So long 2010!! Thanks for (just about) fuck all....

At this time of year it's customary for self-important bastards and dedicated narcissists alike (also known as bloggers) to look back and reflect upon the important shit that happened during the prior twelve months and offer their pithy and humourous commentary about how it impacted them personally. You know, like anybody actually gives a flying fuck what all of these self-absorbed wankers think about anything at all (and judging by the fact that I have been doing this for over a year now and have an audience of about 5 people total,  it's become blindingly obvious that just about nobody on the planet gives a flying toss about what I have to say about a goddamned thing).

So, with that in mind, and far be it from me to rock that boat, here is my look back on 2010.

Some bad shit happened (fires, floods, earthquakes, landslides, riots etc but nowhere that impacted white people too much so no-one really gave a shit). Then some REALLY bad shit happened as well (in the US republicans took control of the House of Representatives, whilst in the UK Nick Clegg sold his soul for a seat at the kiddies table in the new conservative governement - Grade A wanker that he is). Some truly awful things happened too (the Chicago Cubs traded Ryan Theriot and Derek Lee for what amounted to a handful of beans. And no, they weren't magic beans. They didn't even make you fart, that would have at least been funny).

In entertainment news some massively over-paid famous people died, some of them got married, most of them got divorced and Mel Gibson got drunk, abusive and arrested. That last one isn't really news, I know, but like Charlie Sheen's life you just can't help but look can you? Oh, that reminds me, is Lindsay Lohan in, or out of rehab? I just can't keep up. Oh to be young, rich, and stacked. Apparently that gets you a rotating door at the LA County jail instead of the 24 hour lockdown you would get if you didn't have an agent, a high-priced lawyer, the ability to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, or big, firm, tanned tits. But I digress.

In the world of sport a few teams won, every other team didn't, and come 2011 no-one will remember either way (the only exception being the famous Ashes victory over the convicts on their own soil for the first time in 24 years by the England cricket team. THAT result will live forever..Suck it losers!!!!!)

In the world of politics, well, you know what happened, read the rest of this blog if you don't and stop being such lazy gits, I'm not going to spoon-feed you a year's worth of my political rants in one offering.

On a personal note my long-suffering wife still hasn't divorced me (thank you honey, if you left I still wouldn't be able to do my own laundry and the dog would never get walked), my kid still thinks I'm a great dad, although closer to the truth is she's the best kid a parent could ever ask for and I just got damned lucky.

But the single most significant (and potentially devastating) piece of news in 2010 is that Justin Fucking Beiber got nominated for two Grammy awards. Can you believe it? I mean really, who is shitting whom? The little bastard isn't old enough to vote and he already has more money than I will make in ten lifetimes, he looks like a smug little git, (I swear I want to slap that smirk right off his face) and now the Grammys have validated his god-awful dross by nominating him for two awards.

As a culture, we are totally fucked.

Happy New Year all!!!

...And now, over to the sportsdesk...

Says it all really....I feel really badly for the Austr....oh who am I kidding? No I don't, we kicked your arses by an innings and 157 runs to retain the Ashes!! I feel as sorry for you lot as you did for us four years ago...

ENGLAND CRICKET RULES!!!!!

And now back to the newsdesk...

Who let the dogs out..or why Obama can't seem to stop shooting himself in the foot...

After a mad dash across the finish line for the Lame-Duck Congress, President Obama managed to pass some legislation that wasn't actually part of the GOP's grand scheme of permanently screwing over the poor. He passed DADT repeal that will finally allow openly gay Americans to serve their country in uniform, and he agreed to rollback restrictive Wilderness legislation put in place by his predecessor that will allow for the protection of millions of acres of wilderness that now won't get stained with the taint of 'Big Oil'.

All good in the 'hood, right? Well, no. Not exactly.

Apparently unable to go a week without pissing off one section of his base or another (this week it's the animal-lovers that get the shaft), the President got on the phone and congratulated the multi-millionaire owner of the NFL Philadelphia Eagles for giving another multi-millionaire a second chance to make shitloads of money after he got out of the joint. Ordinarily Liberals and Progressives are all about the 'rehabilitation' concept. We are normally all 'compassion' and 'redemption' when it comes to crimes and how you ought to treat non-hardened criminals after they've done their time. But in this case Obama has unwittingly stuck both feet in the brown-and-smelly and really fired up a shit-storm of outrage on the interwebs.

For those of you that don't know what I am on about I am of course talking about convicted felon, and NFL quarterback, Michael Vick. He plead guilty to a series of felonies a few years ago, said he was sorry (without specifying what he was actually sorry for, his crimes or the fact that he got caught) put on his orange jumpsuit and then went to the Big House to did his time. Now fast-forward a few years and, after the NFL rescinded their farcical "ban" on him (with his stats there was no way wasn't going to be allowed back) he's now the starting QB for the red-hot Philadelphia Eagles.

But here's where it gets problematic for Obama. This wasn't your typical crime. This wasn't a case of some guy that got pinched for doing something stupid or rash. This wasn't a case of a guy being thrown in the slammer for too many unpaid parking tickets. This is a case where "he paid his debt to society" does not apply. Not even remotely. Michael Vick was a key part of a vicious, cruel and inhumane dog-fighting ring, and he was personally responsible for the deaths of at least seven of his dogs either by drowning or strangulation. I won't show you the "after" pictures of his dogs because they are revolting, and unbelievably upsetting, but suffice it to say that they are enough to move many a peace-loving liberal to suggest that the only way that Michael Vick will have truly "paid his debt" is when he steps into a cage full of those very same dogs wearing nothing more than a suit made of bacon.

I am one of those liberals.

Michael Vick is a superbly gifted athlete no doubt, and in this culture that means he's pretty much forgiven if he shows enough 'remorse' and his crime wasn't murder or being gay, but I still can't square the circle enough to get past the vicious evil this man was a part of purely for his profit and pleasure... The bigger shame is that the President apparently didn't see that as a problem either.

Salad bars are the newest target for terrorists...only 6 Americans are threatened...

This is quite possibly the most stupid thing I have read in, well, probably at least the last 24 hours.

Apparently the same goat-fucking rocket scientists that brought you the shoe-bomber (sans lighter), the underpants bomber (again sans ignition device) and the printer cartridge "bombs" that weren't actually, you know, explosive, have figured out that the next way to strike fear into the hearts of the infidels is to poison the salad bars in restaurants across the United States. These guys apparently think that the television shows exported from the US are truly representative of the overall American population. You know, where everyone is slim, massively in shape, never smoke and, apparently, no-one ever has to go to the toilet.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality we're all a bunch of meat-eating, carbohydrate-consuming lard arses over here and the closest we ever get to a fucking salad is if there is a piece of lettuce on the bacon double-cheese burgers we are stuffing down our gullets. So it would appear that the stupid arab git that has been causing all of this ruckus, Al Kider, has completely missed the mark with this latest strategy. Boy, I bet he feels stupid.

And I thought the republicans were uptight arseholes....or, this will REALLY start riots...

..in a desperate move to appear relavent in the crazy world of right-wing dumb-fuckery, it appears that one of the brain-dead Hooray Henrys employed by Great Britain's newest Prime Minister, David Camerwrong, has decided that it would be a jolly good idea to outlaw online porn.

Yup, online porn.

Not fixing massive unemployement, or reinvigorating the non-existent manufacturing base, or dealing with the spiralling debt problems, or the students rioting in the streets because they don't think that a 300% increase in tuition fees is fair or reasonable. Nope. The most important thing this guy can think of is how to stop people from looking at porn by making them ask their ISP's for it. "Please sir, can I have some porn?"

This is what happens when you put idiots in positions of power.

Look, this doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of ever coming to fruition (and yes I know I just wrote 'balls' and 'coming' in the same sentence please keep your dirty thoughts to yourselves) but the fact that some do-gooder on the Uptight-Right thought this was even okay to say out loud should be alarming. I know that the UK had a really rough go of it with the last bunch of power-grabbing authoritarian nanny-state wankers in Westminster Palace, but if you try and take away people's porn there really WILL be rioting in the streets...I can already see the signs  "Keep your hands off my junk", "Fair play to all wankers", "Come one, come all".....On second thoughts...that could be quite a giggle...

To paraphrase Charlton Heston, "You can have my porn when you pry it from my cold, dead, sticky hands"...

A last minute tricky-quicky from the "you just can't make this shit up" department...

...in between bouts of uncontrollable sobbing the incoming Weeper of the House, John Boner, has managed to appoint Michele Bachmann to the House Intelligence committee, thereby unwittingly giving political comedians a self-written punchline for the next two years...

Senator John Cornyn is a lying bastard...in other news, water is wet.

I know that the title of this piece is a bit of a giveaway, but on the day that President "Nope, no Change" signs away our children's and grandchildren's financial futures for a few beanstalk beans, I thought it would be useful to point out (again) the rank hypocrisy being demonstrated by the party of "small government" and "fiscal conservatism".

Take for example, Senator John Cornyn. He is one of the very biggest liars and hypocrites in a party absolutely stuffed to the gills with them. As this bloated behemoth of free giveaways to the extremely wealthy known as the Omnibus Spending Bill works it's way through the sausage-making machine in D.C. some republicans saw it as an opportunity to have their cake and eat it too. They figured they would be able to load as much pork onto the bill as possible, and then vote against it, safe in the knowledge that the bill would pass without their vote anyway. Why? Because if it didn't, the core constituents of the Democratic base would have their taxes go up on January 1st and that would not be a good idea, even if it meant the rich got to pay a little bit more too. So what does this silver-haired skidmark do? On one hand he sends out e-mails lambasting the Democrats for wasteful earmark spending whilst on the other hand he makes sure to put in for $18 million of them for himself. So far, so good. Next step in the rethuglican playbook is to hold a press conference and slam the Democrats for over-spending in a lame-duck session. The only problem is the usually placid and compliant M$M momentarily forgot who their masters were and actually called them out on it. 

Just for once the hypocrites were called out for their blatant lies. For one glorious moment the presstitutes started to ask the questions that made the rethuglicans feel uncomfortable. The hypocritical bastards actually looked surprised. They thought this was going to be a normal run-of-the-mill presser where the lapdogs lobbed nothing but softballs for them to swing at, and then everyone would leave happy knowing that they had all played their part. Instead they were shamed into looking like the bought and paid for whores that they are. They were hoisted on their own petards of avarice and greed. Well maybe not that last bit, but dammit, for one brief moment things actually made a little more sense.

And what were the networks covering this week? Yup, you guessed it,  Ryan Reynolds break-up with Scarlett Johansson.

You know. The important shit.

Why is John Boner always crying...??

Seriously, I think this dude is messed up in the head. The soon-to-be Speaker of the House was on 60 minutes last night for an interview (if by 'interview' you mean brazen and unapologetic fluffing by a willing and eager member of the M$M) and seemed to spend most of the time sobbing like a six-year old girl that had just seen her brand-new puppy get run over by Santa Claus's sleigh. Twice.

Now understand, I am not talking about getting a little choked up, maybe a solitary tear slowly rolling its' way down one of his bright orange cheeks as he recalled some touching moment in his past, or an emotional rememberance of some past elder that he held dear. Nope, Boner was in full-on melt down like someone had just slammed his fingers in the car-door, kicked him in the bollocks, and told him it wasn't going to stop until he said uncle.

Being a bit of a bastard I actually thought it was hysterical. The stupid orange bugger looked like a total wuss, and in this day and age of far-right-wing republican women telling any man that displays the remotest sign of vulnerablity (or humanity for that matter) that they need to "man up", I think that Boner is in for a rough ride if he keeps this up. Of course any amusement I experienced from this display of borderline mental disease (it's either that or he has a shitload of suppressed emotional stuff he needs to deal with) was inevitably tempered by the fact that all it really showed was the blatant and rank hypocrisy of the whores in the complicit M$M.

Let's be honest, if the former speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a person with more courage and balls in her purse than her Oompa-Loompa-looking successor could ever possibly dream of, had ever acted that way in public, the presstitutes and right-wing attack dogs would have been all over her. They would have accused her of being 'mentally unstable', or 'an overly emotional woman', or 'unable to stand the challenges of her position'. Never mind that, can you imagine the uproar if President Obama acted this way? Over at Fake News you would be able to hear heads exploding.  And yet when the chain-smoking, booze-hound from Ohio goes on national telly and sobs like a lost child he is called 'authentic' and 'one-of us'.

Really? It's enough to make you want to cry.

Caribou Barbie gets it all wrong....again...

So apparentely in revenge for the anti-WikiLeaks musings the Quitta from Wasilla has been spouting on her FB page, a group of anonymous hackers decided to fuck with her political action committee website (if by political action commitee you mean "legal method to personally enrich herself at the expense of morons that think she's presidential material") and shut it down with a D.O.S. attack.

This so incensed Mrs 'It's all about me" Palin that she had to quip thusly on her FB page "This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his (Julian Assange) sick, un-American espionage efforts". Okay, a couple of things. One, Sarah Palin doesn't know what espionage is, never mind know how to spell it correctly without the aid of spellcheck, and secondly, of course he's un-American you stupid, stupid woman...he's AUSTRALIAN.

I don't know which is more frightening, that this half-baked walking bag of stupid thinks she is presidential material, or the fact that there are other people in the US that think the same thing.

You just cannot make this shit up...or, why Morpheus was right...

..."irony, it seems, is not without a sense of humour"...

Case in point...(And no, it's not from The Onion).

After succesfully hounding Wikileaks from being hosted on various servers around the globe, including Amazon.com, and effectively choking off it's funding, Paypal and now Visa will not process payments or donations to the site, the US will be hosting "World Press Freedom Day in 2011".

Irony much?

December 7th, a day that will forever live in infamy...and no, this has nothing to do with Pearl Harbour..

Today marks the 69th anniversary of one of history's biggest military blind-sides, when the Japanese attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbour and kicked off the Pacific Theatre portion of dubya dubya two. Alot of brave men and women died that day and this post is meant in no way as an insult to their sacrifice. In fact, I am using it as a clarion call to anyone (and it probably is only 'one') that reads this to pay attention to what is going on in this country, and to gird their loins for the upcoming conflict.

Today, December 7th 2010, President Obama made it official, he becamse the greatest republican president of the new century. He accepted the deal (if by 'deal' you mean steaming pile of rancid horseshit) offered by the republicans regarding their platform promise of 'Leave No Millionaire Behind'. Obama has once again proven his willingness to unilaterally fuck over the stupid motherfuckers that thought that he really meant what he said on the campaign trail. 'Hope' and 'Change' apparently only apply when the President is speechifying, and do not actually come into play when dealing with any real policy decisions. I, along with tens of millions of other voters in America, didn't see the asterisk that must have been on the campaign banners. We didn't read the small print disclaimers in the campaign brochures that apparently stated 'Actual hope and change may differ once elected'.

So here we are trying to digest the news that the republicans in congress got absolutely everything their greedy, blackened hearts desired, PLUS concessions on the estate tax which, although they affect less then one tenth of one percent of the total population, have been so successfully marketed by the gop and their whores in the M$M as the "death tax" that the President apparently caved, well,  just because. All we're left with on the left is the minor concession from the Millionaires Club (aka the House of Representatives) that the unemployed get their benefits extended for 13-months. Got that? Tax breaks for everybody (but most importantly the jet-set) extended for 2 years PLUS give backs on the estate tax, PLUS a holiday on payroll tax, but the unemployed get only 13 months of relief, and if you've been unemployed for 99+ weeks already, well that's just too fucking bad, you get a nice big helping of sweet fuck-all.

Calling him a republican isn't a case of irrational hyperbole, it isn't a case of a screaming liberal like myself going ever-so slightly mental because I didn't get my fucking pony, or because Obama didn't send the entire gop to re-education camps as soon as he was sworn into office. No, this is the plain god-awful truth.

Don't believe me? Look at the facts.

Since being inaugurated he has: failed to close Gitmo, allowed the spying on US citizens to continue unabated(he apparently missed the fourth amendment class at Harvard whilst becoming a 'constitutional scholar'), given a multi-billion dollar gift to the health care industry and insurers and called it 'health care reform', extended the scheduled 2011 exit date from Afghanisnam to 2014 at the earliest (and somehow still managed to win the Nobel Peace Prize in the process, fuck knows how), he has declared that the President has the authority to execute American citizens abroad without due process, he has defended the previous adminstrations use of torture by failing to investigate or prosecute the offenders and now he has validated the bush tax cuts, and in the process fucked the terminally unemployed.

I know of no real Democrat that would ever, EVER, think that any of those actions were acceptable in any manner, shape or form, and yet when he was ushered into office with a massive majority in both chambers of congress, and an absolute mandate from the people to change course from the previous policies of division, he barely changed a thing. Oh sure, the press conferences now feature complete sentences, and when the President says he reads alot of books no-one sniggers and asks if they have lots of pictures, but when it comes to actual change, you know, doing things differently than before, well that just hasn't fucking happened. And judging by today's latest capitulation it isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

With this guy in office and a republican majority in the House the next two years could be very, very rough indeed.

Obama caves (again)..and the rethuglicans just keep on laughing...

So it appears that the Prez has caved on the rethuglican "leave no millionaire behind" tax-break plan. The gop's base get what they want (shitloads of money) and in return the peasants can have a little relief too (unemployment benefits extended for another year). The fact that this adds close to $1,000,000,000,000 onto the deficit's bottom line doesn't appear to phase the "deficit hawks" and "small government" tea-party asswipes just elected to congress one bit. Not in the slightest.

So as Democrats get yet another punch in the gut from the gloating fuckers on the right as the Capitulator in Chief rope-a-dopes his way out of another fight, all that is left is to try and get their heads around the reality of the situation. Someone, somewhere in the West Wing decided that the rich getting their money, the poor getting their alms and all of us getting to talk about this all over again in 2012 is a good deal.

On what kind of messed up planet does this sort of logic make a winning strategy?

In order for the poor to get their stale bread crusts the rich are given more caviar.

All of the talk of 'fiscal conservativism' turns out to be complete bullshit(there's a fucking surprise!)

And just in time for the 2012 Presidential election we get to have the same "Democrats want to raise your taxes" meme shoved down our throats by the gop and their enablers in the M$M. Kicking this shit-covered can down the road another couple of years is the thing that must have the Millionaires Club (Congress) the most giddy because it's a win-win for them. If the economy is still in the shitter in 2012 it's because the Prez is an economic dunce by allowing the deficit to continue to grow, and if it improves it's because tax-gifts to the wealthy really ARE good afterall...

Why not go on national teevee and say it like it is..the gop want the rich to keep more money and they are willing to fuck everyone else over in order to make that happen...Use small words so that the teahadists understand it as well..or is it only rethuglicans that get to use the bully pulpit...??

For a guy that got his job with pretty speechifying and verbal persuasionism he sure seems tongue-tied when it comes to actually doing something hard..

Obama looks to remove protections for Gray Wolf and Grizzly Bears...or why "Change" was complete and utter horseshit...

Look, let me just start this by stating quite clearly that I expect to get fucked when the republicans are in office (see: G. Bush the Lesser 2000-2008). What I don't expect is to get fucked just as hard when the Democrats are in control. I don't make anything resembling enough money annually, or have a net worth in remotely the right strata of the atmosphere to actually count for anything as far as the republican party is concerned. So subsequently when the shit started rolling downhill (as it inevitably does whenever the Angry White Rich-Guy party gets hold of the reins and did so with avengeance in 2000) I just hunkered down and tried to weather the storm. As I sat there in my wellies praying that the flood of polished turds would stop before it reached the top of my boots, I scanned the horizon for some glimmer of hope. Some sign, however small, that the maelstrom of bullshit, hatred and bile would end one day. In 2008 Barack Obama was that sign. His speeches were uplifting, his rhetoric was bold, and his passion was immeasurable. 'Hope' and 'Change' was in the air. It felt as though the rancid stench of right-wing policies solely designed to enrich the already wealthy was going to be washed out of the body politic, and once more 'We The People' would be heard loud and clear. We would get our country back from the monied interest groups and lobbyists, we would begin the process of re-building the country they way it was intended to be, 'of the people, by the people, for the people'.

Then he got elected.

And guess what? Nothing changed. Not really. Oh, he got a health care bill passed (if by health care bill you mean 'Gift to the insurers and health care providers that lined the politicians pockets'), and he did pull the troops out of Iraq (if by pull out you mean 'still leave a military presence of 100,000 behind'), but as time passed it became more and more obvious that the campaign rhetoric wasn't matching up with what was actually being done.

His justice department didn't stop the DEA raids on (legal) marijuna clinics in California. His justice department didn't look into the allegations that the CIA had destroyed evidence of torture. His justice department wouldn't look into whether the former administration had broken international law by either engaging in, or allowing the facilitation of torture. He approved (and then rapidly unapproved after BP's little oopsie in the Gulf) more off-shore drilling. He actively advocated for 'clean coal' (whatever the fuck that mythical substance is) and more nuclear power plants. The only mercy there being that he actually said the word 'nuclear' correctly. His interior department refused to overturn the bush administration ruling removing protections for the Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf and the states of Montana, and Idaho promptly rushed out and started slaughtering the Wolves in their hundreds.

Earlier this year several environmental groups (several of which I am a proud contributing member of) won a major court victory forcing the Gray Wolf back onto the Endangered Species List, and instructed US Fish and Wildlife to base their listing/delisting on proper scientific evidence rather than policy decisions.

Way to go wolves, right? Wrong. It turns out that for some unfathomable reason the Obama adminstration wants to delist both the wolves AND grizzlies so badly, that they are willing to try and do an end-run around the Endangered Species Act via congress, to get their way. So, rather than accept the courts' decision, and allow proper scientific data to be gathered and studied to determine what the appropriate wolf levels are to be deemed as 'recovered', the Obama administration has decided that the ranchers and land-owners in those western states know better and that they should be allowed to kill as many wolves and bears as possible.

I have been able to make excuses and rationalizations for many of the actions (and cynical inactions) of this administration, but for me, this is the end of the line. This is where I get off the Obama express. This is where I declare that I have had enough. Yes he is better than the alternative, if only for the fact that it kept that self-promoting ex-beauty-pageant contestant from being a heart-beat away from the nuclear launch codes, but being the 'least bad' is no longer good enough. Not when we have such urgent issues to deal with. 'Change' isn't carrying on with the same policies that were already in place. 'Change" isn't doing everything the opposition party wants and ignoring your base. 'Change' isn't bobbing and weaving when asked straight forward questions on things like gay marriage, DADT or choice. It is with much sadness and more than a little anger, that I admit that I got sold a bill of goods. I really thought this guy was going to be different, I really did. Turns out he wasn't, and we are ALL the worse off because of it.

Mr President, please don't kill the wolves.

So much for change...or why I have finally had it with President No-Bama..

Read this link and then tell me who is worse, the torturers or those that cover up the torture.

I am disgusted.

Nothing funny, pithy or amusing about this post.

"Change" my ass.

Republicans are people too...mean, selfish, greedy people...

As unemployment benefits run out today for close to 2 million people in the United States (also commented on here) and nary a vote in sight to restore them, the Angry White Rich-Guy Party is hard at work making sure the poor just keep on getting fucked.

Not satisfied with emptying the Treasury Dept directly into the coffers of the very same banks that steered the economy to the edge of the precipice, the rethuglicans now want to make sure that any money they might have left behind stays in the pockets of the rich, and the poor can just go fuck themselves. That's right. If you are unemployed and haven't been able to find a job in the last two years, you are well and truly screwed as of December 1, 2010.

You see, these miserly fucking bastards have said they will not even contemplate extending the benefits because it will add another $18 billion onto the deficit, unless something else gets cut to pay for it. If not, well, let the peasants eat cake.

Now to a "fiscal conservative" (also known as "tight-fisted fuckwad") as many of the self-righteous millionaires in Congress like to call themselves, this may seem quite reasonable, but it all starts to come apart at the seams when the topic turns to extending tax breaks for themselves. Thats when these "fiscal conservatives" get all kinds of giddy with indignant rage. You see, the soon-to-expire tax-gifts to the wealthy would add $700 billion to the deficit, but the rethuglicans say that doesn't really matter, they are SO vitally important to the overall health of the economy that they need to be continued no matter the expense.

Got that? $18 billion to help two million Americans = BAD. $700 Billion to the rich = GOOD.

One Democrat has had enough and is speaking out about it. Nancy Pelosi has called the reptiles out on their blindingly obvious hypocrisy and stated in plain English just exactly how fucked in the head these greedy bastards are.

Think it'll do any good?

Me neither.