Five Before Chaos

A little humor to start your Thursday… According to the WaPo, Bush has finally answered his question,”Is our children learning?:

“Childrens do learn,” he said Wednesday.

  The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s not so funny after all. I should have said “pathetic”. Won’t someone please think of the childrens!?!  Happy Thursday, everybody! 

I’ll be upgrading to WordPress 2.3 in the next day or two, so if you come here and things are screwy, you know why and it’s only temporary.

Yep, they’re still aroud crawling in the muck, wounded but not down. Seriously, I’ve never seen a group both so unbelievably ignorant of history and so obsessed with gay sex. Just go out and have some already, people. Who knows, you might like it.

Anyways, over at Americablog today, there’s a good piece on the unraveling of the professional “family values” crowd. It discusses a few things, but of particular interest is a recent mouthbreather gathering called the “Family Impact Summit”. Now I don’t like to usually quote tons of text from another site, but you just need to read this account (courtesy of Box Turtle Bulletin) of  the panel of Godidiots getting an earful and stumbling horribly, when confronted with a rather angry and intelligent lesbian:

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Ok, here’s a Name that Movie for y’all. Movie, and year please. Bonus Obligatory Stupid Trivia Question: In what very tangential way is this movie connected to Charlie Chaplin? Maybe Bill Simmon has the answer. Or not.

There’s a new book out by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, called Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. You’ve often heard me mention the evils of what I call “hypercapitalism”, in which profit trumps all other concerns: health, environment, human rights, all so some American fat ass has a bigger, cheaper TV to watch his beloved reality shows on. It seems like Reich’s book takes this on rather well, and no side is spared. Devilstower over at Kos has a great review:

In the end what Reich has to say is that both left and right are wrong in their view of capitalism. Corporations are not people. They’re not moral or immoral. They just are. And if that sounds too corporate friendly, Reich makes a terrific case for why corporations should not be given the political clout and legal protections of human citizens. In his view, a corporation should have both the responsibilities and rights of a table lamp.

The right is at least as wrong in viewing the market as some kind of self-correcting “natural” system that always tends to produce an overall benefit. There’s no evidence of this now, or ever. In fact, history shows that the market needs constant adjustment and correction — often involving huge amounts of government support that the “free market” advocates are quick to forget when the numbers are going up.

And both sides are wrong in the assumption that democracy requires, or is even related to, free market capitalism. The new global capitalism, the Supercapitalism that shrugs off national boundaries in that eternal search for a lower price, not only shares nothing in common with democracy it’s the enemy of democracy.

Amen to that, brother. That second paragraph is something I’ve been railing on ad nauseum. Those free-market sacred cow assumptions are about as real as Adam and Eve and Mohammed’s promise of virgins in heaven. They repeat them enough, and somehow they become true, lack of evidence not withstanding (what’s even crazier is how some poor people buy into the bullshit without realizing that they’re advocating for policies that ultimately hurt, not help them). There is no free market, never has been, and never will be. Definitely going to pick this book up.

UPDATE: There’s now a good interview with Reich over at DKos. He also responds to questions in the comments section. Interesting what he has to say about “corporate personhood”:

Arguably, the idea that corporations are people had some merit 40 years ago when giant oligopolies (like the Big Three automakers) dominated the American economy, and their executives had so much discretion that it almost seemed the corporations had a human personality. But these days the idea has no basis in reality. We should put an end to it by, for example:
– ending the legal doctrine that corporations have standing to challenge in court legislation or regulations;
– ending the practice of sueing corporations for criminal violations (go after the people inside them who violated the law instead);
– ending the corporate income tax (people pay it, but keeping the absurd fallacy that companies do creates the impression that companies should be represented in Congress, under the aegis of “no taxation without representation,”
– challenging Buckley v. Valeo and other Supreme Court precedents that give companies constitutionial rights;
You get the point.

Lemme tell ya’, this being soooper busy every day thing is starting to take its toll on me. Hardly any time to read non-school related stuff, watch movies of questionable quality, and of course, blog. It’s killing me. So I’m taking a quick minute here to give you a linkdump. Not as satisfying for either one of us as a Christofascist Idiot Watch Update, I know, but hey, I still care.

First up, CREW releases its 22 most corrupt members of Congress list. 19 Republicans, and 3 Democrats…, are you surprised? And you right-wingers, no, it’s not CREW’s fault. Suck it up.

ThinkProgress reports that our dipshit-in-chief was meeting with some military bloggers recently, and said something along the lines of that “he expressed envy that they could be there, and said he’d like to be there but “One, I’m too old to be out there, and two, they would notice me.” Uh-huh. He failed to mention number three, the more obvious one about a high likelihood of getting fragged or caught up in a bit of friendly fire. Perish the thought.

This one sounds nutty as hell, but there’s a ring of truth to it…Nebraska State Senator Sues God:

State Sen. Ernie Chambers sued God last week. Angered by another lawsuit he considers frivolous, Chambers says he’s trying to make the point that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terrorist threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The Omaha senator, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, also says God has caused “fearsome floods … horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes.”

He’s seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

Can’t say he’s wrong there. Good luck to him, because God’s got a helluva lawyer, I suppose, with all the murderin’ and such that he’s always up to, he always seems to get off scott-free.

In more atheist-related news, a soldier is suing the Defense Department for preventing him from having a meeting for atheists and other non-Christians. Good for him.

The “D” in Democrats stands for “disappointment” more often than not, so you can never tell with these things, but some good news seems to be in the making. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying that there are no more Iraq bills coming that do not have a firm withdrawal timeline. Now, if one of the Senators running for the Dem nomination (especially a particular one that likes to talk about how he’s the “change” candidate, without offering much meat to the argument) would just take the lead and filibuster the shit out of any Iraq legislation without a timeline, they’d make a huge difference, and would probably increase their chances of winning the White House tenfold. But they never listen to me, do they?

Finally, they’re excited about “riding the SLUT” in Seattle! Who wouldn’t be?

Hopefully, you won’t have to wait another week here for something new. And by November, life returns to some semblance of normalcy. Stay well and thanks for stopping by.

Another Anthony Steffen spaghetti western that offers nothing new to the genre, and is an excercise in mediocrity.

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It’s always funny how most celebrities who win awards have to throw in the obligatory thanks to God, as though it was God itself that got them that good agent or whatever. Comedienne Kathy Griffin won an Emmy award on the E! television network recently and had this to say:

In her speech, Griffin said that “a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”

She also said, according to her website, “Can you believe this shit? Hell has frozen over. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now.”

Ah, the things that make an atheist smile. Of course, this has Catholic hatemonger/homophobic/racist William Donohue’s panties in a wad. What is it with these far-right Catholic types who view any criticism of their myths as “hate speech”? Donohue would know, he’s got hate speech down to an art form. And the E! television channel is keep in Griffin’s “offensive” remarks out of the final broadcast, to make things even more ridiculous. It’s not like she said “fuck” or something. And she’s a comedienne, for Chrissake… many of them make their living offending people. Anyways, kudos to her for speaking up.

Finally, Time Magazine has an article worth reading, The 50 Worst Cars of All Time. There’s the obvious ones, such as the Pinto and the Pacer. But did you ever hear about the Zunndapp Janus? Howzabout the Horsey Horseless, complete with fake wooden horse head? Have a look.

You know, I couldn’t have picked a worse time to cut back on the blogging (not like I have much of a choice right now). Let’s see, coulda done a million posts on Larry Craig and his “wide stance”, there’s the next round of capitulation from the Dems on the war  (we’re watching, Mr. Welch), Grampa Fred Thompson adds “yet another Republican hack who will never be president” to his resume, Obama’s “Audacity of Hype” rolls on, etc. There’s so much going on, and so little time to report it.

So I thought I’d take the time and just throw this juicy little nugget from Pensito Review out there. Now, those of you reading this are, by now, not shocked by the almost daily hypocrisies that entail being a modern Republican. Were you really surprised about Larry Craig? Well, apparently four more self-proclaimed “social conservatives” are quite possibly the next to come out of the GOP’s closet of hypocrisy:

In the wake of closeted Sen. Larry Craig’s self-outing in an airport men’s room this summer, Mike Rogers, the Washington-based publisher of blogActive who outed Craig, is threatening to reveal the secret sexual identities of two leading GOP senators, while two allegedly gay Republican congressmen are making headlines and drawing unwelcome attention to themselves, the timing of which could not be worse.

The senators are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, from Kentucky. More about them below but first let’s look at two allegedly closeted members of the House, representatives Patrick McHenry and David Drier, who have been in the news lately.

Yep. Mitch McConnell. How’s that going to play in the bluegrass state? But apparently, it’s not just the hypocrisy angle that could very well get Mitch in deep doo-doo. Word is out that McConnell got booted out of the Army in 1967 after only 10 days, for fondling another private’s privates, according to Mike Rogers, the blogger doing the outing.

Now, the issue isn’t and shouldn’t be whether or not these men are gay (and there is no way in hell McConnell or Graham could be elected in the Bible Belt if they were out). As we’ve discussed before, it’s the hypocrisy of being leaders of the anti-gay faction in Washington. And it’s a price they’ll need to pay.

As an added bonus, this could really be the undoing of the GOP, when the country club Republicans and anti-taxers that made up much of their ranks got in bed with the intellectually and reality-challenged Christian Right, back in ’79. And as the Review points out, if the Christianists jump ship, there ain’t “enough country clubbers and anti-taxers out there to win a national election”. And the GOP will find itself where it was, post-Watergate. Screwed. Now if we could just do something to fix those Dems….