Barack Obama | The Electron Pencil

07/17/2013

Abortion, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Every Goddamn Day, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, Iraq War, Joseph Scheidler, Neil Steinberg, Pro-Life Action League, Rush Limbaugh

Your Daily Hot Air

A No Vote For Warren

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I love Elizabeth Warren. Love her.

Lo-o-o-o-o-o-ove her. I wanna marry her. Don’t worry; so does The Loved One. Wants to marry her, that is. We’d have a three-way marriage. We have a spare bedroom at Chez Pencil and Lizzie (as we’d affectionately address her) could sleep and change her clothes there in privacy.

Swoon (AP)

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T-Lo and I would take turns making her breakfast. Then we’d sit there, just listening, our chins in our hands, as she, Lizzie, would expound on this or that problem or proposed law. Sigh.

So now I can say this without fear that someone would dare to think I don’t support everything she stands for:

Elizabeth Warren will never, ever, ever become the President of the United States of America.

There.

Not only that, Elizabeth Warren would make a horrifyingly bad president.

She’d be a one-termer. And, you think the Me Party wing of the GOP is dedicated to stifling the occupant of the White House now? Oh, babies, just wait until some dame who doesn’t genuflect before the banksters gets in there.

Again, I dig Lizzie the most. But she’s too smart, too eager to talk facts and figures rather than fairy tales and bedtime stories, and is too much of a hard-ass for the banksters and the Right to bear.

They’re Starting Already

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Look what they’ve done to Hillary Clinton over the past couple of decades. And she, Hillary, is pretty much one of them.

Hillary, IIRC, is a commie, lesbo, man-hating, murderer. What slanders could they come up with for my Lizzie, who is so much not one of them that I’m surprised they all came from the same planet, which they probably didn’t.

Honestly, I’ve been sitting here for the last ten minutes trying to think of worse accusations the wingnut Right could make against my Lizzie. So far, I’ve drawn a blank. Then again, I’m not as creative as the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Here’s the thing: Elizabeth Warren (sigh) is the polar opposite of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The current Prez and the former Sec’y of State would say or do pretty much anything to maintain their respective toeholds in the game. Dig: Clinton voted for Georgey-boy Bush’s Iraq resolution. And Obama loaded up his administration with so many Goldman Sachs unindicted conspirators that the investment bank now holds its company picnic in the Rose Garden.

Much as I loathe those developments, that’s how people stay in the game if they want to become/remain POTUS.

Thus far, my sweet baby Lizzie appears to be incapable of such machinations.

If, by some weird turn of events, she became the boss of this holy land, she’d spend her entire four years fighting just to keep her head above water. That is, the muddy, sludgy, slimy liquid that passes for water in which Tories, crypto-racists, gun lust-ers, and rabid Christianists prefer to swim.

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For all Elizabeth Warren’s fine and good intentions, she wouldn’t get a thing done. Nothing.

I like her better as a senator.

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Fetal Positions

You’re missing something if you haven’t read Neil Steinberg’s new blog Every Goddamn Day.

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In today’s post, he recounts bumping into Joe Scheidler, the national director of the Pro-Life Action League, on Madison Street in downtown Chicago late Monday afternoon. Scheidler was participating in the PLAL’s annual summer demo, during which they carry placards featuring huge enlargements of aborted fetuses.

I recall running into the PLAL-ers any number of times when I lived in Chi. One July day I was stopped at a red light on Wacker Drive next to the then-Sears Tower and an anti-abortion demonstrator standing on the center island put his fetal hamburger picket sign right in front of my windshield.

“Get that mtherfking thing out of my face,” I hollered as I reached out the window and tried to rip it out of his hand. He dangled it just out of my grasp as if he were toying with a cat.

“You’re a sick prick,” I yelled. I had been looking forward to eating lunch and the sign had pretty much taken my appetite away. Believe me, you don’t want to be the poor soul who messes with my lunch.

Never Mess With My Lunch

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The guy responded, “God bless you.”

“I didn’t sneeze, idiot,” I cleverly riposted.

Then I thought, damn it, I’m all bent out of shape and he’s still standing their with that religious zombie smirk on his face. The light changed and I peeled away. I never did eat lunch that day.

Anyway, here’s the exchange Steinberg had with Joe Scheidler (all sic):

“You have to admit, that being against abortion is a religious scruple,” I [Steinberg] said.

“I wouldn’t say, ‘scruple.'” he replied. “It’s in the Bible, part of the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill.'”

“….a person,” I added.

“A baby is a person,” he said.

“A fetus isn’t a person,” I parried. “I wouldn’t want to take one to the movies.”

“The mom could go to the movies,” Joe countered.

Steinberg concludes his piece with a well-deserved indictment against the so-called pro-choice movement. If you’re “pro-choice” you’re not gonna like it. And you shouldn’t. And I hope it moves you to action.

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07/09/2013

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Flying Saucers And Pink Dresses

Yesterday, of course, was the 66th anniversary of the fabled crash of the UFO into the desert in southeast New Mexico.

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It seems that UFO conspiracy theories have petered out in recent years because we have better, juicier fever dreams to keep folks with hyper-active imaginations awake at night. Keep in mind that Dick Cheney personally directed the 9/11 attacks and Barack Obama was bred by foreign Muslims to take over this holy land. These two fairy tales are a tad more urgent and compelling than a government cover-up of the crash of the family flying saucer driven by some drunken ET teenagers out for a joyride. (h/t to Maxwell Bodenheim of Forest Park, Illinois, for this explanation.)

Joyrider

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Anyway, the 50th anniversary of the second oldest conspiracy theory I can think of is fast approaching and this one just may overshadow, at least for a time, the sins of Cheney and Obama. That is, the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963. (The oldest consp/theo is probably the plot by FDR and the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff to stage Pearl Harbor so’s the USA could jump that much more quickly into WWII. I’m telling you, these conspirator types are brilliant.)

The JFK theory tied together pretty much all the bogeymen that scared the poo out of the widest range of the American citizenry in the mid-60s. The Russkies, Castro, the Mob, right wing generals, the CIA, LBJ, Nixon, the federal reserve, representatives of huge defense contractors, and even anti-Castro exiles met in some secret location to get their stories straight on the impending whacking of the Prez. Not only was this gang brilliant, their ability to coordinate such a massive planning confab — flights had to be booked, hotel rooms reserved, boxed lunches brought in; all in secret — was awe-inspiring. Just getting Castro and his exiled opponents in the same conference room must have been nothing short of a miracle.

LBJ And The Man He Whacked

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The city of Dallas is planning a big shindig for the 50th to be held smack-dab in Dealey Plaza, where the hit took place. It’s not known if organizers will stage a reenactment but I’d bet against it. OSHA regulations put in place since the assassination probably would preclude having an actress in a pink Chanel suit climb on the trunk of the limousine.

Imagine, though, the field day the conspiracy theorists are going to have, come this fall. Already, Bill O’Reilly’s two assassination-porn books, Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy, are New York Times bestsellers. Sales of the latter likely will go through the roof starting in September.

Here are a few fun facts about Jackie Kennedy’s famous dress. It’s in a vault in Maryland, embargoed until the year 2103. Jackie’s mom sent the suit and the purse her daughter carried that fateful day to the National Archives shortly after the assassination. The suit has never been cleaned. Oh, and Coco Chanel, despite never having commented on the fact that one of her creations had suddenly become a gruesome icon, did say some years later that, because of her penchant for wearing miniskirts, Jackie “wears her daughter’s clothes.”

Jackie And The Pink Suit

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Coco sure knew what the important things in life were, no?

A website dealing with all things Jackie actually has an entire page devoted to the pink suit.

And, natch, the chic ghoul can buy a replica pink suit on eBay; it’s a steal at $189.99.

That pink pillbox hat Jackie wore? It’s missing.

One of the archivists in charge of the suit said a couple of years ago, “It looks like it’s brand new, except for the blood.” Which is like saying December 7th, 1941 was a perfect day in Oahu, except for that mess down by the docks.

I was seven years old when Lee Harvey Oswald did his thing. I was vaguely aware of the existence of President Kennedy. I only knew the nuns at St. Giles had red-rimmed eyes when they told us we were to go home that gray Friday afternoon. My second-grade classmates and I momentarily believed the word assassination signified something really good, considering we’d never heard it before and it allowed us to bolt school early.

When I got home, my mother was compulsively vacuuming in front of the TV. She was crying. I’d never seen her cry before. I figured she personally knew JFK. Otherwise, why would she be so busted up that he’d died?

That, I can safely say, was a loss of innocence. Believe me, we’re going to be sick to death of hearing that phrase by November.

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Abraham, Martin & John

To this day, this song brings tears to my eyes. It was released soon after Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in 1968.

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07/06/2013

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Arena Rock, Barack Obama, Don Cornelius, George Zimmerman, Kansas (band), Michael Jackson, Motown, Neil Peart, Paul McCartney, Rare Earth, Rodney King, Sex Pistols, Stevie Wonder, Ted Nugent, Trayvon Martin

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Times Change

And often for the better. Dig this remastered blast from the past. Rare Earth was the first all -white group to have a hit on the Motown label. This album cut goes on for nearly 22 minutes, as did many anthemic and iconic tunes did back in 1969 and ’70.

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These are blue-eyed soul brothers if there ever were any, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Don Cornelius. You can cite this tune as proof if you care to make the argument that music was better three, four, five, or six decades ago. Which seems a fool’s errand as far as I’m concerned.

This track has a drum solo that goes on for — get this — more than three minutes. Hell, plenty of rock ‘n roll era songs lasted just three minutes in toto.

Here’s a confession: I detested drum solos. In fact, when I stopped going to big, arena-rock concerts sometime around 1975, one of my main reasons was the fear that I’d climb the rafters and jump off to my certain death if I was subjected to yet another drum solo.

Neil Peart Bangs Away

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I ask you, my loyal readers who are old enough to remember big shows at the International Amphitheater or the Chicago Stadium or Market Square Arena in Indy or Freedom Hall in Louisville, what was the purpose of the drum solo? Did you enjoy hearing them? Why?

Honestly, I want to know. Because I always felt they drained the life out of any concert. I recall always starting to look around the arena in a state of sheer boredom when the drummer got going. I could never understand why the people around me went apeshit at some point during the drum solo.

Anyway, I assume there aren’t drum solos anymore, which seems a huge mark in favor of today’s concert-goers.

I await your comments.

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History

My last arena-rock concert was Paul McCartney & Wings at the Stadium in 1975. McCartney was my least favorite Beatle and by the mid-70s his music was unlistenable. By the ’80s, when he pushed treacle like “The Girl Is Mine” and “Say Say Say” with Michael Jackson and “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder, he should have been brought before the World Court for crimes against humanity’s ears.

Still, a guy I knew was scalping tix to see McCartney and I felt compelled to buy them for the then-princely sum of $25 the pair because of the history of the thing. Within a year and a half I’d made the full transition to punk music and more intimate venues like the Aragon Ballroom and Tut’s.

The Aragon

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In fact, somewhere in my box of keepsakes I still have the tickets for the Sex Pistols New Year’s Eve show at the Ivanhoe Theater, one of four stops they had to cancel because they couldn’t get visas in time. They only played seven dates on their American tour, the highlights of which being Sid Vicious carving the words “Gimme a fix” in his chest and Johnny Rotten coughing up blood due to the flu.

I get the feeling that some arena-rock aficionados and drum solo lovers might call me out on this one but I’m not claiming the Sex Pistols were anything more than a sensational middle finger directed at the pretentious prog rock of the day. As long as they helped bury Kansas, the Pistols’ll be okay by me. Suffice it to say I’ve seldom, if ever, listened to them on iTunes.

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Court & Spark

Right now my money’s teetering between conviction on a much lesser charge and a complete acquittal for King Doofus George Zimmerman in Florida.

Book it: He ain’t gonna fry for a 2nd degree rap. He was getting the bejesus kicked out of him by Trayvon Martin (not that I blame the kid) and any reasonable jury has to nix the murder call.

I don’t think the jury really wants to let the pudgy Guardian of the Neighborhood walk but they may have to. And if they do, what’s the reaction on the streets going to be? Are we in for a reprise of LA 1992?

The Thick Blue Line

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Back twenty years ago after the Rodney King verdict came down South Central LA residents tore up the town, leading to 53 deaths and a billion dollars-worth of damage. But that was well before the election of Barack Obama and the resultant sense among the lower primate orders of the American electorate that “outsiders” and “aliens” (read the N-word here) were taking over their holy land. If dark-skinned folks take to the streets after a potential Zimmerman pass, are the armed-to-the-teeth Ted Nugent wannabes of America going to wade into the fray?

Role Model

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It could happen.

Then the Prez might be pressured to send in federal troops and once that happens, the militias and tinfoil-hat gangs will really take the gloves off.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.

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07/05/2013

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Aaron Copland, Anarchism, Barack Obama, Conspiracy Theory, Dinesh D'Souza, Fanfare for the Common Man, Grover Cleveland, Joe DiMaggio, Joe the Plumber, Judson Phillips, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Ben Cramer, Rush Limbaugh, Samuel Wurzelbacher, Soma Coffee, Tea Party Nation, Ted Nugent

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Love It Or Hate It?

Barack Obama yesterday did what American presidents do every Fourth of July. He told us how fabulous we are, how rich our history is, what intractable problems we’ve solved, what insurmountable obstacles we’ve overcome, and how we have the unique ability to face all the challenges of the future.

Then an orchestra played the 1812 overture, a bunch of fireworks were shot off, everybody went home, and this morning some of us are back at work.

Obama On The Fourth

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More than some of us are bitter because we have to pay outlandish taxes to support lazy bums, welfare queens, and clever pimps. I’ve always held that the vast majority of flamboyant patriots love America but hate Americans.

Anyway, Obama fulfilled his presidential duties no better or worse than any of his 43 predecessors (actually, he has 42 predecessors; Grover Cleveland, having served non-consecutive terms, is counted twice). The nation’s Cheerleader in Chief is always the big star on Independence Day and normally no one doubts how loyal he is to this holy land.

Barack Obama, of course, is different. He is, according to many, a Kenyan-born Muslim, homosexual, terrorist. He’s not one of “us.”

One Of Us

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I have to wonder, therefore, what the lunocracy thinks when they see Obama waving the flag and celebrating the land they’re certain he’s not a part of.

Just for giggles’ sake, here’s a sampler of observations over the years from the Neptunian Right re: Barack Obama:

◗ “He is an evil, dangerous man who hates America and hates freedom.” — Ted Nugent

◗ “Barack Obama does not like the American system of government. He doesn’t like our founding fathers either…. Obama does not love America. He hates America.” — Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips

◗ “[Barack Obama holds] an ideology remote from what Americans believe in or care about… something completely separate from American thought altogether.” — Dinesh D’Souza

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◗ “[W]hen it comes down to his ideology and mine, there’s a difference. I love America, and I don’t know what he does.” — Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”

◗ “I think it can now be said, without equivocation — without equivocation — that this man hates this country. He is trying — Barack Obama is trying — to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream.” — Rush Limbaugh

So, what do these and other like-minded deep thinkers feel when Obama tells us how fab we are on the Fourth?

I know they don’t have him on their short list for the best American prez ever. But given the above citations, they have to believe he’s the finest actor our great nation has ever produced.

Funny thing is, not one of my go-to sources for wingnut-ism even mentions Obama’s appearance at the pep rally for the Fourth in Washington yesterday. Which is a shame; what a golden opportunity for them to write and rant about the man’s shameless hypocrisy and how pervasive and underhanded his efforts to overthrow this great land are.

Who knows, maybe the Deranged Right is losing its edge. That’d be too bad; I’ve long felt they are the comic geniuses of our time.

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Anarchy In The USA

Soma Coffee is The Electron Pencil’s alternate office, as you well know if you’ve been following these screeds for any length of time. The joint was open yesterday, which I didn’t even know about until I came in this morning. I spent my Fourth napping, writing, washing a dish or two, and sharing in a nice smoked beef brisket with my next door neighbors. Overall, it was my typical Independence Day.

I Wonder If I Can Write Off My Coffee

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Not so typical, as I learned today, at Soma. The place has a life-sized cardboard cut-out of that iconic Marilyn Monroe photo, the one where she’s standing over a subway grate and her skirt is being blown upward. (BTW, acc’d’g to the riveting biography of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer, The Hero’s Life, Joltin’ Joe whacked Marilyn around pretty handily after that particular photo shoot. The story goes that DiMagg didn’t want his wife to be viewed as a “slut” and so he punched her up, but only in places that would be hidden by her clothes. Ick.) Anyway, the cut-out is in the coffeehouse’s bathroom which, at least in these hinterlands of South Central Indiana, is noted far and wide for its compelling decor.

Sadly, some kid Anarchist with a Magic Marker® defaced the cut-out while the rest of us were congratulating ourselves for being Americans.

Recruitment Poster?

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Taciturn Mike, a mild-mannered electronics engineer for the Navy whom dedicated Anarchists might deem a vile tool of the military-industrial complex, wonders why the vandal didn’t decorate, say, the county courthouse or some other symbol of corrupt tyranny with the anarchists’ logo. He also wonders what the offender had in mind: Does he expect the graffito to goose this year’s Anarchist recruitment figures?

I have no such wonderment. The Anarchist in question is simply an asshole.

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Fanfare For The Common Man

This, babies, is the sound of patriotism.

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07/02/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

Sometimes I think World Net Daily was made up just for me.

For my entertainment. For my edification. For my sense of superiority over the gang of lunatics that puts it out.

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Maybe this is what I’m missing out on by not being a sexist slob or a racist. Scads of folks across this holy land seem to feel they are better than others simply because said others either possess vaginas or dark skin. It must feel good to know in your heart that women are weak and stupid and blacks are criminal and lazy — and you’re not one of them.

Superiority must be a trip, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of being a sexist and/or racist?

So yeah, I feel superior — moral- and intellectual-wise — to the jabbering chuckleheads who populate the WND universe.

The WND pantheon includes busts of that great philosopher Chuck Norris, who has fap-fantasized about becoming the president of the Republic of Texas after it secedes (oh, please!), and the redoubtable Jerome Corsi. You may recall Corsi swearing up and down during the 2004 presidential campaign that John Kerry had faked his Vietnam wounds. And, more recently, he has posited that Barack Obama is some kind of a Kenyan fag abortionist or something.

Chuck Norris And Friends

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The WND faithful also are regularly treated to the screechings of Phyllis Schlafly and David Limbaugh (who almost makes big bro Rush sound occasionally sane).

Yeesh.

WND is chock full of ads for gold (the preferred safe investment harbor for survivalists), magical vitamins and elixirs, fountains of youth, and even for the newly-martyred Paula Deen. The fly on this pile of horseshit is none other than former baseball pitcher John Rocker, who pens a regular op-ed column for the site.

John Rocker, for chrissakes!

Anyway, wouldn’t you know it, last week’s US Supreme Court decision to coerce all good, white, straight men into butt sex has the WND crew all aflutter.

Some self-described Christian lawyer named Matt Barber, a regular WND contributor, is convinced he’s going to be imprisoned sooner rather than later as a direct result of the gay marriage ruling. And you know what happens in the joint, don’t you?

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Anyway, Barber recounts a hand-wringing email exchange he had with another self-avowed Christian lawyer, who remains nameless in his Monday column. After speculating that the gay marriage OK will lead to the obligatory state-sanctioned unions of brothers and sisters (ick) and rampant polygamy (just a tad less ick), Barber’s pen pal pronounces:

In my 35 years as a Christian, I never seriously believed we might end up in prison for our faith — except, perhaps, for something like a pro-life demonstration. This is the first time it seriously occurs to me that the trajectory of the nation is such that it is possible in five to 10 years.

Because, as you are well aware, the Christians are such an oppressed minority in this country.

Barber couldn’t agree with his friend more. He writes:

Do I believe Christians will face real persecution, such as loss of livelihood, civil penalties, physical abuse or even jail? Absolutely.

So, there you have it. Gay marriage equals Christian concentration camps.

And, yeah, I’m superior to these howler monkeys, moral- and intellectual-wise.

It does feel good. Thanks, WND.

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Borrowers, Lenders & The Mob

Margaret, the Big Cheese at the Book Corner, Bloomington’s only independent bookseller where I peddle ’em Mondays through Wednesdays, will probably clunk me in the head for this one but, I gotta tell you, I’m becoming addicted to the library.

Not The Library

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I’m reading a couple of books a week now, mainly because I’ve been borrowing from the Monroe County Public Library. I have zero idea why I haven’t done this before.

Think of it: your town or big city has within it a system wherein you can take books, CDs, or DVDs home for your personal use — for free. All you have to do is flash a library card.

You may say, Sure, Big Mike, we know all about it, but when’s the last time you did it?

I mean, even the fire department charges your survivors for sending an ambulance over when your heart explodes from a lifetime of sliders and Pop Tarts. The library doesn’t charge you a penny. How can it be that there isn’t a line around the block when the place opens in the morning?

Anyway, I’m just finishing up a book called When Corruption Was King, written by Robert Cooley with help from former Chicago Magazine editor Hillel Levin. Cooley was a mobbed up, kinky lawyer who was in bed with legendary Chicago First Ward bosses Pat Marcy and Fred Roti, who did the bidding of the city’s Outfit.

Alderman Fred Roti

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The Outfit, of course, is Chicagoese for the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, wiseguys, goodfellas, or whatever Hollywood wants to call organized crime. According to Cooley, the Outfit, through Marcy et al, controlled Cook County’s courts, much of the Chicago Police Department, and too many city agencies to list here. Suffice it to say if you wanted a quick building permit, a zoning variance that the neighbors had been fighting tooth and nail, or just to get your teenaged kid off for denting the skull of some hapless Puerto Rican with a baseball bat, your lawyer paid a visit to Pat Marcy and slipped a nickel or a few dimes into his pudgy hand.

A nickel, in Chicago parlance, is $500. A dime, natch, is a grand.

So, the First Ward boys were the extra-legal funnel through which all smart city business flowed. Marcy and crew took care of the average citizen in the know as well as the big boys who ran the city’s gambling, vice, and narcotics operations, among other colorful pastimes. Most Chicago crime experts believed Marcy was a “made guy,” meaning he was an officially approved member of the Outfit. And, no, the Chicago mob didn’t have any elaborate ceremonies and rituals, the likes of which were portrayed in The Godfather and every other crime movie made since. In fact, the Outfit was an equal opportunity employer, welcoming members of every ethnic group imaginable into its ranks, so long as they were good earners and were willing to snap a guy’s thumb when called upon to do so.

Fiction

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Cooley revealed the fixing of murder cases and the buying of state legislation through efforts of Marcy and his guys. Big circuit court judges who’d previously nurtured reputations as law-and-order hard-asses were in truth, Cooley and Levin wrote, guys who’d fix any case for a buck.

See, Cooley was a big player in these shenanigans until, he says, he got fed up, had a change of heart, and walked into the US Justice Department’s Chicago office unannounced and told the feds he wanted to play ball with them. Cooley then wore a wire when he did business with the First Ward boys. The evidence he amassed led to dozens of arrests and convictions and the eventual dismantling of the First Ward pigsty.

Cooley’s no Raymond Chandler or even John Grisham but his story is as riveting as anything they could come up with.

And, by the way, the kind of pervasive corruption that Cooley helped bring down in Chicago’s First Ward may be a thing of the past now but it was built upon the passing of cash from one hand to another.

The last I heard, cash still buys things. Enough of it can still buy permits, justice, and legislation. Only now, the system is nationwide, or even global, as opposed to Pat Marcy’s petit-realm. Look at the so-called Monsanto Protection Act for proof.

We need a new Robert Cooley.

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06/23/2013

1 Comment

9/11, Alex Jones, Barack Obama, Chuck Norris, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, James O'Keefe, NSA, Pentagon Papers, Piers Morgan, Steve Wozniak, Tea Party, WND, WorldNetDaily

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Imperfect Hero

Computer patriarch Steve Wozniak told CNN’s journalist-manqué Piers Morgan the other day that the secret-spiller who blabbed that the NSA is trawling through yours and my phone and interwebs records, purportedly for the purpose of looking for bad guys, is the moral and heroic equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg.

Steve Wozniak (photo by Nik Harrison)

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Now, Ellsberg was one of my great heroes back when I was an idealistic (and insufferable) teen rebel. Now that I’m an old man rebel, Ellsberg still holds an honored spot in my pantheon. (And I’m still insufferable.)

Anyways, I’m tempted to agree with Wozniak. Edward Snowden did indeed perform a patriotic service by revealing the NSA’s spook methodology. If the bosses of my gummint are eavesdropping on my conversations or peeping in my garage windows, I want to know about it. Even if they are protecting me from 9/11: The Sequel.

Look, I have no desire to have skyscrapers collapse on top of me (and the way things are going here in B-Town, our heretofore quaint town square ought to be ringed with supertalls by the start of the next IU semester.) Still, if the Feds are honestly trying only to protect us, I want to know how often G-men are going to be rifling through my folded underwear.

Secret Drawers

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Guaranteed, there’ll always be one or two true-believer pencil-pushers who want to expand the spy ops to swallow up anybody they disagree with politically or whom they feel might not worship god properly. As long as we know what mechanisms they have in place to harass us, we can at least pretend to resist.

All that said, this Snowden character sure gives me the willies. From his premature Army discharge to his selfie-addicted girlfriend (whom he suddenly bolted from when the story broke) to his habit of wearing a red hood when he logs on to his interwebs browser, he just seems like a guy who sees life more as a histrionic graphic novel than, well, reality.

He calls himself a “spook” and says he’s been spying all his adult life which is like a guy bragging that he’s a member of the Mafia. Real spooks and real mobsters rarely have the inclination to call attention to their job descriptions.

His globe-trotting odyssey keeping him one step ahead of teed-off cops and prosecutors seems a bit overkill-ish. He says he can’t bear the idea that he lives in a country that’s a nest of spies, then he hides out in Hong Kong and, now, Moscow. Honestly? He wants to couch surf in China and Russia to get away from spies?

What’s next — he wants to get a job at McDonald’s because he’s worried about Americans’ eating habits?

None of Snowden’s weirdnesses, in any case, should detract from the importance of what he has revealed. He’s a hero for blowing the whistle. But he’s Daniel Ellsberg with a lot of baggage.

No Baggage

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When all is said and done, though, I shouldn’t care about the baggage, only the revelations.

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The Plot To Oust Obama

It may not surprise you to know that the psychotics who run World Net Daily love this whole NSA domestic spying story.

Their take, natch, is that President Obama, channeling his inner Hitler, spends all his days and nights listening to phone conversations of honest, law-abiding Murricans, hoping to put the screws to Tea Party-ists, militia members, and other pathologically bent individuals.

They’re certain, of course, that Obama’s Secret Black Shirts will be rounding up all gun-fondling, god-fearing, Flat Earthers long before his eight year Reich comes to an end.

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And they’re not gonna be marched into re-education camps without a fight, god help them.

If they had any sense, they’d wish with all their hearts that Obama actually was listening in on their conversations. Nothing could drive him from office quicker than suffering their paranoiac prattle for anything more than three and a half seconds. He’d be pulling his hair out and bouncing around the Oval Office like Daffy Duck if subjected to (what passes for) their logic.

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In fact, perhaps this whole NSA deal is a clandestine operation conjured by the likes of Chuck Norris, Alex Jones, James O’Keefe, and other stars of the Right Wing bedlamite firmament. They know that if the Prez does indeed monitor their respective audience’s jabberings, he’ll be carted away from the White House in a straightjacket before they get to discussing which canned goods they should stock up on for the coming apocalypse .

Who sez Me Party-ists are stupid?

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06/21/2013

1 Comment

Advertising, Barack Obama, Bodyform, Christian Domestic Discipline, Facebook, Jezebel, Menstruation, Richard Neill, Rolling Stones

Your Daily Hot Air

Blood Feud

The Loved One pitched this link my way last night:

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Seems that last fall, some guy from the usually insufferable United Kingdom posted a rant on FB, calling out a British manufacturer of menstrual pads for lying. To him.

Yep. This chap, named Richard Neill, wrote that all his early life he’d assumed women who were being visited by Aunt Flo were having a bang-up time, running and jumping and grinning like maniacs. At least that’s what he gleaned from adverts (don’t these Brits have a cutesy way with words sometimes?)

By the time he became old enough to hang around with women and they started letting him know when it was time for the Clean-up in Aisle 1, he realized that the sloughing off of the uterine and vaginal linings didn’t signal several days of bliss — either for the sloughee or for any human beings within a several-mile radius of her.

In fact, as many of us who strive not to be fooled by corporate adspeak (read: lying) know, those monthly three-to-five days often — way, way, way too often — are among the the most harrowing of our lives.

■

So, Neill called out the Bodyform outfit via social media and — whaddya know? — his post captured better than a hundred thousand Likes. And Bodyform, rather than call for the RAF to bomb the man’s home, decided to have a little fun.

The company produced a slick vid featuring the company CEO (played by an actress) apologizing for misleading the women (and men) of the world (or at least its market share of the orb). The actress-as-CEO looks meaningfully into the camera as she recites her mea culpa. Then she says, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but there’s no such thing as a happy period. The reality is, some people simply can’t handle the truth.” She then tells Richard he’s blown the cover off Bodyform’s efforts to protect men from the truth about women’s beastly time, this over images of men weeping and gnashing their teeth. “You, Richard, have torn down that veil and exposed this myth.”

Aw, hell, watch the vid for yourself. This, my fellow Pencillistas, is creative advertising.

■

Funny, no? It makes me wish Barack Obama and the Dems had done something similar when Me Party-ists, Birthers, and other whack-a-doodles started accusing the president of everything from socialism to Manchurian Candidacy to failure to brush his teeth after every meal.

It certainly couldn’t have been less successful than the strategy they’ve used thus far.

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You’ve Been A Naughty Little Girl

More evidence that too many fundamentalist Christians are really sexual fetishists in disguise: There’s a lively group of Obsessive Lovers of An Invisible Friend in the Sky who follow a path they call Christian Domestic Discipline.

■

The idea being, the king of the household must maintain order within his cellblock…, er, home, by spanking the little woman now and again.

How quaint. And biblical.

And, let’s be frank: Hot!

Well, for some.

Many of us — your loyal e-Pencil-weilding correspondent included — don’t dig pain. In fact, I’ve dedicated my life to the avoidance of it. But I’m an open-minded fellow so I say if you need pain to get off, then go get whipped.

The Sanctity Of Marriage

■

When it comes to sex, my philosophy is anything goes, as long as kids, explosives, and animals aren’t involved. (The bestial scene is so icky, you know?)

Anyways, who are these CDD folks trying to kid, beside themselves? Not I, that’s fer shur. Correction, they are trying to fool me but I ain’t falling for it.

There can be no reason on god’s green (and purple-y bruised) Earth why a man would feel the need to whip his helpmeet unless he was getting off on it. There, I’ve said it.

And any helpmeet who sticks around for said whipping also must be getting engorged in the nethers when the whip comes down. I’ve said it again.

Yet this gang of CDD-ers insists the Big Daddy-o wants us all to play master-and-slave.

This religion racket is the damnedest thing, no?

[h/t to Jezebel.]

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When The Whip Comes Down

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06/14/2013

Your Daily Hot Air

The Right Way To Kill

Here is the second (natch) of the 10 Commandments of the Holy American Empire, Inc.:

Thou shalt not kill, unless it is with bullets or factory-made bombs, then kill away.

Our Pontiff…, er, President, Barack Obama yesterday issued a bull from the Domus Alba (hehe, I’m getting all Catholic-y and Latin-y on you) saying that those nasty Syrian thugs under Bashar al-Assad have just gone too far, what with whacking their own citizens with sarin gas.

We, the faithful, won’t stand for this!

See, we’re a very moral people. We have faith in mass-produced piercing projectiles and explosive compounds (once again, made only in free market-, 2nd Amendment-anointed enterprise facilities). They are sacred and can be used for any purpose their purchasers desire (although most pious Americans use them to free their fellow human beings from the chains of this Earthly realm.)

Holy Killing Machines

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Whew.

Glad we’ve got that all cleared up. The Syrian civil war has thus far claimed upwards of 100,000 people. Most have been killed, of course, by bullets and bombs. And although their premature leave-takings are somewhat regrettable (they are, after all, only brown people), we Americans have always found a way to excuse the air-conditioning of human bodies by means of ammo.

But sarin gas? My god, man! What kind of animals are these Syrians?

We’ll stand for a hundred thousand or even a million bodies being blown to kingdom come by high speed hunks of metal but any madmen who dare to take 150 lives by dropping pellets of poison gas near them must be stopped before the whole of the human race is wiped out.

That’s it for today’s sermon. Go in peace.

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Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court, which usually swoons and bats its eyelashes at big corporations, dealt Myriad Genetics a huge blow yesterday when the justices ruled unanimously that human DNA cannot be patented.

Not So Fast

■

Imagine. Myriad and several other mad scientist outfits wanted to put patents on the human genes they’d isolated and identified, forcing other researchers to pay them hefty royalty fees should they decide to delve into those genes themselves. Clarence Thomas, whose utterances I generally take as seriously as those of a ranting street corner preacher, wrote the decision. “Myriad did not create anything,” he wrote, exhibiting a wisdom I’ve found lacking in him since his elevation to the Court by George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Let’s be frank, this decision is a shocker. SCOTUS just last month ruled that Monsanto had the right to squeeze every penny it could out of family farmers who dare to harvest a second generation of soybeans originally planted with the evil agribusiness empire’s pesticide-resistant seeds. In other words, that same unanimous court had ruled that Monsanto will own the rights to all the soybean plantings on Earth within a few years, considering the fact that pretty much every farmer who wants to make a buck on soybeans will use the company’s Frankenseeds.

The Monsanto decision coupled with the work of the company’s legislation-writing lobbyists are prima facie evidence that Big Business is the real government of this holy land.

So, what’s with Myriad? All it wanted to do was own the genetic encoding of every human being on Earth. What could be more entrepreneurial than that? Ayn Rand would have had a string of spontaneous orgasms just thinking about it.

Own Me, Myriad, Make Me Your Slave!

■

So here’s the latest scoreboard of the Age of Reagan Supreme Court:

1 — The Good, Decent, and Friendly People of the Earth

998 — Corporate pirates, banksters, war profiteers, polluters, etc.

Well, it’s a start.

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The Business Of Piece

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06/11/2013

1 Comment

African National Congress, Barack Obama, Curtis LeMay, George Wallace, Nelson Mandela, Racism, Robben Island, Ronald Reagan, Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, Tea Party, University of Alabama, Vietnam War

Your Daily Hot Air

Two Rebels

Ironic, isn’t it, that on the 50th anniversary of Alabama Governor George Wallace’s infamous stand in the schoolhouse door it’s entirely possible that Nelson Mandela may take leave of this very, very weird proposition we call life?

■

Mandela’s in bad shape, laying in a South African hospital bed with a serious lung infection, surrounded by his family. His former wife Winnie even stopped by yesterday. You know, if you’re 94 years old, already sickly, in intensive care fighting a recurring lung infection for the third time in six months — and you’re ex-wife shows up to pay her respects — you’ve got to figure the curtain’s about to fall.

One more bad sign: South Africa’s current president, Jacob Zuma, says folks in that country ought to pray for the former prez. Politicians don’t pray for each other for because they have head colds.

Oh, just a reminder, it was the official position of this holy land during the administration of one Saint Ronald Reagan that Mandela and his African National Congress were terrorists. And, oh, guess what, Mandela himself wasn’t officially un-declared a terrorist here until July, 2008.

Mandela’s Robben Island Home During The Reagan Years

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July goddamned 2008!

Anyway, George Wallace dramatically blocked the entrance of a couple of black kids to the University of Alabama on this date in 1963.

Here’s the official text of Wallace’s speech at that door, delivered moments before federalized Alabama National Guard soldiers escorted Vivian Malone and James Hood into the school so they might become students there. It’s a long, convoluted argument for the sovereignty of his state and you might not have the time or inclination to read it all. So, as a public service, I’ll provide a condensed version of it here:

We don’t want no niggers in our white schools.

A mere five years later, George C. Wallace ran for president of the United States, carrying five states with nearly 10 million votes, or 13.5 percent of the national total. As if Wallace’s own philosophies about his fellow human beings weren’t hair-raising enough, his running mate, former US Army General Curtis LeMay, suggested late in the campaign that this beacon of democracy just might have to use nuclear weapons to settle its little tiff with the Vietnamese.

The Youth Candidate?

■

You want more? Fine. Wallace and LeMay were the preferred ticket of the majority of young white men in the entire nation that year.

And you’re surprised Me Party-ists and other patriots are so freaked out over the presidency of Barack Obama?

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06/04/2013

1 Comment

Ayn Rand, Barack Obama, Bill Bryson, breitbart.com, Living for the City, Made in America, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Stevie Wonder, Tea Party/IRS, The Pencil Today, WND, WorldNetDaily

Your Daily Hot Air

Woe Is Them

So, the Me Party-ists will form a conga line before the House Appropriations Committee beginning today to tell the world how mean and rotten the feds have been to them.

The poor things had to fill out extra forms in order to receive tax exempt status for their efforts to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick. It’s tyranny, I tell you! Hitler was a wuss compared to the Kenyan freedom-hater whose name we shall not even breathe [and it’s probably phony anyway.]

Social Service

■

See what I’m doing here? Just trying to be as full of horseshit as the Tea Party-ists and their fellow mollycoddlers and squealers.

Natch, breitbart.com and WND are shrieking to high heaven that the Muslim, commie, fag, abortionist who currently occupies the White House illegally is trying to crush the Tea Party and other saintly patriots not via guns or imprisonment but — worse, far worse — through red tape. Oh, the humanity!

Alright, people, looks like I have to say this again. Those right wing conservative groups were trying to game the system by applying for tax exempt status. They are not — repeat, not! — social service organizations.

In fact, their raison d’être is not to feed the hungry, house the homeless, or heal the sick. Quite the contrary. According to the Tea Punks and their philosophical patron saint Ayn Rand, the hungry, the homeless, and the sick deserve to be that way. Rick Santorum and Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are leaders — successes — not because they were born on third base but because they hit a triple.

Rand: “Me. Me. Me. Me. But, On The Other Hand, Me.”

■

The sooner this holy land rids itself of the lamprey eels that are the hungry, homeless, and sick, the better we’ll all be.

Why do you think these Radical Right-ists are four-square in favor of slashing funds for social service agencies? The only honest social service agency is the one that recognizes that the mud people and the undesirables have no place in this great free market heaven that once was and will be again.

Tax exempt, huh? Like I’m gonna pay with my tax dollars for them to spread their hork-ish, self-centered, whitey-jive without a fight.

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If You’re Unhappy, I’m Happy

Not that the excessive self-love of the Me Party-ists is anything new in these great United States. I was thumbing through Bill Bryson’s neat book, Made in America, last night and came upon this passage:

By 1990, America’s sense of declining economic prowess generated a volume of disquiet that sometimes verged on the irrational. When a professor of economics at Yale polled his students as to which they would prefer, a situation in which America had 1 percent economic growth while Japan experienced 1.5 percent growth, or one in which America suffered a 1 percent downturn but Japan fell by even more, 1.5 percent, the majority voted for the latter. They preferred America to be poorer if Japan were poorer still, rather than a situation in which both became more prosperous.

Honestly, they’d rather suffer as long as the dirty Japs were suffering, too? That’s not schadenfreude; that’s lunacy.

This Ought To Make Those Students Happy

■

It’s also telling that the poll’s respondents were students in an economics course, meaning they were most likely business students. As in future leaders who, for their very own benefit, will lay off tens of thousands, sully the air and the water, sabotage the success of others, and, overall, commit countless crimes against humanity.

Future Tea Party-ists, in other words.

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Living For The City

For a brief, precious moment, we actually gave a damn about the problems of other people. How quaint!

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Category Archives: Barack Obama

A No Vote For Warren

Swoon (AP)

They’re Starting Already

Fetal Positions

Never Mess With My Lunch

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Flying Saucers And Pink Dresses

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LBJ And The Man He Whacked

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Times Change

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History

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Court & Spark

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Love It Or Hate It?

Obama On The Fourth

One Of Us

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I Wonder If I Can Write Off My Coffee

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Fanfare For The Common Man

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Chuck Norris And Friends

Borrowers, Lenders & The Mob

Not The Library

Alderman Fred Roti

Fiction

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Imperfect Hero

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Secret Drawers

No Baggage

The Plot To Oust Obama

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Blood Feud

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The Sanctity Of Marriage

When The Whip Comes Down

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The Right Way To Kill

Holy Killing Machines

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Not So Fast

1 — The Good, Decent, and Friendly People of the Earth

998 — Corporate pirates, banksters, war profiteers, polluters, etc.

The Business Of Piece

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Two Rebels

Mandela’s Robben Island Home During The Reagan Years

The Youth Candidate?

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Woe Is Them

Social Service

Rand: “Me. Me. Me. Me. But, On The Other Hand, Me.”

If You’re Unhappy, I’m Happy

This Ought To Make Those Students Happy

Living For The City

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