"In a strictly medical definition"

 Because i have no original thoughts of my own today.

"I think it's important to remember that American life in particular is institutionally predisposed to make people unhealthy. We have few walkable/bikeable living choices, absolute crap for food regulation services, subsidized prices but only for crap food, and a culture that rewards manipulative marketing behavior. The food market doesn't care if it kills you, and the USG doesn't either. Good luck out there.

Now we get to the more important part: the lack of time. If you don't make much money, you have to stay at work for 60+ hours a week to make it. If you make a little bit of money, your boss will make you stay for 60+ hours a week. Then subtract the worlds longest and worst commutes from your day. I didn't get healthy until I moved to a country where 40 hours was a full work week, and working outside of that time is viewed with suspicion and disgust, but the same can probably be achieved with a change of jobs. And who has those kinds of options open to them? I was lucky.


I think many of us living fully western lives are miserable because we are barely valued in our places in the machine. All we have time to do is work, commute, eat, sleep, and die, with nothing but entertainment from a small backlit rectangle to see us through. These financial connections to other people are not nearly as satisfying as regular camaraderie and meatspace interaction, for me at least, but our financial connections are the only connections that are valued. Your job is your life, the source of your financial stability, and probably your health insurance. But in the end we're still just keeping up with what we see on television, and accepting bland 22 minute narratives as a drop-in replacement for living. You can work really hard, miss your kids growing up and dinners with your partner, and your only upgrade is the kind of car you drive, or the cut of your suit.
So of course almost everyone is miserable, no matter what they look like or how much money they have compared to others. Many of us are only alive in a strictly medical definition."

- Tripping Daisy, Metafilter.

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Parasailin'.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attempted on Monday to explain her alternative proposal for Obamacare on the "Today Show...."

"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health-care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases, and those plans have been proposed over and over again," Palin said.  "And what thwarts those plans? It's the far left," she said "It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care."

...

......wow.

...nice.

Peanut gallery?   What say you?

"She has absolutely no idea what the words mean that come out of her mouth. They are opulent iridescent pearls, as beautiful as they are inscrutable. She is as baffled by her bullsh*t as you are. What she does know is whatever it is she is doing is a gold mine with diminishing returns." - Lockers.

"Romney is GooglePolBot 2.0. Palin was 1.0. All of her thought processes end up being run through each language in Google Translate before they're converted into speech. Google admits they still have a long road ahead of them before their robots are ready for public office but believe the speech pattern advancements alone are a good indicator of how much they've progressed in four years. They also have asked the public's help in capturing one of the beta models that escaped the labs and accidentally became governor of Texas." -EngineerAU

"Why do people keep giving this creature air time? She's obviously as dim as five feet up a pig's ass, and yet no one ever seems to call her out for her bullshiat. The only people who seem to make any attempt to hold her accountable for the idiotic things that spill out of her are the Daily Show and Colbert Report writing staff. Sure, she's good for plenty of laughs, but every time they play a clip of her talking, my brain starts to melt." - Wenchmaster

"Okay, let's cut to the chase:  is she retarded or on drugs?  It has to be either/or." -- Guntram Shatterhand

"When I hear Sarah Palin, I hear America.  I hear the sweet cries of an eagle above the purple waves of grain.  I hear the song of freedom that reminds me of a country where the people are free to be freedom, the flag is revered, and mobility scooters can hoveround." -- Uncomfortable Silence

Yes.

Yes.

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I am Souperman

I still haven't seen Man of Steel yet -- except for a few minutes of it on a friend's cel phone -- but i'm already disappointed that the sequel will apparently feature both Superman AND Batman... and did someone say Wonder Woman as well?

Lame.

I really am anti-crossover.  Crossovers are useless.  I don't want Batman to meet Superman, i don't want the Predator to fight Aliens, i don't want Harry Potter to team up with Robocop.  Has a crossover ever been anything but forgettable and gimmicky?  It reminds me of the type of random scenarios that we'd come up while drawing at our desks in 4th grade -- hey, Scottie, what if the Mario Brothers met the Ninja Turtles, who'd win in a fight?  Shredder would totally beat Bowser!  That sort of thinking should vanish when you become an adult and learn how not to be stupid.

I just don't like the idea that Bats and Supes live on the same earth.  It doesn't fit.  If Superman existed, the people of Gotham would be talking about him all the time, because he'd be the biggest news story in the world.  Batman's crusades against local gangsters would be bumped to page six because the headline of the Gotham Times would be something like RUSSIANS DEMAND TALKS WITH SUPERMAN or NASA HOPES SUPERMAN WILL HELP DETECT NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS or maybe just NO ONE HAS SEEN SUPERMAN IN WEEKS, WHERE IS THE MAN OF STEEL?

Superman is too overwhelming and he blocks out everything else like the freakin' sun.  Bruce Wayne's whole life quest only makes sense in a world where there are no costumed heroes, where he's one man engaged in some impossible ongoing struggle against corruption and violence.  When he puts on his suit in Batman Begins, it's something that no one has ever done before.  If Superman was flying around out there, Alfred would just cock his head to the side and ask "who do you think you are, Master Bruce?  Superman with ears?"

It's all just... messy and pointless.  Look, it's entirely possible that at some point, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis could have sat down, and said, "hey, what if we write a book where Frodo and Gandalf travel to Narnia, meet the Pevensie kids, and have some kind of adventure where they stop, i dunno, some random villain?  The wouldn't get along at first, of course, but then they'd overcome their differences and come together for the common good..."

That would be horrible.

Wouldn't it?

But don't get me wrong, it's not that i'm going to automatically hate the next Superman movie just because Batman is in it, and that he's going to be an Affleck Batman at that.  Might be fun?  The tragedy is that this goofy-ass movie is going to take the place of something much cooler -- a superior sequel where Lex Luthor is finally made into a real, convincing villain, and engages Superman in a battle of wits for the soul of humanity using his incredible intellect -- a Superman film that has the same power as, say, The Dark Knight.

Whatever Superman/Batman is, it won't be that.

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You want the Thing you Claim to Fear

Really, you do.

One argument i see Teabaggers make all the time is this -- "look, all our apparent madness is totally justified because we see, quite clearly, the incredible and imminent doom that the DEBT will bring to America.  And that only OUR solutions to the debt problem will work."

It's that simple, they're the farsighted Cassandras wailing in the square.  They're just like a person who sees a leak in the levee, or a forest fire spreading and heading to the town -- they are FORCED into action and have to warn the rest of us.  And that's why they sound like doomsayers who "root for ruin" and cheer on any sign of government shutdown or debt default.

But the massive economic realities that face us are not simple.

Here's a more apt analogy -- they're like the people screaming about the end of the world before Y2K.  Way back in 1999, people were saying many things about the dreaded Millennium Bug.  If you were a rational person who liked technology and the modern world in general, then your response was probably something like "this sounds serious,  i don't want it to happen, we'd better fix it, let's get to work."  But if you were a nutter who didn't like the way things were and secretly yearned for some sort of apocalyptic collapse because you thought it would allow some new, pure, redneck society to spring forth from the ruin, then you sounded like the Teabaggers do today.  "It's too late!  Collapse is inevitable!  You liberals and city-dwellers will get what's coming to you, while us real blue-collar Christian men will become the new natural aristocracy.  Bill Gates will be a pauper, begging for a place in the new order from Big Jim the Drygoods King!"

They thought that was going to happen because they wanted it to happen.

It's the same thing with religious fanatics.  They demand that everyone live according to their holy book, because the alternative is fire and damnation.  "Look, i don't want anyone to go to Hell and burn forever in endless agony, but that's what's gonna happen if you don't listen to me."

See the common thread?  Fundamentalists, Y2K alarmists, doomsday preppers, teabaggers... they all see doom on the horizon because it justifies their own personal worldviews.   Do what we say or the Universe will punish you.  It's not a coincidence that these people all sort of overlap on the Right in a churning, eddying ocean of fear and hatred.

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It's not easy being Green. Or Tea.

You know, to be entirely serious, i do feel bad for the Teabaggers whenever they issue one of their "clarion calls" or "calls to arms."  Things aren't going well for them, and they're stuck in the classic splinter-party conundrum.  They want to abandon the GOP and go third party, except they know that this will forever shunt them off to the third-party ghetto where they'll never win another election.  Third parties don't even get invited to debates -- that's messed up.  They'd rather stay inside the GOP and take it over -- but are stymied by the larger number of centrists and moderates who resist the glorious purification.  Hell, any Republican who can do simple math knows that they'd be in control of the Senate right now, if not for the likes of Christine O'Donnell and Todd Akin.  So what do they do now?  I mean, how long are they going to have to wait to see real change?  They've been at this for, what, at least three years now?

Sadly, they may have a bit longer to go.  Look, guys, have you ever heard of the Green Party, or Ralph Nader?  People on my side have been disillusioned and dissatisfied for ages.  Back when you teadrinkers were happily lining up at the trough and voting for Bush, we were screaming that neither of the two parties represented OUR interests.  We wished that the Democratic Party was a true liberal party that would take drastic action against corporate malfeasance, make bold moves to improve the environment, decrease the size and the scope of the military, allow full rights to gays, and hey -- decriminalize drugs!  Any moral person can see that the Drug War is senseless and evil!

See?  We've barely scratched the surface on those issues.  A Green Party activist who's been plugging away for 25 years can look back and say, well, at least we have gay marriage?  Legal weed in two states?

The struggle goes on.

So teabaggers, be patient and keep at it.  You've got a long road ahead.  Things might look better in a few decades if you don't lose hope.  For now, you're going to have to accept that Chris Christie or Jeb Bush is going to be your nominee in 2016, rather than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz. 

Also, we must accept the loss of Christine O'Donnell.  Gosh, she was cute.

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Methods in the Mouth of the Mountain of Madness

Most of my friends and acquaintances look at the teabaggers and the actions of individuals like Ted Cruz, and ask "are these people insane?"

And i tell them -- perhaps.  Perhaps they are.  But there is a method to their madness.  You have to delve into their thinking and see the big picture that exists inside their mental minds!  It goes something like this...

We hate America as it is.  We desire a new America.  We long for a massive structural collapse or other catastrophe to completely snap the spine of the nation.  If such an event happens, Washington DC will simply go away.  The President and Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will all get on planes and fly away to France and the states will be left to fend for themselves.  The Red States, being full of fertile farmland and virtuous people, will thrive.  The Blue States, which have no natural resources and are populated by moochers and leeches whose only occupation is to "move money around" and fiddle with weird technology that no one really needs, will become impoverished hellholes.  And any smartypants losers from those states who escape the hordes of looting blacks and rioting Mexicans will have to beg our forgiveness before we allow them to enter our Red Utopias.  Ha, ha, not so smart now, are you, city man?  Who's your daddy!

Am i exaggerating?  Hardly.  They sit around their little blogs and daydream of exactly this, and they say things like...

"My secessionist energies are devoted to a free Cascadia. From San Fran to British Columbia on the Western side. More than enough food and resources. Ports for trade, travel and fish, and the natural protections afforded by mountain ranges. Politically, farther left than blue could ever hope to be – bioregionalism at its finest.  I’m getting to this late – but why would redtopia not sell food to bluistan? Pre-schism trade relationships would likely still exist, and trade is probably a better deal than economic/social isolationism."

"When the alternative is to sell to people who have nothing but demands, and those funny green pieces of paper, I think they would sell to anyone who actually has the money. The blue areas won’t have that money, because they will have no wealth to back it up.  Wealth is not those little green pieces of paper, that’s just money, useful for trade, but not backed by anything but the promises of a government that is about to collapse. Wealth is arable land. Wealth is energy. Wealth is potable water. Those blue areas are notoriously short on all three.  You keep thinking that US currency will be worth anything by that time. I imagine the Weimar Republic thought the same thing."

No matter how many times i read such slop, i never stop being amazed at it.

 Glossing over the ridiculous simplicity of reducing states to geographic stereotypes, let's imagine the other more plausible scenarions that would occur before this daydream could materialize.

-- If the US does indeed suffer an economic collapse on some unprecedented scale, we'd see some sort of default/bailout in the international arena.  While i'm no American Exceptionalist, i do recognize that there are nations -- China, for one -- who can't afford to see the US reduced to a bucolic farming community.  The US would limp on, worse than before, but it would remain intact.

-- If ever did get past some point of no return, Washington DC and the central power structure would not "go away," and more than Moscow did after the fall of the USSR.  If the presidency and the Constitution became null and void, they would almost undoubtedly be replaced by some sort of regime that would exercise even MORE dreaded Federal authority than the government we have now.  The impulse to hold the nerve center together at the cost of extraneous limbs is hard to overcome.  We would not have pure freedom, we'd have true tyranny for the first time.

-- There would be no hand-to-hand Civil War that the gun nuts and NRA boosters dream of.  Government agents would not go house-to-house to try to seize your ramen and your bullets.  No, we'd have more of a situation where the General in Charge of the Interior would demand that the North Dakotan oil would continue to flow as it should, else suffer some light bombing runs.  Just because the Constitution trumpets the virtues of a "well-armed militia," this doesn't mean that hunting rifles and shotguns will ever be the deciding factor in any intranational conflict.

Honestly, is this not the same sort of logic that made the Confederacy to believe they'd win in the first Civil War?  They're hitting all the same notes -- we're better people, we have farms and stuff, factories and railroads won't make a difference, and God is on our side anyway. 

Is that really at the heart of this all?  Do they want to fight the Civil War all over again so they can triumph this time?

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It's Teatime

Well, that was a fun senseless debacle.  

Sometimes, in the midst of these political jujitsu grapples, it's easy to lose sight of the essential issues.  To the people on the right, the issue is Teh Debt.  Everything, they claim, is insignificant compared to the one defining priority -- reducing the national debt by any means necessary.  That's why Obama (or any Dem president) is by definition, unnacceptably evil -- because any president, inheriting the recessions and the wars of the previous president -- would be presiding over a country where the debt is increasing.

That brings me to my bullet points.  This is why Teabaggers are WRONG.

1.) To imagine that any president could have assumed the office in 2009 and immediately slashed the Federal Debt is insane.  It couldn't have happened without crippling the country.  Stop dreaming that this was somehow a plausible idea.

2.) The only way to decrease the Debt is steadily, over time, through a combintion of increased revenue, cuts to entitlement programs, the elimination of waste, and a reduction in the defense budget.  Democrats have compromised on entitlements, but Republicans have refused to do the same when it comes to taxes and defense.  They demand not ONE penny in higher taxes, and not ONE penny cut from the Pentagon -- because the Republicans take their orders from billionaires who don't like paying taxes, and defense companies like Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, etc.  Let me just state this again -- the Republican Party works for billionaires, and ONLY billionaires.  Ever since the Reagan era, they've been pursuing a long-term strategy of using deficits as an excuse to eliminate programs they don't like.  The government is in debt?  How awful!  Sure, we could raise the capital gains tax or eliminate some defense programs, but why even think of doing that when you could eliminate the EPA, gut the IRS, and kill the departments of education and energy?

The Republican Party uses crisis as an excuse to pursue things only found on the Billionaire's Wish List.  And thanks to talk radio, they've very successfully fooled millions of blue-collar people into supporting their aims.  Seriously, as we speak, there are rednecks in poor rural areas who feel very strongly that the EPA needs to die, not because they've EVER dealt with the EPA, but because they've absorbed their masters' propaganda.  It... is... sickening.

3.) Of course, the Republican party is now two parties, and the supposedly-insurgent Teabaggers are just as bad in these respects as the old guard conservative elites.  They think they're different, but when it comes to compromise, they both take the same hard line -- all the money we need to save must come from social spending, and not one penny from the Pentagon or the Koch Brothers' capital gains.  The old elites used to demand tax cuts and deregualation under the guise of "it's better for the economy, and you'd better give us what we want unless you want everyone to suffer."  The new teabagger elites now demand tax cuts because they've listened to too much Mark Levin, fetishize the Revolutionary era, and pursue some fever dream of "doing what the Founders intended."  Because the Founders were infallible beings of pure light and goodness, i suppose.

This supposed civil war in the GOP amuses me, because both sides are equally as vile.  It's a bit like watching radical Sunnis and radical Shiites kill one another because they both want to be the only genuine crazy cult in town.

4.)  Nobody believes that you know anything about prudent tax policy when you act like the teabaggers do.  When you dress up in tricorne hats, adorn yourselves with Lipton bags, carry racist signs, and are obsessed with sideshow issues -- Obama's a muslim, abortion, FEMA deathcamps, UN oppression, fluoride in the water... you don't look or sound serious.  You look like a bunch of loons.  

That's pretty much it.

Accept some higher taxes on the rich.  Accept some cuts to defense.  Stop making youselves look stupid.  We can totally deal.

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Tiger Balm

I'm feeling a bit flu-ish today, so here are some wise words from someone else.

"It happened slowly, didn’t it? The change in the Republican Party? I don’t know. Maybe it’s nostalgia. There have always been the wild, vicious voices of the right. The devil on the shoulder of the conservative movement that whispers in its ear, “burn it down, burn it down.” But those voices were to be ignored, humored, tolerated, placated, or just deceived. That was the way of things, and we were protected by the obvious: people who believe foolish things tend to be easy to fool.

Then it all changed. The Republican elite caught a ride on the tiger. But the tiger got sick of waiting for the gazelles it was promised, the gazelles that were always one election away. The tiger was hungry and angry and tired of being used and the longer it waited the more appetizing the elite on its back became. So the tiger got a radio station and a news channel. The tiger got organized and mobilized. And finally the tiger realized it didn’t need someone kicking its sides telling it which way to run and who to eat and when to eat and why it wasn’t time to eat and the time to eat would come, don’t worry, you’ll eat soon enough.

So the tiger ate its master and now here we are.

America needs a strong, rational, positive, practical conservative movement. It needs that bulwark against liberal delusion and hubris. It needs a voice that says we are imperfect, that life is complex, that government can create need even as it meets need, that you can’t fix everything and freedom is worth some danger and sorrow. And there are smart, honest conservatives at the ready to be that voice, to help govern practically and sincerely with that voice, but they are drowned out by the guttural scream of craven utopians raging against reality.

This moment in American political life is insane. That a group of narrow-minded zealots could push us to the brink of economic ruin, that they maintain a base of support in their frenzied, quixotic, incompetent gambit, that there is an apparatus that exists to defend this kind of nonsense—it came on us slowly but it is no less an emergency. This is broken. This cannot go on."   -- Jon Lovett.

I.... agree.  Is all i can say.

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Brang down dem Burricades!

So damn, the shit continues to get more and more real.  Yesterday, this group of Real Americans took to the streets and tore down some dividers... er, foot traffic partitions... no, i mean some BARRICADES in order to protest the government shutdown that they originally clamored for.

...wait, really?  When they heard that the big bad Federal Gubmint was going to close down, they imagined that the parts they liked would be personally exempt?  Christ, what a bunch of babies.  Pull your diapers up, guys.

Look, i ain't mad at these guys.  I like civil disobedience and mischief so long as no one gets hurt.  So more power to you, redneck swarm, you stir that shit up.  The people i have a problem with are all the conservative bloggers who are cumming themselves stupid over these photos, and screeching about people power and takin' it to da streets, and fucking BARRICADES.... 

(Les Miserables, this ain't.  The Friends of the ABC, they are not.)

...because, come on, if the people in that photo were any group apart from old white rednecks, if they were young, or black, or gay, or female, or had long hair -- the same bloggers would be calling for them to be pepper-sprayed, beaten, and arrested.

You know this.

But seriously, just revel in the insanity here.  They want the government to go away, and they they throw tantrums when it does.

Babies.

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Bubble realities

If you've ever seen Donnie Darko or certain episodes of Star Trek, then you know that bubble realities exist.  Every once in a while, the Universe Prime spits out a temporary, false reality that exists for a short amount of time, allowing characters to experience some delicious bit of unreality, before collapsing back into the spacetime manifold.

This, i think, happens to Teabaggers on a pretty frequent basis.  Take last week, when the following imaginary scenario bubbled up from the ether before collapsing under the weight of reality.

-- Someone suggests that truckers might, should, will stage a massive protest by blockading the DC beltway in their rigs.  The entire city of Washington will grind to a halt.

-- A leaked "secret" journal at Redstate.com proves that Obama will deploy the National Guard to disperse the rolling patriots, in the name of national security.

-- Things will turn ugly, shots will be fired, it will rage out of control.

-- Teabaggers everywhere are aghast at this shocking abuse of authority, and take to the interwebs to blather "in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way!"

-- Impeachment proceeding begin!  And hundreds of thousands of yokels descend on the White House to demand the ouster of the wicked king.

....then, none of that actually happens.  But the poor baggers are left almost believing that it did.  It... might have happened?  It could have happened, if it had happened it would have happened just as the internet buffoons imagined.

I mean, can you believe that Obama sat in the White House, snickering and masturbating while patriotic Real Americans were pulled from their cabs and shot in the back of the head?  I know, i was shocked.  Too bad it didn't happen.  That would have been just, well, shocking.

Bubble realities.

Wait!

We have word of a new bubble reality forming in the Northeast.... it looks like a technical glitch has caused EBT cards to stop functioning for a time.  Our yokel sources claim that this is a "test run" for the "big one," an upcoming Obama-caused disaster in which all food stamp cards are revoked, causing millions of young hungry black males and other minority urban youths to flee the cities, and overrun suburbia in order to rape and pillage the well-stocked pantries and virtuous white wives of the Real Americans.

Buy some more guns, people, shit is about to get real.

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

in terms of “level of agitation and unrest”, I see no way this motherfucking Marxist and his politoboro can survive another three years. No way. - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51485#comments

The State of Things and Crap

Gosh, darn.

Well, i just got back from my momentous vacation -- i saw my best friend again, and we spent a day strolling around downtown DC, which was pretty darned cool even if i couldn't go inside any of the buildings...

...now, it's back to business as normal.  Let's see, Obama is still rightfully holding the line against the Republicans, who apparently believe that naked extortion should be a legitimate political tool from now on.  I would ask any conservatives reading this to simply stop, breathe, and imagine that the players were reversed -- imagine, if the Republicans controlled the Senate and Mitt Romney was president after thrashing Barack Obama by a margin of 5 million votes -- but the Democrat-controlled House said "we want a national gun registry and for most guns to be totally illegal, and until you give us what we want, the government stays closed, and we might even force a catastrophic debt default because 'surrendering' at this point is not an option."

How would you feel?

Sure, Republicans, you trounced them in the last election, but you have to negotiate with them and outlaw virtually all guns.  Police must begin seizing every rifle and shotgun in the hands of the citizens, or there's no deal.

Look, be reasonable, the Democrats control the House, so obviously they get everything they want, and you just have to accept that.

Look me in the fucking eye and tell me that you'd be just fine with that.  And you wouldn't call them traitors, or unreasonable, you'd just shrug and say, gosh, i suppose Romney should cave before it's too late.

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RFM

It sucks to have a racist family member, especially if it's someone you care about.  But sometimes the back-and-forth is hilarious... but depressing.

Me: "There's a new hot white girl at my job.  There are a lot of hot girls there, but not many hot white girls.  She's kinda country, but really hot."

Racist Family Member: "If there's no hot white girls there, there are no hot girls there."

Me:  "What, a girl has to be white in order to be hot?"

Racist Family Member: "Yes."

Me: "So nonwhite girls can never be hot, according to you."

Racist Family Member: "Correct."

Me: "No way.  That Muslim girl i used to work with was mad hot."

Racist Family Member: "It doesn't matter how they look.  Even if they're hot, you know that underneath it all, all they're thinking is "kill Whitey."

Me: "You realize that the only reason why you think everyone else is racist, is because you're racist and you're projecting it on everyone else?"

Racist Family Member: "Everyone is racist."

Me:  "That hot Muslim girl wasn't racist.  She loved white guys.  All she ever talked about was how much she loved Channing Tatum."

Racist Family Member: "That doesn't matter."

There's just no reaching some people.  It's sad.  It's sad.

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Rush is right?

Sometimes, conservatives do speak the truth.  The issue is how they say it.  It's not the steak, it's the sizzle, you know?  Remember when Rush Limbaugh said that feminism was invented to give ugly women access to the workplace?  Let me find the exact quote...

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."  -- Rush Limbaugh

Sure, it's any decent person's natural instinct to be repulsed by this boorish drivel and declare it untrue, but then, you think... hey, i've never watched Mad Men, but yeah, wasn't there supposedly a time in America when women were valued most for attractiveness, because their best chance for success in life was to woo and marry a successful man?  And if they couldn't, they had to work, and in the fields open to women, such as secretarial work, the men hiring them would base their decisions on whom they'd like to ogle and maybe pressure into illicit sex?  And that skilled women, older women, women who were good workers, were at a disadvantage against young babes with perky boobs?

Hmm.

Well, that sounds like a kinda fucked-up world.  Maybe that is why feminism was invented, and it sounds like a good thing, if you have any decency or sense of justice and aren't a complete and total sack of shit.  Why does that bloated drug addict say it like its a bad thing?

^__^

I mean, they do that with a lot of things.  When listening to conservative radio, they paint the following horrific scenario...

....in a few short decades, unless things change, America will be filled by people who are mostly tan.  All the races will interbreed and the white gene pool will be diluted by all those sexy latino and asian and african genes.  You won't even be able to tell if that dreadlocked young person handing your your morning ultraccino is a blackanese Hawaiin, or a Chinese-Mexican-Samoan,  or a Soledad O'Brien, or a Vin Diesel, or maybe even a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.  Instead of five races we'll have a million.  Race might even become meaningless.  Even worse,  traditional religion will no longer control people's lives.  It will no longer be the norm to marry the first person who comes along and stick it out forever.  Homosexuals will no longer be discriminated against, and there will be bisexuals and all manner of lesbians, and sex will be rampant and free.  A lesbian might be president, even, in this new world that isn't like the one we know.

Ummmm.

Hmmm.

Hey, that's probably true.  Why do they keep saying it like it's bad?

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Mass Shootings are Bad

I don't suppose i'm alone in wishing the best to the families of the victims of yesterday's senseless attack.  And wondering why the hell people snap like that.  And a tiny amount of satisfaction that the diseased scumbag who perpetrated the act is stone cold dead.

That all goes without saying.

But please, can we get over this ludicrous argument over whether acts like these are "terrorism" or not?  It's more of a sematic quibble than anything.  Because if you want to get technical, it's only terrorism if the person carrying out the act part of an organization or movement with a specific political goal in mind that the violence is supposed to advance. 

If it's just another case of someone who is mentally disturbed (Jared Loughner) or a loser (Adam Lanza) going nuts because they can't stand life and want to take out as many people as they can, then it's not terrorism.  It's just insane, pointless violence.  Teenaged violence, workplace violence. 

And then, sure there are gray areas like the case of Nidal Hassan.  If an incompetent, sadsack loner like Hassan is influenced by islamist websites or the speeches of religious fanatics, if he self-identifies with a cultural movement like jihadism, but isn't receiving orders from anyone, and his actions are purely to satisfy his own sick desires -- and have no clear political goal that can be achieved -- is it terrorism?  Is it any different than a twisted child like Lanza being influenced by movies or video games?

Me, i don't give a crap.  In any case, i doubt that our media classifications will have any effect on the actions of law enforcement.  They will always seek out any possible conspirators, whether they are motivated by ideology, mental illness, terminal butthurt, or some combination of all three.

Get over it, people.

Also, no one gives a crap whether this murderous loon self-identified as a Buddhist or not.  What, do you want to start bombing Buddhist countries or something?

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This is Syri-ous.

As i write this, i am listening to Michael Savage bellow and sneer at the hypocrisy of THE LIBRULS.  Every liberal, every person who ever voted for Obama, is and has always been a lifelong opponent of war in any form; a hippie, a peacenik, a flower child... and now they are utter hypocrites for thinking it's okay for the US to intervene in Syria.  How unlike those hardy conservatives, whose beliefs are set in stone and never change!

In certain cases, i'm sure he's correct.  There are plenty of people out there who support Obama now, but would have opposed Bush doing the same.  Hypocrites exist.  It sucks but it's true.

(Wait, what about the old slight that Democrats like Kerry and Hillary voted to go into Iraq, and thus are equally culpable for that failure?  Does that mean they're just as patriotic as Republicans, or just as stupid?  I've lost track...)

Of course, Savage would never hold the mirror up to his own audience and berate them for now saying the EXACT same things that anti-war liberals did in 2003.  I mean, it's amazing, it's like they're digging up old Code Pink speeches, hitting CTRL-F, and replacing "Iraq" with "Syria." 

• America doesn't have the moral authority to intervene in other countries' struggles.
•  We should save that money and spend it here at home.
• The Middle East is a complex web of allies and enemies, and any action we take will have massive unintended consequences. 
• The idea of a single quick strike is naive; we will end up in a quagmire with boots on the ground.
• Tyrants are bad, but the chaos left after their ouster is usually worse.

....it's the same.  They say the exact same things that we were saying ten years ago.  I wish they'd at least acknowledge that.  I wish they'd say, look, it was after 9-11.  It was after 9-11 and there was a Christian President, and god help me, i ain't that smart.  George Bush said that blowing up the middle East would magically spread democracy, and i believed him because i thought Jesus would wave his magic wand and make it so.  Heck, if Bush had told me that we should start raping cats and eating dogshit to keep the turrists from winning, i'd have done that, too.  It was after 9-11.  We were confused.

All snark aside, i think this is a positive development.  It proves that, yes, conservatives can change.  The Conservative ideology is not set in stone.  For fifty years, the puppetmasters of the Republican Party have effectively brainwashed their working-class grunts into accepting a bundled package of beliefs and stances that don't necessarily have to go together. 

Christian?  Then you want taxes cut for the rich.

Like guns?  Then you hate unions.

Don't like abortion?  Then you think the EPA should be dissolved.

Bundles.  If you've ever dealt with a cable company, then you know that in order to get the one thing you actually want, you have to buy a lot of crap that you don't.  That's how we end up with dirt-poor rednecks driving their sputtering pick-ups to a shift at the sausage factory and nodding in agreement when Rush Limbaugh tells them that the capital gains tax must be lowered, and the payroll tax raised. 

You know what i'd like to see?  You know what might be a positive sea change in the following decades?  If the conservative base changed its tune on labor issues.  It can happen, it probably will happen.  Look, if Obama stood up and gave a sonorous speech about how every worker in America deserves certain things, they'd jeer and scream about socialism...

...but if a good old boy gave the same speech?  If they heard those ideas repeated by others?  Then they'd be on board.  Hell yeah, hoss, this is fucking AMERICA.  I'm a fucking MAN and i have a fucking RIGHT to be able to support my family if i work hard.  I fucking DESERVE at least $12.50/hour minimum wage, ten sick days and one week of vacation per year, and a minimum level of preventative medical care.  This is fucking America!  You gonna listen to all these librul elitists who think you should work two jobs and live in a shack like a fucking Mexican and go bankrupt over a single health crisis because them billionaires want to pay less taxes?  Fuck that!  That ain't America!!!
Tell me that's impossible.

If they can go from being fiercely pro-war and interventionist to being anti-war and isolationist in one decade, then anything can happen. 

If Michael Savage is still filling the airwaves with his hilarious filth in ten years, he'll probably be screaming that he was always in favor of Obama... er, i mean Boehnercare, and god damn you if you say otherwise.

Wait, didn't this start off being about Syria?

Syria.

I don't think we should intervene in Syria.  Supposedly, the last time intervention worked was in Kosovo, and i'm too young to really remember that.  When that shit was going down in the '90s, i was busy watching cartoons, listening to Metallica, and discovering masturbation.  Kosovo, ain't nobody got time for that.

If it does happen, i hope the people doing it know what they're doing.  

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Ahead of the Curve

You can go to a lot of teablogs these days, the dens of the true blue conservatives, and read the equivalent of the following...

George W. Bush was a disaster, an honest but clueless dimwit who foolishly overspent and got us involved in two overseas wars that we had no business being in.

Bob Dole was a doddering old establishment hack.

John McCain is a mentally unbalanced, trigger-happy loon who should have retired years ago because he has no idea what is going on and is just embarrassing himself.  A soulless sellout and a shellshocked tragedy of a man.

Mitt Romney was a pompous, overstuffed fraud, a spoiled goofball, and a perfumed, manicured weakling who had no business ever running for President.  The worst candidate in modern memory.

.....and i agree.

Republicans, we are more alike than you think.  We both hate the people you put up for President, it's just that we realize how full of shit they are BEFORE they can win.  You figure it out two years later.

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Permanent Daylight

Sigh.  War?  No war?  What the fuck?

An atmosphere of permanent war.  It's just another sign of the pervasisve, low-level insanity that is basically infecting every level of our society.  When i really think of how things are now, it's hard not to be angry and disgusted all of the time.  Almost everything is tragically flawed in some crucial way.

College costs.  If you want to become a doctor, an engineer, or anything else that is useful to society, you have to pay an insane amount of money.  I have no problem with poetry and philosophy degrees remaining luxury items, but useful professions?  Why do we make it so hard to get through the gate?  What if  you wanted to join the military, but had to pay $60,000 to do so?  We would call that madness, would we not?

Shitty food.  If you want to remain healthy, you have to avoid 90% of the food that is shoved at you.  I've been eating way healthier lately, which means that most of what i shove down my face hole comes from the produce section or the other outside areas of a grocery store, where you can still find the unprocessed foods that are actually meant to be eaten.  And you have to shun all the convenient shit that is pushed from fast-food joints and vending machines, turn down all the sugary crap that appears at parties and other people's houses.  If you just take what society gives you, you're basically poisoning yourself.

Cigarettes.  Alchohol.  Prescription drugs.  It's all poison.

Half of our citizens are working jobs where they break their backs and are on their feet all day.  The other half sit down all day until their bodies atrophy.  Either way, you're a cog doing a job.  Humans serve the machine.  The machine doesn't serve the humans.

I work nights, so i avoid the traffic.  But every morning, i see the highway going into the city clogged with thousands upon thousands of cars going 5 miles an hour.  We built cars to get places faster, right?

Television.  A brilliant device invented by brilliant people, a technology designed to transmit information... is now mostly used to beam images of the stupidest, most grotesque, most backwards, vile, and selfish idiots at us.  It's like using nanotechnology to produce fake vomit and dog shit.

Bah.

I'm just sleepy, addled, and discontent right now.   Everything looks iffy.  Ignore me.

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Scum of the Earf

So everyone already knows that three soulless, scum-sucking sacks of shit shot an Australian student named Christopher Lane to death for no reason. 

These kids should rot forever.  The fucking dolts.

But yeah, i also kind of want to bitch about the conservative reaction.  All week, they've been asking stupid questions like "why isn't this huge story i heard about in the news being talked about in the news?" and "how come this isn't as big as the Trayvon Martin case?"

Well, i'll tell you. 

Because once the police caught up to these murdering fucks, they didn't detain them for a few hours, and then release them scot-free because they were, you know, standing their ground against an aggressive foreigner who was running right at them, or something.

If that had happened, then it would probably be pretty big.

RAAH LIBRULS WANT TO MAKE THESE KIDS HEROS COZ TEHYRE BALCK AND THEY THINK IT ALWAYS IS GOOD TO KILL WHITEMEN BECUAZE THEY FEEL OPPRESSED FOR BEING POOR AN DUMB WITH NO JOBS AND GOT TROPHIEZ EVERY DAY FOR NOTHING JESSE JACKSON AL SHARPTON SELFESTEEM BENGHAZI IRS COVERUP

Yes.  Yes, it is.

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Egypt

You know, i have no idea.  I have no idea what can and should be done about the situation in Egypt, if anything can be done at all.  It's horrible that people are dying over there, even if it's the "bad" ones.  As i type this, i'm listening to Michael Savage bray that whatever is going on, "it's Obama's fault."  What monstrous idiocy.  But a million people are nodding in agreement, because Americans just don't seem capable of comprehending these things anymore.

Can we rewind?  Look back at the last few years through the mindset of the typical clueless American?

Prior to 2011, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone on the street who even knew who Hosni Mubarak was.  Or Anwar Sadat for that matter.  Americans didn't know who controlled Egypt, and were happy not knowing....

...but then, when the Arab Spring protests ignited in Cairo, Americans said, huh?  He's a lifelong dictator?  Well, i don't like those, i guess.  Yeah, get rid of him in the name of democracy.  Yeah, revolution!  Isn't that what we're rooting for here, the overthrow of middle eastern dick-taters?

Then a few of the realpolitik-minded conservatives pointed out that Mubarak might have been a strongman, but he was still our guy.  Our strongman.  So then people started getting nervous, because it looked like the Islamic Muslimists were going to take over, maybe. 

So then freedom happened, and elections happened, and for a while there we stopped caring. 

Then we learned that Morsi the Muslim Brotherhood candidate won the election.  Jeez, where was Obama during all of this?  Why didn't he help Mubarack stay in power?  Why didn't America bomb and gas and rain bullets down on those crowds demanding freedom and elections?  Way to drop the ball, Obama!

So them Morsi the Muslimist was in control.  And we didn't like that. 

And then he was deposed by his military.  We sort of assumed it would take Egypt about 20 years to overthrow their new Muslim regime, instead they did it rather quickly.  TOO quickly if you ask me!  Why do things go so fast now?  So now... the faceless military -- whom i'm not sure i should be rooting for or not -- is now shooting and gassing the people we didn't want in control of the country.  And that sucks, right?  I don't know.  Americans don't know.  Whatever it is, Obama's to blame.  Can't we just fix everything somehow?  Can't we just bomb the bad people and pick the one right guy over there to make everything better?

Maybe we can't. 

Maybe we need to learn what America can and cannot do. 

You know, it's funny.  For decades, we've lived under the assumption that America can do anything overseas, but nothing at home.  That all we need to do is send enough jets and troops to other countries, and we can fix any problem... while inside our own borders, trying to ensure medical care for all, or feeding the homeless, or building high-speed trains, or preserving middle-class jobs -- these are impossible, Herculean tasks that no government could ever possible achieve.

I won't lie, i wish we had the opposite mindset.  Let's believe that we can do anything here, but not out there.  Focus on our own shit. 

Right?

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The Great Big Maybe in the Sky

By the way, i'm a pure agnostic, in case you were wondering.

I have no idea what lies beyond life; continued existence or the nightmare of oblivion?  Either possibility seems equally unlikely and equally ludicrous; the fact that anything manages to exist at all is still counterintuitive to me.  As for what it is, and what we really are, i have no clue.

It's like...

...it's like having a big box sitting in the middle of your living room.  This box has a countdown clock that slowly ticks down from about sixty years, and occasionally gives a random BEEP that means it might open at any time.  Inside the box is either everything you ever wanted, or a bomb that will destroy you. 

You get so used to the box that you sometimes forget it's there.  But every so often (like when i had a near-miss on the highway today,) you remember that this box is going to pop open someday.  That much is certain.  And either it will be the best thing ever, or the end of everything.

The conclusion that i always come to is.... whatever actually exists, just focus on being an awesome motherfucker. 

You might be an awesome motherfucker made of random, soulless atoms that exists for no purpose, utterly void of meaning.

Or you might be an awesome motherfucker of an eternal soul, existing forever in an infinite pantheon of glory.

Either way, no matter what happens, you're still an awesome motherfucker giving the finger to the whole universe.  It's the one thing they can't take away from you.

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