Is there any point to another election?

I read the blogs, of course. I'm not going to cite anyone, because that would tend to assign blessing or blame where none is due. I will only say that this rant has been provoked by my dear blogfriend and contrary inspiration, Echidne. I will not reveal what particular post, because that would suggest that her pebble implies approval with the direction of this avalanche, and I see no good reason to assume that.

But I will state that Echidne seems to be one of the few, left or right, that seems to give a crap about the fate of those on "the other side," a virtue that I am finding it difficult to claim, even as the "right " shoots at me as if I were wearing a Leftists' red cap.

Well, it IS called a Liberty Cap.

Still, even from the more aloof and not entirely unbalanced perspective I generally try to maintain, it's almost impossible to notice the radical hatred on the "right" and the nearly delusional wishful thinking on the "left." To the extent there IS anything on the "left" of course. From MY perspective, Hillary Clinton is a moderate Republican, and the fact that she's an Ovarian American is one of the few things in her favor.

Liberals love to think she's as liberal as they are, feminists would like to think that her gyno-Americanism would override her wardrobe of scarlet ambition - but I tend to think that of all the candidates, it's probably John Edwards who wears the skirt in the family.

And I'm not saying that as an insult. There is a yin and a yang, and from my perspective, Hillary's yang hangs to her knees, and anyone who's yang is shorter, or who's yin is wider is probably more welcome in polite company.

But "Polite Comany" and "world leader" don't usually go hand in hand, so don't think I'm saying this as a put down. I respect Hill enourmously. I'm just not sure she deserves (in either the usual or the ironic sense) to be President.

A big, long, knobby Yang ain't a bad thing for a US President - unless you are betting on her to act according to your particular preconceptions of gender-based solidarity. And I personally think it would be better in some larger and less immediate sense if she were assured enough in her own gender to not try to counter-program her own femininity.

On the other hand, I bet you would get your ears most righteously pinned back should you even imply she "owes the movement" anything much more than a polite nod and a handshake. Hell, I'd probably do it on her behalf.

But still and all, there is a mess that needs cleaning up, and women are mentally better at sorting messes into useful piles. That's a vast generalization of course, but ask any woman and she'll tell you. Hell, just observe the distintions between men and women in the wild - and then try to act on the assumption that these distintcions are mere social artifiacts.

No, wait. I've got a better example. TRY do things the opposite gender is famous for doing effortlessly in the same way they do it. You may be able to get the job done just as well - but you won't be able to do it just as well if you try to do it the same way. There are some things no amount of enlightenment and social awareness can transcend. And that is why I'm concerned, not about what game she plays, or to what end, so much, but if she is allowing herself a home-gender advantage, when the world situation is positively screaming for it.

I AM impressed by how she handled Bill's messes without undermining the good Bill is capable of, OR doing anything to enable him in his folly beyond that expected of a proper partner and spouse. That speaks to me of a sharp focus on the relative importance of various things. But I am as yet unconvinced.

I should also mention that of the very great female leaders in history, all of them seemed to come to power at times of great social change, where the masculine approach of sudden violent action would be about as smart as lighting a match in a powder shack.

For that very reason alone, I am predisposed to a woman president. Not because they are "just as good" as any male; but because women and men are non-interchangeable. We have different inherent advantages and deficits, and those of us who unabashedly exploit the former while ruthlessly compensating for the latter are worthy of anyone's vote. And I do think B and H do compensate well for each other's lacks. Politically. I'm just not sure if they see a larger advantage than their own careers.

So if she is elected, I do hope she can rise to the example of Elizabeth the First and transcend the example of Cleopatra. But, well-endowed as she is, I'm not sure it's Motherwit she's endowed with. Still, Bill does have some of that.

Personally I think power is what makes HER nipples hard and I think that's how she should be judged - how well she will use the very thing she wants in the worst way** and how much we should charge her for the pleasure.

As opposed to, well, the other way around, how much we will be charged for the pleasure of her leadership.

This, by the way, is an arrogance and folly that seems endemic of all the "first tier" candidates and the pundits that shill for them; that we should somehow take pride in our support of one or another, rather than the fact that they should be personally thanking each and every one of us willing to part with five minutes or a spare dollar to help them along the way.

I'm Not Leftist at all (I keep protesting) but in some respects, Hillary is still to the right of me. Not because she wants to be, I think, but because she and her husband have made political expediency into an art form. In other words, she's just as Liberal as any Canadian Liberal. She says what she has to to get elected, then she will do what she needs to do to stay in power.

But what I do know is that she shares something in common with all of those on the other side of the asile - the idea that there ought to be people in charge, that without the Rule of Authority, Chaos Will Ensue, and that she is qualified to rule.

The last point is for all of us to determine, but I observe that the first two assumptions are fallacious - but very convenient to those born with access to power and the ambition to secure more of it.

If this were Canada, with Canada's particular ways of applying pressure to the powerful, I'd vote for Miz Clinton in a heartbeat, believing as I do of her as I do, because in Canada, there is the understanding that you elect a politician that would like to be honest* - and then help them keep their promises. She's every bit the man - and woman - that Jean Chretien ever was. And she probably has a better command of both French and English.

Honestly, I don't much care for her personally - but the history of US politics shows that likable people are either too squeamish for the job - Jimmy Carter - or are simply panderers to those they want to be liked by, like Regan and Bush. I'd rather have a president I was personally disappointed by, but respected for their sheer brilliance. Nixon and Bill Clinton come to mind for very different reasons.

I don't need a leader, personally - but this country and the great bulk of the population does, so it's a critical issue, that quality of "leadership."

Both panderers and idealists are lousy leaders. I will state up front that Hillary is obviously neither; but she IS is a third thing - the sign of a leader that many will follow to hell, and that might well lead us there just to prove she's got the power to do so.

Furthermore, my gut says that Hillary won't do the right thing if it gets in the way of the politically expedient thing, which means no radical departure from the last fifty years of stupid. I say that even as I remind myself that "politics is the art of the possible." I believe that Hillary is enamored of power itself, and will do whatever it takes to keep it.

Again, if this were Canada.. but it is not, and those that most need a good leader and a champion, those who most deserve a light on a narrow path toward a brighter future are, I think, likely to be disappointed.

I simply cannot forget, nor easily forgive the fact that both Bill and Hillary were quite upbeat about "welfare reform" here in the US - possibly the single most mean-spirited piece of social legislation short of the Enclosure Acts that brought many of our forebears to North America. At the very best, they held their noses as it passed, and took some credit for it to gain points with the wealthy and powerful.

For myself, I have a more workaday perspective on such folks.

"The Gangs of New York" documents what they found, coming here in search of a better life. The full scope of the tragedy is encompassed in the observation that they actually DID find a better life, one well worth engaging in gang warfare to defend - even as Boss Tweed, who reminds me rather a lot of both of a slightly imprudent Bill Clinton and a somewhat better and more intelligent George Bush callously remarked that "you can always hire half of the poor to kill the other half."

Think on that, as the repugnant wing of the Republican party tries to squeeze more out of the poor to enrich (and please) the sort of rich person that thinks their wealth is degraded somehow by the lack of sufficient abject, humiliating, exploitable poverty.

I don't call myself a Progressive - but both Shit and Progress Happens. I happen to believe that the essential difference between shit and progress is pretty much where it gets dumped, and to who's advantage.

My belief in progress begins and ends at the sincere belief that no person and no institution that wishes to survive should try and stand in it's way. Both social conservatives and so-called progressives tend to do this. One wishes to stop it, the other to "guide it." I think the first to be suicidally futile, the other hilariously futile, with the preditive and practical value of a Hal Linsay novel.

Yeah, I know, he doesn't think they are fiction. And he shares that touching conceit with those who Envision A Better Future For Humanity - a future most often envisioned without any broad or significant human contact.

I prefer to watch the splendor of the great leaderless parade from a safe vantage, knowing that altering the path of progress is like playing traffic cop in a cattle stampede.

My obvious cynicism is not because I do not care about individuals. I care about little else; I see both church and state as barely tolerable institutions that exist only for the aid and comfort they give to individuals, and only to the degree they serve individuals humbly and impartially. I see these institutions as being powerful only to the extent that people see no choice in giving power to them. I, personally, see that donation of power as a great mistake, even though I admit that pretending otherwise would have shown me greater personal profit.

My goodness, even in the last decade, had it been within me to hold my nose and speak as Coulter or Limbaugh have - and honestly, I could do better, were I unburdened by conscience or the perception of the individual consequences of people taking me seriously - I could have become rather well-off. Certainly well-off enough to relocate to a country where the poor are agreeably and institutionally oppressed for the benefit of the sort of people I would have become and likely to stay that way long enough to die smugly of old age.

But I do not see it as "better" that one be a hammer than a nail. Given that dichotomy, I prefer to be the light fixture in the workshop. This light shows me clearly that those who think only in terms of hammers and nails are utterly screwed.

I do not champion any particular ideology. I've tried out various ideologies, and all of them, to one degree or another, tend to justify the need to break eggs in order to make a omelets for whatever group or segment of the population they most value.

I value the individual - but not as an expendable resource. That is why I'm a Libertarian. I'm an individualist first, last and always, and it's as good a label as any for those who need labels, though I could be just as accurately called a disciple of the Eight Immortals.

At base, I do think that every individual is connected with every other, and that John Donne was correct in saying "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I just don't happen to think that being connected to all gives me the right to pro-actively act in "their own interest," when really it's my comfort and security that I seek to defend.

Consider the ever-so-pious liberal attempts to ban smoking.

At the root of it, it's disrespectful of the needs and desires of individuals, which are considered far less important than the mild preferences of any group of like-bleating sheep. Side-stream smoke, at least when banished to separate rooms or outdoors is far less of a threat than, say, automotive exaust.

But that sort of Liberal is very dependant upon their Limosines - where they will likely light up in private, even as their conservative counterparts indulge themselves in the joys of non reciprocal oral sex.

With Illegal immagrant male minors of African descent.

Yes, I do prefer the hypocrisies of liberals, being a white citizen of legal age. But they are hypocracies, nonetheless, and I DO smoke.

Moreover, I enjoy it.

Anyhoo; I harbor no illusions that all individuals are equal, much less equivalent, much less interchangeable. Indeed, it's the very most dear topic of the bloggers who's critical insight I value most - that women and minorities are considered as groups, with group characteristics that devalue and degrade any particular individual. I find their arguments to the contrary both effective and persuasive, for their arguments match my experience.

I have known many individuals, of all genders and races, and I've never met one person who fit any particular stereotype unless that was their individual goal in life.

Pretty much, the only people I know who celebrate and revere stereotypes as their personal ideals are drag queens, Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians and Anne Coulter who somehow manages to maintain an improbably high heel in both camps.

Though I don't doubt her XX credentials (or even consider claiming the right to demand a blood test) , she portrays femininity more than just being female, somewhat in the way a successful trannie does, which probably explains the wide perception that she is one.

Personally, I much prefer Ru Paul, who is twice the woman Anne is, and a far more credible actor. Genuine Drag Queens and Kings are a lot more fun to be around, which is really how you tell the difference. They know they are sacred clowns. Ann just thinks she is sacred and justified - which makes her a self-nominated sacred cow, all ready to be tipped.

Even Ru Paul know there is a time to be in drag, and a time to NOT be in drag, and that each has different standards of virtue and fabulousness. The comparable Christianists seem to believe they can't properly revere their stereotypes without forcing everyone else to dress and speak just as they do.

Now imagine how truly Unspectacular it would be, how very UN-festive it would seem, if Mardi Gras was compelled by law, 24/7, 365, and if "certain people" were compelled by law to be mostly naked save for feathers and beads. Yeah, I'm talking about you and your pale, flabby, wrinkly self. It takes a lot of work to be fablulous, and frankly, I have better things to do, and I imagine you think you do too.

As well we might, given a social matrix that allows us to clothe our shortcomings. :P But if it were compulsary (eithier legally or just in a practical sense, as it was in ancient Greece, )

It would be as small-minded, as proscribed and as essentially dull and vapid as any Christianist social matrix. Take "Antigone."

Please.

Of course, we would all get used to it - much like we have gotten used to excusing other intuitively stupid things, like supply-side economics, or the inherent benevolence of human nature, and we would excuse it with shared fairy tales as to how awful things would be if we did not choose to sacrifice some of our freedom to stave off the evil day.

Thus is it now, and so it was in the days of Sophocles and FDR. Different fables, pretty much the same rectal burning the fables are supposed to distract us from. Could be worse, they say; it could be SQUARE, like the OTHER people want to use on you.

And so each individual is imposed upon by the groups purporting to represent their interests; whether it's Hoffa or Bush, and as one mexican peasant put it, after being "liberated" once again, this time by General Pershing; "What does it matter? You ALL steal my chickens."

And in "stealing those chickens" from the Masses, in order to Properly Feed the Great Struggle , my feminist and "racially aware" compadres tend to miss an essential point - in exactly the same way that Dominionists, Patriarchs and white racists do.

There is a great amount of value in individual variation; culture and genetics count for some large part in this; far more than either racists or their ideological foes would care to admit.

I oppose oppression based on any perception that any particular distinction is sufficient to indicate social or biological superiority or inferiority. Certainly there ARE individuals that are, I'm afraid, somewhat overall less capable in general than others. I'm one of those; though I do choose to believe that my greater needs for support are matched by my unusual, if narrow ranges of skill. What I am good at, I'm VERY good at, and there are enough that value what I can do that I've never had to be seriously concerned about what I cannot. And yet, I cannot honestly pretend that the greatest of my advantages are the result of practice. I was born with them - and some of what are my greatest advantages kinda suck for me in a slightly different light.

Due to having my nose rubbed in the matter, I have an intimate appreciation of the variation and value of humanity. I've come to hold nothing but amused disdain for those who think that any particular description of how people should be is preferable to the simple idea that, so long as you mind your own business to the extent you can, and to the extent that you cannot, honestly render value for value, you and yours will be safe and warm in the sort of community that best suits them.

What more does anyone really need?

This vision is inclusive of those who are excellent at making money. Most people are not, it's a rare and valuable skill - for after all, the very activity of gaining great wealth increases general prosperity. Or at least it does when those skilled in making wealth remember that they would not have been able to apply those skills without help, encouragement and the investment of both cash and sweat.

They should know, understand and appreciate that their talent is rare and very much appreciated by those who do not share it - even as they appreciate, use and celebrate abilities that would never truly flower without their support and patronage.

It takes a largish village to raise a child, in part because there is no guarantee that any particular set of parents has all the insight and experience that any particular child will need to be their best - nor is there any way to predict what it will be ahead of time.

That is why I absolutely reject ANY faith or culture as inherently inhuman, obviously unethical, deeply un Christian and inarguably stupid that excludes any choice or life-path that is not directly and provably harmful to others - and I specifically spurn those who base the sum of their faith not on what they are and what they do, but on who they are not, and what they do NOT do.

Note that I abstain from calling social champions of exclusionary faith - such as Huckabee, Bin Ladin, Pat Robertson or Orthodox Druidry by the name they would arrogate to themselves, or referring to their refuges from reality as Churches, Temples, Ashrams or Faith Groups.

Conformity is not faith, and a conformity so insecure that it cannot exist without forcing public obedience to overt exhibitions of that that faith on everyone else is utterly, totally fucking worthless. It has not even the significance of a drag review. It hasn't the social importance of a Folsom Day Parade. It doesn't have the spiritual significance enjoyed by Our Ladies of Perpetual Indulgance. All these things, after all, challenge conventional assuptions and therefore promote the testing and examination of valid spiritual and social truths.

Christianist fetishism celebrates the ideal of eliminating fun for themselves and everyone they can intimidate, in order to eliminate anything that might test their shallow, bitter and pointless faith in their own moral superiority.

Any faith that regularly encourages it 's members to cause (or at least excuse) harm to others, even family members, in the here in now, in the name of "saving their souls" shows an arrogance and indifference toward the very words of Christ that disqualifies them from ANY valid observation of the Numinous.

Unfuck them, say I; they might not appreciate it; but far more significantly, they certainly don't deserve it, much less the right to any genetic payoff.

Perhaps I can sum this up in one or two more graphs and keep it all within the bounds of reason. I have come to think that it may not be reasonable to expect that the vast problems of this great, inept and debtor nation may even be addressed by a federal election. It may be time to admit that we are not one great culture, but at LEAST two, with incompatible ideas as to what "great" means. I am starting to believe that we should each of us declare for the outcome we prefer - or abandon the right to a preference.

There seems to be a huge discordance between the coasts and the interior states, the cities and the countryside; the sophisticates and the viciously ignorant Siberian peasantry who indulge in religiosity as a hangover cure for their own workaday brutality.

Yes, clearly I have my own value judgments going on here. I will unabashedly admit that I'd rather trip over any number of "commies", "niggers," "faggots" "feminazis" and "preverts" on the way to a well-stocked library. None of them ever beat the crap out of me for reading books for fun. Hell, many of them handed me books to read and lived lives worth remembering.

I'm predisposed to forgive many putative faults in those who hand me mental chocolate!

I will delightedly admit that I would rather put up with all of the downsides of a civilized, coastal culture than the inbred, small minded, dead-end reflexes of a long-gone inland agrarian culture that I doubt was worth the powder to blow it to hell at the hight of the family farm.

Certainly I know of few social stories that elevate the life on a farm over the opportunity to successfully escape it.

Now, I don't mind if you find my choices repugnant nor will I even say that I honestly reject all that is middle America. Frankly, given the Internet, it SHOULD be possible to have and value both, if Middle America would allow it.

However, I know that it will not, and that many Middle Americans would love to see me dangling from a lamp-post, along with all the others they call "Liberals".

I cannot help but take that personally. So, forgive me, or not, but if it comes down to a choice between me and mine living, and all the people who would like to see me and mine dangling from lamp-posts dead, I know what I will choose. I know who uses "diversity" and "tolerance" as bad words - and how little I need their continued existence as a cultural, religious or selection of like-minded individuals.

Tolerance has limits even among the tolerant. Tolerating those who would kill you or worse because you are forgiving, tolerant and therefore "weak" is suicidally foolish.

Increasingly, I see the difficulty of governing a nation divided so, on the cusp of ignorance and enlightenment, between those who hope and strive for a better future for themselves and others, and those who fear any change that might possibly affect what little they are and what small prizes they have gained at the expense of "lusers" they despise.

I know which side of the balance I am on - for being who and what I am, I have little choice in the matter. I've not been able to "go along to get along" any time in my memory, so I must go with all the other liberals, faggots, artists, dykes, feminists, intellectuals, geniuses and mentally handicapped that do not fit the mold of "good Midwestern stock."

And frankly, after seeing what has come of following your fears and prejudices these last years, the blowback of your bleating conformity and unreasoning panic; the spiritual rewards of your sacrifice of anyone but your own - well, I have to say that if napalm and cluster bombs MUST be pissed upon someone from a great height, why NOT you? How have you in any way earned a justifiable moral exception to the violence you have empowered and affirmed?

You certainly have earned it as much as any Iraqi, and FAR more than the average Iranian - even as your churches and dear leaders cheer the idea of paving Iran in green glass.

Oddly, you seem confused that those who live downwind might object to such an obvious national security imperative. (That would be sarcasm.)

You demanded it be done to others - and their children. You would wish it done to even more. Have we not all heard calls for bombing the Madrases? Madrases are indeed evil places - but they are evil places filled with children who are slaves to that evil. You would rather kill them than save them, for the outcome of one is cheap and sure, while the outcome of the other requires effort, heart, and not a little heartbreak - and you don't even consider your own noncompliant offspring worth a moment's sorrow.

Of these children - those of others and those you choose to reject - you either said, or silently assented with the idea that "nits breed lice."

Indeed they do.

One sort of bloodsucking oppressive patriarchal religious dictatorship is pretty much the same as any other, and "nits" raised in either result in lice distinguishable only by other lice.
Speaking for humanity in general, I think we would all love to see a war of extermination between the crab lice and the head lice ... if only, of course, it were not our human heads and pubes as a battlefield.

But having that wistful vision, it's difficult to pass the products in the supermarket aisle designed to remove lice from one's follicles without wondering what tempting products are available to our long-suffering planet.

So, you in the Midwest have a choice. You can either do as generations of your smarter and less compliant offspring have done; allow the scales to fall from your eyes, regard the consequences of your social and religious indoctrination and move to a civilized state, or you can face the just wrath of the world, perhaps including those civilized states.

Should you MANAGE to cheat your way to another electoral victory, do NOT expect those of us who share more worldly values with most of the world to spend many drops of blood or any large number of tears for the fate of you and yours.

I know that if I see black helicopters flying cover for white tanks heading east on I-80, I will wave that UN flag like a madman. I will of course take sensible precautions as well; hiding a few things in undisclosed locations - but a rational paranoia does not preclude a certain schadenfreud at the rewards of irrational and vicious paranoid revenge fantasies acted out upon innocents thought to be safely powerless.

Fuck you all to death, with the sharp and unwelcome objects you made for profit and intended to inflict upon others, you and the religious leaders who told you Haliburton and Exxon belonged in your Ethical Fund.

May you rot in the various hells you would wish upon others, after no more painful and humiliating a death than the god you worship would consider the due of sinners such as yourselves working for the OTHER god you worship even more faithfully.
---
*An honest politician is one who stays bought.

**Better than many, not as well as some, at least as well as any serious competitor.

Bargain Optics for your whole family

Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com

$ 8 Complete Prescription Eyeglasses + Case

www.zennioptical.com offers the best value prescription eyeglasses online

I've worn glasses for most of my life. Not just most of my adult life - I got my first pair sometime around kindergarten. So I laugh when I see that. I remember walking into one of those one hour lens places and being laughed at.

I'd hate to add up the total cost of those lenses over my lifetime. I have a very difficult prescription. Or at least I did, until I had cataract surgery last year. I still need glasses - mutter bifocals - but at least the RX won't change ever year. And insurance pays only ever two years - though my wife tends to mislay her glasses at least once every six months.

And more importantly, not everyone in this household has vision coverage. That has been a real problem.

For the price these folks are offering, I might be able to afford to go all Elton John, with a pair for every occasion.

Ok, what I'd love would be a nice pair of driving glasses, and a single-vision pair that is just for reading and computer work. Oh, and some sunglasses.

Anyway, I'm going to send this out now. Later on I'll append what happens when I input my prescription, but as I said, even now mine is ridiculous. If you have mild to moderate vision needs, It's well worth giving these folks a shot.

Of course, you will need to adjust them yourself, but if you have worn glasses as long as I have... that's nearly reflex.

McGovern: Bush worse than Nixon

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Why I Believe Bush Must Go Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse. By George McGovern As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising. From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

And if George McWishywashy can see this, why can't Nancy Pelosi?

That was a pointedly rhetorical question...

Coming Out Multiple

clipped from www.geocities.com Coming Out Multiple Coming out as Multiple is as difficult in it's own way as coming out as queer, or coming out as being any of a dozen "things," ranging from radical feminist to radical pro-life. There comes a time, though, with all such "things," that you need to stand up and be counted for your beliefs, or your sexuality, or your very self in order for that self-definition to be meaningful. One can't be a radical pro-lifer without getting public about it. One can't be a radical feminist without getting up the noses of oppressive patriarchs. One can't be a Republican without apologising for Rush... well, maybe you can, but you ought to feel bad about it. The only difference between standing up and being counted as one of these other things and standing up and being counted as a Multiple is that it takes a little longer. And some would uncharitably suggest that the result is an irrational number. Copyright 1996, 1997 Bob King

A little thing I wrote years and years ago that I'm pretty proud to say is still regularly cited.

Armageddon is Nigh: VP Cited by Sadly, No!

Sadly, No! cites VodkaPundit Steven Green re Huckabee and Iowans, It is a magnificent rant, if damn near a decade belated.

It seems the VodkaPundit has discovered why us "Godless Liberals^TM*" have dismissed the center of these Disunited States as "flyover country," or less politely, Dumbfuckistan.

It's not because of what party they support, VP. It's why they support it!

They are stupid dumb fucks from Dumbfuckistan and they vote as stupidly as the damn fool churches they belong to.

WHAT PART OF "SIBERIAN PEASANT" DO YOU NOT GRASP, VP?

I know you have read all that cold war history stuff, and I bet you have read "The Gulag Archipelago" and all kinds of anti-commie-pinko stuff. So I know you know the concept. So when you ask "what the fuck is wrong with you people," well, if you would just think on it, you would realize you already know. It's just that before, the stupidity worked in favor of furthering YOUR interests, so you pretend that people this stupid don't exist.

Dear Iowa Republicans,

I’ll put this in language even your tiny little Iowa brains can understand: What the f*** is wrong with you people?

The news coming out of Des Moines (literally, French for “tell me about the rabbits, George”) tonight is distressing in the extreme. 32 years ago, your Democratic brethren took one look at Jimmy Carter — the worst 20th Century President bar Nixon, and the worst ex-President ever — and declared, “That’s our man!”

Three decades later, and along comes Mike Huckabee. Same moral pretentiousness, same gullibility on foreign affairs, only-slightly-less toothy idiot’s grin. Then you so-called Republicans took a look at Carter’s clone and said, “That’s our man, too!”

And by a pretty wide margin. […]

Mike Huckabee? Really? We’ve seen this game before, and its name is… every other single stupid, un-winnable candidate you’ve ever picked — which is most of them.

So I repeat the question: What is wrong with you people?

All my love, you corn-sucking idiots,

VodkaPundit

Hell, they grow corn for ethanol, because of government handouts, when they could sew switchgrass and do not a damn thing nor spend a cent for 11 months of the year, and then take advantage of a free DEA ethanol license to ferment and distill it into fuel. Or they could figure out how to ferment the agri-waste instead of the actual corn. It's not like you have to drink the stuff - and making corn into ethanol is a waste of good corn liquor, as well as being a net energy loss.

But never mind, welfare pays the difference.

Never mind that they think they are different than people in inner cities getting "crop support" for children of suspiciously dark colors. (They grow WHITE corn in Iowa!) Somehow, the crop of actual people is less worthy of government price supports and subsidies than surplus corn.

There ain't no hate like the hate of a really stupid WHITE "welfare queen" for an actually deserving inner city welfare recipient of nonspecific color - assumed, of course, to be "black" in every sense of the word.

---

*"Liberal" in this instance is anyone for whom reality trumps Rovian talking points and the common "wisdom" about coastal values spread by Ann Coulter, Bill O'Rielly and Rush Limbaugh. Or in other words, "liberal" in this sense includes Barry Goldwater and Adam Smith.

Or in other words, a "Liberal" is anyone who is both too intelligent and not cynical enough to blow smoke up the asses of the corn-fed idjuts of Dumbfuckistan.

In that sense, and ONLY in that sense am I Liberal, much LESS "progressive." What I AM is a centrist, politically, with a strong bias toward anti-authoritarianism.

This is not due to disrespect for worthy Authorities. On the contrary.

It's due to an understanding of how difficult it is to be Knowledgeable, wise, authoritative and worth following that I feel it proper to discourage people from delegating their personal authority and power to those who neither deserve it and are clearly both unqualified and uninterested in the hard work of exercising power in the interests of "the little people."

I'm neither left, nor right. I'm a cynical, distrustful individualist who, having been exposed to competent governance, knows the depths of uselessness our own government sinks to.

I am, in other words, a Libertarian and further, a person that realizes that all good things, all things of worth, all good things that occur are as a result of the efforts of individuals working in concert or alone, and governments, marketplaces, roads, churches and corporations are all means to those ends, contrivances for leveraging the efforts of individuals. As such, it is the individual who concerns me, not any sort of fictional "corporate entity."

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Now playing: Eric Clapton - Signe
via FoxyTunes

PSA: Signs of a Stroke

Please pass this around widely - I got it from an email list and am passing it around this way. This may well be the Heimlich Maneuver of the new millennium.

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters.... S.T.R.

My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I agree.

If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks. Seriously..

Please read:

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .....she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die.... they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this...
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke... totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke .

Now do ctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S * Ask the individual to SMILE.
T * Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e. It is sunny out today)
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

So do that thing. Right this instant. Rarely does good Karma come so cheaply.