George W. Bush's 2000 campaign would have come to a screeching halt if he'd dismissed opponent John McCain's war record and suggested the American people would be better off with a guy who "didn't get captured."
Barack Obama's 2008 candidacy never would have gotten off the ground if video from an old national TV interview existed where he speculated on how nice and big newborn Malia's breasts would be when she grew up.
Walter Mondale might not have even gotten 13 electoral votes in 1984 if he'd followed up his famous "Where's the beef?" debate line by pointing at his crotch and telling Gary Hart, "It's in my pants. Lotta meat in there if you know what I mean. I guarantee it."
But what would have been called "gaffes" in any election prior to Donald Trump using his presidential campaign launch announcement to declare Mexicans who come to the United States are rapists and criminals who bring drugs are now so commonplace they fail to stand out. It's become impossible to make up satire about Trump. If you saw any of the following quotes attributed to Trump in the coming week, none would immediately jump out as bullshit:
"Yeah, but we're talking about Russia here, George. This is the real world, not some made up place like Westeros or Morocco or Oz."
"What a beautiful crowd. I get the best crowds. Crooked Hillary, you go to see her speak and people are a mess. They're terrible. Ugly, terrible people. The worst. It's sad."
"We're sending our Olympic athletes to Brazil. Brazil! The Olympics have always been America's game but Obama is too weak. It's sad. You need someone strong who's going to tell the Olympics they're staying where they belong. In America!"
"The Chinese are killing us on trade. The Chinese know they're not going to come into a Trump White House and say, (pushes corners of eyes upward and sticks out buck teeth) 'Bing bong ching chong, we gonna take-a all you job and you buy from us. Pay beeeeg money.' I've dealt with the Chinese before."
But the past 72 hours have seen an increased amount of outrageousness from the Republican nominee, even by post-Trump era standards. Most notably, he's attacked the parents of a Muslim American who died protecting his fellow soldiers, claiming he's read the Constitution and that they have no right to criticize him publicly. But beyond that, he's refused to endorse McCain or House Speaker Paul Ryan in their upcoming elections, alleged a conspiracy by fire marshals to limit the size of his rallies, suggested women who get sexually harassed are weak for not quitting and getting new jobs, mocked the mother of a crying baby, ate KFC with a metal silverware on his private jet, spouted Putin propaganda about Crimea, and very likely leaked naked photos of his wife to The New York Post.
It's led to speculation on the parts of many people that Trump may be actively trying to lose the election. Conspiracy theorists have floated the idea that Bill and Hillary Clinton are secretly behind Trump's candidacy. Others think he got into the race to help promote what would have been the upcoming season of "The Apprentice," things got out of hand and now he's trying to get out of a four-year commitment to having to learn policies and being diplomatic. Stories that he offered John Kasich the vice presidential nomination with the promise that the Ohio Governor would make all foreign and domestic policy decisions while Trump "made America great again" lends some credence to that idea.
Trump's real motivation may be found in something he tweeted after Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton at last week's Democratic National Convention:
Bernie Sanders totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton. All of that work, energy and money, and nothing to show for it! Waste of time.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2016
In June, shortly after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, two former campaign advisers speculated that Trump might be willing to surrender the nomination for $150 million. Trump shot down the idea, but billionaire Mark Cuban chimed in that was likely less about ethics and more due to the price being too low.
Trump holds something that many may consider precious and priceless. He may very well control the very existence of the Republican Party. But it's meaningless to him. Unlike any of the other 16 candidates he bested in the primaries, Trump has no more loyalty to the GOP than he has to a business he might buy out in a hostile takeover. Trump is a stranger holding a ceramic urn of your grandmother's ashes on the edge of the Grand Canyon. He can drop it and walk away without a twinge of loss, but he knows you'd be devastated. So he begins tossing it from one hand to the other...
I made a prediction a few days ago that by the end of August, Trump will resign his nomination due to business or health reasons, and Paul Ryan would "reluctantly" accept his party's nomination the way he did when he "didn't" want to be Speaker of the House. Reports this morning indicate RNC Chair Reince Priebus and other party leaders are calling for a meeting with Trump to discuss his behavior and how it damages the party. Further reports are indicating the party is exploring its options for replacing Trump on the ballot.Trump will accept a buyout large enough that he might actually be able to finally call himself a billionaire and mean it. His refusal to endorse Ryan and McCain along with the fact neither was a primary candidate sets the stage for the two of them to form a ticket that symbolizes a complete reversal from the ugliness of the 2016 campaign. And they will crush Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.
The Democrats are narrowly leading the presidential race right now against a ticket of comic book villains and are opting to reach out to disenfranchised Republicans rather than to the 46% of primary voters who supported Bernie Sanders to shore up their lead. A Ryan/McCain ticket will sell its party members a message of unity (which the Democrats failed to do), and while a portion of Trump voters will refuse to be swayed, the majority will be revealed as either GOP loyalists happy to be back on familiar ground or ardent "not Hillary" voters who don't care what name is on the ballot as long as it isn't "Clinton."
Ryan and McCain will offer the same terrible policies and stances the GOP has offered for decades. But in comparison to the bile spewed by Trump for the past year, it will sound reasonable and comforting.
The final scene of The Dark Knight has Batman running from police fresh off of saving the city. He orders Commissioner Gordon 
to lie and place the blame for Harvey Dent's murder on him to preserve the district attorney's iconic image as a crusader for justice and prevent the public from knowing of Dent's murderous turn to Two-Face. Gordon explains to his son that Batman is:
"... the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight."Batman was willing to sacrifice his honor to protect the image of Dent, the hero Gotham needed. He understood the greater good outweighed public opinion of his alter ego.
In a Democratic Primary debate in October, Hillary Clinton labeled "Republicans" an enemy. She was blasted by right wing media and walked back the comment, which is understandable since her record makes it hard to imagine she considers the GOP an enemy. Clinton and her ilk have "fought" Republicans by compromising with them on issues in the hope that it would result in give-and-take that would pull both sides to the center. Instead, both parties have continually been pulled to the right as the GOP drags Democrats to a point that fracking, private prisons, trade deals, domestic spying, reduced banking regulations, voter restrictions, and lax gun laws are considered part of the "liberal agenda."
But assume someone did consider Republicans an enemy, and wanted to destroy the party. Many may picture Bernie Sanders, who has called out the establishment players in both parties for their ties to corporations and big-dollar donors. Sanders' idealism may prompt Commissioner Gordon to label him "the hero America needs, but not the one we deserve."
To really defeat the GOP, we deserve someone else.
Who has done more to destroy the Republican Party in the past century than Donald Trump has done in the past year?
Imagine going back in time two years and finding some people who'd like to see the Republican Party reduced to rubble. Ask them their wishlist of things they'd like to see headed into the 2016 general election. Many may have suggested things like seeing the Bush family's grip on power broken, or having the political futures of promising future party leaders (and likely presidential favorites) Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie neutered. Someone might laughingly suggest, "I'd love to see party leadership having to stand behind a candidate who openly says Mexicans are criminals and find a way to justify it," but no one would realistically expect such a thing.
If they were to put their heads together and create a shoot-the-moon-level, comedically terrible candidate who would expose all the worst aspects of the GOP, they'd probably have that person:
- Claim to be religious while transparently having no understanding of Christianity.
- Insult women for their looks and menstrual cycles.
- Regularly contradict himself, often within the same sentence.
- Never offer a single policy detail.
- Openly court the white supremacist vote.
- Express little to no understanding of foreign policy.
- Express an incestuous attraction toward his daughter.
- Threaten endless military interventions while attacking veterans and surviving family of troops who died on the battlefield.
- Eat a taco bowl as outreach to Latino voters.
- Call for violence against racial minorities at rallies.
- Promise massive tax cuts guaranteed to destroy the economy.
- Boast about the size of his penis during a national debate.
- Name call his opposition like a six-year-old on a playground.
- Praise foreign dictators.
- Order the mother of a crying baby to get out of his rally.
- Dismiss violence committed by his supporters as "enthusiasm."
Donald Trump may not be our hero, but he's accomplishing more than progressives could ever ask of Hillary, Bernie, and Obama combined. And we hunt him like that other make-believe billionaire who inherited everything from his father. Because he can take it. He's a silent guardian--
Nope, I guess the silent bit is where the whole things falls apart...
Schadenfreude is a powerful drug.
Much as one may want to be a good person and bring a positive attitude to the world, it's hard not to pump your fist and laugh when something terrible happens to a truly horrible human being. I have been floating all day since seeing my first #CruzSexScandal tweet. Cruz has since denied the rumor and there seem to be plenty of reasons to doubt it, starting with "what human female would willingly have sex with Ted Cruz for free?"
But while I love seeing a sanctimonious Christian right winger get his face rubbed in hypocrisy as much as anyone else, I can't help but feel that pang of "good guys aren't supposed to kick someone who's down, even if he is a certifiable monster."
Instead, I think it's time we stop worry about tax rates and foreign policy and transgender public restroom rights and focus on the very obvious fact that Ted Cruz is a severely psychologically-scarred human being motivated by a need to be loved and accepted.
Ted Cruz is an Unloved Child
In college, I dated a girl whose parents brought her to the United States as a small child from the Soviet Union. They left family and spent all the money they had so she could have a better life. And she was reminded of that regularly. She didn't get a lot of hugs and kisses growing up. Were you to suggest they show some affection to help their daughter's emotional development, they'd likely point out they'd given up everything for her so how could anyone question their love for their only child?
Ted Cruz's father gives a similar vibe with a religious zealotry added to the mix of being a refugee who fled Castro's Cuba. You can see the desperate need for approval from a father who would much rather preach than spend time with his own flesh and blood. That's driven Cruz to the success he's had, pushing his father's religiously-motivated hate and discrimination into public policy.
Last year, Cruz's campaign put out 15 minutes of raw video of him with his family for SuperPACs to use in "independent" advertisements on his behalf. Watching it, you realize he's as smug and over-rehearsed in real life as he is on the stump, but mostly, you realize even his own family doesn't like him and is creeped out to the point that they need coaching on how to hug him.
And let's not forget that his children--who say in that video that they consider him a guest when he comes home--don't want to interact with him.
Ted Cruz is a Socially Awkward Teen
Making people laugh is a good way to get them to like you. But how do you learn to be funny? From the time we are babies, we observe what makes others laugh. Children will mimic things that made their parents or others laugh in an effort to get the residual humor.
Or not.
The point is again that Cruz wants to be liked. He wants to make people laugh and be win that "candidate I'd most like to have a beer with" support. Yet everything he does results in the opposite reaction. I'm sure it's frustrating to a Harvard-educated lawyer who's argued before the Supreme Court not to understand why Carrot Top gets laugh and he doesn't.On that note, how disgusting are those sycophants laughing at him? He gets some polite laughter, the way you would for a child or a mentally disabled person if they were rattling off dialogue from Star Wars with emotionless, rapid-fire delivery. But there are a few guffaws that feel dirty. There is no reason to laugh at this. If you've seen the movie, this would at best make you think about it and how awkward it is that a man who want to be the most powerful man in the free world is trying to impress you with the fact he memorized parts of it; and if you haven't seen it, none of this would make sense.
Ted Cruz is the Kid the Teacher Forces You to Play with at Recess
As the aforementioned sycophantic laughter illustrates, Cruz can see that people suck up to power. His starvation for love drives him to be an important and powerful person. He worked hard to make himself the personification of congressional obstruction by marketing himself as the face of the government shutdown and the Tea Party. He has set the uncompromising tone that has driven the GOP for the past eight years, and that's made him one of the top two contenders for his party's presidential nomination.
Yet no one likes him.
So while Ted Cruz is undeniably a horrible, homophobic, Christofacist monster fueled by hate and awkwardness, who among us can say we wouldn't be if our own family members didn't love us and our only friends were people who felt obligated to pay us any attention, and that every well-calculated effort we made to endear ourselves to people served only to push them further away?
Someone, please give Ted Cruz a genuine hug and tell him everything is going to be okay. Maybe then he'll finally go away.
Following last night's Republican presidential debate in Texas, Cenk Uygur opened the recap and analysis on The Young Turks by comparing the debate--and then the entire Republican primary race--to the Royal Rumble.
The Prince Who Was PromisedIn many years, the Rumble has what seems an inevitable winner. For three of the past four years, the winner was obvious, and when the writing on the wall isn't as clear, there still are only three or four potential options out of the 30 entrants. Fans spent much of the last four Rumble matches trying to convince themselves maybe WWE would pull a surprise ending instead of taking the most obvious and direct route to its Wrestlemania main event.
For the past two years, Roman Reigns has been put in a position to win. He's a decent if unspectacular wrestler who lacks charisma and stumbles on the microphone, and is being pushed beyond his abilities largely due to his pedigree and successful relatives. Fans haven't taken to him and the more he's been pushed, the more the fans have pushed back, cheering for other wrestlers when he's in the ring... and not just his opponents, but retired and dead stars of the past.
Jeb Bush came into the race as the son of a former President, the bother of another, and with more money than any other candidate--even delaying the announcement of his candidacy so his campaign could coordinate with the SuperPACs that would support him without violating the law. Many Republicans were excited by the potential, but quickly realized Jeb's heart wasn't in it and shifted their support elsewhere. Eventually, Jeb was eliminated, as Reigns was at this year's Rumble. But there is little doubt WWE will have Reigns will win the title in the main event of Wrestlemania, so is there any reason to think Jeb won't be back in 2020?
Scott Walker also would have fit into this category until he actually launched his campaign. It remains to be seen whether he'll be able to weather his disappointing White House attempt or if he's Rick Perry-ed himself forever.
Token Women's OffenseDetractors of both the WWE and the GOP will denounce the organizations as sexist. In an effort to distract from that well-founded accustion, both will sometimes let the girls play too. Chyna, Kharma, and Beth Phoenix have all participated in Royal Rumbles. The game plan is always the same... and should be familiar to anyone who watched Carly Fiorina's campaign.
First, the Diva is announced and the crowd reacts with shock. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that she will lose, but it seems rude to say so out loud. She rushes in to the fray and the men let her take a few shots at them to sell the idea that she belongs and that they respect her. She'll even eliminate someone before some man exerts his dominance, puts her in her place, and she's swiftly eliminated with a "would a woman that strong be part of a sexist organization?" reminder. Meanwhile, men in the audience laugh--most to themselves but some boisterously aloud--at how she's ugly and a bitch, and they celebrate her getting her comeuppance for thinking she was good enough to compete with men.
And little girls sadly shake their heads and accept the fact they're never going to get a fair break.
Promising Talent WastedOne of the biggest criticisms of WWE is its inability to capitalize on innovation. Vince McMahon has been trying to recapture the success of the 1980s Rock 'n Wrestling era for 30 years. Roman Reigns is being groomed to be another John Cena, who is the closest thing Vince has found to the "say your prayers and take your vitamins" Hulk Hogan. Along the way, there have been innumerable other attempts at finding the "next Hulkster," including Lex Luger, Psycho Sid, Rocky Maivia, Billy Gunn, and Tatanka.
Along the way, the company stumbled into the most successful era in the history of wrestling with decidedly non-Hogan-esque stars like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Mick Foley, the Hardy Boyz, Golddust, Edge and Christian, the Dudleys, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Val Venis, and lots more. Still, Vince continued (and continues) to sign and push tall bodybuilders over shorter, less chiseled talents like Dolph Ziggler, C.M. Punk, Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, Neville, and Kevin Owens. Fans cheer for the new talent and new ideas, but WWE continues to push lumbering big men and punishes those who try to be something fresh.
The Republican field also had a handful of fan favorites who never had a chance because they didn't fit the mold. Rand Paul foolishly thought he might convince the GOP that America should address the deficit by not starting wars all over the world. Chris Christie made the mistake of showing gratitude to President Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and no amount of backpedaling could make up for donating money to Planned Parenthood in the past. John Kasich can't gain traction with the suggestion that drug addicts could be better served by and government money better spent on treatment than prison or that the gay marriage issue has been settled and the country should move on. Instead, the GOP pushes more homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-feminism, fear mongering, and threats to carpet bomb the planet.
Past Stars Surprise ReturnsMy kids and I went to the Royal Rumble in 2013 and I've said several times that Chris Jericho's unexpected entrance was the loudest crowd reaction I've ever heard in my life. Every year, a few of the 30 Rumble slots are reserved for stars of the past to make a surprise appearance. Most of the time, they've lost a step or five, but the fans don't care. Like the token women, it's understood that Diesel, the Godfather, Bubba Ray Dudley, or the Boogeyman aren't going to main event Wrestlemania. They're just there to do their shtick, get a payday, and fire up the crowd with nostalgia.
Likewise, we got return appearances by Rick "Three Departments" Perry, 2012 Iowa Caucus Champion "Dogfucker" Santorum, and "Mad Mike" Huckabee, all playing their greatest homophobic, god-fearing hits before ducking out to cash in on the lecture circuit.
The Job SquadTo fill out 30-man Royal Rumble, you need 30 men, and not everyone can be a star. You need a fair share of Tom Brandys and Heath Slaters and Jinder Mahals and Warlords to march out to the ring and be summarily dismissed, often to comedic effect. These guys are still professional wrestlers and proven themselves in smaller venues, but aren't cut out for the big time. Bobby Jindal, Jim Gilmore, and George Pataki have all been governors, and Lindsey Graham is a high-ranking senator, yet each was the equivalent of an "Okay, I have time to run to the kitchen" entrance at the Rumble.
Tim Tebow's goal in college wasn't to win the Heisman Trophy or National Championships. With the Broncos, being MVP or winning a Super Bowl are secondary motivations. Tebow's primary purpose in everything he does is to witness to the world and bring the Word of Jesus to us all. And he has done that in a way few in this world ever have.
Regardless of my differences of opinion with him about religion and my never-ceasing stream of Twitter hatred for the guy whenever the Broncos play, I have to admit, Tim Tebow has made me understand Jesus in a way I don't know if I ever could without him.
From what I understand, Tebow is the Jackie Robinson of Christians in the NFL. After years of passing over strong, talented Christians in the draft, Tebow finally posed figure too large to ignore, so Denver reluctantly chose him and vowed to keep him on the bench his entire (short) career. But Tebow's talent and the overwhelming cries of the usually silent minority of Christians in this nation could not be ignored, leading him to disprove the critics by stepping in and lifting a terrible team to a win in the Super Bowl despite the protestations of the NFL, the networks, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the Muslims, Jews, and atheists who run this country.
Unfortunately, that was not true. In fact, Tim Tebow is not a very good quarterback and Christians are rarely quiet about anything. Neither of those things, however, is a reason for me to hate him as personally as I have.
Say what you will about his goody-goody personality and overt religious zealotry, Tim Tebow truly believes what he says. In America, Republican contenders for President, who cheat on their cancer-ridden wives and suggest repealing child labor laws, make a daily point of reminding us how much they love Jesus and his teachings. Soon, Mitt Romney will secure the Republican nomination and will be able to shift the attention to how much more he loves Jesus than President Obama does. And, in turn, President Obama will have to make the case he loves Jesus more because a huge voting block in this country justifies its decisions at the polls with statements like, "Sure, President Bush ruined the economy by sending us to war with a country that posed no legitimate threat to us resulting in the deaths of millions, but he prays every day and I don't think Gore does that."
For so many in the public eye, religion is an accessory to be worn when one wants to appear good, noble, kind-hearted. But just as it's possible to wear a Broncos shirt or baseball cap without being a true Denver fan, only a minority of any religion's followers will show any devotion beyond the surface appearance.
Tim Tebow is the rare exception whose religious beliefs come from a pure belief in the Bible. While I may not agree with what he believes, it's refreshing to be able to accept it at face value. A sect of Tebow fans likes to put forward the idea that the quarterback might actually be the son of God, and I can understand why.
Tim Tebow's wins on the football field defy all reason. While the word "miracle" gets overused, there's a statistical improbability of a guy playing as awfully as Tebow winning even one game that can't be ignored. Tim Tebow is humble. Tim Tebow shares his beliefs and feelings with the world because he wants us to be--and believes we can be--better people. Tim Tebow loves his enemies. Tim Tebow seems like a genuinely good, noble, kind-hearted person.
His followers, however...
Before he'd started rookie training camp in 2010, Tebow's jersey was the highest selling jersey in the league. Despite his own insistence he had a lot to learn before he could be an effective NFL quarterback, Jesus freaks lambasted Denver's coaches and management for not starting Tebow. Every Tebow win fueled the blind devotion of his followers and made them less bearable.
And, worst, his winning ways drew the attention of non-football fans to the NFL, which drove network and league executives to make "All-Tebow, All-the Time" the strategy for the entire season. Watch a Buccaneers-Texans game and discussion among the announcers will turn to Tebow. NFL.com recently posted a gallery of Photoshopped images illustrating what it would look like if Tebow impregnated various celebrities. Every week this year, whether he was playing or not, one of the headlines on ESPN.com, CNNSI.com, or Yahoo's NFL page featured the word "Tebow."
And, thus, Tim Tebow accomplished his ultimate goal. He made me, a devout atheist, understand Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross in a way I never had seen it before. Because while I know Tim Tebow is a good man and I have nothing against him personally, his followers are ruining football for me.
For the first 55 minutes of Red Skelton's More Funny Faces, Red treated his audience to bad jokes--when he could manage to tell them between overpowering guffaws of fake laughter--and pantomime performances by three other people, despite the fact the audience was there to see him. Imagine if Guns and Roses--the real band, not Axl and the guys he playing with today--reunited and were playing to a sellout crowd. But after playing a quick, poorly rehearsed medley of "Yesterdays," "Civil War," and "You Could Be Mine," they brought out a trained dog act. After that, they return to the stage for a half-assed, flat, out-of-tune rendition of "Paradise City." After that, more dog acts, including a few routines featuring Izzy Stradlin and his four Pomeranians.
While the G&R crowd probably would have burned the building to the ground, Red Skelton's audience couldn't have been happier. Because, as we've previously stated, the 1970's were completely devoid of entertainment. Fucking "Three's Company" was a top rated show!
Now, imagine Guns and Roses is coming back to the stage. Axl offers a heartfelt thank you to everyone for supporting the band and shares how great he felt when Appetite for Destruction and how much it meant for him and how often people come up to tell him about how much they love the album... then detours into a political rant that kind of misses the mark because he's trying to relate "Sweet Child O' Mine" to support for a school voucher program. Finally, the familiar opening chords of "Sweet Child O' Mine" blast from the amps...
And after about sixteen bars, the band stops and everyone leaves the stage.
That is essentially how Red Skelton closes More Funny Faces.
You have to assume that people willing to pay a lot of money to trudge out into a packed amphitheater in the dead of winter in Toronto to see a hack comedian twenty years past his prime are pretty hardcore fans. If they get nothing else, they're going to want to get some Freddy the Freeloader.
Instead, Red Skelton gives them a Freddy cocktease. And he didn't even take the time to make the eye makeup not look like shit. What a fucking asshole.
I also find it interesting that instead of performing as Freddy the Freeloader, he opted to discuss what Freddy the Freeloader means in terms of Skelton's own right wing politics. It should be noted that Skelton was a pretty hardcore conservative who got upset that he couldn't bring on Spiro Agnew and blamed liberals within CBS for the cancellation of his show in 1971.
However, the character is Freddy the Freeloader. He's a panhandler who steals from people. He may have a heart of gold, but at his core he is a layabout beggar who leeches off the more productive within society. One cannot make the case that "he doesn't ask anyone to provide for him." In fact, that's exactly what he does. He's not Freddy the Guy With a Steady Job That Pays the Bills.
The more disturbing belief of Freddy--and by extension of you and me and a little bit of all of us--is that he doesn't want equal rights. Freddy the Freeloader understands that some people don't want to have to look at a filthy hobo while they're eating their lunches, so he's willing to eat out back behind the restaurant, and he can't understand why the darkies can't do the same without raising a fuss. Freddy the Freeloader knows he's not as good as the rich, prominent, heterosexual white men who run the country and wishes the poor, gays, blacks, and women would accept the same!
If this is Red Skelton's most popular, most beloved character who symbolizes all that Red believes and stands for, then fuck you, Red Skelton, fuck you in hell.
When I was in eleventh grade, our Model United Nations considered resolutions regarding chemical weapons and treatment of prisoners of war. I, as the delegate representing Djibouti, took the statewide assembly by storm by introducing resolutions in both cases suggesting that we lift all bans on chemical and biological weapons and abolish the Geneva Convention agreements regarding treatment of prisoners of war.
My justification for both was that Djibouti was a very poor nation. We couldn't afford the nuclear deterrent that richer nations used to ward off invaders. Chemical weapons, on the other hand, were cheap and easy to make and could serve the same purpose as nukes. Likewise, a poor nation like Djibouti could not afford to care for its own people, much less those who would take up arms against us. Prisoners of war, we suggested, should be drowned or hanged, but not shot as that would waste our already insufficient ammunition.
Years later, I was working on "Good Morning, Arizona" when a story came down about a Iraqi suicide bomber who'd blown up his car at a checkpoint and killed three American soldiers. The show's producer, whose brother was a soldier preparing to ship out to Iraq, had a minor breakdown, calling the act "cheating." "You can't do that!" she said. "That's not fair." I asked her to elaborate and she made the case that America had the better army and the better weapons and doing things like exploding bombs at checkpoints wasn't how war was supposed to be fought.
I tried to get her to consider what we as Americans would do if a superior army invaded our country. Would we be good losers and accept their occupation or would we fight with everything we had? Of course, she couldn't consider this hypothetical since America has the strongest army in the world and that nullified the premise.
The latter example brings to light a line from the speech I made on the floor of the Model United Nations in eleventh grade. "Rules are for games, and war is not a game. War should be horrific. War should be so terrible that the very thought of it should sicken anyone who considers it as a solution to a problem." The fact that Americans were eager to go into Iraq, and that months after the invasion we'd be upset that the people we'd rolled over in a race to Baghdad "weren't playing fair" is evidence that war has lost its meaning.
We shouldn't feel safe about our brothers and daughters and grandsons and nieces being in Iraq or Afghanistan. It should come as no surprise when someone we know is killed by a roadside bomb or in an ambush. In fact, I'd argue that we should only be surprised by the healthy return of our troops from their tours. We should all be sick to our stomachs, able to sleep at night only through the knowledge that the horrors befalling our soldiers pale in comparison to those they are preventing. And if we do not or cannot know that, we should not put them nor leave them in harm's way.
War should not be a job. It should not be a way of life. It should not be a showcase for how tough we are. It should be the worse than the worst things we can imagine. Those who die should be considered the lucky ones for those who survive should be irreversibly damaged by the experience, and those who did not serve should carry the burden of caring for those survivors all their days.
Over the weekend, I received a letter made to look like a bill for the registration of this domain with the exception of some fine print stating that it is not a bill.
This letter should be at the forefront of any and all discussion of economic reform.
President Obama is insisting we reform Wall Street and vows he'll veto any legislation that "doesn't bring the derivatives market under control." What constitutes "control" is debatable. In fact, we really don't know how either side of the aisle wants our economy to run. The one thing we can count on in the weeks and months to come is talking points and key terms that will be repeated and regurgitated regardless of their truth. And the one phrase we'll hear more than any other will be "free market."
But what is the free market? To what extent should we support the free market? If child labor can be hired for less than adult labor, the free market would dictate that a good factory owner should hire kids. For that matter, the free market would tend toward slavery. Now, clearly we have legislation that outlaws slavery, but one could argue that such legislation unfairly regulates the free market.
However, I'm going to assume most congressmen don't support the return of slavery--okay, maybe Jim DeMint--but we still need to know what we should expect of our economy moving forward. And this letter sets the stage for that debate perfectly.
This letter notes that the domain registration on jakehateseverything.com is running out "soon." It reminds me that if I want to keep the domain, I'll need to pay to re-register. It never claims to be from my domain registrar. It even uses the phrase "switch" to indicate that I'd be changing companies. And it promises an opportunity to save money by taking advantage of deals on multiyear registrations.
All of these things are factually true, but still the presentation of the letter is a clear attempt at deceit. The company behind it is hoping to take advantage of people who've registered a domain or had a domain registered for them by a relative or friend. By presenting a bill-looking advertisement, the goal is to have some suckers sign off and send in a check for quadruple the amount it should cost to register their domain without even thinking. I will be renewing jakehateseverything.com for nine dollars through my current registrar, while this letter offers me the "deal" of two-years for $50. The "deal" being that one year with this company is $30, so I'd save ten bucks by going for two.
The question is whether this is a business that should or should not continue to operate in our economy henceforth.
Some will argue that the person who first took the time to craft this letter, to search for soon-to-expire domains, and to mail out these "non-bills" should be rewarded for his ingenuity. He's not lying about anything, and it isn't his fault if people don't bother to thoroughly read a document before signing it. And unlike Nigerian princes and bank presidents who are simply out to steal the money of their targets, this company is serving its customers, albeit at a grossly inflated rate.
And that is a cornerstone of marketing, isn't it? The comic store where I used to work prided itself on not giving discounts, instead relying on being the cool attitude of the store and the customer service to win over customers from other stores. The comics aren't any different and the "customer service" consists mostly of upselling customers the way Amazon's "People who bought items in your cart also purchased" feature does.
If legislation were introduced to outlaw such practices, it would be a perfect representation of the "nanny state" Fox News commentators love to warn us about.
The same could be said for predatory lenders, the banks that set out to give loans to people they knew couldn't pay them back because they knew there was money to be made on credit default swaps when the houses foreclosed. Why should the government protect someone who is too stupid to understand that he can't afford a $500,000 home on a salary of $40,000 a year?
A recent episode of This American Life examined the actions of a Wall Street hedge fund that made billions of dollars by creating bonds it knew were likely to collapse, then buying insurance against the collapse. Days later, the Justice Department announced it was filing fraud charges against Goldman-Sachs for a similar practice.
The company in the story linked about was doing the equivalent of building a $100,000 house with frayed wiring and using oily rags for insulation, then buying a $10 million fire insurance policy on it. The company lost millions on the failed bonds, but made billions on the insurance. In fact, much of the housing credit boom--which fueled the predatory lenders mentioned previously--was a direct result of this company demanding riskier credit pools to include in its bonds.
Should such behavior be punished or rewarded?
NPR's Michel Martin and Cokie Roberts have taken a stupid, sexist comment by two right-wing douchebags and are treating it as if it has any bearing on society as a whole.
To recap, Fox News's Chris Wallace was on Don Imus's show--in related news, Don Imus is still not only alive, but on the air somewhere, AND people listen to him--when Imus make a joke about Wallace interviewing Sarah Palin while she sat on his lap. Wallace jokingly replied, "One can only hope."
Roberts--and in turn Martin--made the point that Imus and Wallace wouldn't talk about a male colleague that way and turned the subject to the way that women are not taken as seriously as men and that sexualized treatment of women is more accepted by mainstream society than is the sexualized treatment of men. Unfortunately, they have missed the point of Imus and Wallace's exchange entirely.
It is correct that Imus and Wallace would not speak of a male colleague in that way. After all, they aren't attracted to their male colleague's because they are strong, red state, American males without a drop of the gay in their blood! But it should also be noted they aren't talking about Cokie Roberts or Michel Martin they way they talk about Sarah Palin either.
This is because Roberts and Martin are serious journalists with professional chops that cannot be dismissed by their looks. Imus and Wallace have enough respect for Roberts and Martin to disagree with them on a matter of principle instead of reducing everything they say to a matter of how hot they are. They would consider Roberts and Martin to truly be "colleagues" and wouldn't disrespect either by reducing her merely to a piece of ass.
You can extrapolate from that what Imus and Wallace--and for that matter the Republican Party, Fox News, and Tea Partiers--really think of Sarah Palin, and that is the real story about their "sit on my lap" comments.
Recent polling has shown that a majority of people don't know what is in the health care reform bills. The upshot of that ignorance is that a lot of those who say they want congress to "kill the bill" would actually support it if they bothered to look into it instead of taking marching orders from Glenn Beck.
Unfortunately, Americans don't like to do things like "read" and "think" about things. It's much easier to be told what you think by someone who must know what he's talking about because he has a microphone.
Politics and religion have always been equally dangerous in my mind. The idea of having your thoughts and feelings dictated to you because you choose to be part of a group--be it Catholic or Democrat or Muslim or Libertarian--makes no sense to me. If you are a pro-life Democrat, you're not really a Democrat. Your party has made a point of stating that your belief is not a part of it's platform. If you are a gay Republican... well, no, you're not.
I have heard the case that a belief in free market economics and lower taxes for businesses can supersede one's desire to be treated with equal civil rights, but in my mind it is proof that the very concept of a two-party system is irrevocably flawed. If there are 200 million voters in America, there should be 200 million political parties. A two-party system merely dumbs down any debate to the most simple soundbites as if a nation of hundreds of millions of people can be run on a straight choice of abortions or miniature American flags.
Religions thrive on the same ignorance. In fact, they go so far as to encourage it, threatening eternal suffering to those who dare to question the Almighty's Divine Plan. "Faith" is defined as belief in that for which there is no evidence. In other words, believe what the guy with the microphone in the pulpit tells you and don't go doing a lot of research and reading and thinking that might contradict what he's said.
Ask most Christians whether God is cool with rape and they'll get indignant. "God would never do that. You atheists just hate God for no reason and make up stuff like that!" Then you show them Numbers 31: 17-18 where the followers of Moses are told, "Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves." Translation: commit mass rape in thy Lord's name.
Oh, there are rules about rape. Like if you want to rape a woman after you kill her family in war, you have to wait 30 whole days and marry her, and if you decide you don't want to stay married to her, you have to let her go rather than enslave her (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). And if you rape a girl and get caught, you have to pay her dad 50 pieces of silver and you have to marry her and you can't divorce her (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)! Because if you ask any rape victim, they'll tell you the worst part about the experience is that, after all they shared, the rapist never calls.
The list goes on--God endorses the ravishing of women in Zechariah 14:2--and on--God punishes King David by having his wives publicly raped in 2 Samuel 12:11 (then he kills a baby seven verses later)--and on--rape victims who don't scream loud enough for help get put to death in Deuteronomy 22:23-24--and on--Babylonian babies get murdered while all the women get raped in Isaiah 13:15-18. Yet the majority of Christians are oblivious to these passages.
It's long been said that the greatest tool in the atheist's toolkit is the Bible. The overwhelming message of the book is not one of love, peace, and kindness, but one of hatred, violence, and intolerance. God endorses and demands genocide of his followers (Exodus 22:19, 23:23, Deuteronomy 13:7-12, 13:13-19, 17:2-5, Numbers 25:1-9, Ezekiel 9:5-7, 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Joshua 6:20-21, 8:1-29, 19:47, 2 Kings 19:35... Christ, there's a lot more, but I'm tired of listing them). Jesus suggests men should chop off their penises to get into heaven (Matthew 19:12). God commands thou shalt not kill, but then has a long list of exceptions where killing is okay, including cursing at your parents (Proverbs 20:20, Leviticus 20:9), being related to a sinner (Isaiah 14:21, Leviticus 26:21-22), not circumcising your son (Exodus 4:24), and not punching a prophet who asks you to do so (1 Kings 20:35-36).
What's most interesting is that a majority of atheists will have a passing knowledge of these passages, while most Christians will find them a surprise.
The Christian leader teaching the most accurate dogma per the Bible is Pastor Fred Phelps. The Westboro Baptist Church's leader is most famous for drumming up the "God Hates Fags" rallies and protests, often outside churches and cemeteries where funerals for homosexuals are taking place. Pastor Phelps can quote chapter and verse to explain why terrorist attacks and natural disasters are God's punishment for societal tolerance of homosexuality. He correctly points out that God says he will kill our children if we don't follow his every demand, such as killing our children for mocking bald guys (2 Kings 2:23-24).
Perhaps the greatest interpreter of the Bible is cartoonist Jack Chick, whose tracts are famous for using Bible verses to explain why Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway to Satan and telling your kids about the Tooth Fairy will make them murderers.
Understand, Phelps and Chick are both batshit insane. They promote hatred and intolerance, but they are the true voices of the Lord of the Bible. Any Christian who denies Phelps and Chick is as much a Christian as a pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat is a Democrat.
Yesterday morning, NPR covered a story about the state-run health care plan in Oregon. The reporter covered the rationing of health care and the efficiency approach taken by Oregon. To over simplify, a board creates standards for what will and won't be covered weighing cost and effectiveness. So, if something costs $10,000 but is 100% effective in curing what's wrong with you, it's more than likely covered. If something costs $1 and is 5% effective in treating you, it might be covered, too. But if something costs $10,000 and is only 5% effective, it's not covered.
This policy came under fire in the media--I know, I know, the media never jumps on a non-story and blows it out of proportion without considering all sources--when a woman dying of cancer was denied coverage for an expensive, long-shot treatment.
She received a letter from the Oregon Health Plan denying her cancer treatment because it had less than a 5 percent chance of success. The same letter offered payment for the state's physician-assisted suicide program.
The radio story includes a quote from the woman asking, "Who do you think you are?" to the officials who've offered to pay for her death, but not for her chance to keep living. Unfortunately, the next line is delivered in a passing, inconsequential tone when it is the most important point of the piece.
The drugmaker eventually gave Wagner the medication for free, but she died a few months later.
So the state health care board--or DEATH PANEL!!!! if you prefer--was right! Fortunately, the drug company took the financial hit instead of the health care plan, though this bitch makes me feel sorry even for the big corporation that would probably crush a puppy's skull in front of toddlers if there was a dollar to be made in it.
What's not discussed is what would have been sacrificed if Oregon had opted to sink thousands of dollars into the chance that this woman might overcome her cancer--a chance that was only slightly greater than if they'd dropped those same thousands on any given number on a roulette wheel. How many children wouldn't get vaccinated? How many prenatal screenings would have been foregone? How many regular yearly checkups wouldn't be done?
Health care plans, public or private, government or corporate run, have finite resources. Every dollar spent on one treatment comes at the expense of another (or several others). The main benefit of a government run option is transparency in how the decisions about which treatment will win out will be made.
Unlike Aetna, Blue Cross, and others, a government run option would be accountable to the people it covers instead of to its shareholders. The money being shifted from craps-table-odd cancer treatments won't be paying investors dividends or redecorating CEO bathrooms or buying corporate jets. It will be paying for treatments that are more effective and will save more lives in the long run.
A few weeks ago, my 80-something-year-old grandmother fell down while coming up the stairs from her basement while carrying a basket of laundry. She laid on the steps with a broken leg for almost 40 hours before a neighbor who has a key to her house went to check on her at the behest of my great aunt, who'd been calling on the phone and getting no answer.
Currently, my grandmother is in rehabilitation, learning to walk again. Or, rather, she's not. She doesn't want to participate in the exercise sessions and complains that they are too hard. She has been in the hospital for weeks, refusing to eat the food they serve her or to make any attempt at getting better. Fortunately, because of her age, the majority of her care is covered by Medicare. Otherwise, my dad and uncle would be on the hook for thousands of dollars of care that my grandmother doesn't want in the first place.
What has struck me about this whole incident is the upside-down nature of our nation's priorities. If my daughter fell down the stairs and broke her leg, her care would be determined by what kind of coverage I signed up for at my part-time grocery store job that I maintain only because I don't want to lose my health insurance. If I failed to get adequate coverage, I'd be dropping hundreds--probably thousands--of dollars out of my own pocket.
Because old people vote in inordinate percentages and kids aren't allowed to vote at all, America bases its domestic policies on prioritizing the elderly. School budgets get cut, classroom sizes grow, curriculum gets muddied to meet special interest demands, good teachers exit in droves for better paying jobs (in waitressing, for example), but social security and Medicare never take a hit. In fact, when social security announced that--because its annual rate of increase is determined by the change in cost-of-living and cost-of-living had remained the same from 2008--it wouldn't be increasing the benefits paid out this year, the Obama White House decided to send all senior citizens a check for $250, just for the hell of it.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider here is that my grandmother will never contribute anything to society again. I say this as a grandson who loves her, but the fact of the matter is that my grandmother's only contribution to society was caring for my grandfather and uncle until they both died. If she laid on those stairs until she died or if we spend six-million dollars to give her bionic body parts that allow her to fight a sasquatch and leap over speeding cars, the benefit to society is exactly the same. The cost, however, is zero versus six-million dollars.
My aforementioned uncle had Down syndrome and also received medical care paid for by your tax dollars (or maybe only if you live in Ohio. I'll freely admit I'm not sure whether my uncle's medical funding came from state, city, or federal taxes.) In 51 years of life, my uncle's greatest contribution to the world was several boxes of steno pads filled with handwritten names of dead celebrities. Yet in his final years, doctors performed multiple surgeries on his stomach, throat, intestines, and other organs that were just shutting down, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep alive someone whose parents had been told when he was born that he'd be lucky to make it to six.
In fact, when my grandmother, other uncle, and dad finally decided to stop all treatments on my uncle and put him in hospice, the state launched an investigation. If was their fear that his family had essentially decided, "Screw it. Kill the retard," and spent thousands of taxpayers' dollars trying to uncover the intricate plot, forcing the hospital to continue treatment until the inspectors were satisfied there wasn't some elaborate murder conspiracy at play.
What kind of success would you expect from a baseball team that continuously cut the budgets of its minor league affiliates, didn't scout for its draft, and kept paying ever increasing sums to over-the-hill players to stay at positions where they'd long since been unable to execute. Imagine if the Yankees still had Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield in their outfield cashing paychecks that would make Alex Rodriguez look like a pauper. What would the state of football be if Terry Bradshaw was still the quarterback in Pittsburgh, Steve Largent was still catching passes in Seattle, and Terrell Davis was hobbling along as Denver's top rusher? Basketball understands that while Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, and Charles Barkley may have been a Dream Team in 1992, there was a time for those legends to go.
Unless America can recognize the economic failure of investing in commodities with no room for growth while neglecting those that wither on the vine otherwise, we have no reason to expect this country to live up to the hype of either major political party.
Like many other holidays, I hate Veterans' Day. Oh, it's not the veterans' fault. They're the victims here. My problem is with hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is everywhere you look during holidays, political rallies, religious ceremonies, and just about anywhere else. The reason the Founding Fathers saw fit to make freedom of speech the very first right guaranteed by the Constitution was because if Americans were held accountable for everything we say that contradicts other things we say and do, the Indians would still own the land where my house is built and 19th century Southerners never would have had the manpower to harvest all their crops.
Look at Twitter or Facebook today and you'll be overwhelmed by the number of comments coming from people who want to express how much they care about the vets. They're being posted at a rate of more than one per second. Unfortunately, just like the homeless need food every day and not just Thanksgiving, veterans need more than a few tweets on the 11th of November from the people who claim to be so grateful for all the freedom and peace they enjoy.
More an a quarter million veterans are homeless. While death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan pale in comparison to Viet Nam or World War II, we are still bringing home hundreds of young men and women every month who have been maimed, crippled physically and/or mentally. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have done tours of duty in the Middle East have been sent back time and time again without any efforts to--forget about trying to end the war--just to define why we are there and what we realistically expect to accomplish.
If we can't even be bothered to tell our vets why it's important for them to leave their families for 9-15 months at a time, how much can we really say we care about them? And platitudes like "freedom" or "democracy" or "fightin' 'em there so we don't have to fight 'em here," don't count.
The biggest beef I have with all this is when people choose to wrap themselves up in the American flag and be proud to be an American where at least they know their free and not forget the men who died to give that right to them and proudly stand up next to you and defend her still today... except for that part about standing up. Replace that with "proudly sit on my couch and watch whatever 30 seconds of footage Fox News shows me before going onto some story about how ACORN is lobbying to control the fresh water supply."
I can honestly say I have more respect for someone who says:
"Hey, soldiers! You know what your job is? It's to go to all the shitty places in the world where people hate us and kill as many of those people as you can before they kill you. And that last part is in the job description, too. Don't bother coming back with your fucked up brains that have been wired into killing machines. You're a menace in ordinary society! And if you get your leg blown off, why should we give you medical help? Like we need some 19-year-old with one leg sapping off our tax dollars every year for the rest of your life. Face it, the reason you joined the military was because you dropped out of high school or got your girlfriend pregnant at 16 or couldn't land a good job or came to some other hopeless dead end. What are the odds you're going take that background, go away to do nothing but kill brown people for two years, then come back with one leg and make yourself a valued member of society?"
than I do for someone who says:
got to be in the parade with the veterans at the american legion hope you guys all had a good veterans day and thank you for the men and women who have served and continued to serve our country we love you!
but can't tell you anything about how her currently elected congressional representatives stand on a bill like S. 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act.
If 20% of the people who are willing to tell their Twitter followers and Facebook friends how much they care about Veterans were willing to tell their congressmen how much they care about veterans, we wouldn't have VA hospitals that are more dangerous than not getting care at all. We wouldn't send our troops into harms way unless we truly knew there was no other choice and that their sacrifices would be the noblest of all. We wouldn't let seven-year-old kids grow up most of their lives not knowing one of their parents. We wouldn't allow politicians to roll out veterans as props for photo ops ever other year when an election gets close. We wouldn't let predatory lenders anywhere near military bases to take advantage of soldiers just before they deploy or their families while they are gone. We wouldn't allow one party or the other claim it's more patriotic because it's more willing to use the military.
Veterans are people. That means two things. First, they are not superheroes. We shouldn't put them on pedestals and declare them better than anyone else simply because they chose to serve. There are a lot of good people who never joined the military and a lot of shitty people who did. Automatically canonizing anyone for joining a group of any type ("How dare you level such an accusation? If anyone in the world would not molest a child, it's a priest!") is a dangerous game. Second, and more importantly, they aren't objects. Unlike the guns, tanks, humvees, and other equipment they are often associated with, soldiers can't be sent into the motorpool for a quick tune up to make sure they last another 10,000 miles and they can't just be thrown away when they break.
Today is a day to celebrate our troops, but it shouldn't be the only day. Unless you are going to hold politicians accountable for their proclaimed respect and admiration for our vets, just shut up.
The disintegration of the Republican Party would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad and scary. The new GOP website, which is intended to attract more mainstream voters and convince the world that the right wing nutjobs aren't in charge has been up for about a week. The hottest topics today? "Suceeding" from the Union and kicking John McCain and Lindsay Graham out of the Republican Party.
What becomes quickly apparent is exactly what I pointed out was wrong with the party in my post about the Oakland Raiders. The extremists are chasing away all the reasonable, thinking, rational people. When someone says seceding from the Union is unconstitutional, he's called a liberal commie. Anyone who dares to point out that the Supreme Court is the highest authority on constitutionality in the nation is taken to task and told to go back to the Obama forums.
How much are the Republican extremists shifting the vision of the party? Who are the three most iconic Republicans in history? I'm going to go with Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Abraham Lincoln.
On Roosevelt:
"[Teddy Roosevelt] did more to ruin American than anyone [else] in history."
(In this poster's defense, it's possible he doesn't know there were two Presidents Roosevelt and thinks Teddy is FDR.)
On Reagan:
"Well, was Reagan really a Republican? Depends on what terms we are using."
On Lincoln:
"Lincoln trashed the Constitution more than any other president in U.S. history."
"I don't recommend that you quote the tyrant Abe Lincoln to support your case."
So, if the New GOP is willing to throw those three under the bus, what hope does John McCain have? No wonder he--as you may have seen last week--was among 30 senators to vote in support of rape (or technically to oppose the punishment of rape) as it pertains to the free market and big business.
I am proud to see that Arizona is one of the few states where both senators were brave enough to stand up and support forcing sex on co-workers, putting us in elite company with such cultural beacons as South Carolina, Kansas, and Alabama.
For fuck's sake! Even Arkansas realized rape is bad! Are we really more culturally backwards than West Virginia?
Anyway, to thank my senators, I sent off this email:
I would like to thank you for having the courage to stand up and support proud rapists everywhere. The very notion that our government should not do business with a company just because there have been repeated and steady accusations of rape leveled against its employees is ridiculous. How would this country have ever been built if we held every slave master who ever raped one of his Negress slaves accountable for his actions?
Your willingness to stand firm with other true Republicans against the regulation of rape proves you truly understand what our founding fathers had in mind when writing the constitution. It is not and never should be the place for government to dictate an organization's morals through financial manipulation. Unless that organization is ACORN.
I only hope I can count on your further support of rape and rapists and will oppose any liberal attempts to tax rape, especially rape in the workplace. I pay enough taxes already!
Best wishes and happy raping!
Jake
Something occurred to me after finishing my last post. If a Raiders fan stood outside Qualcomm Stadium with a gun strapped to his leg or slung over his shoulder, holding up a sign that implied someone should kill LaDainian Tomlinson or Phillip Rivers--not saying so outright, but rather saying something like "The thirsty grasslands of the Raider Nation can only be slaked with the blood of Charger quarterbacks!"--I will bet you anything he would be arrested regardless of his Second Amendment defense for his actions.
Decades ago, the Raiders were a force to be reckoned with in the NFL (and the AFL before that). But beyond the team's success on the field, what was more impressive--and intimidating--was the attitude the franchise exuded. The slogan "Just Win, Baby" said it all. If winning is all that matters, everything else goes by the wayside. Sportsmanship, fair play, respect, rules, all out the window if they interfere with victory. "Who needs class when you've been to five Super Bowls?" many Raiders fans will say in online forums.
Decked out in silver and black, the Raiders broke rules and broke bones with the express approval of owner Al Davis, and their collective persona became one of violence. Raiders fans will identify it as toughness, but it's not the kind of blue collar toughness that teams like the Steelers and Packers try to represent. Instead it's "do the thing you opponent won't/win at all costs" violence you'd find in street fights where a guy shoves a broken bottle into another guy's face because he was "eyeballin' my girl."
Two types of people are attracted to that illusion of toughness: Thugs and Weaklings.
Thugs become Raiders fans because they have found an outlet for their antisocial, sociopathic actions in an environment where they will be not only accepted but lauded. If you went to a Costco and stabbed a guy for wearing a shirt with a logo for a sports team you didn't like, you'd go to jail and get hundreds or thousands of hours of psychological examinations. Do it in Oakland's Black Hole and you're a hero.
Because the illusion is why they are there, Weaklings must support it even more strongly than the Thugs. Like the Weakling above, they are more inclined to start a fight for the Thugs, then take credit for the way "they" "totally fucked up that Chiefs faggot!" even if their contribution consisted mostly of jumping around, waving their arms, and maybe getting a kick or two in after the victim was unconscious. The Weakling's contribution to the illusion is to expand it. Where a thug might be willing to just punch a guy in the face, the Weakling will convince him of the need to throw the victim out of a moving car, to burn him with cigarettes, or to piss on him.
Thugs and Weaklings are the Raiders' loyal base, but they aren't the only fans they've ever had. The Raiders' success in the AFL and years after the NFL merger attracted many fans. The tinge of danger combined with on-the-field success, plus the late 80s-mid-90's merchandising push by rappers like NWA, drew in hundreds of thousands. Unfortunately, most were Sycophants.
The Sycophant isn't a fan of a team. The Sycophant is a fan of winning. The golden age of NFL Sycophantaltry came in the early 90's when thousands of "football fans" identified their favorite team as "I like the Cowboys and the 49ers." Ask those same people today where their Niners gear is and they'll proudly show you their #18 Peyton Manning jerseys and Patriot Super Bowl Champion T-shirts.
The remaining fraction of the fan base was made up of the Reasonable, thoughtful NFL fans who saw the Raiders' intimidating style of play, commitment to speed in the secondary and receiving corps, vertical passing game, and lightning rod personality of Al Davis and believed those elements were a recipe for football success.
Of course, it's not "decades ago" any more.
Now the Raiders are terrible.
With every losing season, more fans jumped off the bandwagon, starting with the Sycophants, who left to root for the Broncos and Packers and Rams and Steelers and even the Buccaneers for a year, but slowly the Reasonable began leaving, too, coming to the conclusion that Al Davis's bizarre personnel decisions, lopsided trades, and refusal to advance his football knowledge beyond 1985 might override whatever successful aspects of the above recipe they once believed in.
With his organization bleeding fans, Al Davis had a decision to make. He could revamp the team, embrace a new attitude, and risk upsetting the Thugs and Weaklings who would see change as a threat to their comfort zone, or he could play to his base.
Look at a typical Raiders game and it's not hard to see what decision he made. And it's also not hard to see that the rest of the NFL despises the Raider Nation and considers the organization as a whole and its followers in particular to be a joke. The Raiders have nothing left but the Thugs and Weaklings, and a few Reasonables, like my boss, Ron, who don't like to be associated with the sociopaths, but stay with the Raiders out of a sense of loyalty and a hope that eventually the Raider values from Al Davis's "recipe" above will someday come around and prove successful again.
There is a valuable lesson here for Republicans.
"The mindfuck is a motherfucker. We skullfuck them bitches."
-Raider Milt
Watch that video again, but imagine these same people saying "Barack Obama" instead of "LaDainian Tomlinson," "Democrats" instead of "San Diego," and "Kathleen Sebelius" instead of "Kansas City bitch."
Like the Raiders, the GOP has turned to its most loyal fans, Thugs and Weaklings, to find its direction. The Thugs want wars so they can go kill a bunch of brown people who pray to different gods and talk in crazy moon-man languages. The Weaklings want the Thugs to torture the funny-talking brown people. The Thugs want the rich to get richer. The Weaklings want to make sure any opportunities for poor people to stop being poor get snuffed out. The Thugs want you to pay out the ass for health care. The Weaklings want you to pay out the ass, but then never get the care you paid for. The Thugs want to make life miserable for you just because you're not one of them and the Weaklings want to make sure you'll never become one of them because it makes them less exclusive.
Meanwhile, the Sycophants who marched in lockstep with Reaganomics and the Contract with America and Mission Accomplished have jumped ship. The Reasonables recognize that every time a Republican says, "Sarah Palin has some good ideas," that, in fact, no, Sarah Palin does not have any good ideas and any one who says she does is either lying or stupid. There are a few loyal Reasonables who honestly believe trickle down economics will work--just like my boss believes a bunch of receivers who clock 4.3 40's running fly routes all game long can win a Super Bowl--if given enough time, but they tend to be silent for fear of being associated with the nutcases--just like my boss insists, "I'm not one of those Raider fans."
What kind of Raiders fan? The kind that wears ridiculous costumes to draw attention to one's self?
The kind that drags their kid into their own delusional world, making the kid look stupid before he's old enough to know just how inane what he's doing is?
The kind that still believes unwaveringly in the plans of a dead old man whose ideas weren't very sound or well thought out even before he went senile?
The point here is not that Republicans can't have good ideas any more than the Raiders can't field a good team. Rather that both organizations must realize that their current personae prevent those realities. Republicans who shun so-called RINO's, "Republicans In Name Only" who disagree with party leaders, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, chase brilliant minds from their party's ranks just as the Black Hole intimidates would-be Raiders fans from taking a rooting interest in the team. Blindly adhering to the economic plans of a leader who came to power with the intent of bankrupting the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War makes as much sense as expecting a team built around the one-dimensional blueprint for roster building outlined by John Madden in One Foot Equals Two Feet to result in a championship contender.
On the other hand, no Raiders fans have openly expressed a need for the NFL fans to rise up and kill Commissioner Roger Godell. It says something that I couldn't find a Raider fan equivalent picture to go with this:
Last night a kind soul on Facebook drew my attention to legislation that will have the people who run the post office in charge of our health care. We must not let this happen!
After having a reporter's shoes hurled at him during a press conference this past weekend, President Bush made it clear to reporters he didn't care. When told of the intended additional insult of being targeted by a shoe as opposed to a cream pie or the reporter's notebook, President Bush's reply was "So what?"
This could well be the credo of this administration over the last eight years. President Bush repeated the phrase to ABC's Martha Raddatz when she pointed out that there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the US invasion, and therefore taking credit for having the foresight to send troops into what he's dubbed the central front in the war on terror is tantamount to firemen kicking your front door in, hosing down everything you own, accidentally knocking over a candle, then praising themselves for being there to fight the fire started by said candle.
"So what?"
For eight years, President Bush has shown no interest in understanding the world outside our borders--or much of the world inside our borders for that matter. Anyone he wouldn't meet at church, a state dinner, or in his own living room really didn't pique this president's interest. In many ways, it was a willful ignorance, not just being oblivious to a world where families struggle to pay all the bills each month and aren't helped by cuts to capital gains taxes, where gays are moral members of the community, or where black people exist, but going out of his way not to be exposed to information that might alter his perceptions.
As our president, he has represented us to the world. He has destroyed international favor for the United States, squandered the post-9/11 support pledged from every corner of the globe, and left the world thinking all Americans are ignorant, lazy, self-important slobs.
And at least for that he might be our greatest president ever.
The buzzword for the last election was "change." The victory of Barack Obama was as much a loss for Bush and what he's stood for as it was for McCain. But as we reach the final gasps of arguably the worst presidency in history, we should spend less time patting ourselves on the back for our historic election of Obama and remember that we elected Bush twice.
The difference over the past decades has become pretty clear. Democrats represent what we aspire to be; Republicans represent what we are. In this way, we can look at presidential administrations like going to the gym.
When you are fat and out of shape, you convince yourself you have to do something about it. So you join a gym, workout, get yourself into shape, but after awhile it becomes a grind. You reach a plateau. You're in decent shape and the only way you're going to improve much more is to become obsessive like those dudes who spend six hours a day lifting and drinking power shakes and posing in front of the mirrors. It become easier to skip a work out or three to go drinking with some friends or catch up on some paperwork at the office. As long as you still look okay when you get out of the shower, that's what really matters.
And slowly you find you don't go to the gym any more. When friends point out your gut, you blame it on the holidays. Besides, you can still suck that in when you get out of the shower and look okay, and that's what really matters. It's not until you can't fit in any of your pants and you notice you look pregnant when you stand before the mirror in profile that you finally recommit to working out and getting back in shape and the cycle starts over.
As a nation, we know we'd like to clothe the poor, heal the infirm, and provide good educations for all our children... but we're more likely to stuff a fistful of barbcue chips in our mouths while seeing what the Real Housewives of Detroit are up to. They're such bitches!
So we elect a Democrat who convinces us to make sacrifices and to set goals. We'll go to the moon! We don't know how, but we'll find a way because we're Americans! We'll end racism! Sure, it's been ingrained in us for hundreds of years, but we all know it's bad, so let's stop it!
Sure enough, we see results. We're on the moon! Segregation is abolished! But what the hell are we going to do on the moon? And just because blacks can use the same drinking fountains as whites doesn't mean everything is solved racially. Just like the guy who sees that he's been bench pressing the same weight for two months and can't seem to improve or would like to run an extra mile or two every day but just doesn't have the time, the country tires of aspiring to be something better and gets comfortable with who we really are.
We elect a Republican who reassures us America is great and always has been great. We sit back and enjoy life as it is rather than as it could be. Sure, sometimes Cambodia gets bombed, or American troops have to flee Vietnam in defeat, or both the president and vice president have to resign in disgrace, but things are still pretty much okay, right?
But instead of joining a gym and fully committing to a new workout regiment, we buy a Bowflex or a Total Gym or elect Jimmy Carter. We're promised big changes, but none of them really come about and it doesn't take long before we give up and banish it/him to the garage.
And with that failure still fresh in our mouths, we find someone who will tell us how awesome we are regardless of how poor, stupid, or lazy we are. We elect a Republican who reassures us that we're not poor, stupid, nor lazy as long as there's someone out there poorer, stupider, or lazier.
We let the public schools rot, allow the ranks of homeless to swell, turn our backs on veterans, ignore AIDS, destroy organized labor, secretly fund both terrorism and the drug trade, turn mental patients out into the streets, arm and train men who will declare war upon us in the years to come, turn a blind eye to swindlers on Wall Street and in the savings-and-loans, pay farmers not to grow anything, send kids to bed hungry, and make a hero of Donald Trump.
Finally, like the man so fat the fire department has to cut the wall off his house to get him out, we admit we've let things get out of hand and commit to change. So we elect a Democrat who promises economic growth, universal health care, better education, and a departure from Washington business as usual.
Before long, we see an economic boom unlike any before. Schools are improving, our standing on the world stage is respected, and the national budget is operating with a surpus instead of a deficit... but as good as things are, we still don't have universal health care and won't any time soon. And we've gotten involved in a couple of skirmishes we probably didn't need to, even though we feel bad about all those people dying to Koboso and Somaliland or wherever it was... geography is hard! Plus the president did something that made Dan Rather have to describe what a Donkey Punch was to our kids on the nightly news!
The point is, things were really good and there was no real reason to keep going to the gym when our buddy George--who is a total party dude--was telling us to just kick back and hang with him. He gave us all some money for beer and we all went out and bought trucks and SUVs that were bigger than we'd ever really need. Then when some dudes tried to pick a fight, we were all ready to throw down, but George was like, "No, man, just kick back and go to Disneyland. I'm totally gonna handle this." So we kicked back and let him do his thing. And some guys got tortured and a couple hundred thousand Iraqis got killed and a ton of American phone got tapped and the swindlers on Wall Street got even ballsier and took millions of people's houses and the separation of church and state got narrower and millions of people lost their jobs and gas got so expensive people couldn't go to Disneyland.
And for most of that time, we said a collective, "So what?"
Sure, we've seen that we need to get back to the gym and last November we paid for a four year membership, but we can't blame George Bush for our getting fat, stupid, and lazy. We are fat, stupid, and lazy by nature and we'll be fat, stupid, and lazy after four or eight years of Obama.