Poverty - anywhere - equals Christian hypocrisy - everywhere.

I have thought deeply upon this, for it is unsettling. The implications are immeasurably vast, nakedly apparent, and...well...simply appalling.

I wish the new Pope would just come out and say it, instead of beating around the bush...but it would be difficult, I suppose, to do so from his palace...no humility in that...

Have to share this with you -

We just finished watching one of the most astonishing movies I have ever experienced - low budget movie, to be sure, but nonetheless amazing story, told very well.

It's Jerome Bixby's "The Man From Earth." It's science fiction, but not because special effects or the setting, but because of the subject matter involved.

If you have some time, check it out, I found it on Netflix...think I'm going to watch it again myself...

Fuck it. Let's bring back dueling.

Since since our culture is so rabidly sensitive to insult (anyone is likely to be insulted by virtually anything at any time), and since our culture seems to be hopelessly addicted to guns and violence, why not just bring back dueling and be done wth it? Makes about as much sense as everythng else we're doing these days...

I like this Christmas joke -

From Craig Ferguson's latest stand up special:

For Christmas this year, I bought my wife a pair of shoes, and a vibrator.

If she doesnt like the shoes, she can go fuck herself.

He can do whatever he wants. Sweet.

If you think about it, the second term of a President's tenure is, in it's entirety, a "lame duck" term - for there is nothing left to win, and nothing left to lose. This fact allows a President to transform his administration into something much more effective, and much more powerful, than was possible during the first term. Add to that the self-confidence winning a second term must certainly bring to the President - and also add not just winning a second term but receiving a literal mandate from the People - and you've got a seriously heavy hitter in the Big Chair.

Mr. Obama appears to know this; his current performance on the "fiscal cliff" is a thing of beauty. I believe we will begin to see something I feared was only campaign bluster - a truly progressive President of devastating intelligence - who also just happens to possess titanically massive balls of steel.

I get now that Mr. Obama could not push back with all of his strength during his first term - he had the foresight to see ahead to this time, when he would be able to use his full strength without the concern that doing so would simply be turned against him by the GOP and their owners.

I am truly excited to watch this transformation develop...and love the added fun of seeing Republican heads explode!

I'ts not just insane. It's batshit crazy insane.

Like a noxious weed blooming in the garden, it comes around very year.

This frantic pursuit of holiday perfection infecting us culturally, and individually.

You see it in the faces of drivers, and in the way traffic flows. You feel it in the air. It pummels you in the stores.

It is not enough, in our culture, to have a nice family gathering - it has to be, in a word - Perfect.™

The food must be Perfect.™
The house must be Perfect.™
The children must be Perfect.™
The atmosphere must be Perfect.™
Behavior must be Perfect.™
And so on...

But it is astonishingly insane, for the Perfect™ almost certainly cannot be obtained in a universe of quantum fluctuations and uncertainties and all the random bullshit it produces...

I'm not judging anyone - it happens in my house, too - every year. Stress - it's what's for dinner...! Comes with a side of cranberry sauce, you know - yum!

Oh, well. Just thought I'd mention it, and wish everyone a safe and happy Turkey Day!

Hey wingers - want to end welfare as we know it? We can totally do that. Easily. No problem.

It is such a simple matter, cutting back the dollars we spend on food stamps, school lunches, welfare, etc. In fact, I'll bet we could cut the funds for these programs within a few short years to about 10% of what they are now.

All that really needs to be done is for corporations to stop demanding welfare from their employees.

See, you drooling third-grade dropouts with the brain power of a common slug, when corporations fight against paying a living wage, against increasing minimum wage, against COLA increases, when they perpetually cut employee benefits (health care, pensions, etc.) they are subsidizing their business via their employees.

So, wingnuts, if you really want to cut welfare, then do it for the long term, and make these ginormous bazillionaire corporations actually pay their own damn way for once and run completely non-employee subsidized businesses. For if employees can actually survive on what employers pay them - without your unreasonably hated government assisance - you just watch how fast and deep the welfare funds are scaled back.

Corporate profits are in the millions and billions - yet too often, their employees are forced to seek government assistance just to survive. And corporations can clearly and quite easily afford to do the right thing here, despite the fact they sure don't seem to want to...

So help out, all of you Fox "News" chugging hypocrites out there - and demand corporations pay their own fucking way so we can stop spending so much (a massive and unsustainable 0.04% of the Federal budget!) on financial assistance programs.

For if these corporations paying bloated salaries to their wealthy executives are the paragons of morality you grossly idiotic wackos without a single original thought bouncing around your vacuous skulls seem to believe they are, why then, these beloved corporations you clearly believe in more than America, should totally want to do this - and want to do it voluntarily. Don't ya think so, you corrupted and unAmerican lockstepping zombie-starving fascists? Oh yeah, right...

Just a quick reminder

I thought to remind you all of this, as it came up rather unexpectedly in conversation with my Republican neighbor a bit ago.

He's a retired linesman now working as a second shift jailer - I guess out of boredom. He's a staunch Republican, and a really big guy physically, like 6'3", 250 pounds. He might be in his late fifties; I sure wouldn't mess with him.

He is also an avowed atheist. I know, I'd never met a Republican atheist before, either. He's like Pat Boone without the Pat Boone, but includes a side of Ronald Reagan - extra conservative. He's a likeable enough fellow though, even if he can be somewhat gruff and quite often stubbornly opinionated.

Anyway, he did not realize that Romney was a Mormon - he had never really heard it mentioned before, though he's not exactly a political junkie, like me. However, and quite interestingly, he does consider the Morman religion to be a cult, and will gladly explain why, if you have six hours to spare. I must add that my neighbor also thinks "Curves" is a woman's clothing store, and Anderson Cooper 360 is a brand of fancy golf balls...

Anyway, I just assumed he was fully behind the Republican nominee, and was likely deaf as a post as to who this person might actually be, beyond their name. After I told him about Romney being a bishop in the Mormon church and some kind of bigwig to boot, he suddenly had to get back to sitting on his back deck. But as he walked away, I told him I wouldn't be voting for Romney (saying Obama's name tends to set him off) and he mumbled something about having to re-think things. Don't get excited - he'll still vote for the Mittster - my neighbor is about as exciting as the technical manual for a leaf blower...

Oh, almost forgot - since the media is, I don't know, being "polite" about Romney being a Mormon and all, I just want to remind you not only is Romney religious; he is a wild-eyed fanatic. He's a fundamentalist, evangelical, Taliban-wanna-be, true believer, through and through Mormon, right down to his magic underwear.

This lonesome fact threw a little monkey into my neighbor's wrench this morning - so I thought it might come in handy for some of you, too.

They really just want us dead.

The self-styled plutocracy of sneering wealthy "elites" and their willingly owned Republican political puppets - who serve them at all levels of government - would seem to prefer it if we 150,000,000 Americans would somehow simply cease to exist, or at least have the decency to quickly and efficiently die.

At our own expense, of course.

Maybe these greedy cash snorters believe keeping only the "productive" half - you know, the non-evil responsible half - of Americans would be a much more controllable herd population...a herd which is big enough to keep the lights on, the luxeries flowing, and their whims and wants catered to.

If they can just shed themselves of the rest of us, well, that would be sweet.

Sorry for the cynicism, but it seems to me if they despise us that much, then it is a near certainty the convenience of our demise has been avidly discussed. And with their presidential robot malfunctioning so badly, it probably still is...

Such is the lack of humanity they evince.

The Deeper Metric; Or, Revenge For The Ego-Penis

On the outside, it sure looks like it is, in great part, about race.

But the defeat of President Obama has a deeper root to it; race is merely one of the vehicles used to express it.

Even a cursory glance at their general behavior demonstrates what Republicans are actually fighting for in this election - and no, it is not the 1%. The 1% are merely taking advantage of the situation.

Republicans have trapped themselves...and they rage against it, all sound and fury. They claim to fight for certain values, but their true objective has nothing to do with any of the issues they champion...you just have to get through all of their noise, to get a glance at it.

It starts with their declaration to make Obama a one-term president.

Then obstruction becomes the rule, even to the point of destroying the economy - never doubt they would have done it, if not reigned in by their corporate overlords.

They use race relentlessly - see birthers, and other numerous "dog whistles" Republicans deploy so recklessly.

They dive headlong into the far extremes of the rightwing fringe, each vying to be more over-the-top than the other, racing to see who will become the most "severe."

They attack women with brutal abandon, oblivious to the harm they are causing...for they only see women as usefully exploitative, easy targets for their rage.

They willfully cheat as much as possible, screwing voters out of their Constitutional rights...and the thought of cheating does not concern them in the least, as they see nothing but their ultimate destination.

And they pretend they never heard of George W. Bush, or his criminal administration, which they enabled and actively supported.

Republicans no longer care about being Republicans - professionalism, competence, and true patriotism are forgotten as they heedlessly and frantically and deperately pursue their true ends.

The noise - from racism to crashing the economy to voter restriction - covers what they MUST achieve.

Republicans do not struggle because of race. And it is not about the economy, or women, or austerity.

It is all - exclusively - about their ego-penises.

Their ego-penises must find a way to PROVE that THEY are NOT WRONG.

They allowed W. to crash the economy, to torture, to start illegal wars - you all know the laundry list.

They did all of this, wearing a cloak of righteousness eight miles thick.

And everything they did, everything they tried, everything they stood for...FAILED.

Which means, from their worldview, THEY are FAILURES.

And this, their ego-penises cannot admit, nor abide.

So they MUST prove that they were right to do all of the terrible things they did. They MUST vindicate themselves, at ANY cost.

They have no idea whatsoever how to do this, but their ego-penises demand they try - so they do.

Clumsily. Unimaginatively. Cruelly.

They play to win this game of their own manufacture, despite there being no one to play against except themselves. The collateral damage of their efforts, is incidental to them, unless it pleases them somehow.

And it is not just Republican politicians and pundits who are doing this; it is every tea-swilling, Faux-loving, invincibly ignorant Republican hardliner out there.

To win their game, they must destroy Obama, even if it desytroys everything else, for his defeat is the only way to save their ego-penises from the well deserved humiliation engendered by the totality of their epic, mind-boggling failures.

UPDATE: The term "ego-penis" is not inended to be insulting; rather, it is intended to be a statement as to how our culture equates physical body ideals with "good," and how some individuals often overcompensate for personally perceived physical flaws (ie, personal physical attributes not in-line with perceived cultural body ideals), through ego inflation. "Penis envy" does exist, and is an ego-driven phenomenon.

Plus, I think its damn funny, considering how some of these jackasses strut about...and also, I have a penis, so I do have some grounds to comment on it thusly...