local channels were already broadcasting in HD digital. We watched the box office debacle Sphere, an unintentional comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Samuel L. Jackson.
And it was great. The digital picture was as clear as cable television, just like we had been promised. Since then, we have been watching in HD on the local channels that have begun broadcasting the signal. Only the local NBC affiliate and the local CBS affiliate have to yet commence HD broadcast, making it hard for me to watch one of my favorite shows, 30Rock, except by turning off the converter box. And there has been other problems with it as well.
1. Every time I turn off the television for an extended period of time, the converter box shuts off, and to begin watching again, I have to scan for all the channels again.
2. On occasion, the box will shut itself as I watch it, with no advance warning.
3. Weather conditions can still alter the signal, creating interesting pixel trails and image mash-ups that are like an acid trip. In fact, if I still did drugs, it would be cool to watch just for those moments when one image melts out of another like a free associated mind trip.
4. The additional channels promised have turned out to be Christian broadcasting featuring bad Christian rock bands, televangelists, and movie and television shows from the "good old days", when injecting reality into entertainment was as far away as injecting reality into religion is today.
Sill, I am looking to upgrade my antenna, hoping to fix some problems, and am still hoping that I can start watching My Name Is Earl and 30 Rock in HD soon.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Our Torture Is Better Than Your Torture

Just to set the matter straight, when other countries torture it's bad. However, when the US engages in torture it's okay, because "if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture", even if that torture was not to save American lives but to attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11.
Americans have been conditioned, Jack Bauer'd into thinking that torture is a good thing, because there are so many people out there who wish to do us harm. And rather than discuss the reasons that people may want to do us harm, because we are not the sainted country the rose colored glasses wearing, beer swilling, flag waving, television watchers think we may be (after all, we torture people to justify acts of aggression against nation states sanctioned into near submission), it's better to pretend that we don't torture children, run assassination squads, or bomb civilians.
America needs to grow up. Our moral high ground has been washed away by an ocean of blood, spilled in our name.

Friday, May 01, 2009

Wha' Happened?

Ah, for last year, during the primaries, when the most important issue facing the United States was how to properly display your patriotism by wearing flag lapel pins. Love of America outweighed every issue, from dealing with the impending mortgage crisis, reining in gas prices, or formulating a safe and sane exit strategy from Iraq. And no one loved America, or so they claimed, than the Republican party.
Now, it's a different story. Almost half of Georgia Republicans would like to secede from the nation. Kind of hard to love that flag when you're no longer part of it, isn't it folks?
So, are they all sore losers? Do they think that John McCain has a better handle on things and he and Sarah Palin would have done a better job of dealing with the steaming shitpile that the previous administration dumped on Obama's doorstep? Have they become the America hating terrorists they feared not too long ago? Has not their God equipped them with the strength of character and courage to deal with tumultuous times?
Naw, they're all just a bunch of pussies who can't take the heat. Any one from the left who would have suggested secession during the Bush/Cheney regime would have been rounded up and hung as a traitor. I say we give all these wusses their own state (like Mississippi) and be done with them.