I Hate Trolls

After reading this, I have no respect for fucking trolls.

This certainly seems to be true for the anonymous trolls today. After Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old Long Island girl, committed suicide earlier this year, trolls descended on her online tribute page to post pictures of nooses, references to hangings and other hateful comments. A better-known example involves Nicole Catsouras, an 18-year-old who died in a car crash in California in 2006. Photographs of her badly disfigured body were posted on the Internet, where anonymous trolls set up fake tribute pages and in some cases e-mailed the photos to her parents with subject lines like “Hey, Daddy, I’m still alive.”

I have been a victim of this kind of brainless crap. You know who you are, you tried to post my personal information a few months ago and have continued to try to post shit. I want to have an intelligent conversation with you, but I don't think that is possible. I think I will no longer accept anonymous posts because of that. Haters will hate and I know I am the good guy here.

Football Needs to "Legalize" Fighting

After watching this video and watching the antics of Cortland Finnegan, I believe that fighting in the NFL should be as legal as it is in the NHL. Of course like in hockey, there will be rules to make it safer and a minimal penalty, but nothing like the massive fines players expect to get now. This will also make it less likely the rest of the team will get involved. But I don't expect this to happen any time soon. There is also a racial aspect to the whole thing and I have to bring it up. The NHL is like 99% white and the NFL is like 70%+ black (guesstimates) and there's a subconscious mentality to punish black players more than white players. It's the same thing when it comes to the law, blacks get treated worse than whites.

But having "legal" fighting in the NFL would make it better, that and allowing coaches to challenge penalties and allowing more endzone celebrations.

Call Him Anything, But Don't Call Him Shirley

RIP Leslie Nielsen!

Obama Administration Drops the Ball

I guess we were duped about this new era of transparency that Obama would have brought.

The Obama administration has told whistleblower WikiLeaks that its expected imminent release of classified State Department cables will put "countless" lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize U.S. relations with its allies.

Bla bla bla. Weren't we told this shit during the Bush Administration about anti-war protesting and how it would destroy the morale of the troops and bla bla bla. Censoring Wikileaks won't help win two unwinnable wars. If anything, Julian Assange is an American hero who should be praised for his courageous efforts in exposing the truth. The dude should be given a medal, but probably won't because we live in an era where heroes are turned into villains and villains into heroes (EG: Ronald Reagan). Let's all just hope Julian Assange wins in the end.

Early Morning Quote of the Day

"White liberal guilt ended slavery."-Albert Cirrus

Idiot of the Week

North Korea (I don't need to link to any story, you know what they did.)

It was a tough choice of either Brad Childress for getting fired or North Korea for almost starting World War 3. And like all wars, it would have been started over something stupid like shelling a small fucking island nobody has ever heard of.

Let's all just hope for peace.

Quote of the Day

"No dictatorship has ever been for the 'greater good.' If it was, it wouldn't be a dictatorship."-Albert Cirrus

This is also true in reverse and that democracy is inherently for the greater good. This is why liberalism which benefits the greater good always leans towards democracy and freedom and conservatism which benefits a few elites leans towards dictatorship and authoritarianism.

Quote of the Day

"An attack on one science is an attack on all sciences."-Albert Cirrus

Shorter Michelle Malkintented

Jerome L Murray doesn't need stupid government help to, um get 75 patents on his inventions.

Irony fail.

Quote of the Day

"A hungry man is not a free man."-Adlai Stevenson

Every pseudo-libertarian needs to read this quote because their obsession with government spending ignores the good things government does like helping feed the poor through food stamps and welfare. These people are not free if they are hungry. A true libertarian is a liberal.

Squirrelboy is Going to Jail

Tom Delay is going to jail, maybe.

He faces between five and 99 years in prison, although the judge may choose probation.

But the dude should have gone to jail along time ago and the trial has been too long. Justice "Delayed" is justice denied. And probation is like a slap on the wrist, but we can hope Delay goes to jail.

''This is an abuse of power,'' he said. ''It's a miscarriage of justice. I still maintain my innocence. The criminalisation of politics undermines our very system.''

Boo freakin' hoo you crook. Try giving that same sympathy to drug users and minorities wrongfully on death row.

But we can now hope this is only the start. Every Republican politician belongs in jail for one reason or another, it's time to start the trials.

Corporate America Sucks

It's stories like this that reaffirm my belief that rich people and CEOs are lazy and ethically challenged.

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

Of course they will now say that since they made a profit, they will invest that money into jobs and crap. This leads me to saying this, WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE DONE THAT EARLIER!?!?!

If you use your profits to hire more people, why not do it earlier and hire people periodically instead of hiring a bunch of people at once to claim you are making jobs while then quietly firing the same people later in order to make another profit. Plus they don't use all the profits to give back to the workers, the CEOs and wallstreet gamblers just get richer. Do you know why they do this? They do it to fuck with us! Corporations as a whole suck and those who run them are sadistic and don't care about the economy as a whole. People are suffering and the only answer to the problem is a government answer. Sadly, with business-friendly Republicans plus a cowardly president, the problem will get worse before it gets better.

Quote of the Day

"Why do bad things happen to good people? Because good things happen to bad people."-Albert Cirrus

New Name for the Teabaggers

Ges"tea"po.

I like it!

Monday Hicks

JFK Assassination

47 years later, the mystery remains unresolved. Rest in peace John F Kennedy.

Quote of the Day

"Super rich people claim to be resourceful, creative, and hard working. If that was true, they would use their resourcefulness, creativity, and hard work to find new ways to not be super rich."-Albert Cirrus

Idiot of the Week

Roger Ailes

They (NPR) are, of course, Nazis.

I have an old joke that Hitler would have called the Jews Nazis if he had the chance to. I've compared conservatives to Nazis before, but only because a comparison exists. Ailes or last week Beck using the Soros/Nazi comparison is basically a violation of the Godwin Law and it is basically projection. Car Talk is not Nazi propaganda, but Fox News programming comes close.

Irony Over TSA Objections

I really don't think you will find many people supporting the new invasive body scanners at the airports, but I can't help notice the irony of some opponents.

TSA: Touching sensitive areas

Yes, that Michelle Malkintented, one of the Islamophobic leaders who for nine years ranted about terrorists under our beds. Hey Michelle, it's people like you that created the atmosphere for the TSA to do this, it's YOUR fault! Oh, but in reply I will get the excuse of "only Arabs should be scanned and not beautiful white people." You know, there are white terrorists, duh. But yes the TSA scanners go too far and it's time to stop giving into the fear mongering that lead to them...by people like Michelle Malkintented.

Idiot of the Week

Glenn "Chalk Full of Nuts" Beck

The conservative pundit described Soros this week as a "Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."

He was 14 and trying to survive being murdered, dumbass. Of course these traumatic events have shaped Soros into a better person and philanthropist. That's why Soros today is undeniably a world hero. I'm hoping we can turn this smearing of Soros into something good and this will officially turn Soros into "off limits" for criticism by any conservative, but I won't hold my breath.

Quote of the Day

"There are two moral imperatives of every good person, the first is to make the world a better place and the second is to stop those who will stand in your way in your attempt at doing that."-Albert Cirrus

Jim Davis Apologizes for the Funniest Cartoon He's Made in Years

Two things I hate: people who don't apologize for doing wrong and people who apologize for doing nothing wrong.

Cartoonist Jim Davis apologized Thursday for a Garfield strip that some veterans may have found offensive.

The strip ran on Veterans Day in newspapers across the country. It shows a spider daring the pudgy orange cat to squash it. The spider tells Garfield that if he is killed, "they will hold an annual day of remembrance in my honor."

The final panel shows a spider-teacher asking its students if they know why spiders celebrate "National Stupid Day."

Funny. I'm wondering if there is some sort of buffer zone where someone can make a cartoon and not offend anyone. I mean, if the cartoon came out on Easter, there would be people who would be like "you can't say that about Jesus!"

Balancing the Budget

Excellent column on how to balance the budget by my dawg Ted Rall. I guess we don't need those cuts to social programs after all.

New Stuff

I will be posting some inspirational quotes in the page on the right labeled "I Want My Rockstars Dead!"

I also linked to a local blog and I hope to get some (smart) commenters to comment here.

Armistice Day

Just like World War One ended 92 years ago, let's hope for an end to the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's time for the peace movement to reclaim November 11th as an anti-war special day.

Is Bush the New Reagan?

Reading this makes me want to puke:

"Miss me yet?" ask the ubiquitous billboards and T-shirts featuring George W. Bush's cheerful countenance. It seems maybe the answer is yes.

The World Series crowd cheered as the retired but reinvigorated Bush threw the first pitch of the fourth game. This week come the tour and the TV appearances connected with Bush's newly published account of his big decisions in life, from giving up booze to invading Iraq. Next week at Southern Methodist University, it's ground breaking time for the Bush Center. Not a bad comeback for a president whom his successor keeps deriding as the source of America's present problems.

Emphasis mine. So how does showing up to a baseball game and writing a book about your presidency make you "bounce back" from being rightfully accused of destroying the economy? I don't get it, really. And I have not seen one t-shirt with that phrase on it and I think there was only one billboard with Bush on it. I wouldn't call that "ubiquitous." Maybe the sentence should have been written this way and it would have made almost as much sense:

"Am I full of shit?" asks the ubiquitous billboards and T-shirts featuring Bill Murchison's cheerful countenance. It seems maybe the answer is yes.

Bill goes on to compare Bush to Truman, but what I am sensing is that the right wants to turn Bush into the next Reagan. I have been predicting this for years. They want to turn that giggling murdering asshole into another conservative icon. That's why it's imperative that we never stop trashing Bush and his legacy. If you think about it, the Reagan administration was just about as corrupt as the Bush administration with war crimes and economic irresponsibility. Reagan was slightly more articulate than Bush, but still said stupid shit. They both fostered in an era of right-wing propaganda and it's no surprise that Bush is going to be turned into a "hero" the same way Reagan was. We must stop that or else we will see Bush or Reagan's head on Mount Rushmore.

Idiot of the Week

George W Bush

Prompted by the discoveries, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding on Mohammed.

'Damn right,' (Bush) said."

Damn right you belong in prison for being a tortuous fuck!

I Find This Funny

I understand they are trying to make a point, but it just comes off strange saying "free minds and free markets are not free." This is especially true since the orwellianly titled "Reason Magazine" does not promote free minds. The pseudo-libertarian worldview is actually quite authoritarian and is essentially brainwashing. The concept of "free markets" is imaginary also. "Free markets" is an invented meme to make people think that government has nothing to do with the markets and is a way to continue to push deregulation towards a more fascist state.

What's Your Point Vox?

From everyone's favorite racist, bigot, idiot, homophobe, Islamophobe, atheist-hater, Moon landing denier, etc Vox Day comes this:

It is interesting how many Americans, particularly white Americans, absolutely refuse to understand that immigrants do not want America to remain America. Mexican immigrants want America to be an improved version of Mexico. Turkish immigrants want it to be an improved version of Turkey. Even the descendants of involuntary immigrants want America to become an improved version of an imaginary Africa. None of them will get exactly what they want, of course, but the significant fact is that they will transform it by the mere fact of their presence and so whatever it eventually becomes, it will not be what it was before. It will not be America or even recognizably American.

So what's your point dude? America was founded as a melting pot, not just for white European cultures. So there is nothing wrong with them creating an improved version of their country here. There is no such thing as a "recognizable American." I also like and by "like" I mean "hate" how he calls slaves "involuntary immigrants." At least he didn't reduce them to a triangular trade system.

Keith Needs to Resign in Protest

I remember when Michael Moore was promoting is movie about Capitalism on Countdown last year, he was talking about the day when the corporate bosses would silence people like him and Keith. It seems like that day has come. And don't give me this shit about "Keith violated company policy with his political contributions", I know this has nothing to do with it and I wasn't born yesterday. This has to do with some head officials at GE and NBC saying, "Okay, it's time to rough up Keith, he is getting a little too powerful. Let's suspend him for a while and see if that chills his free speech." The fact that they have the balls to suspend the top talent on MSNBC shows me that they don't care about the temporary loss of Countdown viewership when the potential result of rebellion against corporations as a whole might be greater if Keith gets his way, even if Keith hasn't targeted GE by name. But the thing about corporations and their CEOs is that they watch out for each other, remember that so Keith might as well be bashing GE in the eyes of the GE CEOs.

MSNBC has also gotten a lot of flack for being "too liberal" lately and this is also partially an attempt to reverse that criticism. Guess what, who cares? If they are liberal, they tell the truth more, period. But Keith's situation has shown that speech on MSNBC is no longer protected. I don't really watch or care about Chris and Ed, but I like Rachel Maddow and they will be coming for her too some day. So maybe Keith Olbermann and anybody else with a conscience needs to quit MSNBC and maybe start their own show on a different and independent network. We have seen what has happened to the hosts on Air America Radio, when you try to work within the rules of your corporate oppressors, you will get fucked and the only way to succeed is to sometimes break free. Keith should take this opportunity to tell MSNBC to shove it.

Unintended Consequences

I wrote a few days ago about how a giant has been awaken. One of the unintended consequences of the Republicans winning Tuesday is that they did something liberals couldn't do by themselves, oust conservative Democrats. I have not been too upset about the major losses by the Democrats, it has given us an opportunity to start over in the House. Democrats still have a slim lead in the Senate and the Presidency, so Republicans will have a tough time trying to reverse anything major.

The conservative Blue Dog Caucus has been cut in half and its leaders out of office. I'd be surprised if there are any Democrats that will miss uninspiring politicians like Gene Taylor, Lincoln Davis, Walt Minnick, Chris Carney, Jim Marshall, Chet Edwards, and a few others? Of course despite losing Hall, Grayson, and Hare, the Progressive Caucus has remained in tact and looks to yield more power in the minority. A lot of anti-Choice Democrats lost as well and the Democratic Party will become more dedicated to preserving a woman's right to choose as a result. Looking back at all the loses Democrats took, I think it's fair to say that they didn't really have a majority to begin with, so the losses weren't that devastating. So the consequence of a Republican victory is a more liberal Democratic Party.

Wednesday Hicks

Bill Hicks doing what Democrats should do, verbally beat the levitating shit out of these Republicans.

The Anti-Teabagger Movement

I hate teabaggers and I'm not referring to the sexual act. I hate everything they stand for (and I'm not talking about what they pretend to stand for.) To me the teabaggers are just a bunch of neo-fascist "larpers" who think they are somehow defenders of the Constitution, they are not. They like to pretend they are "tea partiers", but they are not. I refuse to call them that out of respect for the original Boston Tea Party of 1773. Very few people know what that was about.

The East India Company was putting local tea companies out of business, they were the Walmart of that day. The British dropped the tax on imported tea to help the East India Company make more profits. A few patriots and small business owners had none of that and dumped the tea into the water. They were protesting a tax cut and not a tax increase. The original Tea Party was more comparative to the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle against free trade than any right-wing anti-tax revolt. The Tea Party if anything was a liberal idea, but the right has stolen the Tea Party and bastardized it the same way racists on the Mexican border stole the name "Minutemen."

Teabaggers don't like being called teabaggers because of the sexual reference, but they started it. When the teabaggers had their first "protest" on April 15th 2009, they used their own teabag references. They hung them from their hats, threatened to "teabag the White House", and someone bought a million teabags to fill a truck (I remember Jon Stewart's joke that they were protesting government waste by wasting money buying teabags.) Their finger prints were all over the teabags and liberals soon found a name to give to them. But teabaggers hated that name and bitch every time we use it. I just hope we continue to bravely call them teabaggers until the day their stupid fascist movement evaporates.

One of the major lies teabaggers like to say is that their movement is grassroots. Bullcrap. The movement has always had an astroturf quality to it. Major players like the Koch family and Dick Armey have been behind it the entire time pulling the strings. The dude who sort of started the whole thing was Rick Santelli, who was on the floor of a Chicago Board of Trade surrounded by business elites ranting about Obama helping poor and middle class people people. Of course the media is complicit with the teabaggers as well. Santelli worked for CNBC and the entire Fox News cabal has basically whored for the teabagger movement. Glenn Beck is the most guilty. Of course not all the teabaggers are taking orders from elites, at least directly, but they support policies that will continue to empower the rich and the large corporations.

Why do I use the term "Fascist?" I use it because the teabaggers remind me of the beginning of the fascist/Nazi movement. They used selected violence against the IRS, census workers, union members, etc. Let's not forget the chaotic town halls that they were ordered to disrupt last August of Democratic politicians. The next step would be something like the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 when the Nazis tried to take control of Germany. The Nazis were ultra racist and bigoted and we see that with the teabaggers. They support the fascist Arizona "Papers Please" law. They use similar language against "government handouts" racists in the Republican Party have used for years. And of course, they have doubled down on Islamophobia with the opposition to the Cordoba House and the anti-Keith Ellison statement made last week by one of the head teabaggers. Like I mentioned, the teabaggers are very pro-corporate, Mussolini said that fascism is also known as corporatism. So the teabaggers should be known as fascist corporatists. There are many other examples of how they are fascist, but I won't get into that. What separates the American fascists from the German/Italian ones is the economy. Yes the American economy sucks, but the German economy that allowed Hitler to rise to power was 10 times worse. But if the economy keeps getting worse, Americans will continue to look to the right to find some strong leaders like Sarah Palin to label some scapegoats for our problems. The teabaggers are also not libertarian because of their fascistic qualities. Even Ron and Rand Paul are fake libertarians and should be exposed for it.

Yes I know, the teabaggers sound scary. The teabagger endorsed Republicans candidates will win a few seats, but not enough for a takeover. But they will smell blood in the water and come back for more. Here are a few points to stop them.

1. Don't take teabaggers seriously. Once Democrats start taking them seriously, they will win. We need to continue to call them "teabaggers" no matter how much they protest. We need to mock them and have fun doing it.

2. Liberals need a counter revolution of our own, an anti-teabagger movement if you will. There is already the Coffee Party Movement, but it's still small and hasn't made as much noise as the teabaggers. If we exploit the Coffee Party, we can finally get some attention to address liberal issues, ie real issues. We need to first start a movement to reverse the Citizens United decision that gives more power to "corporate personhood" when it comes to campaign donations. We've already seen more commercials by shady corporate astroturf organizations. We can stop this with a Constitutional amendment, but that will take time. We need to do more to address global warming and renewable energy, probably the greatest threat we face as a planet. We need to find ways to give unions more electoral power, Democrats didn't even pass the EFCA like they promised. I think it's time to reverse the Taft-Hartley Act. We need to push Democrats to stop passing half measures. The stimulus bill wasn't big enough, it should have been at least 3 trillion dollars mostly going to jobs involving infrastructure. The healthcare reform should have included a public option which would lead to single-payer healthcare and bankrupt the ethically challenged healthcare companies that caused this mess. Democrats should have also nationalized all the "too big to fail" banks and other financial institutions that caused this mess. Instead Democrats continued to go with the Bush bailouts that have just kicked the problem down the road. There are many other issues liberals and Democrats need to embrace like pot legalization, gay marriage, and fair trade. Liberals need to jump start this and start a counter revolution of our own to combat the teabaggers who will just support nothing good or support ideas that will harm us more.

3. Stay optimistic. We need to remember that in the end, we will win. Teabaggers might win the battle, but lose the war. One thing liberals need to remember is that we are the good guys and the conservatives and teabaggers are the bad guys. Every good idea ever has been a liberal idea that has led to progress. Liberals are on the side of the Constitution and the founding fathers and America is a liberal nation. Most Americans are liberal even if they don't say they are. Democrats will lose seats in 2010 because we weren't liberal enough and our base didn't show up to the polls. Remember that, liberalism will win every time if given the right chance to. The teabaggers might think they have us beat, but they will just wake a giant!