Invasion of the Pod-People . . .

Holy Fuck -- and I mean that in the entire literal sense.

This congresswoman Michele Bachmann is from my home state of Minnesota I'm ashamed to say. To put it bluntly, what she is stating here is - fuck the planet, Christ died on the cross 2000 years ago for your sins and if you don't believe in him too fucking bad for you and the rest of humanity - you're all gonna die soon anyway so you better get your heathen asses saved real quick!

I've been one of many stating for years (to anyone who dares listen) that the group of people formerly known as the Republican party of Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater, along with their entirely honorable and pure conservative ideology, has been sideswiped and run over by this speeding bus filled with zombified, bible-thumping, raving lunatic, body snatchers who see politics and political power solely as a means to hasten their depraved end-time religio-fantasies. These modern-day Republicans in Lamb clothing do not give a rat's ass about politics, much less this country's future. They have no desire or intent to govern in order to better the predicament of their fellow Americans and America or lead the way in the world to help ease the burdens of human despair. On the contrary -- they want to see as much human suffering and social chaos as is possible because it fits quite neatly in with their macabre world view that cataclysmic occurrences and apocalyptic humanitarian disasters are necessary planetary events, and by proxy, clarion calls for their Lord and Saviour Jesus H. Christ to return from the dead and carry them up into the clouds to assist him with his rule over the remainder of earth's minions for eternity. Why an all-powerful, omnipotent cloud being needs millions of pint-sized helpers to perform his heavenly chores escapes my logic, but these people are not known for questioning the questionable or thinking for themselves for fear of sowing doubt amongst their well-trained, obedient flock.

Michele Bachmann is batshit insane to be sure. And if she and her kind were an innocuous and powerless, fringe element of our society (kinda like Celine Dion fans) I wouldn't lose sleep over them at night. But truth be told, there are a whole helluva lot of them and their destructive influence extends into every facet of American society and government. People take them and their pernicious movement lightly -- oblivious to the danger of doing so.

It's too bad that the honest Christians in America are in the minority. Their selfless good deeds and charity, their adherence to Jesus Christ's true teachings, and their abhorrence with mixing church and state affairs offer a dishearteningly faint glimmer of hope for a better future and a democracy that serves all equally.



----k

Home-Grown FuckHeads

What scares me most about an Obama victory in November is not the childish right-wing, pants-wetting fears that Obama is a closet Muslim who will take the Presidential oath of office with his hand on the Koran, and, who wants to eliminate christianity (a noble thought to be true, but let's get real), convert us all to Allah lovers and, force our women to wear burkas, our men to wear keffiyehs and our children to enroll in madrassas.]

When? -- When will the people of this country fucking grow up??

[ LINK ]

No -- nor am I frightened by the irrational wingnut shrieking about how Obama is the brown-skinned reincarnation of Karl Marx who plans to turn America into a huge socialist, hippie commune, force everyone to wear bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye t-shirts, have weekly, communal Kumbaya sing-a-longs and will replace the Department of Defense with a new cabinet position - the Department of Peace & Terrorist Appeasement.

And I absolutely break out into uproarious laughter every time I read some imbecilic right-wing screed claiming that if Obama is elected he's going to throw our borders wide open to hordes of illegal immigrants from all over the world (but especially them thar goldurn beaners), confiscate all of our guns, destroy our military (as if Bush hasn't done a good enough job of doing that himself), nationalize all our major industries, and turn the executive branch of our government over to the U.N.

No -- I must admit -- I am not afraid of a single one of those asinine, demented, and juvenile fears coming to pass if this country is fortunate enough to see Barack Obama elected President. These things do not register so much as a faint blip on my worry radar. And to put it bluntly -- the right wing and their piss-ant followers have never had much of an affinity for this thing normal people call reality.

However, what does scare the shit out of me if Obama is elected is exactly what's in this news article here --- some immature, hate-filled, ignorant gun goon, with delusions of Aryan martyrdom, acting out his premature-ejaculation fantasy of appeasing the KKK and Hitler gods by giving Obama the grassy-knoll treatment.

You want to see anarchy and real bad times come to this country? Well -- the violent elimination of a popularly elected President would be a pretty good catalyst for bringing that about dontcha think?

Of course, it's kind of hard for me to blame this guy entirely. He's only 22 years old and I'll go out on a limb and guess that he was probably raised in a strict, fundamentalist-religious, conservative household who's parents home-schooled him, and who was fed a steady, daily diet of hate-filled radio and tv programming from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of that sickening cesspool of fascist dreck.

But fear is all the GOP and the conservatives have any more. They have no ideas, no vision, no heart and no spirituality in their ideology or their politics. They remind me of spoiled brat children who throw tantrums when they can't have things their way. They're vindictive and selfish and would sell this country down the river in a heartbeat if it increased their financial bottom line or upped the value of their stock
dividends.

Here's to faith --- not the divisive, negative kind, but faith in humanity -- faith that we can do what's right in the world, reject Bush-world secrecy, lies, and criminality --- embrace truth. And all you fucking assholes who think i'm a John Lennon Dreamer ---- fuck you --- your view of the world is 45 X negative than mine is.... I got faith that your kind will be soon be extinct -- and the planet will be better off.


-----k

Anthrax Killer Found!!! . . . Dead!

Gee -- so the anthrax killer who terrified the nation for several months after 9/11 turns out to be a U.S. Army scientist from a U.S. Government lab in Maryland. I think the Bush administration has finally found their long sought weapons of mass destruction and lo and behold they were right there in Washington D.C.'s own back yard.

If anyone's memory fails, in 2001 - just a few weeks after Sept. 11th, letters containing anthrax were sent to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy and several mainstream media outlets. 22 people were infected and 5 died from their exposure to the highly toxic substance. Subsequently, the anthrax attacks were used as another, in a long list of false jusitifications, by the Bush administration to bully Congress and the American people into supporting their premeditated and pre-9/11 plans to topple their former business partner Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq. Bush himself slyly referred to Iraq plotting to develop anthrax in his 2002 State of the Union address, knowing full well that the terror associated with the attacks was fresh in American memories.

Eventually the inept Bush administration identified a biowarfare defense specialist at Ft. Detrick Maryland named Dr. Stephen Hatfill as their primary suspect in the anthrax mailings. That 5 year bumbling investigation of Hatfill resulted in a June 27, 2008 exoneration of Hatfill by the U.S. government and a payout in the amount of $5.8 million U.S. taxpayer dollars to him.

And now, just a month after the Hatfill exoneration we get news that another military scientist on the government payroll, Bruce E. Ivins was the "real" culprit behind the deadly anthrax mailings. And true to form, as it is with anything involving the Bush regime, turns out Dr. Ivins suspiciously and suddenly died on Tuesday of this week after ingesting "massive" amounts of Tylenol with Codeine. Ivins' colleagues state that he had only recently been informed of his pending prosecution in the infamous anthrax attacks. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute where Ivins was employed issued a statement about his death oddly with no mention of suicide.

So in the end folks, turns out we'll likely never know the absolute truth about the "other" 2001 terrorist attack on our soil. I'm sure the Bushies are saddened to hear of the unfortunate and untimely passing of Dr. Ivins. No doubt they yearned to know the truth of his actions and motives in the matter and above all wanted justice to be served . . . . and if you believe that, I've got a big, beautiful fucking bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Sources (click link):

August 1, 2008 L.A. Times report on Bruce E. Ivins death

Gleen Greenwald analysis of media's role in tying anthrax scare to Iraq

Wikipedia entry on history/timeline of 2001 anthrax attacks

Wikipedia entry on Dr. Stephen Hatfill



----krazee

GOP = Gutter Old Politics

There you have it folks. This is what the Republican party has to offer as answers to the critical problems facing this country and it's citizens. A childish taunting aimed at their opponent which addresses not a single substantive issue that the American people are currently dealing with or will be dealing with in the coming years.

[ CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO ARTICLE ]

I've really, really been trying hard not to go postal on John McCain out of the past respect I've had for him, but it finally seems that he and his advisers have made a conscious decision to take the low road in this Presidential campaign and subscribe to the Karl Rove/Swiftboat liar's method of political campaigning. As far as I'm concerned this means all bets are off.

But is it any wonder? Wherever Barack Obama goes, domestically or internationally, hopeful people gather in the thousands to hear what this articulate, intelligent and visionary man has to say on the issues of the day.

McCain on the other hand seems content to rest on his laurels as a Vietnam POW, his 25 years sucking at the public teat in Congress, his phalanx of advisers culled from the ranks of the failed Bush administration and his incestuous relationship with the sycophantic, incompetent whores that commonly refer to themselves as the Washington Press Corp. When McCain does stray from his clubby political and media insider constituencies, and ventures into public venues, they're almost always small, pre-screened, pre-scripted events, not unlike the way Bush and Cheney manipulate their public appearances. Of the few public speaking engagements I've seen McCain appear at, the brief camera scans of the miniscule crowds basically show a bunch of pot-bellied, bearded middle-aged NRA nuts, random pairings of Larry Craig and Barbara Bush clones, a smattering of suit and tie stockbroker types, and of course, the token 1 or 2 brown-skinned individuals who I'm beginning to believe are simply some guys they found standing in the local unemployment line and paid a few hundred bucks to show up and pretend to be McCain supporters.

I've listened to 5 of Barack Obama's major speeches and 3 of McCain's speeches. The only way I can describe it is --- the difference is like getting a totally awesome lap dance from the smokingest-hottest stripper in the all nudie bar (Obama's speeches) or accidentally seeing your neighbor's 90 year old grandma undressing thru her bedroom window (McCain's speeches). Part of a President's job is to be an inspirational cheerleader for the country. The only thing McCain inspires me to do when I hear him speak is to pour another shot of God's nectar (Cabo Wabo tequila) and leisurely scroll thru the split-screen cable t.v. guide looking for re-runs of Spongebob episodes.

The media however is doing some heavy water carrying for McCain. He's gotten very minimal coverage on his never-ending series of verbal gaffes, his plethora of policy flip-flops, his failure to release his military records and his and his wife's tax records, his sucking up to the insane fundamentalist religious crowd and his horrendously wrong support of George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's disastrous Iraq war. In the mainstream media's eyes, McCain is the mythical straight-talking, party bucking, Maverick war hero and to them his shit smells like a bouquet of freshly picked premium roses. It's quite pathetic to watch and as a result I am making a deliberate and conscious effort to avoid any mainstream news outlets during this Presidential election season. I saw what the corporate propagandists did to Gore and Kerry during their Presidential candidacies and it's proof enough to me that they cannot be trusted one iota to give the American people the truth about what's really going on in this country.

Anyhow, since McCain and his cynical pack of Rovian strategists don't appear to have any intention of running a clean election and giving the American people an honest, fair look at their policies and would rather sling mud at Obama while treating the media jackoffs to free barbeque cookouts and donuts, then the best thing people like me can do is to educate the ignorant dumbed-down masses, even though the majority are perfectly happy being ignorant and dumb and believe people like me are elite, latte-drinking, Volvo driving, communist, terrorist appeasers. It's a dirty, thankless job, but somebody has to do it.


----krazee

Let Freedom Ring!

Happy 4th of July! I was ruminating last nite about how differently progressives and conservatives view the ideals of democracy and freedom. And I put together a little list of things I believe would constitute how a modern-day, Bush loving conservative would celebrate our nation's most revered holiday. And here it is:

Run over a baby seal with your hummer. (kudos to Atrios)

Waterboard the neighbor kid who you caught swiping your newspaper.

Shoot your hunting buddy in the face with a shotgun -- then hide the beers and lie to the cops.

Mow half your lawn and declare "Mission Accomplished."

Watch FOX News non-stop until your eye-balls ooze blood and your brain shrivels to the size of a raisin.

Go to church, pray for God's wrath against the evil "libruls", then go out and continue to destroy the world.

Watch a George W. Bush speech and tell everyone you understood everything he said.

Visit a famed conservative place of interest -- like Larry Craig's men's room stall at the Minneapolis airport.

Read the Aug. 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled "Bin-Laden Determined to Strike in US", then go on vacation.

And last but not least,

Ilegally spy on your neighbors, and when you are caught claim you were defending your trailer court from hordes of marauding arab terrorists.

I'll close with a little quote from one of my favorite American radical philosophers and a true patriot:

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
Thomas Paine
US patriot & political philosopher (1737 - 1809)

----k

The Jesus Freak Parade Continues ...

An unbiased, cursory review of history's violent conflicts, wars, etc. will undoubtedly show that religious strife is a core element of the vast majority of the bloodletting that mankind has perfected to art form.

This ancient and childish concept that "my invisible cloud being" is more powerful than your "invisible cloud being" has been the root of untold human suffering over the ages.

This story from right here in the good 'ol US of A is the gazillionth chapter in this sad, unending saga of human stupidity and is reason number ... (shit I've lost count) ... why krazee is not a Christian.

I'm convinced that when the next civil war takes place in this country, and every day by virtue of what I see happening here, my belief that it will occur compounds, fundamentalist religious beliefs adulterously connected with right-wing politics will be the centerpiece catalyst as to it's cause.

Frankly, I'm ready to just wall off a corner of the continent, shove all of the religious nuts in it and let them crusade, convert and conquer amongst each other until they're all mercifully extinct.

Back to this story from Ohio though -- about this middle-school science teacher John Freshwater shoving his fundamentalist religious beliefs down impressionable young people's throats -- who the fuck does this asshole think he is?? His buddy tries to defend him saying, "With the exception of the cross-burning episode [as if that act alone shouldn't be all the evidence needed to send this dickhead packing] ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district." Really? Mr. Freshwater performed personal interviews with ALL of the parents of ALL of his students and made the determination that he and only he was capable of interpreting the values of these parents and his interpretation of those values gives him carte blanche permission to religiously proselytize to his captive audience of students? BULL FUCKING SHIT!!

It's truly a lamentable state of affairs that the sincere, humble, and decent Christians who don't thump their bibles, who don't feel it's their divinely inspired duty to convert non-believers and who don't view their religion as a superior philosophy and who are mindful and respectful of differing views and belief systems, are an underwhelming minority of Christians in this country today. The core humanist principles which Jesus Christ actually preached have been so twisted and perverted by this modern fundamentalist movement to the point where these people really have no goddamn right to call themselves Christians any more. If Christ were to come back today he would be horrified by the inhumanity, the selfishness, the arrogance and the idiocy that's been wrought in his name by these uber-pious, phony believers.

Anyhow, without question, this "Science" teacher in Ohio not only deserves to lose his job, he ought never be allowed anywhere near a public tax dollar financed school system ever again.


----k

In The Interest of Fairness . . .

LOL.! Too fucking hilarious. If you can't laugh at this AND simultaneously see the blatant hypocrisy in our so-called "liberal media," just go and stick your head back in the sand-pit whence you plucked it from to read this blog post.


----k

Credit Given Where Credit Due . . .

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House, portrays herself as a polite, grandmotherly lady...Don't believe it for a second. Would your grandmother ever say, "If people are ripping your face off, you have to rip their face off" (Pelosi's approach to handling attacks from Republicans)? How about "If you take the knife off the table, it's not very frightening anymore" (her explanation for why she won't let voters forget George W. Bush's unpopular Social Security proposal from last year)?

I've had my differences of opinion with Dem House Leader Nancy Pelosi (mostly related to her coddling of the war-mongering Bushies on Iraq), but you really got to give her a bit of credit for saving the ass of a cherished American government institution, and I refer of course, to Social Security.

Remember a few years ago, the Wall Street hucksters and their political allies (mostly GOP thugs, but a few Dem toadies as well) were scaring Americans with their "woe is you!" routine, giving dire warnings that social security would be broke in just a few years? Of course, those of us who bothered to actually take the time to study the issue and actually read the reports of the SS Trustees knew that SS was entirely solvent until the year 2042, AND, with minor adjustments could easily be made solvent many decades beyond that. Four of the six Trustees who signed off on the report stating that SS was just fine were appointees of George W. Bush.

And of course the folks who were pushing hardest and loudest for the privatization (they can spin it any way they want, but that's exactly what it is) of SS were the same pond-scum that brought this country the accounting scandals of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and others -- the same slimy dirtballs who manipulated and jury-rigged the mortgage industry and brought it to it's knees -- the same greedy cocksuckers who paid off politicians of both stripes to de-regulate Wall Street to the point that the robber-baron era of the early 20th century was playskool stuff compared to what these conniving thieves are up to these days.

So, in the spirit of recognizing good public work which has benefited the most people, and in this case most of the people I'm referring to are this country's most vulnerable (the elderly and disabled), I've got to give a big high-five and a profoundly grateful thanks to Nancy Pelosi for doing the right thing and telling the greedy Wall Street whores to keep their filthy, grubby, greasy, fucking hands off of the people's money.

Now -- if only we can get her to be just as much of a hard-ass on the issue of the never-ending funding of the clusterfuck in Iraq -- ... oh well, all one can do is hope.


----k

Your MBA President

COLORADO SPRINGS, May 28 -- President Bush acknowledged that his administration is "learning as we go" in building democracy in Iraq, as he used his final military academy commencement address on Wednesday to ruminate on some lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

G.W. Bush's sychophantic followers used to love to crow about how the failed Texas oilman and all-around shady businessman was going to be America's first MBA President. Of course they conveniently overlooked Bush's mediocre grades as well as the prescient words of one of his Harvard Business School professors who stated that the future MBA President was someone with weak social values, compassionless and of limited intellect (gee, wonder how anyone could ever have gotten that impression of Mr. "Childrens do learn")?

Anyhow, here we are, 5+ bloody years into the Iraq quagmire, 4300+ U.S. soldiers dead, another 30,000 wounded, tens of thousands more suffering from PTSD, anywhere from 100,000 (conservative estimate) to 650,000 (British Lancet estimate) dead Iraqis and all this proper-english challenged buffoon can do is shrug his shoulders and say is that it's a learning experience?

I don't know about any of you, but I get the distinct vibe that something is terribly, shockingly wrong with this picture.

Let me see if I can put this into straightforward, lucid terms. Imagine yourself wanting to undertake an exciting but dangerous venture, oh say -- climbing Mt. Everest for example. Wouldn't you want to spend all the time up front learning everything there is to know about that mountain, the proper gear needed for a successful mission, interfacing with the local sherpas to learn the terrain and climate, studying the outcomes of previous missions, etc. before trekking on up? Does that sound crazy?

But nooooooooo not President Dumbfuck. He just barrels full speed ahead, with the idea that he'll learn it all as he goes.

I have this absolutely frightening, recurring vision of Bush sitting around one weekend in early 2001, shortly after being installed as President by the black-robed thugs on the Supreme Court, munching on pretzels and watching re-runs of Gunsmoke! and Combat! Condi is in the kitchen whipping up her favorite health drink, Cheney is slumped in a lazy-boy recliner, shit-faced from the 12-pack of Coors he just finished downing, Don Rumsfeld is sitting in the corner pulling the wings off of flies that he's caught...and suddenly Bush blurts out -- "hey fellers! I gots me a great 'ol idea. Let's go blow the shit out of that thar' smelly 'ol A-rab Saddam -- that sumbitch tried to hurt my Daddy!! Now if only y'all can come up with a dadgum good excuse to do it!" . . . And thus --- the genesis of the Iraq war.

Does that scene straight out of a Kafkaesque Beverly Hillibillies episode sound entirely implausible to you? If it doesn't, welcome to the reality based community -- a community of smarter people who rejected drinking the kool-aid offered up by Bushco and their fawning boot-lickers in the media.

"Learning as we go . . ." Holy fucking sheepshit! God (if there is one) help us all.



----k

Fox Asswipes - The Neverending Story

I went on a spectacular fire-breathing e-mail ranting binge this past weekend. While I would be the first to admit that an evening of consuming healthy quantities of God's nectar was the fuel behind the fire-breathing rage, what really got me started was this video of one of the Faux News conservative knuckle-draggers (Liz Trotta) stating her inner most desire to see Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama killed (along with Osama Bin-Ladin).

Now -- it's no secret I'm no fan of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld or the rest of that criminal bunch, and as much as it would not bother me one whit to see them all wearing prison stripes and sharing an 8x10 cell with some 6'7", 350 lb. convicted rapist named Hoss, publicly professing a desire to see them killed is something that's even beyond the level of my political vitriol.

And the fact this horrid woman made this even more horrid remark on Rupert Murdoch's abortion called Fox News comes as no surprise to me whatsoever. There are numerous recorded instances of Fox chyrons (you know -- those scrolling mini news stories at the bottom of your t.v. screen that distract the shit out of you as you're trying to listen to some semblance of real news?) substituting Obama's name with Osama's -- Obama Bin-Ladin for example -- oops! -- sorry about that little mixup Senator Obama! I honestly and truly am incapable of comprehending who the ratfuckers at Fox think they're fooling anymore with their blatantly overt conservative bias. That bias should be obvious to all but the most mentally challenged amongst us at this point. And you know what's interesting -- I really don't have a problem with the fact they want to be a mouthpiece network for the GOP -- just don't lie to my fucking face about it ad nauseum. Lying like they do about how "Fair and Balanced" they are just makes them look deceitful and calls into question any shred of journalistic integrity and honesty they might have.

Lastly -- imagine if you can somebody like Keith Olbermann on MSNBC or some Dem party mouthpiece on CNN making a similar death-wish statement about GOP nominee John McCain. HOLY FUCKING EYE-BULGING, VEIN POPPING, SPASTIC BRAIN SEIZURE SHIT FITS BATMAN! -- the right-wingers would be marching in the streets, pitchforks and torches in hand, nooses at the ready with the fiery sparkle of vengeance and righteous justice gleaming in their eyes. And our ever vigilant mainstream media and their high-flying troupe of circus clowns would be all over the story like flies on shit, playing it over and over and over again, feigning outrage and demanding every Democrat and liberal within 1000 fucking miles of the person who said it get down on bended knee, confess their sinful unworthiness and beg forgiveness. Which prompts me to state the obvious once again --- liberal media? what fucking liberal media?

Anyhow, to those who were recipients of my caustic e-mail arrows this past weekend, I beg forgiveness for filling up your e-mail box with my cactus juice fueled ravings, but even after contemplating all of it, I can't and won't beg forgiveness for stating exactly what I thought of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and this soulless bitch Liz Trotta for allowing vile statements (smug, insincere apologies notwithstanding) like that to be spoken on OUR airwaves.

I've no doubt that this following clip is Liz Trotta's all-time favorite movie scene -- and is likely the only thing that's ever brought the sick-minded shrew to orgasm:



----k

Krazee breaks self-imposed silence on John McCain

Perhaps some of you may have noticed that I have yet to make any quantitative remarks, negative or positive, about the presumptive GOP Presidential nominee John McCain this election year. And considering the penchant I have for blasting out my political opinions with reckless abandon, with special, uninhibited malice directed toward the modern-day GOP and their water carriers, that is no small feat for me.

The reason I haven't stated any personal opinions (up to this point) on McCain is twofold. One -- I actually have had a healthy, albeit begrudging, level of respect for John McCain over the years. That level of respect took into account McCain's honorable military service and Vietnam POW ordeal, his occasional warfare with his own party members in bucking some of their more pernicious legislative transgressions, and his seemingly thoughtful disinterest (until recently that is) in sucking up to the people who I believe have hijacked and thoroughly wrecked the Republican party - the fundamentalist religious right.

The second main reason I've been keeping my lip zipped about McCain is because he was the one guy back in 2000, within his own party, who saw the coming disaster that was George W. Bush and actually had the balls to openly and publicly state what he thought about the blue blood, fake Texas cowboy and corrupt oil man, which prompted him to cast his hat in the ring for the Presidency that year. Of course McCain's resultant punishment for that level of public honesty was a vicious political smear job by Bush's brain and hired hit man Karl Rove, which culminated in the horrific hatchet job they performed on the Arizona Senator in the run-up to the 2000 GOP South Carolina primary.

In the weeks prior to that pivotal 2000 South Carolina contest, KKKarl Rove and his foot soldiers blanketed the solidly conservative Republican state, gleefully spreading rumors about McCain and his wife that brought new meaning to the words cruel and slimy. Bush supporters circulated fliers at South Carolina churches labeling McCain as "the fag candidate," because McCain would not promise to ban the hiring of gays in his administration. They spread racist-tinged rumors that the McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually John McCain's out-of-wedlock black child (yeah I know -- but these people are so fucking stupid all they know is the kid had really dark skin). They spread more rumors that McCain was a closeted gay and cheated on his wife Cindy and that Cindy was a drug addict. And the coup de grace rumor was that McCain's 5 & 1/2 year stint as a tortured POW in Vietnam had left him mentally unstable, and therefore an untrustworthy Commander-In-Chief of the military (wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- nuclear weapons). One of the dirty trickster Rove operatives who spear-headed the savaging of McCain in South Carolina that year (Ted Sampley) later went on to be one of the Swift Boat liars who slandered milquetoast Dem John Kerry's honorable military record in 2004 -- but that's a whole other horror story.

Back to McCain though -- unfortunately, for McCain and the American people, the forces of fear mongering, hatefulness, divisiveness and dishonesty ruled the day in that 2000 South Carolina primary and it sent a bitter John McCain limping back to his senatorial post in Arizona with his presidential ambitions ruinously shattered for the foreseeable future.

Flash forward to 2008 and a back from the dead John McCain is furiously trying to plead his case to the American public in his latest quixotic bid for oval office glory. Bluntly stated, and sadly so though -- I propose to you this day that the honorable (arguably to some) John McCain, of pre-2000 South Carolina and prior, exists no more. And I state that to you unequivocally and with the utmost regard for his still meritorious military service.

McCain has flip flopped on important political subjects big and small, everything from his previous rejection of the Bush tax cuts to his now openly embracing and courting of the Jerry Falwell religious right -- the people he correctly labeled "agents of intolerance" in 2000. If John Kerry's convolutions in 2004 about "being for before being against" the Iraq war and subsequent funding bills earned him the flip flopper label, then McCain's list of flip flops is necessarily analogous to of one of my all-time favorite t.v. shows - Kung Fu. In that show the young Kwai Chang Caine was tutored by his blind mentor Master Po if you remember. Master Po was called master for a reason -- nobody was his equal. My analogy is this -- when it comes to the art of flip-flopping -- John McCain is Master Po to John Kerry's Kwai Chang Caine. Any fair analysis of the public record will bear that out.

There's a couple of other core reasons I am having a really difficult time seriously considering pulling the voting lever for McCain this year. He is surrounding himself on domestic and economic policy with a virtual who's who list of corporate lobbyists. In the past week alone the McCain campaign has seen the sudden resignations of (5) high level economic advisers due to corporate lobbying-related conflict of interest allegations. Bush and Cheney shamelessly sucked up to big industry (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, Exxon, etc.) and the defense industry back in 2000 -- and we all know the criminal fallout from those cozy relationships -- Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Adelphia CEO's in prison, Exxon raping the American consumer at the gas pump and war profiteers gone wild in Iraq. It's long past time to diminish the amount of slop (tax payer dollars) in the public trough that the gluttonous corporate pigs have been engorging themselves on these past 8 years. It is damn well time to start investing that money back into America, America's infrastructure and security and the hard working American people who make this country the greatest Democracy in the world.

Secondly -- McCain has taken on as foreign policy advisers many of the same grossly incompetent, idiotic neo-con assholes that got this country embroiled in the Iraq fiasco to begin with and he has voiced unbridled support for Bush's disastrous Iraq policy. And for me what that boils down to is this -- whatever the foreign policy credibility level and boasts of experience which McCain has had by virtue of his military service and his stints in the Senate on the Armed Services Committee over the years is instantly negated and deflated when one reviews the lineup of his foreign policy advisers in 2008 and his position on the Iraq war policy overall. Quite frankly -- if McCain's foreign policy advisory team and his Iraq position were a movie it would be titled "Bush/Cheney - Fuck-Uppery, Part 2."

So -- in the end, and barring some last minute Billary shenanigans in the Dem race, it appears I will be pulling the voting lever for the Senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama, come November and I'm pretty fucking comfortable with that - thank you very much. Oh I know that is not a momentous shock to those of you who are familiar with my viewpoints, but here's something for you to contemplate -- if John McCain had maintained and strengthened half of the courage and conviction he displayed in his GOP nomination battle against George W. Bush back in 2000 my voting decision here in 2008 would have been alot more complicated and self-conflicting and would have been a decision requiring a much more intense level of thoughtful consideration on my part. As it is -- John McCain, by his own sell-out actions, has mercifully spared me the inner turmoil and that agonizing and gut wrenching decision which accompanies it.



----krazee

A media footnote -- A nation's death knell

Wednesday, April 30th marked the 5 year anniversary of Commander W. Codpiece strutting onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with a big, shiny new red, white and blue banner hanging in the background with the words "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" emblazoned across it. And the conservative right-wing Bush sycophants cooed with amorous admiration at the manliness of the cocky little man from Crawford, Texas -- a little man whom they now profferred to the world as a figure who was part God, part action-hero, and part brilliant statesman.

On December 7, 1941, the empire of Japan launched a surprise raid on the United States naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii setting in motion America's involvement in the second world war - aka WWII. On August 15, 1945, 3 months after Italy and Germany surrendered in the European war theater, Japan, reeling from the horrific devastation wrought from the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, also finally surrendered.

So, in approximately 3 years and 8 months the United States and it's allies managed to decisively defeat several then world-class military powers, who had already conquered a goodly portion of Europe and southeast Asia, and restored the hope and promise of Democracy to millions of repressed people around the world. 3 years and 8 months! It bears repeating.

Yet hear we are, 5+ years into the shitty little Iraq conflict, with no end in sight, no viable political solution on the horizon, violence and military and civilian casualty levels on the increase once again (showing the utter, and predictable, folly of the Bush/Petraeus surge), $1 trillion in taxpayer funds wasted (that's a thousand $billion for you math flunkers), and, apparently, an embarrassingly inept ability to wrap up this bloody horror show and take our toys and go home.

There's an old saying -- "the passage of time heals all wounds" and I suppose depending on the gravity of the wound it's generally a truthful statement. With America's military mis-adventures in Mesopotamia I submit to you that the passage of time also adversely affects people's memories and their ability to learn lessons from previous mistakes. I refer to our last long-term military foray on foreign soil -- the Vietnam war. I was just a kid when that conflict was ravaging the moral fabric of our society and chalking up death-toll numbers which would result in a memorial wall of shame in our nation's capital. I remember some of the effects of that idiocy on my family -- an uncle who came back from Vietnam and 6 months after --dressed himself up in his Marines dress uniform, drove his car into a wooded area behind his apartment, put on his white gloves, climbed into the back seat and put a bullet into his own brain. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember the hushed conversations at the wake about the "awfulness" of the Vietnam war. If only more had spoken out openly then, perhaps my uncle would be alive today.

Bottom line is --- this generation has forgotten the stupidity of the Vietnam lesson. We hide our heads in the sand thinking that the same people who had their hands in the Vietnam pot, could somehow now be trusted to deal with another international crisis in an intelligent and diplomatically feasible manner.

The Bushistas are the Nixonites redux --- read up on it if you have the guts and the fortitude to do so. And as Nixon's forays into criminal adventurism doomed his Presidency and the Republican party, Bush's transgressions, in a sane world, ought to be the precedent setting example of why a nation should forcefully remove an elected leader from office and humiliate all those elected officials who supported his transgressions.

The picture of the ( now deceased ) Marine at the head of this post is my justification for stating --- BRING OUR GUYS AND GALS HOME NOW! This country does not need any more Merlin Germanys. If you have an issue with this, please e-mail me -- i'm interested to hear your side of the story.

----krazee