Activist Judgin'

Pictured above: Chief Justice John Roberts, activist.

Or why the Justice Sunday™ activist judges joke would make me laugh if this wasn't the opinion of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court:

The imminence of the danger posed by drunk drivers exceeds that at issue in other types of cases. In a case like J. L., the police can often observe the subject of a tip and step in before actual harm occurs; with drunk driving, such a wait-and-see approach may prove fatal. Drunk driving is always dangerous, as it is occurring. This Court has in fact recognized that the dangers posed by drunk drivers are unique, frequently upholding anti-drunk-driving policies that might be constitutionally problematic in other, less exigent circumstances.

With the exception of the death penalty, he wasn't hired to give his opinion regarding the societal and emotional aspects of a specific crime. Chief Justice Roberts is entitled to his personal opinions and rightly so. But as the administrative head of the judicial branch of the Federal government, those opinions have no real place in the questions his job is charged to answer.

[VIA: Libertarian asshole, Radley Balko. Ya know, that Senior Editor and contributor for this commie iRag.]

OMFG Look at the dust in this place. . .

Yeah, I suck as a blogger. Either way, enjoy:

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

DFH SABOTEUR!!!!!

Why I truly dig this country:



That fellow speaking is Sinfonian*.

The crowd reaction is priceless.

Next up, the inevitable Fourth of July protests. Followed by the completion of the "project" on 9/12.




*A Dirty-Fucking-Hippie Blogger if there ever was one. A Dirty-Fucking-Hippie Blogger with big Dirty-Fucking-Huge Balls, that is.

I Guess. . . If You're Trying to One-Up Jon Stewart.

Seven minutes and fifty seconds of "HAH HAH We're All Laughing At You and Go Fuck Yourself!!!" that everyone should watch

Wherein Steven Colbert proceeds to tear off Glenn Beck's head, shit down his throat, question his sanity and mock him endlessly and mercilessly.

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Amen.

Here's to hoping Glenn Beck is dumb enough to go on Colbert's show.

(h/t "them")

Up yours, Jim.

Sometimes it's all about the follow-through.



Why does it take a comedian with a fake news show to point this shit out? How sad is that? As Mr. Stewart says, "it's not a fucking game."

UPDATE:Watch all the segments. Trust me.

I don't find anything funny about the interview. It's really nothing more than a pithy display of "truth" speaking to "power". But it is eye opening to see a clown get his bullshit smile wiped clean off his sad fuckin' face right before our eyes by a professional clown.

In the parlance of our times. . .

A proper and well earned Bitch Slap™.

Watch the whole thing.

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Four long years. . .

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt. - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, February 16, 2005

Raise a toast, if you will, for one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century. For good or ill.

On Saturday, August 20th, six months to the day after Hunter died, many of his closest friends gathered in the high-ceiling lobby of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen. Since the mid-1960s, Hunter had used the hotel's J-Bar as his boozy late-night office, its long outdoor swimming pool as his fitness club. Now, family and friends congregated here, waiting for a convoy of shuttle buses that would ferry them down the two-lane country road to Owl Farm, Hunter's home in Woody Creek, to say goodbye.

As the hour approached, the Victorian hotel became a Gonzo way station. Reporters wandered about with spiral notebooks while Ralph Steadman and Bill Murray held court at the bar. "I wouldn't miss this for the world," Sen. John Kerry said as he boarded a shuttle, his arm around former Sen. George McGovern. "I met Hunter in the days of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Then, last summer I offered him the vice-presidency in jest. He's missed."

Because Hunter had been a perpetual Peter Pan, accepting the bleak reality of his death came hard. Nobody coveted what his son, Juan, deemed "Dr. Phil closure." Instead, his family and friends wanted to find a gallant, jubilant way to remember him. Luckily, Hunter provided them with a dramatic, ready-made funeral scheme first hatched nearly thirty years ago, a self-aggrandizing stunt guaranteed to launch his posthumous literary reputation skyward in a final blaze of triumphant glory. "Hunter wanted to be crazy and outrageous in death, just as he was in life," composer David Amram said on the bus ride to Owl Farm. "Like a phoenix, he planned on rising from the ashes."

Back in 1977, Hunter had asked Ralph Steadman -- his brilliant illustrator and trusted sidekick -- to draft a blueprint for a Gonzo Fist Memorial, his warped idea of a pyrotechnics-rigged mausoleum. The morbid notion had been preoccupying Hunter for a while. A few years before, he had asked his artist friend Paul Pascarella to design an official Gonzo logo: an iconic two-thumbed red fist clutching a peyote button, ensconced atop a dagger. Now, with a BBC crew in tow, Hunter and Ralph wandered into a Hollywood mortuary to inquire about transforming the Gonzo symbol into a full-fledged artillery cannon, 153 feet tall, capable of blasting his ashes into the atmosphere. It started out as a lark, but as the years passed, Hunter grew serious about the cannon concept, telling his family and friends it was his "one true wish." He often spoke of how Mark Twain wanted to report on his own funeral, how France celebrated the death of Victor Hugo with a no-holds-barred parade and, more recently, how Timothy Leary had his ashes fired into space from Grand Canary Island via a rocket. But Hunter had a much grander farewell in mind. He wanted to trump his own suicide with a surefire, high-octane, sizzling Gonzo epilogue complete with a thunderous eight-piece Japanese drum band and a Buddhist reading and his ashes showering down on his lifelong friends while Bob Dylan wailed "Mr. Tambourine Man" from high-decibel speakers.

Lifestyles of the Affluent and Retarded™

ABOVE: A Debtor's Prison.

Wow.

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months.

So. . . Four months is, normally, 122 days. Divide that by "at least 3000" and you get 24.59 cars abandoned by their owners at the Dubai airport EVERY DAY by people fleeing their debts and economic disaster, compounded by the real threat of incarceration. Yes, in Dubai you can go to prison for defaulting on a personal debt. I'll bet Dubai's prisons are not as "nice" as the NYSDOC's.

Could someone explain to me how the poor and working/middle class are responsible for this? Because a disturbing number of people I talk to seem eager to blame anyone less affluent then themselves.

So yes bittercup226, we are all fucked. Now we just have to figure out how to blame people who have less than us. Because we all know damn well that they are responsible for the mess we are in.

(h/t Smashing Telly)

Two pence for my thought? nah.

However, this sounds like a great idea.

But one obvious project that’s also [shovel ready] on day one is the scanning of the contents of the Library of Congress.

Anyone who thinks this is a bad idea is, frankly, dumb.

With All Your Power. . .

What would you do?

Watch, read the words and think.

If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
If you could make everybody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

And so we cannot know ourselves or what we'd really do...
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?

If you could make your own money and then give it to everybody
Would you do it?
(No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No)
If you knew all the answers and could give it to the masses
Would you do it?
(No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No)
Are you crazy?
It's a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you want

Because you cannot know yourself or what you'd really do...
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?

Really.

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Yeah, no really. . .

We. Are. Fucked.

I'm not kidding when I say I am actively working on becoming a licensed hand-gun owner.

(Obviously, I'm not feeling quite the way I was in my last post.)

How I've been feeling. . .

Without the cameos, obviously.

HIGH-FIVE INAUGURATION! - watch more funny videos

UPDATE: Seriously, I'm not smart enough to resize the short clip. Sorry. Watch it anyway.

Henry F. Potter

Seriously.

Rot in Hell - you fetid, vacuous, authoritarian piece of shit.

Read All About It!!!

THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008

43. You

Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

Exhibit A: You’re more upset by Miley Cyrus’s glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.

Sentence: Invaded and occupied by Canada; all military units busy overseas without enough fuel to get back.

Check the rest of it out.

I wait all year for this list and recommend reading the previous ones if you are new to the annual feature.

Living in Buffalo, NY, I've been reading The Beast ever since it was founded by Matt Taibbi, Kevin McElwee and Paul Fallon back in 2002 as a new, free bi-weekly alt news rag alternative to the milquetoast Art Voice - though I'm sure that probably was not their intent, it's why I started reading it. It's funny, smart, unbelievably offensive and publishes with balls of steel.

Look at what they did to Buffalo's then-mayor Tony Massiello - in their first issue! The Mayor Brown prank is even better as they almost goaded two mayors - ours and Ottawa's - into making a wholly unethical and most likely illegal bet over a fucking playoff hockey series. That's more of the silly end of things. Though, the actual journalism, however sophomoric, and the information it revealed about the alarming incompetence, gullibility and, in the Ottowa mayor's case, close to criminal behavior, said more in one or two stories about the sorry state of Western New York politics (and it's pretty sad) than the Buffalo News' political editor, Bob McCarthy, could by working any number of local politicos and contacts, then devoting months of his cherished real estate in a low rent Op-Ed section to his insights. (Not that I think Bob McCarthy is a dumb and/or incompetent man. Quite the opposite, in fact. He's just what passes for modern political journalism/punditry.)

Read The Beast. And if so inclined, support the sorry band of losers and miscreants that publish it.

Ps. I'm a bit of a fanboy, I'll admit it. Plus, it's a local rag from a town with not much to be proud of in that department and every time I see their Grade-A, year end, wrap up posted all over the net, it a good thing, IMO.

Side note - those motherfuckers can drink.

Happy Birthday, Bill 'mutha-fuckin' Hicks!!!

It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. - Bill Hicks

"The Fundamentals of the economy are strong."

"Smell that? Of course you do, it's your 401K."
(Henry Paulson juxtaposing a fart as a private retirement plan)

Nobel-laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz (not the guy pictured above) provides an interesting, though abridged, historical layout of the economic meltdown and the importance of the getting our history correct so as to smartly deal with the potentially disastrous economic depression we are facing today.

The more I read, the more it seems to be apparent that the problem is not the cyclical (and somewhat predictable) downturn that occurs in any large economy. Instead, the problem is the very infrastructure of our economy. There has been a major flaw in the way we have done business over the last 20 years, at least. As Dr. Stiglitz sees it:

In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.

Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator. If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you’ll get. A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous.

Can we all finally say, "Fuck Ayn Rand and her followers!"? If there ever was an ideology that needed a thorough, brutal and final rebuke, it's that horseshit. . .

Either way, Dr. Stiglitz wraps up his piece, I think, rather succinctly. Even if you haven't been following the minutia of the economic crisis, this is a good set of ideas to have in your head as you do. . .

Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? Every decision—including decisions not to do something, as many of our bad economic decisions have been—is a consequence of prior decisions, an interlinked web stretching from the distant past into the future. You’ll hear some on the right point to certain actions by the government itself—such as the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make mortgage money available in low-income neighborhoods. (Defaults on C.R.A. lending were actually much lower than on other lending.) There has been much finger-pointing at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge mortgage lenders, which were originally government-owned. But in fact they came late to the subprime game, and their problem was similar to that of the private sector: their C.E.O.’s had the same perverse incentive to indulge in gambling.

The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.

Down with the Trickle Down™.

For the Love of God. . .

Please read this.

About 30 years ago, the socially embedded corporation of the post-World War II period was reconceived as a giant money machine. This started innocently enough. As global competition began to affect American industries, many wondered how to make managers more accountable for the firm's performance. The idea was that managers were not acting in shareholders' interests to maximize profits. Theorists suggested all kinds of reasons why this might be so, from inertia and self-interest to community loyalty and even "honor."

One solution eventually dominated all others: markets for corporate control. A new breed of activist investors led tender offers, often hostile, to take over companies whose share prices were regarded as underperforming. Most stockholders responded simply by choosing the highest offer. Leveraging up debt and driving new economies of scale by combining or reorganizing resources were seen as ways to impose discipline on teams of managers and limit their divergence from shareholder-wealth maximization. New compensation and incentive systems linked executive pay to the performance of the company's stock price.

The company became a transaction machine designed to maximize profit, untethered from its community, society, and country. Jobs were outsourced, work was automated, assets were concentrated, costs were cut to the bone, and balance sheets depended on increasingly arcane financial engineering. Takeovers gave way to mergers. Industries consolidated, limiting consumer choice. The inward focus to which management had always been vulnerable became pathological, banishing the needs of customers and employees to a distant horizon. Job security became tenuous, and most families depended on two incomes. A large majority of employees wanted more flexibility at work than their employers allowed. Working parents, and especially mothers, foundered. Customers were treated as anonymous and expendable.

Two comments: 1.) The current situation is not just a result of the cyclical nature of any functioning economy. It is about the way we do "business". 2.) Personally, I think we're all fucked - rich and poor, alike. Whether you earn and/or make money. . . See ya in the Soup Line™.

Yes. We. Did. (Part II)

It's a marathon, not a sprint. But it never to hurts to celebrate the gains - once in a while.

Yes. We. Did.

I'm not one for campaign slogans or their re-writes, but I was part of a huge group-hug last night where, after CNN called the election for Obama, we all cried and shouted that for two minutes, easily. I wish I had some pictures of it, but alas. The memory, burned into my brain, will last me a lifetime - and that wasn't even the most amazing part of my day.