New Review: Resident Evil (2002)

This week, AYTIWS(?) watches on in horror as Paul W.S. Anderson pulls a career out of Milla Jovovich's ass in Resident Evil (2002).

Gay Air Force Nurse Wins Job Back; DADT Wins Raised Middle Finger

Via BBC (among others):

In the state of Washington, a judge ruled the ban unconstitutional and said the firing hurt morale in her unit.

Maj Margaret Witt sued after the Air Force sacked her upon learning of her relationship with a civilian woman.

President Obama and some military leaders have called for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but Congress this week rejected the bid.

On Friday, US District Judge Ronald Leighton became teary as he praised Maj Witt for her struggle to win back her job following her 2004 suspension and subsequent dismissal.

"There is no evidence that wounded troops care about the sexual orientation of the flight nurse or medical technician tending to their wounds," Judge Leighton ruled.

Thankfully, there's overwhelming evidence at least one District Judge is as fucking sick and fucking tired of waiting for Congress and Our Glorious Leader to pull their thumbs out of their asses as I am.

Oh, I'm sorry, make that two.

The ruling is the second this month in which a federal judge has said the "don't ask, don't tell" policy violates the US Constitution. Analysts say the twin rulings add further momentum to the growing movement to overturn the policy.

The only thing stopping it? The same thing that stops everything, pinky: upcoming elections. If politicians solved problems, what could they promise to fix during their campaigns? Good God, how could they raise funds? Who could they possibly scare the jaded, coddled, apolitical public out of their gadget-stuffed homes, off their ever-fattening asses, and into a voting booth?

That's why we'll have no tax on rich people. That's why "don't ask, don't tell" is still on the books, despite being barbarically stupid. That's why we'll have no direct federal hiring, no net neutrality, no universal health care. Nothing but greed, money grubbing, and desperation for this Empire tonight...punctuated by the occasional bit of good news, in between drone aircraft attacks and the disaster movies sprung to life. The Apocalypse might be upon us, but at least my lesbian sisters can go down fighting. For "freedom," of some kind. 

New Review: Event Horizon (1997)

This week, And You Thought It Was...Safe(?) explores the early works of director Paul (Resident Evil) Anderson, diving back into the late '90s with as much retro zeal as the rest of American political culture seems to have developed. Hence: Event Horizon (1997).

A Public Service Announcement from D.O.I.T.

And Speaking of Labor Day...

...my own labors continue. Received my first rejection slip of the month today, pushing one more short story back into the "like a rolling stone" category. On a Sunday, of all days. And a holiday weekend, too. Feels good, in all sincerity. The sour taste in the back of my mind lets me unequivocally know I've been rejected by a by-God professional.

New Review: New Moon (2009)

And so AYTIWS returns to fictional-Forks with New Moon (2009). You're welcome.

New Review: If God is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010)

In a rare Wednesday update, AYTIWS reviews Spike Lee's latest letter from New Orleans: If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise.

Fighting the Future, with Paul Krugman and a Dick named Morris

Paul Krugman read my mind this Sunday, meaning at leas one of us is telepathic:

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

And GOP pollster Dick Morris has confirmed the veracity of my precognative powers:

Republican pollster Dick Morris told conservative political activists that newly elected Republicans should shut down the government next year. Morris said the party must elect lawmakers who will stand up and say "No" to President Obama's requests for more government spending and predicted a repeat of how Republicans forced a shutdown under President Clinton after they won control of Congress.

"There's going to be a government shutdown, just like in '95 and '96 but we're going to win it this time and I'll be fightin' on your side," Morris said at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation Conference on Friday in Washington.

Now, that's not exactly campaign trail material, but it's a fascinating glimpse into what Republicans may put into action should they win back control of Congress. Morris' suggestions, memes and talking points frequently end up in GOP campaign materials, so we'll be keeping a close eye on this one to see if Republicans will back up his promise for a government shutdown.

It's also quite interesting given that Morris was a Clinton campaign operative in 1995 and 1996 when the Republicans forced a showdown over government spending. (A gamble which, of course, didn't help them much politically. Clinton was able to win reelection in part by running against the GOP's obstruction.)

I've been saying it ever since nostalgia for the 1980s decayed into a sick and futile parody of itself: '90s Retro is coming, baby. You barely survived it the first time. Now get ready for round two and this time the President really is black. To paraphrase Jello Biafra, the 2010's may suck but at least they won't be boring.

New Orleans 8/29/05: Never Forget

Quote of the Day: Joe Bageant on Truth

After decades of hyper-militant consumerism and its attending alienation, and a national consciousness spun from pure capitalist bullshit and mirrors, it is testimony to the American people that they can still see to piss straight, much less recognize any sort of truth whatsoever.

(from Honk if You Love Caviar: Understanding America's Class System by fellow-strumpetocrat Joe Bageant, which, apart from being one hell of a rant, is also one hell of a sociopolitical history and required reading for everyone with eyes. Unless you care more about a mosque that isn't a mosque in a city that isn't yours which suffered a disaster you had nothing to do with almost nine years ago. Which, if you're American, you probably do.)

New Review: Kick-Ass (2010)

This week And You Thought It Was Safe(?) reviews Kick-Ass (2010). Because the power of nerds compels me.

New Review: Predators (2010)

Predators (2010)

Memo from Long Island: Darth Vader Reduced to Petty Theft

No, really...the Dark Lord of the Sith robbed a Long Island bank yesterday.

We live in interesting times.

Memo From New Zealand: Twilight Kills!

Wednesday night, police discovered a twenty-three year "transient" slumped in his car, dead, outside a Wellington, New Zealand theater screening of Eclipse, the series latest film installment.

To paraphrase my favorite Quaid, I've been saying it for years. (Ain't I been sayin' it, Miguel?) Twilight is undeniable blueprint for murder, more potent and viable than all the "violent" video games I've ever played in my life put together.

The official cause of death is yet to be determined at press time...but I think we could hazard a few guesses. The continued success of the Twilight series has led me to contemplated suicide once or twice myself, and frankly I'm grateful to find I'm not alone. So I'd like to salute you, anonymous transient man, and let the whole world know that you're death was not in vain.

(h/t Jezebel and the NZ Herald)

From Your Cold, Dead Hands

Today, in a 5-4 decision that should surprise absolutely no one, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gun ownership is an individual right. I know. "Duh," right? Apparently, this is only news to constitutional scholars and the court system that draws it's members from them.

Apart from restating an obvious, on the ground fact, this ruling once again proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Roberts and Sam Alito are the bought, paid-for, and kept whores of the knee-jerk, Wrong Wing, conservative ideologues who handed them their jobs in the first place.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District of Columbia law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5-4 decision does not strike any other gun-control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

"It is clear that the Framers ... counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty," Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

[...]

Alito said that the court had made clear in its 2008 decision that it was not casting doubt on such long-standing measures as keeping felons and the mentally ill from possessing guns or keeping guns out of "sensitive places" such as schools and government buildings.

"We repeat those assurances here," Alito wrote. "Despite municipal respondents' doomsday proclamations, (the decision) does not imperil every law regulating firearms."

Sir, with all due respect (that is, none)...bullshit. And you know it. You know it, and you don't care, because you've spent your whole life imbibing this brand of NRA bullshit. The NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, has already said, “We’re going to go everywhere cynical politicians attempt to pervert, defy or nullify the decision,” and they won't stop until they've got the whole chicken coop sown up. Hell, they won't stop until every one of this Empire three hundred and fifty million citizens has a Glock 17 strapped to their ass, ready to go at a moment's notice.

Today, the halls of Remington, Smith & Weston, and Charter Arms are ringing with jubilation. They've won, their butt-boys (like LaPierre) know it, and they're going to make sure they keep on winning, regardless of the human cost.

Not that that really matters. If you're a citizen of the West your hands are already covered in the invisible blood of your fellow man. Why not slather on a few more layers by "accidentally" shooting your wife and child in a fit of work-stress-related rage?

I used to favor gun "control" measures, whatever their source...then, one day, I realized favoring such policies is a self-defeating exercise in Playing The NRA's Game. It's a Game they've spent forty years rigging, and thanks to Our (former) Glorious Leader, George Jr., and the shaved apes he placed inside the Nation's Highest (and I do mean highest) Court, their efforts are finally paying off.

Except this Empire armaments industry has always reaped extraordinary benefits from careful manipulation of the "democratic" process. Hate a gun-control advocate? Brand him/her a communist terrorist socialist in disguise. Then, all you have to do is sit back and throw money at his/her Primary or General Election opponent(s). Should your candidate ever express concern about the amount of gun-related homicides in this country, or our massive cultural addiction to adolescent Rambo fantasies, all you have to do is remind them of how they got their job in the first place. And that they could loose it just as easily.

But assume the worst and suppose a gun "control" law actually makes it on the books. No problem. Sue. And sue. And sue. Tie up the local, state and federal judiciary for as long as it takes because, remember, you're right and they're wrong (whoever "they" are), so fuck them, their fat wives, and their so-called courts. Don't worry: if you need more lawyer money you can always tell the NRA's rank and file to "remember Ruby Ridge." Or Waco. And watch the money tree grow.

In mixed company its best to avoid mention of those unfortunate incidents. Instead, quote from Gospel of Reagan, chapter 6 verse 66. Repeat along with me, kids: "If Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns."

(Bonus points if your handpicked Legislative lackies regularly decry "frivolous lawsuits"...you know, like those brought by individuals against corporations who've screwed them out of pensions, poisoned family members, or dumped toxic waste into the local water tables.)

The real irony is, Wayne LaPiere is right. Over a year ago he told the Conservative Action Committee "Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules." Thus our two hundred year history of genocide, frontier violence-as-justice, and our Do What We Say or Die foreign policy. Furthermore, the return of the Armed Maniac to the national, political stage (more of them every day, as seen in this campaign ad from the National Socialist State of Arizona) will only encourage those of us who honestly hate guns to go out and buy them. For personal defense, of course. This will, in turn, further enable the Iron Mongers among us, allowing them to pack "our" government with their handpicked allies, ensuring more Judicial homicide enabling. So it goes.

I'll let George Washington Universe law professor Paul Butler have the last word, he being a law professor and all.

It’s not every day when four justices of the Supreme Court accuse the other five of having blood on their hands. The majority opinion doesn’t immediately lead to any change in a specific law, almost like the court is afraid of what it is setting in motion. But the dissenters were correct. Sooner, rather than later, the blood will flow.

New Review: Fantastic Four (2005)

Fantastic Four (2005)

New Review: Yongary Monster From the Deep (1967)

Yongary Monster From the Deep (1967)

Artificial lifeform created: Microbe declares mankind "already dead."

Via the Daily Mail:

But the breakthrough, which took 15 years and £27.7million to achieve, opens an ethical Pandora's box. Ethicists said he is 'creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history' - with unparalleled risks.

There are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon.

And there are also warnings that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend.

Like this

That fucking tears it. Every crap sci-fi film you've ever seen or even heard about is coming true. Soon, the killer robots will feast on our flesh side by side with all the victims of the zombie-sparkly-vampire-apocalypse virus, right before the killer tidal wave washes a bumper crop of giant monsters into the remains of our more-photogenic cities. Indeed, God help us all.

In Deference to Reason

...Reason Magazine, that is, we celebrate the First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammad day. And, since I can't draw, I offer you this blast from the past:

(The Prophet Mohammad defends Washington D.C. from the ravages of a giant, stone Abraham Lincoln. Circa 2001.)

Time Warner Gives USCG, Federal Courts, One-Fingered Salute.

In a strange twist of fate, Time Warner Cable threw itself under the anti-movie piracy bus today, stating publicly that it had no intention of complying with the 2,049 subpoenas generated by German crap-filmmaker Uwe Boll's suit against peer-2-peer downloaders. None. Zip.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, this is just one more example of the fact corporations can do whatever they want, and will do whatever they can get away with, employing any excuse. In this case, it's lack of manpower, and resources tied up in the parallel wars on Crime (remember that one?) and Terror.

"Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff's efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits," wrote the cable company. "By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC."

Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity, and the company says that such cases take "immediate priority."

On the other hand, I cannot support anyone, anywhere, exchanging money for a Uwe Boll film. Fuck Uwe Boll, and his horrible movies. Fuck the underwear models posing as lawyers on the U.S. Copyright Group's website. USCG has made a name for itself partnering with independent film studios, distracting the courts with these massive lawsuits in a futile attempt to roll back the technological clocks to 1995.

On the third hand, I can't support illegal file sharing, because I'm afraid I'll get sued if I do. And that, in case anyone was wondering, is how terrorism works.

The Policeman Will Shoot Your Pet

On February 12 of this year, police in Columbia, Missouri, serving a search warrant for narcotics, raided a man's home in full SWAT regalia, guns drawn. Acting on a tip that the man was some sort of Kingpin of Pot, the police handcuffed him and "accidentally" shot his pet corgi.



Via the very evenhanded (all things considered) Reason Magazine, which rightly points out raids like this go on all the time. The only difference is, this one was caught on film.

Look around your back yards. Ask yourself, what are your local police doing? Do you even know? Quick, who's your local Commissioner Gordon? Mine's the mayor, Sam Adams. He just fired Chief Rosie Sizer two days ago, officially taking the helm of a police department he'd delegated to city commissioner Dan Saltzman. Saltzman must've drawn the short straw. He got the task of apologizing to the family of James Chasse Jr, who died in September 2006. Portland police officers broke 16 of his ribs in the process of tackling him, puncturing his lungs.

And my friends tell me the drug war is over. Barack Obama is supposedly going to save us all. But how long will this naivete allow our nation's cops to take out their pent up aggression on the nation's defenseless pets?

Answer: As long as Pakistani's trying to set off bombs in Times Square.

Question: Why in God's name would anybody want to blow up Times Square?

Answer: Because nothing's changed. Two wars going nowhere fast, U.S. sanctioned torture, spying, environmental catastrophes...sounds like 2005 to me. Where are we again?

I would communicate with others...

...but I'm in school. I'll let Professor Chomsky explain that to you:

New Review: Predator (1987)

Predator (1987): Arnold Schwarzenegger and his elite Special Forces squad of doomed, ancillary characters, must outwit an extraterrestrial trophy hunter and escape the jungles of Central America. It must be the 80s.

The Cartoons that Shook the World

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone received several (not-so) veiled death threats over the very idea of depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name) in their show's two hundredth and two hundredth and first episodes. The later, which aired last Wednesday, ended with a multi-character "I-learned-something-today" speech, a callback to nearly every South Park episode of the first six-or-so seasons. A series of drawn-out, audio "bleeps" completely obscured the content of these speeches in what I first took to be a meta-joke on the boy's part. Then I read their statement @ South Park Studios:

We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. [Show's what I know. - ed] Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear.

Well, shit on that idea. Intimidation and Fear rule the land, and the creators of South Park are in a better position than anyone to realize it. Their battles with the MPAA are legendary. Yet their home network has always backed them previous to this.

Comedy Central's decision to be chickenshit corporate scumfucks, and then hide behind some delusion that they're "protecting their employees" (as Jon Stewart, loyal company man that he is, put it) reveals a truth even the South Park boys probably haven't guessed. For all their excessive obscenity and supposed irreverence, things have only gotten worse in the fourteen years since their debut. The nine years since they last depicted the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name) certainly seem to have been one long, downward spiral of censorship and intimidation. We had Janet Jackson's breast in 2004, the original Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, a flare up one year later, and just last year Yale University Press beat Comedy Central to the punch, preemptively removing all Muhammad cartoons from their upcoming book, titled...The Cartoons that Shook the World.

Were I a more conservative commentator, I might suggest the terrorists are winning. After all (and I'll say it again, because this bears repeating), Yale University Press decided to remove all Muhammad cartoons from a book titled Cartoons That Shook The World. Only Fear and Intimidation could inspire such a colossally stupid decision. But of course there are no terrorists...only a few crazed maniacs on the one hand and clutches of toothless, suit-wearing shills on the other.

So, in solidarity with Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kurt Westergaard, Roger Köppel, various members of the Danish People's Party's youth wing, and all artists the world over who labor under the threat of religious intolerance and extremism, I offer this pictorial depiction of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon his name):

along with a fervent prayer to all the messiahs of the world, whatever their affiliation:

Lords, save us from your followers. They know not what they do, but we know very well what they'd like to do. Especially to those of us who don't want to turn the clock back to the eleventh century. Help us, Super Best Friends. Like the sign in The Crow: City of Angels said, "Save us."

What Every Person Should Know About War

Via WikiLeaks ("The intelligence network of the people.") And God bless the Pentagon for finally talking about them, allowing the mainstream media permission to do so as well. I would've never heard about the damn site if not for the fact that it's suddenly everywhere. All over an incident that took place two years ago, in a little country no one really talks about very much anymore. Almost as if we share a new national hope: if we just close our eyes and click our heels often enough, the whole sordid, evil nightmare will just go away...

There's no place like Iraqi. Unless you count Afghanistan.

New Review: Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen (2009)

Health Scare: The Final Friday

Dateline: Constantine's Rome, U.S.A. After a year of fearmongering, deception and compromise, our bought-and-paid-for political system at last knelt on the Great Toilet Bowl and squeezed out a fibrous chunk of a bill, now being sold as “the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s”.

That from David Frum, a “fellow” at the right-wing, non-think tank, the American Enterprise Institute...who lost his job yesterday after he dared criticize the Republican Party's flailing, and ultimately failed, strategy of Fear and Surprise, Surprise and Fear.

Yes, the battle is over, and the narrative is already set. One must either embrace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as a milestone carved from gold and set at the latest American Crossroads...or despise “Obamacare” and everyone who supported it, “baby-killers” and “assholes” that they are. This bill with either usher in a new bumper crop of healthy, wealthy and wise American citizens...or bring about the “Apocalypse” We've been marinating in Right Wing fear-juice for so long now, I'm not surprised by any of this...only saddened that, as usual, those of us who don't align our thinking along what Jon Stewart called “the Hannity-Olbermann Scale” are not allowed to sit and talk at the Big Kid Table. Can't something be “the most important piece of legislation since the 1960s” and a massive corporate welfare boondoggle? In today's Washington, these are not mutually exclusive things. It seems like giving free money away to corporations is about the only thing the two wings of our one-party state can agree on.

At least the Republicans remain honest to a fault. They have the stones to brazenly declare, loudly and proudly for all who might hear, “Yes: we are the party of eternal warfare, greed, fear mongering, and bigotry.” The Democrats try to look like they feel bad about eternal warfare, greed, fear mongering, and bigotry, even as they tacitly support all of those things in a continuing bid to Right-flank the Republicans. Because bourgey suburbanites are the only people who bother to vote any more, and they're so mean and stingy they'd rather bankrupt themselves putting their kids through private school than pay another dime in taxes that might go to help brown people.

I do not cast my tar with a wide brush. I am not Glenn Beck...though, if you believe him, I am a Cancer on the American Political scene. If only I could metastasize a few members of Congress...I'm sure Joe Liberman would get stuck in my throat...but what if I dissolved him first, in some sick, twisted, pre-digestive process...then again, why waste good vomit drop? Liberman's so desperate to be noticed these days he'd probably get a kick out of the free publicity:

“The Huffington Post received word today that Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Himself) will convene a press conference in the Senate Briefing room at three p.m. There, a strange combination of human being and house fly, a freakish, bastard child of Science Gone Horribly Awry, will dissolve the Senator's face with what the estate of esteemed Canadian physicist Seth Brundle described as, 'a corrosive enzyme.' Pundits from Faux News to the General Electric Pseudo-Liberal Primetime Lineup are already speculating that this may be Liberman's first act in a 2012 bid for the White House.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world...there actually are eighty-three out-and-proud, real-life Progressives in the Congressional Progressive Caucus—including my Representative, Earl Blumenauer. They are not the malignant, flesh-consuming disease that Glenn Beck would have you believe. They did all they could to keep their yuppy-fied “allies” in the Corprocrat Party from turning the bill into an even bigger hand out to medical supply industry. But their efforts were largely in vain. They'll be no “public option,” for anyone. No universal health care. No socialized medicine. Not even its shammiest sham of a cousin. Merely a requirement we all buy into the same, piece of shit, for-profit plutocracy that's killing us now. Hillary Clinton loved the "individual mandate" system (it's got the word "individual" in it - it must be good). Candidate Obama decried it...but the people who get money from medical insurance companies (hospitals, corporate drug dealers) loved it, and those are the people who put money into politician's coffers. It's not a Donkey vs. Elephant thing: don't think of either. The corporatocracy doesn't care. It throws its cash around wherever power resides, hedging every bet against the chance of a real socially-democratic revolution in this country.

They get what they pay for. The whole Health Scare debacle just goes to show you can have all the Committee Chairmanships you want, in both Houses of Congress, plus the White House, and every left-leaning weirdo in whole country at your back (as Obama did, this time last year) and still cave in on everything the people who put you in office held dear, thanks to venial, virulent vermin like Bart Stupid (with his need to control women's internal organs) or Joe Sleezeberman (with his vindictive temper-tantrums – hey Joe, Ned Lamont may be a playboy millionaire, but at least he's not a complete dickhead). Our esteemed Progressive members still have only the same number of votes as those two jackasses. And there are a lot more Stupak's than Blumenauer's in the Democratic Party's ranks.

As a nation, we're over-worked, drugged-up, nail-bitingly paranoid, and (more than likely) not making enough to scrape by, petrified by the possibility of our job disappearing into the wilds of India, China, or Taiwan. So it's no wonder we're reacting to all this with name calling, death threats, and random shots into the air.

At least 10 House Democrats have had to request additional security since Sunday's health-care vote. Someone left a coffin on the lawn of Rep. Russ Carnahan's home in Missouri. Glass doors and windows were broken at the district offices of Reps. Louise Slaughter of New York and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Vandals have damaged Democratic Party offices in Wichita, Cincinnati and Rochester, N.Y.

And Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, whose last-minute compromise on abortion funding guaranteed final passage of the reform act, has received a flood of abusive phone calls at his office and home. Someone faxed him a drawing of a noose. One voice mail, subsequently posted on the Internet, was left by a woman who wanted Stupak to know that "there are millions of people across the country who wish you ill." Another caller was more direct: "You're dead. We know where you live. We'll get you."

Indeed. Check it out, people: it's getting dangerous out there. So stay in your homes and let Super Rockin' Mr. Magic entertain you. After all, according to that great storehouse of modern journalism, Access Hollywood, those White House party crashing yuppies we were all supposed to care about months ago are set to appear on Real Housewives of D.C.

According to The Daily Beast, they also have a tell-all book in the works, which will “set the record straight” on the rumors that have surrounded them since their uninvited adventure.

“People will be surprised when the truth about the Salahis is finally told,” literary agent Sharlene Martin told the Beast.

Meanwhile, the real housewives, house-husbands...real people, in fact, of all genders and social situations...seem poised to catch one final “fuck you” before “our” Congress goes to its Easter recess. After proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are terminally disconnected from the tribulations of really-real Americans, none of the "leadership" in Congress seems to mind that unemployment benefits, flood insurance, and all manner of things that actually provide real, immediate help to real, immediate people...the ones they supposedly represent...are set to expire. Again.

Last week, the House approved a $9 billion measure containing one-month extensions of unemployment insurance, COBRA health benefits and federal flood insurance. Senate Democrats hoped to have their chamber approve the same bill Thursday. But Republicans refused, complaining that the bill is not offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

They said the same thing in early March, when Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) brought the chamber to a halt for five days over another extension that wasn't offset.

Senate Democrats and Republicans spent hours negotiating among themselves and with each other to find a compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) discussed the possibility of a one- or two-week extension of benefits that would be fully paid for, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was opposed to the idea, according to two Senate aides.

As a result, the House and Senate will leave town without further action. COBRA and flood insurance will expire March 30, and unemployment benefits will expire April 5. The Senate will return to session April 12.

Meanwhile, AIG CEO Robert Benmosche took home a cool $7 million this year, along with $3.5 million in bennies and stock options. This is the “socialism” Glenn Beck keeps yammering about. This is a “redistribution of wealth” on a grand scale. For a year and half I've watched these bastards feed at the public trough and all I see are the rich getting richer while the rest of us get stuffed.

Six of eight [AIG] managers who had their 2009 awards set by Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master on executive pay, had their overall packages increased this year, according to a Treasury Department report [released on the 23^rd].

As “special masters” go Feinberg's sure made a mess of things. His “socialist takeover” of America's businesses looks a hell of a lot more like a giant cash-grab. Corporate welfare. Socialism for High Society. That's the real danger, lurking out there in the noise fields. And unless people wake up and realize that corporatist politicians (whatever the consonant next to their name) aren't going to ride in on their white horses and save us, we'd all better get ready. Things'll get a lot worse before they get any better.

With the Great American Health Scare “debate” tabled for Easter, our national Infotainment Complex will have to flail about until it finds the Next Big Thing to distract from how badly we're getting fucked. Sure, it's a mid-term election year, but who cares about those races anyway? Osama bin Laden just put out another mix tape, threatening to...gasp...harm Americans he's supposedly holding prisoner. (Gee, what a surprise. And here we thought you'd just sit them down for a nice, hot meal and a discussion of the Theodicy Problem, O-man.) Sister Sarah has returned to the headlines yet again, swooping down from Alaska to try and save old man McCain's ass from a loony, disingenuous, teabagging primary challenger. Election 2010 icons are already appearing across this great Web of ours. And that new Twilight movie's coming to a theater near you. God must be in his heaven, and all is truly right with the world. More wine, please? Thank you...I think I'll go for a garden stroll, my path lit by bodies of a few burning terrorists. Oh, sure, they call themselves “martyrs,” but what the hell do they know? Then we've got the orgy at three...and that bribery session at four...what's the point of Easter if I can't go home to extorting some more cash out of my past contributors?...And what the hell is that sound I hear in the distance...is that...Mel Brooks shouting something...what could it be?

“Gentlemen! We've got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!”

Well said, Mel. Well said.

Jon Stewart's "Con-serv-ative/Li-bert-arian"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Just when I thought it was safe to write a send-up of Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart does my job for me. Damn you, Stewart! Stop reading my mind. Bastard.

New Review: Q (1982)

Q (1982) @ And You Thought It Was Safe(?)

New Review: The X From Outer Space (1967)

The X From Outer Space (1967)

Health Scare #5: Eric Massa Admits Love of Grabass on Glenn Beck

Gay Bashers of Not-Too-Distant Future Claim Apocalypse Imminent, Obama-era Navy Full of Gay

Rep. Eric Massa's resignation from the House of Representative's is a intergalactic bummer on a lot of fronts. For one thing, his tales of a vast, left-center conspiracy to oust him from office over health care "reform" made him the new It Girl of the Rupert Murdoc's noise machine, Faux News. Every time Glenn Beck interviews a guest, somewhere, a kitten dies.

But what an interview. And what a wonderful opportunity to showcase a madman and claim, “He is a gigantic Progressive,” as Beck did. “And I think I'm pretty clear on where I stand with Progressives.” If nothing else, it's a good excuse to laugh at Glen Beck's demagogic style. But first, the apparent facts:

Former representative Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the [Congressional Ethics] probe.

The allegations surrounding the former lawmaker date back at least a year, and involve "a pattern of behavior and physical harassment," according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.

I'd like to propose a joint investigation into allegations I've just made up that Representative Massa is completely out of his gourd. How else can you explain his statement that, “I wasn't forced out. I forced myself out,” which came in the same breath as this: “And goodness only knows what kind of allegations they're gonna throw at me.” They?

"If someone on my staff thought I was un-Congressional, that I was inappropriate, I own that. That's why I resigned." But he seemed to have no trouble blaming anonymous “attackers.” Glenn displays little interest in figuring out who these attackers actual are during the interview, seemingly more concerned with being a total bastard. Rather than wring an actual accusation out of his guest, Beck implores Massa to think of the “damage” he's doing to “your lovely wife" his children and "the country.”

Massa thankfully avoids this proto-fascist trap and repeatedly apologizes...while simultaneously making sure we all know he's the real victim here. “What my attackers don't get—and trust me this is all planned and calculated—we'll leak this, we'll leak that—”

Despite Beck's stupidity, its not hard to figure out which attackers former-Congressman Massa might be thinking of. Rahm Emanuel's showertime fun, whether true or not, is now a story for the ages, and a mental image I'd rather get out of my head. Does Rockin' Rahm just wander the halls naked, ravaging interns and lobbyists, foaming at the mouth and spouting obscene, Lovecraftian gibberish unfit for human mouth parts to pronounce?

Seriously, though, I can believe Rahm is a dick. He may, in fact, be exactly the kind of dick George W. Bush found in Dick Cheney. Those not rendered impotent by the thought of arguing with Naked Rahm in the Congressional showers, I ask you, join me in solving the overpopulation crisis and consider arguing with Naked Dick Cheney. There. Now you all know my pain. Stew in it.

But you'll have to watch the whole interview to really enjoy the pain. Let it settle in there. The centerpiece comes when Massa pulls a photo album out for Beck. Identifying several photos, he declares, “It looks like an orgy in Caligula, and anybody who's been in the Navy knows it.” Cue the Village People and expect Pat Robertson to jump on this new evidence of the Gay Navy, set to bomb Colorado Springs with absolutely fabulous Tomahawk missiles.

The worst part of all this? Massa may have once believed in a single payer health care system, yet at one point he plainly states, “We're never gonna get there,” conceding the debate before it even begins. In this he's the perfectly groomed “Progressive”: bloodless, devoid of balls, and stupid enough to go on Glenn Beck's TV show and admit the Navy gave him a life-long love of playing grabass.

It's no wonder Emanuel went after him, in the showers or otherwise. Bullies have uncanny senses. They can sniff out psychological weaklings across miles of swampy ground, and our capital is the biggest swamp going. Your nearest grade school can provide all the examples of this that you need. And Rahm Emanuel is nothing more than a sixth grader who can't let go of that time his older brother paid someone to beat him up, back in third grade, and must now beat your ass in turn.

In the grand tradition of small minded jocks from sea to shining sea, Rahm views politics as a game. He talks of “scorecards,” “winning,” and “loosing.” He's called his boss' natural constituency “fucking retarded,” when they dared try and do his job for him and twist some Conservative Democrat's arms. Note that he apologized to the head of the Special Olympics rather than those whom he actually declared “fucking retarded.” One would think intelligent {rogressives would take a hint from this: Rahm Emanuel is not our friend. Never was and never will be. This is the man who strong-armed NAFTA past the few Progressives who doubted its wonderfulness back in 1994. He does not give two shits about us.

In his year in office, Emanuel's displayed a Machiavellian willingness to play paddy-cake with whomever he can, regardless. The man has no principals. He's not even a man. Rahmbo is an Aristotelian political animal, a so-called “realist,” who'll sacrifice it all for the “big win.” Whatever that means to a millionare Richard Daley fundraiser, Bill Clinton adviser, and former-Freddie Mac director. As my old St. Louis connection used to say, “Never trust a politician from Chicago.”

Or...never trust a politician. The conservatives are all theocratic monstrosities, and “progressives” like Massa make even Teddy Roosevelt look like a rational being (albeit a racist, ecocidal one). At least Teddy's “muscular Christianity” propelled him to get the occasional Big Thing done. Would he knuckle under to every threat the American Taliban threw at him? Or is it Rahm who, scarred by his experiences in Clinton's White House, reacts with shame a horror at the thought of every little conservative backlash? Is he the one tossing red meat to the mouth-breathers while reducing “our” so-called “team members” into rambling shells of themselves with showertime shakedown sessions?

Many have called for Emanuel's replacement, from Sarah Palin to Michael Moore (who's agent, Ari Gold, oddly enough, is Rahm's brother). I'd echo that sentiment if I thought it went far enough but I say, throw all of them out, from our Glorious Leader on down to the last, yellow-bellied, slime-sucking lobbyist on K Street. March every white man with a suit and tie out of Washington and lead them, like the Piper, into the sea. I think I know a song that might get them all going.

In the Navy
by scorpiomusic

Health Scare #4: Profits Matter More Than People

Nothing could be more truthful than the fact that I don't want "government run health care." But I don't want for-profit health care either. So, as usual, I'm left with nothing. No options, no outlets. Trapped out in a world where Onion stories come true with remarkable ease and depressing regularity. Like this gem from last year:

WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."

"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.

The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.

"We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. "If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population."

(Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care, The Onion, August 19, 2009)

The bald-face, plain-as-day fact remains: people are dying, right now, from lack of health care. While Our Glorious Leader and his Randian hack "opponents" sit around a table and spar over bullshit talking points, people are dying. Yesterday, today, every day. It's gotten so bad even the New York Times finally noticed:

As members of the Obama administration and Congress met on Thursday to try to find common ground on health care, a new report warned that without comprehensive legislation, more than 275,000 adults nationwide will die over the next decade because of a lack of health insurance. Nearly 14,000 of those deaths would occur in New York State. [Emphasis mine.]

An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people died prematurely in 2000 because they lacked insurance; the Urban Institute updated that figure to 22,000 in 2006. The new study, by liberal advocacy group Families USA, applied the same methodology used in the previous reports to drill down and calculate, on both a national and state-by-state basis, the latest figures.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg, and the most severe consequence, which is death,” said Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy at Families USA. In addition, thousands of other citizens, perhaps millions, are experiencing a reduction in the quality of their lives and their health because they lack insurance, she said.

Unfortunately, the Time's reveals its real concerns by burying all of those horrible numbers in its websites Health section, safe from the prying eyes of everyone who isn't already and old fart, or an old-fuck-at-heart (like your humble narrator).

On the more-prominent U.S. page we find a more typical example of the media's Health Care "Reform" coverage under the headline Pelosi Struggles to Corral Votes for Health Care Bill:

The future of President Obama’s health care overhaul now rests largely with two blocs of swing Democrats in the House of Representatives — abortion opponents and fiscal conservatives — whose indecision signals the difficulties Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces in securing the votes necessary to pass the bill.

The article is a prime example of Horse Race Journalism, a genre that now dominates American political writing thanks to years of pressure from the mouth-breathing media whores on the Right and the more-intelligent but (apart from Michael Moore) ideologically hamstrung media whores of the "Left." That is, the politically empowered "Left," symbolized by Pelosi, Reid, and Our Glorious Leader, the president, who are little more than rich, privileged shills for the very power structure left-wing politics are supposed to oppose.

This creates the twin phenomenons of political "centrism" and policy "triangulation," rhetorical red herrings meant to mask what the economist John Williamson identified (way back in 1989) as the "Washington consensus."

Being an economist, Williamson saw nothing particularly seedy or evil in this term (at least, not at the time...he has since recanted his choice of words for all the usual, wrongheaded reasons). At the time he originally coined the phrase he was attempting to outline a complex of economic ideas that everyone in Washington could agree upon, regardless of their politics. These included deregulation, unfettered access to credit, trade liberalization, the privatization of state assets, the deification of private (which, in most cases, means "corporate") property, and the destruction of even the the shadow of a functioning "welfare state." All of this motivated by a free market fundamentalist belief that economics can do more for people than politics.

If you happen to be rich, then, yes, it can. If you're poor, well...fuck you running. It's your own fault for not playing the proper Horatio Alger game. You must be out of favor with the Invisible Hand of the Market, what Jello Biafra called "God Incorporated." Did you eat meat on Friday? Sacrifice the wrong goat? Whatever it was, it certainly can't be the fault of a system that threw you overboard before you were even born. In any case, the System couldn't care less. It's far too busy bribing Congress with one hand and slapping their pitiful excuses for "reform" back with the other:

Anthem Blue Cross, a unit of WellPoint, recently informed subscribers in California that premiums for individual insurance policies would rise an average of 25 percent, with some rates going up as much as 39 percent.

“Raising our premiums was not something we wanted to do,” [WellPoint CEO] Ms. [Angela] Braly said [in her testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday]. “But we believe this was the most prudent choice, given the rising cost of care and the problems caused by many younger and healthier policyholders dropping or reducing their coverage during tough economic times. By law, premiums must be reasonable in relationship to benefits provided, which means they need to reflect the known and anticipated costs they will cover.”

Translation? It's not our fault we're so rich, or that we're legally bound to do everything we can to get richer. It's those damn doctors and their damn hospitals. It's the damn old people and their stupid needs for care. It's the damn young people jumping ship because they can't afford our base rates in the first place, only to slink back like beat dogs when something goes wrong.

According to Reuters, Ms. Braly pulled down over $9 million last year. Now that she's Chairman of the Board as well as President and CEO she can expect a raise this year, at the very least. The other witness quoted by the Times, Lauren Meister of West Hollywood, can expect to supply Braly with that raise now that WellPoint has pushed her premiums up by two hundred dollars:

“We saw what deregulation did to the cost of utilities in California,” Ms. Meister said. “We saw what the lack of regulation has done on a national level to our financial and banking system. Well, it’s doing the same thing to our health care system.”

Ms. Meister added: “The City of West Hollywood, where I live, regulates how much landlords can raise the rent each year to keep rents stabilized. Why can’t the federal government regulate how much health insurance companies can raise their rates per year, in order to stabilize premiums?”

Well, Lauren, it's got a lot to do with the insane amounts of money the health care industry has used to grease our government's wheels. Since 2005, that's been a $46.6 million investment, counting publicly-disclosed campaign contributions…who knows how much more cash changes hands away from the cameras? It's all a matter of profits over people, power of progress, and money over matters of life and death. So rejoice and be exceeding glad: they'll be no "government run" health care in this country. Not until the greedheads and glandhanders figure out how to run it straight into the pockets of their true constituents.

Health Scare #3: Limbaugh, Beck, Ingraham Laugh at Toothless Woman, Flash Everyone With Evil Underbelly of America

Thanks to David Brock's penance, Media Matters, even those us who consciously chose not to amerce ourselves in the Right-wing noise machine get to learn (as if we needed a refresher) just how evil a nation the United States really is.

During her turn at health care summit, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) talked about plenty of stuff. But because our media is full of sensationalist bullshiters, the only comment of her's with any legs turned out to be the story of a constituent so poor she "wore her dead sister's teeth."

The store grew gams thanks, in part, to the noise machine, a prime example of political symbiosis that keeps this country deadlocked into a uneven tug-of-war between centrist and rightwing crazies. A so-called "liberal" tells a horrible story in public. So-called "conservative" voices respond to it with ridicule, vitriol, and spite. And we can already here liberal voices rising in a chorus of indignation (MediaMatters holding the baton) at the Rightwing mouthpiece's callous indifference to the suffering of their fellow Americans. As if something like this:

LIMBAUGH: You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big. I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?

should come as a surprise. "Let them eat cake," Marie Antoinette shouted. Well, no, she didn't, but never mind. Evil people have shouted it ever since, whenever they wanted to display their complete contempt for the rest of the human race.

While discussing the probably results of privatizing Medicare (sick, old people tossed out of hospitals, into the streets, to join the legions of crazy people already tossed out in '80s), Rep. Slaughter declares, "We're better people than that." Well, I'm sorry, Congresswoman, but we're really not. Have you seen Glen Beck's ratings? I have. More people watch his rambling civics-lesson-tirades in one night than visited these pages last year. Surely all of them are sincere, red-blooded Americans, hoping to keep pace with the endless treadmill that is the News. And maybe they like their current events served up in silky, semi-sweet Beckness. Who am I to begrudge them?

Such was my thinking. Until I heard this:

On his February 26 radio show, Glenn Beck played an audio clip of Slaughter's account then said, "I am wearing George Washington's dentures right now. I'm wearing his teeth right now." He later added, "I just like wearing dead people's teeth. But in America -- I'm sorry, I didn't know that that was -- I've read the Constitution before. I didn't see that you had a right to teeth." Echoing Limbaugh's remarks the previous day, Beck stated, "The environmentalists should be all over Slaughter. 'How dare you say that?' My gosh, they're just recycling. They're just reusing."

You can hear Beck and his "sidekick" break out into frat-boy giggles when Rep. Slaughter says, "she wore her dead sister's teeth." Now I want to be clear, here: I respect Glenn Beck's right to laugh at the pain and suffering of Rep. Slaughter's constituents. All I ask in return is that he, and everyone else, respect my right to fantasize about his parent company's (owner's) destruction at the hands of an angry mob. That makes me giggle.

After all, Glenn Beck's program is taped at the News Corporation office studios, 1211 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue to the rest of us) New York, New York, right down the street from MSNBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

So imagine, if you will, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow leading a torch-wielding procession of correspondents, line producers, key grips, camera operators, runners, ADs, journalists, bloggers, and talking-heads through the night streets of Manhattan, singing "All Hell Can't Stop Us," or "I Wanna Free Miss Liberty" or some other fine selection from the IWW's Little Red Songbook. They storm News Corps' offices, overwhelming security. Rent-a-cops shit themselves in fear as red-eyed, foam-mouthed, Brooks Brothers-outfitted lefties, fed up with years of taking conservative shit, break down the revolving doors and pour in. Shattered glass twinkles in their frosted, TV hairdos.

Enmass they rush raving up the narrow stairwells, pouring out like a latte-fueled wave into the live studios. Sound men battle with boom mikes for bo staffs. Camera men's faces are driven into teleprompters by rebellious runners. Studio and viewing audiences keep their seats, shocked into rigidity by the sight of liberals actually doing something for a change. Other than bitch on endlessly about how dirty, evil and mean are those ol' conservative media whores, dag nab them.

Bill O'Reily, dragged from behind his desk, exposes his rubber-ducky emblazoned, $2000 silk boxers to a stunned and horrified world. He declares the whole "fucking thing sucks" as he's carried out to the streets on the shoulders of Chris Matthews Show interns, who proceed to tar, feather, and set Bill marching south, down Sixth Avenue, with instructions not to stop until he reaches the Village.

Meanwhile, back upstairs, Maddow stomps Laura Ingraham into bloodied unconsciousness with a pair of Manolo Blahnik's alligator boots, while Beck looks on, enraptured. Not by the girl fight. No, our man is caught by the visionary's paralysis. Like the audience itself, he is enrapture by the sight of his own worst fears made flesh. In a last ditch moment of egoism sure to make his spiritual grandmother, Ayn, proud, Beck has just enough time to stand and declare, "See? I WAS RIGHT!" before an Ed Schultz boot-to-the-naughty-bits reduces him to a simpering ball of well-dressed muck...

Whew. Sorry. Blacked out there a minute. And now I've got old union songs stuck in my head. What was it we were talking about?

Oh, yeah. Right. Fantasy.

Ayn Rand: The Beast 666

I keep running into Ayn Rand, for she seems to have regained her place as the darling of the American Right. Very creepy experience.

My life with Rand began in junior high. My mother the English teacher receives an annual maildrop of information about the Ayn Rand Ayn Rand Institute Essay Contest. Every year the Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Irvine, California, splits $85,000 into 569 prizes and hands each to a Junior High or High School student brave enough to read one of Rand's godawful novels. Many a money-conscious parent has force many a young reader into undergo that traumatizing experience. It's probably destroyed more budding socio-political novelists than anything since television.

A Jewish pharmacist's daughter, born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersberg, 1905 (the year of Bloody Sunday and revolution), Rand was twelve in 1917, when revolution again seized Russia, this time for good.

Escaping to America in 1926, young Alisa Rosenbaum committed the kind of auto-genesis her characters are always going on about and renamed herself. Alisa Rosenbaum may have got on the boat, but it was Ayn Rand to when to Hollywood.

During this period, she ran into Cecil B. DeMille, designed costumes for RKO and married an actor. She also, according to the eXiled's Mark Ames, began idolizing the serial killer William Edward Hickman, "The Fox."

Hickman was a check forger, convict, and armed robber who kidnapped his former employer's twelve-year-old daughter, strangled her, cut her into bits, and tossed the bits out of a moving car all over Los Angeles. His capture in the town of Echo, Oregon, trial, and subsequent execution were the celebrity trial of 1928. And, as Ames notes,

This is the “amazing picture” Ayn Rand — guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing — admired when she wrote in her notebook that Hickman represented “the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.”

Other people don’t exist for Ayn, either. Part of her ideas are nothing more than a ditzy dilettante’s bastardized Nietzsche — but even this was plagiarized from the same pulp newspaper accounts of the time. According to an LA Times article in late December 1927, headlined “Behavioralism Gets The Blame,” a pastor and others close to the Hickman case denounce the cheap trendy Nietzschean ideas that Hickman and others latch onto as a defense:

“Behavioristic philosophic teachings of eminent philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have built the foundation for William Edward Hickman’s original rebellion against society…” the article begins.

The fear that some felt at the time was that these philosophers’ dangerous, yet nuanced ideas would fall into the hands of lesser minds, who would bastardize Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and poison the rest of us. Which aptly fits the description of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy developed out of her admiration for “Supermen” like Hickman. Rand’s philosophy can be summed up by the title of one of her best-known books:The Virtue of Selfishness. She argues that all selfishness is a moral good, and all altruism is a moral evil, even “moral cannibalism” to use her words. To her, those who aren’t like-minded sociopaths are “parasites” and “lice” and “looters.”

"Thriller" novelist Michael Prescott (who's Next Victim my Aunt Judith happened to be reading over Christmas, so props to you, Michael) adds more depth to the picture on his page of Rand:

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.

The more I read up on her life, the creepier she becomes. A picture emerges of writer, speed freak, and sociopath. A cult-leading Anne Coulter. A dress-wearing Glenn Beck. A roadshow barker, tossing red meat to the masses she despised, labeling them “parasites” to be ground under food.

Over at Slate, Johann Hari concludes his little book review/psychoanalytic biography of Rand with this eminently reasonable assessment:

Rand was broken by the Bolsheviks as a girl, and she never left their bootprint behind. She believed her philosophy was Bolshevism's opposite, when in reality it was its twin. Both she and the Soviets insisted a small revolutionary elite in possession of absolute rationality must seize power and impose its vision on a malleable, imbecilic mass. The only difference was that Lenin thought the parasites to be stomped on were the rich, while Rand thought they were the poor.

I don't find it hard to understand why this happened to Rand: I feel sympathy for her, even as I know she would have spat it back into my face. What I do find incomprehensible is that there are people—large numbers of people—who see her writing not as psychopathy but as philosophy, and urge us to follow her. Why? What in American culture did she drill into? Unfortunately, neither of these equally thorough, readable books can offer much of an answer to this, the only great question about her.

Now, Rand's followers, on the other hand, diverse nothing but scorn. And, as Ames points out, some very highly placed people--Alan Greenspan, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Batshit Crazyville), Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and God only knows how many ordinary Americans who have nothing like her fucked up childhood to use as an excuse.

Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Baggers dividing up the world between “producers” and “collectivism,” just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie.

One who died the year before I was born, alone and unloved, from lung cancer. So it goes.

You'd think, in a nation so obsessed with protecting our children, we might do something to protect them from the cackling-mad doctrines of this evil old woman. To say nothing of the fact that her books are downright boring. Even her early novels, like Anthem (which I read in eight grade) show signs of terminal Victor Hugo's disease, a kind of sprawling, preachy romanticism that went out when Dostoyevsky died.

Yet Rand's crap remains popular, and tough economic times are forcing pundits from all corners to blame populism. Yet the essence of her "objective" truth is elitism--the belief that you are superior to everyone and everything around you. And what could be more American than that?

Health Scare #2: We've Already Lost. They've Won

In the lead-up to tomorrow's health care "summit" (i.e., pointless political show-pony piece), the quixotically-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released a wonderful (pdf) list of just how much health care cash each of the participants has received. Ranked from highest to lowest, reading it is an exercise in "Oh...now I understand. That's why John Boehner, Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer have been acting like such god-almighty dicks this past...zombie Jesus, it's been almost a year already. Where does the time go?" Straight down the drain, along with any chance you ever had of affordable health care.

From CREW's website

According to CREW’s study, the five summit invitees who have received the most health care dollars since 2005 are:

• Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who has received over $2.5 million in contributions, $777,113 from the pharmaceutical/health products sector alone;

• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has received over $2.2 million, $802,500 of which came from doctors, other medical professionals and their trade associations;

• Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has received nearly $2 million, $483,750 of which came from the insurance, HMO and health services industries;

• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who has received almost $1.9 million, $572,237 of which was contributed by hospitals and nursing homes; and

• Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who has received over $1.8 million, and like Sen. McConnell, received a large portion of that -- $709,261 -- from health professionals

So. We see the bribery wheel continue its Grand Round. Where she stops, nobody knows, but odds are good it won't be anywhere you (you less-than-filthy rich, politically disconnected, more-or-less completely disenfranchised person, you) would want to go.

And lest any of the ten or so people who actually bother to read these notes (not that I have anything but love for all you wonderful lurkers who come to steal my screen shots from Godzilla the Series) think Our Glorious Leader is somehow, magically above all this, CREW reminds us all that, "Additionally, President Obama received over $18.6 million during his presidential campaign."

Since precious few of us will ever see any side of $18 million, I took a quick walk around the internet and found that such a chunk of change is:

• the total amount raised by Bono's Product Red campaign for The Global Fund, despite a year's worth of endorsements from every supposedly-conscientious celebrity from Stephen Spielberg to the Mad God, Oprah. (Called a "meager $18 million" by the industry shills at Ad Age...which just goes to show you what world they really live in. Big hint: it ain't ours.)
• the amount of stimulus money the AARP received last year for the Senior Community Service Employment Program ("Hello! Welcome to Wal-Mart! Been a nice winter, hasn't it?")
• the rumored sale price of the Fire Island Pines resort. And if you don't know what that is, congratulations: whatever doubts, masturbatory fantasies, or drunken, back-seat-of-a-car "experiments" you might've had in the past, I hereby declare you straight. Go forth and sin some more.
  
• (and) the amount of money allocated for a upgrade to one (that's one) government website. Which one? Recovery.gov, of course. Because its not really "irony" until you feel that knife twist a bit.
  

Happy political theater, everyone. How's that "Canadian system" looking?

John Yoo's "Bloodshed of the Two Torture Memos"

Two Decembers ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney said,

"we don't do torture."

And the authors of the two most-famous Bush-era "torture memos"--the ones advocating "enhanced interrogation techniques" including waterboarding and the forced consumption of Brittany Spear's albums--were just cleared of any and all misconduct by an internal Justice Department review. So we must not "do torture."

And yet, on February 14th, Cheney brazenly admitted "I was a big supporter of waterboarding."

So just so we're clear, here...

You're the Office of Legal Council to the President of the United States. The Vice President's office sends word down that we're fightin' a new type of war and all, and maybe that ol', moth-eaten Geneva Convention really don't apply to the people we catch up in this war. Maybe we just need to, oh, I don't know...start letting the CIA kidnap people, throw them in some hole in the ground somewhere...like Morocco...or Cuba...and start torturing them, ya know? The Vice President's representative asks you to whip up a way this might be accomplished. What do you do?

Do you:

(a) Politely thank the Vice President's representative (probably his lawyer, David Attington), show him out the door, immediately grab the phone, call the President, and inform him his Number Two is a raving mad asshole who wants to undermine that greatest of great myths of ours: the rule of law, warping the character of this great nation into a grinning, horrible, schizophrenic parody of itself. Or do you

(b) Inform the Vice President's man that you'll do everything in your power to see that such a policy conforms to the laws of the United States, as proscribed by the Constitution and determined by the courts, or

(c) Inform the Vice President's man you'll be sure to write a memo equally sure to abandon "fundamental practices of principled and balanced legal interpretation,” fail "to cite highly relevant precedent, regulations, and even constitutional provisions," and misuse "sources upon which it does rely," conveniently ignoring everything else in a hard-line, insane drive to vest the Executive Branch of this country with unrivaled power. After all, we're at war. No time to be liberal pantywaist and wring our hands over "the laws". It's time to go all Howard Roark on these Camel Jockey assholes. Tell you what, screw writing up a legal case. You've decided to join up with the U.S. Marines right now, because that'll be the shortest distance between you and you ventilating terrorist scumbags.

Or do you

(d) Call a meeting with other senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, the White House counsel’s office, the Departments of State and Defense, and the National Security Council regarding whether the Geneva Convention applied to members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Inform the Vice President's man that, at these meetings, you and your lawyer pals will do everything in your power to draft a memo sure to abandon "fundamental practices of principled and balanced legal interpretation,” fail "to cite highly relevant precedent, regulations, and even constitutional provisions," and misuse "sources upon which it does rely," conveniently ignoring everything in a hard-line, insane drive to vest the Executive Branch of this country with unrivaled power.

(These quotes come from a 2007 critique of John Yoo's torture memo written by Dawn Johnson, currently head of the OLC under Our (new) Glorious Leader, President Obama--so suck on it, Johnny.)

Said memos will be sure to justify the Vice President's stated wishes, producing documents the President, Vice President, SecDef and Attorney General will spend the next eight years (Yoo wrote the torture memos back in 2002) hiding behind. Remember when Bush and Dick used to go on and on, when they were all, like, "Nope, we good. It's all legal. We've got these memos from the OLC, and they say it's fine. Foggedaboutit, not problem. Stop trying to coddle the terrorists and grow your balls back, you liberal pantywaist." Weren't those great times?

And it'll be okay. Really. No one will ever hold you accountable for providing a legal cover to the Bush Administration's obviously-adamant wish to torture people. You can even write a book all about it and no one will even bat and eyelash.

Let's be clear: Dick Cheney's valentine this year? Waterboarding. Fuck Liz and the kids, right? Sick fetishist is all about strapping men down to tables, putting washcloths over their mouths, and dribbling two-gallon milk jugs full of water onto them until their gag reflex makes them puke, or pass out, or both. Former Vice President Dick is a self-described "fan" of this. A "big" one. Sweet bleeding Jesus.

But wait: it gets worse. Lawyers for a Tunisan Gitmo prisoner, Rafiq Alhami, have just filed a lawsuit alleging that CIA kidnapper-spooks were torturing people as far back as December, 2001

In his lawsuit, Alhami stated, as the Associated Press described it, that, from December 2001, he was held in three CIA “dark sites,” where “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and where, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.” He also stated that his interrogators “sprayed pepper spray on his hemorroids, causing extreme pain.”

[...]

Moreover, although the OLC memos dealt specifically with a “high-value detainee” program that began with the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, it’s also clear that the administration began working out how to deal with prisoners outside of existing legal frameworks within days of the 9/11 attacks. Most of this centered, at the time, on expanding the program of “extraordinary rendition” developed by the CIA under Bill Clinton in order to deliver “terror suspects” to third countries, where they could be interrogated by proxy torturers or even “disappeared.”

This in itself was enormously worrying, of course. The Clinton-era program occupied a horribly gray area, in which “terror suspects” — mostly Egyptians — were seized by the CIA and rendered to the custody of the Egyptian government, which was then free to kill them, torture them or imprison them after show trials, but it was at least a carefully controlled program, involving 13 prisoners between 1995 and 2000, according to research undertaken last year by Peter Bergen for Mother Jones, and a detailed paper trail that required the existence of a sentence by a court, even one handed down in absentia by a government with a disturbing human rights record.

After 9/11, however, all these restraints were abandoned. Within 12 days of the attacks on New York and Washington, a Yemeni named Jamal Mar’i, who worked for a Saudi charity in Pakistan, was kidnapped from his house in Karachi and rendered to Jordan, one of several countries with whom the Bush administration had swiftly established arrangements involving “extraordinary rendition” and torture. In the ten months that followed, before the OLC issued its indefensible opinions, at least 25 more prisoners were rendered to torture in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Syria, and we now know, from one of three more OLC memos released two weeks ago — written in May 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and revisiting the OLC’s August 2002 torture opinions — that, after the CIA brought torture in-house in August 2002, 94 prisoners in total were held in secret CIA custody.

The fact I can even cut and paste these words without my head exploding, gumming up the keyboard with fragments of skull and brain goo, just goes to show you how far down the moral-evolutionary ladder eight years of Dick Cheney has really pulled us. Congratulations to us as a nation and as a culture: we've re-branded torture and once again made it cool by embracing it in absentia, through our "elected leaders." Great job all around.

Maybe next we can bring poisoning wells with dead bodies back to good. Quick, someone think up a name for that that won't scare people when they hear it on the six o'clock news. Something boring and bland, like the rest of American politics..."enhanced...water treatment techniques"?

Obviously, the correct answer to the above is (d), since torture memo authors John Yoo and Jay Bybee were ruled "not guilty" of professional misconduct. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility did what the government does best and issued a report about it on Friday. Remember when your kid told you about that flunked Math test on the trip home from Six Flags? Well, the DOJ just pulled one of those one us. With Congress out until Monday (thanks, President's Day) and nobody important watching TV Friday night, they knew they could get away with giving Johnny and Jay a cute little smack on the wrist. Bad, bad boys, you two; letting that mean-old Mr. Cheney talk you into writing things. That gets you in trub-ble!

This sends a clear and concise message to conscientious men and women within the American government, and, indeed, all free governments of the world: suck-up, brown-nose, and bend over backward to please your powerful superiors. Not only will this allow you to twist and mutilate the law, but if your superiors are evil enough, you'll even get to twist some human beings along with it.

Christ sake, these two won't even be disbarred. Bybee will go right back to his day job as a federal judge (of all things), while John Yoo gets right back to the business of molding young minds at...Berkeley...of all the goddamnedest places in the Universe. Yoo, at least, has out-and-proud admitted he fixed the law to justify his "client's" (the Administration's) wishes. In the middle of bitching about Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay (and, one year out, what the hell's going on with that anyway?) Yoo even let slip the fact "President" Bush himself personally authorized waterboarding "three times in the years after 9/11."

(Sidenote: you know the Spirit of the 60s is well and truly dead when the man who literally wrote the book [and, first, the memo] on American torture programs can remain in his job at UC Berkeley with, apparently, no loss of life, limb, or property. God, the political Left in this country really is a coalition of toothless, bourgeois hypocritical fucks. He's authorized waterboarding for goddsake. C'mon Berkeley radicals: the least you could do is trash the man's office.)

Obviously, at this point, no one in the Obama Administration is the least bit interested in investigating the crimes of their predecessors. Why should they be? President Clinton was equally obliged to let the previous Bush Administration get off scott-free. It's not as if moral, ethical, or even legal concerns are foremost in Our Glorious Leader's mind. You noticed all this "extraordinary rendition" bullshit (when FARC does it it's just called "kidnapping" but I guess American "doesn't do that" either) started under Bill Clinton, didn't you? Good ol' Slick Willy sure stabbed us in the back on that one. The point is, all this is bigger than one evil, little man...or one evil, god-all-mighty-stupid presidential administration.

Let's be clear: U.S. torture policies grow out of fundamental assumptions of U.S. foreign policy. Foremost is the assumption that we, as the U.S., have the power to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. And get away with it. Until we get over that little canard, there's not a damn thing voting for your favorite corporate puppet is going to do about all this.

Just FYI.
(Within the Empire is supported in part by a grant from Dick Cheney Foundation: doing what Dick Cheney says, before he shoots us in the face. And by the annual financial support of Dick Cheneys like you. Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself right up the butt.)