So let’s recap.  Change must mean Biden as VP (35 year Senator), Clinton as Sec of State (huuuuge political insider and cold bitch), Geithner as Sec of Treasury (20 years in Treasury or Fed… yikes!), Gates to remain as Sec of Defense (HOLY FUCKING SHIT!), Emanuel as Chief of Staff (long time democrat with Chicago ties), and now Volcker to head Economic Recovery Panel (former chairman of the Federal Reserve, aren’t they part of the problem?).

Way to go rockstar, that looks like some positive change…. fucking politicians.

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I’m actually referring to the Republicans not the economy in this instance, although it appears that desperate times for many of us on on the horizon.  The Republicans are indeed desperate.  In the past couple of weeks they have abandoned any quiet dirty campaigning (at least they pretended they were being quiet) and have resorted to Rove-like FUD attacks (FUD=Fear Uncertainty and Doubt).  They are starting to throw the kitchen sink at em.  Let’s recap:

• Barrack “Hussein”  Obama, lame attempt to make people think he is an Arab, terrorist, or Muslim by referring to him this way.  Campbell Brown calls this race-baiting.
• He’s a “pal” of the terrorists, more FUD trying to make a closer connection with Bill Ayers
• Drugs.  all of sudden past drug use becomes an issue (even though Obama openly wrote about it).  I love this one, fucking Republicans didn’t seem to mind Bush snorting some lines.
• Obama too risky.  This I also believe, but no more risky than McCain, that guy seems a) unstable as hell, and b) one extra long night of sleep away from being dead.

So why do the Republicans resort to these negative lowest common denominator attacks?  Because it works.  How else do you think that Bush was elected not once but twice?  It is all about the FUD.

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Shoot yourself twice in the upper body while being evicted.  This happened to 90 year old Addie Polk of Akron Ohio, and Fannie Mae forgave her loan and signed her  house over to her (click here for full article).  Something tells me that this strategy will have limited returns for pretty much everybody else who decides to use this method.   Congress and “the people” can only use one symbol per crisis, everybody else in this situation is fucked.

In a similar vein, I watched a portion of Meet the Press today and Tom Brokaw stated this:  (full transcript here)

… let me introduce a moment of heresy into the political campaign. Isn’t it also time for these candidates to reflect just what Peggy was saying and say to the American people, “You’ve got a role in this, too. You’ve got to step up.” We’re not going to make gain without some pain here in the next year, and, in fact, the American people have been part of the problem that we have right now. A lot of them took loans that they should—ought not to have taken. Credit card debt is very high. And they want to turn a blind eye to things like entitlements, Medicare and how we’re going to pay for it.

I had some immediate conflicting reactions to this statement.  First, it was a bit of a sting as I have spent many years of my life living above my means as well as many many Americans, currently, my family has paid down most of our debt and have taken great pains over the last couple of years to eliminate credit spending all together.  But the statement rings true.  My second reaction was making this statement (as a member of the MSM and a puppet of our government) is like a drug dealer complaining about the junkies.  Our government has taken great pains to encourage spending both by average Joe and by themselves with their incredible deficit spending, forcing an unnaturally low interest rate, giving incentives to sub-prime mortgage houses, and by giving two fucking ridiculous tax rebates and encouraged people not to pay down debt or save but to buy buy buy.  How many of you sat down with a used car salesman mortgage broker to obtain financing to purchase a house and were told:  “you’ve been cleared for XXXX” where XXXX was waaaaaaay more than you knew you could realistically afford.

It fucking makes me sick.

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I got an email today, this email was better than 10 hate comments and 30 videos of nuns washing cars in thongs. It was a copyright infringement email. Not only was it a copyright infringement email, but it was from Gary Larson’s “people”, you know the motherfucker who writes The Farside. The Farside was only my obsession in junior high, I basically creamed my pants when I read the email. I don’t flatter myself, I was dumb enough to name a couple of images of the farside cartoon “farside1″ and “farside2″ on a post back in November (post removed BTW) so the lawyer types probably did a google image search and scraped up my post off of the bottom of the interwebz shoe. The letter was pretty cool. I’m going to frame it.

Dear totaldiatribe

Creators Syndicate, an international newspaper syndicate, syndicates Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoons to foreign newspapers. In addition we handle all reprint permissions requests for The Far Side following guidelines long established by Mr. Larson and his company FarWorks Inc. (copyright owner to all Far Side images). In short, we approve or disapprove requests to reproduce Mr. Larson’s cartoons, and carefully monitor the ways in which they appear.

We are writing on behalf of FarWorks, Inc. and Gary Larson about your posting of two Far Side cartoons on your website http://www.totaldiatribe.com/2007/11/. While Mr. Larson is certainly flattered to know you are a fan of his work, we have to be concerned about any unauthorized use of The Far Side name and cartoons, especially when they appear online.

FarWorks has a serious problem with unauthorized uses of The Far Side worldwide. As a result, it does not allow online publication of works from The Far Side. No matter how insignificant a few uses may seem, it still amounts to making versions of the cartoons available in digital form for anyone to download, which makes it virtually impossible for Mr. Larson to control future uses, something that is very important to him.

 

Please read the letter from Mr. Larson below, and respect his wishes by removing the cartoons from your website. Many thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

<Name Removed>

Permissions Department

Creators Syndicate

<Address/email address removed>

Enclosures: A note from Gary Larson

A note from Gary Larson

RE: Online Use of Far Side Cartoons

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I’m walking a fine line here.

On the one hand, I confess to finding it quite flattering that some of my fans have created web sites displaying and / or distributing my work on the Internet. And, on the other, I’m struggling to find the words that convincingly but sensitively persuade these Far Side enthusiasts to “cease and desist” before they have to read these words from some lawyer.

What impact this unauthorized use has had (and is having) in tangible terms is, naturally, of great concern to my publishers and therefore to me — but it’s not the focus of this letter. My effort here is to try and speak to the intangible impact, the emotional cost to me, personally, of seeing my work collected, digitized, and offered up in cyberspace beyond my control.

Years ago I was having lunch one day with the cartoonist Richard Guindon, and the subject came up how neither one of us ever solicited or accepted ideas from others. But, until Richard summed it up quite neatly, I never really understood my own aversions to doing this: “It’s like having someone else write in your diary,” he said. And how true that statement rang with me. In effect, we drew cartoons that we hoped would be entertaining or, at the very least, not boring; but regardless, they would always come from an intensely personal, and therefore original perspective.

To attempt to be “funny” is a very scary, risk-laden proposition. (Ask any stand-up comic who has ever “bombed “on stage.) But if there was ever an axiom to follow in this business, it would be this: be honest to yourself and — most important — respect your audience.

So, in a nutshell (probably an unfortunate choice of words for me), I only ask that this respect be returned, and the way for anyone to do that is to please, please refrain from putting The Far Side out on the Internet. These cartoons are my “children,” of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, “Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.

I hope my explanation helps you to understand the importance this has for me, personally, and why I’m making this request.

Please send my “kids” home. I’ll be eternally grateful.

Most respectfully,

Gary Larson

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Andre Moore isn’t exactly a brain-surgeon, he’s pretty much a fucking moron, he was tossed in jail after he posted a youtube video that allegedly incited violence against the police in Filthydelphia.  One of the charges, aggravated assault.  What the fuck?  Let’s take a step back here.

Andre is/was a security officer at a medical center in Philly, and evidently had a beef with the Philly police.  As an outlet of his obvious red-hot frustration, he posted a hate filled video that promoted violence against the cops.   A quote from the video (click here for full article):

When you shoot the cops, you shoot them dead

I’m not sure that qualifies as aggrataved assault.  Here is wikipedia’s definition of aggravated assault:

• attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another person; or
• causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly in circumstances where the person has exhibited indifference to human life; or
• attempts or causes bodily injury to another person with a deadly weapon.

In another stroke of moronic genius, Andre the fucktard had his 12 year old son film the video.  So slap on a corruption of minors charge.

My problem with this is obviously a free speech issue.  Is Andre a despicable person?  You bet.  Are his rants and rages protected speech?  Hell yes.  If we allow our government to decide the line between protected and unprotected speech, then we are on a very steep and very slippery slope with a bunch of bible-beating book burners waiting for us at the bottom.

I wonder, should they have arrested Ice Cube, Easy-E, and Dr. Dre for “fuck tha police”?

Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthafucka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I’m from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young nigga on a warpath
And when I’m finished, it’s gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA

That shit is protected too, and fucking NWA rules.

Later bitches…

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The following quote from CNN.com completely encapsulates how fucking stupid our asshole president is…  new estimates are that the war will cost 2.7 trillion dollars and thousands and thousands of lives… nuff said:

U.S. President George W. Bush claimed Wednesday that he had no regrets about the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 and reiterated his determination to force Iran to halt its nuclear program.

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Say it isn’t so, our bullshit government has engaged in propaganda activity directly on US soil? The New York Times had a very interesting article yesterday titled: “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand“. No, the hidden hand wasn’t up Bush’s mostly retarded ass as I had originally guessed, it is actually in your pocket and mine, as well as up the skirts of school girls (the Pentagon is a dirty dirty place full of creepy pederasts). The article is a great read and goes into detail how the Bush Administration uses former military officials, who are now mostly tied up with the private sector defense industry, as embedded puppets at the major TV news outlets. Big surprise, FoxNews had the highest number of these ass-clowns followed by NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC. One warning, the article is fucking 11 pages long, most of us don’t have the attention span or time to dedicate to an article that long, but it was worth the extra minutes for me.

We all know suspect that the information flowing from the Bush Administration is bullshit, but now there is solid evidence of an information tampering program initiated by the assholes in charge of the country. They brought these “independent” analysts in and held private briefings with them with the exact message points the administration wanted to get out and then deployed them to the networks. And this shit works.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

I really fucking hate this administration. And, I’m not sure if our government is realistically fixable.

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Or at least heading in that direction. I’m referring of course to our civilization. The answer to the question of “What caused the fall of Rome” has no real answer, however it had some dominant factors like population in decline, incompetent and corrupt political system, and economic crisis… we are fitting the bill fairly nicely. For me it is those factors plus the unbelievable shit that we as a population get into. For example, check out this disturbing motherfucking shit out:

I’m speechless and sick to my stomach.

Then there is shit like this:

What the fuck is wrong with these people…

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I’m a little more than half way through the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and I’ve come to an interesting hypothesis.  The privatization of the US Armed Services is taking free market economics (i.e., laissez-faire) too far.  In general I’m actually in favor of more privatization, especially on the services side of government like the DMV, Lottery, Toll Roads, tax, schools, etc if the proper oversight, controls and requirements are in place.  But the military?  I’m not so sure about that.  Do we want a private army (or several) fully armed with free reign to kill that sits outside of both our military and civilian justice systems?  I recommend that you read this book, it is guaranteed to piss you off no matter where you lie on the political spectrum (full disclosure, it is a left leaning book, but well cited and written).  This book will give you an insider view on how corrupt and arrogant our current administration is, and how a few people have the power to mold and create policy to profit their buddies and themselves.

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I was reading a CNN.com article about the new sinful behaviors listed by the Vatican this morning with my 17 month old son on my lap, when the whole pope vs. poop argument began (click here for full article).  This was the conversation with my son: I said while pointing at a picture of the Pope, “Look it’s the pope!”, he said “POOP!”, I replied “no, no… it’s POPE, not POOP”, he then started shrieking “POOP POOP POOP POOP!!!”.  I’m not sure who won the argument.    The article noted:

A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution and genetic manipulations as well as social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior.

Well holy schniekies batman look out for an avalanche of bullshit.  My head is spinning right now.   Drugs, what about alcohol?  Hello!!!?? wine anybody?  Pollution?  I’m sure the Vatican doesn’t pollute as it is a small city, as well as all of the franchise churches spanning the globe, and how long has it been that being a dick makes it a sin?  Genetic manipulations, since when has the church been afraid of science?  I’m actually surprised they didn’t make the belief in evolution a sin.  Social and Economic injustices… well this one just takes the cake.  How many millions and billions of people were killed and tortured in the name of God and the church over the years?  And the church itself has set itself up to be an elite society (and extremely affluent).

Are we missing something?  I know, how about the priests sucking on the alter boy’s peckers?  The article mentioned this:

Girotti said the Catholic Church continued to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and pedophilia.

He said Church authorities had reacted with rigorous measures to child abuse scandals within the clergy, but he also claimed that the issue had been excessively emphasized by the media.

What was that?  I couldn’t hear you Girotti, I nearly drowned from a tsunami of horse-shit and was hurling up road apples.  Replace the words “rigorous measures to” with “covering up the” in the sentence above for a more accurate statement.

Come to think of it… I have a pretty smart 17 month old son.

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