Worst. President. Ever

Today, I added a category to this blog called Worst. President. Ever.  And I’ve been going back and marking posts that belong. This post won’t stay at the top long, but it frames the category.

Several months ago, I got in an email argument with a liberal friend who was incensed when I said that Barack was going to turn out to be the worst president ever. His point was that I wasn’t giving the guy a chance. I didn’t reply. It’s a fair point and I was happy to let him win it. There was nothing I could think of to say that didn’t start with, “Look, dumbass…”

It was obvious to me that Obama was failing and now it’s obvious to everybody. I didn’t want to slam my friend’s head in the toilet and scream, “You voted for it, now eat it!” There are reasons my wife doesn’t want to read this blog, and that last sentence is one of them.

This post has been sitting in my drafts since last April with this notation:

Organize: Date/Event/Suck Category/Suck Description

That’s too much work for me. So I just decided to create a category and start compiling all the bad things this administration is doing. As I remember ones from the past, I’ll add them too.

Here’s what I had in here already:

2009-04 release of CIA interrogation technique memos.

Snubbing Gordon Brown.

Appointing Tim Geithner.

Cap and Trade, and screw you and your liking to be able to afford to read at night too.

The tax scandals of your grey poupon financial genius appointees.

Bowing to a Saudi plutocrat. Bush held his hand–yes I remember.  Hated that too.

Lying about the 5 days public disclosure period on the web before passing bills. That’s easy to do. Not doing it is flat-out lying.

Joining the AIG distraction mob. Trying to demonize people who earn bonuses.

Orchestrating attacks on the tea baggers.

threatening GM/firing Wagoner

2009-04-17. Photo-op with Hugo Chavez. Ignorantly shaking Chavez’ hand. I say ignorant, because that’s what Chavez called Obama a couple of days ago.

2009-04. release of CIA interrogation memos (partial)

2009-04. Announcing release of interrogation pictures.

2009-04. Suggesting that lawyers who gave opinions about torture should be tried.

Looking back at all of the above, I’m very disheartened. It’s just gotten much worse on most fronts since then. Gitmo, the Merry Band of Marxist Czars, jousting with Glenn Beck, the proudly corrupt Democratic Congress, the cop summit, the health care debacle, the resurrection of the CIA show trials, being in the middle of a keepaway game with the Iranian mullahs and the Russians, the Nobel Prize for this year’s biggest Euro-weenie, the fascist “paymaster” Czar, the incompetence at disbursing stimulus funds, the retreat to “well, it’s far worse than we said it would be, but it would have been even far worser without us trust us.” Why don’t you get a Goal Post Moving Czar? Or are all the other czars just supposed to pitch in every Friday when you move them?

And I’m just ranting off the top of my head. There are dozens more big things that Obama is screwing up, things that will take decades to fix.

I am deeply saddened and sickened by what the Obamanistas have wrought. I was far too sanguine about the country riding out an Obama administration none the worse for wear.

The only thing I have left to shield myself against conservative friends’ onslaughts is, Well, McCain would have been even worse! I don’t really believe that anymore. As liberals used to like to say, till their Magic Unicorn got elected, competence counts.

We have the triumph of Leftist academia in this administration.  Obama is their bitch. They say his name sharply and he says, “Yes, ma’am!”

These people running this president are Nellie Olsens and they are Deeply Stupid. Deep Stupidity is characterological. They hate and fear and don’t understand anything that deserves their reverence and respect. They’re worse than teenagers. They’re 9 year olds suddenly in charge of the family. Ice cream and cheese doodles for breakfast every morning! Daddy stays home today! No school! Mommy reads me stories all day! FOX better not make me mad or I’ll wish it into the cornfield!

Their take on soldiers comes from The Deer Hunter and other 70’s movies that are all unwatchable now except for Apocalypse Now, where you root for the people you’re not supposed to. (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”)

Their take on corporations comes from pre-adolescent primary process resentment at not being hired. They creeped the interviewer out.

Their take on the average American is “little pink houses.” They loathe those they propose to rescue. You are racist, stupid, a Fox-watcher, with not a Derrida book in your whole neighborhood. We will shepherd you and cull you and make your final moments painless.

(Sarah Palin caught a lot of crap for her “death panel” jibe, but that’s because it struck home. If you don’t think these people don’t pillow talk about how to neuter all the red state puppies, you’re naive. Most of the people in the current administration won’t use the word eugenics, but they think they’re The Humane Society and you’re a suspect pet with intact testicles.)

Anyhow, I’m done with Obama. If you’re not, I hope he cuts your nuts off.

Rush to Racism

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t just wrap himself in the flag–he thinks he IS the flag. He’s charging up the hill against the NFL, waving proudly in the breeze, outraged because he won’t be allowed to buy in as part owner of the Rams.

Rush’s comments over the years on racial issues are the purported cause celebre for kicking him out of the clubhouse.  Some of the comments that have gotten him booted are fabricated.

Rush busted some liberal New York law firm for puttting bogus racist quotes on Rush’s Wikipedia page. Mainstream media organizations swallowed those quotes whole, and have to should apologize now. And Rush is hammering hammering hammering, like a blowhard John Henry.

As far as I’m concerned the real scandal here is how easily media organizations are suckered and how little research they do before breathlessly “reporting.” Professional media has become an oxymoron. They read Wikipedia and blogs just like everyone else to get their facts and news.

I watched Fox last night, captivated by the Balloon Boy and his Balloon Knot parents. En passant, Geraldo Rivera did an admirable job gathering actual Rush quotes on race, several of which made me wince. And I’m not talking about just the McNabb thing.

Geraldo, doing a fine job as a real reporter, nailed Rush to the wall with quote after quote, gleaned from the radio show, in Rush’s own voice. Real stuff that had other media dug in, they’d have had a field day. This was on FOX, for Christ’s sake. MSNBC and the rest of the legacy media (CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC) were too lazy to get even this catnip scoop.

Geraldo’s point was, Screw Rush–even if a bunch of New York asshats thought they had to pile on to nail the guy, the fact remains he’s said lots of things that are about the same thing as the made-up quotes.

Ok, that’s fine. There’s just one thing. Rush isn’t being given the bum’s rush because of racism. It’s because of his conservatism and influence. Racism is the excuse for lynching Rush. Anybody who has ever commented on race in a way that makes Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton huff and puff is at the same risk. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.

First they came for Rush, and I said nothing, because I wasn’t a loudmouth radio talk show host….

Who’s Stupid Now?

UPDATE March 2019: WARNING–graphic language. I stand behind every C-word.

Bill Maher is stupid. Turns out he’s a Vaccine-Crackpot. He thinks his perpetually snotty nose when he was a child was because he was vaccinated. Maybe so, but what explains Maher at 50 still being such a snotnose brat?

Who else is as stupid as Bill Maher?  How about all those morons who manned the barricades to defend Roman Polanski, the extraordinary director and even more extraordinary 13 year old girl ass-fucker.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I previously posted the libel that Polanski raped that 13-year-old child anally, orally and vaginally. It appears that I was wrong, and Roman isn’t that interested in vaginas. He doubled down on the ass.)

He also took repeated sexual advantage of 15-year-old Nastassia Kinski, starting about a year before the rape he was finally charged with. And stories keep coming out–it’s looking like everyone in Hollywood knew about Polanski’s fetish for underage girls. There were frequent pool parties where he’d photograph girls who, at any other pool, could still innocently go topless.

I’d like to point out that I haven’t really tried to check out anything I’ve said above, and I’m writing it with reckless disregard for the truth and with the intent to bring Polanski into disrepute. I do believe all this stuff is true, but don’t much care if it isn’t. While I’m at it, why don’t I try to incite a little violence?

I’m offering a bounty of $100 American to anyone who will git ‘er done and off Polanski, however indifferently or with style. $200 to anyone who does it by sticking a knife up his ass twice or more.  $300 to anyone who uses a knife made of razor blades on a toothbrush handle.

Somehow, I doubt I’ll be hearing from Rapin’ Roman’s solicitors telling me to cease and desist.

Oh, one last thing before I go. Harrison Ford is a cunt. He signed the Free Polanski manifesto.

Cunt is a really interesting word. It’s way more offensive, in the USA, than cocksucker or motherfucker. I want to make it clear that I am using this term in the USA sense. I can’t think of a more generally offensive or derogatory word right now, or I’d use that word.

Not only is Harrison Ford a cunt, he’s my Designated #1 Cunt. Because he’s such a shocking cunt. He’s Polanski’s frantic little bitch. Ford did a lot more than sign–he collaborated. I invite Harrison C. Ford and Ass-Stormin’ Roman to get together and jointly sue me after they’re done felching each other.

There are lots of other Hollywood cunts who also deserve mention. This won’t be a complete list, just the ones whose work I used to enjoy. The ones I can never see their work again without thinking, what a cunt!

I encourage you to look online for other signatories and supporters who should be added to your own personal Cunt Roll.

Anyhow, without further ado:

Martin Scorsese is a raging cunt.

Terry Gilliam is a funny cunt.

Woody Allen is a kindred cunt.

Whoopie Goldberg is a cunt cunt.

Jonathan Demme is a silent cunt.

Stephen Frears is a dangerous cunt.

David Lynch is an elephant’s cunt.

That little bald cunt Buck Henry is still alive?

John Landis is a hairy cunt.

Debra Winger is Crazy Cunt. She does the voice for the cartoon.

Michael Mann is a vicious cunt.

Taylor Hackford is an official cunt.

Neil Jordan is a surprising cunt.

Milan Kundera is an unbearable cunt.

Sam Mendes is a winsome cunt.

Tilda Swinton can’t figure out if she’s a cunt or not.

Ok, that’s my list. I guess it’s pretty obvious that after a while I stopped picking real favorites and just went for the cunt jokes.

I’m kind of a cunt that way.

Original Sin

I’ve posted several times in the last few months about race. I noticed this when going back over my posts to categorize them. It made me think. Why am I posting about this so often? Maybe I’m that unconscious racist I hear so much about.

I didn’t vote for Barack Obama. I was going to until he signed on to the Bush bailouts. Unlike the Norwegian numbnutz who gave Barack the Nobel award for not being Bush, I didn’t vote for him because I could see he was just like Bush. (cue The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again.)

Rendition, Guantanomo, Patriot Act, Bailouts…All alive and well under Obama.

So let’s say I had voted for Obama. Would that have gotten me a “Get Out of Being Called a Racist Free” card? No, because like all other white people, I still have Original Sin. No matter what I do, I am still deserving of damnation just for being white because of what other people did. Barack Obama is not Jesus (I’m sure that comes as news to many people) and he is not about to expiate White Original Sin. But he’s doing a good job discrediting the whole idea.  Allow me to explain. This will take a while.

To understand White Original Sin, you must first understand generic Original Sin. To understand Original Sin, you first have to understand Sin.

The traditional Christian notion of Sin is that any single, even minor, infraction against God’s Rules deserves eternal punishment. Original Sin just adds the clause “whether committed by you or your ancestors.”  In this most Christian of nations, most people are still cowed by the Sin and Original Sin memes.  This makes them easy pickings for the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

All people who believe in Sin believe that there is no significant moral difference between the offense Ted Bundy committed by running a red light with a dead girl in his trunk and putting the dead girl in his trunk before running the red light. Eternal damnation is the correct and same punishment for both offenses. “God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.”  If you believe that the punishment should fit the crime and if you believe that all crimes and misdemeanors deserve eternal punishment, then you believe that all crimes and misdemeanors are morally identical. There’s no difference between burning a cross on somebody’s lawn and saying something nice because you were invited to  Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. Both are sins of racism, so you must burn in the same hell.

I think one of the reasons the Saw movies are so popular is that they have a deeply Christian view of life. In the Saw movies, some doofus in a goofy mask does things like handcuffing someone to a ticking bomb and giving them a saw so they can cut off their arm and escape before the bomb goes off.  Or something like that. I’ve never seen one of these movies, and I’m sure the setups are much more gruesome and clever, but I think I’ve got the essence right.

In the Christian universe, God has handcuffed you to a ticking bomb labeled ETERNAL DAMNATION but has given you a saw called JESUS CHRIST. All you have to do to escape is saw off your critical thinking and moral discrimination. Or you escape by pushing the button that crucifies Jesus. Whatever. I’ll leave it to others, perhaps those who’ve seen the Saw movies, to improve this metaphor. I think I’ve got the essence right.

Jesus will indifferently forgive  red-light-running and dead-girl-trunk-stuffing. That’s the flip-side of the Sin idea, the Christian Carrot that rescues you from The Divine Stick. Jesus is Good Cop to Jehovah’s Bad Cop. All you have to do is obey and believe and ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is forgiven.

The practical effect of believing that every offense is worthy of damnation is to end up believing that nothing is. You can get out of jail free for anything you do as long as you substitute fawning obedience for moral judgment and discrimination.

Anyway, Original Sin is a durable idea. Original Sin is nothing more and nothing less than the demand that you feel guilty for existing. The reasons for the guilt are always flimsy. Eve ate the apple. Some Southern guy who shares your skin pigmentation kept slaves.  Other people gave you advantages because you shared that guy’s pigmentation. You’re lucky and I’m not. You’re white and I’m not. In no case does it have anything to do with anything malicious you have actually done. Your intent, your character and your actions are irrelevant. In no case can you do anything personally to make up for it, but you’re invited–demanded–to try forever. Or to accept membership and paying dues in Our Gang as payment in full for anything you’ve ever done. We won’t even ask what you’ve done.

The word Racist is used today like the word Sinner was used in 17th century Puritan Salem.

Am I a racist? I don’t believe in original sin.

UPDATE March 2019: I LOVE this post. I often forget how long I’ve thought what I’ve thought.

In Defense of Mawwiage

I used to be tepidly in favor of gay marriage. Not having a dog in the fight, I was fine with passively supporting my gay friends who wanted their wuv wecognized. This was before the obnoxious post-Prop-8 behavior in California, along with sundry other fascist offenses against freedom of speech and opinion that gay activists have been regularly committing. Now, I could give a damn about gay marriage, except if it were on the ballot in my state, I would vote against it, because I don’t like bullying interest groups.

UPDATE March 2019: I did vote for gay marriage when it came on the ballot in Washington state.

This is much like how I feel about giving women equal work for equal pay, or protecting them against workplace harassment, or about affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws. The aggrieved groups have all overreached and are now far more venal than victimized.

With that said, the only plausible arguments I’ve heard against granting gays the legal protections, obligations and horrors of marriage are these:

(1) The government should just butt out of people’s lives. Rather than legalize marriage for gays, we should abolish it for straights. I’ll leave this libertarian utopian argument on the sidelines in this post.

(2) You’ll eventually have to legalize various polyamorous relationships too, including Muslim polygamy. People who dismiss this argument as absurd slippery slope thinking aren’t worth arguing with. But I’ll argue with them for a moment anyway.

There are good reasons to not want this to happen. In Utah, where I was voluntarily (if stupidly) incarcerated for a decade of my life, the Mormon polygamists are a huge pain in the ass. They are a giant drain on the welfare system; they are not culturally assimilated; they breed irresponsibly; more often than not they raise their kids to be even weirder than they are, and they rape their kids a lot too. In all of these respects, fundamentalist Muslims and Mormons are more than alliteratively similar. And most hippie dippy poly’s make even bigger messes of their lives and of those of their hapless children than do the traditional religious nuts.

What possible intelligent argument can you make in favor of gay marriage but against polygamy? You can only count to 2? Muslims and Mormons oppress women and so their free choices are bad for society, but the rabid-mink promiscuity that brought us AIDS was a good thing for society?

The poly problem is actually a good argument for de-legitimizing heterosexual couple relationships too unless they meet certain criteria. If hetero couples aren’t behaving in ways that are consistent with the public interest, why should they get protected more than anyone else? Divorce rates over 50%, widespread abandonment of children from previous relationships, and other stereotypical heterosexual behavior patterns certainly deserve more discouragement from the government. If you think the government should be involved in such things in the first place. Which everyone advocating for or against gay marriage does think, or you’d join me in supporting option (1) above.

(3)  The point of marriage is the welfare of children. At least as far as state involvement and support for marriage is concerned. Marriage deserves unique privileges and protections because the family is the way we get the next generation ready to take over. In the long run, there’s nothing more important, so let’s take this seriously and do everything we can to help those who are responsibly raising children. If you buy that:

• Only romantic/partnering relationships conducive to the healthy rearing of offspring should be promoted by the state. What compelling state interest is there in promoting any other kind of “life partnerships”?
• Going one obvious step further, only relationships where offspring are actually being healthily reared should be state-sanctioned. I don’t know why people should get the benefits of marriage if they don’t have children any more than people should get the benefits of a mortgage tax deduction before they actually buy a house.
• If the state has a legitimate interest in promoting such relationships, certainly it has a legitimate interest in punishing or at least discouraging relationships that are deleterious to raising healthy children.
• Divorce should be illegal until all offspring, natural or adopted, are self-supporting adults. The state has no interest and should have no interest in whether the parents are still in wuv.
• Yes, you should have to be licensed to raise a child. Failing to obtain or maintain such a license should carry a presumption of loss of parental rights. You have to get a license to raise a dog.
• Given the huge default rates for parental financial support, prospective parents should demonstrate financial responsibility before being granted parental rights. I’d say 20% down on the average cost of raising a child to age 18 would be fine, or parents can buy PMI (Parental Monetary Insurance). Failure to comply will presumptively terminate parental rights.
• Getting pregnant out of wedlock or without a license or without proof of financial responsibility should lead to automatic termination of parental rights and mandatory irrevocable adoption unless all hoops are jumped through before the child is born.

Now, we can argue about whether it’s important to have a male parent and a female parent, or whether it’s important to have 2 parents (if, for no other reason than to have a backup in case a parent dies).   But if you’re against gays getting married, and your stance is about anything more than religion or revulsion, how can you not get behind most of the bullet points above?

The problem with marriage today is that heterosexuals don’t take it seriously. It’s not that gays are storming the rotten fences guarding the wedding chapel. Straights have (literally) emasculated and (metaphorically) eviscerated marriage. It’s now till-bored-with-you-do-I-get.

After we dump each other, if we’re good people, we’ll be easily-manipulated guilty parents mewling to our children for validation and expiation, until we turn them into awful brats. If we’re not all that great as people, we’ll stay locked in a death struggle till-death-do-us-part, ignoring the kids, in which case our kids have at least some chance of growing up to be decent, if somewhat traumatized, people.

Here’s the elephant in the living room in this debate:  80% of kids have parents who had bad, stupid, irresponsible or accidental reasons for having them. This includes:

• Every child born out of wedlock to an unmarried woman under 30.
• Every child born out of wedlock to a straight couple.
• Every child born less than 2 years into a legal marriage.
• Every child born to anyone over 30 who has less than $100,000 in net worth.
• Every child born to a married couple under 30 who has less than $50,000 in net worth.
• Every child born to a woman on any form of government assistance.
• Every child whose mother gave him or her up for adoption.
• Every child that was a surprise (duh, listed for completeness).
• Every child under 18 with divorced biological parents.
• Every child with a parent younger than 25 at the moment of conception.

Kinda judgmental, ain’t I? I broke 4 of those rules.  So did my parents. If we used my filters, the human race would die out before 2100. Well, stupid people would continue to breed unabated, so probably everyone left would be urgently scratching themselves like Lindsey Lohan’s last boyfriend and and banging their iPods on rocks because they have forgotten the concept “battery.”

So how do I resolve this dissonence between my breeding bullet points and human survival? Well, they’re not really my points. I’m arguing in this post, as best I can, from the perspective of people who think that phrases like “compelling state interest” are meaningful. See where that leads ya?

Not one thing bulleted here do I believe.

Now I’ll get controversial, and this is what I do believe:

People shouldn’t breed who don’t read anything with more than 100 pages (I don’t care if it’s a comic book or a romantic novel or Stephen King or Proust).

The rest of you, start bumping boots!  Not only isn’t neurosis hereditary, it’s self-limiting.

And stop incenting the aggressively stupid to impregnate each other whenever proximity beckons.

The Silence of the Liberals

My liberal friends really really really don’t want to talk politics these days. They know that Obama is a disaster, deep in their hearts. This seems a particularly good week to talk about their silence. What with Obama’s triumph with the Peace Prize and all.

For a long time, choosing the “winner” of the Nobel Peace Prize has been a sickening exercise in Euro-trash snottiness. Even American liberals are admitting this, now that their Hero has been given the prize merely for Not Being Bush.

Said the prize committee: It’s about time We gave you colonials a gold star for pulling your Blue State heads out of your Red State asses. So this year’s winner is Barack “Our Bitch” Obama.

Even liberals can tell when they’re being grey pooped-on by a bunch of decadent stinky-fish eating socialists.

Poor Barack. Everybody is on him, parsing everything he said. He didn’t know how to react so he did the best he could on short notice.

The one thing he said that was accidentally true was that he was humbled by being given this prize. No kidding, Barack. Humbling America was the whole point.

So what was Barack supposed to do? They gave him a shit sandwich and told him it was the finest European cuisine. He had 5 seconds to think and he ate it to avoid giving offense. This is what happens when your highest value is to avoid giving offense. All your natural defenses are down.

I hope that Barack is pissed off right now, brushing his teeth over and over again, thinking about how he just got played.

I bet you Euro-weenies won’t like him when he’s mad. I bet McChrystal just got an early Christmas present.

I bet the next time my nice liberal friends are willing to talk about politics they’ll sound just a little bit more like John Wayne and a little bit less like Susan Sarandon.

General Dixie Chick

Conservatives who were outraged by the Dixie Chicks dissing George Bush in England seem to be just fine with General McChrystal’s more measured and damaging British disagreement with his Commander-in-Chief.

Regular readers (all 3 of you) know I’m disillusioned with Obama and might guess that I agree with McChrystal about the facts on the ground. But it’s more important to preserve the rule of law and take care of the system that provides the ring in which we jab at each other, than it is to land on any single jab.

It was obnoxious poor form for the Ditzy Chicks to air American dirty laundry on foreign ground. But they’re not sworn to the system like McChrystal is.

McChrystal taking his fight with Obama to the media isn’t just obnoxious, it’s a threat to civilian control of the military. Not a huge threat–cracks aren’t huge. But they’re dangerous, especially in an America where neither the left nor the right gives a flying monkey about what keeps the electricity flowing while they fight over who controls the light switch.

Birthers

It used to be that the Democrats were the party of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  I used to think there wouldn’t be a Democratic Party by 2020. Now, I hope there won’t be a Republican Party after 2010.

Even after Obama won, I thought this was just a rock star moment. The best Dem candidate ever would still have lost were it not for catching the wave of the tanked economy. The Republican McCain/Palin seppuku was barely enough to elect Obama.

 The Obama administration’s stunning incompetence and cluelessness is matched only by its hubris. I can tell that everyone knows this because liberal friends  won’t talk to me about politics anymore–they’re in full-on, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it mode. They pin their hopes on the birthers.

Which brings me to my point. So do the Republicans–pin their hopes on the birthers and their hero Sarah Palin.

Let’s say the birthers are right. Obama is technically disqualified to be president. The time to win this fight was before the election. Now, this is just a crackpot undermining of the system, no different from the crackpot left challenges to George Bush’s election.

Sarah Palin is the queen of unforced errors. Her resignation as governor was asinine, as were her statements about it. Blame Katie Couric all you want, that was not an anomaly.

I wrote in Sarah Palin for president in the last election. I don’t regret it. Even now, I think she’s so much better than Obama, Biden, McCain, the three stooges.

But she’s done and dumber. Put a fork in her. If the Republicans moth-to-a-flame to her, it will be over for them.