Here's to a Brainfree America!

I would say that every enemy of regulation everywhere can kiss my sweet liberal ass, but the thought of any wingtard of either gender being in close proximity to my nether regions makes my skin crawl. The outrage du jour occurred when perusing the packaging of a simple garden hose I bought at a small, local hardware store a couple days ago. To wit:

"WARNING: This hose contains chemical(s), including

lead, known to the State of California to cause cancer,

birth defects and other reproductive harm. Do not drink

water from this hose. Wash hands after use." (bold in

original)

Isn't that fucking beautiful? A hose that you not only cannot drink from, but, like anything/anyone GOP, you have to wash your hands after touching it. I would bet the farm that 99 percent of sheeple either do not read this bold-face warning or project the same moronic macho disdain for pussies like me that the 40-something blonde redneck within earshot did when I returned it.

Well, guess what, bitch? The joke is on you and your lamebrain spawn who actually know -- no thinking involved -- that a pathetic loser like Sarah Palin is what this country needs. Let me key you imbeciles in on a little secret: LEAD DAMAGES YOUR FUCKING BRAIN, RETARDS. PERMANENTLY. Is that plain enough English for you to understand? Or is it just that you figure when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose? I strongly suspect it is the latter.

The wrapper for the garden hose at issue, incidentally, is embellished with a large font "USA" (with a cutesy 5-pointed star in the "A" hole, you can't make this stuff up) and the accompanying "Manufactured in the U.S.A." Maybe these hoses were all supposed to go some country designated by our coporafascist overlords for future socioeconomic experimentation, but probably not. Eight years of official mendacity have led so many down a rabbit hole of no return that this type of callous disregard for our health and safety has become a, what else, no-brainer.

Wake Up, Sheeple! You Can't "Get Your Country Back" by Supporting the Assholes Who Stole It from Right Under Your Noses

Guess what? I would like my country back, too: the country where a unanimous Supreme Court decided the year I was born that "separate but equal" was the crock of shit that every southern cracker knew it was; the country that once elected as president a Republican military leader who knew what a crock of shit was capable of being brewed by the military-industrial complex and who had absolutely no fear of saying so.

Yet, since Barack Hussein Obama's (virtually untainted) election as our 44th Commander in Chief, the incessant sniping of the minions opposed to him has been largely a constant chorus of "I want my country back!" and variations on that theme.

Sue me if I am wrong, but this statement reeks out loud of racism, bigotry and Reaganesque delusions. It is a celebration of the unreformed Archie Bunker, an endorsement of Reagan's "young buck standing in line for his welfare check and food stamps," a hearty "amen" to Bush I's "carping, little, liberal Democrats."

Add in the blind hatred of William J. and Hillary R. Clinton, the equally blind devotion to the "free" market as envisioned by Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan -- woefully inarticulated and disastrously implemented by Bush II -- and you have the recipe for our current quagmire.

What will it take for the misguided supporters of the likes of Sarah Palin to see that they have been had? Forty percent unemployment? Another Civil War? A nuclear apocalypse? A "rapture"? Fox News actually presenting a "fair and balanced" newscast? How about Rush Limbaugh apologizing on his deathbed ala Lee Atwater? Just for the sake of argument, I would wager that even if any these fantasy scenarios were to occur, it wouldn't change enough high-school-Republican minds to alter the outcome of a single congressional district race anywhere in the country.

Don't believe me? Then prove me wrong. Do any of them read anything? Or do they read "everything," just like Saint Sarah the snowbilly grifter? How the fuck did we become a nation of nitwits? Is half the population congenitally stupid?

Apparently, hindsight is not 20/20 for a rather large segment of these United States.

Grow a Spine, Sen. Leahy

I just sent Sen. Leahy this message at senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov:
"Dear Senator Leahy, I am extremely disappointed in your capitulation to the Rove-led caucus' demands to delay confirmation hearings on Eric Holder's nomination as Attorney General.
Senator, why on Earth are you willing to do this? Is it not obvious that Rove and his GOP lackeys only want time to crank up their spin machine to start chipping away at the new administration's authority?
Unless there is some concern that Mr. Holder may be forced to withdraw from the nomination, there is no reason -- none -- to acquiesce to those who foisted Alberto Gonzalez on us. If three weeks was good enough for the likes of him, two weeks is all they need to consider a nominee with Mr. Holder's credentials.
I frankly do not understand why, with this watershed election for change, you do not exercise some authority to remind the GOP of what took place just five weeks ago. We do not want to hear from Rove again -- ever. Isolate him and his supporters. This man lies and cheats as naturally as he breathes, is not an elected official and has no place at the table. He intends to foster obstructionism in any way possible and you are making it easy for him to do so. I am, as stated above, not only deeply disappointed, but angered by any action that enables his pursuit of his personal agenda."

On Bailing Out the Big Three

Copyright 2008, Creators at Large, LLC
By YleXot

Why should we spend our hard-earned tax dollars on Detroit? Well, first of all, to steal a line from the past, what's good for GM is good for the country. We may be able to survive as a nation if we produce only search engines, cheeseburgers and insurance policies, but we will not thrive.
The Big Three, despite all the blather to the contrary, have done a remarkable job of closing the quality gap with the likes of Toyota and Honda, and have regularly beaten Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki in quality metrics. The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for more than 30 years with the Chevy Silverado nipping at its heels. And, yes, Ford also invented the modern SUV with the introduction of the Explorer almost two decades ago. Chrysler invented the other most-successful concept in the market 25 years ago with the original Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager minivans.
So just in terms of providing what consumers want, which is the definition of capitalism, the Big Three have done so. Right now, today, GM offers hybrid vehicles in more classes than any other manufacturer in the world. However, until the Chevy Volt rolls out in the next year or so, the Big Three have no competition for the hands-down most popular hybrid on the planet: the Toyota Prius. I would like to compete with the rest of the world's automakers for this ultimately huge market. Wouldn't you?
So the question is not whether the Big Three are capable of supplying cars (and trucks) that Americans want, but rather what happened to turn them upside down so quickly? Two reasons, neither of which they created:
1. The "Credit Crunch." This is the ogre in the closet, the alligator under the bed. When banks start to go bankrupt, other banks lose their confidence in lending money for fear that they might be the next to fail. This is what the TARP is supposed to do: restore confidence and liquidity. The actual implementation of it is open to interpretation and beyond the scope of this article. Let me just state for now that when the banks quit lending money, the economy gets squeezed, businesses that depend on credit lines get squeezed even more, people lost their jobs and those who don't slow their spending way down. Ergo, sales of big-ticket non-essentials, like new cars and trucks, fall as well.
2. As if the Credit Crunch weren't/isn't bad enough, at the same time it really got rolling, so did the price of crude oil. Rolling, hell, crude went through the roof like a Titan missile,hitting $147 per barrel, and sending the price of a gallon of gas to $4.25 a gallon and a gallon of diesel to $4.80 where I live. Your prices may vary. There is substantial evidence that rampant speculation, i.e., what most of us would call "gambling," inflated oil prices by as much as 60 percent. Subtract 60 percent of $147 and you get $59. The price of oil right now is $45. Hmmm, maybe it was more like 70 percent. Anyway, the Big Three weren't the profiteers/pirates speculating in the oil-futures market. But baby, they weren't the only ones to be hurt by it. Toyota, Honda and Nissan sales were hit just as hard as GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Now, make no mistake about it, we Americans love our big vehicles. We loved our woodie-style Country Squire and Town and Country station wagons in the 1940s, '50s, '60s and even into the '70s because they were the only vehicles big enough to put the whole family in whether we were going to church a few blocks away or to Grandma's a few states away. Or picking up the Little League team, or hauling plywood home.
Not much has changed since other than more activities to haul kids of both genders to.
But, like Studebaker, DeSoto, Plymouth, Oldsmobile and scores of other great American marques now relegated to museums, the station wagon was pretty much killed by the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1977. The demand, however, never died, although it was tempered severely by their 8-12mpg fuelishness when the price of a tank of petrol quadrupled. But when the price of gas stabilized for long enough, SUVs, with their roominess, and the one thing a station wagon never had, increased visibility due to their higher stance, emerged as the peoples' choice. Especially when they were (under)powered by V-6s that got double the mileage of their ancestors. Everybody, including the Japanese and Germans, jumped to cash in on the success of the Ford Explorer. Why? Large people movers (not to mention large-people movers) will always be around. They are just too useful.
Furthermore, the U.S. is not Asia or Europe. For better or worse, we have geography - and lots of it. Our cities, especially in the West, are new and designed to be car-friendly. Do you like to fly anymore if you don't have to? I don't. Have you ever gone grocery shopping and tried to get frozen food home before it thaws using public transportation? In the summertime? In the desert? Or had to grab an overcrowded bus that takes an hour and a half to make the same trip that is less than half that in a car? Public transit, like the poor, will always be with us, even though it makes very little sense compared to subsidizing electric/hybrid taxis in most, if not all western cities. Plus, there hasn't been a car built in the last 30 years capable of pulling a horse trailer. At least not one with a horse or two in it.
Then there are the jobs at stake. Creative ones in design and engineering. Laborious ones in production, repair and maintenance. Worthless ones in sales (kidding, sort of). Plus the jobs from the myriad suppliers, from glass and rubber to electronics and steel. With the economy shedding jobs like a truck full of Christmas trees headed to the recycling chipper, how many jobs do we want, or can we afford, to lose? Do you want to take the gamble on a new Depression? I don’t.
Let's face it, folks. We need a new generation of greener cars and trucks. We can do it. We must do it. The market for cars and trucks worldwide is only going to grow. Think of it as "Car Wars" instead of "Star Wars." We need a Manhattan Project to develop the new technologies, whether they are electric batteries or carbon-neutral sustainable biofuels. If we don't do this, rest assured someone else will and we will then be forced to buy it from them at their price. Haven't we learned this lesson yet? Wouldn't you rather have us selling it to them?
Finally, I don't see bank CEOs who have their hands out for money willing to work for $1/year like the Big Three chiefs have promised to do to save their companies. This is passion, folks. You have to have it in your job if you want to succeed. Especially when you produce a product that packs a lot of emotional appeal, like cars and trucks. Henry Ford had it. So did Walter P. Chrysler, and Soichiro Honda. Let's get this done and let's do it now.

China's Economic Advice to U.S. Defies Logic

© 2008, Creators at Large, LLC
By YleXot

For the past couple years, it appeared to me that the Chinese government may have had an inside line on the new economy. Spectacular growth and a stable currency – albeit artificially so – over an extended period of years made me wonder whether they were on to something worthy of our attention. My mistake.
Today, these same Capitunists (capitalist-communist opportunists) suggested that the U.S. needs to reign in both fiscal and monetary spending, start saving more and curb its consumer appetite. Unless I am missing part of the equation here, every bit of this "advice," if heeded, would be the functional equivalent of the captain of the Titanic adding ballast to correct the mighty ship’s iceberg-inflicted list.
China’s continuing economic growth – estimated at a still-stunning 9 percent in 2009 despite the near-global contraction – has been fueled by our appetite for cheap consumables. Barring a total meltdown, we are, have been, and probably will continue to be China’s biggest trading partner. In fact, our desire for bargain-priced merchandise will most likely grow stronger for at least the duration of the current recession as millions of American households are forced to make do with less cash.
I have never been comfortable with the notion that consumer spending comprises two-thirds of our economy. Yet, there it is. If we were to follow the Capitunists’ advice and put $75.00 in the bank instead of replacing, say, a broken DVD player or microwave oven, we would be hastening the demise of our economy. And China’s economy. And Britain’s economy, and Belgium’s economy and so on ad infinitum.
Moving on to government spending as a stimulus, it bears noting that Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has just gone on record as saying he fears that the incoming administration may get the cure wrong. He said that it would be a major mistake to confuse budgetary restraint with prudence right now. He favors massive spending to lift the economy back onto track to taking a chance on half-measures. Spending too much to do so at this stage of the game is virtually impossible, according to Mr. Krugman.
Which brings us to the final remedy: China says we need to balance our budget. This, even according to those in the public eye whose politics are only slightly to the left of Genghis Khan, would be ultimate folly and have immediate and disastrous consequences. This suggestion flies in the face of every reasonable expert’s opinion on the current crisis.
If there is any logic to be found in these recommendations to restore our economic health, it is of that type so long imputed to the Far East: inscrutable. Adopting any of these measures, according to the prevailing wisdom, would doom not only us but the entire global financial apparatus. To what end? Are the Communist leaders looking for a way to turn back the tide of capitalism while their piggy banks are bursting at the seams with the wealth their little experiment has generated? Are they subtly suggesting they might just be inclined to dump the $600 billion of U.S. debt they already own? Do they think their own newly minted middle class will gladly forsake the upward mobility to which they have quickly become accustomed to return to the purity of class struggle?
I highly doubt that any of these scenarios are the correct answer. I doubt even more whether the Chinese economic theorists and political leaders have any more clue about what the correct answer to the current situation is than we do.



–30–

An Open Letter to Sen. Obama

Dear Sen. Obama,

You are losing me. Not because of your skin color – it is irrelevant. Not because of Rev. Wright – he is truly entitled to his opinions. Not because you have been portrayed as an elitist, but maybe you should shop at a 99-cent store for groceries every now and again just to see how many people are forced to buy their food there and what they are buying.
No, you are losing me because I want change. Real change. Not lip service to a national health-care system or limits on what kinds of vehicles we can drive. We are being filleted (not flayed) alive by our elected officials and everyone else who supports the status quo. We sent $300,000,000,000.00 -- $300 billion -- out of our country in 2007 and will send close to $500 billion – half a trillion dollars! – this year. Just to pay our oil bill. Calling this "unsustainable" is to put a smiley face on it. Calling it outrageous, stupid and insane is closer to reality.
We need an alternative to oil NOW. We have needed it for 40 years. We haven’t gotten it because we have a cravenly coward Congress whose members’ primary concern seems to be appeasement of big oil, big pharma and big insurance in order to prevent these special interests from funding their opponents. Lift the tariff on imported ethanol until we can get southern Louisiana producing enough sugar cane to make enough ethanol to support us and watch how fast oil prices will fall. Then, instead of treating us like peasants, let’s see a mandate requiring that all government vehicles get 40 miles per gallon. You lead, we will follow. Until then, I want to see bans continued on drilling for any fossil fuels in any environmentally sensitive areas, a moratorium on adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the $40 billion a year we collect from fuel taxes spent on our highways. Then raise the fuel tax and use-permit fees on foreign trucks until the revenue raised equals their share of upkeep of our infrastructure.
And all those jobs that you said are never coming back to the heartland? That is a sure bet with the current policies we have. But I believe they could come back. Get national health insurance in place and watch how fast Ford, GM, Chrysler and Caterpillar profits rise. And to hell with China. Why are we selling out to them? We have more than paid their overhead to industrialize. Cut them off like a trust-fund slacker. Tell them we will reconsider when their products and behavior meet our standards. Maybe. In the meantime, let’s get serious about enforcement of intellectual-property and industrial-espionage laws.
Then tell me why, if it is in our interest to support capitalist democracies, that China now holds what amounts to a mortgage on our economy that it could foreclose at will? China holds $363 billion in U.S. debt obligations,2 nearly twice that of No. 2 Japan’s $200 billion. China is not a capitalist democracy in any sense of our own experience of what this term means. The answer is that the administration is using China as a "home equity" credit line to finance the absolutely wrong war in Iraq and the continuing standoff in Afghanistan just to keep ruinous tax cuts in place for those who need them least.
So please, Senator, please, do not pull the Jimmy Carter cardigan of malaise out the closet and tell us to turn down the thermostat. Whoever controls energy – starting now – will set the geopolitical agenda until a truly sustainable global solution is in place. That may take decades. In the meantime, we cannot afford to have the terms of global politics dictated to us by the – currently – energy-rich nations. When 82 percent of Americans say we are on the wrong track, much of that sentiment derives from our perceived decline in power. And not world power, but domestic power: the ability to determine our own future without outside interference; the ability to be strong enough to stand up for those who need our help, and; the ability to serve as an example of why our particular interpretation of what a democratic republic should be is worthy of emulation.

The U.S. Needs National Health Care Now!

No matter which of the major candidates you support in this year's presidential election, the shameful reality is not one of them has a workable plan to guarantee universal health care for all Americans.
This is no longer acceptable, citizens. The rest of the industrialized world -- and many emerging nations -- have working health-care systems in place at a fraction of the cost we pay. In Germany, the system set up by Otto von Bismarck has worked through two world wars and the reunification of the German state. In contrast, the country whose system most closely resembles our own is China. That's right, Communist China has a consumer-based pay system guaranteed to bankrupt its most needy citizens.
We deserve better. However, we will not get anything but a band-aid approach from whomever takes the White House this fall. We need a national campaign to lobby the Congress and the president until we get a workable national health plan and policy that does not capitulate to the demands of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
I have the time, skills and motivation to implement this campaign. What I don't have is -- you know what's coming -- the capital to get it up and running. I need a web-hosting site with sufficient bandwidth to handle several gigs of video, a web designer to give it an appropriate face and identity, and cash donations. I will supply the rest. If you want change and want it now, please join me.
NOTE: Donations are not tax-deductible because they will be used strictly for political purposes. Nonetheless, a donation will still make you feel good about yourself and better about your country.

Wither, CNET

That's right, the title says "wither," not "whither," and it is imperative, not interrogative. And even though fifth-grade grammar lessons aren't the point of this post, they do dovetail nicely with the theme of fifth-grade opinions.
My extended family consumes electronic toys; we buy digital cameras, camcorders, game consoles, HDTVs, MP3 players, computers, flash drives, hard drives, ad infinitum and ad nauseuem. We aren't rich and we aren't technogeeks, just everyday consumers. So when it comes time to buy, we check Consumer Reports' ratings, read the on-line reviews and the retailers' user reports.
Invariably, CNET reviews pop up when doing on-line research. CNET has become a technophilic juggernaut -- maybe the technophilic juggernaut as of this posting. Unfortunately, juggernauts carry momentum that makes them hard to steer. See "dreadnought" in Wikipedia. For reasons unknown, CNET apparently does not edit its user reviews. Perhaps it can't afford editors; maybe it just doesn't care. Regardless of the cause, the consequence is that anyone can log in and express their opinions on products they don't even own or use, resulting in a level of discourse that often sounds like fifth-graders on a school playground, e.g., "PS3 Rocks!" "XBox 360 Rules!" "XBox sux!" "You suck!" "My parents suck b/c they won't get me one!" etc., etc., etc. Each of these junior geniuses then gets to "rate" the product on a scale of 1 to 10, which CNET dutifully averages in with everyone else's rating to determine an overall number as a "service" to its readers. Gee, thanks for the top-drawer info, CNET.
As if this isn't annoying enough, if you use CNETs search filter to find the most helpful reviews as determined by "users," the results are compiled only by the number of posted responses to a review. For example, if 0 of 2343 users found the review "helpful," that review will still turn up at the top of the search results rather than a review that 10 of 11 users found helpful. And, of course, with all the tedious flaming of other "users" reviews, you begin to regret you even bothered with CNET.
Then, the topper. I wanted to email CNET's editors about this issue, but couldn't because they don't publish their email addresses on their "contact us" link and I do not use Outlook (for purely personal reasons). Fair enough, they are certainly big enough to get along without me. But also see, "battleship history" in Wikipedia.

Current Events

Trick question: Which ones, if any, of the following statements qualify as news?

A. Tom Cruise is an excitable moron.
B. Mel Gibson is a bigoted drunk.
C. The government is run by lying thieves and incompetent whores.
D. The producers of “Survivor” are irresponsible racemongers.

Before you skip directly to the answer, let’s consider each item. “A” qualifies as news because Tom-Tom has alienated millions of his screen fans by using the talk-show circuit to trumpet his Scientology-warped world view. Of course, if you are not a Scientologist you cannot be expected to “get” Tom’s message, as you clearly have not pissed away all your money to this group of crackpots in order to become a “clear.”

Becoming a “clear” means more or less emptying your brain of anything of consequence. This used to be known as “brainwashing.” We should all thank Tom for serving as a prime example of how not to live your life.

Then we have the “news” of yet another cinema stalwart fencing with his demons in the most public way possible -- as a defendant in the criminal justice system. The specifics of Monkey Mel’s anti-Semitic remarks and contextually-displaced sexual aggression have been flogged beyond death already. Why? Because, just like Tom-Tom, multitudes of his teeming minions are disappointed and angry that part of their own self-image has self-imploded.

As for “C,“ there is no news here. Our system of representative democracy was actually designed to produce this result, although only a tiny fraction of a percent of the population is sufficiently erudite to have attained this level of historical knowledge. Journalists seem to think that tattling on the evildoers who are stupid enough to get caught will change things. This is their burden.

The latest in this list, “D,” qualifies because it is going to directly affect more people than the other three combined. When three times as many Americans know who won “American Idol” than who sits on the Supreme Court, this is a no-brainer on every level, from the producers who spawned this monster to everyone who supports it by watching. If I were smart I’d have a Chinese factory cranking out T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers right now demeaning each racial “tribe” thereby profiting handsomely from the latent and overt bigotry this show is bound to awaken and incite.

So sit back and enjoy the show, ladies and gentleman, playas and ‘ho’s and dudes and chicks. That stale, old homily, “ignorance is bliss,” is about to be tested on a huge public stage for the first time this century.

BTW, the answer is A, B and D