Fear the Chemical Plants, Not the "Terrorists":
So much of what we argue about in our politics in the United States is just so much noise and distraction, like a magician trying to misdirect an audience's attention so they don't see the bullshit behind the trick. Sometimes, the Rude Pundit imagines super-rich fucks in some luxurious penthouse high, high above the streets, sucking down thousand dollar bottles of wine, snorting cocaine, and laughing, laughing, laughing as they watch on TV as we down here in the world of the rabble fight over the scraps. Abortion? Guns? Gay rights? Oh, yes, yes, these are very real and very important issues. But they are, despite being gut-level meaningful, merely the symptoms we're trying to get under control because we can't fight the disease: the withering, overwhelming siege of democracy by corporations. That's where the life and death battle needs to be waged, but it is the battle we are incapable of engaging because "Look over there - it's a terrorist."
You gotta think that the owners of fertilizer and other plants around the world, like the Koch brothers, were incredibly relieved that the explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company in Texas happened just a couple of days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Americans, and our media had to go nutzoid over "terrorism," because the saga of the Tsarnaevs totally subsumed the story of a neighborhood wrecked by a preventable explosion that killed four times as many people and far, far more property than the Tsarnaevs pressure cooker bombs.
The town of West was failed by multiple governmental agencies, but it was the insidious influence of industry money, often from multinational corporations like, you know, Koch Industries, that watered down regulation and enforcement. That's a goddamn shame. But the fact that the plant had 1350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate, the shit that blows up, that was reportable to the DHS to ensure it's safe and secure? That's a goddamn crime, a crime far more important to the well-being of Americans than whatever those assholes in Boston were up to and a crime that ought to be punished by more than the lawsuits now being filed against plant owner Adair Grain, Inc.
Of course, it's not like you'd know that. Indeed, it's not like you'd know anything, at this point, other than the Boston bombing is the Most Significant Event Ever Since the Underwear Bomber. There's been a kind of creepy media near-blackout of the West story.
At his press conference today, President Obama was asked two questions related to the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, that bullshit rallying point for increasingly crazed conservative conspiracy-mongering. Obama was even asked if Americans should feel unsafe about going to public events because they might have douche-bombers attacking them. Doesn't it seem, intrepid CNN reporter Jessica Yellin, that the more reasonable question is "Should the millions of Americans who live near goddamn chemical plants worry that that fucking things are gonna go armageddon on their asses?"
The last most of us will probably ever hear about West is that Obama made a stopover in Waco last week to be hugger-in-chief at the memorial service to the firefighters killed. In a boilerplate "buck up" speech, Obama extolled small town virtues and good ol' American come-togetherness. He did not say a single word about making sure the next West explosion doesn't happen, that more than a dozen people don't die.
There's a bill in Congress right now that will ensure that more do die. It waters down the EPA's ability to regulate chemical sites. As Mother Jones reports, it's supported by "two dozen industry groups, including the Fertilizer Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration." That's also known as "A Cabal of Motherfuckers." It's pathetically hilarious that Congress will gladly strip away individual rights in the name of hunting down a few jack-offs who wanna be the Joker, but burden a capitalist with some oversight so that shit doesn't burn your town down? That's government over-reach, you socialist bastards.
This is not to mention that 14 new ammonia plants are proposed to be built in the next 3-5 years, after a 20-year lull. That's because of the availability of cheap natural gas, which is pumping up the production of ammonia, which is one of the prime ingredients in, hey, look, ammonium nitrate, which blew the fuck out of West, Texas.
Yep, those imaginary rich people, tripping balls at their rooftop orgies, are laughing hard. And they're walking to the edge to piss off the side on the rest of us.
The liberal press (the real liberal press) needs to stay on this story and not get distra--oh, hey, look, a basketball player said he's gay...
4/29/2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Snort Meth Off a Dumpster Lid:
That's the apartment complex that was destroyed by the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company on Thursday, April 18. What happened in the redundantly named town of West, Texas, is far, far more important than anything to do with Boston bombs, Tsarnaevs old and young, and innocent Mishas. If we truly gave a shit about being safe in our homes in this America, we'd be talking endlessly about West, not Boston.
The Rude Pundit will have much more to say about this tomorrow, but he wanted you to see this image so you can understand that something truly awful happened in West, a story that has been buried with almost conspiratorial swiftness.
So far only 3 out of the 157 homes in the blast zone have been deemed habitable. You can imagine that these apartments were not among them.
That's the apartment complex that was destroyed by the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company on Thursday, April 18. What happened in the redundantly named town of West, Texas, is far, far more important than anything to do with Boston bombs, Tsarnaevs old and young, and innocent Mishas. If we truly gave a shit about being safe in our homes in this America, we'd be talking endlessly about West, not Boston.
The Rude Pundit will have much more to say about this tomorrow, but he wanted you to see this image so you can understand that something truly awful happened in West, a story that has been buried with almost conspiratorial swiftness.
So far only 3 out of the 157 homes in the blast zone have been deemed habitable. You can imagine that these apartments were not among them.
4/26/2013
A More Realistic Bush Museum:
The highlights of the new George W. Bush Library and Abattoir of History are many. The building itself is shaped like a giant hand with a middle finger thrusting out, obviously pointing towards the heavens, where the former president found the strength to deal with the many crises of his two terms in office. The statues out front of drunken sisters Barbara and Jenna Bush welcome you inside because, indeed, what is life but a party?
- The first space is the "How-the-Fuck-Did-This-Guy-Become-President" Room, and it deals with Bush's early years. Exhibits include the megaphone Bush used as a school cheerleader, a pile of cocaine and bottle and bottles of tequila, and, of course, a wrecked car or two. You'll learn about how Bush succeeded in destroying nearly every business he ever came near, except for the Texas Rangers, which didn't require him to play an active role. You'll gaze in wonder, perhaps nodding and thinking, "How the fuck did this guy become president? Sure, maybe governor of Texas because, well, fuck, it's Texas. But the whole goddamn country? Twice?" Then you see the final glass case: stacks of cash from the Bush family's overseas accounts.
- The next room lets you have fun recounting ballots from Florida. What kind of mark is that? How's that chad hanging? You get to figure it out. Be careful though. You have a timer on you and before you're done, rowdy GOP operatives will appear on a screen to distract you and an animatronic William Rehnquist comes rushing in to put an end to it.
- The heart of the Abattoir of History is the Chamber of Horrors. Here, wax figures represent the various victims of George W. Bush's belief in the greatness of the United States.
You get to stand in front of a bed that contains a brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Oh, wait. That's not a wax figure. It actually is Terri Schiavo, secretly kept alive by machines to remind us that only God can decide who lives and dies.
Further in the Chamber of Horrors, you'll see the Lab of Scientists, a diorama showing people who have studied subjects like medicine and climate attempting to solve the problems that plague humanity. Never fear: Dr. Stem Cell and Professor Inconvenient Truth won't get far attempting to kill snowflake babies in order to fill the ozone layer or whatever it is they're doing. George W. Bush will stop them from their "reality-based" work.
The Titty Room will remind you of the important breasts of the Bush Administration: the boobs on the statue of Justice that Attorney General John Ashcroft had covered and the national scandal of Janet Jackson's pierced nipple fleetingly displayed on television. These things mattered because the children.
On we push into the Chamber, and it gets a little more grotesque here. There's a display of a flooded Canal Street in New Orleans. Yes, sure, there's an alligator about to eat the corpse of that black woman, but it still feels like the Big Easy.
And then there's the display of dead Iraqis, who were Shocked and Awed and Surged and Fallujahed into loving America. Never fear: it's the George W. Bush Library. You won't have to see any bodies of Americans. Yes, there is a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's execution, but, no, Osama bin Laden isn't here because, you know, who really spends time on him?
- The Subjects Is Hard Room is devoted to George W. Bush's disdain for things like reading and math. There's the daily briefing that said, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." It's still unread after all this time. There's the tax cut bills Bush signed, one of them even after the wars had started. There's Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill's report that said that taxes needed to be raised and spending cut. Next to that is the letter informing O'Neill that he would no longer be needed in the White House.
- There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures. And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.
- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.
Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.
The highlights of the new George W. Bush Library and Abattoir of History are many. The building itself is shaped like a giant hand with a middle finger thrusting out, obviously pointing towards the heavens, where the former president found the strength to deal with the many crises of his two terms in office. The statues out front of drunken sisters Barbara and Jenna Bush welcome you inside because, indeed, what is life but a party?
- The first space is the "How-the-Fuck-Did-This-Guy-Become-President" Room, and it deals with Bush's early years. Exhibits include the megaphone Bush used as a school cheerleader, a pile of cocaine and bottle and bottles of tequila, and, of course, a wrecked car or two. You'll learn about how Bush succeeded in destroying nearly every business he ever came near, except for the Texas Rangers, which didn't require him to play an active role. You'll gaze in wonder, perhaps nodding and thinking, "How the fuck did this guy become president? Sure, maybe governor of Texas because, well, fuck, it's Texas. But the whole goddamn country? Twice?" Then you see the final glass case: stacks of cash from the Bush family's overseas accounts.
- The next room lets you have fun recounting ballots from Florida. What kind of mark is that? How's that chad hanging? You get to figure it out. Be careful though. You have a timer on you and before you're done, rowdy GOP operatives will appear on a screen to distract you and an animatronic William Rehnquist comes rushing in to put an end to it.
- The heart of the Abattoir of History is the Chamber of Horrors. Here, wax figures represent the various victims of George W. Bush's belief in the greatness of the United States.
You get to stand in front of a bed that contains a brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Oh, wait. That's not a wax figure. It actually is Terri Schiavo, secretly kept alive by machines to remind us that only God can decide who lives and dies.
Further in the Chamber of Horrors, you'll see the Lab of Scientists, a diorama showing people who have studied subjects like medicine and climate attempting to solve the problems that plague humanity. Never fear: Dr. Stem Cell and Professor Inconvenient Truth won't get far attempting to kill snowflake babies in order to fill the ozone layer or whatever it is they're doing. George W. Bush will stop them from their "reality-based" work.
The Titty Room will remind you of the important breasts of the Bush Administration: the boobs on the statue of Justice that Attorney General John Ashcroft had covered and the national scandal of Janet Jackson's pierced nipple fleetingly displayed on television. These things mattered because the children.
On we push into the Chamber, and it gets a little more grotesque here. There's a display of a flooded Canal Street in New Orleans. Yes, sure, there's an alligator about to eat the corpse of that black woman, but it still feels like the Big Easy.
And then there's the display of dead Iraqis, who were Shocked and Awed and Surged and Fallujahed into loving America. Never fear: it's the George W. Bush Library. You won't have to see any bodies of Americans. Yes, there is a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's execution, but, no, Osama bin Laden isn't here because, you know, who really spends time on him?
- The Subjects Is Hard Room is devoted to George W. Bush's disdain for things like reading and math. There's the daily briefing that said, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." It's still unread after all this time. There's the tax cut bills Bush signed, one of them even after the wars had started. There's Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill's report that said that taxes needed to be raised and spending cut. Next to that is the letter informing O'Neill that he would no longer be needed in the White House.
- There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures. And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.
- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.
Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.
4/25/2013
The George W. Bush Library: A Place to Contemplate One's Existential Worthlessness:
Yessirree, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Whitewashatorium of Wonders is opening in all its Panglossian glory, forcing us to look backward and think, "Aw, schucks, that dumb shitkicker wannabe was just doing the best his little ol' brain could do. He didn't mean to set the nation on the path to its imminent doom." Truly, it's like creating a library to a gorilla that wasn't quite as gentle or articulate as Koko. Well, look, here's a pile of kitten corpses it petted to death, but, goddamn, wasn't it adorable to watch them together briefly. And at least it could use sign language to say, "Me throw poop now." You might have to duck, but don't say you weren't warned.
Beyond the exhibits (like the chance to see if you are smarter than George W. Bush "Decision Points" computer games), there's the "artifacts," a bunch of objects from the Bush presidency that are supposed to make you nostalgic for the first decade of the 21st century.
Like, hey, look, there's the bicycle from noted cheater Lance Armstrong that Bush rode for more time than he spent in the office, injuring himself multiple times.
There's a statue of a bull sauntering without a care over a pile of shit. Of course, that was in the Oval Office for Bush's entire term.
Seriously, how fucking useless a man do you have to have been for the museum devoted to your eight goddamn years to contain an exhibit of the state dinners from one's time in office. How pathetic and low do you have to be for the place meant to commemorate your accomplishments to have this picture:
That's the dessert tray from the 2008 National Governors Association dinner. Since it was 2008, you can pretty much assume that those are Republican testicles covered in powdered sugar since they were about to have their balls handed to them.
Let's not even get started on the series of photos from the White House t-ball games, which Laura Bush herself mentioned as one of the accomplishments of the administration this morning on NPR (the Rude Pundit swears to you he is not making that up).
And there's a section on the dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley. Hopefully, the museum will feature their stuffed corpses so we can admire their dead-eyed adorableness and think about how Barney now rots in hell. By the way, the Rude Pundit searched the Clinton library website. He did not find a biography of Socks the cat.
The whole thing seems designed not just to cover-up for every horrible thing done to the United States under Bush. Actually, it reflects the essential emptiness of the man who led the country as an incurious figurehead, a meat puppet with Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's hands up his ass at different times. In recent interviews, you can hear the reporters trying to get Bush to have a scintilla of self-awareness, a moment when he says he regrets something or made a wrong decision. He doesn't, though, because he can't. He can't because he was never secure in anything but his rightness, no matter how much of a failure he was.
Now, though, George W. Bush wants to be forgotten. He has disappeared because he is incapable of doing anything. He bumblefucked his way into history. His library merely represents his non-entity status. And it costs 16 bucks to see it.
Tomorrow: What an honest Bush library would look like.
Yessirree, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Whitewashatorium of Wonders is opening in all its Panglossian glory, forcing us to look backward and think, "Aw, schucks, that dumb shitkicker wannabe was just doing the best his little ol' brain could do. He didn't mean to set the nation on the path to its imminent doom." Truly, it's like creating a library to a gorilla that wasn't quite as gentle or articulate as Koko. Well, look, here's a pile of kitten corpses it petted to death, but, goddamn, wasn't it adorable to watch them together briefly. And at least it could use sign language to say, "Me throw poop now." You might have to duck, but don't say you weren't warned.
Beyond the exhibits (like the chance to see if you are smarter than George W. Bush "Decision Points" computer games), there's the "artifacts," a bunch of objects from the Bush presidency that are supposed to make you nostalgic for the first decade of the 21st century.
Like, hey, look, there's the bicycle from noted cheater Lance Armstrong that Bush rode for more time than he spent in the office, injuring himself multiple times.
There's a statue of a bull sauntering without a care over a pile of shit. Of course, that was in the Oval Office for Bush's entire term.
Seriously, how fucking useless a man do you have to have been for the museum devoted to your eight goddamn years to contain an exhibit of the state dinners from one's time in office. How pathetic and low do you have to be for the place meant to commemorate your accomplishments to have this picture:
That's the dessert tray from the 2008 National Governors Association dinner. Since it was 2008, you can pretty much assume that those are Republican testicles covered in powdered sugar since they were about to have their balls handed to them.
Let's not even get started on the series of photos from the White House t-ball games, which Laura Bush herself mentioned as one of the accomplishments of the administration this morning on NPR (the Rude Pundit swears to you he is not making that up).
And there's a section on the dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley. Hopefully, the museum will feature their stuffed corpses so we can admire their dead-eyed adorableness and think about how Barney now rots in hell. By the way, the Rude Pundit searched the Clinton library website. He did not find a biography of Socks the cat.
The whole thing seems designed not just to cover-up for every horrible thing done to the United States under Bush. Actually, it reflects the essential emptiness of the man who led the country as an incurious figurehead, a meat puppet with Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's hands up his ass at different times. In recent interviews, you can hear the reporters trying to get Bush to have a scintilla of self-awareness, a moment when he says he regrets something or made a wrong decision. He doesn't, though, because he can't. He can't because he was never secure in anything but his rightness, no matter how much of a failure he was.
Now, though, George W. Bush wants to be forgotten. He has disappeared because he is incapable of doing anything. He bumblefucked his way into history. His library merely represents his non-entity status. And it costs 16 bucks to see it.
Tomorrow: What an honest Bush library would look like.
4/24/2013
Our Gun Laws Don't Care If You Might Be a Terrorist:
Look, the Rude Pundit knows that the Tsarnaevs didn't get their guns from the shop at the corner or the Wal-Mart. But let's try a thought experiment.
Wrap your head around this: Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aka "The Dead One," was on the terrorist watch list (or, you know, one of the super-secret watch lists), and that fact alone wouldn't have stopped him at all from legally buying any gun he wanted. It wouldn't have even slowed him down. You can be forced to leap through hoops and have your anus probed in order to board a plane. But being on the list that's supposed to, you know, give us the illusion of safety cannot, by law, be used to even slow someone down if he or she wants an AR-15.
The Rude Pundit thinks the watch list is bullshit and a violation of at least three constitutional protections, but, hell, it exists and it affects nearly half a million people, hindering them in various ways. Not if you want a semi-automatic rifle with a large magazine, though. Again, think about it, particularly if you're a gun owner: Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have walked into a gun store. He would have had to pass a background check, but that background check could not take into consideration that he was on the goddamn terrorist watch list. Nothing could happen because of that. No extra phone call to authorities. He would have been treated like anyone else. What might have hindered him was his domestic violence incident and that he was denied citizenship. But not for being on the terrorist watch list. And, you know, at a gun show? Fuck, go for it. (Wanna bet we find out that that's where he got his guns?)
You want a fact? Here ya go: "Data from the Government Accountability Office show that between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times. They succeeded in more than 90 percent of those cases, or 1,321 times." Are you cool with this, average gun owner?
Simply put, if you support the idea of a terrorist watch list, if you support the idea of monitoring people who you think might one day attack the United States, but you don't think they should receive extra scrutiny when purchasing a fucking gun or a bunch of fucking guns and bullets, then you are, at best, a pathetic tool of the NRA; at worst, you're aiding and abetting violence against Americans. No matter what, you are the worst kind of motherfucker: the kind who fucks his own mother and is proud of it. Let's just call you "Lindsey Graham" for short.
On Sunday in Seattle, five people were shot dead after a domestic dispute. Today, in an Illinois town of less than 300, five people were shot dead.
In Boston, yes, many were injured and property was damaged. But so far only three people have died. The media is filled with articles and reports introspective and knee-jerk about What Could We Have Done to prevent the bombing or What Can We Do to prevent future attacks. None of those ideas involve preventing people from having access easy access to weapons and explosives (you know, gunpowder?).
No, the Seattle and Manchester, IL murderers are not analogous to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But they each killed more people. And we're not going to have a single discussion about how to stop those kinds of mass killings because, like in our national failure to do anything after Newtown, the right answers are off the table.
Look, the Rude Pundit knows that the Tsarnaevs didn't get their guns from the shop at the corner or the Wal-Mart. But let's try a thought experiment.
Wrap your head around this: Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aka "The Dead One," was on the terrorist watch list (or, you know, one of the super-secret watch lists), and that fact alone wouldn't have stopped him at all from legally buying any gun he wanted. It wouldn't have even slowed him down. You can be forced to leap through hoops and have your anus probed in order to board a plane. But being on the list that's supposed to, you know, give us the illusion of safety cannot, by law, be used to even slow someone down if he or she wants an AR-15.
The Rude Pundit thinks the watch list is bullshit and a violation of at least three constitutional protections, but, hell, it exists and it affects nearly half a million people, hindering them in various ways. Not if you want a semi-automatic rifle with a large magazine, though. Again, think about it, particularly if you're a gun owner: Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have walked into a gun store. He would have had to pass a background check, but that background check could not take into consideration that he was on the goddamn terrorist watch list. Nothing could happen because of that. No extra phone call to authorities. He would have been treated like anyone else. What might have hindered him was his domestic violence incident and that he was denied citizenship. But not for being on the terrorist watch list. And, you know, at a gun show? Fuck, go for it. (Wanna bet we find out that that's where he got his guns?)
You want a fact? Here ya go: "Data from the Government Accountability Office show that between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times. They succeeded in more than 90 percent of those cases, or 1,321 times." Are you cool with this, average gun owner?
Simply put, if you support the idea of a terrorist watch list, if you support the idea of monitoring people who you think might one day attack the United States, but you don't think they should receive extra scrutiny when purchasing a fucking gun or a bunch of fucking guns and bullets, then you are, at best, a pathetic tool of the NRA; at worst, you're aiding and abetting violence against Americans. No matter what, you are the worst kind of motherfucker: the kind who fucks his own mother and is proud of it. Let's just call you "Lindsey Graham" for short.
On Sunday in Seattle, five people were shot dead after a domestic dispute. Today, in an Illinois town of less than 300, five people were shot dead.
In Boston, yes, many were injured and property was damaged. But so far only three people have died. The media is filled with articles and reports introspective and knee-jerk about What Could We Have Done to prevent the bombing or What Can We Do to prevent future attacks. None of those ideas involve preventing people from having access easy access to weapons and explosives (you know, gunpowder?).
No, the Seattle and Manchester, IL murderers are not analogous to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But they each killed more people. And we're not going to have a single discussion about how to stop those kinds of mass killings because, like in our national failure to do anything after Newtown, the right answers are off the table.
4/23/2013
The Boston Distraction: Republicans Are More of a Threat to America Than Bombers:
There's something that's been deeply bugging the Rude Pundit lately in the wake of the continued, seemingly unstoppable Republican obstructionism in the Senate (and leaving aside whatever the hell goes on in the House, which has just become a stage for a weird psychodrama between John Boehner and the wacko right-wingers). By making the threshold for any bill 60 votes, a pretty hard mark even in times of comity and genuine compromise, the Republicans have declared that the minority backseat drives the Senate. Now, if Republicans take back the Senate in 2014, and assuming they don't knock down the filibuster rules, Democrats will be able to do the same, and, even if they can't, President Obama could still veto.
So Republicans have said, through their actions, that the only way the federal government can function is if they rule it. All of it. This is not a blithe assertion. Even when bills are crafted in a way to make the GOP happy (like the background check legislation or, going back to 2009, the bank bailout), even when they are in the room writing the damn things, even when they get to propose a bunch of amendments, they filibuster or threaten to vote them down. And don't get them started on Obama's judicial and other nominees.
While any party wants to have total control of the processes of government, the periods of that are rare (and Democrats can thank enormous piece of shit Senator Max Baucus, among others, for blowing the 2009-2010 shot at it. Baucus should be pantsed, spanked bloody, and forced into the streets of DC as his retirement send-off). But it's something else entirely for one party to assert that they will not allow government to function unless they are in charge. That is new. That is insidious. That is frightening. And it is more of a threat to the United States than a dozen Bostons.
The Boston Marathon Bombing is not that significant an event. Unless you're a victim, it's just not. The West, Texas chemical plant explosion is far more important to our personal security. But not Boston. It's not 9/11. It's not Oklahoma City. It's not Sandy Hook. It's a crime that has been solved. With few loose ends, it is already over. But the GOP just absorbed it into their bloodstream, using it as an inoculation against doing anything, on guns and, ultimately, on immigration. Goddamn, how jubilant Republicans must have been, inside, yes, for the most part, when it happened so that they could bray and point and say, "Look, look, Obama can't keep us safe." Christ, the 2014 ads that'll say, in essence, "Come back, come back to our savage conservative arms and we will protect you." But until they are voted back in, with a supermajority in the Senate, they will simply not allow the nation to move from an enforced stasis.
We are their hostages. Their price is our capitulation.
Today, the Bush Library-o-tarium of Lies and Exaggerations will open. It will no doubt whitewash most of George W.'s crimes against the nation. But it will list all the things he wanted that he got, from tax cuts to wars to No Child Left Behind to the prescription drug plan, many with Democrats on board. At this point, the Obama Presidential Library will feature a series of decent ideas that were left on the cutting room floor.
(Note: To be sure, the Obama administration will use the Boston bombings to keep on with the surveillance programs and drone attacks, but that's a topic for another day.)
There's something that's been deeply bugging the Rude Pundit lately in the wake of the continued, seemingly unstoppable Republican obstructionism in the Senate (and leaving aside whatever the hell goes on in the House, which has just become a stage for a weird psychodrama between John Boehner and the wacko right-wingers). By making the threshold for any bill 60 votes, a pretty hard mark even in times of comity and genuine compromise, the Republicans have declared that the minority backseat drives the Senate. Now, if Republicans take back the Senate in 2014, and assuming they don't knock down the filibuster rules, Democrats will be able to do the same, and, even if they can't, President Obama could still veto.
So Republicans have said, through their actions, that the only way the federal government can function is if they rule it. All of it. This is not a blithe assertion. Even when bills are crafted in a way to make the GOP happy (like the background check legislation or, going back to 2009, the bank bailout), even when they are in the room writing the damn things, even when they get to propose a bunch of amendments, they filibuster or threaten to vote them down. And don't get them started on Obama's judicial and other nominees.
While any party wants to have total control of the processes of government, the periods of that are rare (and Democrats can thank enormous piece of shit Senator Max Baucus, among others, for blowing the 2009-2010 shot at it. Baucus should be pantsed, spanked bloody, and forced into the streets of DC as his retirement send-off). But it's something else entirely for one party to assert that they will not allow government to function unless they are in charge. That is new. That is insidious. That is frightening. And it is more of a threat to the United States than a dozen Bostons.
The Boston Marathon Bombing is not that significant an event. Unless you're a victim, it's just not. The West, Texas chemical plant explosion is far more important to our personal security. But not Boston. It's not 9/11. It's not Oklahoma City. It's not Sandy Hook. It's a crime that has been solved. With few loose ends, it is already over. But the GOP just absorbed it into their bloodstream, using it as an inoculation against doing anything, on guns and, ultimately, on immigration. Goddamn, how jubilant Republicans must have been, inside, yes, for the most part, when it happened so that they could bray and point and say, "Look, look, Obama can't keep us safe." Christ, the 2014 ads that'll say, in essence, "Come back, come back to our savage conservative arms and we will protect you." But until they are voted back in, with a supermajority in the Senate, they will simply not allow the nation to move from an enforced stasis.
We are their hostages. Their price is our capitulation.
Today, the Bush Library-o-tarium of Lies and Exaggerations will open. It will no doubt whitewash most of George W.'s crimes against the nation. But it will list all the things he wanted that he got, from tax cuts to wars to No Child Left Behind to the prescription drug plan, many with Democrats on board. At this point, the Obama Presidential Library will feature a series of decent ideas that were left on the cutting room floor.
(Note: To be sure, the Obama administration will use the Boston bombings to keep on with the surveillance programs and drone attacks, but that's a topic for another day.)
4/22/2013
A Few Things Regarding the Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing:
The Rude Pundit didn't really think he'd be so glad to be away from the United States for a week. In Germany, he watched and read about, in bits and pieces, the enormous freak-out in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, seeing it from a distance, above it, staring down, like some Wings of Desire angel, except instead of gazing mournfully from the Berlin Victory Tower at how touchingly tragic humanity is, he'd have been slapping his head while watching everyone shit themselves while the media ran around like slapstick clowns, slamming into each other and hitting each other with fish.
(Note: The Boston PD and other authorities in the manhunt are left out of the parade of morons because, you know, they got the fucking job done with admirably little other damage, except to the alleged bombers. Note to the note: Yeah, the lockdown was a bit heavy-handed.)
You're gonna hear conspiracy heaped upon conspiracy, from the evil Moooslim connection to the wacky Chechen/Russian/Kyrgyz cover-ups of something or other to, inevitably, the Lizard People, but here's what we all know happened: A couple of brothers, one with a wife and kid, who were ball cap-wearing bros watched too much jihadi shit on the internet, perhaps met a person or two in a visit to the homeland, and decided to act stupidly, which is what stupid young men do. And, oh, hey, an older brother got his younger brother to go along with a plan because it's cool to blow shit up. We won't find out anything useful from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was an isolated incident, no different than Newtown, Columbine, or any other crime where assholes got a shit-ton of guns and bullets, something that makes them awfully American at this point. Hell, if their last name had been Smith, we wouldn't even be talking about it as anything more than one more tragedy in our carousel of carnage, another time we won't learn or do a goddamn thing.
The Rude Pundit doesn't say this to diminish the pain and suffering of those who were attacked. He does this to diminish the pain and suffering about to be inflicted on the rest of us because two dicks made bombs that work. Once again, we’re going to act like a couple of worthless fucks are a threat to the freedoms of the United States, thus turning them into a threat to the freedoms of the United States. We did it with 9/11, when we elevated Osama bin Laden from the sick boss of a few dozen goat-fuckers to Hitler-level evil genius. We did it with the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the nonstop excuses to whittle away and whittle away at true freedom until it's nothing more than the shadow of liberty.
We have been on edge in this nation since 9/11, almost fetishistically tearing at ourselves, knowing, just knowing, that Something Bad would happen again. And finally, thank fucking god, it did. But here's the thing: Something Bad always happens, whether you're anticipating it or not. You are judged by how you react to it. And from the reaction to this, we are fucked beyond fucked.
The Rude Pundit will talk this week about a few of the ways we fucked it all up, but let's start with this: Get Tsarnaev a lawyer. He's an American citizen. Treat him like he's supposed to be. Enough with this bullshit "public safety exception" to reading him his Miranda rights. We found the stash of weapons and bombs almost immediately. Obama campaigned against this very kind of approach to "terrorism," but now he embraces it with the force of Dick Cheney's mechanical heart-type machine.
It's goddamn embarrassing to see the Senate's prettiest debutante, Lindsey Graham, more or less standing at Tsarnaev's bedside, cock out, ready to fuck the bullet hole in the guy's neck while Kelly Ayotte and John McCain fondle each other and watch as Peter King jacks off in the corner, all sweaty in anticipation of a declaration that Tsarnaev's an "enemy combatant" so he can be Gitmo'd or some such shit.
It's depressing beyond words to hear people say, as Graham did, that "The homeland is the battlefield" and call for surveillance, more surveillance, on the ground, in the sky, surveillance of every space, every orifice, give up more freedom, always be a suspect, always make sure the authorities are watching. Who gives a fat monkey fuck about your Fifth Amendment rights when there might be a single terrorist out there?
Oh, except for one thing. Guns. We can't keep a national database of those purchases. Nope, no surveillance of legal gun buys. Too bad the Tsarnaevs didn't make fertilizer bombs. Yeah, purchases of certain kinds of farm products - infused shit, if you will- could be reported and tracked. But not guns or gunpowder.
Now, we're gonna have another freak-out over Who Knew What When, with the FBI's questioning of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 becoming the new Benghazi.
Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue.
The Rude Pundit didn't really think he'd be so glad to be away from the United States for a week. In Germany, he watched and read about, in bits and pieces, the enormous freak-out in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, seeing it from a distance, above it, staring down, like some Wings of Desire angel, except instead of gazing mournfully from the Berlin Victory Tower at how touchingly tragic humanity is, he'd have been slapping his head while watching everyone shit themselves while the media ran around like slapstick clowns, slamming into each other and hitting each other with fish.
(Note: The Boston PD and other authorities in the manhunt are left out of the parade of morons because, you know, they got the fucking job done with admirably little other damage, except to the alleged bombers. Note to the note: Yeah, the lockdown was a bit heavy-handed.)
You're gonna hear conspiracy heaped upon conspiracy, from the evil Moooslim connection to the wacky Chechen/Russian/Kyrgyz cover-ups of something or other to, inevitably, the Lizard People, but here's what we all know happened: A couple of brothers, one with a wife and kid, who were ball cap-wearing bros watched too much jihadi shit on the internet, perhaps met a person or two in a visit to the homeland, and decided to act stupidly, which is what stupid young men do. And, oh, hey, an older brother got his younger brother to go along with a plan because it's cool to blow shit up. We won't find out anything useful from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was an isolated incident, no different than Newtown, Columbine, or any other crime where assholes got a shit-ton of guns and bullets, something that makes them awfully American at this point. Hell, if their last name had been Smith, we wouldn't even be talking about it as anything more than one more tragedy in our carousel of carnage, another time we won't learn or do a goddamn thing.
The Rude Pundit doesn't say this to diminish the pain and suffering of those who were attacked. He does this to diminish the pain and suffering about to be inflicted on the rest of us because two dicks made bombs that work. Once again, we’re going to act like a couple of worthless fucks are a threat to the freedoms of the United States, thus turning them into a threat to the freedoms of the United States. We did it with 9/11, when we elevated Osama bin Laden from the sick boss of a few dozen goat-fuckers to Hitler-level evil genius. We did it with the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the nonstop excuses to whittle away and whittle away at true freedom until it's nothing more than the shadow of liberty.
We have been on edge in this nation since 9/11, almost fetishistically tearing at ourselves, knowing, just knowing, that Something Bad would happen again. And finally, thank fucking god, it did. But here's the thing: Something Bad always happens, whether you're anticipating it or not. You are judged by how you react to it. And from the reaction to this, we are fucked beyond fucked.
The Rude Pundit will talk this week about a few of the ways we fucked it all up, but let's start with this: Get Tsarnaev a lawyer. He's an American citizen. Treat him like he's supposed to be. Enough with this bullshit "public safety exception" to reading him his Miranda rights. We found the stash of weapons and bombs almost immediately. Obama campaigned against this very kind of approach to "terrorism," but now he embraces it with the force of Dick Cheney's mechanical heart-type machine.
It's goddamn embarrassing to see the Senate's prettiest debutante, Lindsey Graham, more or less standing at Tsarnaev's bedside, cock out, ready to fuck the bullet hole in the guy's neck while Kelly Ayotte and John McCain fondle each other and watch as Peter King jacks off in the corner, all sweaty in anticipation of a declaration that Tsarnaev's an "enemy combatant" so he can be Gitmo'd or some such shit.
It's depressing beyond words to hear people say, as Graham did, that "The homeland is the battlefield" and call for surveillance, more surveillance, on the ground, in the sky, surveillance of every space, every orifice, give up more freedom, always be a suspect, always make sure the authorities are watching. Who gives a fat monkey fuck about your Fifth Amendment rights when there might be a single terrorist out there?
Oh, except for one thing. Guns. We can't keep a national database of those purchases. Nope, no surveillance of legal gun buys. Too bad the Tsarnaevs didn't make fertilizer bombs. Yeah, purchases of certain kinds of farm products - infused shit, if you will- could be reported and tracked. But not guns or gunpowder.
Now, we're gonna have another freak-out over Who Knew What When, with the FBI's questioning of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 becoming the new Benghazi.
Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue.
4/19/2013
Back in Full Flower on Monday:
Boston on lockdown, Texas town blown up, Illinois town washed away. What the fuck? The Rude Pundit can't leave you people alone for a week without you fucking up the entire joint? He doesn't want to think what getting through customs at JFK is gonna be like tomorrow.
The cocksuckery is getting thick out there. And the Rude Pundit will be back on the clock on Monday.
Boston on lockdown, Texas town blown up, Illinois town washed away. What the fuck? The Rude Pundit can't leave you people alone for a week without you fucking up the entire joint? He doesn't want to think what getting through customs at JFK is gonna be like tomorrow.
The cocksuckery is getting thick out there. And the Rude Pundit will be back on the clock on Monday.
4/18/2013
4/17/2013
The Spirit of Occupy Wall Street Is Alive in Berlin:
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While the scheisse eaters in the Senate are cowards beyond belief, the Rude Pundit remains in Germany. Here in Berlin, he walked past an encampment devoted to people who were protesting for gay rights, as well as against racism in Berlin. The encampment was not only allowed to stay in the park where it was set up, but the residents there were taken care of by health officials. Because that's what the fuck you do when you're a society.
Also, here's a photo of an Occupy collage of protesters and their signs that's in a gallery. The Rude Pundit's favorite is "Fuck your unpaid internships."
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While the scheisse eaters in the Senate are cowards beyond belief, the Rude Pundit remains in Germany. Here in Berlin, he walked past an encampment devoted to people who were protesting for gay rights, as well as against racism in Berlin. The encampment was not only allowed to stay in the park where it was set up, but the residents there were taken care of by health officials. Because that's what the fuck you do when you're a society.
Also, here's a photo of an Occupy collage of protesters and their signs that's in a gallery. The Rude Pundit's favorite is "Fuck your unpaid internships."
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4/16/2013
Still in Berlin:
The Rude Pundit will have something to say about the bombing in Boston when he gets back to the bleeding United States from his German walkabout. So instead of all of us coming together, something, something, blah, blah, false unity, here's a picture of his foot on Ronald Reagan's stupid fucking face near the Brandenburg Gate:
The Rude Pundit will have something to say about the bombing in Boston when he gets back to the bleeding United States from his German walkabout. So instead of all of us coming together, something, something, blah, blah, false unity, here's a picture of his foot on Ronald Reagan's stupid fucking face near the Brandenburg Gate:
4/15/2013
Republicans Solidify Their Base in Florida:
From NBC News, we hear of how Republicans in the Sunshine State have expanded their base of voter support. Said GOP Governor Rick Scott, "This is what we wanted to do: diversify our party. Our new voters are with us on every one of our issues except our refusal to support limits on salt."
(Note: the Rude Pundit is on a walkabout in Berlin, here to do amusing and disturbing things under the influence of beer and opium. So blogging will be limited to a few bits now and then for the week. Maybe he'll put up or shut up and post a picture of himself near something German.)
From NBC News, we hear of how Republicans in the Sunshine State have expanded their base of voter support. Said GOP Governor Rick Scott, "This is what we wanted to do: diversify our party. Our new voters are with us on every one of our issues except our refusal to support limits on salt."
(Note: the Rude Pundit is on a walkabout in Berlin, here to do amusing and disturbing things under the influence of beer and opium. So blogging will be limited to a few bits now and then for the week. Maybe he'll put up or shut up and post a picture of himself near something German.)
4/12/2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to OD in a Poppy Field:
That's a picture of a woman named Nuria. She's in prison, with the son she gave birth to while there, in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the United States of America is wrapping up a great and mighty war for freedom. Or something. Who knows at this point. She committed a moral crime. That is, she asked for a divorce from her husband whom she was forced to marry. She wanted to marry another man, one she is in love with. That man is in prison now, too. Nuria says that, even though she was offered a chance to leave if she returned to her husband, she would rather serve out the rest of her sentence.
Two hundred women are in the fairly new prison, most for moral crimes. An activist for women in the nation says, "We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig in deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed."
If the Rude Pundit remembers correctly, one of the ways that we were sold the war in Afghanistan was that it would liberate (or, more accurately, re-liberate) the women there from the punishing treatment imposed on them by the Taliban and others. It was a cause that even Laura Bush was behind (as were many of us who were supporting that cause even before 9/11).
Failing in that means that, on one of the most basic ways you can measure it, even the supposedly "good" war was a heartbreaking waste of life and money.
That's a picture of a woman named Nuria. She's in prison, with the son she gave birth to while there, in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the United States of America is wrapping up a great and mighty war for freedom. Or something. Who knows at this point. She committed a moral crime. That is, she asked for a divorce from her husband whom she was forced to marry. She wanted to marry another man, one she is in love with. That man is in prison now, too. Nuria says that, even though she was offered a chance to leave if she returned to her husband, she would rather serve out the rest of her sentence.
Two hundred women are in the fairly new prison, most for moral crimes. An activist for women in the nation says, "We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig in deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed."
If the Rude Pundit remembers correctly, one of the ways that we were sold the war in Afghanistan was that it would liberate (or, more accurately, re-liberate) the women there from the punishing treatment imposed on them by the Taliban and others. It was a cause that even Laura Bush was behind (as were many of us who were supporting that cause even before 9/11).
Failing in that means that, on one of the most basic ways you can measure it, even the supposedly "good" war was a heartbreaking waste of life and money.
4/11/2013
Obama's CPI Chains:
Let's give people credit for a brief moment when they are not motherfuckers. So President Obama proposes his latest great-and-mighty Idea That Won't Go Anywhere: a budget that's a mix of some tax increases, infrastructure spending, and spending cuts in other areas, including changing how Social Security benefits are measured, from CPI-W to chained CPI (no, the Rude Pundit won't explain it. Go somewhere else for that). Chained CPI will end up cutting benefits to seniors to the tune of $130 billion over ten years, so, yeah, it's a shitty way to try get some street cred as Compromiser-in-Chief. But entitlement cuts are something that Republicans have been slavering for, and chained CPI in Social Security pleasures them. Well, most of them.
Sure, one way to look at Republican Representative Greg Walden's comment to CNN's Wolf "Who Dares Touch the White Mane?" Blitzer that Obama is "trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors" is that it's the usual GOP chicanery (see the "Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare" non-debate from 2012). But Walden, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was immediately kicked in the balls by the senior-hating right, with the Club for Grover Norquist's Wallet's Growth condemning him. But give Walden points for consistency. On November 15, 2010, on Fox "news," he was asked about cutting Social Security, and he said, "Look, there's a lot we can cut before we get to Social Security. How about not raiding the Social Security funds to begin with? I mean, there are lots of things we can do, but there is so much waste across the government, every agency, every program needs to be evaluated." Indeed, the Rude Pundit searched for a time when Walden said he supported chained CPI and instead found Walden fairly consistent, at least when discussing cuts to Social Security. Walden is actually going against his leadership. John Boehner wants the chained CPI vote outside of any larger budget deal.
President Obama's Rose Garden address introducing his budget yesterday ended with one of the most pathetic moments of this awful year. He had promised throughout that, no, really, this budget is really, really good and serious and "not controversial" with "not a lot of smoke and mirrors" and with ideas that he didn't think were "optimal," but that he'd accept if he the other side would really, really make a deal. It was depressing, seeing Obama have to constantly state that he has good intentions. Then he concluded by saying, "And if we can come together, have a serious, reasoned debate -- not driven by politics -- and come together around common sense and compromise, then I’m confident we will move this country forward and leave behind something better for our children." He didn't even sound as if he believed the words coming out of his mouth then, like a great actor doing a role in a shitty movie just because he owes some child support.
Michael Tomasky lays out pretty much what the Rude Pundit is sure is going to happen: "First the GOP is going to say no no no no no, because Obama’s budget calls for $580 billion in revenue (by the way, it proposes $2 in cuts for every $1 in revenue, for a total of $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction). The sequestration cuts are going to continue. Then will come mid-May, when Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling again. The Republicans will probably extract more cuts there. But as they will never accept more revenue or do anything to give Obama a political victory, we will just keep limping along through this year and into next with Congress funding the operations of government on an ad hoc basis."
But Tomasky thinks that this failure and the failure of Democrats to win back the House of Representatives will unleash a truth-telling Obama who will say what we really need: a hike in the taxable income cap. That hope is almost as unreasonably optimistic as Obama believing that offering entitlement cuts will bring Republicans to the table on revenue increases.
It's just disheartening as hell to watch Obama constantly believing that somehow, through some persuasive magic of moderation, he can bring Republicans back into the act of governing. It's predictable but funny, less like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy yanks away and more like when Charlie Brown would try to fly a kite, but that goddamned kite-eating tree would gobble up his good intentions and leave behind nothing but limp string.
Let's give people credit for a brief moment when they are not motherfuckers. So President Obama proposes his latest great-and-mighty Idea That Won't Go Anywhere: a budget that's a mix of some tax increases, infrastructure spending, and spending cuts in other areas, including changing how Social Security benefits are measured, from CPI-W to chained CPI (no, the Rude Pundit won't explain it. Go somewhere else for that). Chained CPI will end up cutting benefits to seniors to the tune of $130 billion over ten years, so, yeah, it's a shitty way to try get some street cred as Compromiser-in-Chief. But entitlement cuts are something that Republicans have been slavering for, and chained CPI in Social Security pleasures them. Well, most of them.
Sure, one way to look at Republican Representative Greg Walden's comment to CNN's Wolf "Who Dares Touch the White Mane?" Blitzer that Obama is "trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors" is that it's the usual GOP chicanery (see the "Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare" non-debate from 2012). But Walden, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was immediately kicked in the balls by the senior-hating right, with the Club for Grover Norquist's Wallet's Growth condemning him. But give Walden points for consistency. On November 15, 2010, on Fox "news," he was asked about cutting Social Security, and he said, "Look, there's a lot we can cut before we get to Social Security. How about not raiding the Social Security funds to begin with? I mean, there are lots of things we can do, but there is so much waste across the government, every agency, every program needs to be evaluated." Indeed, the Rude Pundit searched for a time when Walden said he supported chained CPI and instead found Walden fairly consistent, at least when discussing cuts to Social Security. Walden is actually going against his leadership. John Boehner wants the chained CPI vote outside of any larger budget deal.
President Obama's Rose Garden address introducing his budget yesterday ended with one of the most pathetic moments of this awful year. He had promised throughout that, no, really, this budget is really, really good and serious and "not controversial" with "not a lot of smoke and mirrors" and with ideas that he didn't think were "optimal," but that he'd accept if he the other side would really, really make a deal. It was depressing, seeing Obama have to constantly state that he has good intentions. Then he concluded by saying, "And if we can come together, have a serious, reasoned debate -- not driven by politics -- and come together around common sense and compromise, then I’m confident we will move this country forward and leave behind something better for our children." He didn't even sound as if he believed the words coming out of his mouth then, like a great actor doing a role in a shitty movie just because he owes some child support.
Michael Tomasky lays out pretty much what the Rude Pundit is sure is going to happen: "First the GOP is going to say no no no no no, because Obama’s budget calls for $580 billion in revenue (by the way, it proposes $2 in cuts for every $1 in revenue, for a total of $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction). The sequestration cuts are going to continue. Then will come mid-May, when Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling again. The Republicans will probably extract more cuts there. But as they will never accept more revenue or do anything to give Obama a political victory, we will just keep limping along through this year and into next with Congress funding the operations of government on an ad hoc basis."
But Tomasky thinks that this failure and the failure of Democrats to win back the House of Representatives will unleash a truth-telling Obama who will say what we really need: a hike in the taxable income cap. That hope is almost as unreasonably optimistic as Obama believing that offering entitlement cuts will bring Republicans to the table on revenue increases.
It's just disheartening as hell to watch Obama constantly believing that somehow, through some persuasive magic of moderation, he can bring Republicans back into the act of governing. It's predictable but funny, less like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy yanks away and more like when Charlie Brown would try to fly a kite, but that goddamned kite-eating tree would gobble up his good intentions and leave behind nothing but limp string.
4/10/2013
"Accidental Racist" and Not Tolerating Intolerance:
So shitkicker singer Brad Paisley has this song out you've probably heard about, "Accidental Racist." If you haven't listened to it, you should know, before any interpretations of the thing, that it sucks. It sucks so hard that if it was a whore, it would be the most popular one in the brothel. It's lugubriously slow with shitty instrumentation and faux meaningful lyrics and an embarrassing rap by LL Cool J that is somewhere between bad Schoolhouse Rock and Uncle Tom freestylin'.
The premise of the song is simple: White guy says, "I ain't racist. I just like wearing racist shirts." Black guy interjects, "Hey, you misunderstand some things about me. Can't we all get along?" That's pretty much it, except it goes on for five goddamned minutes of tedious repetition.
The problem with the song is the things it equates. In the most absurd part, LL Cool J raps (within the whiny lyrics Paisley is singing like he's got a mouthful of tobacco or cock), "If you don't judge my do-rag/I won't judge your red flag/If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains." And then J follows it with a rousing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah." Oh, wait, no, instead he says, as Paisley sang earlier, "Can't rewrite history, baby." The implication being that we should just forgive and forget.
"Accidental Racist" starts with Paisley wearing shirt that he says shows his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd: "The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south." You got it wrong, he says, "I'm just a white man comin' to you from the southland" and "I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done." Except here's the deal: if you're wearing a Confederate flag, you're saying you're proud of a nation that went to war with the United States so it could keep black people enslaved. That's not accidental racism. It's just racism. Accidental racism would be something like a misinterpretation of the word "niggardly."
Paisley's defense of the ignorance of white southerners isn't the greatest sin of the song. It's the idea that somehow African American fashion that whites might find offensive is equal to support of racism. It's this notion that we have to tolerate intolerance. When the fuck did this happen? When did we have to be careful about offending the racists?
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was on The Stephanie Miller Show, discussing a piece he wrote where he says, flat out, if you oppose same sex marriage, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter where you got that belief, be it church or political organization or your parents. You are intolerant and a bigot. A caller was outraged, outraged, damnit, that we would dare say that he is a bigot because he follows his church's teachings on gay marriage. The Rude Pundit wouldn't back down, telling the caller that his church was bigoted against gays and lesbians. "You're persecuting me," he said. "You're persecuting me for my beliefs." No, the Rude Pundit said, he wasn't being persecuted. He's allowed to belong to any hate group he wants. But the rest of us are allowed to say it's a group of bigoted fucks.
This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.
The sad part is that the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men have been winning this argument, through rhetoric or force.
What has the Republican approach to governing been? Has it been to allow votes on things and then run on whether or not those things that pass succeed or fail? No. It's been to not even allow votes on most of the things the President wants or that the Democrats wanted pre-2010. It's been to say that they, the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men know best and how dare you attempt to do things differently than what they allow.
And it's been to the Democrats and especially President Obama's shame that they've gone along with this approach, validating it along the way, all in the name of some nonsensical "working together" shit. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying it: when the nation didn't prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration for war crimes and prosecute and regulate to death the criminals on Wall Street, the Democratic argument for change was lost. You don't build your house on top of the shitpile left behind by the previous owners. You clean that out, no matter how much trouble it is, and start from scratch.
Which gets us back to "Accidental Racist."
No one needs to "understand" why white southerners wears a rebel flag. Fuck them. They lost that argument back in 1865. It ain't the same as droopy pants. It ain't the same as a Malcolm X t-shirt. In fact, there is no equation, except for maybe a swastika tattoo. And Paisley's song is oh-so-earnest in reaching out for sympathy and harmony where there should only be condemnation.
We don't make great leaps forward anymore for fear of upsetting someone, some previously powerful group or some corporation or some industry or some herd of drooling idiots. Instead, we get milquetoast, overcompromised baby steps. The politics of politeness is the politics of capitulation.
So shitkicker singer Brad Paisley has this song out you've probably heard about, "Accidental Racist." If you haven't listened to it, you should know, before any interpretations of the thing, that it sucks. It sucks so hard that if it was a whore, it would be the most popular one in the brothel. It's lugubriously slow with shitty instrumentation and faux meaningful lyrics and an embarrassing rap by LL Cool J that is somewhere between bad Schoolhouse Rock and Uncle Tom freestylin'.
The premise of the song is simple: White guy says, "I ain't racist. I just like wearing racist shirts." Black guy interjects, "Hey, you misunderstand some things about me. Can't we all get along?" That's pretty much it, except it goes on for five goddamned minutes of tedious repetition.
The problem with the song is the things it equates. In the most absurd part, LL Cool J raps (within the whiny lyrics Paisley is singing like he's got a mouthful of tobacco or cock), "If you don't judge my do-rag/I won't judge your red flag/If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains." And then J follows it with a rousing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah." Oh, wait, no, instead he says, as Paisley sang earlier, "Can't rewrite history, baby." The implication being that we should just forgive and forget.
"Accidental Racist" starts with Paisley wearing shirt that he says shows his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd: "The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south." You got it wrong, he says, "I'm just a white man comin' to you from the southland" and "I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done." Except here's the deal: if you're wearing a Confederate flag, you're saying you're proud of a nation that went to war with the United States so it could keep black people enslaved. That's not accidental racism. It's just racism. Accidental racism would be something like a misinterpretation of the word "niggardly."
Paisley's defense of the ignorance of white southerners isn't the greatest sin of the song. It's the idea that somehow African American fashion that whites might find offensive is equal to support of racism. It's this notion that we have to tolerate intolerance. When the fuck did this happen? When did we have to be careful about offending the racists?
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was on The Stephanie Miller Show, discussing a piece he wrote where he says, flat out, if you oppose same sex marriage, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter where you got that belief, be it church or political organization or your parents. You are intolerant and a bigot. A caller was outraged, outraged, damnit, that we would dare say that he is a bigot because he follows his church's teachings on gay marriage. The Rude Pundit wouldn't back down, telling the caller that his church was bigoted against gays and lesbians. "You're persecuting me," he said. "You're persecuting me for my beliefs." No, the Rude Pundit said, he wasn't being persecuted. He's allowed to belong to any hate group he wants. But the rest of us are allowed to say it's a group of bigoted fucks.
This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.
The sad part is that the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men have been winning this argument, through rhetoric or force.
What has the Republican approach to governing been? Has it been to allow votes on things and then run on whether or not those things that pass succeed or fail? No. It's been to not even allow votes on most of the things the President wants or that the Democrats wanted pre-2010. It's been to say that they, the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men know best and how dare you attempt to do things differently than what they allow.
And it's been to the Democrats and especially President Obama's shame that they've gone along with this approach, validating it along the way, all in the name of some nonsensical "working together" shit. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying it: when the nation didn't prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration for war crimes and prosecute and regulate to death the criminals on Wall Street, the Democratic argument for change was lost. You don't build your house on top of the shitpile left behind by the previous owners. You clean that out, no matter how much trouble it is, and start from scratch.
Which gets us back to "Accidental Racist."
No one needs to "understand" why white southerners wears a rebel flag. Fuck them. They lost that argument back in 1865. It ain't the same as droopy pants. It ain't the same as a Malcolm X t-shirt. In fact, there is no equation, except for maybe a swastika tattoo. And Paisley's song is oh-so-earnest in reaching out for sympathy and harmony where there should only be condemnation.
We don't make great leaps forward anymore for fear of upsetting someone, some previously powerful group or some corporation or some industry or some herd of drooling idiots. Instead, we get milquetoast, overcompromised baby steps. The politics of politeness is the politics of capitulation.
4/09/2013
Bobby Jindal Has Not Learned a Thing:
Please, motherfuckers. When will you learn? When will you learn that there is no such thing as a Republican giving up on an idea once he has started humping it? Those bastards are like male elephant seals, who will beat the living shit out of you if you try to take one of their dozens of seal bitches away. And elephant seal fucking is goddamn disturbing; the giant ass bull just flops its huge gut on the much smaller female and starts fucking away. So goes the harem of GOP ideological stances. They protect it and then take out a concept and fuck it until it's knocked up. It's nature, man.
So Louisiana Governor and winner of the "Largest Adam's Apple" award, Bobby Jindal, just a month ago, made a grand and mighty economic proposal: get rid of the state income tax on individuals and corporations and make up the money through various other taxes, like higher sales taxes and an eminently rational tax on internet purchases. Conservatives around the nation danced a grotesque jig in celebration and sacrificed a goat by drowning it in a tub as a robed Grover Norquist intoned ancient, guttural prayers of thanks to Mammon. However, most everybody else said, "Whoa, wait, what the fuck?" Because, see, they realized that the tax plan, which was designed to be "revenue neutral," would shift the burden to the poor and middle class. And Jindal saw his approval rating plunge to below 40%, which means he's perfectly suited to be the savior of the Republican Party.
Well, yesterday, saying that he had "listened" to the people, Jindal announced to the legislature that he was going to "park" his plan.
Now some on the left saw that as a defeat for the governor. It is a "collapse" of Jindal as a presidential aspirant. The plan crashed, and scrapping it is a "bitter pill."
Bullshit. Jindal is doing nothing of the sort. What's happening is that he has turned it over to the state legislature, which is led by Republicans, and they are going forward with what Jindal really wanted: elimination of the state income tax, phasing it out over a few years. In fact, "Eliminating a tax requires the support of a majority of each chamber, a far less ambitious goal than seeking the two-thirds support that would have been required for the full package he was proposing." You can look at the idea and say, "Well, that would be stupid, to scrap the income tax without any way to make up for the lost funds." And the Rude Pundit would say, "Yeah, sorry, but this is Louisiana, and 'stupid' would be a step up from the way that the government is usually run."
In other words, it's way too premature to declare that the Paul Ryan-like approach to slashing taxes has suffered a setback. It's merely suffered a brief pause while the Republicans in Louisiana try to figure out how to put a new bacon flavor into their shit sandwich for the poor.
And it's all founded on a lie about taxes making Louisiana unfriendly to business. As John Maginnis points out, "Last month, the governor interrupted his statewide tour bashing the income tax in order to herald IBM's decision to locate its regional software development center in Baton Rouge, creating 800 high-paying jobs and forming an invaluable partnership with LSU's computer science department. It's the biggest private deal for the capital since Mr. Rockefeller chose to locate his Standard Oil refinery there over a century ago." Which means that taxes didn't chase them away, no?
But supply-side economics is part of the harem. And you can bet that Jindal will be humping it hard even as he seems to undulate away.
Please, motherfuckers. When will you learn? When will you learn that there is no such thing as a Republican giving up on an idea once he has started humping it? Those bastards are like male elephant seals, who will beat the living shit out of you if you try to take one of their dozens of seal bitches away. And elephant seal fucking is goddamn disturbing; the giant ass bull just flops its huge gut on the much smaller female and starts fucking away. So goes the harem of GOP ideological stances. They protect it and then take out a concept and fuck it until it's knocked up. It's nature, man.
So Louisiana Governor and winner of the "Largest Adam's Apple" award, Bobby Jindal, just a month ago, made a grand and mighty economic proposal: get rid of the state income tax on individuals and corporations and make up the money through various other taxes, like higher sales taxes and an eminently rational tax on internet purchases. Conservatives around the nation danced a grotesque jig in celebration and sacrificed a goat by drowning it in a tub as a robed Grover Norquist intoned ancient, guttural prayers of thanks to Mammon. However, most everybody else said, "Whoa, wait, what the fuck?" Because, see, they realized that the tax plan, which was designed to be "revenue neutral," would shift the burden to the poor and middle class. And Jindal saw his approval rating plunge to below 40%, which means he's perfectly suited to be the savior of the Republican Party.
Well, yesterday, saying that he had "listened" to the people, Jindal announced to the legislature that he was going to "park" his plan.
Now some on the left saw that as a defeat for the governor. It is a "collapse" of Jindal as a presidential aspirant. The plan crashed, and scrapping it is a "bitter pill."
Bullshit. Jindal is doing nothing of the sort. What's happening is that he has turned it over to the state legislature, which is led by Republicans, and they are going forward with what Jindal really wanted: elimination of the state income tax, phasing it out over a few years. In fact, "Eliminating a tax requires the support of a majority of each chamber, a far less ambitious goal than seeking the two-thirds support that would have been required for the full package he was proposing." You can look at the idea and say, "Well, that would be stupid, to scrap the income tax without any way to make up for the lost funds." And the Rude Pundit would say, "Yeah, sorry, but this is Louisiana, and 'stupid' would be a step up from the way that the government is usually run."
In other words, it's way too premature to declare that the Paul Ryan-like approach to slashing taxes has suffered a setback. It's merely suffered a brief pause while the Republicans in Louisiana try to figure out how to put a new bacon flavor into their shit sandwich for the poor.
And it's all founded on a lie about taxes making Louisiana unfriendly to business. As John Maginnis points out, "Last month, the governor interrupted his statewide tour bashing the income tax in order to herald IBM's decision to locate its regional software development center in Baton Rouge, creating 800 high-paying jobs and forming an invaluable partnership with LSU's computer science department. It's the biggest private deal for the capital since Mr. Rockefeller chose to locate his Standard Oil refinery there over a century ago." Which means that taxes didn't chase them away, no?
But supply-side economics is part of the harem. And you can bet that Jindal will be humping it hard even as he seems to undulate away.
4/08/2013
In Brief: Gun Guy Is Full of Shit:
In case you missed it, go on over to the New York Times and read columnist Joe Nocera's conversation with self-proclaimed "Gun Guy," Dan Baum. Baum is a gun lover who thinks gun control advocates are too intolerant, but that the NRA is a bunch of assholes, too. In the interview, Baum comes across as an arrogant and naive fool, someone who has no fucking clue about the political reality of the moment. He's one of those people who wants to piss on both sides without really understanding that the two are not, actually, equal.
He opposes limits on magazines and certain assault weapons, but he's open to a great deal of regulation. Here's what he says he supports (and that, according to him, a silent plurality, at least, of gun owners support): "If a gun guy leaves his gun in the glove compartment of a car and it’s stolen and used in a crime, perhaps he should be criminally liable. If a gun guy leaves a gun unlocked and a child finds it and kills himself or somebody else, that gun guy should perhaps be liable. And laws that require people to lock their guns up, I think they’re great. Report them if they’re stolen." He also supports background checks and that if you get a license to carry a gun "you have to be trained at least as well as a police officer." Gun guys, he claims, are down with this, too. But don't try to take shit away from him.
Now, speaking as a pretty ardent gun control proponent, the Rude Pundit would say to Baum, "Okay, motherfucker. Put your ass where your rhetoric is. I'll give up the bans if you can get liability laws, lock laws, universal background checks, and police-level training requirements passed." In fact, that kind of deal would be very, very difficult for anyone pro-gun control to pass up. It would be an amazing advance in our approach to guns. But the fact that we might accept that demonstrates how Baum, who literally says, "A pox on both their houses," is full of shit and understands dick about politics.
Because, see, the NRA and their lackeys in Congress and on most state legislatures are gonna look at that list and say, "That's not gonna happen."
The difference, dear, dumb Gun Guy, is that one side is willing to compromise and one side is not. One side is reasonable and one side is not. If gun control advocates were as intolerant as the NRA, we'd be calling for the confiscation of all guns.
Except for some fringe groups, we're not. But, really, don't let our rational beliefs spoil your fucking bullshit narrative. Don't let it get in the way of claiming that people who don't shoot guns don't understand guns, that nonsensical canard, the supposed trump card of the argument, especially when conservatives believe that non-educators should make decisions about education and that non-scientists should make science decisions.
Paleontologists never saw a real dinosaur. But that doesn't prevent them from commenting on the dessicated bones.
(Tip o' the hat to rude reader Deb for the heads up on the Gun Guy.)
In case you missed it, go on over to the New York Times and read columnist Joe Nocera's conversation with self-proclaimed "Gun Guy," Dan Baum. Baum is a gun lover who thinks gun control advocates are too intolerant, but that the NRA is a bunch of assholes, too. In the interview, Baum comes across as an arrogant and naive fool, someone who has no fucking clue about the political reality of the moment. He's one of those people who wants to piss on both sides without really understanding that the two are not, actually, equal.
He opposes limits on magazines and certain assault weapons, but he's open to a great deal of regulation. Here's what he says he supports (and that, according to him, a silent plurality, at least, of gun owners support): "If a gun guy leaves his gun in the glove compartment of a car and it’s stolen and used in a crime, perhaps he should be criminally liable. If a gun guy leaves a gun unlocked and a child finds it and kills himself or somebody else, that gun guy should perhaps be liable. And laws that require people to lock their guns up, I think they’re great. Report them if they’re stolen." He also supports background checks and that if you get a license to carry a gun "you have to be trained at least as well as a police officer." Gun guys, he claims, are down with this, too. But don't try to take shit away from him.
Now, speaking as a pretty ardent gun control proponent, the Rude Pundit would say to Baum, "Okay, motherfucker. Put your ass where your rhetoric is. I'll give up the bans if you can get liability laws, lock laws, universal background checks, and police-level training requirements passed." In fact, that kind of deal would be very, very difficult for anyone pro-gun control to pass up. It would be an amazing advance in our approach to guns. But the fact that we might accept that demonstrates how Baum, who literally says, "A pox on both their houses," is full of shit and understands dick about politics.
Because, see, the NRA and their lackeys in Congress and on most state legislatures are gonna look at that list and say, "That's not gonna happen."
The difference, dear, dumb Gun Guy, is that one side is willing to compromise and one side is not. One side is reasonable and one side is not. If gun control advocates were as intolerant as the NRA, we'd be calling for the confiscation of all guns.
Except for some fringe groups, we're not. But, really, don't let our rational beliefs spoil your fucking bullshit narrative. Don't let it get in the way of claiming that people who don't shoot guns don't understand guns, that nonsensical canard, the supposed trump card of the argument, especially when conservatives believe that non-educators should make decisions about education and that non-scientists should make science decisions.
Paleontologists never saw a real dinosaur. But that doesn't prevent them from commenting on the dessicated bones.
(Tip o' the hat to rude reader Deb for the heads up on the Gun Guy.)
4/05/2013
A Personal Appreciation of Roger Ebert:
The first time the Rude Pundit had any idea who Roger Ebert was happened way back in 1977 when he turned on PBS to for a new show, Sneak Previews, with Ebert and Gene Siskel reviewing movies. They were talking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. To a young Louisiana kid, it was an immediate connection to an assertive, passionate world of criticism he didn't know existed. This was before the internet, children, and the Rude Pundit had to get taken to the library to read Ebert's reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert led the Rude Pundit to other movie critics, like Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby (and even a book of old school reviews by Bosley Crowther).
Ebert inspired the Rude Pundit to begin doing film commentary in his elementary school newspaper. He still has his first review, The China Syndrome, which was as good an imitation of Ebert that that tween could manage. He wrote movie reviews into college, and the Rude Mom was sure he was going to be, specifically, the next Roger Ebert.
The movies Ebert forcefully championed became a large part of the Rude Pundit's cultural and political education. He became aware of independent film because of Ebert's love of John Sayles's Return of the Secaucus Seven, and, when he was old enough to drive, he would head out to Baton Rouge or even New Orleans to see films like Michael Moore's Roger and Me and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. That was partly because Ebert, as a writer and a presence on television, urged you to seek them out and sit in an audience and take part in the act of viewing a film.
And Ebert's reviews even led the Rude Pundit into controversy. When Ebert and other critics praised Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, he crossed a picket line of crazed evangelicals to see it at the single theater in the entire state where it was playing.
One of the key moments for the Rude Pundit politically was seeing how appalled Siskel and Ebert were by the slasher films of the late 1970s. Ebert was no shrinking violet about violence: he admired Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, which is one of the most horrific films ever made, still hard to watch even today. And they both praised John Carpenter's Halloween. But after a string of movies that featured sexualized teenage girls getting murdered, with the low point being the original I Spit on Your Grave, the pair of Chicago movie critics devoted an entire episode of their show in October 1980 to violence against women in films. Agree or disagree with their perspective, it was ballsy as hell.
For the Rude Pundit, this half-hour was crystallizing in many ways. It revealed and contextualized the pervasive sexism of mainstream entertainment to a disturbing degree. It demonstrated how pop culture was intertwined with worldly matters, the merging of the personal and the political, a merging that the Rude Pundit has attempted in this blog.
The Rude Pundit has concentrated on Ebert's work from two or three decades ago because that was when Ebert had the most impact on him. While he still read Ebert's reviews, he lost interest in the TV show after Gene Siskel died because Ebert had lost his greatest foil. Besides, you've heard plenty about the valiant, public battle Ebert waged with the cancer that eventually did him in. You can read about his shift to more directly political commentary, even though he was always offering political and social insights through his film criticism. When he lost his voice, he used Twitter like an enthralled teenager, and that introduced him to a new generation, who have hopefully sought out his books and reviews. Ebert once retweeted the Rude Pundit, and he will not lie: he was as blissed out as a fan girl getting a wink from Justin Bieber.
It's silly, now, isn't it, to think of a critic with that much power? Siskel and Ebert's thumbs up was actively courted by foolish film executives, and they were excoriated by industry figures, even actors. But there was a time when there were such unifying cultural figures. We are poorer without Ebert, without those people who crossed all kinds of boundaries, who were widely accepted as taste makers and mind expanders, and who conveyed their views in everyday language, people who believed that there was a stake in broadening oneself intellectually and that mass culture - film, in particular - could be part of that. Or it could just mean a damn fun time at the movies.
The first time the Rude Pundit had any idea who Roger Ebert was happened way back in 1977 when he turned on PBS to for a new show, Sneak Previews, with Ebert and Gene Siskel reviewing movies. They were talking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. To a young Louisiana kid, it was an immediate connection to an assertive, passionate world of criticism he didn't know existed. This was before the internet, children, and the Rude Pundit had to get taken to the library to read Ebert's reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert led the Rude Pundit to other movie critics, like Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby (and even a book of old school reviews by Bosley Crowther).
Ebert inspired the Rude Pundit to begin doing film commentary in his elementary school newspaper. He still has his first review, The China Syndrome, which was as good an imitation of Ebert that that tween could manage. He wrote movie reviews into college, and the Rude Mom was sure he was going to be, specifically, the next Roger Ebert.
The movies Ebert forcefully championed became a large part of the Rude Pundit's cultural and political education. He became aware of independent film because of Ebert's love of John Sayles's Return of the Secaucus Seven, and, when he was old enough to drive, he would head out to Baton Rouge or even New Orleans to see films like Michael Moore's Roger and Me and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. That was partly because Ebert, as a writer and a presence on television, urged you to seek them out and sit in an audience and take part in the act of viewing a film.
And Ebert's reviews even led the Rude Pundit into controversy. When Ebert and other critics praised Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, he crossed a picket line of crazed evangelicals to see it at the single theater in the entire state where it was playing.
One of the key moments for the Rude Pundit politically was seeing how appalled Siskel and Ebert were by the slasher films of the late 1970s. Ebert was no shrinking violet about violence: he admired Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, which is one of the most horrific films ever made, still hard to watch even today. And they both praised John Carpenter's Halloween. But after a string of movies that featured sexualized teenage girls getting murdered, with the low point being the original I Spit on Your Grave, the pair of Chicago movie critics devoted an entire episode of their show in October 1980 to violence against women in films. Agree or disagree with their perspective, it was ballsy as hell.
For the Rude Pundit, this half-hour was crystallizing in many ways. It revealed and contextualized the pervasive sexism of mainstream entertainment to a disturbing degree. It demonstrated how pop culture was intertwined with worldly matters, the merging of the personal and the political, a merging that the Rude Pundit has attempted in this blog.
The Rude Pundit has concentrated on Ebert's work from two or three decades ago because that was when Ebert had the most impact on him. While he still read Ebert's reviews, he lost interest in the TV show after Gene Siskel died because Ebert had lost his greatest foil. Besides, you've heard plenty about the valiant, public battle Ebert waged with the cancer that eventually did him in. You can read about his shift to more directly political commentary, even though he was always offering political and social insights through his film criticism. When he lost his voice, he used Twitter like an enthralled teenager, and that introduced him to a new generation, who have hopefully sought out his books and reviews. Ebert once retweeted the Rude Pundit, and he will not lie: he was as blissed out as a fan girl getting a wink from Justin Bieber.
It's silly, now, isn't it, to think of a critic with that much power? Siskel and Ebert's thumbs up was actively courted by foolish film executives, and they were excoriated by industry figures, even actors. But there was a time when there were such unifying cultural figures. We are poorer without Ebert, without those people who crossed all kinds of boundaries, who were widely accepted as taste makers and mind expanders, and who conveyed their views in everyday language, people who believed that there was a stake in broadening oneself intellectually and that mass culture - film, in particular - could be part of that. Or it could just mean a damn fun time at the movies.
4/04/2013
George Will: So Wrong Even When He's Kind of Right:
In his latest column (if by "column," you mean, "the asthmatic wheezes of dying generation of supposedly 'rational' conservatives"), George Will goes on a tear about various things in education what piss him off mightily. It's "conciousness-raising" propaganda, goddamnit, that the U.S. guv'mint is a-teachin' to the chillens. And George Will ain't no-how, no-way gonna stand by and let that pass without comment.
Leaping onto a minor conspiracy theory that really is propaganda, just spread by Right Blogsylvania, Will accuses the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction of using a document from the Americorps*VISTA website that encourages educators to urge "white students to wear white wristbands 'as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.'"
The problem is that the Wisconsin DPI categorically denies that anything of the sort ever happened: "[N]o DPI official, or any VISTA volunteer has used, requested, or encouraged anyone in any school to use the wristbands as ‘reported’ and shared by external groups that thrive on spreading rumors and misinformation. The bottom-line is that there is no wristband program in Wisconsin." The DPI says that a document in a packet of "Additional Resources" mentioned it, but that's it. (If you want to read the document, you can see it at Alex Jones' Infowars, but that's a rabbit hole you don't wanna go down.)
That's not good enough for Will, who cites outraged bloggers at the conservative Port-a-John known as Townhall.com as his proof of how outrageous this non-existent white wristband-wearing is. But, really, what Will wants to do is attack any "taxpayer-funded indoctrination" where students might actually deal with questions of white privilege in America. To some of us, that's known as "teaching critical thinking skills." But, as we know, critical thinking is to modern conservatives as Copernicus was to geocentrism.
Will, who wraps a bowtie tightly around his balls so his dick can look like an intellectual dandy, thinks it's ridiculous that college students would be assigned a reading titled "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Apparently, questioning one's position in society and how one benefits or is harmed by it is beyond the pale for students. He calls it "distractions from the study of calculus and literature." To which the Rude Pundit needs to play his professor card and say, "Um, have you been in a literature class lately, you pinheaded motherfucker? It ain't just Alexander Pope appreciation courses."
But amidst his retro attack on pluralism and diversity, the kind of thing that gives Allan Bloom's dessicated corpse a boner, Will hits on something that is a problem across all levels of education: there's too many goddamn administrators: "Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers." And he rightly points out that too many education dollars are sucked up by redundant administrators. Hell, teachers' unions agree with Will.
And while Will thinks the problem in universities is administrators who deal in diversity or other conservative bugaboos, it ain't. It's actually the corporatization of education that's done this. The administrators exist to take care of the external demands, of testing, of funding, of all the rubric-laden bullshit that's been layered onto just fuckin' teaching students, even white ones.
In his latest column (if by "column," you mean, "the asthmatic wheezes of dying generation of supposedly 'rational' conservatives"), George Will goes on a tear about various things in education what piss him off mightily. It's "conciousness-raising" propaganda, goddamnit, that the U.S. guv'mint is a-teachin' to the chillens. And George Will ain't no-how, no-way gonna stand by and let that pass without comment.
Leaping onto a minor conspiracy theory that really is propaganda, just spread by Right Blogsylvania, Will accuses the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction of using a document from the Americorps*VISTA website that encourages educators to urge "white students to wear white wristbands 'as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.'"
The problem is that the Wisconsin DPI categorically denies that anything of the sort ever happened: "[N]o DPI official, or any VISTA volunteer has used, requested, or encouraged anyone in any school to use the wristbands as ‘reported’ and shared by external groups that thrive on spreading rumors and misinformation. The bottom-line is that there is no wristband program in Wisconsin." The DPI says that a document in a packet of "Additional Resources" mentioned it, but that's it. (If you want to read the document, you can see it at Alex Jones' Infowars, but that's a rabbit hole you don't wanna go down.)
That's not good enough for Will, who cites outraged bloggers at the conservative Port-a-John known as Townhall.com as his proof of how outrageous this non-existent white wristband-wearing is. But, really, what Will wants to do is attack any "taxpayer-funded indoctrination" where students might actually deal with questions of white privilege in America. To some of us, that's known as "teaching critical thinking skills." But, as we know, critical thinking is to modern conservatives as Copernicus was to geocentrism.
Will, who wraps a bowtie tightly around his balls so his dick can look like an intellectual dandy, thinks it's ridiculous that college students would be assigned a reading titled "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Apparently, questioning one's position in society and how one benefits or is harmed by it is beyond the pale for students. He calls it "distractions from the study of calculus and literature." To which the Rude Pundit needs to play his professor card and say, "Um, have you been in a literature class lately, you pinheaded motherfucker? It ain't just Alexander Pope appreciation courses."
But amidst his retro attack on pluralism and diversity, the kind of thing that gives Allan Bloom's dessicated corpse a boner, Will hits on something that is a problem across all levels of education: there's too many goddamn administrators: "Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers." And he rightly points out that too many education dollars are sucked up by redundant administrators. Hell, teachers' unions agree with Will.
And while Will thinks the problem in universities is administrators who deal in diversity or other conservative bugaboos, it ain't. It's actually the corporatization of education that's done this. The administrators exist to take care of the external demands, of testing, of funding, of all the rubric-laden bullshit that's been layered onto just fuckin' teaching students, even white ones.
4/03/2013
Your State Sucks: A Whole Bunch of States Suck Because They Are the NRA's Bitches:
Hey, gang, while we were sitting here with mouths agape, appalled because North Carolina's legislature is actually considering a bill to allow a state religion (joining other proud NC symbols like the Venus flytrap, the state carnivorous plant; and the Carolina Tartan, which is, redundantly, the official Tartan of the state), other states' governments have gone completely bonkers this last week with pro-gun laws. Yeah, they're shoving each other out of the way to show how eagerly they can guzzle the National Rifle Association's chowder.
In North Dakota (motto: "Man, all this filthy oil money has turned us into total assholes"), two bills await the governor's signature. One would prevent law enforcement from changing anything about guns in a Katrina-like state of emergency: no registration, no confiscation, no nothing. The other would allow for concealed weapons in churches (as long as Preacher Bob says it's cool).
That "emergency powers" legislation has been passed or is being considered in several states that could never experience a Katrina, but, hey, why the fuck not? Like West Virginia, which is also considering a bill to exempt people with concealed carry permits from the National Instant Criminal Background Check database because those fine Americans have already been put through enough to be able to hide their weapons under their belly fat while walking the Charleston mall.
Over in Tennessee, they're about to start debating a bill to allow educators with concealed carry permits to do so on school grounds. But don't worry: armed teachers will have to go through a no-doubt rigorous 8-hour safety course.
And in North Carolina? They're also considering legislation that would ban the destruction of any firearms "found or received by law enforcement." Those weapons have to be auctioned or used by the cops, whether they like it or not. North Carolina will not neglect the NRA's balls. No, sirree.
Meanwhile, today in Connecticut, where the legislature is voting on bills to enact actual gun control, the gun-noids have swamped stores to purchase all the crazy ass firearms and magazines they can because...freedom. And because Connecticut is one of a handful of states that refuses to be just another punk for the NRA dicks, the organization has flipped the fuck out.
Which, if you think about it, is all it really does.
(Note: Truly, the entire nation is the NRA's bitch because nothing can get through Congress, but some passively take it in the ass while others fall on their knees, asking Wayne LaPierre if the blow job feels good.)
Hey, gang, while we were sitting here with mouths agape, appalled because North Carolina's legislature is actually considering a bill to allow a state religion (joining other proud NC symbols like the Venus flytrap, the state carnivorous plant; and the Carolina Tartan, which is, redundantly, the official Tartan of the state), other states' governments have gone completely bonkers this last week with pro-gun laws. Yeah, they're shoving each other out of the way to show how eagerly they can guzzle the National Rifle Association's chowder.
In North Dakota (motto: "Man, all this filthy oil money has turned us into total assholes"), two bills await the governor's signature. One would prevent law enforcement from changing anything about guns in a Katrina-like state of emergency: no registration, no confiscation, no nothing. The other would allow for concealed weapons in churches (as long as Preacher Bob says it's cool).
That "emergency powers" legislation has been passed or is being considered in several states that could never experience a Katrina, but, hey, why the fuck not? Like West Virginia, which is also considering a bill to exempt people with concealed carry permits from the National Instant Criminal Background Check database because those fine Americans have already been put through enough to be able to hide their weapons under their belly fat while walking the Charleston mall.
Over in Tennessee, they're about to start debating a bill to allow educators with concealed carry permits to do so on school grounds. But don't worry: armed teachers will have to go through a no-doubt rigorous 8-hour safety course.
And in North Carolina? They're also considering legislation that would ban the destruction of any firearms "found or received by law enforcement." Those weapons have to be auctioned or used by the cops, whether they like it or not. North Carolina will not neglect the NRA's balls. No, sirree.
Meanwhile, today in Connecticut, where the legislature is voting on bills to enact actual gun control, the gun-noids have swamped stores to purchase all the crazy ass firearms and magazines they can because...freedom. And because Connecticut is one of a handful of states that refuses to be just another punk for the NRA dicks, the organization has flipped the fuck out.
Which, if you think about it, is all it really does.
(Note: Truly, the entire nation is the NRA's bitch because nothing can get through Congress, but some passively take it in the ass while others fall on their knees, asking Wayne LaPierre if the blow job feels good.)
4/02/2013
Sorry, Conservatives: You Are a Bigot If You Oppose Gay Marriage:
Oh, how we laugh at the idiots of the past. When we watch TV shows and movies that were produced or take place in the past, through the 1980s, at least, how we shake our heads, most of us, at the men who think a woman's place is in the home. What fools they are, what narrow-minded, bigoted fools, we think, and we know we're on the good side of history because, well, shit, we are, despite the best efforts of some on the right (men and women) to tell us that the nation collapsed once women decided life could be something other than just taking care of the kids and cleaning the house. Or that careers could be more than teacher, nurse, maid, or nanny, professions that were seen as variations on housewife. But if you were to tell the men, including politicians and religious leaders, who believed in what they saw as a "natural order" or some such garbage that they were, indeed, bigoted fools, they would have said the exact same goddamned thing that opponents of gay marriage now say: Hey, we're not bigots just because we disagree with you.
(And that example could have been for any time one group has asserted agency, be it the right to vote or the right to live without fear of psychotic assholes lynching them.)
The cries of victimization coming from the anti-same sex marriage camp are ludicrous. The defense is that they're not bigots; they just believe in a Christian definition of marriage. John Nolte of Breitbart's rotting corpse sees it as an attack on Christianity writes, "I oppose same-sex marriage because marriage is a sacrament, and there is a big difference between asking one to be tolerant, and demanding one condone." He does support civil unions, just not marriage. There's some damn Catholic archbishop saying, "Those who believe what every human society since the beginning of the human race has believed about marriage, and is clearly the case from nature itself, will be regarded, and treated, as the next class of bigots. That's untrue, and it's not kind, and it doesn't seem to lead to a 'live and let live' pluralism."
And, soaring in madness above them all, is Erick "Erick" Erickson of the blog RedState, who has gone completely monkeyfuck insane since leaving CNN: "Christ himself is clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. My church does not treat marriage as a sacrament, but it would be a sin to alter that which God himself ordained and established as an institution. Active sin without repenting, and without even feeling the need to repent, should be a big red flag on anyone’s salvation."
Here's the question the Rude Pundit has: If the government says, "Okay, we're not going to allow gay marriage because Christian tradition - oh, wait, let's say, 'Judeo-Christian,' just to sound briefly open-minded - says it should be for heterosexual couples only," then what's the difference between that and the Shariah Law all of you right-wingers are afraid of?
Jonah "Who Really Tweeted His Fruit Ninja Score" Goldberg of the National Review, and other places that strangely let him write, tries to solve the problem by saying that it's not cool if everyone is intolerant of each other, but, you know, states should be allowed to decide the issue and if people don't want marriage equality, then, hey, live and let live, except, you know, in places where they won't let some people do so. Thus, as ever, he takes the wimpiest possible position on an issue.
In a few years, dear, sweet, dumb conservatives, you will be mocked as fools not just by mocking liberals who are so very cruel in their mockery, but by the vast, vast majority of young people, who think you are just, to use Bill "Everwrong" Kristol's word, pathetic to have stood in the way of progress. In our pop culture of the future, you will have to sit on the couch while your children and grandchildren laugh at how ridiculously, needlessly cruel you truly were.
Oh, how we laugh at the idiots of the past. When we watch TV shows and movies that were produced or take place in the past, through the 1980s, at least, how we shake our heads, most of us, at the men who think a woman's place is in the home. What fools they are, what narrow-minded, bigoted fools, we think, and we know we're on the good side of history because, well, shit, we are, despite the best efforts of some on the right (men and women) to tell us that the nation collapsed once women decided life could be something other than just taking care of the kids and cleaning the house. Or that careers could be more than teacher, nurse, maid, or nanny, professions that were seen as variations on housewife. But if you were to tell the men, including politicians and religious leaders, who believed in what they saw as a "natural order" or some such garbage that they were, indeed, bigoted fools, they would have said the exact same goddamned thing that opponents of gay marriage now say: Hey, we're not bigots just because we disagree with you.
(And that example could have been for any time one group has asserted agency, be it the right to vote or the right to live without fear of psychotic assholes lynching them.)
The cries of victimization coming from the anti-same sex marriage camp are ludicrous. The defense is that they're not bigots; they just believe in a Christian definition of marriage. John Nolte of Breitbart's rotting corpse sees it as an attack on Christianity writes, "I oppose same-sex marriage because marriage is a sacrament, and there is a big difference between asking one to be tolerant, and demanding one condone." He does support civil unions, just not marriage. There's some damn Catholic archbishop saying, "Those who believe what every human society since the beginning of the human race has believed about marriage, and is clearly the case from nature itself, will be regarded, and treated, as the next class of bigots. That's untrue, and it's not kind, and it doesn't seem to lead to a 'live and let live' pluralism."
And, soaring in madness above them all, is Erick "Erick" Erickson of the blog RedState, who has gone completely monkeyfuck insane since leaving CNN: "Christ himself is clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. My church does not treat marriage as a sacrament, but it would be a sin to alter that which God himself ordained and established as an institution. Active sin without repenting, and without even feeling the need to repent, should be a big red flag on anyone’s salvation."
Here's the question the Rude Pundit has: If the government says, "Okay, we're not going to allow gay marriage because Christian tradition - oh, wait, let's say, 'Judeo-Christian,' just to sound briefly open-minded - says it should be for heterosexual couples only," then what's the difference between that and the Shariah Law all of you right-wingers are afraid of?
Jonah "Who Really Tweeted His Fruit Ninja Score" Goldberg of the National Review, and other places that strangely let him write, tries to solve the problem by saying that it's not cool if everyone is intolerant of each other, but, you know, states should be allowed to decide the issue and if people don't want marriage equality, then, hey, live and let live, except, you know, in places where they won't let some people do so. Thus, as ever, he takes the wimpiest possible position on an issue.
In a few years, dear, sweet, dumb conservatives, you will be mocked as fools not just by mocking liberals who are so very cruel in their mockery, but by the vast, vast majority of young people, who think you are just, to use Bill "Everwrong" Kristol's word, pathetic to have stood in the way of progress. In our pop culture of the future, you will have to sit on the couch while your children and grandchildren laugh at how ridiculously, needlessly cruel you truly were.
4/01/2013
Guns for Gays:
Here's what has to happen: we gotta get gays and lesbians by the thousands...no, no, by the tens of thousands to buy guns. No, wait, even better. Someone call George Soros for some major scratch. We gotta start a program to arm Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts and even Qs with the baddest ass guns currently legal, motherfuckin' AR-15s and fuckin' .50 caliber rifles, toss in some pistols like Glocks and Magnum revolvers. And get 'em all concealed carry and whatever other licenses they need. Then, once all the gays got themselves armed, they need to start showing up with their guns, all tricked out in the most over-the-top outfits that play right into what ostensible straights fear most about the LGBT community, crazy stereotypes, like cross-dressed feather queens and tight-pants and cropped shirts on skinny boys and the bull-dykiest-lookin' lesbians that you can imagine. Send 'em out with their guns to shooting ranges, to gun shows, to pro-gun marches, every fuckin' place that NRA gun nuts and militias and white supremacists and worse show up.
A queer army, man, of locked and loaded leather studs and lipsticked femmes. And it's not just a show, motherfuckers, although what a goddamn show it'll be.
Oh, no, it's for political purposes. We can say that it's all about defending 14th Amendment rights to equality under the law. Yeah. You can take away our right to marry when you pry it from our cold dead hands. A fuckin' 2nd Amendment solution to abrogation of the 14th.
This ain't some April Fool's Day joke. It's time to go all Black Panther on their asses. We can have a fabulous group of armed drag queens show up with their AKs strapped to the back of their sequined dresses and promenade around downtown because it's their constitutional fuckin' right. We can have a troop of muscle bears and suit-wearing butches show up at Tea Party events locked and loaded, wonderin' why "freedom" doesn't have anything to do with who you love. And, just to be helpful, we'll need to have a security team of trans gun owners to guard schools, all wearing school uniforms, of course, of course.
Yeah, some of the gun-noids will be fine with it, happy that more people are armed for the coming black helicopter zombie nightmare. But you can bet there's gonna be a whole lot of 'em that start reconsidering this whole "no compromise" position on gun "rights."
(Note: Thanks to Jeff Kreisler for the easy-to-remember title.)
(Note 2: It's been pointed out that the group Pink Pistols exists. It's a start. But it needs to get crazy radical.)
Here's what has to happen: we gotta get gays and lesbians by the thousands...no, no, by the tens of thousands to buy guns. No, wait, even better. Someone call George Soros for some major scratch. We gotta start a program to arm Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts and even Qs with the baddest ass guns currently legal, motherfuckin' AR-15s and fuckin' .50 caliber rifles, toss in some pistols like Glocks and Magnum revolvers. And get 'em all concealed carry and whatever other licenses they need. Then, once all the gays got themselves armed, they need to start showing up with their guns, all tricked out in the most over-the-top outfits that play right into what ostensible straights fear most about the LGBT community, crazy stereotypes, like cross-dressed feather queens and tight-pants and cropped shirts on skinny boys and the bull-dykiest-lookin' lesbians that you can imagine. Send 'em out with their guns to shooting ranges, to gun shows, to pro-gun marches, every fuckin' place that NRA gun nuts and militias and white supremacists and worse show up.
A queer army, man, of locked and loaded leather studs and lipsticked femmes. And it's not just a show, motherfuckers, although what a goddamn show it'll be.
Oh, no, it's for political purposes. We can say that it's all about defending 14th Amendment rights to equality under the law. Yeah. You can take away our right to marry when you pry it from our cold dead hands. A fuckin' 2nd Amendment solution to abrogation of the 14th.
This ain't some April Fool's Day joke. It's time to go all Black Panther on their asses. We can have a fabulous group of armed drag queens show up with their AKs strapped to the back of their sequined dresses and promenade around downtown because it's their constitutional fuckin' right. We can have a troop of muscle bears and suit-wearing butches show up at Tea Party events locked and loaded, wonderin' why "freedom" doesn't have anything to do with who you love. And, just to be helpful, we'll need to have a security team of trans gun owners to guard schools, all wearing school uniforms, of course, of course.
Yeah, some of the gun-noids will be fine with it, happy that more people are armed for the coming black helicopter zombie nightmare. But you can bet there's gonna be a whole lot of 'em that start reconsidering this whole "no compromise" position on gun "rights."
(Note: Thanks to Jeff Kreisler for the easy-to-remember title.)
(Note 2: It's been pointed out that the group Pink Pistols exists. It's a start. But it needs to get crazy radical.)
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