Banana Republic

So, this week there was a Right wing military coup in Honduras. Pretty much every government in the hemisphere has condemned it, whether they support the deposed leader or not, as a blow to the emergence of the democratic process as the dominant political mechanism in the region. This includes Barak Obama, the illegal alien, mud person, chain smoking, President of the United States of America.

The wing nut faction in the United States, celebrate the coup as a victory for freedom and the good old Monroe doctrine of divide and conquer. They think the leaders of the Western Nations, Obama included, are a bunch of commies and the military, as an agent of the Christian, reactionary Right, is obligated to step in. No big surprise here.

We Waterboarded the Wrong Guys

Madoff got 150 years. He's getting off easy. He hasn't cooperated at all or given up any hidden assets or co-conspirators.

I say send him to Gitmo. Waterboard him every day for a couple of years. Get the number of every off shore account and asset. Get the names of everybody that helped him or knew what he was doing. Then convict and start on them. It's OK. Not torture, right?

Guys like him are an insult to everyone who works for a living. Jack Welsh, Warren Buffet, Angelo Mozillo. Take'em all down in the basement and put the electrodes to their balls. Crooks, all of them. Thousands go to prison for committing penny ante crimes to feed their families. These guys walk away with billions.

Make examples of them all.

Is Your Boat Here ?

Mine is the second one up from the pier.

Here she is in better days. I was probably on the bridge. OOPS, no DSRV docked on the ass end. Wasn't me on that bridge.

Sailor, Rest Your Oar

Muster eight sideboys. Rig the bosun's chair. Pipe him away. Put on some real uniforms and keep the damn laundresses below !

I knew a guy once who became the Supt. at Annapolis. Always with the big smile. Slimey bastard. Can't imagine he did the Middy's any good. This guy was a better one and no doubt a better sailor, though before my time. Made the transition to Nukes at the beginning, probably pretty sharp. This guy graduated Summer of '42, then went to sub school. That took a little while. Then he went to subs as an Ensign. Three years later he's XO, probably a Lieutenant or LCDR. No ticket punching for him. Nice way to jump start a career. David Farragut was in the Navy for forty years before he made Captain. S'way the hardtack crumbles. Or doesn't.

Says he he got an appointment to the Academy after two years at another college and still graduated at 22. I didn't think you could do that. Maybe because it was wartime. Anybody want to comment?

Not many of the WWII guys left, especially O gangers. Sorry to see him go. Sorry to see any of them go.

And The Box He Rode In On

You gotta love this stuff. The anticipation must be giving the Pope a big knobby.

Is Elton Going To Sing "Candle In The Wind" At His Fucking Funeral ?

Elvis and Michael had a lot in common. They were both American cultural icons, loved in the most traditional and religious segments of our society, as well as World wide. They both died of drug overdose in middle age, living isolated and marginalized lives. They were both deeply disturbed, aberrant individuals and remorseless sexual predators. They both paid parents to knowingly give over their children to be raped repeatedly. The corruption of the parent as well as the child was an important part of their sickness. Either one is a hundred times worse than somebody like O.J. or Phil Spector, who are just regular, old, celebrity, psychotic, sex murderers.

The media attention and homage paid on the occasion of their deaths is incomprehensible. That so many involved in the carnival claim conservative, Christian values, I find humorous.

Me, I got a lot more sympathy for the poor girl died of ass cancer after a life spent peddling it too cheaply in Hollywood. She was tired and sad but no monster. Good night, Farrah. Nice ass.

Bring On The Moose Killer

The 2012 elections are still a long way off. That's good for the Republicans because they have a lot of rebuilding to do and it looks like they still have a wait until the party completes it's current wave of deconstruction. Daily, more prominent Republican leaders are melting back into the foul black dirt of ignorance and ethnocentric enmity from which they sprung.

Barring complete political catastrophe, the Democrats are going to count on the leadership of their transformational leader, Barry O, to aggressively promote a liberal domestic agenda, while trying to co opt traditionally Republican leaning, independent, family values voters. The Republicans, with a stable of incumbent leaders with histories of graft, corruption, closeted homosexuality or marital infidelity, will have a hard time competing with them.

Karl Rove is counting on historical precedent to replenish Congressional ranks in 2010. I'm not certain that will happen. I think they will be lucky if they pick up enough new seats to replace further losses. They have a few attractive young up and comers with novel backgrounds. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia is one. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is another. I doubt they can make either of these boys fit the mold they need to win the Presidency. I don't think they can retread either Huckybuck or Romney again and hope to win a national election. Who knows, I could be wrong on both counts.

Personally, I think Sarah Palin is too stupid, unsubtle, and mean to be elected President but it is looking more and more like she is the only candidate that can make an impressive enough showing in the Republican primaries to be a believable candidate in 2012. Whatever her failings may be, she is a bonafide modern female candidate. She owes no fealty to a stronger male figure, lurking in the background. Whatever she is, she is self made. This is a milestone in American politics, liberal or conservative.

Win or lose in 2012, the Republicans need to start building a new group of future party leaders. This new crop needs to be packed with women, minorities and people with openly alternative life choices. If they want to make a comeback, it can't be with their father's Republican brand.

I don't think that the culture wars are over. Not by a long shot. Reproductive and Gay rights will continue to be hot issues for years to come. I think that's the way it should be. Easy victories aren't victories at all. The longer that these public dialogs remain hotly debated, the more public opinion on them will moderate, on both sides and that is exactly what is needed. We also need to keep examining racial, religious and cultural diversity and what it takes to meld us all into some kind of workable homogeneous society. We're nowhere near there yet but a lot closer than we used to be.

Yo Ho Ho!

I found the link to this at W.C. Varones. You have got to hand it to the Russkies. Protect the sea lanes. Make a little money. Have a good time on vacation. All rolled into one. Well rounded life.

Health Care

Healthcare is a snakepit. You can't have a system of any kind that gives everybody the best possible healthcare. Even mundane care if provided to everyone, can produce mindboggling costs.

Use Steve Jobs as an example. Pancreatic cancer is not curable but death can be delayed, sometimes significantly. First, you get a Whipple procedure. You need a really good surgeon and it takes all day. He guts you like cleaning a fish for dinner, then reconnects what little is left. Convalescence takes a really long time and there will be complications and surgical revisions, no matter how otherwise healthy and young you are. If they do everything right, when you heal, you can eat but you won't digest anything. You'll need to have intravenous nutrition for the rest of however long you live. It's amazingly expensive and the risk of sepsis is extemely high, no matter how much care is taken.

Even with all of this, the cancer will metastasize and must then be dealt with. Chemo, radiation, organ transplants, all these can eventually be done if the patient lives long enough.

From the minute you decide to aggressively treat pancreatic cancer you are committing to millions of dollars a year in costs.

Given a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, most people are willing to submit to any measures necessary to stay alive. Even if it's not for that long.

There are a whole shitload of diseases just as expensive to treat as pancreatic cancer. There are some that are more expensive. Steve Jobs is a billionaire. If it costs him 10 or 15 million a year to stay alive, it's no problem for him. If we commit to treating everybody aggressively for every disease we can, it's a whole different matter. When those "Culture of Life" fuckheads get involved, it will be even worse. You think they're bad now, just wait.

There's maybe a billion people out of the six or seven billion on earth who are starving to death. There are a lot of places where the life expectancy is under 40 years. In many of these places, birth control is not practiced and consensual sex is not a recognized concept. Basic sanitation infrastructure is absent. Basic health care is not even productive in these areas. Lowering the infant mortality rate makes conditions worse in the long term. Maybe comprehensive health care is not where we should be focusing our best efforts right now.

I'd like to see Americans get basic health care. It seems to me though that we haven't even decided what that is yet. It seems to me that old people and poor people already get too much free health care, while the uninsured don't seek treatment even when sick for fear of burdening their families with unpayable bills. There's no way that's fair.

Traitorous American Catholic Militias To Fight The Culture Wars ?

I don't think this is any coincidence, do you?

The American Catholic press has chosen this time to rehash one of the most brazen and brutally punished mutinies in American military history. They are suggesting that the motivations for it were a gallant cause and worth emulating today. Old Zach Taylor rounded up every last one of these guys he could find and hung them publicly.

Today, when Pope Ratzo and his bishops are demanding all loyal Catholics to disregard American civil law on social issues and instead follow their edicts, can exhortations of armed resistance and rebellion be far behind?

I don't think any American Catholics will follow Ratzo on this and the thought of any fat, faggot bishops taking up the gun is laughable. Still, it tells you where Ratzo's head is at.

Tin Soldiers And Nixon Coming

Today, the wing nut, blood mongers of the Republican Party. decry the murder of the beautiful and innocent young Iranian girl Neda, shot down, presumably by para military thugs on the streets of Tehran. They aren't wrong but they are now and have always been, cringing little cowards.

Four decades ago, the voice of the Right was silent over the shooting, in cold blood, from several hundred yards away, of 13 students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. President Nixon, as newly elected as Barry O is today, said the shootings were the treatment that student protesters on campus should expect. No attempt was ever made to uncover who gave the order to fire. The soldiers who fired were not prosecuted because they were supposedly threatened by the students, most of them innocent bystanders, going from class to class, more than a football fields distance away.

On another note, we learned today that Nixon was generally against abortion, not on any quasi-religious or ridiculous "natural law" grounds but because he believed it weakened family values in America. He believed abortion should be allowed for cases of rape or miscegenation, which he no doubt believed would be mostly the same thing. He would have had no problem aborting Barry O. Hey, neither would I, if that's what his mother wanted. Dicky might have made it mandatory. He wasn't a big fan of the mulatto condition. Everyone knows they're uppity.

Family values and Richard Nixon. What a joke. It is well known that his wife despised and was disgusted by him and that he was a homosexual pedophile, indulging in his filthy passion with his friend "Bebe" Rebozo, down in Florida on Key Biscayne every chance he got.

So Smart

Here's a nifty little article from Australia. A catholic charity set up in support of women seeking abortion, found that most of the women seeking abortion were experiencing economic challenges and abused either physically or psychologically by their domestic partners.

What a surprise.

They advocate social and financial support that will enable these women to bear and raise their children but bemoan the tremendous costs and effort required.

The long term solution is obvious. Criminalize abortion and punish these women even more.

Iran Revolts, Again

A lot of Americans have been surprised by the reaction in Iran to the suspicious election results. No one who has ever paid any attention to Persian history, recent or ancient or who knows any Iranians should be surprised. They are capable of and willing to engage in revolution.

Nobody should expect that in the end the government that is installed is not Islamicist, anti-Israel, and very leery of American influence. Those things are just going to be a given. It's going to be a given in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan too.

Democratic or not, functional governments mirror the attitudes of the people.

Oh Please Marse Mitch, Don't Throw Me In That Briar Patch

Mitch McConnell says a filibuster in The Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation is possible. We can only Hope!

When There Were Guns To Bear Or Earth To Plow, I was Always There, Right From The Start

During the ten years after I got out of high school. That is 1970-1980, America had record inflation pressure. Then things tapered off and even backtracked a little, so that a working guy could barely get along on about $20,000 a year. A lot of families started to depend on having two incomes during this period.

Since then, most costs have gone up 3-5 times as much. Some things, like housing have gone up more, even with the present real estate meltdown added in. Most working people are lucky to currently have a job that pays $40,000 or less. They are working a lot harder for a lot less and no promise of anything but harder times ahead.

It's alright though. The top 10% are doing fine and the top 1% are cruising along better than ever.

Does Michelle Obama Look Like A Gorilla ?

I think this is interesting because several people have told me recently that Michelle Obama looks like a gorilla.

Is this some kind of GOP talking point? Maybe it's a throwback to overt racism from the past but I can't imagine anybody thinking that would get any kind of sympathetic response.

I don't really see that much resemblance. Gorillas have broad shoulders, thick chests and short legs, Michelle doesn't. She doesn't seem to me to be that hairy, either. Still, a lot of people have said it. What do you think? Does she look like a gorilla?

I always thought Marlon Brando looked like a Gorilla. Especially in the Godfather, with his cheeks all puffed up.

Ride Sally Ride

June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. The acting administrator of NASA posted a notice on the website of the Office of Equal Opportunity at the Goddard Space Center stating this, lauding gay and lesbian NASA employees for past achievements and contributions and encouraging employees to participate in celebratory activities during the month.

Catholics are all upset about it. I guess they feel that an iconic organization like NASA should not be condoning people who engage in perverted sex acts. Maybe they should take a breather, anally rape a few alter boys and Irish orphans, and get over it.

And They're The Ones That Make The Eskimo Whore Jokes

As the toll of senseless and deadly gun violence from the Right rises this Summer, instead of trying to curb their rowdier factions, they want to whine that Sarah and Bristol have been made fun of by some late night TV comedian. The mother accused of looking slutty, the daughter of acting it.

They should face facts. Both these women, mother and daughter, are known for the casual use of controlled substances, followed by indiscriminate fornication, out on the tundra, under a cloud of blow flies, in the season of the midnight Sun. Both mother and daughter claim these acts were of love and not commercial. Isn't that what women of this type always say? The days of the mother's youth, when this happened, may be long past, it happened, none the less. The daughter's youth is fresh upon her. With her illegitimate child in tow, she has contracted to teach other young girls the consequences of round healed complicity. She would make a more honest living out on the tundra, butt down in a caribou wallow. The season is right. The nights are long. The methamphetamine is cheap and plentiful. I guess we should be grateful mother and daughter have not taken up arms, to avenge their soiled virtue, spilling yet more blood across the National landscape. The death toll on that would likely run to scores, maybe hundreds.

Walks like a duck. Quacks like a duck. Hoors. Mother and daughter both. God help the poor younger girls still not grown.

What, Me Worry?

I have said before that American money will be worthless. Pretty soon.

A lot of people don't think think this is true.

Read this and think about it a little bit.

If I wasn't right, this could never happen. Two guys? In a suitcase? With a false bottom?

What does this tell you? They're starting to sell our debt in Asia. Deeply discounted. For Cash. Probably any currency but the dollar. These guys were going to do a little arbitrage, get some cash and go back for more bonds.

This Is Evil. God Hates Fags. It's The Truth.

Read this. What Fester is saying here, is that true authority must always be right. The silent subtext is that he is the true authority. Ergo. God Hates Fags.

You, get no recourse or input into what becomes, for all intents, the absolute truth. Fuck consensus. Democracy is not a Catholic concept. God will speak to you if you listen and what he'll tell you, is to believe Fester and do what he says. Whatever he says. Some pretty out there stuff. How come when Fred Phelps puts up a God Hates Fags website, everyone trips over themselves calling him a hate monger but when il Popo says it, it's golden. God Hates Fags.

Luckily, most people realize Popo is an evil, perverted, anal raper and blow off everything he says. Unluckily for a few, they will heed his call and end up with dilated sphincters and blood running down their leg. God Hates Fags.

If you think the Pope , Rick Warren, James Dobson, Jimmy Swaggart or Creflo A. Dollar are any different from Fred Phelps, you're dreamin'. God Hates Fags.

Hey! Carrie Made The National Catholic Register

Our Miss California, Carrie Prejean, as we all know from the well publicized time she spent with everyone's favorite Olympian, Michael Phelps, fucks like a mink and is a total slave to the reefer. She's got a clamshell full of Ortho Novum and never leaves home without it. Mouth on her like a stevedore. Yet she's as pretty and plastic as a Hugh Hefner girlfriend. Hose her down and use a dilute bleach solution on her mucous membranes, check for open lesions or suspicious pustules, she's ready to go again. A girl after my own heart. Plucky. High spirited.

I'm pretty sure she's never even been in a Catholic church. She hates the Homos though and that makes her an honorary mackerel snapper, today, anyway.

It was the Homos that made her lose her crown, poor girl. That Trump guy is probably a Homo, too. Why else would he do that creepy, comb over thing. Way Elton John.

Quick! Re-Elect the Republicans

When the Republicans are running things, the gun waving, Right Wing Terrorist factions are at least minimally mollified, and tend not to shoot, mutilate, string up on barbed wire fences or drag behind their pick up trucks, Jews, Niggers, Homos, Abortion Doctors and Women or at least the ones who don't know their place.

It is the fault of the Left that all these recent acts of violence are taking place. If the Republicans were still in charge, everything would be peaceful here at home and we could get back to the legitimate business of water boarding towel heads at Gitmo and gang raping little Iraqi girls, like God wants us to.

This is your last warning, Liberals. There's returning veterans out there, with rental garages full of nitrate fertilizer and an old, dog eared copy of The Protocols of Zion, longing for Republican leadership. Give it up, now.

Why didn't I think of That

This explains Dick and Lynne Cheney's daughter, Mary and George and Laura's daughter, Barbara. So what? Nobody thinks they're not good parents.

Bolivians Have No Need For Other Gods

Of course not. They have the baby Jesus and his mother, Pachmama, the Earth Goddess, just as they have for thousands of years.

Along with the rest of the indigenous Latin American peoples.

Mr Peabody's Coal Train Done Hauled It Away

Anybody that thinks that the wing nut bloc of the Supreme Court; Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito have any integrity needs to read this.

These little white kittens suck the corporate teat 'til the bitter end. I wonder if a wise Latina would see it different?

GOP Rift

Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are in a clinch for the leadership position of the Republican party. Newt's main bitch is that minorities are racists who strive to oppress old, white, Christian men. Palin, on the other hand believes that the biggest issue in America today concerns the right of citizens to do whatever they want with the money they get from government entitlement programs.

Does it get any better than this?

No Fall Back Position.

Most people believe that if Catholic priests were allowed to marry, the profession would attract a lot fewer homosexual pedophiles, Catholic children would be a lot safer and families would feel better about sending a son off into the priesthood. Most American Catholics would like to see women have equal participation in the Church with men, it hasn't happened. They would like to see a more democratic church structure instituted, it hasn't happened. In the past, the Catholic church tried to hold the line against divorce within it's membership, and failed. They tried to hold the line against premarital sex and cohabitation within it's membership, and failed. They tried to hold the line on birth control, and failed. They tried to ignore the feminist movement and that hasn't worked out well for them either. Catholics don't go to mass, they don't feel like they need communion. They don't confess. They aren't contrite.

The Catholic church has watched as other Christian groups have tried to liberalize with the mainstream of culture and then fade into irrelevance. They don't know what to do. They've been around too long to just give up. The current fights in the culture wars that the Catholics have been forced into are destigmatization of abortion and homosexuality. They are losing both, badly. Young Catholic women are more likely to have abortions than their secular or Protestant counterparts. Pro life activists are reduced to thuggish demonstrations in front of clinics and cowardly apologetics over the murder of physicians, while mainstream Catholics recoil in revulsion and disgust at their behavior. Gays are increasingly demanding to live openly within the Catholic communities that they grew up in and those communities are letting them. When these fights are lost, as so many others have been, where is the next fallback position? What can the Church then point to, as the dividing line between the faithful and the fallen?

The Church has to have some reason for being, some relevance in the life of the people. What is it? Where is it?

How To Tell They're Schmucks

When you realize it isn't really about abortion being murder. It's a sex thing. They don't like contraception either, or divorce, ever. They won't let their kids have sex education or information. They want the right to force their children to bear children. They insist that it's abstinence outside of marriage, or face the consequences.

There is only straight heterosexual intercourse. Between a married couple. For the purpose of reproduction, only. If she doesn't want to, it's alright to beat her with a stick, as long as it's not any bigger around than the thickest part of your thumb. The thing about God's law is, it never changes, ever.

When you fuck the right way, it is a sacrament, from God. Yahoo!

Schmucks.

Life Choices

My local paper ran a little feature story today. It's about a young Afghan woman who won a scholarship to attend high school and college in the West.

Now her family wants her to return home and marry her first cousin, to whom she was betrothed at age seven. This is not something she wants to do.

I remember, in the Zumwalt Navy, back in the Seventies, there was a stand down and we all had to spend a week attending assertive training classes. The trainers emphasized that we all have freedom of choice, all the time. They also emphasized that often those choices could result in a Court Martial, a long stretch at Leavenworth, and a Dishonorable Discharge.

This girl's choices would seem to involve outcomes even more grim than that, no matter what she chooses.

Bummer.

May God Have Mercy On Us All

I haven't written about the economy in a while. There's nothing new really, to talk about. A lot of the States are broke. The Feds are going to print half the money they spend this year.

The government is the last bubble. The rest of the World doesn't like it but they are holding big bags of our debt. What can they do but stand by silently and hope for a miracle?

You can argue, short term, about inflation versus deflation. In the long run, there can be no debate. America is heading for insolvency and bankruptcy.

Nothing has changed. Nothing can change, this late in the game. It's just not the American way to give up before the clock runs out. We still have time, if not hope.

May God have Mercy on us all.

Buy a little farm if you have the money. Organize a militia with your neighbors. Grow opium. Learn to distill liquor. Otherwise, stockpiling food, guns and ammo will have to do. Become a Mormon, couldn't hurt. Any port in a storm.

A Pro Life Interview

This guy pretty much meets my expectations for a pro life activist. The only thing that makes him unusual is that he's willing to speak honestly in public.

After all the mealy mouthed liars. He's a breath of fresh air. You know where he stands and what he thinks.

Radical Right Wing Terrorists, Smoke'em If You Got'em

Not every Muslim is an Islamist. Not every Islamist is a Radical willing to bomb public places, hijack planes or perform Jihad, killing innocents by the thousands and ultimately bringing about the downfall of the West.

The problem is that large numbers of Muslims are willing to remain silent, or even aid and abet their coreligionists that are willing to do these things.

The pro life movement is the same way. There is a history and continuing pattern of grievous violence by those in the pro life movement against their opposition. While those carrying out the violence may be only a small number, many others are obviously not only passively aware but willing to tolerate, aid and abet those among them that do these things. They are a real threat to our society and must be rooted out and destroyed. Thanks to the Bush administration, we have a bureaucracy designed to deal with them.

Turn DHS loose on them. Root them out. Stomp them down. intercept their communications. Infiltrate their organizations. Round them up. Do it now.