Category Archives: Hillary Clinton

06/15/2014
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Ann Romney, Artisanal Cheesemaking, Barack Obama, Climate Change Denial, Food and Drug Administration, Hate Groups, Hillary Clinton, Open Carry, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of California-Irvine

Hot Air

A Stand Up Guy — Finally

At long last.

Prez Barack H.O. the other day finally — finally! — called out the idiotic climate change deniers in Congress and the Right Wing media. He was especially hard on the elected deniers who’ve tried to erect roadblocks before every gov’t attempt to stem the flow of crap into our air and water.

Of cerebral titans like Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who, while not overtly denying the science,  still play along with their partisan confreres who do, Obama said: “There are some who duck the question by saying, ‘Hey, I’m not a scientist.’ Let me translate that for you: what that means is, ‘I accept that man-made climate change is real, but if I admit it, I’ll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot.”

The Kenyan-born secret Muslim mole who has stolen the White House from its rightful heirs for all intents and purposes told a crowd of University of California-Irvine graduates Friday that climate change deniers are full of horseshit.

Obama/UC-Irvine

“I Must Say They’re Full Of Horseshit.”

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What took you so long, Barry?

Oh right, you haven’t wanted to alienate these folks because you have to work with them. As if they’ll work with you whether you alienate them or not.

Anyway, Obama stood up for something for a change. Personal to the C-in-C: Keep it up.

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A Cheesy Regulation

The interwebs this week have been buzzing with news that the federal Food and Drug Administration might want to ban the aging of cheese on wooden board, a practice that’s been going on since the first splotch of milk started going sour.

Cheesemaking

Cheese Aging On Wood Boards

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Huzzah! The FDA has issued a clarification that says, in essense, Hey, don’t sweat it. The feds, it turns out, won’t be crushing artisanal cheesemakers with the heels of their jackboots by banning wood board aging after all.

I’m sure this apparent reversal has more to do with Open Carry cheesemakers advancing on Washington, DC than anything else.

Open Carry

… The Right Of The People To Age Monterey Jack…

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Cinderella?

Back to presidents, the next one has taken some heat of late for her statement that she and her hubby Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House in January, 2001.

Bill Clinton, of course, came from poverty but Hillary grew up in the very comfortable and privileged Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. As such, she has no idea what the term “dead broke” means.

Clintons

We’ve Got To Pay That Electric Bill

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When Bill said “I feel your pain” back when he was running for prez the first time, you could believe him. Hillary, though, had better not say any such thing because she has no idea. This is not to say she can’t be an effective and powerful voice for the poor when — if? Naw, when — she takes the Oath of Office in Jan. 2017. Only that she’s never had to scrimp or save or eke for anything at any time in her life.

In this sense, her statement was as offensive as Ann Romney’s in 2012 when she bragged that she was a working woman because she’d raised kids at home. I wrote at the time that it’s doubtful she’d ever had to worry about scrubbing the toilet, mopping up a spilled gallon of milk, or cleaning up a splash of puke. If she did it would be because the help was off and the emergency household chore thing was sort of a lark.

Personal to Hill: Ixnay on telling the world about your financial struggles; you’ve got enough credibility problems already.

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The States Of Hate

Thanks to Helen Harrell and Carol Fischer for pointing this out from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

SPLC Map

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Go ahead and check the site for a more detailed look at this plotting but a quick glance shows how hate seems to be centered in a certain area of this holy land. The southeastern quarter of this nation is rife with people who so despise The Other that they’ve joined groups to do something about it.

Just a thought: Indiana seems a tad over-represented in relation to its size, doesn’t it?

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05/09/2014
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Angela Davis, Boko Haram, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Godwin's Law, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Jet Magazine, Nigerian Girls Kidnapping, NUVO Magazine, Surveillance Society

Hot Air

Inflexible Moralizing

Glenn Greenwald made a name for himself around the world by hitching his wagon to the Edward Snowden runaway horse. Greenwald, of course, is the reporter who published, via the Guardian US, Snowden’s revelations that this holy land is nosy about every single email you’ve ever written and every cell phone call you’ve ever made.

Greenwald

Greenwald (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP)

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Rightly so, we were aghast that our heretofore simon-pure leaders were attempting to peek over every transom in America. So Prez Barack H. O. had to toe the dirt in front of him for a few uncomfortable moments and get all apologetic for wanting to look under the socks in our collective upper right hand drawer.

[That’s three metaphors in one graf; is that my record?]

Snowden, meanwhile, started thinking he was the protagonist in a cheap spy novel and fled to Russia where freedom reigns eternal. And Greenwald found himself the hottest investigative reporter around.

Now, loyal Pencillistas know my feelings about Edward Snowden. Basically, he’s a dildo who somehow found himself in a position to do the rest of us one act of good and then proceeded to go back to being a dildo. As for Greenwald, I never thought much about him one way or the other, although I had a suspicion he might be a tad overzealous in view of the USA as this planet’s most odious villain. As in, we’re Nazi Germany sans the swastikas. In fact, Greenwald is skeptical of those who pooh-pooh Godwin’s Law practitioners.

Now we learn Greenwald is four-square against the United States sending police or military resources to Nigeria to assist that nation in finding its kidnapped 300 or so young girls.

His rationale? Well the US has done a lot of crappy things in its day so who are we to try to be good guys now? That and any expeditionary force, no matter how limited, surely will be the advance guard of an imperialist takeover of that oil-producing land.

Perhaps I’m naive but I believe Glenn Greenwald is full of horseshit.

A great number of Far Left radicals also buy into Greenwald’s reasoning. They’re calling any American effort to go over to Nigeria to help in the search “neo-colonialism.”

Nigeria

Click Image For Full Article

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They, too, are full of horseshit. Nigeria is suffering under the threat of those Boko Haram nitwits. And the president of the country until very recently was more concerned with silencing parents and their supporters calling for a stronger government effort to find the girls than actually finding the girls.

BTW, Nigeria in recent years has criminalized homosexuality. Oh, and most secondary schools in the state of Borno have been closed due to the menace of Boko Haram which means, literally, western writing is sinful.

The big shots in charge of Nigeria might not need neo-colonialism but they sure need a swift kick in the ass.

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Jet

From the very first time I ever rode an el train to downtown Chicago alone — in the summer of 1972 — there’d be kids walking from car to car hawking copies of Jet magazine. And, sure enough, they’d find at least one passenger in each car who’d buy the little, digest-sized mag. It cost 35 cents at the time.

In fact, I’ve found the cover of the first issue of Jet I ever saw:

Jet

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That’s Angela Davis, the era’s chic-est revolutionary. She was smart, determined, a college professor, a rebel, and gorgeous to boot. I already had a huge crush on her when the kid selling that month’s issue came through my car. I saw the cover as he neared me, repeating the mantra, Jat, Jat, Jat….

I would have paid a dollar and 35 cents for a copy, that’s how smitten I was with Angela Davis.

The discovery that black people had their own magazine was a revelation to me. Funny thing is, I was too scared to buy one from the kid. The only folks who bought them on the train had dark skin. I was certain the kid would snicker at me or some older black person would give me a dirty look. I never even opened a copy until my first bookstore job in 1977.

By that time, I knew white people were allowed to read Jet. Only they didn’t. We’ve come a long way.

Jet soon will publish its last print issue. Beginning in June, it’ll go online exclusively. I’m not going to cry phony tears over this transition. Working at the Book Corner (where we don’t carry Jet), I’ve come to understand that the vast majority of mags simply don’t sell. People are reading online now. I’m reading online now. Perhaps we can save a tree or two.

The only thing I’ll miss is those young black newsboys threading through the cars of an el train intoning, Jat, Jat, Jat….

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Wake Me When It’s Over

Are you as underwhelmed as I am by the prospect of Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush in 2016?

Clinton/Bush

Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z

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Well, one good thing. We’ll have our first woman president. No, make that a great thing. Alright, alright, I’ll stay up for the race.

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Indiana Ear Candy

The Indianapolis alternative weekly NUVO has released its 100 Best Hoosier Albums Ever.

You’ll recognize plenty of the artists: everyone from David Baker to Hoagy Carmichael to the Jackson Five and Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. But those big names are really the minority. You’ll discover a hell of a lot of great new music if you study the list and take a listen to some of the choices you’re unfamiliar with.

I have a feeling it’ll be a better experience than being earwormed by The Lion Sleeps Tonight (wink, wink, Susan Sandberg!)

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03/28/2014
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2014 FDR Gala, 2016 Presidential Election, 2104 Midterm Elections, Efrat Feferman, George Romney, Greed, Hillary Clinton, Lee Hamilton, Linda Robbins, Mitt Romney, Monroe County Democratic Party, Rugged Individualism, Shelli Yoder, Social Security Act of 1935, Tea Party, Trent Deckard

Hot Air

Bloomington’s Big Party

Monroe County Dems gathered together yesterday eve at the Convention Center to pat themselves on the back and to cheer each other on toward the fall elections. Politics, y’know?

The whole gang of Democratic elected officials in this town and county (almost all elected officials herein, truth be told) made the scene. Even B-town’s notoriously stealthy mayor, Mark Kruzan, showed his face. He contributed to the pep rally as befitting the star of the team but he did not say whether he’s running for a fourth term in 2015, as some have already whispered he may not.

Party chair Trent Deckard read off a seemingly endless list of candidates for the May 6th Democratic primary. When he finished, he told the throng he’d prob. be eligible for Social Security now. Fitting, because it was Franklin D. Roosevelt, after whom the annual bash is named, who signed SS into law.

FDR

FDR Signs The Social Security Act Into Law, 1935

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The honored guest of the confab was former US Congress dude Lee Hamilton. The Party presented Hamilton, now a distinguished scholar at Indiana University’s School of Global and International Studies, a certificate of gratitude for being a decent guy who could win an election or two. Hamilton said he tried to follow the path of Roosevelt, who looked upon any potential piece of legislation for what it did to benefit the average person. Sounds like county Dems have themselves a talking point for the 2014 elections.

And speaking of the upcoming beauty contest, the following Dem primary candidates were on hand yesterday:

Monroe County Republicans currently are looking for an old phone booth to reserve for their pow-wow.

[h/t to MC Dem Party sec’y Efrat Feferman for help with the abovementioned names.]

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Like Father, Like Son?

For the benefit of those whose historical perspective reaches back, oh, say, 15 minutes, one Willard Mitt Romney once, very long ago, wanted to be president of these here Yew-nited States of Murrica.

He lost to a commie, socialist, sub-human mongrel, abortionist, non-Murrican citizen born in Kenya and our holy land has crashed into a sea of shit ever since.

Well, that’s the narrative of the audience Willard Mitt Romney played to back in those paleozoic days of 2012.

Now, anyone who could figure out a way to lose an election to such a blatant example of bold, bald evil, you would think, might consider it better to keep his trap shut in ensuing years. But Ol’ Mitt is traipsing around the country these days, campaigning for Republican candidates for US Congress and various statehouses. Politics, y’know?

Anyway, Candidate Mitt repped a zeitgeist that posited if you’re rich, you have worked hard and are wonderfully fabulous and whatever you did to get that way was good and pure, and by contrast if you were in need, well then, you deserve it and you’d better get the hell out of my face.

Many of Mitt’s supporters considered themselves members of something called the Tea Party. That’s an almost-perfect name for them. They were only off by two letters. More properly, they should call themselves the Me Party.

Murrica, the Romney gang sang, was made great by gun-owning, god-fearing individuals who excelled despite the onerous burden of gov’t regulations and tyrannical things like labor laws and consumer protections. The rest of this sanctified land was populated by takers — those too lazy, unmotivated, or dark-skinned to amass piles of cash.

Romney/Bain

Mitt (Center) And The Bain Boys: Good & Pure

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Now, how could a man construct such a worldview? Romney himself might answer that by saying a man’s character is formed, in large part, by the most important male role model in his life — his daddy-o.

Mitt Romney’s old man was George Romney, auto company CEO, guv of Michigan from 1963 through 1969, and himself a candidate for prez in ’68. Romney pere is a relic of a long-gone age, a liberal Republican, if you can believe such a thing ever existed. In the 1960s, it did.

G. Romney Placard

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The old boy spoke about poverty and civil rights and Americans helping Americans and he even became a dove after visiting Vietnam, saying that our little excellent adventure there was a “tragic” blunder.

George Romney had this to say about the American slant on economics, something we’ve liked to refer to as “rugged individualism”:

It’s nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.

Wow. Imagine if the Kenyan Manchurian Prez had said that! Oh, the Me Party-ists, the GOP, and Romney fils would scream to high heaven that it was the preamble to a Soviet invasion.

In reality, Romney the Younger didn’t give a good goddamn about the lessons his pop tried to teach him.

So, why am I bringing this up? I’m getting this strange feeling that Ol’ Mitt is fixin’ to run for president again in 2016. I’m no more an idolator of Hillary Clinton than I was of Barack Obama, but I sure as hell will vote for her over a man who doesn’t have the good sense to listen when his father tries to teach him to be a decent human being.

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08/14/2013
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2016 Presidential Election, Birthers, Canada, Donald Trump, Harvest Moon, Hillary Clinton, Lord Christopher Monckton, Neil Young, Ted Cruz, Wonkette

Your Daily Hot Air

He’s a Furriner

How weird, weird, weird is it that some of those same Birthers and fellow trash can sniffers who turned purple when a brown man was elected Prez — because, after all, BHO couldn’t possibly be a real American — are now pretty cool with Ted Cruz?

That is, with the Tex. Sen. potentially being the CEO of the US Inc. Cruz, who certainly is not shooting down rumors that he’s f’nta run for the Oval O. come 2016, was born in — drum roll, please — Canada.

Cruz

Hoser

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Which, last I checked, is not part of the United States. Although, being predominantly white, maybe it is at that.

Donald Trump and some doorknob polisher named Lord Christopher Monckton, both of whom transformed themselves into dicks (in the 1940s, savvy-dame-snafu sense of slang as diminutive for detective, ironically) to hunt down proof of Barack Obama’s real place of birth in Kenya or Abortiastan, are big, big, big on a Great White North Presidency. Emphasis on the word…, aw, you know.

h/t to Wonkette for pointing this all out. Ironically, I had no idea Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz wasn’t born in this holy land. Then again, I studiously avoid reading anything at all about the gun-loving, gay-marriage-hating North American moose.

I get the sense that constitutional experts think Cruz being born north of the 49th Parallel should be no impediment to his presidential ambitions. Apparently, as long as his Mom was a US citizen and had lived in the Greatest Nation This Earth Has Ever Seen for 10 years prior to his emergence, he’s cool to be the Boss.

Bullwinkle J. Moose

Eligible

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Which, fascinatingly enough, should have shut all those Birthers the hell up even if Barack Obama was born in the Kremlin or Mau-Mau-ia. His Mom, after all, was a Kansan, which I know for a fact is in Murrica.

Ah, none of it matters anyhow; Hillary Clinton is a lock to be the next White House target of Right Wingnut Nation.

Anybody care to risk a C-note on that proposition?

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Harvest Moon

Speaking of Canadians.

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07/31/2013
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All the President's Men, Bill O'Reilly, Bloomington High School North, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Gawker, Goodbye Columbus, Hair Original Soundtrack, Hillary Clinton, Jesus Diaz, Joel Osteen, R.E. Paris, Slaughterhouse Five, Slavery, Surf Thugs, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Invisible Man, Trayvon Martin, White Boys/Black Boys

Your Daily Hot Air

Some Of My Best Friends Are White

Oh man oh man! A flamboyant tip o’the lid to book babe RE Paris for this one. She points out a spot-on farcical indictment of white culture and parenting from Gawker writer Jesus Diaz.

See, a bunch of ultra-violent, scary, faux-uniformed surf thugs raised havoc in Huntington Beach, California this week. They are, of course, white as white can be. Diaz takes this phenomenon and runs with it.

Photo by Allen J. Schaben/LA Times

Discrediting Their Race

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Following the template set recently by white navel-gazers bemoaning the black culture’s putative failings in raising children, taking responsibility, committing acts of mayhem upon each other and so on in the half-dozenth or so generation of fallout and blowback to the Trayvon Martin affair, Diaz points the finger at caucasians who are letting their race down.

“Many people don’t want to hear this kind of tough love,” Diaz writes, swiping the line from numerous white commentators. He then goes on to cite cherry-picked stats: 84 percent of whites are killed by other whites and most white rape victims are raped by whites.

Diaz calls white leaders Joel Osteen, Bill O’Reilly, and Hillary Clinton to task for not speaking out on the issue of white on white violence at surf rallies, equine events, and Ivy League campuses. He then spreads the blame uniformly across the entire white population — again, just as white self-appointed moral guardians are doing with blacks: “When did so many white parents fall asleep at the wheel?”

White People

No Excuse

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And in a brilliant crescendo, Diaz throws the old slavery-is-no-excuse rotten chestnut back at the pasty-faced commentators. “Whites in America,” he writes, “have been out from under their European ancestros’ boot heels for centuries…. So being ‘oppressed’ is no longer an excuse for behavior like this. How long must we wait for the white community to get its act together?”

Satire, my friends, is a crusher.

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Bah!

So, sophomores at Bloomington High School North who wish to take a certain Honors English course were compelled this summer to read Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

While typing this, I pondered whether to write forced at gunpoint rather than compelled. Obviously, I went with the less dramatic verbiage, although I’m having second thoughts about it all.

Why on this green Earth would a 15-year-old choose to spend her or his precious summer vacation reading a suicide pill like CD’s DC?

Dickensian London

Happy Summer Vacation!

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Look, Dickens specialized in writing about the hellholes of Victorian England. And while some literary titans like George Orwell and Leo Tolstoy slobbered all over themselves praising him, my own fave commentator Oscar Wilde thumbed his nose at Dickens.

Regardless of where Dickens fits in the penman’s pantheon, forcing teenagers to descend into his netherworlds seems an act of child abuse.

Add to that the fact that the Penguin Classic edition of DC runs a full 1024 pages. Sheesh! Was there any time left for a swim in the pool, a hike in the woods, or a bike ride for BHSN sophs?

Thick Book

Have Fun, Kids!

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of teachers assigning Disney-like pap to their charges for summer reading. I’d be even more huffy if BHSN sophomores were ordered to read the latest books of consumer-porn, vampire-porn, or other Butternut Bread boluses that pass for teen lit now.

But man, you’re hitting me where I lived some 40 years ago: The books most teachers assigned to me in high school had no connection to my life or anything I was interested in. I would have greedily eaten up The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Slaughterhouse Five, All the President’s Men, The Invisible Man, or Goodbye, Columbus over any given summer. The authors of these books wrote in a language that I understood about issues and conflicts I recognized.

Book Cover

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The Mayor of Casterbridge and Lord of the Flies meant nothing to me, especially since they were set among the British, who always seemed to me to be a gang of stuffy pains in my ass.

All I’m asking is for teachers to meet their students halfway.

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White Boys/Black Boys

From the Hair original Broadway cast soundtrack. This link accesses the entire soundtrack recording. Scroll down to and select White Boys/Black Boys or just listen to the whole thing. You can’t go wrong either way.

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07/23/2013
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Barack Obama, Garrett Marquis, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Matt Rhoades, Mitt Romney, Neneh Cherry, Royal Baby

Your Daily Hot Air

Breaking News

This just in: Nothing happened in Great Britain yesterday.

Nothing

Communique From The UK

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That is, nothing that came within a light year of interesting me. I have scanned all the news sites. I watched the BBC newscast last night. I monitored the radio this morning.

Again I say, not one single thing that could possibly be of use to me in understanding this world occurred in the paleo-empire upon which, the old saw holds, the sun never sets.

I just thought you’d like to know.

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No Vagina In The White House

The CNN Political Ticker blog tells me a “Stop Hillary” gang is coming together with the sole and sacred purpose of, natch, preventing the former Secretary of State and serial forgiver of her philandering husband from becoming POTUS.

Now, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a formal organization being establishing more than two years in advance of an election to preemptively halt one of the expected several dozen presidential aspirants from getting anywhere. Not even the putative presidency of Barack Obama so scared the poo out of people in 2005 that they began huddling to stop him.

Stop Hillary 2016

See How Hideous A Woman President Would Look?

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Then again, Obama hadn’t declared that far in advance but even if he had, it’s doubtful anyone would have taken him so seriously as to form an anti-O club. Even after he’d declared in February 2007, no one cared enough to organize against him. Bet they’re kicking themselves, eh?

Anyways, this Stop Hillary PAC is led by a bunch of conservatives, Republican operatives, lobbyists, and other gadflies. Some guy named Garrett Marquis, who worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign appears to be the spokesman for the group. He says, “We’re supporting anything that is the opposite of Hillary.”

Considering the fact that Hillary Clinton is so centrist she makes Barack Obama look like a bandanna-masked anarchist, it seems odd that a group of guys would be so spooked by her.

Ah, wait a minute! There’s the key, no? Group of guys.

Hard as it may be to believe, the existence of a president who doesn’t carry between her legs that god-given symbol of power and righteousness, the penis, is even more terrifying than the thought of a brown Commander in Chief.

Fear

The Terror

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I mean, honestly, should Hillary Clinton be elected Prez, the collective phalluses of America would turtle so severely that, by golly, the real men of this holy land would finally have to take up arms. No more of this Next time, we’ll have our shootin’ irons namby-pamby jaw-juice. The moment Hillary takes the oath of office is next time.

Gun Lover

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Open fire, boys, our very potency is at stake!

Bet you didn’t know this isn’t the only organization formed to make certain Hillary Clinton never, ever, ever becomes our boss. Mitt Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, Matt Rhoades, started one up even before Stop Hillary came together. That group is called America Rising.

Appropriately enough.

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Woman

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07/21/2013
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Barbra Streisand, Carlos Slim Helu, Christopher Hitchens, Citigroup, God, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, If I Ruled The World, Monsanto, Nate Silver, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Netflix, Open Corporates, Open Database, Orange Is The New Black, Piper Chapman, Rachel Maddow, Taylor Schilling, Terrorism, Tom Vanderbilt, Tony Bennett, Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do

Your Daily Hot Air

She’s Not There

Whyzit that the smartest females corporate media gives us are fictional? I had no idea who Piper Chapman was before I read her fabulous meme quote last night. At first I thought she was a real person and I started writing, “Here’s a female actor who isn’t a dumb blonde. This Piper dame seems to have the goods between the ears. How she ever made it in Hollywood or wherever they shoot Netflix things is beyond me.”

A couple of seconds-worth of research revealed PC is a character in the Netflix comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black, which I’ve never seen and I don’t plan to. No, not because I object to it in particular but because, y’know, it’s TV.

Schilling

Taylor Schilling: At Least She Plays Smart

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Anyways, natch, no ambitious young actor would ever say anything like PC said in public because although we are free, free, free to gun down anyone whose looks we don’t like in this holy land, when it comes to expressing liberal-bordering-on-radical views, well, now hold on there pardner.

It’s okay to be Barbra Streisand and throw fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, who’s about as liberal as I am a thug rapper. That’s cool. But once you start messin’ w/ the Big Daddy-o in the Sky, you’re messin’ w/ your career, babies.

Oh, and you aspiring female opinionators can dream of filling the Rachel Maddow slot — TV needs a lesbian/intellectual/tough-talking/hard-core liberal, you bet. She’s a perfect target for Right Wing troglodytes to aim their hot little pistols at while she’s going on and on about commie things like facts and poor people. And, by the way, any double meaning you’d care to attach to my reference to hot little pistols there is perfectly expected. The “real men” of this holy land know what R. Maddow needs.

Maddow

… Aim….

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So, I’m bummed that the following manifesto is merely script dialogue. Still, it’s worth a look:

I believe in science, I believe in evolution. I believe in Nate Silver and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Christopher Hitchens, although I do admit he could be kind of an asshole.

[A Pencil Aside: Hey, is this chick me or something? Carry on.]

I cannot get behind some supreme being who weighs in on the Tony awards while a million people get whacked with machetes.

[Pencil Aside 2: Oh yeah, she’s me. With long streaked hair, blue eyes and ladyparts. Carry on.]

I don’t believe a billion Indians are going to hell, I don’t think we get cancer to learn life lessons, and I don’t believe that people die young because god needs another angel. I think it’s just bullshit and, on some level, I think we all know that. I mean, don’t you? … Look I understand that religion makes it easier to deal with all the random shitty things that happen to us. And I wish I could get on that ride. I’m sure I’d be happier. But I can’t. Feelings aren’t enough. I need it to be real.

Trust me, there was some heavy sighing going on as I clacked this in. I’m still not going to watch Orange Is the New Black and I wish, wish, wish an actual person had said this. Like Piper Chapman sez, I need it to be real.

[h/t to Deanna Truelock]

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Hot Rods To Hell

How full of shit are we? This full of shit:

Grimly tally the number of people who have been killed by terrorism in the United States since the State Department began keeping records in the 1960s, and you’ll get a total of less than 5000 — roughly the same number, it has been pointed out, as those who have been struck by lightning. But each year, with some fluctuation, the number of people killed in car crashes in the United States tops 40,000. More people are killed on the roads each month than were killed in the September 11 attacks. In the wake of those attacks, polls found that many citizens thought it was acceptable to curtail civil liberties to help counter the threat of terrorism, to help preserve our “way of life.” Those same citizens, meanwhile, in polls and in personal behavior, have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll (e.g., lowering speed limits, introducing more red-light cameras, stiffer blood alcohol limits, stricter cell phone laws.)

Murrica, ya gotta love it!

Head-on Collision

Terror

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The above passage is from the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt, a neat little study of the psychology behind our cars and roads and everything else related to them.

They hate us, remember, for our freedoms.

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The Boss

Who rules the world? You, the voter? The Prez? Carlos Slim Helu? Bruce Springsteen? Tony Bennett (see below)? Whoever it is that packs the most heat?

Forget ’em all. If you want to figure out who calls the shots on the third planet from the Sun, check out this fab Open Database website: opencorporates.com. OC monitors more than 55 million corporate entities around the globe, measuring their reach, gauging their influence, and illustrating the dense web the biggest of them has spun around us all. We seven billion are, after all, a bunch of buzzing flies trapped in the arachnoid mesh created by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other archvillainous entities. (How about that for literary imagery?)

Dig: SMERSH and KAOS had nothing on, say, the Citigroup gang. And don’t even get me started on Monsanto.

From opencorporates.com

Citigroup’s Untangled Web

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Now you know. Go there.

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If I Ruled The World

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07/17/2013
1 Comment
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.

Warren/AP Photo

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.

Anti-Warren Meme

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.

Polluted Water

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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.

everygoddamnday

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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.

Chicago-Style Hot Dog

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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12/14/2012
Leave a comment
Anne Hathaway, Barack Obama, Carl Carlton, Feminism, Feministing, Hillary Clinton, Human Trafficking, Ingrid Sischy, John Kerry, John Lennon, Les Miserables, Matt Lauer, Meryl Streep, Rebecca West, Republican Party, Susan Rice, Swiftboating, Today Show, United Nations, Vanity Fair

The Pencil Today:

HotAirLogoFinal Friday

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THE QUOTE

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” — Rebecca West

West

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NYAH, NYAH

So, the Republicans now have their pound of flesh.

Feeling all sissified by the results of the November election, the political decision makers within the Party of God racked their brains for a few days and then hit upon a forward course.

Does it include becoming more inclusive toward black and brown people, women, gays, the poor, and those whose IQs are north of 30?

2012 Republican National Convention

Republicans

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Well, no. At least not yet.

How about a concerted effort to purge the party’s ranks of antediluvian racists — both crypto- and overt? Or accepting the fact that geologists, zoologists, biologists, and other learned souls just might know a little bit more about the nature of our physical world than do bizarrely-coiffed backwoods Bible-thumpers?

Nah.

Our friends the Republicans have decided their best first step forward was to stand firm against that greatest threat to our nation’s very existence: the putative nomination of Susan Rice to the post of Secretary of State.

Rice

Susan Rice

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And whaddya know? They scored big time!

Rice, the current Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the United Nations, has informed her boss that she’s withdrawing her name from consideration to replace the outgoing S of S (and 45th President of the United States-in-waiting), Hillary Clinton.

Rice’s boss, the anti-Christ Barack Obama, was in for a bruising mud wrestling match had he tabbed Rice to don Clinton’s sash. And when all is said and done, even if Rice’s nomination were indeed approved by the Democratic-majority Senate, she’d have been viewed around the world as a weak PR agent for this holy land simply because so many fought against her.

Woo-hoo, we showed him, the Republicans are now telling themselves.

And guess what — the likely rebound nominee is said to be John Kerry.

Imagine that! The Republicans have indicated they’d be four-square in favor of approving Kerry. You remember him, don’t you? The traitor who protested against the war in Vietnam, only after he’d committed fraud to gain a pile heroism medals while there? The Republicans saved us from him in 2004.

Kerry/Lennon

Dangerous Johns: Kerry & Lennon

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Now they love him. And why not? He’s a white male.

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ANNIE’S LITTLE SECRET

The republic has survived yet another threat to its very existence. We’ve awakened four mornings in a row and discovered that the Earth remains in its orbit even after actress Anne Hathaway’s cooter was viewed by all concerned Monday night.

The temporarily-gaunt star of Les Miserables wore a gown made of coffin lining as well as some S&M accoutrements, all of which pass for haute couture, to the premiere of her big new blockbuster in New York.

She arrived at the red carpet in a positively presidential-looking SUV limousine. Her bodyguard leaped out and helped her exit the vehicle. She swung her legs out in an oh-so-ladylike fashion. Sadly (or not, depending on your level of sexual and emotional maturity) her knees separated and, thanks to a strategic split in her gown, her external reproductive organs were exposed and, within a nanosecond, were illuminated by a camera flash.

Hathaway 20121210

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Naturally, the image of her fancy bit immediately flashed around the planet.

Just as naturally, Anne Hathaway is aghast even as tens of millions of adolescent boys are furiously masturbating to the point of pain.

“It was devastating,” she told Vanity Fair’s Ingrid Sischy.

Fair enough.

Hathaway — whom, by the way, I intend to marry should The Loved One ever come to her senses and throw me overboard — went a step further on NBC’s Today Show: “… I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants….”

Fair enough again. I guess.

Only we’re not talking about powerless young girls being bought and sold in the Middle East (see chart). Nor are we talking about someone pointing a camera through a hotel room peephole so he can peddle nude pix of an unsuspecting sports reporter.

From the Woman Stats Project

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Yes, it’s a crying shame that pix of Hathaway’s Little Secret should turn out to be such a valuable commodity but isn’t she being a tad disingenuous here?

I mean, I love the woman. She’s well on her way to becoming the Meryl Streep of the 2030s. She’s generally considered dignified.

But she has a knockout body and she knows it. And she trades on it. Google images of her and you’ll see tons of her flesh. Nothing tasteless, mind you. But anyone who cares to can examine her breasts and other parts of her anatomy.

Again, she’s no Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan but, still, she understands what exposed female flesh means in Hollywood. It’s like a being a lawyer and having been a member of the right fraternity in college.

Anyway, it was Hathaway herself who went commando. Which is usually harmless, except when you’re wearing a gown that’s slit some eight and a half yards from talus to ilium.

Hindsight is 20/20 but from this outpost, her best bet would have been to ignore the breathless and puerile questioning of the likes of Matt Lauer and let the incident pass without comment. She should have let the whole issue die a deserved death.

From "The Today Show"

Matt Lauer Grosses Out The Universe While Interviewing Hathaway

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And maybe — just maybe — we’ll all grow up and stop tee-hee-ing when somebody’s business gets exposed.

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A LADY LEXICON

The fun gals at feministing.com have provided us with an invaluable guide to the euphemisms for the human vagina.

That’s the technical term for it, of course. Vagina comes directly to us from the Latin, meaning a sheath for a soldier’s sword, which our old pals the Romans called a ferrum — literally, iron — but commonly used the word to refer to the penis.

Cicero and Co. had a way with words, no?

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Sheathe Your Swords, Men Of Rome.”

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So do we. Our words reveal our fears and distastes. Apparently, the vagina is scary and distasteful to far too many sword-bearers around this funny globe. Dig how many terms confer frightening, weird, and/or disgusting connotations on that place we’ve all passed through.

Study this. There’ll be a pop quiz later this semester.

From Feministing

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SHE’S A BAD MAMA JAMA

By Carl Carlton, this song rocketed up the Billboard soul chart in 1981.

She’s poetry in motion/

A beautiful sight to see.

I get so excited/

Viewin’ her anatomy.

At least he wasn’t being a sneak about it.

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09/11/2012
2 Comments
Alec Baldwin, Bill Gates, Chicago Teachers Union, Cognitive Video Regeneration, Hillary Clinton, Julian Castro, Labor Unions, MacBook, Mark Twain, Rahm Emanuel, Richard J. Daley, Richard M. Daley, Ronald Reagan, US Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.” — Mark Twain

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PAY ‘EM: DAY 2

First things first: The Chicago Teachers Union strike is not about the children. So let’s stop that silly, mawkish pretense this instant.

✍

The teachers are going on strike because management wants to squeeze their pay and benefits, extend their work day, and expand class sizes. These are workplace issues, not We love children and only want what’s best for them issues.

If teachers and management wanted only what’s best for the children, the city would be throwing bushels of money at the teachers in an effort to get them back in the classroom and the teachers would be telling them not to bother because they (the teachers) would be more than happy to work for peanuts.

The kids are getting screwed royally in this mess. They’re missing the continuum of daily attendance in school. It may take weeks for them to get back in their groove, depending on how long this strike lasts.

Parents who work are getting screwed, too. Tens of thousands of families in Chicago are scrambling to make arrangements to make sure their kids aren’t roaming the streets all day while teachers walk the picket lines.

Very little benefit is going to come out of this craziness for anybody other than the teachers.

And that’s okay.

People get hurt in strikes. Customers and clients and vendors and and everybody else who depends on an industry starts hurting when that industry is hit by a strike.

One of the potential hammers either side has in a work stoppage is the collective anger of all those aggrieved parties. If a striking union plays its cards right, customers and clients and all the rest will start putting heat on management to make a deal.

The union has to control the PR side of the contretemps. In this case, the Chicago Teachers Union has to convey the message that its members are not rich, they’re not asking for wheel barrels full of precious metals, and — for pity’s sake — all you out there need them.

If the union does it right, it’ll walk away from this with nice raises for the teachers, a manageable workday, and class sizes significantly shy of the capacity of the Wrigley Field bleachers.

And if the kids and the families of Chicago get their knees scraped in the process, so be it.

I’m behind the teachers 100 percent.

I only ask them and some of their supporters not to try to bullshit me or anyone else. Teachers don’t go on strikes because they’re thinking of nothing but the children. They go on strikes because they’re worried about paying their mortgages and dreaming of sending their kids to college.

Nothing wrong with that as a casus belli.

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WORKING

Here are the highest-paid careers in the United States this year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

  • Pharmacist — $112,160 average salary a year
  • Air traffic controller — $114,460
  • Sales manager — $116,860
  • Airline pilots — $118,070
  • Financial manager — $120,450
  • Industrial-organization psychologist — $124,160
  • IT systems manager — $125,660
  • Marketing manager — $126,190
  • Natural science manager — $128,230
  • Architectural and engineering manager — $129,350
  • Lawyer — $130,490
  • Petroleum engineer — $138,980
  • CEO — $176,550
  • Dentist — $161,750 to $204,670
  • Doctor — $168,650 to $234,950

Who’d have a problem if teachers ranked anywhere in that list?

Me? I’d be thrilled to see teachers knock sales managers or financial managers off. And industrial-organization psychologists? They’re getting paid that much dough just to delve into people’s heads so they can make the workforce more pliant and submissive?!

Not only would I help the teachers throw them out, I’d give those sons of bitches kicks in the ass on their way out the door.

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ONE MORE THING

Take a look at this luxury baby stroller:

The Nicest Ride On The Block

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I don’t know how many people own one of these baby limousines. I’m willing to bet, though, that tens of of thousands of parents — maybe hundreds of thousands — would buy one if they could.

Now, how many of those people do you think want Chicago’s teachers to stop making trouble and go back to work?

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I’M NOT FINISHED YET

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his kids to a private school.

That, my friends, is an outrage.

He is saying, essentially, that the schools — his schools — aren’t good enough for his kids.

The Emanuel Gang

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Mayor Richard M. Daley and his old man, Richard J., both sent their kids to private schools as well.

What would people say if Bill Gates, while he was running things at Microsoft, carried a MacBook around with him wherever he went?

Mark it: The day I’m acclaimed King of the United States, I’ll decree that all municipal officials must send their kids to their local public schools.

They just might start seeing things a little differently.

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OLD TIME (REALLY, REALLY OLD TIME) POLITICS

The technology already exists to generate video images of dead politicians and celebrities saying precisely what you want them to say in real time.

Big Think contributor Dominic Basulto speculates on the 2016 Republican National Convention when the star of the show will be Ronald Reagan lambasting Hillary Clinton or Julian Castro or Alec Baldwin or whoever will be the Dem standard-bearer.

Click For Full Article

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Of course, my feeling is the GOP would be more accurately served by a video image of Homo Neanderthalensis grunting his distaste for women who enjoy sex and his worship of a psycho-sadistic god.

“Sandra Fluke Has Sex!”

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