"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

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"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Friday, September 07, 2007

Going Backwards
Posted by Anonymous | 9:24 AM

Even if we don't wind up nuking ourselves into extinction, America has other things to worry about.

Forget about Stephen King and his fake boogeymen. If you want to have the shit scared out of you, then read this nightmare scenario by David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York:
"One day you’re gonna wake up in a hostile world where your country no longer has any friends. There will be governments of other countries – former long-standing allies – that cannot afford to have anything to do with you, lest their publics angrily remove them from office for collaborating with a country as hated as yours. Nor will those governments trust yours anyway. They will perhaps possess intelligence that could save your life, but they will not share it. They will possess forces that could help you survive real security threats, but they will not provide them. Your country will have become an international pariah, the South Africa of the twenty-first century."
See what seven years of easy answers have gotten us? Bupkes.

Complex issues don't have simple solutions. Leaping before you look isn't "staying the course", especially if you're stepping off the roof. But that stubbornly-loyal 28% of the public with fifteen second attention spans doesn't want to hear that. What they want is fast food news they can gulp down without thinking, and big, won't-go-away political headaches like Iraq solved by tossing it in the microwave. Bush is the type of President they want, the guy they can have a beer with and not worry about him making them feel stupid. That's why loud empty barrels like Mutt and Ghouliani are so popular; they're just selling more of the same. What's worse, there are other voters who feel the same way as the 28% does, they're just not out of the closet yet.

It's a seductive but false luxury America can't afford anymore. Ignorance isn't bliss; it's a temporary blindness that keeps you from seeing the beast that's gonna tear your throat out. Personally, I wouldn't want the guy I'm having a beer with to fix my car, never mind putting him in the White House. I don't want a boozehound that's going to vomit on my shoes. I want the sober, boring, responsible guy who's going to drive my drunken carcass home. What I and the rest of this country needs is somebody in charge who isn't afraid to be smart. As Thomas Fuller said, “Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.”

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Next?
Posted by Anonymous | 8:08 AM



A big tip of the hat to Press Esc

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

The I-Word
Posted by Anonymous | 7:54 AM

Time for the I-word again.

Impeachment.

I'm tired of feeling like a helpless, scared-to-death passenger trapped in the back seat of a speeding car as a boozy, coked-up Bush careens blindly towards the abyss. Melodrama? God help us, I don't think so.

We already have more than enough reasons: Katrina, Iraq, an economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and flat-earth bozos tossing copies of Origin of Species into trash cans. Yadda yadda yadda. It's goddamned terrible. It's gonna take years to fix this shit. But it can get much, much worse. Before January 2009, a lunatic, I-Don-t-Give-A-Fuck Bush still has the time to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two and--ready?--start dropping nukes on Iran. Can this country survive World War III? I don't think so.

Melodrama? I don't think so.

Impeachment is the only check and balance we have left, and threatening to use it with no intention of doing so is like waving a cap gun in Tony Soprano's face: it can get you killed.

It's not a political choice anymore. It's survival.

Thankfully, there is a reluctant but ever-growing awareness in the United States about how batshit crazy the bozo in the White House is.

It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten. (Don't you hate when that happens?)

As the old saying goes, "Nothing focuses a man's mind like an imminent hanging."

Thank the Goddess for enlightened self-interest. It ain't pretty, but it works. Sometimes.

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Monday, August 20, 2007

Dubya
Posted by Anonymous | 8:42 AM
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
--H.L. Mencken.

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

Captain America Is Dead
Posted by Anonymous | 5:54 AM

Captain America is dead.

It’s one of the oldest and most predictable lessons in the comic book “how-to” manual. If a new costume, a different writer/artist team, or a female character suddenly discovering she’s a lesbian doesn’t pump up declining sales, then killing the super-hero is usually what happens next. Ho hum. If the right number of outraged fans make enough noise, then a magical McGuffin is found, and one timely resurrection later, the Corpse In Tights comes back. If not, oh well.

With Captain America, however, I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. It wasn’t just a sniper that killed America's super soldier: It was an identity crisis. Captain America was an anachronism; a heroic relic from WWII who didn't belong in George Bush's America.

The super heroes who matter, the icons who last for decades and sink deep roots into our collective consciousness are primal archetypes that have a singular purpose. There's much more to their existence than gamma rays, a funny green lamp, or a bite from a radioactive spider. They are what the culture needs.

Batman is a ferocious and relentless avenger seeking justice for helpless victims in the lawless streets. Superman represents the power of an America with open borders that freely welcomes refugees fleeing oppressive countries. The idea of Captain America was born during World War II, when the horror of Nazi Germany threatened to transform the planet into a concentration camp.

The lines dividing good and evil were clearly defined then. Captain America knew who the bad guys were. We all did.

But what about now?

Where is Captain America's place in the ugly America of George Bush and Dick Cheney? What does Captain America do when he has witnessed a stolen presidential election, 9/11, the swift boating of John Kerry, fraudulent WMDs, Shock and Awe, Abu Grahib, the erosion of habeus corpus, torture, Alberto Gonzales, No Child Left Behind, Enron, "Intelligent Design", the Supreme Court putting out the welcome mat for Jim Crow, and Katrina? In Karl Rove's broken mirror, Captain America would be beating up abortion doctors and appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

Is it any wonder that the myth of Captain America was lost, confused, and burdened by a bleak sense of irrelevancy? Naturally, as bad as things got for Captain America, it got worse for the United States of America.

As usual, Tristero from Hullaboo nails it. Hard.

“Once Bush stole his way into the White House, America entered a period of decline. Declining influence in the world, declining pre-eminence in science, and declining trust in international affairs. Some of this is normal and some of America's decline is not necessarily such a bad thing. But a lot of it is very bad news indeed. Perhaps the worst decline is that last one I mentioned, trust that the American system will, at the very least, place major checks upon, the megalomania of mentally unstable executives. And here's the nut of the problem:

“Even assuming the next president makes Lincoln look like a log, would you trust this country if you were a foreign leader, knowing that not only had it enabled a George W. Bush to run the show but, worse, never held either him or his administration accountable for its serial crimes and failures? What - you think it's gonna be easy to say it's the dawning of a new era? Y'think the next President can just appeal to multiculturalism and s'plain away Bush? Like "it's just our culture" to let monumentally incompetent and murderous fuck-ups get off scot-free?

“No. Until the Whole Sick Crew of Bushites is held accountable, this country will continue to lose influence and trust. It will mean that life for Americans who deal with other countries - that means all of us, Chucko, 'cause of the importance of our imports - will become increasingly more inconvenient. And the United States on many fronts, will continue to become less secure. It's hard to build alliances with assholes."

Exactly.

Let's not forget, it wasn't specifically Bush that was voted into power, it was what Bush represented. I don’t care how many votes Bush stole; it never should have been that close in the first place. What myopic white people wanted, I think, was for America to stumble backwards into an Utopian Pleasantville, where there were no scary jigaboos, queers, ragheads, or feminazis to worry about. It was a cold, narrow-minded ideology that brutally excluded everyone and everything that gave the United States its unique identity. No, you can't see the "White Only" signs, but we know where they are, and there's more of them every day.

It worked, didn’t it? Lots of Americans voted for it twice.

Now look where we are.

And if we choose not to stop our slow descent into the abyss, then Captain America and the ideals he honored is truly dead. Unlike the comic book hero, the America we used to be so proud of won’t be resurrected. It won’t deserve to.


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