Helpful hint

Conservatives,

The next time you feel compelled to say any variation on the following...

"This isn't about the environment/public safety/access to elections/national security/fairness/childhood nutrition/education/economic stability, it's about enslaving a free and proud people and making them helpless vassals of the State!"

Just pause for a moment, and think -- it's very possibly about the first thing.  Not the second thing. 

I've been around liberals at certain points in my life, and i've never heard much talk of enslavement.  They mostly talk about movies and weed.

Apropos of nothing, i love this cartoon.  It speaks the truth.

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They're all gonna laugh at you.

(This post only refers to conservatives who are a bit older than me, we're talking 35 years of age or older.)

You know, if you were to ask your typical Breitbart-Cruz-Levin fan to list their core beliefs, i have no doubt you'd end up with a shining document that contained the words "freedom, liberty, prosperity, freedom, capitalism, security, constitution, founders," and "freedom" a number of times.  And they would look at their statement of purpose, and think "how can anyone have a problem with these beliefs of mine?  They are utterly beyond reproach.  Anyone who criticizes me and my sacred beliefs is just plain wrong."

But nobody has any problem with those collections of patriotic buzzwords.  We really don't.

It's the little things, the things they say when goofing off with their buddies, the things that creep and crawl from between the lines that come across as icky.

It's how they hated the first black president before he was sworn in, how they immediately assumed that the dead black kid was guilty.  It's their constant fear of "thugs" and "urban youths" with their "cRap music."

It's their offhand remarks that young women are turning into "sluts" and are "stupid" because they have been fooled by falling for flashy guys instead of grounded, sensible, conservative men of worth and valor.  (Translation: "Women refuse to fuck me, what's their problem?")

It's the jibes and jabs at "metrosexuals" and "fairies" and "wimps" and all those others who don't live their lives in unconscious imitation of John Wayne.  It's the bragging that they used to "stuff kids into lockers" and "put the nerds in headlocks."

It's the repetition of the phrase "...are laughing at us."  How many times have you heard that?  The illegals are laughing at us, the Muslims are laughing at us, other countries... are laughing at us!

Sometimes that seems to be their greatest fear.  To be laughed at.

These conservatives -- the ones who are middle-aged now -- always remind me of kids that we all knew in junior high.  Not the bullies -- the genuine brutal sharks who are probably all in jail now -- but the kids that tried to cozy up to the bully, the wannabe bullies, the kids who looked at the dweebs and fags and sissies and weirdos and said "i don't want to be laughed at, i want to be one of the tough guys.  I want to make fun of the weak, and not be considered weak myself."

And ever thus have they lived their lives.  And it worked, for a while.

But these days, they don't feel too cool.  All of a sudden, they're being called "hicks" and "rednecks" and "teatards."  The specky geeks they once thought they ruled are now ruling them.  Now it's cool to be black, and okay to be gay, and perfectly acceptable to not give a fuck if whether the music you're listening to, or the movies you watch, or the people you hang out with, are acceptably masculine.  Now their Republican party is no longer the dominant party of Reagan and Trump and Oliver North, but the uncool, stodgy, stuffy old white man's club of Boehner and McConnell.

As Grandpa Simpson sagely stated,"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me."

And they don't like that.  Around the age of 12, they made a deal with the Devil, that they'd sell their souls for the chance to be on top of the pecking order, to be the bully rather than the bullied.  And now they feel bullied -- by young people, by attractive women, by the intelligentsia, by Hollywood, these voices assaulting their sense of self worth from all sides.

No wonder they find such solace in the right-wing world of talk radio and FOX News.  It's the last place on the planet where they're still cool.  

As for the conservatives and libertarians under the age of 35?  Probably still going through that Ayn Rand phase.

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Zimmerman Dimmerswitch

The Zimmerman verdict. 

Obviously, there is a lot i could say.  Everyone else has said it already.  They've talked about the inherent moral problems with the stand-your-ground law.  They've asked why the statute denying the use of deadly force to the "initial aggressor" was never brought up to the jury.  They've pointed out that Zimmerman's gun was almost, by necessity, primed to kill before the confrontation happened, and that his injuries were extremely minor.  They've pointed out the insane case of a woman who was just sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot at her abusive boyfriend. 

Right now, the right-wing whackos and goons are slobbering with righteous fury, gleefully sharing stories about how they broke down in joyful tears at the verdict, that their faith in the otherwise-abhorrent United States is partially redeemed... and, as always, they bellow, why are people callling us racists?  We're so clearly not!  This isn't about race, this is about constitutionalism, and gun rights, and all of that.

Here.

Is why.

There is still a four-minute gap where no one -- except George Zimmerman -- knows what really happened.  The possibility that Zimmerman tried to attack Trayvon Martin, or grabbed him, assaulted him verbally, accused him of crimes he hadn't committed, ordered him to lay down on the pavement, attempted to search his person, or even pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot him -- they consider all of these to be IMPOSSIBLE.  It is, to them, utterly not within the realm of possibility for any of those to have happened, or for Zimmerman to conveniently fail to mention them to the police.

Nope.  Won't consider it.  Can't consider it. 

The only possibility, they claim, is that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman without provocation.  He was young, black, liked rap music, and smoked weed in the last few days, right?  What other outcome could there have been?

As Te-Nahisi Coates states...

"The idea that Zimmerman got out of the car to check the street signs, was ambushed by a 17-year old kid with no violent history who told him "you're going to die tonight" strikes me as very implausible.  It strikes me as much more plausible that Martin was being followed by a strange person, that the following resulted in a confrontation, that Martin was getting the best of Zimmerman in the confrontation, and that Zimmerman then shot him.  But I didn't see the confrontation. No one else really saw the confrontation. Except George Zimmerman."

It's okay to have doubt.  It's okay to want to know the whole truth.  It's okay to want to weigh the evidence.  It's even okay to accept the verdict, with reservations, because the evidence to the contrary just isn't available, acknowledge the ambiguity, and grudgingly decide that it's better to let a potentially guilty man walk free than risk imprisoning an innocent man.  That's the system.

That's entirely proper.

But to consider this a simple case closed situation, to gloat and celebrate and feel "joy" at this turn of events -- is monstrous.

As usually is the case with these chortling morons, i ask myself, is this evil or stupidity?  Probably both.  These poor lonely wingnuts have been on a losing streak these last few years.  After two Obama wins, gay marriage, and the nearly wholesale dismantling of Bush's legacy... they want a "win."  If they can't take the Senate, then seeing a black kid get gunned down is good enough.  Take that, Obama!  As an added insult, many of the louts who cheer over Martin's grave are the same rednecks and idiots who brag about all the fistfights THEY got into when they were Trayvon's age, how they didn't take shit from anybody, and settled things with their fists.  Because, hey, it's okay to get in some scraps and brawls if you're white.  But if a black kid fights back to prove he isn't a punk, then he's a dangerous animal who deserves to be put down and then jeered at.

We get it.  You're racists.  You're terrified, old, white people.

Anything else i have to say was just said by TJ Kirk, aka The Amazing Atheist.

Tricks of the Trade

I listen to a lot of conservative radio.  Not as much as i used to, but sometimes.  In doing this, i've learned that there are three tricks that nearly every wingnut host these days uses.

1.)  The Calculated Bellow:  You know what that is.  Every segment, with few exceptions, begins at normal volume.  Then they get more intense, a bit louder and faster.... with the occasional... dramatic pause... so that the extent... of the damage the homosexuals.... are.... doing to the nation... can sink... in.  And then, there's a few words that are said LOUDER than the rest, and then they all become LOUD.  LOUD SO YOU KNOW.  HOW ANGRY AND PASSIONATE THEY ARE.  BECAUSE THEY JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.  ....then silence.   Then back to normal volume.... for a bit... until the next one.

2.) The 20/20 Hindsight:  All right-wing hosts are genius prognosticators, able to divine the future with perfect accuracy.  They do this by a steady process of predicting both outcomes at different times.  My friends, the vibrations are right, Romney is slipping in to the Presidency, he will be President on January 10th, take that to the bank.... also, Obama will win.  The Democratic corrupt machine is too powerful to overcome at this point, ACORN, minorities, moochers! 

......and as i said, my friends, Romney lost, just as i predicted.

3.) The Greased Pig:  Nearly all talk show hosts are just looking for callers to agree with them and say how brilliant and insightful they are.  When faced with any sort of dissent or chance for debate, they instantly squash it with a rapid-fire series of dodges and deflections.  It goes like this...

Caller: "....one thing i agree with them on, is that we spend way more money on the military than we ought to, and...."

Host: "Is that so?  What is the percentage of GDP that went for military spending in 2012?"

Caller: "...uh, well, i don't know the exact percentage, but the US spends more than the next..."

Host: "Oh, so you have no idea?  NONE WHATSOEVER."

Caller: "...my point is, if we were serious about the debt, we'd...."

Host: "You've already proved your ignorance!  You have no idea what you're talking about!  Tell me this, did you know, in your ignorance, that our actual defense spending is LESS than than the average rate per capita for western nations if deducted by a prime percent of inverse coalition?  And that any reductions would be proportionate to the increased terror factor?  Huh?"

Caller: "....what?  I..."

Host: "Get him out of here!  He doesn't know anything!  I'm done with you, buddy!  Next caller!"

It really is sick to listen to.  Savage.  Levin.  Ralph Bristol.  Theater for the weak-willed, the easily gulled, and the mushy-brained rubes.

Kinda entertaining.

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Visiting the Asylum

In today's dispatch from the fringe asylum.... listen, folks.  This gay marriage thing isn't about gays, and it's not about marriage.  It's about murdering friendship.  That's right.  For you see, from this point on, men can't be friends with men, and women can't be friends with women -- not ever, because if they are seen chumming around with people of the same sex, people will snicker and point and call them gay, which means that all straight people will have NO CHOICE but to stop having friends and rely on the Government for all their companionship needs.

No, really, someone said that.

That didn’t take long: Same-sex “marriage” murders friendship.

Which makes me want to ask two questions.

First off, unless you're some kind of psychological doormat with no spine, why don't you just be friends with whomever you want, and tell anyone who has a problem with it to fuck off?  That's what i've been doing my entire life and it works out pretty well.

Second.... well, it's the same question that Brad Pitt asked Kevin Spacey in the movie Se7en....

"I've been trying to figure something in my head, and maybe you can help me out, yeah? When a person is insane, as you clearly are, do you know that you're insane? Maybe you're just sitting around, reading "Guns and Ammo", masturbating in your own feces, do you just stop and go, "Wow! It is amazing how fucking crazy I really am!"? Yeah. Do you guys do that?" 

I wish i could ask that of every person who thinks that the SCOTUS ruling is some sort of psyops ploy to make them feel lonely.  It's not.

It's about freedom, and equality, and fairness, and because we love George Takei so much.

Ohhh, myyyy.

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Today is one fruity day!

Yay!

Oh, here we go again.  Gay marriage is even more of a thing now, and certain people don't like it.  You know the ones.  I'm not sure who to be more entertained by, the ones screaming about "Gamorrah," or the ones attempting to twist some pseudo-legal pretzel of justification for continued discrimination.  Mostly, it's just the same refrain that we heard when they wanted to end slavery.  Or end Jim Crow.  Or let the chicks vote.

"This isn't the way it's always been.  It's always been one way, the way GOD wants it, and you can't do it any other way.  If this stands, get ready to watch everything just fall apart!"

I look forward to hearing the same thing when i'm an old man, and the first genetically-engineered people or people with cyber-brains start being made.  

Because change is eternal, and so is resistance.

In the meantime, if anyone is down about the gays taking over, i recommend listening to some good old fashioned rock balladry, maybe some Elton John?  From "Tiny Dancer" to "Someone Saved my Life Tonight," he has many yearning, heartfelt tunes that can offer needed solace to souls in pain.

Sir Elton, he can get you through the night.

Queen also has some great torch songs.

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The Paradoxical Republican

I find it funny when conservatives propose solutions to problems, knowing full well that they'd also oppose the solution if anyone ever tried to implement it.

"Guns have nothing to do with school shootings!  Adam Lanza and James Holmes were mentally ill -- we should do nothing about guns, and focus on mental health..."

"Okay, well, we could mandate mental health screenings for all children in public schools and..."

"What?!  You want to create a wasteful trillion-dollar government evil program to enslave my child's mind?  Our souls do not belong to you!  Tyranny!  Impeach Obama!"

You know that's how it'd go.  They do it all the time.

"Syria is falling apart!  Why hasn't Obama done something to stop the senseless bloodshed?"

"Okay, the US is going to arm the rebels and..."

"What?!  They're Islamists and Muslimists and all sort of Al-Qaeda!  Not one dime!  Isolationism!"

Sigh.

Also, just this morning, i heard a right-wing talker claim that global warming has been disproven through pure hard science.  Anyone who looks at the pure, hard science will come to the conclusion that the earth is not warming -- anyone who believes otherwise is beholden to an "ideology."

....and not five minutes later, he claimed that global warming can't exist because of GOD.  Because God knew beforehand "what we would be, what we would create" and would benevolently alter the composition of the atmosphere in response.

Which is funny.  If it weren't so stupid.

The talker in question, Michael Delgiornio of Nashville, is a fairly hefty guy.  I wonder if he eats cakes and pies and bacon casseroles because he knows that God will magically counteract any cholesterol in his veins?

 Probably.  Probably.

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Moar Franklin

Here's another gem of a quote from the exalted lord Benjamin...

"The Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual & the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none can justly deprive him of: But all property of the Public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the Public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire & live among savages.—He can have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club towards the support of it"

Gosh, that guy sounds like a commie.  He's essentially saying that once you can afford your house, a horse, and enough food to feed your kids, everything else belongs to the public.

Don't get me wrong, i don't actually agree with that.  But holy hell, that's a good quote to throw at teabaggers when they claim that our Founders -- our noble, glowing, beneficient, godlike Founders -- were all libertarian Ayn Rand junkies who would shudder and weep at the thought of having corporate and capital gains taxes.

Ben Franklin, more socialist than the socialists!

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All about the Benjamin

 One thing i'm sick of hearing is that one quote by Benjamin Franklin -- you know the one, the one that every conservative is trotting out these days -- not just my buddy here.  The one that goes...

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

 Oh, snap!  Case closed.  Governments should not be monitoring calls, nor searching people at airports, nor monitoring people in any way.  Because that takes away from freedom and adds to safety, and that's wrong.  It's wrong because Ben Franklin said so!  Everything that Ben Franklin ever said is automatically law, because he was the smartest and wisest person who ever lived.

Okay.  I can live with that. 

Dismantle the NSA.

But we have to follow Franklin's other quotes as well.  If you want to make Ben Franklin the sole arbiter of right and wrong in our country, i'm cool with that, i really am.  It's just too bad that when George Bush was fluffing the American populace for war with Iraq, no one stood up and pointed out that Franklin once said the following...

All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones.

Boom!  Sorry, Bush.  No war for you.  It goes against the holy way of Franklin.  As for Christianity?
 
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

You hear that, you superstitious motherfuckers?  The Bible is a fiction; Franklin says that only science matters -- the water cycle is superior to the mythic fables of Jebus.  That's just how it is.  And let's end with...

 He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.

See that?  Accumulated wealth is bad.  Franklin says so.  That does it; we must relieve the wealthy of their ill-gotten fortunes that possess them, and distribute them for the common weal.  It is the only way, the way of Franklin.

Franklin.  His word.  Is Law.

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Universe Next Door

I don't know if Edward Snowden is a hero or a zero.  I don't know how exactly i feel about this entire NSA affair.  I don't have it in me to jump up and scream "tyranny!" or "traitor!"

It's a complicated situation.

There's only one thing i know -- in the universe next door, Americans are OUTRAGED.  The media is aghast at the latest revelations coming from the whistleblowers.  For you see, a terrorist attack happened on American soil, and it was not stopped.  Now that the wreckage is being cleared and the bloody chunks of citizens are being buried, we're finding out that that the evil-doers who perpetrated this heinous deed were in constant communication with one another, making calls for months between New York and Riyadh, New York and Chicago, Chicago and Dubai.  It was all there in Verizon's databases but no one in the US government had access to this info.  For you see, President Obama shut down the NSA divisions that would have overseen this sort of thing.  He did this with great fanfare after taking office in 2009 -- declaring an end to to Bush abuses, an NSA program started in 2002, which had already cost 2 billion dollars, was scrapped to the delight of the ACLU and civil libertarians...

...and now here we are, twelve years after 9-11, still deaf and dumb to the threats facing the homeland.  How wrong we were to trust this clueless hippie, this flower child Obama, this moonbeam chaser, who naively believes that if we act nice to the world they'll be nice to us.  Does he not understand?  Does he not understand that every life lost in this recent attack is on HIS head and no other?  Calls from the right for Obama's resignation are increasing!  FOX News begins its impeachment countdown!

Sigh.

See, the reason Americans are never happy is because we want it all.  At all times.  We want freedom and security.  We want blind patriotism and virulent dissent. We want high returns and low interest rates.  We want low taxes and more services.  We want great taste and less filling, we want the cake and want to eat it, too.  It's all part of our character, to think that life can be perfect if only we make all the correct choices.  There is one right way and we SHALL find it.  It sounds like i'm criticizing America, but just the opposite.  This drive towards perfection is what makes our country awesome.  Other nations have put up with far worse tyrannies, far worse outrages, regimes and insanities that last decades, because there's always a majority of their population that will say, "this is necessary, this is just how life is, we can't hope for more than the glorious regime of General Krull."

Proceed, America.  Shoot for the stars, baby.  We'll get to the moon at least.

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Blam Blam Blam

Good lord.  If i could wave my hand and magically make Teabaggers aware of their grotesque tunnel vision, i would.  Maybe.  Take this recent phenomenon of kids being suspended from school for bringing Nerf guns, cap guns, and squirt guns to school -- or biting a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, or talking fondly of guns.

I totally agree that this is insane, and that the zero-tolerance policies of these dickweed teachers and fuckface principals are worthy of nothing but ridicule and scorn.  They should be shamed publicly, and pelted with snowballs, old batteries, dirty diapers, and banana peels full of hobo cum. (*Spoony ref.)

I think we can all agree on that.  

The part where we disagree is when teabag loons see this as some sort of coordinated leftist uber-plot to disarm the populace, that Obama is sitting at his desk and receiving calls -- what, Timmy Gooner made a Pop-Tart gun in Peoria?  Suspend!  

Ludicrous.  Sometimes a dickweed school official is just a dickweed school official.  This is the equivalent of tracking down a few cases where white Christians assult black people, and declaring that all churches are hotbeds of Racist Crime -- secret cells of the Right-Wing Negrocide Agenda!

See how silly that sounds?

When teabags focus like this on single incidents, i want to ask them -- hey, morons, what about the entertainment industry that you supposedly loathe for being too violent?  How is the communist conspiracy to "brainwash children into hating the very idea of guns" supposed to take root when kids can play an endless array of first-person shooting games and watch tons of bullet-filled Hollywood action movies, and listen to rap music that glorifies guns?  Rata-tat-tat?

Wasn't that the previous complaint, that kids were being turned into psychopathic gun nuts through the media?  If the entertainment industry is leftist, and leftists are trying to obliterate guns, then why do they allow the entertainment to overuse guns in every art form we have?

Hell, i just watched Wreck-It Ralph, the latest movie from Disney.  DISNEY.  As you might know, it features a Halo-like heroine named Sgt. Calhoun who rarely goes anywhere without her BFG, which she uses to blast baddies at a rate that would make Clint Eastwood jealous.  And the fact that she's voiced by and patterned after Jane Lynch makes it even more delightful.  And even though she does fall in love, she never renounces the gun and its awesome ability to slaughter waves of Cy-Bugs.

But no, kids aren't going to pay attention to movies and video games and music superstars, they're going to emulate the shriveled dickbag principal who squeals at them that guns are bad.  Don't you cretins realize that when authority figures tell kids that something is bad, it makes kids want whatever it is even more?

Gosh, teabaggers, you sure sound silly now.  All that ink you've spilled over this latest vast left-wing conspiracy seems like a waste.

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Nutsack registration

As a liberal, i obviously tend to envision the future optimistically and hope for a cleaner, more technologically-advanced world with well-ordered cities and a generally Star Trek-ish air.  I'm not holding out for teleporters and holodecks, but you know what i mean. A feature of this world would be an atmosphere of sexual freedom, in which people could engage in all manner of consensual relations with partners of their choosing, free of shame -- and that birth control would be perfected to a level in which children are not born accidentally, but are created by parents who genuinely want to have them.  This would lead hopefully to a gradual leveling-off of the world population, because isn't 10 billion people at any given time enough?

Say this to a conservative, and they begin to hallucinate some nightmare Gattaca scenario of state-created clone drones, mass abortion, sterilization, nutsack registration, booby gestapos, and the CRIMINALIZATION OF LOVE AND FREEDOM, OHHH NOOOOOOOOOO!

Silly, that.

See, conservatives have a different vision of how sex fits into human life.  It goes something like this:  when your penis gets hard or your vag gets excited, it's evil and you should ignore it because you're a dirty, sinful, perverted creature abhorred by the Sky God.  You should never fuck, but if you do, it's best done surreptiously and shamefully, maybe in the back of a car or in a hay loft.  And it won't be safe sex, because sex is evil but influencing the course of the wicked fluids is even MORE evil.  So just go with it. The only happy result of all this sticky sin is that she'll eventually get pregnant, and if she's a decent woman she'll marry you and fuck only you forever.  And if she doesn't, she's a slutful whore.  So you get married in the Sky God Temple, and the priest mutters some words that erase your sin, and turn you into good citizens.  And the accidental baby that you didn't want is followed by another, which means that your irresponsible ass gets a job at the sausage factory, because you weren't going to do anything interesting with your life anyway.  And so you work, and buy things, and spend one day a week at the Temple to atone for your further sins, and pump out many more babies, because at some point we're gonna have another war and the war machine will need some young bodies to feed it.  And don't forget, we gotta outbreed the Chinese and Muslins -- if there's a billion Muslins, we need two billion Amuricans, damnit!

Ah, the most beautiful life imaginable.  That is how life must be, and how it must be forever.

How dare you queers and libs and hippies and lesbian poets and masturbating fornicators not want that. 

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Alpha Betas are okay (if you like sweat socks)

One thing i see all the time on right wing sites is this obsession with "alpha males" and "beta males."  All teabaggers see themselves as powerful alpha monkeys and all liberals and "metrosexuals" as their natural enemies (because they make friends with women and gays, i suppose -- don't trade with the enemy!)  But rather than brag about their accomplishments, or anything they've done to prove their overwhelming manliness, they just hurl insults on the same level as your typical 5th-grade bully.  When Ray Harryhausen died last week, they couldn't even hold a discussion on his FX work without someone chiming in "I liked Clash of the Titans, except that Harry Hamlin always struck me as a pussy.  He wouldn't even know what to do with (actress who played Andromeda.)"  It's just a reflex to them.

First off, i was under the impression that true alpha males were secure enough in their positions that they don't engage in such blather.  Do Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt and Richard Branson go around giggling and snarking at people?  Probably not.  The true alpha shows magnaminity, class, tribal leadership.  He is secure in his position.

...and that's if you're going by this biological model.  And that's the most ludicrous thing -- the same tards who are obsessed with alpha status are the same idiots who quote scripture and profess a belief in Christ.  They don't believe in evolution, but they apparently believe in applying primate group psychology to the human species?  While declaring the next minute that they are souls totally separate from the monkey?  And they glory in bullying and "might makes right" while simultaneously worshiping the Passive Prince of Peace?

These things do not compute.

Or, gosh, maybe they're just apes who use religion as another tool to claim their status, and naturally accept what they see as the predominant belief of their herd.  Insider status good, outsider bad. 

No wonder they have trouble with women like Hillary.  No wonder they have trouble with alpha-nerds like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, or celebrities like Johnny Depp and Tobey Maguire, whom they call pussies -- they are in alpha positions, far more powerful than they are, but don't give off the domineering macho vibe that they respond to.

UGGA GEORGE BUSH GOOD.  ME FOLLOW BUSH.  HIM CHIEF. 

Jesus Christ?  What a beta.  He was totally submissive. 

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Atlas Shrugged and then vomited on my head.

My friend  and i are pretty much in agreement. Every other movie nominated for the Oscar is better than Argo.

One movie worse than Argo is Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike. It's even worse than the first one. No, i take that back... it's a little better, a little less disjointed and soulless. I have sympathy for the people working on the movie. They're trying, they really are, to make a coherent film out of this mess and on a small budget. They're troopers. Who can hate on Larisa Oleynik? It's just a baffling experience at first because every single cast member from the first one has been replaced. Most of the new actors look radically different from their predecessors, and it was a weird challenge just to figure out who the hell everyone is supposed to be.

I could snipe forever at all the corny bits, or mention the things they got right, but that would get boring. Instead, i just want to reiterate my broad indictment of these movies that i probably mentioned last year after i saw the first one. These films fail utterly if their purpose is to spread Ayn Rand's philosophy to the masses. Since they die a quick death at the theaters and are kept alive by DVD sales, i would imagine that there are lots of dedicated Objectivist right-wingers purchasing these movies and trying to expose their family members to the "message" without having to ask them to read a gigantic novel. First The Passion, and now this?

But these movies are impossible for the uninitiated to properly enjoy, because in Ayn Rand's insane world, every normal character archetype is reversed. Normal working-class joes are greedy bums. Soft-spoken preachers are vile parasites. The spunky working girl is a clueless dupe. Politicians who want to help the poor are insidious charlatans. Old women are prattling fiends. Children are little worthless animals... the only good guys are the ruthless capitalists who only focus on work and talk to one another about how much they fucking can't stand everyone else while cheating on their wives and drinking Scotch.

Visually, emotionally, it just feels utterly wrong.

It does not translate into our pop culture language. Especially when many of the actors playing the villains are just as charismatic, or in some cases, MORE charismatic than the actors playing the heroes. One character who is supposed to be the ultimate sniveling, weak-willed, bureaucratic sycophant is played by a tall, handsome, silver-haired man who projects charm. Meanwhile, the heroic genius steel magnate is played by a gravelly-voiced actor who looks like he ought to be busting kneecaps in a gangster film. It is... just.... bizarre.
Utter confusion is guaranteed for for any wife or husband or sibling or friend forced to sit through these movies. I wish i could hear more of the conversations that take place after these awkward viewings....

"Don't you see? This movie explains everything wrong with the country today! The government totally turned its back on capitalism. Capitalists and industrial leaders were expelled, shunned, made pariahs, and kept from having any impact on government policy. Rich people were enslaved and not allowed to make money, while the unions grew out of control, and the lazy lower classes glutted themselves with needlessly high wages and benefits. That's why all innovation was stifled and why we've seen a tremendous lack of progress -- especially in the tech world. Also, physically gifted, attractive, dashing people became objects of hatred and ridicule to make way for the worship of the mundane and mediocre. At every level of society, the intelligent and beautiful have been snubbed and cast aside, leaving the weak and ugly to run the world, don't you see?"

"Except, honey, didn't the exact opposite of all that actually happen?"

"Raaargh, you need to read the book! Then you'll see!"

"Does this Ayn Rand person at least promote Christianity? And family values?"

"Uhh... no, she was an atheist who hated all religion. And she loved abortion, couldn't stand kids, really. And she didn't believe in marriage, and was a huge amphetamine addict..."

"Honey, why do you like this person again? She sounds like a..."

"BECAUSE FUCK THE LIBERALS THAT'S WHY."

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Thoughts on Boston...

When it comes to last week, there's just a few things i want to add that haven't been said a million times already.

First off, i'm really creeped out that i know so many people who, upon hearing of the Boston bombing, have the exact same response they did upon hearing of the Sandy Hook massacre.

"It's a setup. The government did it. Why? Umm... control. Government did it."

And you can talk to these people, and tell them all about Occam's Razor, and why, in the absence of any major discrepancies or compelling new evidence, it does appear that it is possible for weirdos just to snap and decide to kill people for no good reason. And more often then not, they'll just say "Yeah, but i saw this video online where this guy said, like, someone saw some other guy. There was a guy on the roof? Yeah. Government did it."

Second... there is this weird tendency people have to worry that, no matter what happens, that the terrorists "won." Specifically, they have this suspicion that no matter what happens to Djarkovich Tsardinicus, he will be sitting in his prison cell, grinning like the Joker, and reveling in what he was able to accomplish with no regrets. He'd do it all over again.

No way, man.

This goofball and his fuckface wife-beating brother clearly thought they were clever enough to get away. They reportedly wanted to go to New York and plant more bombs and eventually end up as big bad men back in Chechnya. Think of how wrong things went for him, so fast. Imagine the panic he felt when after three days of silent gloating, he saw his picture on the news. Imagine how he felt when his brother -- who apparently convinced him that what they were doing was awesome and told him all the reasons why it would totally work out -- was shredded by shrapnel from one of his own bombs, and run over by Djingleberry himself. The dude ran over his own brother. Then he had 12 hours of hellish flight in which he must have thought that there was some sliver of a chance that he might get away. But he ended up cowering in a boat, and tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the mouth, and now... he's locked in a hospital, in incredible pain, with a fucked-up face, a dead brother, his family under uncomfortable spotlights, and all his future plans turned to puddles of shit at his feet.

He probably might still want to kill himself. But they won't let him. His wrists are probably zip-tied to the bed and a nurse is wiping his ass. All he has to look forward to now is sorrow for his brother, months of interrogations at the hands of the Americans he so despises, and a lifetime in prison.  He didn't win. At all. He's trapped in a living hell right now. Whatever infamy or fame he won amongst Chechnyan terrorists will be fleeting, and of no help to him now. And yet, i'll read that he's somehow laughing at us, like the Joker, all his dreams fulfilled.

I disagree. I know very well what it's like to be a stupid young man who thinks they can get away with anything, only to find that the world is smarter and faster than you thought. It's not a good feeling. If i was a goddish sort, i would look at this situation and declare it evidence of some sort of moral law in action. Instant karma's gonna get ya.

Third thing?

Teabaggers are idiots.

All this time, they've been huddling in their nests of filth, trying to use this "new 9-11" to discredit the President, and saying asinine things like...

"Shutting down the entire city of Boston because: one lone hat-backwards teenager was ludicrous. But that exercise did prove to anyone noticing how easily modern Americans are cowed and herded at whim. This ain’t American anymore, folks. ‘Cower’ may be a bit strong a term to describe many Citizens’ compliance with Government Authoriteh after it was ‘suggested’ that they cower in their homes. A better word choice for non-recusants might be ‘complacent’, ‘acquiescent’, ‘controllable’, ‘obedient’, or my favorite, ‘docile’."

Awww. Ain't that cute? This idiot thinks that when the authorities told people to stay off the streets so they could catch the terrorist, the proper American response would be to march around having drunken redneck parades or something. While firing their guns into the air? Maybe, maybe.
Little butthurt, i think. They're a little butthurt because a blue state is successfully battling terrorism while a red state suffered a massive and tragic explosion resulting from capitalist corner-cutting. Also, gold prices collapsed this week, and they've all been buying gold because Glenn Beck and Mark Levin have been repeating for years that, if that Obama gets reelected, a wheelbarrow of paper money won't be able to buy a loaf of bread, while those with stashes of gold will be the new community pillars, you know, after the Collapse.

Butthurt.

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Always wrong

Conservatives are so used to being wrong at this point, they don't even notice anymore.  Let's review the last week, shall we?

In Boston, there was a bombing perpetrated by two lone losers.  The citizens of this blue state, Taxachusetts, responded with strength and resilience.  The criminals were apprehended quickly as a result of both watchful citizens doing their part, and a massive effort by law enforcement.  Boston is still healing, but they've handled the situation in the best way possible.

Meanwhile, in red state Texas, a fertilizer plant exploded, killing more people than the Boston bombers.  The nation goggled in horror and confusion at the fact that the plant hadn't been inspected by OSHA since the '80s, had thousands of tons of unregistered ammonium nitrate, and was too close to nursing homes, schools, and residences.  Oh, and Rick Perry had slashed the firefighting budget.  All in all, it was a huge, visible, embarrassing failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

How do the righties deal with being so wrong?

By whining, bitching, and moaning.  By making up ludicrous narratives in which two losers with pressure-cooker bombs are equivalent to 9-11, which means that Obama is just as bad as Bush for failing to stop it!   And after amping up the threat to elephantine proportions, they mock and deride the response, and blather that the Boston lockdown was evidence of the people being "cowed, coerced, scared, timid, controlled" by authorities.

Sorry, teatards, you're just jealous 'coz blue states do it better.

Oh, and as a final indignity?  Even the talk radio goons have started admitting that they were totally WRONG about the economy.  For years, they've been predicting the collapse of the currency, and urging their braindead listeners to dump stocks and buy gold.  Gold, gold!  Why, in six months, wheelbarrows of cash won't be enough to buy a loaf of Obamabread, but come the apocalypse, a single gold coin will make you the new neighborhood potentate.

....wrong.  Wrong again.  Always wrong.

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Right where we left them.

Every once in a while, i'll still flip to the conservative station, just to check in on the loonies. Over there, in their alternate reality, three things are certain.

Barack Obama stole the election. He just did, case closed.

Global warming? Disproven. Forever. Everyone knows that.

The economy is a house of cards one minute away from total meltdown, we're on the brink of a catastrophe so horrendous that it will make the collapse of 2008 look like a picnic; start stockpiling rice and ammo, people, these are the end times. That being said, if you can't find a job, you're just a pathetic loser who hates work because you're lazy and dumb.

Just making sure they're where we left them.

Over on some other site,  people have been taking me to task and demanding why i don't complain about liberals the same way as i complain about conservatives, do i not realize that all partisanship is evil? Don't you realize that we must accept all viewpoints? Don't you see that the people for gay marriage and the people against it are totally the same, in a cosmic sense? My response is this -- when conservatives go to far, we get war. When liberals go to far, we get... uhh, expensive healthcare? Too much art funding?
Also... i don't encounter any liberals these days. In Tennessee, they're not in the streets and not on the radio. The last time i remember being annoyed by a liberal was about 12 years ago in college, when i was in an english class with some curly-haired douchebag who was the most pretentious, whiny, entitled sack of crap ever. Since then, nothing.

Conservatives these days don't even know what they believe anymore. All it took was one president with a foreign name to change them all from authoritarians to anarchists. I mean, the jobs report this month was dismal, and they're gloating about it...

See! We told you Obama was going to wreck the economy! He allowed the sequester to happen, and the sudden reduction in government spending cost us jobs! Because what's hurting the economy is too much government spending! The only way to bring back jobs is by radically slashing government spending. Oh, god, the Army base over in Crocketsville just laid off 150 contractors, and now they're unemployed, all because Obama cut government spending! WHY?

I don't even know what to say.

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Screw Politics

It's all happening just as certain prognosticators said.  Conservatives have responded to Romney's loss by saying that he wasn't nearly conservative enough.  The mainstream Republicans realize this is not so, people like Christ Christie and Jeb Bush are giving these speeches where they say things like "no longer can we write off entire chunks of the populace" and "the face of the Republican Party should be the face of every American."  The hardcore right is having none of it.  Heck, they won't even invite gay Republican groups to the CPAC conference.  They are rallying around outsider figures like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, digging in and erecting ideological barriers, and talk more about civil war with their fellow Republicans than with the Democrats.  If a politician shows any tolerance of gay marriage, gun control, or immigration reform, they are branded as traitor to the Teabagger cause.  The Teabaggers are supposed to be all about taxes, but they don't even talk about taxes any more, all they talk about is guns and the unlimited access to them they desire.

2016 -- massive primary slugfest between Jeb Bush and Rand Paul, with the bruised winner going down against Hillary.

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Michael Bay

I just read that Michael Bay is making a new movie version of "Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles" and the Megan Fox is going to play April O'Neil.  I shudder, but then i think... you know what?  Good.  I'm glad that Michael Bay is keeping busy destroying properties that i liked as a kid, but really couldn't give a crap about now.  Some adults retain their affection for the Turtles or the Transformers, but thankfully i'm not one of those sad bastards. 

You know what they should let Bay ruin next?  Voltron.  Come on, that'd be epic.  MORE giant robots and explosions.  And the five young pilots would all be, you know, hip and extreme mad bustas or whatever.  The leader would be a jock with a heart of gold, naturally, and there'd be a hyperactive nerd who can hack everything with his iPad, and a craaaaaazy whack black dude who'd be loud and cowardly and stuff, and the girl pilot would be this total radical awesome slut who wants to fuck the jock, and she'd be played by Megan Fox, and then there'd be a fifth one, i don't know, wasn't there a big fat guy?  Yeah, one of the original pilots was a fat guy.  So he'd just be this fatass who tries to eat everything.  And his Voltron Lion would also be fat.  And at one point the fat Lion would sit on a bad guy and crush him with his gigantic ass.  My god... this would be the ultimate team. 

Jock.  Nerd.  Black Guy.  Slut.  Fat Guy.

Together they would form the ultimate Voltron, and they'd be fighting.  Uh.  Robot aliens.  Who cares.

KAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOOM.

$893,000,000 domestic, $1,382,000,000 worldwide gross.

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Oscar Grouches

  I don't hate the Oscars. It's too trendy to hate the Oscars. Come on, Jennifer Lawrence is adorable, what's your problem? More importantly, it's hard to hate something that radio conservatives also hate. On the way to work, i listened to a few minutes of Supertalk 99.7, and sure enough, some right-wing goon was screeching about Hollywood's "toxic fog" and "endless sewer pipe of degradation." Which, you know, is hilarious. Conservatives just have it in their minds that Hollywood releases nothing except pornographic movies about drug users who hate America and hard work...

...and i'm still just confused. Where are those movies? I want to see them. That's not what i see coming out of the movie industry. I think i ranted about this like a year ago -- some famous online wingnut released a video claiming that movies about American heroes "no longer exist" on the same weekend when Captain America was number one at the box office and selling twice as many tickets as expected. But here we are again. Okay, let's just look at the critically-lauded movies of the year....

Argo: A movie about how awesome Americans save other awesome Americans from the swarthy Iranian hordes.

Lincoln: I haven't seen it, but i imagine it's rather patriotic.

Life of Pi: Supposedly, it's about the greatness of God? It does have brown people in it, so that's a bit suspect to conservatives.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Also contains a lot of brown people and is partly about Hurricane Katrina, but is essentially apolitical. All the conflict in the movie comes from Hushpuppy's disturbed father, who is a poor black alcoholic who needs to get a job.

Zero Dark Thirty: A movie about how we totally killed Osama bin Laden, America, fuck yeah?  No, wait, tht happened under Obama, so the killing of Osama is no longer patriotic; it's just awful.

Django Unchained: Seriously, why are conservatives against this movie? It's a western. They love westerns. They love movies where lone bad-asses shoot everybody. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson.... Django. What's the problem here? Is it because of slaves?

Silver Linings Playbook: I have no idea what this is about, it must be the one about the naked hippies on drugs who hate America.

And what about our recent blockbusters?

The Dark Knight Rises: Western millionaire defeats scary foreign terrorist and cures a fallen woman of her wanton ways.

The Avengers: A bunch of white superheroes, including Captain America, defeat a foreign army led by a villain who is, you know, a bit lavender, really.

The Hunger Games: Scrappy girl from rural coal town battles against the decadent, perverted city people.

Skyfall: The ultimate traditional male races to save his stern boss from an evil latino homosexual terrorist.

The Hobbit: A white middle-class guy goes off to find riches.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn II: Okay, they're vampires, but they waited until they were married to have sex.

...does anyone else see this?

Even though Hollywood is full of gays and swarming with liberals like Ben Affleck and George Clooney, the products coming from Hollywood are still fairly conservative in nature. So why the disconnect? Did these conservatives see Natural Born Killers back in 1994 and haven't been the same since? Meh. I guess it's just more of that good old American either/or thinking. Either the movie industry is a bastion of wholesomeness that dishes out nothing but Christian pablum, or it's the polar opposite. Gray areas don't exist in the conservative mind.

 Honestly, i'm not a fan of conservatives and how they think. Did you know that.

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