NRA 4Ever

There was a shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. today. Apparently, some white supremacist entered with a rifle and began opening fire on visitors, killing a security guard and injuring two others.

Where to even begin with this story? First of all, lol @ the notion of white supremacy in the United States. I do believe this continent was populated by natives who, you know, weren't so white centuries before white Europeans even knew this half of the world existed. Some of these not-so-white natives, like the Inca and Maya, were light years more advanced than the Europeans of the day. And lol @ the notion of white supremacy in general, seeing as how the human race began in Africa. White people are the mutants, having all the melanin sucked out of our skin by living in cold, rainy climates in northern Europe. We're the freaks! lolz, anyway...

Secondly, I hope the shooter realizes that not everyone who visits the Holocaust Museum is a Jew. I'm just sayin'. And how ridiculously ironic will it be if it's revealed his victims are white?

I was sure this would just be another in a long line of rampage shootings that dominates the headlines for a news cycle and then just goes away without us having applied what we learned from it, if anything. But I was wrong, at least so far. On the MSN website, the article about Miss California losing her title has more views that the article on this story. Anywayz, I'm sure the NRA is already planning a rally at the Holocaust Museum and state legislatures in the South are prepping to undo the few gun control measures they have because if there's anything random shootings should tell us, it's that we need less gun control in this country.

Just Some lOLz

-A hilarious post script to the octuplet story- the mother already has six kids. And all fourteen (that's 14) of her children were conceived using sperm from the same donor. And she's single and still lives with her parents. LOL

-Rush Limbaugh is being touted as the "new" voice of the "new" Republican Party. I'm sorry, is this 1993? Speaking of the Republican Party, they elected Michael Steele as the new head of the RNC. Cause what better way to counter the popularity of Barack Obama than to elect a senatorial loser like Michael Steele? But hey, at least he's black! And he was lieutenant governor of Maryland! Way to go Republicans! Way to not make empty gestures of conciliation to ethnic minorities, who are abandoning your party in droves!

-The "recession" is going to get worse and when recovery does come, it will be "slow and weak." Thanks, MSN!

-I have a migraine and I think my head is going to split open! Yay! Have a great fuckin' weekend, y'all! I certainly will!!!!!!!!111

Lord, Bless This Bounty For Which We Are About To Conceive

In case you haven't heard, a set of octuplets was born in California last week. All eight babies are said to be doing well, as it their mother. As usual when a woman gives birth to a litter of Frankenstein children, the media is going gaga apeshit over this news. Personally, I find it highly disturbing. Highly.

We don't know much about the mother, because she and her doctors are in some sort of weird media blackout, only occasionally updating us on the status of these freak kids. But we can surely conclude that mother used fertility drugs and that she's a paranoid narcissist.

Because, seriously. How fuckin' full of your own infertile shit do you have to be to think you deserve to have six plus children at once? Only in America is this type of behavior celebrated and encouraged. Remember the McCaughey septuplets, the world's first surviving set of seven babies, born in Iowa in 1997? I do. They were on Oprah the following year, paraded out by their Christian nutbag parents in front of the bright lights and television audience of millions, all in an attempt to prove what a "normal" family they are. A "normal" family that gets a pre- babyproofed mansion as a gift from Oprah.

Now, of course, we have "Jon and Kate Plus 8," a TLC reality show dedicated to this couple with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets. We learn that they are also Christians and full of their own infertile shit. I love how these families are always religious, as if subverting god's own will is going to get you into the express lane to heaven. There's a reason he made you infertile, asshole! Fuck, they're not blessings, they're science experiments. Allah forbid you just adopt a kid or two and leave it at that.

I was watching "Jon and Kate Plus 8" a few weeks ago and Kate was talking about how she gets the kids to line up for shit. She says something like, "I just say, 'Birth order,' and they just know. They know that their birth order was chosen by god." No, not so much. Their birth order was chosen by which fetus was closest to the hole they cut in your overstuffed uterus. And the neonatologists did that, not god. Or Jesus.

There is nothing at all normal or healthy about a woman carrying more than, like, three babies in her at once. And even triplets is a stretch, both morally and anatomically. I can't believe any insurance company in this country would be willing to cover the delivery of eight premature babies at once and the subsequent ten years in the NICU they'll require. But then again, I guess that's what Oprah's for.

The Audacity of Audacity

Well, it's day eleven of Israel doing it's defendin' thang against them asshole idiot goat-fuckin' terrorists in Gaza, in case you haven't been keeping score. Or watching TV. Or surfing the Internet. So the Israelis attacked a school yesterday, killing 39 civilians. Big deal. That's where Hamas was hiding! Oh wait, no Palestinian militants were killed in that school attack? Well, *huffs* well, I heard that they were shooting at armed forces in the Israeli military! I mean, when armed forces in the military are shot at, you're supposed to respond by killing children! Israel has lost ten whole people since this started. Ten! Oh, there's been 670 Palestinian causalities? Dayum.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much longer our idiotic defense of Israel's actions can last given these incredibly lopsided numbers. It's getting more psychotic by the day to hear Israel whine about being a victim of periodic Hamas rocket attacks in civilian areas when they're the ones doing the constant rocketin' into schools and hospitals now.

But I happen to read something the other day that totally incensed me, and also offended and bemused me. I spent a while on the Jerusalem Post website in an attempt to stay fair and balanced like Bill O'Reilly when I came across an op-ed written by woman who actually insinuated that because Barack Obama hasn't said much on this conflict, it could force Israel to act hastily before Bush leaves to get what they want because Bush is Jew-friendly. Maybe I'm too outraged to get her true meaning, but I sincerely believe she is trying to blame some of their actions on Barack Obama's silence on this conflict. Barack Obama. The man who, in 13 days will become U.S. president. Not Israel's. God, what a Republican way to argue something! 9/11 is Bill Clinton's fault, even though G-Dub was in office at the time, and now this shit is Obama's fault when he's not even in a position to do anything about it yet! The woman said he should come out screaming in support of Israel and reaffirm America and Israel's special relationship. Bitch, we have one special relationship and it's with our mama England. Take a number.

And lest you think it's just Jews who are batshit nuts and blaming Obama for this current mess, today al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri said, and this is a direct fucking quote, "This is Obama whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America. He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection." I've reread this sentence several times and I think I've succeeded in giving myself a slight stroke. I thought Obama was in D.C. working on the stimulus package; I didn't realize he was personally mowing down children in Gaza, and without affection no less! You think Perez Hilton would have posted a picture of that by now, maybe with a little cum dribbling down Obama's chin as he bayonets a small Muslim child. Of course, this is the same al-Zawahiri who called Obama a "house negro" or something to that effect after his victory in November and said he was a disgrace to "honorable" black Americans like Malcolm X. But it sounds nutty, even for a group as apeshit as al-Qaeda.

This day in history: Twenty nine years ago, Jimmy Carter gave $1.5 billion in loans to Chrysler, which the company was able to pay off in three years with the help of Lee Iacocca and his glorious, groundbreaking, genius mini-van concept. -Do you hear the choir of angels?- The mini-van would become a revolution in the auto industry and provide suburban soccer moms with a larger, 80s version of the station wagon that's still annoyingly cliche well into the 21st Century. That Iacocca prick's still alive, so they should dust him off and install him back as CEO. All he has to do is reinvent the wheel to save the American auto industry. And by "reinvent the wheel," I mean rip off those fuckin' Japs he so loathes.

A Rant In Historical Perspective

On this day ten years ago, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Bill Clinton based on his perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power during the Lewinsky scandal. Lead by moral crusader Henry Hyde, who himself engaged in a five-year long affair with a married woman with children, the bills of impeachment barely passed and solely along party lines.

I remember this shit. I remember supporting Clinton's impeachment only because I wanted to tell my kids someday, "Yeah, I lived through a presidential impeachment." Of course, I was 13 years old and didn't understand that "impeachment" and "removal from office" are two totally different legal concepts. Clinton, of course, was never removed from office; that vote in the Senate barely failed and solely along party lines.

I don't think I need to get into how utterly ridiculous the whole Lewinsky thing is vis-a-vis everything that's happened under Bush. But it just highlights this theory of mine that we allow Republicans to get away with things we'd never allow Democrats to even think about. I vaguely remember how outraged Republicans were at the Monica thing and at Clinton's "complete disrespect of the law." I concretely remember how Bush's "complete disrespect of the law" post-9/11 didn't bother the GOP in the slightest. Wiping his ass with the Constitution? Silence. Making shit up about WMDs in Iraq? Silence. Fucking torturing guys? Silence.

Actually, they haven't been silent. They've been vociferously in favor of all that, or at the very least complicit in its perpetuation. What a difference ten years can make! Ten years ago, if you sat in front of the U.S. Congress and made shit up about an embarrassing private fuck-up, you were excoriated and held up as an example of the moral decay we godless liberals started in the 60s. Today, if you sit in front of the U.S. Congress the United fucking Nations and make shit up to get us into an illegal, unnecessary, unwinable war, you're hailed as a hero who's "kept us safe."

"Everything changed on 9/11," they whine. No it didn't. Or at least it didn't have to. How many of you think that if Bush were a Democrat who lied to everyone's faces about Iraq's capabilities to manufacture weapons and its "airtight" ties to 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, then invaded the country on those pretenses, then have it be revealed everything he ever said about the reasons for war was bullshit, then have said war devolve into a chaotic shitfight with Iraqi insurgents and a nascent al-Qaeda base, then change the reasons for war to fluffy sounding crap like "liberation" and "spreading democracy," that he would have survived politically for more than a second after declaring "mission accomplished" in his dumb, fake jumpsuit? If Bush the Democrat tried this shit, we would have impeached him, removed him from office, and deleted him from the White House homepage before "American Idol" that night.

OK, this is getting long but one last point. I think it was just last week, Dick Cheney did an interview where he basically admitted that he knew the pre-war intelligence was made-up nonsense and that an invasion of Iraq had been planned before 9/11. He said that even knowing then what we all know now, he still would have pushed to invade Iraq. He also casually admitted to authorizing torture at Gitmo. And the response from the Republican peanut gallery? "Bush kept us safe!" Yeah, safe from our rights, prosperity, science, our allies, and our once pretty damn good global standing.

Yeah, Clinton is a scumbag in a lot of ways but come the fuck on! How goddamn quaint does his impeachment seem now! It's almost cute how in 1998, the Republicans made it sound like the biggest threat to national security was Bill Clinton's penis. It was also in 1998 that al-Qaeda bombed those two American embassies in Africa and bin Laden issued his second fatwa against the U.S. It makes one wonder what better things the FBI could have been investigating instead of Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, and seimen samples from a blue dress. Thanks, Republicans! I'll always remember how your party "kept us safe" in the 21st Century.

Rural America: Living Up To Stereotypes

This is the state of the state I live in. The state of Maryland theoretically ends at Frederick, which is located roughly at the black line. To the right of that line lies Baltimore and the D.C. suburbs. That's where all the people and wealth in the state are located. That part of the state is overwhelmingly Democratic, which is why Maryland is always a solidly blue state. The Eastern shore and the area to the left of the line are, well, not so Democratic. But because no one really lives there, the Southern sympathies of those areas are easily overriden (praise Jaysus).

Of course, being a denizen of that lovely place I affectionally call "Eastern West Virginia," I get to put up with racist and backwards shit that should have been settled decades ago. Just this year, at a vocational high school near my hometown, a controversy erupted over some white students displaying the Confederate Flag. Yes, the Confederate flag...in Maryland...a state that was a member of the Union, not the Confederacy. Now while most of us consider the Confederate flag to be a symbol of hate and division, others see it as a symbol of pride and unity. The furor from this shit even reached as far as The Washington Post, which painted my hometown as some shithole relic of the Old South (which it both is and isn't, since Maryland isn't the South!). As you can see, it was clearly just the honor students worried about their constitutional rights to free expression and not just idiot neo-Nazis. After all the dust was settled, it was ruled that the racist assholes were allowed to keep displaying their hate flag, for after all, it's their constitutional right.

Now, despite my personal opinions on the Confederate flag, I actually agree with the ruling. Because if I ever got caught burning a U.S. flag (which I've never actually done), I could just point to this event as precident that it's free speech. And then I'd inform all the haters to kiss my blue ass and move to West Virginia (which is a state that seceded from Virginia to be a part of the Union, though don't tell them that. There's plenty of Confederate flags in that state as well).

Fun times in Appalachia.

Ballot Initiative Madness

Proposition 8 has passed in California. I'm legitimately shocked that it passed because I assumed that most people in that state are members of the gay liberal conspiracy to destroy America. I also didn't anticipate all the religious resistence they'd get to it (not realizing that there's a sizable Mormon population in CA). I suppose I'm guilty of viewing that state through a Berkeley/hippie lens but it's just surprising to me that California -of all states- voted to ban gay marriage. It wasn't surprising at all to me that similar measures passed in Florida and Arizona, because, well, those states suck ass.

But Californians didn't just vote to ban gay marriage; they voted to retroactively take away people's rights. It's totally fucked up and unfair. I'll never understand why religious people are so gay for gay people and why they can't just allow grown-ass adults live their own lives as they see fit. It's almost like Christians aren't happy unless they're demonizing some subgroup of society (which I hear Jesus was all about). But fuck it. All I can say to gay people is keep your chin up. Amendments can be amended; it's happened before when religious freaks got too much influence *cough* PROHIBITION *cough*. Your time will come.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb...Syria and Pakistan

Just a quick comment on our "accidental" raid on a Syrian village this week. According to the BBC, a U.S. helicopter raid killed eight people- including four kids- in an eastern region of the country. As you can see, Syria shares a long border with the country we're currently liberating.

The U.S. government has supposedly chastised Syria for not cracking down on the traffic of unidentified people (read: terrorists) across said border, therefore leaving us the only option of attacking their sovereign country. Of course, the U.S. is a pro at cracking down on the traffic of unidentified people crossing our own porous border. Hey, maybe we should invade Syria to show 'em how it's done!

Apparently, we also "accidentally" attacked Pakistan this week, too. We're finding it difficult to keep them dang al-Qaedas in Afghanistan!

I know that invading sovereign nations is soooooo 2003 but can we at least pretend like we give the tiniest of shits about this kind of stuff? Anyone?