Big Storm on the horizon...or so they say

..according to the Weather Channel we here in the Midwest are about to get clobbered with a snow storm the likes of which we haven't seen in over a decade, up to a couple of feet in some places...my only question is...why couldn't it have shown up this morning whilst I was still nice and toasty under the covers...if it hits, as predicted overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, instead of throwing another log on the fire and copping a quick feel of the missus while she slumbers, it'll mean getting up at o-dark thirty to shovel tons of the white shit off the driveway and then a 2 hour commute to the office which normally only takes 15 minutes...

Global warming my arse.....*










*I am of course completely kidding about that, but just once in a while I like to see what it feels like to be a smug GW-denier...

Randumb thoughts for your friday amusement...and consternation...

1) Why does the M$M cover the Teahadists as though the are a separate party? They aren't. Their party registration is republican, not "frothing-at-the-mouth homophobic bigots". They are merely the openly radical wing of the mainstream republican party. Should the Dems come out with their own version of the Teanuts and then demand equal time? Do you think the M$M would do that? Yeah. Me neither. God the media in this country sucks.

2) Bristol Palin was scheduled to give a speech at the Washington University in St. Louis for a fee of $20,000. The topic? Abstinence. No, I am not making that up. Apparently they couldn't rip Charlie Sheen away from the hookers and blow long enough to give a speech on sobriety and moderation, so they asked the un-wed teen mother from Moose-Fuck Alaska to speak on how not to get knocked up. Thankfully the students of the university persuaded the administration that this probably wasn't a good idea and the whole thing has now been called off.

3) Want proof of what republicans really think about women? Legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-Caveman) would limit federal aid for abortions to only cover cases of rape that were "forcible". Get that ladies? It isn't enough that some bastard raped you and knocked you up, now they want you to prove that it was "forcible" before they'll help pay for the abortion. What about cases of incestuous rape or cases of statutory rape many of which are non-forcible? Tough shit? Too bad, so sad? Any woman, and I mean ANY woman that votes republican needs their fucking head examined. It makes as much sense for a woman to vote republican as it does for a chicken to vote for Col.Sanders.

And on that note, I believe the bar is open. Cheers!

POTUS SOTU, A-OK or WTF?

He came, he saw, he read a speech. In an atmosphere that can most charitably be described as 'muted', Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union speech to a chamber that for the first time in it's history, had everyone sitting together in a display of 'civility'. In reality it just made for some good television viewing for those of us at home, as we watched the attendees fake sincere smiles and handshakes, some of whom looked genuinely uncomfortable sitting with their opposite numbers. This novel seating arrangement also meant that the usual partisan jack-in-the-box standing ovations from one side of the room or the other at the designated moments in the speech were not going to happen. Instead we were blessed with the sight of what seemed to be a series of half-hearted standing ovations by folks that at times looked seriously confused as to whether it was their turn to stand or not.

The speech itself was a mish-mash of watered-down generalizations, with a discouraging amount of red-meat thrown in for the repubbies to get moist over, including Tort reform, lowering corporate tax rates and simplifying the tax code. At one point I wondered if someone from John Boner's office had switched the speeches loaded into the tele-prompter and replaced it with the one that the Weeper of the House is scheduled to give at an insurance lobbyists luncheon next week. For all of the republican wish-list items that were checked off in that speech it made me wonder just what the hell Paul Ryan (R- Eddie Munster look-alike asshole) was going to criticise in the official republican rebuttal? Maybe the colour of the President's tie?

As with the previous Obama SOTU addresses, the real fun begins when the right-wing spin machine goes into overdrive afterwards, starting with the official opposition's response. After the disaster that was Bobby Jindal's coming out speech two years ago, they tried to play it safe with Paul Ryan from Wisconsin this year. I watched him for a few seconds at the end of his "Everything that guy just said is bullshit" routine only to be struck by how stoned he looked. Paul Ryan either hadn't changed his contact lenses in a year or two, or he was high as a kite. Seriously, his eyes were so red you wouldn't use Visine to clear them up, you'd have to use White Out.

Not wanting to be left out, the lunatic fringe of the gop, the TeaBaggers, had their own rebuttal that no-one but the Comedy News Channel (CNN) covered. It featured the walking punchline that is the spectacularly stupid Rep Michele Bachmann (R- Batshit Insane). Actually that's a slur on stupid people, Bachmann is more like 10lbs of crazy stuffed into a 5lb bag. Her presentation featured charts, graphs, and the picture taken at Iwo Jima. The gist of her psychotic rant was, apparently, that Obama is Satan, the IRS is going to use Health Care Reform to tax you back to the stone age, and the the birth of America was 'a miracle' (and there was me thinking it was a bunch of folks trying to escape religious persecution getting on some rickety old boats whilst telling The Crown to 'fucketh off').

If the subject matter wasn't whacky enough, the delivery of it was completely bizarre. It appears that the Teabaggers didn't want to pony up the extra dollars for a professional-grade tele-prompter that allows the person reading it to look directly into the camera, but instead opted for one that was off to the side of the camera. This resulted in the speaker looking completely mental as she appeared to be earnestly addressing someone that was standing off camera. (This also raises the question of why she using a tele-prompter in the first place? I thought that was a clear violation of the Tea Party Code because they continually attack the Socialist/Nazi/Commie from Kenya in the Whitehouse for using one?)

In conclusion there was very little for the Dems to get too thrilled about, we've heard alot of these promises before, and instead of being a true assessment of the 'State of the Union' (there were only two paragraphs about only one of the two wars being fought, and bugger-all about the chronically unemployed) it was more like a republican speech delivered very eloquently by a centrist who apparently thinks that invasive TSA pat-downs are hysterical.

*As an aside Mooselini has reappeared from her self-imposed exile to chime in with her two cents about the speech, and said that the President's use of 'Win The Future' is the wrong use of 'WTF'. This would be amusing if A) she had come up with that line herself, and B) if her entire politicial career wasn't the biggest WTF of all time.

Wait, Obama said what?..about whom?..you must be joking...

Today, January 25th, 2011 President Barack Obama will make his second State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and many a political pundit is giddy with excitement guessing which topic will be the primary focus of the speech. In these trying times it is hard to imagine that it would be anything other than jobs, jobs, jobs, but in light of the recent tragic events in Arizona, it is fair to speculate that he will reiterate his call to extend tolerance and civility into political discourse. Back here on planet Earth this is known as 'casting pearls before the swine', but the Prez has never been one to readily accept the reality that the right-wing despise him and everything he represents regardless of how bi-partisan he is. And that is what makes his OpEd piece, published yesterday in USA Today, so totally and completely baffling. In it he praised Ronald Reagan (whose 100th birthday would be coming up soon if he wasn't you know, dead) and said that "he was a patroit that always put his fellow citizens' welfare above all else", and that "we remain forever grateful for the gift that was his view that it was always 'morning in America'."

I'm sorry, what? Are you kidding me?

That's just wrong on so many levels. For a start it's total bullshit. And I mean completely and utterly, pure, unadulterated bullshit. I know, I was there. I became politically aware during Raygun's Reign of Error, and the one thing I know for sure was that he didn't gave a tinkers' damn about his fellow citizens unless they were a) rich, b) white, and c) male...if you were a woman, gay, or a minority you were screwed...He was quite possibly the single most destructive occupant of the Oval Office ever. His disdain for the environment was breathtaking in its' audacity ("when you've seen one Redwood you've seen them all", "trees cause more pollution than automobiles" - yes - he actually said that), his disregard for the mentally ill and those suffering from AIDS was horrifying, and his defense spending was so reckless we are still paying for it now.

Whether he was mentally competent or not during the whole Iran-Contra debacle can be argued ad nauseam (and his son Ron Jr, has said that he was almost literally out of his mind for at least part of his presidency), but the fact remains he still broke the law, and his support of vicious right-wing regimes in Central America was directly responsible for hideous acts of torture and the deaths of many innocent people.

I don't think he was stupid, and I don't think he was (entirely) evil - you know, like Dick Cheney is - I just think he was ill. Seriously ill. A British comedian at the time questioned the sanity of having such an aged old geezer in the Oval Office with his finger hovering over the nuclear trigger when his own grandad was the same age as Reagun, and they wouldn't even let him have control of the t.v remote! Thankfully we never found out, even though the clueless bastard did joke once about launching nukes at Russia as he was warming up for his weekly radio address.

But here's what drives me nuts. I am beyond sick of the constant re-imagining of this senile old bastard from weepy-eyed snake-oil salesmen on the right, but I feel almost physically ill when one of the sycophantic revisionists is allegedly 'one of us' on the left. Having lived through that time I can honestly say that the only thing I am truly grateful for about Raygun was that his gibbering idiocy was term-limited to only eight years...and even that was eight years too many..

And as for Obama? He should bloody well know better..

Global Climate Change is a myth...the same way the sun doesn't always come up in the east..

Or maybe not...according to a new study of the Greenland ice sheet just published, Global Warming Deniers are completely and utterly full of shit. Okay, the report doesn't actually put it quite that succinctly, but it is the inevitable conclusion one can draw from the report. In it they have found that since 1979, when studies of the ice sheet started in earnest, an additional 17,000 square kilometers per year has melted. That is the equivalent of an area the size of Great Britain vanishing every 5 years.

Now that the Intellectual Luddites have taken over control of the US House of Representatives I know that it has become fashionable again to thumb ones' nose at nerdy scientists armed with their nerd-charts and their scraggly nerd-beards, but one would hope that the time will soon be upon us when even the most highly paid whore in Congress can no longer squawk about global warming being a "myth" without realizing themselves just how fucking stupid they look. I mean, just look at the freaking pictures that are out there. If the data confuses you, or the pie chart reminds you of Ms Pacman fine, but don't look at those glacier before/after pictures and tell me GW is not happening.

"There are none so blind as those that refuse to see" so the saying goes, and that is no more ably demonstrated than when one looks at the case of the wilfully blind King Canutes that continue to say that there's no "proof" that global warming is real, even as the glaciers and ice sheets melt, and the sea-levels rise. They sit around and and bicker over whether it is 'real', or solely man-made, or whether it is a part of the greater cyclical nature of the planet. That has always struck me as being rather like the crew of the Titanic standing around arguing over whether the iceburg that just ripped a bloody great hole in the side of the ship came from the North Pole or Greenland. In the end it doesn't friggin matter, because we're all going in the drink. And if this survey is right, by the time the Greenland ice sheet has completely melted, the sea levels will have risen 21 feet around the globe.

Hope you brought your swimming suit.

The M$M silence another critic..or "liberal media" my arse...

In an abrupt, and highly surprising move MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have "agreed" to "part ways". Strange when you consider that Keith Olbermann still had two years left on his contract which was valued at $7 million per year, and yeah, this smells like week-old bullshit to me too.

It strikes me as no small coincidence however, that this happened in the same week that the takeover deal of MSNBC's parent company by Comcast finally gets approved. Comcast is a big-time supporter of the republican party and the last thing they needed right out of the gate was someone like Keith Olbermann running around in primetime pointing out how the republicans are all a bunch of hypocritical assholes.

The whole NBC/Comcast deal is rotten from top to bottom for a myriad of reasons, not least of which is that it means that we now have only five corporations owning 94% of all the television media in this country, but this evenings' news merely confirms the suspicions of many on the left, that their voices are being silenced by the major corporations as they gobble up each media company, one by one.

The "liberal media" is an age-old lie that has been spread around, very successfully, by the right-wing noise machine in this country for years. Despite the fact that it is completely, and demonstrably untrue, it is a lie that has been told so many times, by so many people, that it has now become the truth, even when faced with absolute proof that it is total horseshit. Say for instance today. Think about it. If the media is so liberal, where are all the liberals on the telly or the radio? If the "liberal media" really did exist, by definition, none of the right-wingers complaining about the "liberal media" would be heard, because "the liberal media" wouldn't let them. Right? Of course it's horseshit, but that doesn't stop the right-wing noise machine from perpetuating the lie, and using Keith Olbermann as a prime example of it.

In an era of corporate media ownership that has had a chilling effect on forthright and honest journalism, it is a tragedy when a voice like Keith's gets silenced. Keith Olbermann is a hero of mine. A man unafraid to stand up and say what needed to be said, no matter how unpopular or controversial it may have been, and regardless of the political affiliation of the offending party. His 'Special Comment' segments were something I eagerly looked forward to as a source of inspiration, understanding and catharsis. His eloquent anger over the injustices and hypocrises of the political operatives, both in front of and behind the camera's eye, gave me hope that there was still a chance that this republic can achieve it's greatest goals, as long as it's fiercest critics are allowed to speak.  His genuine patriotism, his passionate love of country and democracy, and his deep understanding of what the Founding Fathers were trying to acheive with this grand experiment, was inspiring.

According to his many detractors on the right, he was a socialist idealogue, a liberal blow-hard and an all around pain in the ass. He was in fact the only man brave enough to go on a television network show, night after night, and call a spade a spade. He pointed out the fact that Fox is nothing more than the media arm of the republican party despite it's Goebbel-esque mantra of 'Fair and balanced". He regularly pointed out the rank hypocrisy of some of his fellow 'journalists' too, even on his own network, and did so knowing full well that a day like today might happen at any moment because of it.

And so, it finally happened. Apparently the new bosses don't like the idea of a real journalist, you know, one with ethics and the willingness to ask the tough questions, and will instead terminate their number one star, from the number one show, for something else.

I have resolved to do two things to protest this. The first is that I am going to dump Comcast as my cable company this week, and I will tell them specifically why when I do it, and the second is that the next person that complains to me about "the liberal media" will get a swift kick in the bollocks.

Ricky Gervais - The Scourge of Hollywood?

The celebrity sections of the news media in the U.S. have been all abuzz this week after the hosting job done by British comedian Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes. Apparently our little Ricky cut a little too close to the truth and told some jokes that made more than a few of the precious darlings in attendance wince. Really? Tough shit I say. What did they expect when they hired him? Knock, knock jokes? Sycophantic arse-kissing? That's more up Jay Leno's alley. Look, I think that a great number of people like watching those awards ceremonies just in case someone actually does something unpredictable and memorable rather than thanking their lawyer or their pet-walker or their colon-cleanser.

Cary Grant once famously said of the Oscars "it's just a bunch of rich people sitting around applauding each other", and for the most part he's still right. Face it award shows can be very boring. No-one outside of that room actually gives a shit about any of the people that are usually so effusively feted, and no-one gives a shit about most of the categories either. Foreign film screenplay? Hello, no-one saw the bloody thing, who gives a shit who wrote it? We want best supporting actor and actress, best actor and actress and best film (trust me no-one gives a shit about 'best director' either, they can give some of the worst speeches ever, do you remember how awful James Cameron was after winning for Titanic? One word, Ugh). Anything other than that is boring bullshit that is simply there to fill in the time and make some of the "little people" feel special. (Best score? best make-up? Puh-leeze).

A much better idea is to trim the actual number of awards down as suggested above, and then have Ricky Gervais use the rest of the time for his stand up. Two things will happen. There will be a shitload more laughter, and a bunch of Americans will learn the proper use of several new words to impress their friends with.

Rep. Peter King thinks that Wikileaks are terrorists..but the IRA apparently aren't...

Rep Peter King (R- Complete Asshole) is a well-known tough-talking knowitall bullshit artist that likes to trash Democrats and other like-minded people that don't agree with his "kill them all - let God sort it out" type of rhetoric. He went completely around the bend after 9-11 and his sanity (if that's what you can call it) has never been seen since. He has said some of the most amazingly bigotted things about the Muslim community in the US, including suggesting that Muslim-Americans aren't "real" Americans at all. But now his new target is Wikileaks.

He has suggested that the New York Times be tried for treason for publishing some of the material, and that Julian Assange should be tried as a terrorist because Wikileaks amounted to support for terrorists. If that were the case Mr. Assange would be quite right to suggest that as far as going to jail for supporting terrorists is concerned, perhaps Rep. King should go first. You see, Peter King actually HAS supported terrorists, only they were white, and it was politically beneficial in his district to do so. Their official name is the IRA.

It has always rubbed me the wrong way that Americans felt that supporting the IRA was okay, but supporting another group, say Hamas, was not. They are BOTH terrorist organisations, and just because one comes from a land that is much mythologized and revered for it's dodgy food, it's fairly decent beer and it's sorrowful history, whilst the other exists in a desolate hole in the Middle East, doesn't excuse those that give support to either of them. And this goes doubly for someone that loudly shouts and accuses one, but not the other, of being sub-human animals that need to be exterminated. The fact that he knows that he has given material support to one group of terrorists (a violation of federal law) whilst villifying another group merely goes to show you that he is indeed, completely full of shit.

Another reason why President Obama's speech yesterday was just what the doctor ordered...

If you haven't seen it I urge you to find a video of it. It was absolutely one of the most eloquent, uplifting, tear-jerking and inspiring speeches I have ever heard him make. The tone was perfect, mixing respect, sorrow and optimism in equal parts. It left you feeling at the end as if you had awoken from a night of uneasy sleep, worrying about something not quite visible in your dreams, only to find out that the sun was shining, there was a light, warm breeze blowing through the window curtains and you felt incredibly refreshed and alive. You know, like those feminie hygiene products they always show on the telly.

Anyway, find it, watch it, and enjoy it. This will go down as one of the best speeches by any President. Ever. I am not joking.

Plus, it seems that it may have just about completely ended Caribou Barbie's political aspirations once and for all. That's quite a two-fer. You see, two things will be remembered about yesterday, the first is the President's eloquent and heartfelt appeal for the country to unify after a terrible tragedy and for all of us to try and live up to its' better aspirations with calmer and more respectful dialogue, the other is the bitter, self-centred, accusatory, combative, and stunningly anti-semitic pre-recorded bile spewed by someone that was once politically relevant for about a month and a half.

Sarah Palin couldn't possibly have looked less 'Presidential' (if indeed that was what her advisors were aiming for) if she tried. Standing in front of a background that looked like one of those fake ones used at a supermarket photography studio, she painstakingly picked her way through the words someone else had written for her, syllable by syllable. She looked for all the world like a contestant in a beauty pageant trying earnestly to communicate her desire for world peace whilst wearing a shimmering thong bikini and 5 inch heels. The ultimate irony about this of course was that you could see the reflection of the teleprompter in her "make me look smarter" designer glasses, something she has relentlessly criticised the President for doing.

Many pundits, on both the left and the right, have started to wonder aloud if she has done irreparable harm to her chances of winning the republican nomination, or indeed whether she has a viable political future at all. Personally I think she is done and dusted, and I think that deep down inside she knows it too. My bet is that she'll tease all the knuckle-draggers she calls her base for as long as she possibly can, and then when it comes time to make the decision, she'll make up some half-assed excuse not to enter the race, you know something like "the lame-stream media pundits will only use it as a chance to attack me or my family" and she'll stay on the sidelines snarking and sniping, making speeches and "writing" books as she has done since 2008.

Why do I think that? Well, consider for a moment how she first made her entrance onto the national political stage. She was plucked from obscurity by Grampa McLame, who thought that female Clinton supporters pissed off at Obama for having won the Democratic nomination would simply vote for whomever had a vagina on their ticket, so she has never had to run the gauntlet of having members of her own party tear her apart in a brutal primary contest. She's only had the "un-American liberal lame-stream media" to deal with, and even then only at arms-length in pre-scripted fluff sessions. Just wait 'til Mike Fuckabee, or Toad Gingrich or Mutt Romney start going after her shallow resume as a lightweight quitter with no real political bona fides and see just how quickly she begins to melt before your eyes like the wicked witch of the west...She can't afford to have that sort of damage inflicted on her marketable image, so rather than risk entering the race and being torn to shreds by her fellow republicans and then quitting (again), I don't think she'll even enter. She'll quit before it even starts.

Who says there's no such thing as miracles?

Sarah 'Don't retreat, reload' Palin issues statement re: AZ shooting..apparently SHE is the victim...

It took her four days to get all of her ghost-writers together and try to get the right words from Google all untangled, but finally today the Quitter from Wasilla issued a statement (if by 'statement' you mean self-serving video message on Facebook) that slammed the media for trying to point some of the blame of the Arizona shootings towards her fiery campaign rhetoric. This meant that she neatly avoided having to answer any uncomfortable questions in person like "if you didn't have anything to be be concerned about, why did you scrub your website of the gunsight imagery right after the shooting?"

Anxious not to fan the flames of anger by using insensitive or inciteful rhetoric she accused her critics of starting a blood libel. Oopsie! So much for that idea. You see, a blood libel actually refers to the false accusation that Jews used the blood of children in religious rituals and has been used as one of the reasons for anti-semitic violence for many, many centuries. Apparently her "fact-checkers" thought it meant something else. You want to know what else her "fact-checkers" missed? Congress-woman Giffords is Jewish.

Way to go Sarah. You not only look like a complete idiot for trying to walk away from your own violent speechifying that is out there in the public domain for everyone to research (you know, on the internets you betcha, also) but you have managed to further insult the primary target of this attack while she fights for her life in a hospital bed. Nice one.

Sarah, your 15 minutes of fame are rapidly coming to a close (so sorry that your six-part infomercial on TLC got cancelled, but I'm sure the wildlife in Alaska will breathe a sigh of relief now that you'll stop parading around the countryside with a rifle and a camera crew pretending that you're an outdoorswoman), and for that we are all eternally grateful, but the real tragedy is that it took the deaths of six innocent people at the hands of a deeply disturbed nutjob to bring your political career to an end. From the moment you were plucked out of obscurity and thrust onto the national stage by possibly the most short-sighted old geezer in history, you have done nothing but poison the political sphere with your bile and spite. You did all of this whilst at the same time enriching yourself beyond the wildest dreams of a third-placed beauty queen from Wasilla. In other words you are the prototypical republican. But now, that is over. Try as you might you will not be able to run away from this tragedy or your "lock and load" rhetoric, and it will be fun to watch your expression when you suddenly realize that it isn't the "lame-stream media" or the "liberal elites" tearing you apart, but members of your own party.

Karma's a bitch. You betcha!

Arizona shooting tragedy, why the M$M is in full-on spin-mode..

According to a CBS News overnight poll, 58% of those surveyed said that the awful tragedy that occurred in Tucson, Arizona over the weekend was not due to angry, violent political rhetoric from the right-wing.

Wait, what?

Okay, first off, who knew that CBS still had a news division? My impression, judging by their current nightly 'newscasts', was that they were no longer in the 'serious' news biz and had just fully given into being corporate apologists 24/7 with the occasional celebrity fluff piece thrown in for shits and grins. This became even more apparent after they hired quite possibly the worst excuse for an anchor-person in the history of network television (absolutely zero journalistic credibility, but a nice pair of legs and a blindingly white smile), and their ratings still went straight through the floor.

Secondly, I doubt that 58% of those that CBS claims to have surveyed could find Arizona on the map, never mind Tucson.

Thirdly, this poll is the most glaringly obvious example of the smoke-screen the M$M is laying down in an attempt to cover up their own culpability in the tragic events of this past weekend. Whilst the gunman is quite clearly out of his frigging tree, his rantings and ravings point to a train of thought that is decidedly right-wing in nature. So what does the M$M do? They spend the next 48 hours doing their damnedest to paint him as simply a "crazed, lone gunman" (gee, why does that sound so familiar?) rather than someone that spouted right wing talking points in his garbled messages on youtube.

Why would they do that? Simple. The corporate media in this country enthusiastically embraced the emergence of the far-right Tea Party, as well as the grammatically-challenged morons that came crawling out of the woodwork, atrociously spelled signs and all, after Barack Obama was elected President, and now after one of the inevitable chickens has apparently come home to roost, they are desperately scrambling for cover.

You don't believe me, you think I am exaggerating? Take a look at their actions over the last couple of years.

They actively covered the Teabagging rallies (if that is what you call Klan meetings these days) thereby legitimizing them, and even used the Teabaggers vernacular in their reporting, 'Health Care Reform' became 'Obamacare' for example. They gave them the forums into which the rightwing could pour all of its angry, hate-filled discourse.

They gleefully covered townhall meetings where they felt physical conflict might result in someone getting a good old-fashioned ass-kicking (don't forget the number one mantra in news journalism has always been 'if it bleeds, it leads').

They allowed right-wing lunatics like Sharon Angle of Nevada to repeat, over and over again, that perhaps citizens should consider "2nd amendment remedies" if they didn't like what Congress was doing, and they didn't chide Caribou Barbie, the half-term ex-governer of Alaska, when she went so far as to put a map of the US on her website with gunsight targets over several Democratic districts. (She also said about her supporters "they don't retreat, they reload" the M$M thought that was 'folksy' and just 'Sarah being Sarah').

They didn't say a word when extremist commentators in the right-wing media called for the killing of liberals as an example to others (Ann Coulter R-Adams Apple), or suggested that all liberals be killed, except a few that should be left on university campuses across the country as examples of political fossils (Rush Limbaugh R-Oxycontin).

They didn't say a word when a certifiable lunatic on the Faux network (I know, I need to be more specific here because they are all a bunch of certifiable lunatics, in this instance I am of course referring to Glenn Beck, the Lunatic-In-Chief, if you will) said that he had thought about murdering Michael Moore, and poisoning Nancy Pelosi's drinks.

They said nothing. Not a sausage. At least, not until this past saturday.

It's almost as though they were getting into high gear even before the echoes of the gunshots had faded, trying to frame this in any way they could that would minimize their own culpability. The right-wing media immediately tried to paint the shooter as a 'pot-smoking liberal' (hence the insistence on only using his high school yearbook picture when he had long hair, you know, just like a godless hippy, rather than a more recent one which showed him with much shorter hair). The rest of the corporate media allowed a not un-surprisingly large percentage of republican politicians versus democratic ones, to use the airwaves to express their 'shock' and 'horror' in a pathetically transparent way of trying to get in front of the issue.

It wasn't until it almost got completely derailed by the local Sheriff when he came on the air and spoke very passionately and eloquently of the blame the media shared in allowing such vitriolic right-wing hate speech to pollute political discourse, that the presstitutes really went into overdrive. They got every commentator they could find, no matter how irrelevant, onto the air to talk about how "we can't be sure of the shooters' political affiliations" and how when it came to violent rhetoric "both sides do it". That second part is the most blatant and shameless of all of the lies they have spouted since Saturday. We may indeed not know 100% what the murderers' political bent is, but we DO know for an absolute fact that the 'left' does not, in any way, shape or form, engage in the same sort of violent, hate-filled rhetoric which is de rigeur for the right. Not even close, but according to that CBS poll this morning, their spin seems to have worked.

Mission Accomplished.

Psssst...wanna buy a forest?...Or Selling England by the Yard..

Back when I was a young lad (stop snickering) there was an album released by Genesis called "Selling England by the Pound." It was an album full of yearning to return to the days of yore, the days before there were newly-mega-rich Arab Oil Sheiks flooding the country with suitcases full of hundred pound notes and buying up all the old manor homes and castles they could find. I remember being genuinely panicked at the time that the Oil Sheiks would buy up the whole country and kick us all out (hey, I said I was a young lad at the time, gimme a break). Turns out all they wanted to buy was a few old houses, some department store chains, the odd football team, a shit-ton of Rolls Royces and a Prime Minister or two.

Nowadays in my homeland you don't have to worry about outsiders buying it all up, the crooks in Parliament Hall are giving it away. After displaying all of his supposed 'green credentials' in the run up to the last general election as a way to woo the unsure, and appease the sceptical, David Camerwrong has promptly discarded them all and is now pursuing a course of what appears to be total environmental pillage. His newest plan is to sell ALL of the national forests in the UK to private corporations, most of them timber companies. You know, the companies that chop trees down and turn them into breakfast tables or salad bowls. Oh, don't worry, planning permission will still be required before Sherwood Forest is chopped down and sent to the local B & Q (I'm not sure how much planning it takes to say 'See all those trees? Cut 'em down'), but in a not unsuprising twist of fate, those regulations too have been chopped down, in order to 'streamline' the process. Imagine that. Rather fortuitous timing, no?

Not satisfied with selling off the country's woodland heritage, Camerwrong has also given the green light to deep-water oil-drilling off the Shetlands, because the odds of another Deepwater Horizon BP-size fuck up is apparently so remote. Yeah right, that worked out well for the folks on the Southern U.S. coast now didn't it? What could possibly go wrong? Chevron has warned the PM that an oil spill out in the North Sea could mean releasing upwards of 77,000 barrels of oil a day, and be hellaciously more difficult to clean up than the Gulf oil spill, but that apparently doesn't seem to worry the green PM. It would appear that the only 'green' he is concerned with is the color of the money coming into the Government's coffers.

Time for a vote of no confidence perhaps? Yeah, pull the other one mate, Camerwrong would just send out Nick Clegg to do his version of Tony Blair's poodle-dance while the old Etonian just sat back and counted the cash.

Where's Robin Hood when you really need him?

So much for transparency...or how it took less than 24 hours for the lying to begin..

Newly appointed Weeper of the House, John Boner (R-Oompah Loompah), spoke grandly in his introductory speech yesterday after taking hold of a comically massive gavel (apparently over-compensating for something) from Nancy Pelosi, that he was there to usher in a new era of responsibility and transparency, and an end to 'business as usual'.

As with anything else said by that overly-tanned links-rat, it was of course complete and utter bullshit. Hell, the reptiles hadn't even taken office officially yet and they were already backing away from one of their promises to reduce spending by $100 billion in their first year. That $100 billion number apparently was only 'symbolic' and not an actual hard number, this according to several congress-critters cornered by reporters on the topic, none less hypocritically than Eric Cantor (R-Asshole) on a breakfast chat show. When pressed about this blatant bait-and-switch on Good Morning America, his stammering response had all the markers of a guy that, contrary to his indignant protestations that he was in church with his wife at the time, has just been shown a video of him shagging the shit out of the babysitter on the living room floor. Doggy-style.

So, with the full knowledge that ne'ery a word that escapes the lips of these lying hounds should be taken at anything remotely close to face-value, comes today's stunning example of the 'Do as I say, not as I do' party in full swing. Whilst voting on various and sundry rules packages on the floor of the House, a rule was introduced by a Democrat from New York that would have simply required each and every congress-person to publicly disclose whether they were receiving Federal Health Benefits. Nice and simple, a straight-forward disclosure of whether they had tax-payer funded health care. What did the newly-minted republican majority do? You know, the 'transparent' and 'responsible' party? They voted it down of course. Get that? The very same assholes that want to repeal "Obamacare" (that would be YOUR government healthcare) don't even have the stones to admit that they themselves fully take advantage of "government healthcare". See, government-run healthcare is good when they benefit, but bad if it's extended to everyone else.  

They've been in power less than 24 hours and they're already up to their old tricks. Methinks it's going to be a long, LONG two years...

Code Orange: Boner becomes Weeper of the House

The Las Vegas line for the over/under on when John Boehner (who claims it's supposed to be pronounced 'Bay-nor' not 'Boner', yeah right buddy, not in MY house it ain't) breaks down and sobs uncontrollably as he takes over as Speaker of the House today is set at seven and a half minutes. The probablity that the M$M whores will then call that display 'authentic' and 'proof that he's one of us' is set at 100%...Welcome to 2011...and the beginning of the rethuglican reign of error..

NEWSFLASH!!!!!

The big girl's blouse didn't even have the gavel in his hands before he started crying....

Good grief dude....Sack up wouldya? It's not like Nancy said she was going to use it on your nuts...