DeLay's Toupée; Or, Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean There's Not Really Someone Out To Get You

The slow-motion demise of Tom DeLay's political career is a thing to behold, for several reasons. The obvious one is that sending this corrupt asshole down the road, at long last, may finally be the beginning of the end for the hijackers of the Republican Party.

Not to worry. To be sure, Tommy and Dickie and Rummy and Dubya and the rest of the putsch gang will land on their feet. They always do. DeLay will be sure to command Ollie North money for speaking engagements, at which he will inveigh against the "liberal media machine" -- which is none of those three things, if you think honestly about it -- for bringing him down. Evil Demo-rats, and all that. You know the drill by now. Failing that, there is always the mad fly K Street lobbying chedda, yo.

The empirical impossibility of the Democrats actually being able to dismount DeLay matters not to his supporters, who really are just another in an endless series of continuations of idiots who think their support for such characters symbolizes their will to be Free. They labor under many delusions, such as the notion that they're fighting a Clintonian conspiracy to ram evolution and gay marriage down the virgin throats of their sainted children. Oh, the blasphemous horror!

The idea that DeLay could have been brought down by Democrats is on a factual par with the rest of their anti-empirical claptrap. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats can't get much of anything done on their own at all. Occasionally they can raise a stink about an issue by getting in front of a camera, but that's about it. Even at that simple tactic, they suck.

See, a truly opportunistic opposition party would have seen the recent shenanigans employed by the Republicans as just cause for a response, to which they could have clearly delineated the difference between the two parties. There would have been nothing amiss in a model Catholic like Nancy Pelosi or Pat Leahy stepping forward after the death of the pope and reminding everyone just whose side he was on with regard to things like war, the economy, and general social consciousness.

Yes, the Republicans have him on abortion and birth control and such. So much the better to draw that line, since Americans have made it quite clear where they stand on those issues. Do you want social awareness and consciousness, or do you want Gladys Kravitz? At long last, this is not one of those "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" deals. You really do have to make up your mind one way or the other, sooner than you think.

So if anything, the Democrats have distinguished themselves by their impotence, not their hidden power. They have none; no hidden power, no visible power. No, DeLay is going down because he has become a liability to his fellow Republicans. The usual question of "did he jump or was he pushed?" is moot here; the only question is who exactly is doing the actual pushing.

I submit that a person who is as infamous for fucking with his friends as he is with his enemies is ripe for a good old-fashioned shanking. The bearer of the sharpened toothbrush appears to be Chris Shays, but Shays is no reckless fool -- you can count on at least a dozen sets of fingerprints on this puppy, all of them Republican. The big happy funtime conspiracy theory is that Shays got the nod from the Moron In Chief, but that's highly unlikely. These guys are all old-school mafia values, and DeLay is an integral part of their crew. It would be like Tony Soprano giving the go-ahead for some low-level peon to knock off Silvio. Hell, even when Pussy had to be knocked off, Tony at least had the class to be actively involved in the task.

No, what you're looking at is the low- to mid-level captains chafing at the nonsense that cultivating the snake-handler vote has wrought the entire party. It's starting to flow north, slowly, inexorably, but only in the way that shit-ridden sumps do when they just get too damned full, and start leaking at all sides. DeLay has done nothing but piss people off and fuck around; the real miracle is that it's taken this long to get the bastard.

The real story is just how absent Democrats have been from this low-tech lynching, which would have been remarkably easy, and amazingly productive for them. Perhaps, per usual, they have been involved, sotto voce, not wanting to look like usurpers or whatever. So much the worse for them; nothing wrong with usurping someone whose congressional sobriquet is (sadly) "the Hammer". Whatever the case, they need to realize right now that the only way DeLay's demise works for them is if they take his district. If they do, the proverbial domino theory will probably be in play, but the way these pussies operate, that's a big if. The fact of the matter is, for the truly muscular liberal, the midterms await -- 2006 is payoff time, baby. All we have to do is grab that fucking brass ring.

So call the roller of big cigars already, and let him whip his proverbial concupiscent curds out of DeLay's scroungy ass. Let the Republican party rediscover its heart, its brain, and its soul, all in one swell foop. Let be be finale of seem.

Update: DeLay has since expressed contrition at his "inartful" (apparently Tommy takes English as a Second Language classes with the Malaprop-In-Chief) choice of words in excoriating activist judges (that is, judges who make ruling that hurt DeLay's wittle feewings). Nice try, asshole. Good luck unringing that bell.

DeLay also opined that the GOP's 1994 "Contract With (On) America" ranks up there in all-time document standing with, um, the Magna Carta. Yes, the roll of 2-ply asswipe that put the current group of bozos in charge to lawn-dart the US ranks right up there with the document that heralded the end of serfdom, and eventually led to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Englightenment, and the Age of Reason.

The thing about DeLay is, neither he nor his idiots realize just how fucking dumb and flat-out ignorant they really are. It's pretty scary if you think about it.

MBA: Millions of Broke Americans

Moon of Alabama makes a damn good point here, one that has floated around the periphery of this administration since the get-go.

The second-term Required Courses in the Harvard MBA program includes

Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE)

This course introduces tools for studying the economic environment of business to help managers understand the implications for their companies.

Students will learn the impact of: National income and balance of payment accounting; Exchange rate theory; Political regimes

An examination of both the gains and problems arising from regional global integration covers: International trade; Foreign direct investment; Portfolio capital; Global environmental issues

That sounds like an awful lot of econo-speak to me. Heritage's Beach thinks that's not "a language he understands". Thereby Beach doubts the value of Bush's MBA degree?

No doubt it's not the particular inference Beach (or Bush, for that matter) was hoping for, but it's the most sensible one. What does any business owner look at -- whether or not he has a degree -- when assessing a person or situation in the context of competence, innovation, and reliable stewardship? Well, unless he's just an idiot corporate plunderer, he looks at two things right away: past record, and current results.

So ask yourself, if you were a small business owner, would you hire George W. Bush to mind the store for you, or would you not trust him with anything more complicated than a broom? Every innovation he's attempted has either been a failure or an outright lie, and as for competence, all you have to do is read Bush's own sales pitch for Social Security "reform". Res ipsa loquitur and shit.

If Bush really has a Harvard MBA, they need to tighten up their program standards. What the fuck was his master's thesis on, brush clearin'? Hard work done by good people? Keeping the economy functioning while working people pay three bucks a gallon?

It's a good thing he's not worried about history's assessment of him, because unlike Nixon (who at least was intelligent), it will not be kind.

[via Atrios]

The Mob Rules

In the midst of worldwide month-long contemplation of papal navels and feeding tube minutiae, this story slips under the media radar, much to the chagrin of lazy Catholic commentators who would just as soon prattle on about this or that legacy ad infinitum.

Chanting "Death to America!" and burning effigies of President Bush and Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Iraqis flooded central Baghdad on Saturday in what police called the largest anti-American protest since the fall of Baghdad exactly two years ago.

The peaceful demonstration by followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr underscored the United States' accomplishments and its failures since the end of the war.

Once staunch supporters of the U.S. invasion to oust the dictator who ruthlessly suppressed them, many Shiite Arabs in Iraq have grown so frustrated by the lingering military occupation, with its checkpoints, raids and use of force, that they took to the streets to demand a deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

....

Carrying banners that read "Go Out" and "Leave Our Country," marchers hit the streets early Saturday, blocking roads and causing traffic jams around the capital. Most of the protesters came from the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, but busloads arrived from Kut, Amarah, Baqubah and other cities. Some estimates put the number of protesters at 300,000.

So. Conservative Kurdish PM, who will surely have his own countrymen's desire for independence in mind (which would completely destabilize the entire region, seeing as how an independent Kurdistan would take chunks of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey); conservative Shiite president (al-Jaafari) with close ties to al-Sistani -- and thus, the Iranian moo-lahs; resurgence of rebel clerics like al-Sadr, whose political juice had been thought to be largely squeezed several months ago, drawing a record crowd; and a seething, demographically young and pissed-off populace, wanting us to get the fuck out now.

Wait till they find out about the 14 permanent bases we've built. This is going to get uglier before it gets any better.

Meanwhile, Vacation Boy continues with clearing an apparently endless expanse of brush, while he schemes as to how to appoint one of his household pets to replace the ineluctably corrupt Tom DeLay, who is about to have to return to his former occupation as Dale Gribble.

Message to Dear Leader: Suppose you get your stupid ass back to work already, and find a way to give real regular folks a break on the gas they have to put in their cars to get to work. This is bullshit, asshole. You haven't earned the right to vacation time yet. Start earning your keep, chop chop.

Fear Is The Key

Back in a more innocent era -- 1992, to be specific -- Iron Maiden, of all bands, did a great song called Fear Is The Key. One lyric from that song has stuck with me for years, and seems more and more true as our culture gets more and more cynical and caught up in itself, in all sorts of creepy and self-referential sorts of ways. It's a very simple line, but there's a lot of truth to it:

The kids have lost their freedom, and nobody cares till somebody famous dies.

Hmmm. Sounds like a pretty good snapshot of our starfucking celebrity cult-ure. Either Bruce Dickinson has the gift of foresight, or history repeats itself like a stuttering mime.

Then the chorus:

Now we live in a world of uncertainty.
Fear is the key to what you want to be.
You don't get a say, the majority gets its way
And you're outnumbered by the bastards till the day you die....

Yes, yes, it's trite and clichéd, right? But it's also sadly, painfully true, in this brave new era of the (pffft) "culture of life", as invoked by a little punk of a man who mocks the people he executes right before he throws the switch, and puffs his chest at the enemy in time of war, from the bravery of being out of range (cf. Roger Waters).

Frank Rich has more on this hypocritical nonsense-babble phrase which is sure to catch on in deep-fried Twinkie country.

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.

These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.

As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.

As James Carville, he of the Deliverance six-toe banjo-playin' countenance, once said, "This is woah". Indeed it is, and the Democrats had best decide once and for all if they'd rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Time is running out like Rosie O'Donnell's supply of Devil Dogs.

Scenes From The Culture Of Life

I don't know about you, but when I saw the requisite overhead shot of the mourning throng at the Vatican, all I could think was, "So, if you're the guy smack dab in the middle there, and you suddenly have to take a huge dump, what the fuck do you do -- shit your pants, or start praying that you don't shit your pants?"

And what if you've spent 24 hours or so waiting in line, and you're just a hundred yards out now? You've long exhausted your supply of beef jerky and Gatorade (or were stupid enough to share) and you haven't slept -- and you really, really, really gotta drop the kids off at the pool. You gotta raise some wild chocolate trout in Lake Porcelain, your back teeth are floating, you're exhausted and delirious from spending the last day trudging at 1 mph like some retarded pack mule, elbow-to-kneecap with another million of you. Think the Million Drone March is just gonna let you back in line; you think they don't have their own brownies baking?

I'm just saying. There was a time in my life where I was damn near ready to just drive without a license if need be, because I have better things to do than wait in line for 45 fucking minutes at the DMV. There is nobody on the planet that I'd do this shit for in mourning, not even Lemmy, and he's like Elvis and shit to me.

---

Like most people not in thrall to a corrupt cabal of pedophile eunuchs, scant attention has been paid to the week-long mourning, though some of it is pretty unavoidable, if one wishes to interact with the world and read and view things. Indeed, sometimes that can be its own path to enlightenment; you just might learn something or gain a new insight where you didn't think you could.

Alas, that seems not to be the case here. It is not the fault of the pope; indeed, most people's lives could be described in five minutes, whereas just enumerating the pope's list of accomplishments and travels would take considerably longer. Then you have the political and social ramifications of his writings and encyclicals, not that anyone's going there. No, it isn't that so much as the "event whiff" the whole thing radiates, not unlike the deaths of Ronald Reagan or Princess Di. People want to be "there", and pretend that the "there" had important meaning to it, when it's really just about them and the use of celebrity culture as a tableau on which to project their psychological bullshit.

They may as well have been at Woodstock -- either one, it doesn't matter. At least at the Vatican, they probably won't have to deal with the trauma of watching a coed get wilded over by the PortaPotty during Limp Bizkit's set. Dude, that would so harsh your mellow.

The Di death really inaugurated this level of funereal foolishness, this abject fantasy of the crowd pretending that they "knew" the well-known, or had some kinship with them. Some "connection". I submit that this is a prime manifestation of their feelings of disconnectedness, of the atomization of communal society and mores. People "cocoon"; they are "homebodies". When they travel, they bring all their gadgets and toys with them; when they camp, they require a bus or large RV, because nothing says "camping" like a living room and fucking satellite dish, microwave and all that shit. Did I miss something, or do they just not manufacture tents and sleeping bags anymore?

Reagan's funeral last year, and the visiting of the coffin and such, were a rude reminder of the brainless buffoonery surrounding Diana. I recall at several points, during the interminable procession of "visitors" to view Reagan, seeing people who were dressed like they had just come from a cockfight. Fat women bursting out of short shorts and T-shirts. Men wearing jeans and wife-beater shirts and fucking baseball caps. People who thought that they were making a pilgrimage, yet it didn't even occur to them to dress for the occasion. Consciously or subconsciously, this is a remarkable level of cognitive dissonance, expressed as a profound lack of respect for someone they've deluded themselves into thinking they're paying respect to. This ain't Graceland, motherfucker. They don't serve hot dogs here, and there's no velvet bullfighter paintings.

But for these idiots, it's clearly not about paying respect , anymore than hovering outside Terri Schiavo's hospice was about paying respect. For these funeralistas, it's about marking signposts in their lives with media-driven events, as opposed to being about, you know, the deceased. Funerals are strange events to begin with, but public funerals are a turgid mix of circus and travesty, fed and watered for an extended period by the jerkoff media.

Think about it. Would the media have failed in their putative goal of reporting actual news by, say, giving the pope the day when he died, and another when he is actually buried? Isn't that enough? Of course it is, as it would have been for Reagan as well. Because the problem is, once again, especially in an era of 24-hour news channels, that there's only so much to talk about, when talking about a person's life -- any life. These week-long binge-and-purge death-fests serve no practical purpose whatsoever, and really just feed into the mass psychosis of people telling themselves over and over again that they could be "friends" with the people they see and read about. The story and analysis started eating its own tail by Monday morning, really.

It is a sign of being way overfed and intellectually lazy when members of the throng start talking to the cameras as if waiting in line was some kind of fucking accomplishment. At least in Russia, there's usually toilet paper at the end of that line, and it doesn't have to be guarded by 6000 paramilitary troops, carabinieri, and guided missiles.

The pope, whatever his faults, was a smart man, and he probably would have appreciated the irony of all that. All the infernal implements of war, looking over the final ceremony for a dead man of peace. One can actually visualize the pope smiling impishly at that, eyes twinkling. He did have that presence, you have to give him that.

The media would be doing a favor all the way around -- to the line-waiters, to the rest of the world, and even to themselves (because they are far too rotten, fat, and lazy anymore) if they just stopped this wall-to-wall coverage nonsense altogether. It's a delusion -- the people in line are affected by John Paul's death because they think they are. And despite their publicly-professed faith, they don't appear to be terribly self-reflective about things.

Life is for the living; instead of making the scene and acting like you're "paying respects", why not really honor that person and do something in their name that truly makes a difference? Seriously. I can't possibly imagine that the pope or Reagan wouldn't rather have a million people out there mobilizing and finding real ways to help other people, than standing in fucking line all week just so they could say they were there. Don't buy another fucking votive candle; go rescue a dog from the pound, or plant a tree. Do something more intellectually, spiritually, and physically rigorous than waiting in fucking line -- or even worse, watching the line on TV -- and deluding yourself that you're actually doing something even remotely useful.

---

Because of the unexpected political backfire from their little Schiavo sideshow (say that three times fast), Republicans are now making a callow attempt to publicly milk the lemon, as we say in the 'hood. The phrase "culture of life", what with its unnecessary implications and flabby logical contortions, has jumped the shark in record time.

Naturally, the one remaining worthwhile news program, The Daily Show, has distilled this bankrupt catchphrase to a nice quick montage, saying all while everyone else sits on their thumbs. From Pete Domenici's grandstanding, to Faux News' Neil Cavuto's disingenuous cowardice, to Scott McClellan's usual scamboogery in service to his dark overlords, there's no shortage of sanctimonious horseshit being peddled here. Most instructive was McClellan's invocation of the phrase some ten times at a press conference, indicating that the scriptwriting elves are hard at work for the administration once again.

When countered with a perfectly legitimate (and obvious) question of how Bush's seeming indifference to executing retards, people with narcoleptic alkies for lawyers, and pretty much everyone besides Henry Lee Lucas, contrasted with this overt plaintive babble, McClellan had the goddamned nerve to get righteously indignant about it all. Suddenly, now was not the time for that. Well, of course not. Nor was it time to ask where little Sun Hudson fit into this supposed "culture of life" when the hospital pulled the plug on him. Didn't see Tom DeLay hopping that bandwagon, even though it was in Texas.

Because it's bullshit. The "culture of life" values the vapid narcissism of American Idol, the nihilistic cruelty of contrived reality shows like Fear Factor and Survivor, and the gratuitous goo and gore of forensic porn shows like CSI. The "culture of life" wants to win the lottery -- or failing that, a slot machine -- because Americans have seen too many people die broke and lonely because their pensions got looted or their jobs got outsourced or they worked till they dropped, and all their government wants to do about any of it is kill off Social Security.

The "culture of life" surrounds itself with feel-good totems and doo-dads, so they won't have to travel or learn anything except how to do their jobs. The "culture of life" pretends that bigger is better, even as they loudly proclaim their loyalty to a man whose message was to live modestly and humbly upon the earth, and to take the stewardship of the creations of God seriously and honestly. The "culture of life" showed that cunt in the Prius by buying a Hummer and slapping an "Earth First" sticker on it. The "culture of life" tells itself that we went to war to liberate the Iraqi people, because that's the only explanation it can live with at this point. The "culture of life" is more likely to believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, than to know just how badly Pakistan has been fucking us over for years.

The "culture of life" allowed itself to think it had a stake and a right in interfering in the Terri Schiavo case, while it said shit about their elected representatives selling them out to the usurious credit-card industry. The "culture of life" wants to lecture everybody on the sanctity of every zygote, but wants nothing whatsoever to do with people once they're out of the womb. Unless they're homosexual, in which case the "culture of life" either wants to cure them or kill them.

The "culture of life" smothers itself in imagined nostalgia because it has nothing creative of its own to say. Indeed, the "culture of life" shies away from anything too creative or innovative, because apparently everything good has already been thought of. The "culture of life" would rather watch Gilligan's Island than Larry Sanders, and would rather listen to the latest flavor of the month than Johnny Cash, even though Cash was more innovative and creative back then than Alan Jackson will ever be. The "culture of life" thinks it has nothing to learn from anybody else, even its fellow citizens. The "culture of life" thinks it has it all figured out, even as it gorges on fast food and alcohol, and binges on NASCAR and Krispy Kremes.

The "culture of life" thrives on jonesmanship and covetousness, even as they insist that everyone should be lowjacked at birth with a digital copy of the Ten Commandments. The "culture of life" waits outside Walmart at four in the fucking morning the day after Thanksgiving, because their life would just come to an end if they had to wait till December 1st to pay $5 more for that DVD player. But the "culture of life" can only be bothered to vote when someone promises to give the fags what-for.

The "culture of life" is just passing time, instead of living and engaging and learning. The "culture of life" is not passionate about anything worth being passionate about, like sex and music and maybe a good peach pie or a nice barbecued ahi steak. They would rather be passionate about affirming their rightness, about living in a cognitive Möbius strip of meta-confirmation of assumptions. Their air is self-righteous vindictiveness; their water is the phony vindication they get from professional shit-shovelers at the usual "think tanks" and talk-radio outlets. No wonder they never feel nourished and sated. Fast food just makes you bloated and ill, after the initial endorphins fade away.

It doesn't matter if any of the factoids they regurgitate are true or not; that never mattered in the first place. Despite popular pretenses about the stark contrasts between "good" (them) and "evil" (everyone else), questions of right and wrong and fact and truth have become incredibly subjective -- and hence, useless except in service to political gamesmanship. Telling the truth about the "liberal" media is tripleplusungood to the culture warriors of "life".

The "culture of life" has got its priorities all fucked up. The "culture of life" is slowly, surely strangling the fountain of innovation and excellence this nation once was, because they prefer "fat and happy" to "awake".

The "culture of life" is in for a rude awakening.

Juche 5: Bad Year For Dear Leader

Were it not for the week-long mourning of the pope, this would have been an even worse stretch of time for Dear Leader than it has been. The Schiavo chickens may take a while to roost, but (to mangle some mexed mitaphors here) the GOP really dropped the ball on this one, as this op-ed piece points out quite well.

Because this is what conservatism has become in this country. No more is there a dedication to the traditional principles of limited government and fiscal restraint; as John Danforth, a former Republican senator and an Episcopal minister, noted in the New York Times last week, the Republican Party “has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.”

“As a senator,” wrote Danforth, “I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.”

Something to keep in mind: when John Danforth says you're catering to the Jesus Crispies too much, you better listen. Of course they won't, because they've painted themselves into a bit of a corner with the fruit-loops, and they gotta dance with them that brung 'em -- except dancing is sinful, mainly because it startles the snake they're handling.

And the recent brazen attack by Iraqi insurgents on Abu Ghraib prison serves as a clear reminder of just how far from stability Iraq still is, and will be for the realistic future.

In fact, though it's hardly mentioned in our media, we've been digging in. Joshua Hammer of Mother Jones magazine reported in a recent issue that approximately $4.5 billion dollars has gone to -- who else? -- KBR for the construction and maintenance of up to 14 "enduring camps" or permanent military bases in Iraq. Many of these bases have a look of permanency that undoubtedly has to be seen to be imagined. But here's Hammer's description of just one:

"Camp Victory North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S. military seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Over the past year, KBR contractors have built a small American city where about 14,000 troops are living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden, air-conditioned bungalows called SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of those used by troops in Vietnam. There's a Burger King, a gym, the country's biggest PX -- and, of course, a separate compound for KBR workers, who handle both construction and logistical support. Although Camp Victory North remains a work in progress today, when complete, the complex will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo -- currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War."

And let's just remember what those 14 bases sit on.

Then again, if our intel agencies had done proper due diligence on their weapons assessments in the first place, we might not currently be standing on our collective dicks.

A presidential commission said Thursday that "the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments" on Iraq's arsenal. The commission also warned in a scathing report that the CIA and other agencies may be equally blind now about nuclear threats posed by countries such as Iran and North Korea.

And now Mr. Magoo -- accompanied by the woman who is not his wife though he is married and we are so very concerned about the chilluns will think -- will do for international development aid what he did for our foreign policy. Until he has a Robert McNamara moment down the road and expects us all to just forgive him for being a douchebag or something. Good luck with that.

Other fun news from the new incubator of Democracy®:

“They started shouting at us that we were immoral, that we were meeting boys and girls together and playing music and that this was against Islam.

“They began shooting in the air and people screamed. Then, with one order, they began beating us with their sticks and rifle butts.” Two students were said to have been killed.

Standing over them as the blows rained down was the man who gave the order, dressed in dark clerical garb and wearing a black turban. Ali recognised him immediately as a follower of Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric. Ali realised then that the armed men were members of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, a private militia that fought American forces last year and is now enforcing its own firebrand version of Islam.

The picnic had run foul of the Islamist powers that increasingly hold sway in the fly-blown southern city, where religious militias rule the streets, forcing women to don the veil and closing down shops that sell alcohol or music.

Apparently the March of Freedom™ has left waffle prints in a few foreheads. Pussies. Didn't they get the memo?

Finally, it seems that after three months of a bullshit Social Security privatization scheme -- which may or may not actually have a plan stapled to it, depending on whom you ask and on which day -- and no end in sight to rising gas prices (as Chevron makes record profits and we subsidize Iraq's fuel), some of the brighter bulbs are getting the idea.

President Bush's approval rating has plunged to the lowest level of any president since World War II at this point in his second term, the Gallup Organization reported today.

All other presidents who served a second term had approval ratings well above 50% in the March following their election, Gallup reported.

Presidents Truman and Johnson had finished out the terms of their predecessors, and then won election on their own for a second term.

Bush's current rating is 45%. The next lowest was Reagan with 56% in March 1985.

More bad signs for the president: Gallup's survey now finds only 38% expressing satisfaction with the "state of the country" while 59% are "dissatisfied." One in three Americans feel the economy is excellent or good, while the rest find it "only fair" or poor.

I see polls like this and I wonder what the 38% are smoking, or if they just feel that holding the line shows resolve against the traitorous Franken/Garofalo conspiracy to undermine their sacred freedom to shop at Piggly Wiggly and blow the remainder of their drone wages at the local Indian casino.

The war is not going to pay for itself. The Middle East is in a state of flux, like it has been for most of the last 5000 years. This does not automatically mean that "they" want to be free; "they" may just want a different strongman, and if it happens to be a strongman we don't favor, then we can dispense with our pie-eyed notions.

Perhaps someone should get on with funneling a few hundred grand to Ahmad Chalabi, so he can get some sort of public art project going in downtown Baghdad dedicated to Dear Leader. Maybe a bronze statue of Him bringing a plastic Thanksgiving tofurkey to the troops. Maybe a ceiling fresco of Him touching the hand of mortal man, and imbuing it with the unquenchable thirst for Freedom™ -- or at least a thirst for lining his pockets while Halliburton blows more taxpayer money importing oil into Iraq.

Really, the possibilities are endless, and Juche 5 has already begun with the flowering of many of those possibilities.

Stupor Nanny

Let's take a brief detour from the freeway of politics and contemporary current-events, and take a look at where the rubber meets the road, as the kids say in their impenetrable lingo.

Outside of California, the case of the hit-and-run nanny may not be well known, but it showcases a person at least as execrable and despicable as any of your Scott Peterson or Robert Blake types. Generally I am either apathetic or openly scornful of public trials with soap-opera potential such as this, but I have been keeping an eye on this one literally since the tragedy first happened.

I'm not entirely sure why this case has my balls in such an uproar; perhaps the sheer inscrutable nature of someone as repulsive and disgusting as Jimena Barreto presents itself as a sort of puzzle. What makes this sort of person tick? Normally I couldn't possibly care less. Maybe it's because her victims were children. I really don't know, but this vile woman's continued existence gnaws at me every time I read about her.

As the boys grabbed scooters and bike helmets, Jimena Barreto, 45, slid into her gold 1979 Mercedes to drive 15 miles to her job as the nighttime nanny for a family with a 3-year-old and a newborn. Her 12-hour shift started at 7 p.m., and she wanted to be on time. A native of Colombia, she had been fired from two other jobs. Her new employers had already warned her about being late.

In the glove box, she carried an expired insurance card, dummied-over to appear up-to-date. She'd left her driver's license in her apartment, but that was the least of her problems. She had four previous convictions for driving under the influence, and her license had been suspended nine times. Picked up recently for drunk and disorderly conduct, she was an emotional wreck — the man she'd been living with had left her.

This may also be the crux of it for me -- this dumb cunt had been popped four fucking times, and her license suspended nine times. Honestly, I didn't even know you could have a license suspended that many times. What the fuck does it take to have your license permanently revoked in this state -- running over a couple of little kids?

Regardless, there have been other stories about Barreto that have colored the facts in almost sympathetic tones. She had a "problem". Awwww. I fucking care, really. I am as libertarian as they come about what people choose to put into their bodies, but keep your fucking bad habits at home. And when you keep getting popped by The Man for your bullshit, and your significant other gives up on you, then maybe alcohol and drugs are not for you, and you should just accept that and grow the hell up, m'kay?

Unharmed, Barreto walked back to the wreckage. Witnesses, including Carmen and the Cunhas, remember her repeating over and over: "I'm not from this country. I'm going to go to jail" and "Those damn pills, those damn pills for my back."

She asked if the girl was dead, and made the sign of the cross. Something — mother's intuition? — told Carmen she would try to flee. When Barreto said she wanted water from her car, Carmen limped after her, reached inside and took the keys.

Minutes later, Barreto flagged down a passing van. Hyperventilating, she asked for a cell phone, saying she'd been in an accident and needed asthma medicine. The driver, suspicious, swung the van around and headed back to the scene.

"I can't go there. I can't be seen. I can't let people see me," Barreto allegedly said, hopping out and disappearing as the van driver tried to get an officer's attention.

So much for the "I panicked" defense. She had several chances to stay and do the right thing. She dodged every obstacle and fled like a rabbit. She deserves no mercy.

Read the whole article and judge for yourself. It's nice that the Packs have used this situation to try to strengthen some penalties and toughen license regulations after DUI convictions, but I submit that that would not (indeed, did not -- she had a fake insurance card in her car, and I don't see how the hell she could legally have had a license with 4 DUIs and 9 suspensions) have kept an indecent soul like Jimena Barreto from doing exactly what she did.

It's funny -- even though after much investigation and many witnesses, a grand jury found that Barreto had been driving under the influence, she still denies it. Still fucking denies it. Imagine that. Okay, dummy, then why did you run and evade and scheme to have all your drugs flushed and your money and jewelry sent to you, if it was all just an honest accident? Please.

And since her capture, Barreto has made repeated claims about her depression and guilt, and how she has contemplated suicide.

I would be more than happy to buy some rope and toss it in her cell, if I thought for one minute she was sincere about that. But this is clearly a delusional, narcissistic sociopath who has no conscience whatsoever about what she did. A decent person would express contrition, and remorse, and regret, and just come clean already and hope for some sort of absolution. Barreto has done none of this, and I hope she gets the rest of her life in prison to think about that.

Nothing Rhymes With "Feeding Tube"

Perhaps you caught Jesse Jackson's brief video spot on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher the other night. If not, you should, if only to confirm first-hand that the man is just a shell of his past at this point. First he put forth an argument for siding with Terri Schiavo's parents that completely disregarded established law that had been implemented in this case, once again, twenty times. While Jackon's pleas for common decency sounded plaintive enough, one can't help but figure that he might as well have just thrown on a fake Franciscan cowl and joined the microphone choir of holy vultures.

Worse yet, Jesse Jackson went on to defend Michael Jackson. Jesse wisely avoided offering his opinion as to Michael's guilt or innocence; rather, he defended Michael's recent comparison of his own travails to those of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Jack Johnson. Uh, yeah.

What both Jacksons seem ignorant of (or are perhaps merely blinded by cynicism) is that Whitey doesn't see Michael Jackson as "black", and hasn't for a long time. Whitey sees Fifty Cent as black; Whitey sees Dave Chappelle as black. And Whitey really doesn't care; Whitey (especially his subspecies, Suburban Whitey) has eaten up black and ghetto culcha as fast as it can be churned out of Death Row Records. Whitey spends time acting black; Whitey is secretly ashamed and paranoid that his penis is reputedly a lot smaller than that of the average black man.

Whitey doesn't even think Michael Jackson has a penis, much less a big one. Whitey has made Oprah an institution. Whitey buys Al Green and Barry White CDs to fuck his woman to. Whitey doesn't hate Michael Jackson for his race; Whitey is bemused and disgusted by what an idiotic circus the man's life is, and how long it's been since he was more notorious for being a fucking weirdo than famous for actually having talent. Whitey assumes that even black people stopped seeing Michael Jackson as a black man quite some time ago.

Enough with the bullshit race-baiting, Jesse, especially in the defense of a washed-up has-been llama-fondling pedophile who has the goddamned nerve to compare himself to people that were unfairly persecuted. Go back to knocking up your secretaries or something, and get off my fucking TV until you have something useful to say. You're a sloppy orator, and an even sloppier thinker. Shame on you; would you let your kids sleep over at Neverland without their baby-mommas supervising? Didn't think so.

---

In other Schiavo-related wrap-ups, National Review's Jay Nordlinger takes a break from cleaning Richard Cougar Mellonscaife's pool to tell the rest of us just how awful we are. Tell it Tom DeLay, Fucko.

Or remind yourself that even a champion of life like the Pope knew when it was time to put the machinery away, and just go home and let God call him up. This rotten notion that "liberals" enjoyed the Schiavo case (ignoring, of course, the inconvenient fact that a lot of conservatives and evangelicals also polled strongly against government interference in end-of-life care decisions) may be just the thing to finally sink in, and derail the wingnut dominance.

Circus Of Morons

Via Atrios we are directed to an op-ed piece re Terri Schiavo. As the cliché goes, it'll really make ya think. Check it out. Funny how these things take on a life of their own once the media and the assorted wingnuts involve themselves.

Pimpology: A Treatise, A Confessional, An Apology

Is everybody in? Comfy? Good. Grab a beer, or whatever suits you (I have a Samuel Adams Black Lager, from Costco's Samuel Adams Brewmasters Specialty Pack; highly recommended), and settle in for a spell, as the Internet's favorite curmudgeon (that, uh, would be me) opens up a virtual vein for your bemusement and edification. This post has been a long time coming.

When I started this thing up a few months ago, I felt that I came in equipped with several things: fairly strong writing skills; a decent working knowledge of politics, current events, and associated subjects; a desire to rant; and a sense of humor. People are welcome to disagree with such a self-assessment; I couldn't possibly care less.

However, one very important thing I quickly discovered that I lacked was a solid working knowledge of Internet promotion. The 'net, of course, is an incredibly jaded place -- or rather, galaxy of places, pockets of associations networked by sometimes rather unpredictable threads. It is not a clichéd reflection or mirror of society, it is society, teeming and throbbing with snarky technophiles looking to one-up each other. Ah, home.

But how does the new kid on the blog (sorry) sufficiently penetrate the infinite subset of virtual inner circles? One person I "know" got lucky and did it incredibly quickly; one of his first posts got spotted and linked to on a major site, after which an established kindred spirit helped him establish an audience of his own. It's a great, and very organic, way to for it all to happen, almost the 'net equivalent of Lana Turner wearing the right sweater at the right time, and being spotted at the right soda shop by the right person. It's the football coach definition of "luck" -- preparation meeting opportunity; a person with talent and skill actually being fortunate enough to have a forum where he can display these things for many people.

You can't count on that, obviously. It's like knowing where lightning will strike. Supposedly it's better to be lucky than good, but you can only control the latter. So for the majority of bloggers who wish to show their goods to as wide an audience as possible, there is by necessity a contrivance somewhere along the line, a calculated attempt to manufacture luck, or at least increase the odds a bit.

The conventional method for this, of course, is to buy advertising for your site. This is problematic for a couple reasons. For one, what if your site is non-commercial? If your goal is to eventually become commercial, and sell ad space of your own, then perhaps you can consider it an investment, albeit an investment with a highly questionable rate of return. It's like trying to start up your own rock band -- there's a hell of a lot of competition, and it's definitely a buyer's market.

Which leads to your second problem, assuming you can afford to make such an investment in the first place -- where do you purchase said advertising? As wondrous an invention as the Internet is, in its pomo dynamic it has made everyone veeerrrry leery of purchasing services. Between pop-ups and spam, it's a Wild West of virtual kiosks, seemingly an endless supply of Eastern European and Levantine hucksters shilling fake opportunity after fake opportunity.

This is not a dynamic which builds confidence in the newbie investor. To the novice, it just looks like everyone wants to pick his pocket.

So perhaps the newbie starts casing the joint, as it were, combing similarly-minded sites which have a quantifiable level of popularity. He sees how they do it in Rome, and attempts to follow suit, however ham-fistedly at first. Again, the garage-band metaphor holds true -- the only way to figure out what you're really doing wrong is to play live in front of strangers. Your mom and your friends will never tell you that you suck, even if you suck on a William Hung level of suck. Which is pretty damned sucky.

(Little known fact: you can actually vacuum a shag carpet with a William Hung CD. Try it!)

---

Anyway, so that's the quandary I have found myself in after a whopping three months of blogging. Quitting the ol' day job and making a living from this would be nice, but then so would winning the lottery. I came into this with no illusions about making any money, so that's not the issue at hand. The issue is the two rules I set for myself right from the start:

1. I'm gonna do what I wanna do, the way I wanna do it. This is so obvious, it scarcely bears mentioning, but just in case. Given the world of supposedly unvarnished opinions we live in, I am intent on making sure mine remain truly unvarnished. If that means picking on Democrats and liberals that I find to be doing something stupid, no problemo. I adhere to the Frank Zappa principle -- if people like it, great, enjoy it; if not, blow it out your ass. Maybe the next post will be more to people's liking, maybe not. Worrying about that sort of thing is counter-productive.



2. I want as many people as possible to read this thing. This is also seemingly both obvious and at cross purposes with Rule #1. But as with a musician, one has to balance their own personal level of integrity with what people want to see, read, or hear. The compromise for the blogger is that you might have to harp on the Story Of The Day, even if you may personally feel that that well has been pumped dry. The key is whether or not you can find just one more angle on that story and make an honest go of it.

So, in a well-meaning, if perhaps misguided, attempt to make the most of Rule #2, I basically imitated what I saw in Atrios, Kos, AmericaBlog, The Perfect World, and a few others. I've always made sure that either the post is relevant to the given thread topic, or more often, just putting it out in declared open threads. I have no idea whether this is a breach of some arcane set of 'net protocols, but it has been a concern. Very few people have said anything at all, and even then only in limited context on one forum.

Whatever the case, I don't like doing it. I prefer to do it in the context of a forum conversation, as has generally been the pimp dynamic in The Perfect World. People have chafed and groused about it, and told me, "Look, asshole, I know you have a blog; if I want to check it out, I know where to look already." True enough, but the Site Meter does not lie -- pimping works, and quite well at that. Still, can't shake that tacky "hey look at me" vibe. But that's why we're all here, no?

The thread dynamics of blogs like Atrios and Kos are unfortunately rather unfamiliar to me, and thus rather difficult to try to even have a conversation, much less find a spot to realistically interject a relevant post to pimp. I have had some pretty fun conversations with some folks there, particularly at Atrios, where there are a lot of folks who are knowledgeable about music and politics and such.

But usually that is not the case for me; HaloScan takes a long time to load on my PC, and I have to wade through an ever-growing pile of posts just to see if I happen across a response to my post. It's an unfulfilling dynamic in that regard, and the fault is mine, for not having the patience or time to figure it out better. Worse yet, it lends itself to a distasteful "drive-by pimping" pattern, which I really am conflicted about.

The main thing I feel I am asking of people when I pimp a post is for their time. And I don't take that lightly; time is a scarce resource for me, and for everyone else. I value the notion that people are willing to give me even five minutes of their time to read what I have to say. Time, unlike money, is such a non-fungible, non-refundable resource; it can't be re-allocated once it's spent. We all have jobs, families, lives, outside the virtual world where we intersect.

Between 12 hours of work and commute, and 5-6 hours sleep on average, that leaves me 4-6 hours absolute max per day to do this thing, if I want to be a jerk and ignore my family. Consequently, at any given moment, I generally have 2 or 3 extended posts (2000-3000 words) in draft form, awaiting editing. I still have a mammoth one that I estimate to be 8000+ words as is, waiting to be edited and broken into more digestible chunks. And so on. It's remarkable just how time-consuming all the research, writing, and organizing can be for just one post, especially given the long-form style I work in.

Money is not really the problem; if I knew where I could get reliable advertising for reasonable rates, from someone I knew wasn't going to fuck me on my credit card number, I'd seriously consider just going that route, and forgoing the obnoxious pimp dynamic once and for all, just having a conversation with some interesting people just for its own sake. I miss the inherent purity of that sometimes. The fun I have in doing the blog mitigates it thus far, but even that is directly contingent on the amount of traffic it gets. If I can communicate to 200 people on a forum, versus 100 people a day on the blog, then that's 100 more people to talk to, right? So it's in the back of my mind, and all these factors weigh on each other to varying, highly subjective degrees.

And of course, my lizard brain figures that if Atrios or Wolcott or whichever kahuna just ambles along and sees that one magic post that makes them say, "Hey! What the fuck; that's pretty good!" and throw me a freakin' bone here, well, we don't have to have this conversation if that happens. I get the modest amount of traffic I seek, there's an audience to say "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", and I don't spend precious time spinning my wheels with obnoxious pimping. It's not an ego trip of affirmation, so much as the basic tenet that I believe in what I'm doing at my little Internet outpost, and I think other people will too, if they hear about it. There of course lies the proverbial rub.

Despite the tone of this post, it is not a valedictory, nor is it a complaint. I like doing this, and I only wish I had more time to put into it. I'm not gonna stop the posts, though the time has come to reconsider the current pimp dynamic. This doesn't mean it will necessarily stop, but I will try to take it down a notch or two, and not hump everyone's leg with every other post. It gets old for me, so I'm sure it got old for everyone else a long time ago. If I have stepped on anyone's toes, I apologize. It has been out of ignorance of protocol, rather than malice or general jerkiness.

But I felt it was important to explain where I was coming from, and more importantly, to express my appreciation to all the folks who have come in and checked things out. I also want to express my appreciation to the blogs where I have been freeloading on the open threads for these past ten weeks or so, and to the people that run those blogs. It is important to mention that I would never even consider pimping if this blog had so much as an Amazon wish list on it.

I want to be certain that at least that much is understood -- this is not about using other people's sites to line my pockets. It has always been about finding like-minded people milling around the marketplace of ideas and saying, "Hey, if you like that, you might also like this," and just giving them the option of checking it out. To use that shopworn music analogy one more time, to me it's the equivalent of putting up flyers in the local stores and bulletin boards, just letting people know where my band would be playing that weekend.

So, once again, thanks. Advice, comments, even brickbats (whatever those are supposed to be) are welcome.

April Foolishness

As if waiting for nothing more than to wrap up Easter services and for Terri Schiavo to pass, the Pope lurches headlong into his own homestretch. And lordy, the networks trip all over themselves with the up-to-the-minute pre-emptive encomia. As the saying goes, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. So this morning's CNN Headline News "coverage" begins with sober pronunciamentos at John Paul II's "modern" touch, and immediately careens over the precipice with descriptions of his actual policies and writings.

Apparently the "modern" part was being intractably anti-communist. Okay, fine, we're with him on that, with the possible caveat that some post-colonial governments, especially some in Africa and Latin America, might actually have gained some long-term societal benefit from some short-term redistributive policies. In other words, Guatemala and El Salvador might not have been such child-torturing, nun-raping charnel houses if more than a dozen families had had a stake in ownership in those places. To be sure, Castro's a shit, but Cuba has higher literacy rates and lower infant mortality rates than the giant under whose thumb it chafes. But that was then, and this is now, and it's all just blood under the bridge, n'est-ce pas?

So what other "modern" touches did we get from the last quarter-century of Karol Wojtyla? Well, we got the usual 12th century nonsense about the ordination of women, priests having sex with someone besides hapless altar boys, homosexuality (presumably outside the confines of seminary and priesthood) being part of an "ideology of evil", etc., etc. We'd expect nothing less from the philosophical trend-setters that took 500 years to apologize for the Inquisition and imprisoning Galileo, but still.

So much for modern. A truly "modern" spiritual leader would recognize that doctrine is generally formed as a response to political and social climate and environment. Preserving doctrine based on the social mores of the 12th century lies at the nexus of needless, asinine, and a little dangerous, especially in yet another era of rampant religious extremism. A modern man understands that change is the only true constant, that the old makes way for the new, whether it likes it or not.

(Politically, the US is going through a similar misunderstanding, and will probably only get the message pounded home when oil hits $80 or so a barrel. The dinosaur thrashes its tail, and the God-fearing Cro-Magnons just do their best to get out of the way. That's the Jesusland dynamic.)

Rules can be -- and are -- updated to reflect further contemplation on First Principles. There is no cognitive or theological dissonance in saying so; indeed, the rules currently in place are generally not the original ones. This is universally considered a good thing, at least by people who naively prefer doctrine to enlighten, rather than merely control.

A spiritual leader who truly wanted to reconcile faith with modern realities would have found a way to speak to all the people in the Information Age, the people in industrialized and post-industrial societies who find their lives, jobs, and culture increasingly commodified. Instead, the Church went where the demographics were, and pressed on into the jungle, showing the wogs a more centralized and lucrative brand of mumbo-jumbo.

Had John Paul II spent half as much time encouraging people to get up on their hind legs and think for themselves, as he did canonizing every third Venetian horse whisperer, we'd be a little more deferential. As it stands, it seems that he mainly proved adept at using modern technological advances to continue making people feel guilty about their pee-pees.

Interspersed with all the requisite hagiography on CNN was a clip with someone named John Allen, who was billed as something called a "Vatican analyst". Honest to God, up to now, I had no idea such a thing was a paying job. I wonder how these self-described "cultural commentators" manage to find their way in front of a camera. I assume that, like professional athletes in the old days, they have to sell insurance and real estate in the off-season.

Just as everyone's supposedly Irish on Saint Patrick's Day (a rather silly notion to this actual person of fairly recent Irish descent), apparently everyone's Catholic every single time the Pope does or says something. Yes, there's a lot of 'em, 'cause they'll take you soon as you're warm, but most Western Catholics seem to be of the "cafeteria" variety, which essentially means that catechism hard-wired them when they were young, so even though they're old enough now to know better, it's hard to just walk away from all the florid trappings of guilt and shame. So they muddle through with a Chinese menu of a spiritual outlook, taking some from Column A and some from Column B.

The Church makes it quite clear that there are no substitutions, though, so are we headed for a schism between "cafeteria" and "orthodox"? I can hardly muster up the energy to care, to tell the truth. People who haven't got the courage to tell themselves the truth about what they think and do are always going to waste everyone else's time. Telling them to shit or get off the pot is like trying to tell George W. Bush to learn how to use pronouns or read a book without pictures in it.

But whatever. People should be allowed to run or mis-run their lives as they see fit. That's the essence of democracy, and that's the real point of why the pope is really just the CEO of an enormous buggy-whip factory. Reason has worked well enough for most sensible individuals to realize that the question of the existence of God -- despite the entreaties of extremists on either side -- is fairly moot. If He does not exist, then that's easily enough answered. And if He does exist, then He is everywhere at all times, and thus does not require special interpretation from special buildings populated by special eunuchs making special pronunciamentos from special books.

Offering spiritual guidance is one thing; running a celestial casino, with special rules for high-rollers, and no accountability to the law or to parishioners, is quite another. Bottom line: any institution which spends more effort collecting money to pay off victims of its sanctioned crimes -- horrific crimes at that -- than acknowledging and being held accountable for said crimes, has ceased to serve its members properly. Period.

You have common sense, and that's really all you need. You do not need the corrupted institutions of priests or politicians, propped up by the money and good will of hundreds of millions of decent people. You can do just as much good without institutionalized lecturing on sexual proclivities and such. Just let people live, and have some humility, dammit. That's why it's the Fisherman's Ring.

Upon the pope's death, the first thing that will happen is that the faithful will proceed with some form of condescending fake ecumenicism, attempting to equate all faiths in as patronizing a fashion as possible, all the while smirking at the notion of, say, the Dalai Lama being anything more than a distraction from Richard Gere's gerbil-related publicity. We're all God's children, they'll say; what they'll think is that some are the fair-haired apple of His eye, while others are red-headed stepchildren.

Next, as already happened at Faux News' false alarm last night (April Fools!), the usual suspects will trot out the new Bush marketing phrase, forged in the fires of Terri Schiavo's excruciatingly public agony -- "the culture of life". See, presumably those of us who felt that this Hobson's choice should legally be decided by her spouse, and understood that her life (and its quality) had ended some 15 years ago, are locked in a "culture of death". You saw that one coming up the road, didn't you? They're cravenly attempting to make lemonade out of Tom DeLay's growing political lemon, and they can go straight to hell for it, too.

It's amazing to watch their ever more cynical rhetorical flourishes, lecturing the rest of us on our depravity and indifference, even as they prepare the next form letter to shuttle off to the check-writing mouth-breathers on their mailing lists. It's yet another shove to the Democrats' collective chest, and don't hold your breath for the Dems to grow a pair and push back. Probably they'll send Holy Joe over to Faux to try to smooth things over, which is the exact wrong thing to do.

Err America

I'm still trying to figure this one out. Let's see -- I'm liberal (socially, anyway), and I enjoy documentaries a lot more than most people. And I was looking forward to Left Of The Dial, HBO's doc on the Air America network, the crunchy left's putative answer to Rush and Sean and the rest of the Horst Wessel gang.

So why was I alternating between fidget and doze within the first thirty minutes? Good question, and part of it lies in the DNA of this very blog. One over-arching message that I want to permeate each and every post in here is the theme of what I refer to as "muscular liberalism". As Left points out several times, the majority of Americans, when polled with specific policy questions, generally skew center-left, or socially liberal/fiscally conservative. Of course there are wild cards played as wedge issues -- abortion, gay rights, capital punishment, etc.

But Left forgets some very important things which are conspicuous by their very absence. One is that when you make a "warts-and-all" type of documentary, it is helpful to show at least as much "all" as "warts". This movie is a piss-poor attempt to show any sort of cohesive message, aside from the obvious "Bush sucks".

Which leads to the other monumental problem. Republicans have maintained political dominance in this polled minority of theirs with leverage. In classic Archimedean fashion, they have chosen their fulcrum quite well, and used it to full advantage. They have leveraged from more overtly American ideals of masculinity and self-reliance, even in the face of evidence to the contrary on their own (ahem) back porch. And Democrats have been all too eager to play into this meme of bloodless, amoral, effete inefficiency -- sometimes in the mistaken spirit of compromise, sometimes in actual practice of those sordid accusations.

Last year's campaign held a prime example. Only the Republicans would have been so brazen to not only put up two draft dodgers against a multiply-awarded combat veteran, but then to attack and impugn the record of said veteran. Only the Republicans would be so cynical as to cut veterans' benefits in the middle of a war, all the while rallying around the flag.

And only the Democrats would be so craven and gutless as to actually let them get away with it. Every opportunity they are given to push back and hammer home their message, they quietly curtsy and initiate compromise.

This is the problem that Left Of The Dial inadvertently illuminates so well. The good stuff is provided by Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, who are indeed passionate, articulate, and committed to the battle at hand. Like any good warriors, they ask no quarter, nor do they give any. They intrinsically understand the very nature of the propaganda machine they are up against, and the dynamic is humanized with a brief segment with Garofalo's father, Carmine, a very nice Republican who seems happy with his chosen path away from empirical reality.

But then we are confronted with the repeated hissy fits of Marc Maron, who can be scathing when he's on his game, but here just confirms every nasty assumption Republicans ever had about self-absorbed urban douchebag Democrats. Injudicious editing scarcely allows Maron the opportunity to acquit himself, and thus leaves the viewer with the impression that he's just a prima donna.

Ditto Randi Rhodes, a braying, honking mess of a woman who apparently paid $17,000 to look like Barbra Streisand's uglier sister. Dear, for that kind of money, you could have had a cruise to the Bahamas, five years' membership at a state-of-the-art gym, and a few hundred cases of Ring Dings. You would have gotten the same effect either way, but my way would have been more fun.

Regardless, Rhodes is the lefties' answer to Michael Savage (a question scarcely worth asking), providing that cathartic primal scream without all the icky thinking and factual analysis. Again, a conservative watching this would just have all his suspicions affirmed in a nasal Bronx accent. Certainly the "fight fire with fire" approach is acknowledged and appreciated, but the key to elevating above mere head-butting is to provide at least some light to accompany all that heat. Any would be an advantage, and Rhodes seems incapable of even providing that much. Instead, it's merely the realm of radio high-colonic eternally squatted by Rush and his hetero life-mate Hannity-Boy.

The overview of the atrocious business planning of the venture, and the chicanery of chief investor Evan Cohen, is the backbone of this thing, and it's a scary sight. It's a bien pensant clusterfuck of an operation, with Cohen -- who seems like he'd be bankrolling porn movies out the back of a pet store in Reseda if this radio thing fell through -- killing the organization in its very infancy by bouncing checks in the major markets of LA and Chicago.

Long story a little bit longer, new investors have apparently injected new life into the project, which is an admirable effort to be sure. Conservative talk radio has been a pernicious influence in the "heartland", flying below the radar of the technophiles, yet serving as the aural bread and butter for a lot of working people, even in supposedly granola-crunchy California. So Air America can and should evolve into a much-needed balancing propaganda entity, but they need to get the $5.00 individual listeners to kick in and stick with them, just as much as they need the millionaire speculators.

And they need to remember, they need to tattoo it on their foreheads perhaps, that this is a war, that their opponents are serious, and committed, and completely without scruple, and that the left does themselves no small disservice when they just flail and whine. They need to dig through Ken Mehlman's garbage and send flyers to everyone on the gay-bashing evangelicals' mailing list. They need to mobilize their own faithful with every hortatory shock-story emanating out of the stultified cultural sphincter of Bobo's World.

They need to quit fucking around, and Left Of The Dial shows too much unfocused, poorly-planned, pissy-attitude fucking around. Call me when you're ready, guys. I will come in and take you to school on muscular liberalism. I will show you how to reach the people you think are out of reach. I will teach you how to kick ass, take names, and never look back. I will demonstrate that the politics of personal destruction is wrong only when used on human beings, and thus is okay to use on Tom DeLay.

I'll work (relatively) cheap, and I'll work damned hard. Let me know when you're ready to start winning again. This is no April Fool's joke; I'm dead serious. The day Democrats quit letting sanctimonious pussies like Joementum Lieberman lead them into Joeblivion with their "compromise with the Visigoths" bullshit, is when the sun will once again come out for them.

Political Song Of The Day

This one's actually been out for a while, and it's a cover to boot, but it's excellent. A Perfect Circle's cover of Devo's Freedom Of Choice, just a visceral, kick-in-the-nuts kind of political song. Musically, it's almost Floydian, in the somber, cynical vocalisms that the English mastered back in the days of empire, with plenty of the industrial feedback squawks that many of the kids are enjoying with their commodified rock and/or roll these days.

It's hard to find a site that has a competent version of the lyrics; here's my best estimate.

We're victims of sedition on the open sea
No one ever said that life was free
Sank, swim, go down with the ship
Just use your freedom of choice

I’ll say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Freedom of choice

In ancient Rome there was a poem
Who followed along and watched it fall
He cast a stone
He felt secure
He felt that he would never be heard

Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom of choice!

Then if you got it you don’t want it
Seems to be the rule of thumb
Don’t be tricked by what you see
You got two ways to go

I’ll say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Freedom of choice

Freedom of choice
Is what you've got
Freedom of choice!

In ancient Rome there was a poem
Who followed along and watched it fall
He cast a stone
He felt secure
He felt that his voice would never be heard

Freedom of choice
Is what you've got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want

It's A Gas Gas Gas

Enjoying your gas prices lately? Starting to regret buying that second Hummer? Getting into the office pool on when it'll hit $3.00 a gallon?

There's nothing to refocus your moral outrage like paying $2.49 a gallon to get the ol' Honda Accord back home from work, which is exactly what I did this afternoon. And yes, it starts with beating up on idiot "bigger is better" SUV owners, with all the externalites and increased aggregate demands.

It continues to China, whose rapidly ramped-up demand has very abruptly tightened up supply, hence affecting production and distribution. Yet China, whose gas prices are only slightly less than the US', has shrewdly expanded its supply, helping negotiate an end to the Darfur genocide in Sudan (and thus securing oil field access), and signing extraction contracts with Canada (who is clearly getting sick of the US' 'tude) and Venezuela. Either China's prices will start declining soon (especially if they re-peg the renminbi), or they will go the Euro route and invest fuel taxes into an actual public transportation system, count on it.

And what have we done to secure our own ever-increasing supply? Well, let's see. We invaded the country with the second-largest oil reserves on the planet and turned it into a net importer (for which we pay Halliburton to pay the ungrateful Kuwaitis $2.65 per gallon, and subsidize the Iraqi pump price of 5¢ per gallon). Remember how were sneeringly told by our moral and intellectual betters that this would all "pay for itself"? How's that been working out?

We tried and failed to topple Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who has since vowed revenge, and threatened to completely kill Venezuelan exports to the US if we try that shit again. (China seems all too eager to help him carry out that threat from a financial standpoint, offering Chavez a huge new market. He may just decide to cut us out for sheer spite at some near point.)

So the big brilliant master plan from these geniuses boils down to drilling in ANWR, from which we should start seeing benefits in, oh, about a decade or so. I am fairly heterodox, as liberals go, on the environment. I am all for protecting nature, and natural parks, hate clear-cut logging, etc., etc. But I believe in the concept of resource stewardship; I believe that you can have paper and redwood decks and still have groves of old-growth trees. I believe you can drive cars and have lots of electric power, and sensibly extract oil and natural gas. The key is not getting too greedy or stupid, something at which we fail terribly.

The problem is that we have no balance. We think we can drive an enormous piece of shit to run simple errands, and never deal with all the externalities. We think we can get a cheap redwood deck and never have to hear about the volume of lumber that had to be extracted to drop the price so low. We have allowed liars and crooks to repeatedly dupe us into believing -- just as surely as we believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that God will come save us from our carelessness right before we finish ruining His master creation -- that we can eat our cake and still have it.

We could have agreed to drill in ANWR five years ago, with the proviso that CAFE standards be reinforced. But the automakers wouldn't hear of it; Ford makes something like $10-12K profit from every Expedition they sell. Again: short-term hard-on for the shareholders, long-term externalities for the entire rest of the world, whether they bought one of these fucking things or not. Meanwhile, oil companies keep on posting record profits.

And Dear Leader does exactly fuck-all about any of it. It's as if this stupid shit would just be a distraction from all the brush-clearin' and fence-paintin'. Liberatin' is hard work, done by good people.

Thanks again, values voters!

People Power

So the Kyrgyz government has been toppled by a bloodless popular coup. This has been cautiously billed as good news, though at first blush it smacks a bit of mob rule. Ousted leader Askar Akayev has been billed as a rather benign, if corrupt, despot. After all, this is Central Asia.

But after the initial ass-trumpet of "people power" triumphant and Freedom™ continuing his inexorable march, you could almost hear the thud of rational conclusion -- what if the Kyrgyzianites want us out, decide they are better off without American base and troop presence? What brilliant chess move would Dear Leader concoct then, with his far-seeing eye?

Fortunately, we still have our other great and noble democratic Central Asian allies Uzbekistan, whose leader Islam Karimov boils political dissidents alive, and Turkmenistan, whose leader Supamurat Niyazov has renamed all the months of the calendar after himself.

Yes, that feeling between your toes is Sweet Lady Liberty®, blowing you and me!

Tom DeLay Is Going To Hell

Tom DeLay compares his self-imposed persecution to that of Jesus Christ. Yes, seriously. PERRspectives kindly points out some other similarities between the two.

[via Atrios].

One More For The Road

Hopefully this will be final time we refer to the Terri Schiavo case. Indeed, we've endeavored to scrupulously avoid the whole mess for as long as possible, but obviously it has morphed into something of a microcosm of the greater cultural civil war at hand. So we battle on.

It has been said that war, in addition to all the pain and sorrow and death and violence, brings with it clarity. And that's true; war clarifies things. People must make actual objective decisions, draw a line, and pick which side of that line they will stand on. Such is the situation here.

Just when it seems that our well of contempt for the morons of the world has been tapped dry, they go and do something even stupider than before. The braying jackasses parked for days outside Terri Schiavo's hospice make a perfectly good argument against Darwin's thesis. Apparently a dozen people have been arrested thus far for attempting to sneak in food and/or water with which to nourish her. The latest of these was three kids and their father. "Dad" seemed all too impressed with himself, thinking he was giving his offspring a crash course in Sticking It To The Man, via some sort of putatively Thoreauvian act of civil disobedience. Dad and sons were unceremoniously handcuffed and hauled away.

It may have been more constructive to let these idiots through, to have let them sneak in and deliver their bounty to someone who can't swallow. Yeah. Let these kids see just how utterly stupid and irresponsible their so-called "parent" really is, and clap a manslaughter charge on Dad. You want a message, you clueless retards, there ya go. You can bring in a bucket of fried chicken and a gallon of Gatorade, and it won't help, not one damned bit. One more time -- Terri Schiavo cannot swallow; she has not been able to for fifteen long, torturous years. God is not going to miracle your gift of food down her esophagus, shit-for-brains -- she'll choke and drown.

This is a perfect illustration of the total lack of thought on the part of the protesters, who really ought to be commended at this point for showing the rest of us just what kind of dumb motherfuckers we're really up against. There is no bargaining with this level of fanaticism and sheer idiocy -- they just have to be slapped down. Preferably with weighted truncheons, and preferably in places where further procreation will be painful and thus impossible.

Some have done charming things such as superimposing Schiavo's face on the traditional picture of Jesus' crucifixion, and changing the usual "I.N.R.I." (the Latin for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews") to "Terri Schiavo", thus making her their martyr.

And that's really the heart of the matter here -- this is not about Terri Schiavo for them. It never was. It's about their sheer inability to cope with things that are out of their control. It's about Their Faith. It's about Them, as far as They are concerned, though they'll never admit it.

How do we know? Well, let's take a look at their words and their actions. Some of these idiots are even referring to W. and Jeb as "Pontius Pilate" and "Judas". Far be it from us to defend a Bush (much less two), but come on. What exactly would these fools have them do -- subvert the law and spirit her away to where, the White House? Stick her in the Lincoln Bedroom and re-insert the feeding tube, and allow us all to foot the bill in holy perpetuity to keep Them happy? Both Bush brothers did all they could; indeed, they went above and beyond the legal call, taking literally unprecedented steps to subvert and overturn what had already been legally adjudicated nearly two dozen times over the years.

There doesn't seem to be any realistic, pragmatic objective to the wingnuts' aims. They do not seem to understand that it costs money, effort, time, and special facilities to maintain the care for this woman day after day, and as such, you can't just roll her out and spirit her away in the dead of night. Who undertakes the care for her? Who gets to pay that person?

There are so many more areas of cognitive dissonance, it is truly difficult to break them all down. Some of Them apparently not only want to murder Michael Schiavo, but Judge Greer. They seem to ignore the fact that twenty other judges have already adjudicated the exact same way as Judge Greer. Okay? This is not coincidence or anomaly, morons; this is what people who have to live in the real world call a pattern. See, people use "patterns" to determine little nuggets of empiricism called "facts". Welcome to the world of rational thought; come back when you can't stay so long.

It doesn't seem to occur to these dipshits that maybe this is a case for Ockham's Razor -- that after all the nefarious conspiracy theories and religious claptrap have been debunked, the simple fact is most likely that Mike Schiavo is just a guy with a wife who befell tragic circumstances. He made an honest effort for seven long years to find treatment for her, and has since had to reconcile to himself the cold hard fact that neither she nor he nor most of us would want to be stuck the way Terri Schiavo has been stuck.

If God had been planning a miracle for her, maybe He would have just re-regulated her severe potassium imbalance in the first place, and prevented this whole rotten mess. Who knows, maybe He did just that, for as long as He could, until Schiavo's bulimia got the best of the regulatory functions of her body.

The morons just don't know; they'll never know for sure. And after all these useless cocksuckers pull up stakes and go back to their caves to pick fleas off each others' backsides, Terri Schiavo's family still has to live with it all. But instead of using that brain that God gave Them, the morons have decided that this is Their call to arms, Their chance to assert Their faith.

They didn't choose to do any of this for Spiro Nikolouzos, nor for poor little Sun Hudson, the latter of whom succumbed not even two weeks ago from the tender mercies granted by the Texas Futile Care Law, signed by none other than then-Governor George W. Bush in 1999. No, because when the plug was pulled on Sun Hudson, there were no cameras or reporters for these self-righteous fucks to posture and preen in front of, like the fucking show cats that they are.

That's the worst of it -- the callous, cynical abuse of the rather noble ideal of real faith, of constant self-reflection and re-examination of personal moral principles. These assholes are not faithful; they are spiritual vampires, living parasitically off a dying woman, stuck in the thrall of their own dogma, secure in the sanctimonious notion that there's nothing new for them to learn. They've got it all figured out, just ask them. Not that you really need to ask them; they're all too happy to kick down your door and tell you How It Is.

And now Randall Terry says that he will do what he can to oust the Republican politicians. Sounds like we all owe Randall a big "thank you"; not only has he drawn a line we can all quite clearly see, a line which even most Christians and evangelicals have rejected (that government should intervene in end-of-life care decisions), but he wants to kick out moderate Republicans and run wingnuts in the midterms. That would make the return to sanity that much easier, before it does come down to calling for war on Jesusland. Enough is quite enough of the nonsense emanating from Bobo's World. Get back to work and quit wasting everyone's time, you stupid bastards.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury

Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle featured the odd juxtaposition of two articles which, in a rational universe, would come to symbolize the sort of cognitive disconnect 300 million Americans are forced to endure under the current reign of error.

First up is the official okey-doke from the Bush administration to sell F-16's to our good buddy Pakistan, for all their "help" in the ongoing War On Terror. Yes, from harboring Osama bin Laden in their tribal provinces, to keeping Abdul Qadeer Khan safe from US interrogation about nuclear proliferation to rogue entities, to enabling the rise of the Taliban and Islamic militants in the first place, Pakistan has done A-OK by us, no matter how you slice it.

President Bush rewarded a key ally in the war on terrorism Friday by authorizing the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, a move that reversed 15 years of policy begun under his father and that India warned would destabilize the volatile region.

The United States banned the sale of F-16s to Pakistan in 1990 out of concern over its then-undeclared nuclear weapons program, but the Bush administration has forged a close relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf since Sept. 11, 2001, and considers his help crucial in the battle against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization.

Forget the usual Oedipal analyses that surround these sorts of policy reversals from Bush pére to Bush fils -- the fact is that Pakistan has not been a "good" ally, but rather an ally at gunpoint. After 9/11, they were given a stark choice, to get with the program or watch Karachi get turned into a parking lot. This was a reasonable proposition on our part, and Pakistan certainly made the correct choice, but they have dragged their feet from day one.

Then again, were bin Laden actually to be captured, it would be as purely symbolic as the capture of Saddam Hussein. It would not solve a thing -- indeed, it might very well provoke another 9/11. The real crux of this biscuit is that we don't know. Keep that in mind, no matter what the supposedly well-informed and high-minded talking heads may tell you. They just don't want you pulling the curtain.

Pakistan initially wants to buy about two dozen aircraft, but administration officials said there would be no limits on how many it could purchase.

The administration tried to balance the sale by announcing simultaneously that it would allow U.S. firms the right to provide India the next generation of sophisticated, multirole combat aircraft, including upgraded F-16 and F-18 warplanes, as well as develop broader cooperation in military command and control systems, early warning detection and missile defense programs.

Uh-huh. That's exactly what a good sheriff does, gives everyone in town a gun -- especially the Hatfields and the McCoys. As long as they point them at each other, I suppose. Still, just how high a role does placation have in our foreign policy? Apparently pretty high.

Congressional leaders have criticized the prospect of renewing F-16 sales given Musharraf's refusal to allow U.S. investigators to interview Abdel Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb who for years ran an illicit international ring providing nuclear technology to rogue nations.

Precisely. If we look at the "good ally" accounts ledger, Pakistan is found to be severely wanting by any honest measure. If we are serious about this war on terror, it beggars the imagination to try and honestly defend this action.

Which leads us to our second story, ironically placed next to the first one in the Chronicle.

A federal criminal investigation has uncovered evidence that the government of Pakistan has made clandestine purchases of U.S. high-tech components for use in its nuclear weapons program, in defiance of American law.

Federal authorities also say the highly specialized equipment at one point passed through the hands of an arms dealer in Islamabad, Pakistan, named Humayun Khan, who they say has ties to Islamic militants.

What exactly does Pakistan have to do to get pimp-slapped from these would-be tough guys -- nuke Houston? Really, this is getting fucking stupid, not to mention dangerous.

Even though President Bush has been pushing for an international crackdown on such trafficking, efforts by two U.S. agencies to send investigators to Pakistan to gather more evidence have been stymied for more than a year by other American officials, according to U.S. officials knowledgeable about the case.

"This is the age-old problem with Pakistan and the U.S.," said David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "Other priorities always trump the United States from coming down hard on Pakistan's nuclear proliferation." A former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and elsewhere, Albright favors getting tougher with Pakistan.

Selling them F-16s must be the "crackdown" part. Showed you, didn't we? Recognize, motherfucker, we crackin' down!

Pakistan must be positively quaking in their collective boots at this point, with this unprecedented show of force. Let us briefly compare and contrast with what it took for us to launch a full-scale invasion into Iraq -- a couple of doctored documents and bullshit rumors of what might happen. And here we have proof on top of proof on top of a systematic pattern of dangerous behavior working at direct cross purposes with American interests and security.

So once again we ask, what exactly does Pakistan have to do to get the smackdown it sorely deserves? It is a disruptive, unstable, corrupt troublemaker of a nation, good for little more than stirring up shit with the world's largest democracy (which would be India, for those of you who experienced the wonders of the American public educational system). It has been fucking with us for years, and has yet to even be "consequenced", as yuppie behavioral therapists would term it.

If ever a kid needed to be yanked up by his collar and had the shit beat out of him right in the middle of the aisle at the supermarket, it is now. Pakistan is that kid, and we keep indulging his bullshit. Apparently we won't get the message until the Space Needle or LAX has a dirty bomb go off.

So. Feel safer? Still think you got the right team on the job?

How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

It would be tremendously difficult, if not literally impossible, to recall the last time a crybaby of Barry Bonds' magnitude lit up the public radar. Not that it matters any; we gave up on baseball after the 1994 strike, only checking in to watch the Red Sox come back to bury Steinbrenner's tired-ass collection of mercenaries and end The Curse. But we do pay attention to the more newsworthy aspects of the game, and last season Bonds actually earned some sympathy, having to confront a seemingly endless array of pussy pitchers and managers that would just as soon intentionally walk the guy (intentional walks are another good reason to despise baseball in general) as throw some heat at him.

And that's also why we didn't give the steroid talk too much thought; it is assumed that a certain percentage of players (particularly power hitters) are at least a little juiced. So is the ball. So are the fans. People continuously bring up Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, but Ruth and Aaron didn't always have to face fresh pitchers -- who might even be a little juiced themselves -- who worked in five-and six-man rotations.

So it was six of one, half-dozen of the other, as far as we cared. Baseball is a number-diddler's game anyway, and is amazingly boring to watch.

But Bonds' most recent tirade, coming as it does on the heels of recent revelations about his complete lack of marital fidelity and disregard of tax codes, is quite enough. The man is pampered beyond belief, even by his own team. He makes no effort to even pretend to be a team-oriented individual; he is aloof and pissy to his teammates as well as the media. He makes an amazing amount of money to hit, catch, and throw a fucking ball.

No doubt the media are invasive. No doubt Bonds, like most sane people, is ill-suited to a constant barrage of cameras and microphones. Again, he is incredibly well-compensated for these inconveniences. He has all the money and pussy he could possibly want. People pick on George W. Bush once in a while (as you may have heard), and for all the man's faults, you don't hear him constantly bitching and whining about that. And his salary is 1/40th of Bonds'.

So grow the hell up, Barry, or fucking leave already. Really, no one gives a shit one way or the other, no one with a bit of sense anyway. It's only a game, and your constant whining has to have made it infinitely more unpleasant for the few people who haven't yet moved on to the NFL or NASCAR.

Don't go away mad, Barry....just go away. Honestly, life will go on.